362: Did WW2 Nukes Create Ghouls? - R0B0TS Answers Reddit Questions

0:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Robots radio, games, lore, stories, community, just press play. [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Fallout lorecast. [SPEAKER_00]: The podcasts that explores the boundaries of our knowledge about the world of Fallout. [SPEAKER_00]: Wastelanders and Voltweller's welcome back. [SPEAKER_00]: We are changing things up today and I want to make sure right at the beginning of this episode that you are ready for what we're about to do because I know that all of you are very comfortable at this point with the wasteland.

0:44 [SPEAKER_00]: You know what to expect. [SPEAKER_00]: You've been surviving there for a long time, but I'm going to take us to a place that is arguably more dangerous than the wasteland. [SPEAKER_00]: We are visiting [SPEAKER_00]: maybe just temporarily. [SPEAKER_00]: The internet. [SPEAKER_00]: That's right, the hive of scum and villainy.

1:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, that was the Star Wars reference. [SPEAKER_00]: We're in Fallout still though, but yeah, we're going to the internet. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, we're going to the source of all truth on the internet. [SPEAKER_00]: He says sarcastically, don't at me read it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I thought this would be fun.

1:15 [SPEAKER_00]: The idea here is, oh, also, I'm recording this as we go during a thunderstorm, because I live in Florida and we get thunderstorms like every day. [SPEAKER_00]: So if you happen to hear [SPEAKER_00]: Rumbling in the background, or if I get electrocuted while recording this, then you will never have heard it.

1:29 [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, let's go back to what I was saying. [SPEAKER_00]: Why are we going to Reddit? [SPEAKER_00]: Why are we online today? [SPEAKER_00]: Because I like to stay on top of the lower conversations. [SPEAKER_00]: I host a lower podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: It's one thing to play the games and do some research and figure out things to discuss for each episode.

1:46 [SPEAKER_00]: But it's also important to keep my ear to the ground. [SPEAKER_00]: And to understand, is that nose to the ground? [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the analogy there. [SPEAKER_00]: But to understand what's actually going on? [SPEAKER_00]: What are people discussing in the world of fallout? [SPEAKER_00]: And this is something I do fairly regularly.

2:01 [SPEAKER_00]: But I thought it would be fun to do it a little bit differently today and mix things up a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: What I have done is I have gone to the fallout lore subreddit. [SPEAKER_00]: I've organized the posts by the best posts in the last thirty days. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's by up votes and interaction and all of that.

2:18 [SPEAKER_00]: So here's what we're going to do. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to look down those posts and we're going to take a look at the discussions, the questions, and we're going to see are these really good posts? [SPEAKER_00]: Do they actually have good questions? [SPEAKER_00]: And what kinds of things are people even discussing about fallout lore today on the internet?

2:33 [SPEAKER_00]: So prepare yourselves. [SPEAKER_00]: This might be the most dangerous adventure yet. [SPEAKER_00]: Here we go. [SPEAKER_00]: Alright, so to get started, this is the very top post. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to start with the top, and we're going to move down from there. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, remember, these are sorted by the last month by the number of upvotes.

2:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And this post is only eight days old, but has seven hundred and thirty two upvotes. [SPEAKER_00]: So, relatively good, and it has climbed that relatively quickly. [SPEAKER_00]: So this question was posted by Sotha did nothing wrong, assuming that Sotha still from the Elder Scrolls. [SPEAKER_00]: The question here is, if Japan was canonically nuked, why didn't it result in ghouls first appearing in around nineteen forty-five?

3:27 [SPEAKER_00]: and it goes into more details here. [SPEAKER_00]: It says, or maybe they did, but it was suppressed at the time. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they were put down and noted as long-term burn victims. [SPEAKER_00]: Is there any source in-game referencing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the aftermath? [SPEAKER_00]: And then they edited a little bit extra on here after getting some results.

3:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And let's see what that says. [SPEAKER_00]: It says, [SPEAKER_00]: I see a lot of people claiming FEV is needed for the process, and it was not present in Japan at the time, but it was never confirmed that it was needed. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a subject of discussion by the original Delve devs themselves, and we never got confirmation.

