I was playing FO4 and got to the glowing sea for the first time. I was really liking the true apocalyptic setting it had. It was a complete dead zone. The only things living there were horribly mutated monsters and the weird Children of Atom people(how they stay un-radiated is beyond me). It got me thinking and wondering what the most radiated place in the world is and what it might be like. Does anyone know? The most radiated spots I know of are The Glowing Sea and The Divide. Not counting the small little specks of heavy radiation like that Super Mutant vault in FO3.

If you are talking about the games only, I'd say the Glowing Sea, but not in the games, I'd have to say China, we released 95% of our nukes, maybe even 100% at China, which numbered in the 10000s. We launched at least a minimum of 8000 nukes at China, enough to nuke it off the map more than three times, if we launched full capacity of nukes at China, that would make it the most irradiated wasteland in the world of Fallout. And it probably has very few survivors left, given there is no indication of a Chinese counterpart of Vault-Tec, so thy be dead for the Chinese.

@TheRatDragon So China is probably one giant crater filled with nothing but radiation? No radiated monsters or anything? That's a little disappointing honestly. It would have been interesting to see a future game/mod visiting the most radiated place in the world, but it would seem really pointless if there was literally nothing left there.

No, no, there's gotta be creatures there, I mean if its one thing, we know life is VERY stubborn and most likely you'll find some creatures that were so harmless before the Great War like ants that have become very dangerous and maybe even some microlife that might've been unicellular has mutated into multi-cellular horrors, I mean there's gotta be life, just no humans or very few humans/ghouls. But it would be so irradiated, I think there would be more ghouls and only ghouls would be able to survive. 10000 nukes on China would still make it uninhabitable for another thousand years unless they didn't nuke the Gobi Desert, since nuclear winter would've hit the world, all the deserts probably turned into paradises or arctic wastelands but I think the Gobi Desert might've turned into a Garden of Eden so it might be the only place the nukes had a minimal impact as there is literally nothing there (Duh!), but maybe a few military bases, and plus the US Army invaded the Gobi Desert back in 2076 so its probable they didn't nuke it but instead of cleared the enemy bases before the nukes dropped. And I think there could be American survivors since there were US troops on the ground in China at the time of the nukes, so yeah. But yeah its probably one big f*cking crater lol.

I think it's possible for a new mutated type of ghoul and other such creatures to possibly exist unique to Chinese wastelands, similar to the Marked Men that inhabit the Divide where there is too much radiation even for typical ghouls to survive in.

Speaking of American military survivors, that's probably the only way I can ever see a Fallout game taking place in China is by having the main protag being a descendant of these groups, who may or may not have established a paramilitary organization similar to the Brotherhood. Fallout just isn't Fallout to me without power armor, the relatively new armor technology and at the time before the Great War, exclusive to the United States. IIRC most suits were built with an 'If I can't have it, no one can' failsafe, which was largely the reason China could never produce (copy) their own design.

@TheRatDragon I can't imagine many ghouls live there unless it's on the edges. The thing about ghouls is that they do need radiation to become a ghoul, but no one could survive an onslaught of nukes like what you're describing. With that many nukes, there would be no humans alive to become ghouls. Ghouls and feral ghouls may wander in, but I can't imagine they would walk the thousands of miles to get anywhere near the center. At least with the Glowing Sea there was at least an edge and the overall sea wasn't that inhospitable. From what you said, I can't imagine anything survived. That's a lot of nukes. Even the toughest bunkers wouldn't be able to withstand that many nukes so there's an extremely low chance of any surviving building unless it was miles below the surface. Without any surviving buildings, there would be no chance a human could have survived the bombs so they could not become ghouls.

I'd like to believe there is stuff there, but if what you said is true about all our nukes going there, I sincerely doubt anything is left. It'd just be one giant crater of radiation. The thing about the Glowing Sea is that life survives there because those mutated creatures had survived the bombs and adapted to the overly radiated area and fed off the other creatures that lived there. With China, nothing could have survived the bombs so there would be no source of food for any radiated creatures. It'd be like expecting camels to migrate to the middle of the desert to try to live despite there being nothing there to sustain them. Maybe a few creatures would live a few miles into the radiated area, but there would be less and less sources of food the further you went. The less radiated an area is, the more life it would hold and that's what those creatures would migrate near. They wouldn't go to a massive crater in search of a reliable food source. They might wander a bit inside and find nothing and then move on to greener pastures. The same thing happens in nature. Predators migrate to where their food lives. Once the food runs out, they move on to the next area. The thing about China would be that there is literally nothing there so there would be nothing to sustain them so they'd just move on rather than staying.

