Fallout's Radiation vs real life radiation gets intresting! OR Why Fallout Equestria is better than Fallout · 3:49am Aug 27th, 2019
Fallout Radiation mysteries. Why so radioactive after 200 years? To figure that out we need to figure out just how radioactive it is. In real life terms. Fortunately we can do this!
Facts
- 1000 rads of exposure = lethal, cannot treat, death immanently.
- Fallout uses Rads for total radiation in system, a cumulative measure of exposure (RL unit for this is the Gray)
- Fallout's time scale is 1/16th normal time. 1 min IRL = 16 min in game.
- IRL the 100% mortality radiation exposure amount where you die instantly is ~78 Grays (A bit hard to measure this since, well, it would kill people. This is what math says, it may be slightly higher or lower in practice). We need to use this because 1000 rads = instant death in Fallout.
- On average, standing in water irradiates you at 3 rads/s
- IRL Chernobyl's most radioactive spot at its peak was 100% fatal within 2 days after a mere 300 seconds of exposure
Conclusions
We now have real values for the game's rads. 72 / 1000 gets us how many Grays 1 fallout Rad is equals. Each Rad = 0.072 Grays. This is a fair conversion since both units track total radiation absorption across the whole body, IE cumulative exposure. Our next hurtle is the time discrepensy. If we don't correct for time our results will be off by a 16x...
What we have right now is "1 real world second of exposure at 1 Rad per second = 0.072 Grays." Fallout's time is 1/16th real time, so to get Grays per in universe second we must divide 0.072 by 16. This means every second of in universe time, at 1 rad per second, you are getting 0.0045 Grays of radiation exposure. Again, this is fair since it wouldn't matter if we corrected for time before or after comparing Rads to Grays. Math is funny like that.
We now have the ability to take Fallout's radiation levels and compare them to real life data for things like Acute Radiation Syndrome, IE radiation poisoning. To do this we simply take the most common source of being irradiated in game at the average level it irradiates you and see how many Grays it gives ya. The average level of radiation in the environment in Fallout as far as we can get data for is based on the radiation exposure you get when standing in water. This is the most common way people will get irradiated by far since only total morons would stand next to the green glowing thing that's putting off so much heat they cna feel if from 15 feet away and is surrounded by a big ring of death (Seriously, only PCs walk into the remains of nuclear reactors in search of loot :P )
On average, water in Fallout irradiates you at 3 rads per second. Via our math we can say that in real life terms, standing in water in the Fallout world for 1 second would expose you to 0.0135 Grays. At this rate, you would need to stand in the water for at least 74 seconds to get even the most mild of Acute Radiation Syndrome symptoms, a mild headache occurring ~2 hours after your exposure followed by a 5% chance of dying in 2 months with or without medical care. That sounds horrible, but remember, baths are not necessary for survival and purified water can be made on a campfire (Or more practically with some very simple filters you can literately make from rocks, sand, and a bucket).
That sounds pretty bad... But let's compare it to the closest thing to a radioactive wasteland that actually exists. My dad's homemade Mac and Cheese. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. This is NOT a fair comparison because the radioactive material used for power plants and bombs are very very very very very different. In fact they are literally polar opposites. Lets ignore that for now.
In the United States, the ambient background radiation is ~0.0000000000098 Grays per second. Do not worry this is fine. The human body evolved in these conditions. Everywhere is a tiny bit radioactive always. Cosmic radiation and what not. Anywho, the Exclusion Zone's hotspots are ~57 times the background level. Sadly I couldn't get the average background radiation levels of the Ukraine, but I don't imagine it's much higher than the US's. (Also this comparison is kinda bullshit because remember, reactor fuel =/= nuke explody materials, so it doesn't matter much.)
This means that the worst spots in Chernobyl are a horrible terrifying hellscape of 0.0000000005586 Grays per second! At least now. It really was literally "Instantly die" at one point. But it's not now. So, remember, to get the most mild form of radiation poisoning, you need 1 Gray. To get it in Chernobyl, you'd need to hang around a hotspot for... 1,790,189,760 seconds. Or um, 57.55 years. This means that your own body would replace your cells 100,000s of thousands of times faster than radiation could kill them. You'd survive there indefently as long as you didn't poke your head into the reactor core.