4:03 [SPEAKER_00]: If you have any in-game other than file a Bible source, cite it to cut the speculation. [SPEAKER_00]: And they're referencing a [SPEAKER_00]: uh... that this was addressed in the file followed by but if you recall from that episode that's not cannon that's relatively it's like pseudo cannon it ties into some of the details that the developers were intending on developing or ideas that they had but [SPEAKER_00]: as we know from previous discussions on this podcast and interviews I've done with devs and things like that, the canonicity of what happens in a follow game ultimately comes down to what happens in the games if it's not directly addressed by a source in the games then it can't officially be canon.

4:48 [SPEAKER_00]: It may still be accurate and it may still get confirmed that a later date when something is added to a future game but that doesn't mean that it's currently confirmed as canon. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's a little tricky. [SPEAKER_00]: But what they're referring to here is the idea that some people have responded to this question, okay, why aren't their ghouls from nineteen forty five on because human beings were Tao's den radiation due to the explosions, the nuclear bombs that went off at Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

5:20 [SPEAKER_00]: So that's a good question. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I think that the core respondents are correct in saying, or at least he's correct in responding to some of the respondents by saying that it doesn't have anything to do with FV, which is true. [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't. [SPEAKER_00]: FV is not as far as we know required for goalification.

5:40 [SPEAKER_00]: It is simply radiation from any source that we have in the games. [SPEAKER_00]: And I've double check this. [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't seem like there's a source we have in the games that contradicts this. [SPEAKER_00]: So that would mean that theoretically, World War II, as far as we know, happens in the fallout timeline.

5:56 [SPEAKER_00]: That is correct. [SPEAKER_00]: Does it happen identically to the way it happens in the real world? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it seems like it's pretty close from the evidence that we have, but we'll never, a hundred percent know again until something gets canonized that can refute that. [SPEAKER_00]: But it seems like with the bombs going off and with radiation being [SPEAKER_00]: In the world, even just after the bombs went off, kind of remaining in that space for a period of time, that you should have some level of goalification.

6:26 [SPEAKER_00]: You should at least have some people who have qualified. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that there's probably a good reason for why that doesn't occur. [SPEAKER_00]: But here, let's take a look at some of the responses. [SPEAKER_00]: This is the top response. [SPEAKER_00]: It says, because becoming a goal is already extremely rare, and those bombings didn't release quite as much radiation as the Great War did.

6:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I think not quite as much radiation as the Great War is understating it. [SPEAKER_00]: These were two early bombs as opposed to thousands of nuclear warheads across large swaths of major parts of the United States and China. [SPEAKER_00]: most likely large parts of China that we don't have a map that details that in any specific details far as I'm aware.

7:10 [SPEAKER_00]: So the level of number of bombs is astronomically bigger. [SPEAKER_00]: The total amount of radiation would have been astronomically bigger. [SPEAKER_00]: And their point makes sense because think of it this way. [SPEAKER_00]: How many people survived the bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

7:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Not very many. [SPEAKER_00]: Lots of people were killed. [SPEAKER_00]: A number of people were irradiated and survived, but that number would be much smaller. [SPEAKER_00]: If goalification was something that happened in one and every ten thousand people or hundred thousand people, then statistically speaking, you may only have a handful of potential goals.

7:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Also, they would have to have survived the event. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, they would have had to not be killed by some other means during or after the bomb dropped. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, you might argue the point that, well, after the bomb dropped, the radiation was still there. [SPEAKER_00]: Human beings were still in the area doing cleanup and all sorts of other things.

8:12 [SPEAKER_00]: But go back to my episode about how long radiation sticks around. [SPEAKER_00]: It actually gets cleaned up through the environment through natural processes relatively quickly. [SPEAKER_00]: And so the levels of radiation would have dropped. [SPEAKER_00]: People would have avoided the area without using the kinds of gear and equipment they would need in order to not get radiation sickness from that in the real world.

8:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And so therefore the total number of people who were exposed to the point where the radiation would have turned them into ghouls would be very, very, very, very, very minimal. [SPEAKER_00]: So let's just play this out even more. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's say there's three people who survive this.

8:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Those three people may still be out there in the Fallout universe, but they might just be in Japan. [SPEAKER_00]: We haven't been to Japan in any of the Fallout games, so we wouldn't know. [SPEAKER_00]: Heck, there could be thirty people. [SPEAKER_00]: There could be three hundred people.

9:03 [SPEAKER_00]: What if for some reason, and this is the way goalification seems to work as far as we know, [SPEAKER_00]: They were genetically predisposed for goalification to take effects upon being exposed to a certain level of radiation. [SPEAKER_00]: And what if genetically people from Japan were more predisposed to that than people from other countries?

9:24 [SPEAKER_00]: That could be the case. [SPEAKER_00]: There's no evidence for that. [SPEAKER_00]: But theoretically, just go with me here. [SPEAKER_00]: That could be the case. [SPEAKER_00]: So let's say there's three hundred, three thousand goals that actually survived that event into the future. [SPEAKER_00]: The fact that those details are not present in a current fallout game doesn't confirm or deny it.

9:43 [SPEAKER_00]: What if we just didn't have that information? [SPEAKER_00]: What if that information was reported, but the new sources disappeared? [SPEAKER_00]: And probably from a meta-perspective, more importantly, none of the places that we've been to in the games have very much to do with Japan and the fallout from World War II.

9:59 [SPEAKER_00]: There are a few very specific locations, but buried among pages and pages, large amounts of data about the war would be maybe an article to, or to about these people who have been changed. [SPEAKER_00]: They look like burn victims, but they seem to survive and are healthy anyway. [SPEAKER_00]: You can see how that plays out.

10:23 [SPEAKER_00]: It would be very unlikely if people were gullified in that situation for us to even know how would we know. [SPEAKER_00]: But what this does do is it leaves open the potential for something like this to come up in a future follow game. [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine a follow up five where there's a location.

10:44 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know where where we are, but there's some sort of location with a new center or a museum, some sort of historical site. [SPEAKER_00]: and then some clippings from news articles that may have been saved from before the bomb dropped, maybe just after World War II, maybe decades after World War II.

11:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Talking about these strange details about some of the survivors who seem to have been well ill-affected by the radiation, thus the skin falling off and all of that, but yet continue to survive for unprecedented lifespans. [SPEAKER_00]: because think about it. [SPEAKER_00]: By twenty seventy seven somebody who was exposed in nineteen forty five would have been well over hundred years chances are hundred fifty years if they were an adult during exposure.

11:32 [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe there are news articles out there we just don't have them yet. [SPEAKER_00]: and it is something that could show up in a future follow-up game. [SPEAKER_00]: So this is a very good question. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of conversation in debate about this. [SPEAKER_00]: The second post on this notes that there are goals that existed before the bombs dropped.

11:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Somebody else chimed in says that the mob boss and Boston that was canonically a goal. [SPEAKER_00]: Before the war, all of that is true. [SPEAKER_00]: There is evidence of goals from before the bombs dropped, and then the majority of them because of the bombs dropping. [SPEAKER_00]: But you can also see how those numbers would be very, very slim and from a country very far away from the US that there might be limited amount of knowledge and news about those things, especially from a post-war wasteland perspective.

12:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Digging up information like this would be, well, a needle in a haystack, but it could happen. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's fiction, right? [SPEAKER_00]: So future developers could work this in. [SPEAKER_00]: Alright, moving on, then the second post, the second of the top post right now, says this.

12:37 [SPEAKER_00]: It's from OK calendar, seven, six, two, six, who writes, why the hell would the minute men use the laser musket? [SPEAKER_00]: According to the in-game model, the laser musket is made using the lens chamber from a regular AR-Nine [SPEAKER_00]: laser rifle. [SPEAKER_00]: So in order to make the laser musket, they have to strip apart an AER-Nine laser rifle.

12:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But the AER-Nine is already semi-automatic by default. [SPEAKER_00]: The laser musket is not. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the AER-Nine is better than the laser musket and almost every aspect gameplay wise. [SPEAKER_00]: So the minute men are effectively stripping apart a superior weapon in order to make one inferior.