@Chinpoko117 In regards to the Marked Men, they aren't really a "new" ghoul mutation. They're still ghouls, but the brutal storms that flow through the divide have flayed their skin and their bodies became reliant on the radiation of The Divide to survive. From my understanding, it's just the conditions of how they were "ghoulefied" that makes them unique rather than it being a new mutation. Normal ghouls have become ghouls through similar experiences, but did not become like the Marked Men. You actually can meet multiple pre-war ghouls who survived the initial explosions and they aren't like the Marked Men. In FO3, Gob's "mother" was caught in the explosion of a nuke and she's just a normal ghoul. The only real difference in the "ghoul process" between her and the Marked Men is the conditions of their surroundings. Gob's "mother" was more or less in the same boat as every other initial survivor. An empty and dead world full of ash and radiation. Future ghouls become ghouls via general over-radiation and are the same as pre-war-human ghouls. These similarities suggest that the conditions of The Divide is what makes the Marked Men unique rather than a "new ghoul mutation". The harsh environment is likely the reason as to why they are unique. I think the reason for their red skin is because the storms flayed their skin. You don't become a ghoul over-night. If a human turns ghoul, their skin/flesh turns more yellow/green which is similar to their general skin before the ghoul process began. The Marked Men are soldiers who survived the missiles and were forced to survive in lethal environments. The storms tore off their skin and then the ghoul-fication kicked in and mutated what flesh they had which resulted in a bloody fleshy form rather than a decaying form of a normal ghoul. This is just my understanding of their physiology and I hope I explained it to a degree that it's understandable.

TL;DR Marked Men are likely a result of adaptation rather than a new mutation. In nature, living beings adapt to their surroundings. Their bodies were adapting to the harsh environment and then the radiation kicked in. So not really a "new mutation", but more of an adaptation.

Edit: And I'm pretty sure normal ghouls could survive in The Divide if they really wanted to. Ghouls don't really have a "radiation limit" and there really isn't a whole lot there to begin with as The Courier doesn't come across many overly-radiated areas. The only real threat to the ghouls would be deathclaws, Marked Men, and tunnelers, and the storms. Not the radiation.

Yeah, I was given the impression that it was the sandstorms of the divide that made the Marked Men look the way they do, that what was left of their skin was torn off the the sandstorms, but the radiation keeps their internal organs alive and kicking. So I assume that a normal ghoul, let's say Raul would look just like a Marked Man after a few years. It also kind of seemed like they weren't feral, given that they were able tot use and maintain guns in a very harsh environment, plus Ulysses said that they were united by hatred of both the Legion and the NCR. Anyway, back to the topic at hand, given the aesthetic and the existence of RadStorms throughout the Commonwealth, the Glowing Sea has to be, by far the most irradiated place we've seen in the fallout Universe. The Divide, lore-wise, however should be more irradiated given how recently the bombs went off in their silos, compared to the 200+ years that have passed since the Chinese missile hit the Commonwealth.

@Wertologist

Oh I know about the Marked Men, I just said China could have types of ghouls in the sense that, like you mentioned above, could adapt to the wasteland around them and are unique to that region due to a different type of ghoulification process. But not that the Marked Men themselves are a new subspecies. What I mean is China may be worse off than the places like the Glow or the Glowing Sea in terms of radiation, but I'm sure there might exist unique types of ghouls born from their environment that can survive when other ghouls would either die outright or just turn feral.

Mutation was prolly the wrong term to use in any event, but in my defense I was thinking about subspecies and how they can be considered mutations in real life. I just drew the parallel between ordinary ghouls and the Marked Men's unique ghoulification.

IIRC I'm pretty sure there's a loading screen in New Vegas which said something about the Divide where the area around where the nukes went off had pockets of lethal radiation even ghouls would be hard-pressed to live in, which is why I mentioned that. The nukes that went off were relatively recent and spread a fair amount of rads, in such places like the Courier's Mile.

