Fallout Verse

[Terdwilicker]

Fallout was a fun video game, back when PC gaming was starting to get fun. Later versions went to consoles and much better polygon rates, heading towards more realism. By the time Fallout: New Vegas came out the game verse was pretty interesting. So I've been reading a story on Twisting the Hellmouth called New California Dreaming.
<a href='http://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-21412-1/Hotpoint+New+California+Dreaming+-+A+Fallout+Universe+Fic.htm' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>http://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-21412-1/Hot...niverse+Fic.htm</a>
Its one of those walkabout stories where the hero explains the setting to a sidekick because the setting is largely the story. It reads a lot like a video game campaign RPG retelling. Its not great, but not terrible either. Wish it had a little better detail, but the author is pretty new at writing and is focussed on action and dialogue rather than proper description.

If they'd researched animal radiation resistance and knew about the Chernobyl animals, the story would be pretty interesting in comparison to the game verse, which isn't really very scientific. Some animals, like fish, are surprisingly resistant to radiation. There are horses living in the shadow of Chernobyl's fallout. If a new version of the game came out and they added a lot more animals to it it would be a bit more full and a bit less simple.

(REAL SCIENCE)As for cleanup, biotech has some answers. A radioisotope scavenger, say ocean diatoms that sink after chemically bonding radioisotopes that allow them to reproduce, thus sinking all the radiation to the bottom of the oceans, that would be a sweet way to clean up most of the fallout at sea. Pull a similar trick using bacteria and mud and you'd get a similar result in streams and rivers and pull the radiation out of the environment and food chain. Not perfect, but it would work within a few years, not decades or centuries. Think algal blooms that remove heavy metals from waterways and your fish and birds etc make a comeback. Its kinda cutting edge stuff, actually. (/SCIENCE)

Something I like about the Fallout Verse is its very long term, covering the next 300 years. The firearms aren't completely absurd. Some of those things already exist. 10mm pistols are used by the Secret Service and used to be standard at FBI, and were a hit in IPSC (pistol competition).

(SCIENCE)Populations move around, based on resources and geography advantages. Those advantages change based on things like water supply, mining, climate. Right now its the monsoon season in Arizona and the Southwest. They're getting thunderstorms and rain almost daily, so its putting out fires, while lightning strikes cause new ones. In California it's dry and will be till October, but the coastline gets heavy fog every morning, keeping the temperatures down while inland its 100'F. In the Pacific Northwest they keep getting rain and clouds. This is pretty normal stuff. Change some important climate issues and all that is different, say the Alaska current powered by a strong wind that flow down from the arctic. Take that away and you lose the coastal fog, waters warm and fish go north because they're heat sensitive, and you start getting hurricanes in Los Angeles and Monsoons in the California central valley instead of dry desert conditions. In the Fallout Verse you could expect to see these changes in 300 years. (/SCIENCE)

(SCIENCE)That rain changes all sorts of things. Reforestation, for example. Higher erosion until the forests establish themselves, leading to roads washed out, bridges torn down in flash flooding. Some dry lakes would refill, making habitat for migratory birds that stopped showing up a century ago when those lakes source waters were dammed for agriculture. Stuff happens that changes everything. Someday there will be a bioengineered beetle that only eats sagebrush and the tallgrass will return to Nevada so it can be grazing land again. The sage is relatively new, you see. It's an invasive species. (/SCIENCE)

(INTERNATIONAL POLITICS)If you take away the nuclear exchanges and simply let things fall apart, or place the exchanges between Russia, China, and India and Pakistan, and the Koreas, things change even more. Japan gets to be Fallout Central. The Pacific Ocean stops most of the fallout hitting the USA and the Americas, and the EU gets off scott free. Happens in war. Sometimes being too poor to bother with is a protection from invasion. Sometimes its distance. In the 10 days it takes for fallout to cross the ocean from Japan to the USA, radioisotope half-lives massively reduced dangerous fallout for US residents, particularly in Iodine gas which is a nasty way to die following nuclear war. Why those countries? BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) are unstable Second World partners with big dreams and a proven history of indifference to Western morality. They want stuff NOW. No waiting, no smart growth. They're going to make the Mistakes of the West, only much more quickly. That's why I think they're likely to have fun with nuclear weapons while we sit on the sidelines, scratching our heads. How would Fallout be in that scenario? (/POLITICS)

 

[Terdwilicker]

It would be interesting if a reboot of the Fallout series started with Eureka and Warehouse 13 as a technological base, and bioweapons were also used, not just nukes, and the collapse of the USA was mostly caused by the end of transportation fuel and food riots rather than actual nuclear hits. Its a bit more believable.