13:14 [SPEAKER_00]: I suppose it could be said that one advantage of the laser musket is that it does not require microfusion cells, but it's not like those are all that hard to find in the fall at universe. [SPEAKER_00]: Alright, so interesting question. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's see what some of the responses say.

13:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, this has three hundred and seventy-two upvotes, and that's from thirteen days ago. [SPEAKER_00]: The first response from Doppy Dragon says, the amount of MF cells and energy cells available in the games is intentionally exaggerated as a game mechanic. [SPEAKER_00]: As is all ammo.

13:42 [SPEAKER_00]: Generally speaking, unless you are in a more civilized area with manufacturing like the van graphs and gun runners, those kinds of things are going to be scarce. [SPEAKER_00]: From a lore perspective, it makes sense. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that this is headed in the right direction. [SPEAKER_00]: And I like how this person answers the question from a meta perspective.

13:59 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, don't come here wrong. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that when it is possible to answer questions from an in-game lore perspective, that is almost always the better way to do it. [SPEAKER_00]: But sometimes, [SPEAKER_00]: The thing that actually raises the question is a meta-decision, is a gameplay decision.

14:17 [SPEAKER_00]: So from that perspective, the idea that this doesn't use energy cells means that not only does it not require [SPEAKER_00]: ammo, the same way that you would need ammo for your laser rifle, and that could run out. [SPEAKER_00]: But you also don't have to keep the ammo with you. [SPEAKER_00]: You also can respond to a situation necessarily without needing to pick up ammo or an extra bag or anything.

14:42 [SPEAKER_00]: You pick up your rifle and you go. [SPEAKER_00]: You crank it and you shoot. [SPEAKER_00]: I can see why that would be a kind of weapon that you might want to use when you're the kind of person who is responding to the calls from other people to show up and react. [SPEAKER_00]: But also, cells, energy cells are rare.

15:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Rarity means that they're more expensive. [SPEAKER_00]: Would you in the wasteland use up a bunch of expensive items when you need to be shooting at things fairly regularly? [SPEAKER_00]: or would you more carefully save your ammunition from when you really need it? [SPEAKER_00]: In this case, having a weapon that doesn't require the ammunition is a much cheaper way to handle that.

15:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine that you are working for the minimum. [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine that every week you have to go out and solve a problem, which probably requires like shooting goals or who knows. [SPEAKER_00]: The amount of energy cells that you would run through in order to have a laser powered weapon would be very, very high.

15:46 [SPEAKER_00]: The cost of operating would be very, very high. [SPEAKER_00]: And that would compound itself across multiple members. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, of course, when you come across the minute men in the game, they're kind of rundown. [SPEAKER_00]: It's really just Preston who's left and then some of the people who are with him who are to defend themselves.

16:02 [SPEAKER_00]: But you get where I'm going here. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's say you had a team of ten people. [SPEAKER_00]: Ten people all shooting energy cells is going to run through a lot of energy cells really, really quickly. [SPEAKER_00]: So I think that there's something to be said about that. [SPEAKER_00]: The second top response to this by BT flick response something very similar.

16:18 [SPEAKER_00]: They say you're confusing gameplay with lore. [SPEAKER_00]: Lorewise laser muskets don't use cells. [SPEAKER_00]: They're hand-cranced to generate ammunition and fire. [SPEAKER_00]: It makes the musket a slow but more reliable weapon you don't need ammo for. [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually a damn good choice for peacekeepers doing a job for free who isn't going to be expecting citizens to part with valuable resources like ammunition or money, you know, caps, as thanks and they didn't say caps, but I'm just throwing that in there.

16:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Like I imagine you show up and as a peacekeeper and like I saved your farm, okay, now you get to give me money. [SPEAKER_00]: Now it feels like extortion. [SPEAKER_00]: You're not actually helping out. [SPEAKER_00]: You've become the mob basically. [SPEAKER_00]: So that makes sense. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, think of it from this perspective, it's a laser musket.

17:00 [SPEAKER_00]: A musket is an item that is traditionally identified with the time period of the Revolutionary War, which is thematically part of what's going on and followed for. [SPEAKER_00]: So it makes sense for them to have a musket type weapon. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, I think there's another aspect here that we're not really considering.