And to quote the wikipedia, "dialogue between the Courier and Ulysses, it can be confirmed that such injuries and radiation would have killed ordinary ghouls". Their injures should of killed them along with the amount of radiation from the missile silos exploding, but the thing is the only thing that really keeps them going is their hatred. Hate's a powerful emotion and without it they wouldn't even be standing.

Hmm... yeah, who knows about China, you raise a good point. I'll keep an eye out for that loading screen... after putting in enough hours you kind of stop paying attention to them. It would be cool to see what it's like their. I recall though in Mothership Zeta that there was a huge glowing whole in the Asian continent. Plus FO2 said something about continents falling into the ocean in the intro narrative. So I think our chances of seeing the Chinese mainland in a Fallout game is slim. However, Taiwan and Korea and other areas that would have likely been on the fringes of the PRC in the Fallout Universe could still be standing, in some Glowing-Sea type state.

I digress. One answer I really want is what makes ghouls go feral. There's implications leading in a thousand different directions. You'd still need your faculties to maintain guns in an environment as dusty and hostile as the Divide. Plus the Marked Men appear to have some sort of tribal structure.

With that said, China, or what's left of it, might not be completely dead, the Chinese Spies in Mama Dolce in FO3 had to have had a reason to keep the war going after 200 years. Otherwise why wouldn't they give it up like the Submarine Commander in FO4.

So maybe there is something special about the divide... I personally always thought that the Marked Men were a testament to the unique biology of ghouls... they were basically the ghouls lack of skin and regenerative abilities pushed to the furthest possible extreme. But I confess I'm hardly an expert. I'd have to differ to the Underworld Doctor in FO3 and his scholarly studies of his fellow ghouls.

I think China is a dead giveaway for being the most irradiated being that it was a direct target, however I believe the most irradiated place in the U.S. was either California or New York.

The most irradiated place in the US post-war is DC being the Capital and all. It's just diluted in game because it's been like 200 years since the bombs dropped, and even then, DC is still a depressing and bleak place to live.

@Chase Gunnufsen

I personally like to believe BIG MT. Research Facility is behind it somehow, akin to how they inadvertently created the Ghost People. They had some type of dealings going on with the military that were stationed there before the war and the dust storms are their work, only now with the Courier blowing all those nukes up they were altered with toxic radiation.

I also like to think the Tunnelers are also made by them, or at least in some part with the military that were rounding up local Sino-American war protesters. It's hinted in game they were potentially around before the Great War broke out, but overall their exact origins remain unknown. Them being the result of brutal experiments holds some merit, after all the Cazadors and Nightstalkers are also products of BIG MT.

As for feral ghouls, I think it has to do with something about radiation overtime can deteriorate their brains to the point where they essentially lose all reason and logic, effectively being rendered nothing more than rabid animals.

Who knows, the Tunnelers are unlike anything else in Fallout lore, so who knows, Big MT is already responsible for like 98% of the Mojave's problems, so who's to say that they weren't somehow involved in the creation of the tunnelers. Maybe they sent something experimental to Hopeville pre-war and after the nukes went of it was able to... let's say contaminate the drinking water... or something. The Marked Men were NCR and Legion troops. But where'd the humanoid tunnelers come from?

As for feral ghouls, it obviously has nothing to do with age... Ghouls like Eddie Winter, Beatrix Russell and Daisy are still around, and ghouls confirmed to be younger than them through terminal entries went feral. So who knows, it could be a radiation thing or it could be genetic, like ghoul Alzheimer's, or something.

Some people think tunnelers might even be some type of alien species. Either way it's interesting to think about that they've been living underground for hundreds of years, and that the Courier blowing the divide up exposed them to the surface.

Also that's why I said radiation instead of age. Ghouls that spend too much time around radiation can turn feral. On the flip hand, if they're in areas with overwhelming amounts of radiation they will turn outright at a much quicker pace. Radiation is key in their feral process. Ghouls are immune to radiation in the sense they won't get cancer and physical diseases like we humans will, but as far as psychology goes it can have detrimental effects if exposed for too long or in large doses.

Yeah I'd have to say that I agree with you there. High doses of radiation seem like a likely culprit, probably why you don't see too many sane glowing ones.