This is the total opposite of Fallout's world. Remember how Fallout's typical exposure is 0.0135 Grays per second? That's 24,167,561 times WORSE than Chernobyl! Fallout's world would be 100% uninhabitable. Life totally impossible for... pretty much anything. Even single celled organisms believed to be able to survive direct exposure to cosmic radiation in space. In Fallout, a mere hour and a half swim would kill your ass dead instantly. No one could survive more than 4-6 weeks after having a single glass of water. So really, the game's radiation is even more bullshit than you may have thought.
"But wait!" You say. "You mentioned that the comparison to Chernobyl is unfair because nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors have different go juice or something, right? Doesn't that change things?" It sure does! It makes Fallout's world EVEN MORE bullshit.
Nuclear reactors are fuled by many different elements, but the most common type use Plutonium. To get that plutonium you take some uranium, specifically the isotope Uranium-238, do some science to it to make atoms jump from fuel rods to control rods and BAM, you get plutonium-239. Plutonium-239 is your reactor's go juice. It's got a halflife of 24,110 years, and will keep on vooming out a constant 211.5 mega electron volts of power that whole time! (t least, it will assuming I properly understood what the paper I used to look up its energy output meant.) This means if a nuclear reactor overheats, causing the water it boils to spina turbine to flash to steam instantly making the reactor pop open, the scattered fule will contaminate the local area and stay in the environment for thousands of years, blah blah blah.
Obviously, that's awesome for power generation assuming it dosn't overheat! Lasts a long time, puts out a good amount of energy, but slowly. Thing is that's the OPPOSITE of what you want a bomb to be, obviously. You want a bomb to last for a fraction of a second and put out a ton of energy all at once, but ONLY after you've pressed a button.
It's not JUST the design of the machine you need to change to get plutonium (or any radioactive element) to undergo a rapid fission (or fusion) reaction and cause a nuclear explosion. You need to change the fuel type too.
Fun fact, if you put the kind of plutonium used for a reactor into a nuke, the nuke would just explode randomly. Why? Because reactor fuel isn't pure Plutonium-239, it's got a lot of Plutonium-240 in there too, and P-240 has neutrons that like to whizz about for no reason. Nukes explode when we bombard the core with neutrons. I'm sure you can see why we don't use reactor grade plutonium in nukes.
Instead, we use weapon's grade plutonium! What's the difference aside from having as little P-240 as possible? The difference is when creating the plutonium in a nuclear reactor you do different stuff to the Uranium-238 used to make that plutonium in the first place. Think of it like eggs. You can cook an egg in countless different ways and end up with some extremely different products that behave, appear, feel, and even taste differently even though they are all just eggs. How? By varying the cooking time, temperature, and cooking implements.
This has been a long winded way of explaining that nuclear bombs do NOT leave much radiation behind. The nuclear fuel for a nuclear bomb has to be specifically calibrated to all burn up very very rapidly for the nuke to work at all. Once it goes boom, the rads are amost all gone. Instantly. They were consumed to make the boom happen.
"But! But what about nuclear fallout! It's super dupe rbad and evil and horrible bad!" You say.
Nope. Over 2000 nukes have been detonated on Earth since their invention. The most recent was in 2017. Are we all dead from the fallout? No. Are we in a nuclear winter? No. Why not? Because fallout falls across such a wide area that you get barely more radiation exposure from nuclear fallout than you would a few chest xrays using an older less safe (but still fine) x-ray machine.
Also the danger of radiation from fallout decreases rapidly with time due in large part to the exponential decay of the individual radionuclides. Or in plain English "Because nuke go juice is cooked to voom all at once it burns up fast." The rule for nuclear explosions is 7 times 7 times 7. After 7 hours, 90% of the radioactivity is gone. After 49 hours, 99%. After 2 weeks, 99.9% is all gone.
That's why people can and DO live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today even though those cities were vaporized in WWII via nuclear weapons. Even Chernobyl is livable again today, aside from some hotspots. If we were being realistic, the world of Fallout would be 100% radiation free from the war after ~90 days, the first generation that grew up in the wasteland would be 0.0005x more likely to get cancer, and there'd be some climate change due to the nuclear winter... but that's it.