17:21 [SPEAKER_00]: The lens that is pulled out of the A-E-R-Nine is pulled out from a weapon that is modular. [SPEAKER_00]: It is not just the most powerful version of that weapon. [SPEAKER_00]: The fully upgraded rifle with a stock and advanced targeting system and other updates to the front of the gun in order to make it more accurate.

17:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Any of that stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: It is simply a lens that is pulled from the base part of the gun. [SPEAKER_00]: So that means a few things. [SPEAKER_00]: First of all, it means that we shouldn't be comparing the stats of a trick-out laser gun to a laser musket. [SPEAKER_00]: We should be comparing stats to the simplest version of it.

18:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Also, if something else in a more complex piece of equipment were to fail, [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't know, the chamber that holds the lens and the lens is now not able to be angled correctly, then that gun is no longer useful. [SPEAKER_00]: But if you can pull the lens out because the lens still works and put it into another working design, then you have now basically created a weapon with minimal resources from the previous broken weapon.

18:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And finding broken laser guns in the wasteland is probably a lot easier than finding working ones. [SPEAKER_00]: So it makes sense that a group like this would be pulling pieces from stuff in order to build them together. [SPEAKER_00]: But there's another aspect to this as well. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's look at the basic stats.

18:45 [SPEAKER_00]: The laser muskets base damage is thirty. [SPEAKER_00]: The laser guns base damage is twenty-four. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, you might be like, okay, yes, but it shoots a lot faster. [SPEAKER_00]: It has a higher magazine size. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: The rate of fire is fifty, and the laser muskets is six.

19:02 [SPEAKER_00]: The magazine, quote unquote magazine, I mean, that's not really a magazine's crank, but the magazine on the laser muskets is just a single shot thing, whereas the laser gun can hold thirty cells in order to shoot. [SPEAKER_00]: But let's look at the other details. [SPEAKER_00]: The range and the accuracy are almost identical.

19:21 [SPEAKER_00]: They both have a range of seventy-one and the laser gun only has one more accuracy point. [SPEAKER_00]: Seventy-one compared to seventy. [SPEAKER_00]: So don't get me wrong here. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_00]: The laser gun, the pistol version of the AER-nine, does more DPS. [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.

19:39 [SPEAKER_00]: It can shoot multiple shots much faster even if the shots do less damage. [SPEAKER_00]: But ultimately, you don't lose any real range or accuracy by converting one into a laser musket and you actually get a little bit more damage even at the same ranges, which means that you don't have to get as close to the things you're shooting at.

20:02 [SPEAKER_00]: And that could make all the difference, especially if you're showing up to a situation where somebody's in trouble and all of the attention from the danger is focused on the person who's in danger. [SPEAKER_00]: So let's play this out in a scenario. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's say there's a super mutant and it's attacking a farm.

20:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's say [SPEAKER_00]: It stumbled around its hungry. [SPEAKER_00]: It's been looking for something to eat. [SPEAKER_00]: The farmer is on its land. [SPEAKER_00]: It notices the farmer and he's got a dog and he's like, oh, I want to eat the dog or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever the scenario is, there's a super mutant attacking a farm.

20:33 [SPEAKER_00]: If you were to then respond to that and you have a farmer in his home and he's shooting out of his windows and you got a super mutant who's now shooting back at the farmer, probably standing behind a tractor or something. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know something broken down on the yard out front.

20:49 [SPEAKER_00]: If you were to come up to that situation, would you want to get up close to them and shoot them multiple times with a pistol? [SPEAKER_00]: Or would you rather hit them from a distance with a well aimed more powerful shot that might disarm the situation faster without putting yourself in danger?

21:07 [SPEAKER_00]: It seems like the second one might be more effective, especially if you're in a group with multiple people who all have laser muskets and you all shoot simultaneously coordinated at the same time. [SPEAKER_00]: Now that's just one version of a scenario that can happen. [SPEAKER_00]: Clearly there would be opportunities that a regular laser pistol that can shoot faster would be more effective.

21:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, but I think when you look at all the pieces together, you can see why it would make sense that they piece together a laser musket out of these parts. [SPEAKER_00]: That also means that if you find something like a broken laser gun, you could take some of the other parts and repurpose them for other things as well.

