So if a rad scorpion was evolved and gigantified from a six inch emperor scorpion, and the same process affected an elephant and a whale... how big of a creature are we talking about here? I have a feeling the elephant would be bigger than a dinosaur and the whale would swallow the world.

Massive. And everyone who had been eaten by said whale would be living in its gut with their own civilization living off boat wreaks and shit trying to stay out of the acid.

The fallout universe might just be that strange. At least, it is in the dlc.

That would be really interesting to see, there is nothing yet on ocean life in the fallout universe

Save for the sea creature in Fallout 4...

Spoiler:

It would be interesting for Fallout to one day at least have a side quest or DLC at sea, maybe a parody of JAWS?

Doubt they survived tbh.

Nearly all the animals we see in Fallout are descended from rodents, bugs and scavengers, IE those that could live off of the remains of a post apocalyptic world. Others are mutated by fev or other types of experimentation/radiation in order to be able to survive in that world. A few species have been kept alive because humans continue to farm them and they were hardy enough to survive on the scraps of vegetation left behind, ie bighorners, radstags and Brahmin. Dogs and Cats can also function as scavengers very effectively, and humans will adopt them frequently, so it's very likely their survival would be assured.

Some animals survived due to artificial environments or cloning, like those in Nuka-World or the Institute, but they don't have nearly enough of a significant population in order to be present at any length beyond these environments.

I doubt elephants or whales would survive because there simply wouldn't be enough food/water to sustain them. Sea life is an even greater mystery than land, since fallout doesn't seem too sure how to deal with them. In Fallout 1 there's a fisherman in a random encounter who is locked in an eternal struggle with his nemesis, an evil three eyed fish who is scaring away all his catch. He lives off of fish. Fish was also a cut food item in Fallout 2. The colorado is also filled with fish, as is the Virgin in Zion, and the tribals there live on fish caught from the river. Fallout 4 also features fishermen, and options to have some fishing utensils as decorations in your settlements, showing fish are still used as a foodstuff, particularly on the island, where they can be found all around. There are also weird shark dolphin hybrids so there are fish out there. Tobar the ferryman mentions that sea critters even try eating boats on the open water, so there must be some big monsters out in the sea, which would explain why cross continental voyage is considered so risky.

Though on the flip side, Doc Preston in Rivet City has a terminal entry about how eating the fish occasionally caught in the Potomac is incredibly dangerous, causing severe poisoning if ate. In FNV, both Cass and the low intelligence Courier have never see, or know what a fish actually is. These two things seem to fly in the face of everything else. Perhaps fish are an oddity in most parts of the wasteland, particularly where most water has dried up. Makes sense I guess.

The Whales probably aren't that big judging from the whale(?) skeletons you see in Far Harbor and based on how radiation affects insects and mammals in the fallout universe that live on land, they are probably at least twice as big from the original with a mutation(maybe they have become carnivores/omnivores).

If you think about it carefully though, they may not be much larger, if at all. Look at the Yao Guai. They're about the same size as bears are today. Same thing for Radstags and Brahmin.

The only creatures that were enlarged were non-mammals, like insects, mollusks (mirelurks, fog crawlers), amphibians (gulpers, anglers), and arthropods. Their cells and DNA react very differently to radiation. Since they're simpler organisms on a cellular level, they react and mutate much more readily than more complex organisms, which tend to just die out, or are otherwise harmed (ie become sterile etc).

Also size does not promote survival in this case. If anything whales may have shrunk, since the nuclear war is likely to have killed off much of the oceans creatures due to latent radiation, nuclear waste and runoff, other such things. With significantly reduced food sources, in order to survive, the whales would either have to become smaller, much fewer in number, or both. The more likely scenario is they went extinct. Same thing for elephants and other large herbivores, like rhinos, giraffes, etc.

Ok, some very good points.
There in indeed overwhelming evidence that invertebrates are affected very differently than the vertebrate animals. Coyotes, cows, ravens, bears, deer -- all exist and aren't bigger.
Coyotes and ravens are largely unaffected and many other animals are "doubled" like brahmin or just look partially ghoulified like the yuao-guai.
There are surprisingly normal-looking fish in lake mead, but fishermen reaching the mojave with a large stock of food are probably not happening enough so the people there don't always know what a fish is. Invertebrates however seem to get bigger and more aggressive, almost without exception.

So I would suggest that the reason we don't see sea life in the ocean is for these reasons exactly: the mammals only changed a little. And the invertebrates changed a lot.
Maybe sea life is extinct because the invertebrates, the whale's food pre-war, killed off most of the other animals?