Humans have handled climate change plenty of times through history. 200 years after the Great War there'd be plenty of new nations that would be on par with pre-war nations. Yes. Really. See the USA? It was made from total scratch in just 250 years starting from dirt, sticks, and constant wars with native populations who did just as much killing of white settlers as American colonists did killings of natives (Just turns out there were way more settlers than natives. Mostly because of the apocalypse the Spanish unleashed on the Americas via diseases.)
So yeah, from a post-plague-apockoliptic landscape to These United States in 250 years without advanced technology like robots and laser weapons literately laying around everywhere for anyone to make use of. The World of Fallout would be radiation free and fully recovered by the time the games take place. Humans are not weak little simmering wimps. We survive. We make do. We change the whole world to suit our whims. That's what nature designed us to do.
I guess what I am saying is... Well, it turns out radioactive wastelands from nuclear war are simply not possible via the laws of physics. Nuclear bombs do not work that way. The answer to our question of "why is Fallout so radioactive?!" is... "Because the writers wanted it that way".
This is why Fallout Equestria is better than Fallout, IMO. The answer for why Equestria is still irradiated after 200 years is "Arcane radiation from scientifically amplified necromancy spells is not nuclear radiation and behaves differently. Duh." Or in other terms "A wizard did it."
Can't argue with that. Not when wizards are a thing in the setting. And they you know, did it.
Addendum:
"BUT SALTED NUKES!" somone shrieks.
Salted Nukes do not actually exist. No intentionally salted bomb has ever been atmospherically tested, and as far as is publicly known, none have ever been built. It is very unlikely anyone will ever build one for the simple reason that using a nuclear bomb to scatter reactor fuel is a horrible idea because you dont know where the winds will take that reactor fuel.
What's more we know Fallout's nukes were low yield uranium bombs. They were not thereotical weapons of bio-sphere annihilation. So no, you haven't proven anything with that objection other than saying you know about an idea a madman had in 1950.
Ha hah ah hah ha ha ha hah ha!
"And that, children, is why Fallout Equestria is better than Fallout"
Nice work, that was both entertaining and informative. So I have one more thing to say:
"Egghead!"
"What's wrong with that?"
Fun calculations there Meep. Matches up with my thoughts, but...
When has Fallout ever bothered for actual realism? You say Fallout Equestria is better, but...
Fallout has radiation that causes giant bugs. Not like gigantism or something, radroaches the size of cats are a normal thing-fuck, they're common enough I'm surprised they haven't been domesticated.
Fallout doesn't follow real world logic hardly at all unless it's convenient. It follows 1950s sci fi logic. And physics. Which sometimes aligns with the real world ,but most of the time...no.
So as a theme, as a setting, I really have few issues with Fallout...on the radiation front, at least. Mostly because it's all total BS based on 1950s sci fi that didn't make sense in the first place.
I always kinda gave the games a pass because, you know, game mechanics and engineered senses of threat and all that, but FO:E does at least have the fallback of actual wizardry where the physics of the games is just not there.
5112284 XD pritty much. Deffently a nerd when I'm happy.
5112285
In its scocial dynamics and politics. It's suposed to be satire on US politics, so it takes, or at least took, that very seriously and realisticly. For example, Fallout 1's boss can be beaten by showing him that his plan can't actually work because of a scientific error he made. He then suicides once he learns his life work is for naught and such.
But yes. It's unrealistic. It's fantasy, it's supposed to be. Realism is... boring frankly. I only bring all of this up because people panic way way way way way too much over nuclear power and weapons in general. People need to be aware of the simple facts that as long as you're not using a terribly designed reactor built by the Soviets via conscripts, nuclear power is safe, safer than solar power is funnily enough. They also need to know that as unlikely as a nuclear war is (almost 0% chance), that wouldn't be the end of the world or even life as we know it.
Too much fear out there these days. GOtta squash the ignorance it's based on.
Anyways, Fallout Equestira is stil better because if you're gonna make magical radiation for your nuclear wasteland, you might as well also add wizards :3
I mean, if I could upvote a blog I would. This is the kind of random thing I think about/figure out on a slow evening, myself.
Nicely done, Meep. I found some differences in what you wrote compared to what I learned, but seeing as I went through Nuclear Power School forty years ago, you may know of some things I never knew. Navy reactors use Uranium-235, not Plutonium-239.