@Chinpoko117
>Oh I know about the Marked Men, I just said China could have types of ghouls in the sense that, like you mentioned above, could adapt to the wasteland around them and are unique to that region due to a different type of ghoulification process

I'm not sure about that because the severity of both regions' explosions is vastly different. With The Divide, the Marked Men survived one bomb and it was largely due to the canyon that offered some semblance of protection. With China being gang-banged by nukes, there would really be nothing left to adapt like the Marked Men. You can't have beings adapt unless they were able to survive the initial bombs. That's what I'm trying to get at. The sheer amount of destruction all those nukes carried into China would mean that there would really be nothing left. The reason life continued elsewhere was because not all life was directly hit by the bombs. If China got all of our nukes, then there would be nothing left.

>I personally like to believe BIG MT. Research Facility is behind it somehow, akin to how they inadvertently created the Ghost People. They had some type of dealings going on with the military that were stationed there before the war and the dust storms are their work, only now with the Courier blowing all those nukes up they were altered with toxic radiation.

I'm not so sure they had a part in it as there is no evidence to suggest it. They had part in creating some known hazards, but nothing hints to any connection to The Divide. Nothing in any dialogue, terminal, or even journals. I don't think there's even a single element of Big MT in The Divide unlike the Mojave and the Sierra Madre which both house things directly linked to them.

@Chase Gunnufsen @Chinpoko117

>Big MT creating Tunnelers

I'm not so sure that's true. There's not indication that supports that other than the fact that Big Mt does experiments, but many other organizations did as well. There's no real evidence to support it and it would be purely speculation. I wouldn't bet on them being the makers though. There's evidence against it like them not even having any trace of research around the Tunnelers. The creations that they had a hand in can all be found in Big MT in some form. The Spore Carriers were created there and can be found there, the Sierra Madre hazmat suit can be found there along with similar technology that Sinclair was given, a Cazador and nightstalker facility can be found there. Everything they did is found there in some way, but no trace of anything tunneler-like can be found. Another thing is the timing of the tunneler's "creation". It's heavily suggested they existed there before the war and it was only after the war did their other creations break free and spread out. Frankly, there's more "evidence" stacked against them creating the tunnelers than there is of them creating them.

@Chinpoko117
>Some people think tunnelers might even be some type of alien species. Either way it's interesting to think about that they've been living underground for hundreds of years, and that the Courier blowing the divide up exposed them to the surface.

I'd ask for citation of evidence to support them being alien other than the green skin. More evidence suggests that they were created before the war rather than being buried and then uncovered. Ulysses believes they mutated from an unknown creature before the war, but no real evidence suggests it's an alien creature.

>Ghouls that spend too much time around radiation can turn feral.

That's not exactly true. They need a lot of radiation in order to become ghouls, but it's never been shown to turn them feral. Fallout 4 states that it's true what you said, but history says otherwise. Pre-war ghouls that have withstood massive amounts of radiation ended up perfectly fine and never turned feral. Dr. Barrows, the ghoul doctor in Underworld in Fallout 3, claims to be the foremost expert of ghoul biology and he still doesn't even know what turns them feral. It's likely on a genetic level as many ghouls who face identical surroundings end up with different results. The "ghoulification" rate differs from person to person. Some can take weeks or even years while some can turn in a day. After the war, the survivors in DC were subject to the same amount of radiation, but "ghouled" at a different rate. Then some of those ghouls turned feral. Some over the course of a few weeks or years while some never turned feral. We really don't know the true cause of feral ghouls.

They've been to the Divide before the war, you can find metal boxes scattered about with their logo on it. Plus they have a map of the region in Old World Blues. Hopeville was a major project for them, the game states this. Now I'm not saying they created the marked men 100% deliberately, but it's not entirely farfetched to say they may, emphasis on may, may have had an inadvert hand due to the weather experiments they were conducting. The skin-flaying storms in the Divide were created by them, and it is the exact dust storm that turned future NCR and Legion troops into skinless horrors.

Inadvert in the sense that, they had no intention of it happening nor thought it would happen -- similar to Ghost People existing because of the Cloud, another of their creation - that their weather project would be tainted by radiation in the future, radiation itself having a major hand in creating ghouls. These two elements had an unintended side effect of creating skinless abominations that were also ghoulified from radiation and survive through their hate and rage for everything around them.