(SETTING CHANGE)The BRIC states are likely to nuke and bio-plague each other to death within a few years anyway, just fighting over the last of the rare earth elements in China, central Asia, the oil in the middle east and africa, and food production and bioethanol in Brazil vs each member state's huge populations scrambling to modernize. The USA and EU get sidelined due to poverty. They can't pay for the fuel anymore. Nothing to trade. Ironic, but not really wrong. That's what happened to Spain after their Armada sank in 1688. Spain STILL hasn't recovered from that economic collapse.

Instead of the Chinese nuking the USA, they'd nuke Pakistan and blame India, who then gets nuked by Pakistan and probably bio plagued, then China gets nuked and bioplagued in response ending in megadeaths at the Billion level. A couple billion dead. Brazil and Russia find themselves survivors touched by the power vacuum and may scramble for influence in both emptied nations as well as Africa whose debts no longer matter because the Chinese are dead. The Middle East is glowing from fallout, so most of the oil is gone forever. Now, how do you make that work? That's the danger of Ambition. The BRIC nations want First World things, and they'll kill or enslave anyone to get them.

Now picture the USA, having watched all this from the sidelines and stuck in grinding poverty, same as the EU, trying to get back into exploration via sailing ship and bicycle and possibly horse, but with laptops, solar panels, cellphones/radios, and water purification, low tech medical. That's a peculiar setting. Africa without any AIDS drugs would quickly die off, dropping a billion down to a few million most likely. That turns it into open territory, more conflict over mining and potential development. It is unlikely to have been nuked either. Nothing worth hitting there.

Take that setting with the war happening around 2025 or so and then move forward 50 years at a time. Brazil is a superpower who trades with but irritates their neighbors. Russia is heavily invested in the former China and has major cities on their East Coast, involved in cleaning up the radiation and chemical spills from China's 21st century industrial revolution. The EU is very Green, through necessity, and exploring North and West Africa, big with cheap Desalination of sea water and major irrigation projects into the Sahara starting with coastal cities built by the very rich for the very rich and their servants.

Its a lot different from Fallout, enough that it probably deserves its own name. The primary goals will be exploration, settlement, cleanup, trade, health, and recovering some kind of place for humans to live in moderate peace. It won't last, of course. People are a little too good at killing themselves off, a little too good at dividing, at nepotism. Still, its an interesting setting premise. The weapons of Fallout would work fine for this, but might not get used as much. Sailing skills would be important. Endurance bicycling would be a basic skill for everyone. Same with EMT and basic communications electronics, like radio.

I could really see a space satellite war brew between Brazil and Russia that results in massive small particle debris that prevents successful launches, essentially killing off satellite navigation eventually and all satellite communications. I'm talking full on Kessler Syndrome <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome</a> which prevents use of space until all that crap degrades out of orbit, and every hit on a big object just makes more crap so every failed attempt just makes the problem worse, a sort of MAD for space junk. Pretty light shows at least.

Settings like this don't get used nearly enough in anime and it's a shame. The Japanese like to picture themselves surviving all this, having survived getting nuked twice, but since the Fukushima disaster, which isn't over yet btw, I'm pretty doubtful they'll survive if they stay in Japan once their radioactive storage water leaks out. That's probably less than 5 years away, realistically. At the very least, they need to steer well clear of the contaminated water and stop eating fish until the radiation levels fall. That's a tough sell. A very tough sell. In 85 years, 50 years after the bombs and plagues, a lot of populations will be displaced and living rather extreme lifestyles. You might find Japanese trawlers operating out of Western Sahara and Namibia and Chile and Peru, living in their xenophobic communities under despots because that's what they like. Negotiate with those people. I dare you. You might find Spanish farmers living side by side with Morroccans east of the Atlas Mountains thanks to canals filled with desalinated sea water pumped inland thanks to cheap solar power. It only works in daylight, but at least it works. You might find coffee plantations in Kenya and Ethiopia run by Costa Ricans and Italians. Why not? Its whoever has survived. (/SETTING)

The traditional survival stories of who gets targeted for nukes and plagues are all ridiculous now. Everything has changed. BRIC is the big world power. The West is falling apart. We don't really matter anymore.