As for nuclear weapons, I really don't know much about them. I do know if you can say 'what was that?' you would probably live. The initial flash and blast is one thing, but it's the fallout (insert slap sound effect here) that is what you have to worry about, all the dust and debris that would get activated in the blast. Breathe it in, and you have problems.
One thing I remember being taught is TDS, which means Time, Distance and Shielding (no, not the Trash Disposal System!). Also, we were trained in tenth-thicknesses, the amount of shielding needed to cut exposure rates down to 10 percent of the source reading. Shielding materials are also determined by what you want to protect against, for example alpha radiation can be stopped by your skin, beta radiation required a sheet of tinfoil, while gamma-neutron required much more. I would say more, but, like I said, it's been almost 40 years since I read the -0152 manual. (or was it the -0153? Always got the two mixed up)
Very good essay you have here. You made me think. Hats off to you. Won't fault your numbers. Oh... never heard of a Gray as a unit of measure. That's new to me. Rads, yes. Rems, yes. Sieverts, I know of. Grays? That's new to me..
The reason radiation works so differently could be because of the eldritch entities we have seen traces of in the Fallout universe, they seem to have some form of connection to radiation
"Cthulhu did it"
nicely researched, but partialy already invalid.
ongoing research into chernoybl acutaly has made fallouts science even more bullshit then your sugesting as the exclusion zone is actualy becoming livable again at a far far FAR faster rate then anyone ever predicted, the thought ited be 90 years before you could get near the place without a suit, but after only 30 the only places you realy need to worry are near metalic structures which seem to have held the radiation more firmly (theres a feris wheel thattle kill you right quick)
one research group actualy recently produced a viable sales product from within the exclusion zone...vodka of all things, the distilation process removes all detectable radiation from the resulting spirit made of grain and water from within the zone, as such its market safe, the research group is planing to dontate the proceeds to the familes of those displaced by the desaster suposedly.
that stated there are as you pointed out a few...liberties, taken with the fallout universe that make it function very diffrent from ours.
i skimed thru this so i dont know if you went into how a nuke actualy detonates in here but for the layman if you didnt you have a ring of one kind of radio isotop at one end, and a rod of it at the other, when the device detonates the rod is shot into the center of the ring by a standered explosive, this sets of a runaway chain reaction that releases all the radioisotopes potential energy all at once, rather then over time like in a reactor, the result, a blast thats hoter then the surface of the sun.
also fun fact: if there is a nuclier war, be at one of the ground zeros...your death will be instant and you wont suffer and you may even leave a nice permenent reminder you were there as your shadow is burned into a nearby surface
The salting you have to worry about, is that Russian missile test that exploded?
That was Americas Project Pluto, that they scrapped because someone not totally insane managed to see the budget. The ones the Americans have, very intresting photo, is the rack of cobalt steel deep penetration thermonuclear devices for taking out buried uranium seperation and concentration plants.
Why make salted bombs when you can just use a legal clean device on your enemies salt stockpile?
I assume neutron bombs also dissapate their energy right quick after the blast?
5112298
Even if they used uranium, 33% of the power generated by them came from plutonium inadvertently created in the reactor form the uranium. The mere 0.8% plutonium content of an expended fuel rod created 1/3rd of the power in older reactors, so the designs were adjusted to be more fuel efficient by creating more plutonium. That being said, I drew more emphasis to plutonium based reactors so we could compare plutonium to plutonium for a better comparison.
Not really no. A wet cloth over the mouth will do. The main danger of fallout is Acute Radiation Syndrome. Just avoid the dust for a few days and you'll be fine. With modern nukes the fallout goes so high up that by the time it comes down to an altitude that can hurt you, it's already not radioactive enough to be a threat.
What more fallout is an inefficiency, not a perk. The better your bomb, the less fallout it makes because more of the radioactive material will react. Fallout amount decreases with every new generation of warhead.
Thanks :3
Rads were retired and replaced with Grays. Gray is a metric unit, and the US formally switched to it in the 90s (I think) to make damn sure there is no miscommunication when it comes to nuclear hazards when chatting with other nations.