Just a theory, though. One that can make sense given how they're pretty much connected in all of the DLCs and even the base game. Cazadors and nightstalkers, the plants in Vault 21 that found their way into Zion, just about everything in Dead Money and finally the Divide where they were conducting weather experiments, responsible for the dust storms that were further altered by nukes being set off underground and radioactive debris mixing with it.

The tunneler bits were just theories and my personal head-canon, not actual facts. I like to believe they created the still at large unknown origins of these creatures. There were war protesters back then, and graffiti preaching peace, love and drugs references can be found in parts of the game and there's even terminals where military personnel complain about these indivuals being commie traitors. Who's to say BIG MT in collaboration with the military conducted genetic experiments?

Chinese were a big target of their experiments such as the bomb collars, but Borous claims they're true intention from the start has always been focused on Americans. Who's better to experiment on than a bunch of drugged out hippies no one will miss?

The alien bit is not something I believe in personally, but there are theories out there I've seen on Reddit and YouTube. In the end tunnelers remain at large a mystery, their true origins unknown and only speculated by fans.

And finally my final point is that it's radiation that can turn them feral, if one were to go by what modern Fallout loading screens say. Some ghouls are more resilient than others, some turn feral when others didn't in similar situations, or some just die outright.

Maybe state of mind has a play in it depending on circumstances. Emotions are very powerful and your mental health can effect your physical health. Perhaps this is why some ghouls do not turn feral when others do, maybe it's because they have a strong mind and willpower to push on where other ghouls are flat out depressed and even suicidal in some.

It can be easy to see why some ghouls can go insane and feral, if I woke up looking like them I'd prolly lose it too. Certain ghouls can't stand the way they look, and these negative emotions can possibly further the deterioration if they're around or in pockets of radiation.

None of this is factual of course, but just something I thought of when thinking on how the mind can have effects on health, such as stress. Same theory can be applied to the Marked Men as well, the game confirms what they've been through no other ghoul could of but they did and that boils down to their circumstances. Unrelated, but Darth Maul from Star Wars survived the Phantom Menace and well into the Clone Wars because of hate. Hate kept him alive even while he was in two pieces. These marked men are also alive because of hate for the NCR and Legion and really just about any living thing.

@Chinpoko117 I stand corrected. They did have a part in Hopeville, but it was a meteorological experiment rather than any kind of chemical, radiation, or biology experiment. Meteorological experiments wouldn't normally have anything that could mutate people/creatures as it likely deals with electronic devices. They were indirectly responsible for the Marked Men, but it doesn't really mean they "created" them. They just screwed up the environment to have constant "natural" storms and that's what created them. Saying that they created them inadvertently is like saying the company that built your nails inadvertently built your house. They accidentally set up part of the conditions, but the rest was on other people. It's not quite the same as the Ghost People as they are a direct result of their meddling.

>The tunneler bits were just theories and my personal head-canon, not actual facts

While it's an interesting theory that could link Big MT around the wasteland more, I just don't see any indication that they created them.

>In the end tunnelers remain at large a mystery, their true origins unknown and only speculated by fans.

While they are mostly a mystery, we do know that they existed before the war. The game also suggests they were a mutated creature rather than an experiment gone wrong. Ulysses would know the difference between a "natural" mutation and an experiment as he's seen both.

>Maybe state of mind has a play in it depending on circumstances.

Possibly a factor, but I wouldn't rule it as a major one as we can see depressed ghouls as well as really happy ghouls. Will power and "mental strength" aren't really easy to measure, but we've seen varying degrees in ghouls. I'm leaning on it being something on the genetic level more. I'm thinking there are some genetic abnormalities that the non-feral ghouls have that prevents them from turning feral. If a ghoul lacks this trait, then they become feral. Some ghouls last longer than others and this may be due to having "better" traits than some, but still not good enough to resist going feral. Again, this is my ghoul theory. I don't really have any "evidence" to back this up, but I think it's true because genetics is a really tricky thing and can drastically change outside effects on the human body.

To me, its the surface entrance of Vault 87 (I'm counting only areas you can get to in the games). As even with radiation immunity perks and other rad Resistance items, the area by door you can't open, is near 2,000 Rads per second. That's my option though, I thought the glowing sea would be similar like that if Dr.Mari said it could "Kill a man in seconds."