21:46 [SPEAKER_00]: That's what the wasteland is about. [SPEAKER_00]: It's about taking the things that you find and finding other uses for them. [SPEAKER_00]: And so this plays into the lore and it plays into the details and sure the games are a little bit inflated with the number of things you find. [SPEAKER_00]: Like if it hasn't hit you by now that it's odd that you can wander into someone's old broken down home that nobody's lived at for a hundred years and then open a refrigerator and [SPEAKER_00]: You can still find a cram that hasn't been eaten in there that seems ridiculous, right?

22:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Like those areas would have been combed over hundreds of times by people wandering the wasteland looking for any little bit of scrap of food or whatever. [SPEAKER_00]: There shouldn't be anything that's actually useful available in regular places in the world that anyone can get into at all.

22:33 [SPEAKER_00]: That's the way the wasteland would actually work, but that doesn't work for a video game. [SPEAKER_00]: Items should be available enough for the game to be fun, but also give you the feeling of a world that's been abandoned and rummaged through by everybody with every need across any situation.

22:51 [SPEAKER_00]: So there you go. [SPEAKER_00]: That's my perspective on that one. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's move on to number three. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, our third and final question, and I think you'll probably find this one kind of humorous. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll give the best response I possibly can to it is from Friendly War, five nine two eight.

23:12 [SPEAKER_00]: who writes, and there's five hundred and sixty five up votes on this one. [SPEAKER_00]: How isn't there a mass outbreak of STDs in New Vegas? [SPEAKER_00]: Given the state of everything, catching and spreading diseases should be much easier when your body is constantly absorbing little bits of radiation everywhere.

23:28 [SPEAKER_00]: You go and never at full health, so in Vegas, [SPEAKER_00]: where everyone is constantly getting down and dirty with everyone. [SPEAKER_00]: The prostitutes should be literally ridden with every STD there is. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm assuming very little people are using condoms. [SPEAKER_00]: So how is that everyone in Vegas not constantly sick or showing visual signs of STDs?

23:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, okay, so we'll get into the responses here. [SPEAKER_00]: Are you actually searching everybody for visual signs when you meet them? [SPEAKER_00]: I would imagine that most of the signs are in a part of their bodies that you don't usually see. [SPEAKER_00]: So chances are even if they are consumed by tons of STDs.

24:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you wouldn't necessarily know until you got close and personal enough to know, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, it's not like there's just a sign that everyone would be holding up. [SPEAKER_00]: So, that's my first thought on that, but I've got some other thoughts. [SPEAKER_00]: But here, let's check out what the first, the highest rated response is.

24:25 [SPEAKER_00]: This is from Koo Enjoyer, who writes, I think he can be safely assumed that the standards of care for prostitutes in New Vegas would be about equivalent to brothels in the old West or slightly better. [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard to say whether or not any biotics still exist. [SPEAKER_00]: From an in-universe perspective, I think some of the chems could be interpreted as antibiotic, but that may be a stretch.

24:45 [SPEAKER_00]: From a logic perspective, I think it's safe to assume that there would be some supplies of antibiotics, both pre-war and newly synthesized. [SPEAKER_00]: If antibiotics are available in some limited form, I would think places like the Gomorrah would have stocks on hand for their girls, which would take care of many of the STDs you are thinking about.

25:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Like in the old West, [SPEAKER_00]: Local doctors would provide basic medical care and teach the girls about good hygiene practices with the last resort being a large needle. [SPEAKER_00]: There's the first response to this that says Fallout four and seventy six though, sooner after the war.

25:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Outright has antibiotics to find and loot in the game, and considering the followers are right outside of Vegas and the general store at the NCR, I find it very unlikely that Vegas doesn't have antibiotics. [SPEAKER_00]: So solid points there about antibiotics. [SPEAKER_00]: Clearly you can take care of certain types of diseases, [SPEAKER_00]: with antibiotics.

25:37 [SPEAKER_00]: But that doesn't mean that they aren't still riddled with those diseases, just because you take in antibiotics, certain diseases go into remission. [SPEAKER_00]: They hide, but then they come back later. [SPEAKER_00]: Other diseases don't respond to antibiotics because they function differently.