5112327 Yeah Fallout needs to lean more mystic XD If Bethesda is gonna add in Cathulu (which they did), we need more mystic stuff.
5112287 Oh I can slip into the setting well enough. I adore Fallout. I jsut think if they want a radioactive wasteland they should explain it. Because their current explanation dosn't work. At least, not if it's meant to be "Earth IRL, except..."
5112353
Um, no? I think you misread me, friend. Did you not see the part where I showed you that the radiation levels in the Exclusion Zone is only a mild health hazard on average? It's safe enough. There's tours you can take there.
Yeah you clearly did. You should probably read it in full before complaining about things my dude. No worries, we all do it.
5112540
NO. BAD. Those weapons, are, theoretical. We don't even know if the basic idea will work. They do not, nor have they ever, existed, nor are they likly to be made in the future because IN THE COLD WAR the US and USSR agreed "No, none of these. This is a horrible idea."
5112651 Even more so. Neutron bombs kills via a pulse of high-level radiation. They are specifically designed to make as small of a boom as possible while allowing the materials to fission (or fuse) to as close as 100% complete as possible in as fast a time as possible without causing a nuclear explosion. The radioactive materials are consumed, so nothing radioactive is left aground after the pulse, really. Just some faint traces of compounds that are mostly all used up as is.
If you detonated a neutron bomb over a city your forces could move in safely within a day or so to occupy the now clear territory.
I think what most people assume abot ionizing radiation is that you zork a beam of it over stuff and it makes that stuff deadly forever. No. Not at all. That's like thinking if you swept a flashlight across the carpet that your carpet will glow forever. Light, heat, wifi, these are all form s of radiation (non-ionizing radiation, specifically. too low energy to damage your cells). Nuclear radiation behaves just like light, or heat, or wifi. Turn off the "router" no more gamma radiation. Once all the unstable atoms in a substance have released their energy, there can be no more ionizing radiation in an area.
Reactors, bombs, radiological weapons, they all have different fuels calibrated to make those atoms dance at different speeds.
Okay, that's why I have not heard of them. I last worked with nuclear stuff in 1986. Thank you!
Honestly, I'm more scared of something like mustard gas or chlorine. That shit will turn your insides into soup and melt you eyes out of your skull.
Your Blog posts have a tendency to make me wish i could favourite them. Always looking forward to the next one
5112674
Ah, I see.
So, just wondering, is there any point to making a bomb that's only purpose is to spread a bunch of long term radioactive fallout?
5112724 Not really no. That would be a Salted Nuke, which are theoretical as of now. There's not much point in building them, because:
1. We dont know if the radioactive fuel would be scattered, or consumed.
2. We don't know if it would fry the biosphere where it was detonated, or where the fallout would land...
So yeah.
5112742
Oh, I forgot to ask, and a bit off topic: how are you feeling? Any better?
At least my mom’s mac n cheese is less radioactive than Chernobyl.
Kraft is still superior, though.
5112906 To be honest, I don't think you could call this stuff Mac and CHeese.
My dad mixes about 2 pounds of Velveeta cheese to 1 pound of noodles. It's more soup than cheese. The way he makes it, cooking and seasoning, it's literally sent 2 people I know of to the hospital. My friend Mike almost died from eating that stuff >< Not even joking! He didn't have any kind of allergy to any part of the food, but all together the mixture proved to be something he was VERY allergic too.
5112763 I'm at about 80%.
5112540
It's believed that the Russian missile that exploded was a nuclear SCRAMjet.
It's been a theoretical design because nobody had been stupid enough to build one.
Basically, it's a nuclear reactor that draws in air from the environment and passes it directly through a nuclear reactor core as a means to cool the reactor, and in so doing creates large quantities of extremely hot air in order to provide thrust.
Some of the major problems, of which there are many, include it inducing bremsstrahlung radiation in the air and any particulates contained therein, the difficulty of keeping the reactor cool when it's time to stop, the sensitivity to environmental factors, and (as demonstrated) the effectively unavoidable release of highly radioactive materials in the event of a crash.
5112966
Yup, you would have to be Jackass Flats to even try building, never mind test firing one.
Wikipedia Project Pluto
5112946
Glad to hear it
5112288
Too much god-damn ignorance. That is correct.
Now if only we could get some new power plants built...