Imagine a king crab, or a giant squid, already huge before the war, but vulnerable to the radiation gigantification of invertebrates? Real world giant octopuses are already pretty smart and inquisitive and have strange genes already.

So let me rephrase my original question:
What would an FEV'd blue whale be like?
What if a mad scientist pulled a Jurassic park and resurrected the extinct megalodon shark and FEV'd it, as surely a mad scientist would want to do? FOR SCIENCE!

Sirdanest wrote:

Imagine a king crab, or a giant squid, already huge before the war, but vulnerable to the radiation gigantification of invertebrates?   Real world giant octopuses are already pretty smart and inquisitive and have strange genes already.

Octopi and squid don't adapt very well to rapid environmental changes, so it's likely that they died off, and the only ones that would have survived would be the incredibly deep water versions which we would never interact with regardless. And down at that depth of water, there's little to nothing that would really affect them at all, so it's likely they'd follow their natural evolution.

As for king crabs, Mirelurks mate XD.

Sirdanest wrote:

So let me rephrase my original question:
What would an FEV'd blue whale be like?
What if a mad scientist pulled a Jurassic park and resurrected the extinct megalodon shark and FEV'd it, as surely a mad scientist would want to do?  FOR SCIENCE!  

FEV'd blue whale? It would depend. Probably change it to a better predator. Likely make it's vestigial limbs grow out and become usable to grasp prey. It would also likely change food sources since plankton and krill would not survive the nuclear fallout well... or they might mutate and become bigger and stronger themselves.

And an FEV'd shark would definitely become significantly more aggressive. Would also likely become a little larger, and definitely more powerful muscle wise. However it would also die quickly because there wouldn't be enough food to sustain it. Same for the blue whale.

They'd no doubt feast on the giant plankton.

I would love to have a quest for my TTW character to go out to sea and have to deal with Giant sea creatures and mutated sharks.
I would imagine they would be looking like something out of a HP Lovecraft novel.

Seriously, one of my initial disappointments of Fallout 4, was the lack of enemies in the oceans. Save for the mirelurks that wandered the coasts, the ocean is fairly empty. So much opportunity for a radiated squid or some kind of aquatic leviathan.

I completely agree with EyeShotFirst. It was so sad to see an empty ocean and empty waterways...there were so many wasted opportunities for great interactions, even passively. I would absolutely would have love to have seen more enemies. in the sea. There are way to many species of fish to think they all died out. Such a sad, wasted, opportunity.

the fish didn't die out...the mods I have put them on gutting tables and the settlers are cleaning fish endlessly...I've got mods for fish nets and piles of netting...there are plenty of fish in the sea. With the texture packs...they aren't even disgusting but actually quite appealing...visually.

As for the whales and elephants...I'd say they would be as large as the production team allowed the design team to make them...It's far easier for me to envision a round table discussion about this at the beth studios...when someone exclaims "DUDE!!!" and then runs to the whiteboard with an expo marker to illustrate their epiphany...rather than a few eggheads with an abacus attempting to scientifically deduce the proper scale according to lore/science for a new creature.

That aside...it was also stated that there was doubt they would survive...let's go with that because we haven't seen them yet or been anywhere where elephants roam free (pre war) I mean what is this Far Cry?

A giant mutant squid or something like that seems almost a no-brainer in the fallout universe. Or at least I wouldn't be surprised to have seen something with tentacles out in the ocean. Octopi, with their intelligence and strange genes and weird appearance are almost begging to have a mutant variety. Lakelurks look almost implausibly human compared to an animal, so almost anything is possible.

That's the beauty of science fiction. Anything and everything is possible, as long as it is even slightly plausible. And considering we still don't know much about radiation, or everything there is to know about how it affects life as we know it, after a nuclear apocalypse anything really is possible XD.

Fallout definitely assumes that if something is slightly possible then maybe it can happen. It may even go beyond that a few times. An underwater setting seems like it really should have happened, the potential for new mutations is quite high.

On a off note when your going to Point Lookout in 3 the captain does mention a gaint sea monster. Now how big it was, I have no idea. I believe he said said it could have shallowed the ship whole.

We better see some good ocean stuff in a future Fallout installment!

Actually there was also commentary from Garvey about how the Castle walls were destroyed by a giant sea monster a hundred years ago or something like that. So I guess it's probably probable that there are giant sea creatures in the fallout universe.