25:52 [SPEAKER_00]: They're not bacterial and said they might be viral. [SPEAKER_00]: And so that becomes a different thing. [SPEAKER_00]: So that can answer some of it. [SPEAKER_00]: I think the real answer here from my perspective. [SPEAKER_00]: is that diseases in a world where there are limitations to the ability to treat the diseases often end up killing the hosts.

26:15 [SPEAKER_00]: This is something that was very common. [SPEAKER_00]: You go back to the eighteen hundreds, and the epidemic of syphilis was terrible, so widespread, and people died from it. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, they weren't sure how to treat it, so they would treat it with mercury, which of course was toxic and would cause other problems.

26:32 [SPEAKER_00]: But many people died from these types of diseases. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, they became so difficult to control that they would often limit the host in not just living. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if you got something like this and survived long enough, you also were way less likely to then pass it onto someone else because it was so painful and shameful in social situations to even have these diseases.

26:59 [SPEAKER_00]: So people ended up not going out and not meeting people and not partaking in the kinds of activities that would then spread these diseases. [SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't mean that the diseases wouldn't continue spread. [SPEAKER_00]: But what happens here is when something becomes so detrimental to a population that it ends up killing off the population, the population [SPEAKER_00]: does two things.

27:21 [SPEAKER_00]: First of all, they change their actual ways that they interact with each other. [SPEAKER_00]: And secondly, if the scale increases so much that it kills enough of the hosts, then the number of people it spreads to declines. [SPEAKER_00]: And so eventually, the diseases actually destroy their ability to spread to other people because they kill their hosts.

27:42 [SPEAKER_00]: So that could be part of what's going on here. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, with such a small percentage of the population actually surviving the bombs dropping, it may not be likely, but it could be possible that the total number of STDs actually reduced as well because some percentage of them were eradicated.

28:02 [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody who had them died during the Great War and the people who survived [SPEAKER_00]: didn't have them and they never could have contracted them because there was nobody left to get those diseases from. [SPEAKER_00]: So you have another situation here where the diseases actually die off due to the bombs.

28:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Now that is in a hundred percent likely for every disease, but I think that there's probably [SPEAKER_00]: Some diseases that would have died off that makes sense to me. [SPEAKER_00]: You're taking the population down by an incredible number. [SPEAKER_00]: But I think what is actually more likely here is that the people who have these are treated for them as best they can in the situations they're in and discussion about those diseases is probably very limited.

28:47 [SPEAKER_00]: You wouldn't want to advertise that this is a problem if the way you make money is through sex work and on top of that. [SPEAKER_00]: If you have them, you probably don't show people that you have them. [SPEAKER_00]: Just like in old timey brothels, you would be in a dark room and you wouldn't necessarily see the parts that would be the problem until it's too late.

29:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And then the diseases get passed on. [SPEAKER_00]: So there may very well be mass outbreaks. [SPEAKER_00]: They just don't show up in the game because the games weren't designed in a way that would have brought that up and that became a major issue. [SPEAKER_00]: But also, [SPEAKER_00]: people probably hide it as people usually do.

29:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So there you go. [SPEAKER_00]: Weird question, but very interesting and makes you wonder about other things that don't get addressed in games because they don't play into the main stories, but very well could be part of the environments of these games. [SPEAKER_00]: Cool stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: Good questions.

29:42 [SPEAKER_00]: If you have any thoughts about any of these and want to discuss them further, jump on our discord. [SPEAKER_00]: There's always conversations every day about all sorts of fun stuff going on in the discord and different people's perspectives and ideas and all the ideas are welcome just because you disagree with me doesn't mean that you [SPEAKER_00]: are not welcome to post on there.

29:58 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, you might have a good counterpoint that makes me rethink some of my answers to these questions, and I'm always open to learning more, and I've been talking about Fallout for six plus years now, but that doesn't mean have all the answers, and doesn't mean I don't forget details.

30:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So, come join us on the Discord. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, we're going to take quick break, and I'll be back to thank our patrons and wrap up the show, so don't go anywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: If you have any questions about Nucleworld, I'd be delighted to answer them. [SPEAKER_00]: Alright, we've got some new Patrons to welcome over-seer He who poops and Andrew H. Welcome to the Patreon so glad that you're here.

30:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for the support. [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you're enjoying the ad free episodes and the other stuff that you get depending on the tiers that you're at, including stickers and t-shirts and joining me for Patreon chats. [SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of patron chats, we've got one coming up on the third year, so very, very soon, the end of the month is coming again.

30:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's still time to sign up if you want to be part of our merry band of wasteland weirdos. [SPEAKER_00]: I just came up with that, but I think maybe that's what I should call our patrons from now on. [SPEAKER_00]: If you are a patron, take that as a compliment, please. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not meant to be bad.

31:01 [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, come join us. [SPEAKER_00]: There's all sorts of fun things to talk about. [SPEAKER_00]: And you could even share your idea for a conversation that might get voted by the patrons as the thing they want to talk about. [SPEAKER_00]: So come join us for that. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, thank you to Germanator.

31:14 [SPEAKER_00]: He is our century bot and gets a shout out every week. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you would like to get shoutouts every week and sign up as a century bot as well. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, before I get into the reviews and other stuff, [SPEAKER_00]: uh... while you are listening to this i will be at gcx and i have at this point some interviews set up that i'm working on with some really cool interesting people that you're going to want to hear and that i was all still in the process of being scheduled so i and i also don't want to reveal anything too early but [SPEAKER_00]: What that means is you will probably get a patron episode on the feed next week and then you'll probably get interviews after that.

31:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm anticipating that they're going to be super cool because we're talking like voice actors and then other people who work in and around fallout and have cool stories about that and other games. [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of these voice actors and professionals have done stuff in elder scrolls or [SPEAKER_00]: a number of other things.

32:12 [SPEAKER_00]: So, I'm just going to leave that for right now, you know how I feel about talking to voice actors, they're all very, very cool and I'm always impressed and such professionals, such wonderful, wonderful people. [SPEAKER_00]: To a number, like every single time I've met anybody in this space, they're just wonderful.

32:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And all of that is for a good cause, St. [SPEAKER_00]: Jude's Children's Hospital, and I will have links for you to donate and all of that available on those episodes. [SPEAKER_00]: So that is coming down the list of future things going on. [SPEAKER_00]: So I hope you're excited about that.

32:41 [SPEAKER_00]: Also, have to read out a new review that came in on Apple Podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: This is in the US, and I can only see the ones in US, but if you leave a five star review, I will read it out. [SPEAKER_00]: Even if you leave it in another country, that would be super helpful. [SPEAKER_00]: I just may not be able to see it.

32:54 [SPEAKER_00]: This one is from YeNep, who writes Best Podcast Ever. [SPEAKER_00]: I have been listening to it almost every day at work. [SPEAKER_00]: I listen to the first, a hundred and eighty-five episodes trying to catch up to the current time episode to make the day go by so much faster with such a great podcast and amazing host.

33:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for that glowing review. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's going to do it for this week. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for being here and until next time, if you're on the Vegas strip, make sure that you are careful about who you are. [SPEAKER_00]: Who you know, you know, you know, you know, I don't even have to say it, you know.

33:25 [SPEAKER_00]: All right. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm excited. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to G.C.X. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're going to be there, I'll see you there, or maybe I've already seen you there, but I tell you, anyway, you know, there works anyway. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know what I'm saying. [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

33:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's just wrap up the episode. [SPEAKER_00]: Bye, everybody. [SPEAKER_00]: To plug into everything else we're doing, check out robotsradio.net. [SPEAKER_00]: Reach out to me on Twitter at robots underscore radio. [SPEAKER_00]: Check out the robots radio rocket club where you can join me and a bunch of our other creators creating your podcast starting a new podcast or helping your current podcast grow.

33:59 [SPEAKER_00]: There's more information about that on RobotsReady.net as well. [SPEAKER_00]: And you can always talk with us and the entire community over two thousand people on the RobotsReady Discord. [SPEAKER_00]: Come join us. [SPEAKER_00]: We'd love to chat with you. [SPEAKER_00]: See you guys next time.