Are Tunnellers actually a threat to the Mojave?

[Ciaran Zagami]

Ulysses says they "breed fast, hunt in groups, more than enough to bring down the strongest in the Mojave."
But that doesn't really make them a threat, the Mojave already has lots of dangerous mutants.

Unlike the Divide the Mojave doesn't have a substantial amount of underground real-estate for them to occupy. Without the constant cover of the endless Divide sand storms the Tunneller's hyper sensitivity to light would even an even worse problem, likely dooming them to hide in the caves on the fringes of the Mojave desert. Lets not forget that The Strip and outer Vegas are filled with electrical lights. All the important NCR bases have electricity too.

Sure they might rip The Legion a new one because of their preference for melee and their refusal to use electrical lighting in any of their camps. But the NCR was able to arm their troops with flash bangs and flare guns. Both things that drove the Tunnellers away easily. And don't even get me started on the Securetrons, I'd like to see a Tunneller survive half a dozen rockets to the face.

Granted we do see them kill a single Deathclaw, but that one was alone and scripted to die.
And everyone I've ever spoken to has always agreed they've had more trouble with the Deathclaws in Lonesome Road than the Tunnellers due to the aforementioned hyper sensitivity to light.

All this without mentioning that Courier Six kills the Tunneller Queen while travelling through the Cave of the Abaddon. So they won't be doing any of that "fast" breeding Ulysses describes.

And lastly, it took the detention of multiple underground nukes to drive them to the surface. Whatever existence they had going on for the last 200 years must have been pretty comfortable, if they wouldn't abandon it for anything less than a nuclear earth quake. Making it unlikely that even if they did reach out past the Divide, they ever even surface again.

As a result, I find it highly unlikely that Ulysses is correct. He's either stupid and vastly underestimates how bad of a weakness sunlight is in a DESERT. He's also giving his quotes about how dangerous Tunnellers are BEFORE Courier Six kills the queen. Or he's being hyperbolic and using the Tunnellers to back up his argument that society in the Mojave is meek and unprepared for the true dangers of the Wasteland.

[Vassago Rain]

They're a poorly written Chris Avellone plot device, so no.

[ReichsMinister Goebbels]

well, if the cloud from the sierra madre were to roll over the mojave, that would block out the sun permanently allowing the tunnellers to tear apart anyone who dared to step outside. this very thing happening is the main plot point for the F:NV mod "DUST". and as for the death of the tunneller queen, the tunnellers are very ant like in nature and like ants i would expect them to be able to replace the queen relatively quickly. as well as the fact that there may well be more then one queen and possibly more then one colony of tunnellers. though this is all just speculation.

[Shiroi Ren]

Tunnelers could actually dig tunnels underground which would result in very-very comlicated undeground labyrinths. They could use them to hide from the Sun which would negate their weakness to light to some degree if we are talking about their spreading across the dessert.

The main problem would be inability to protect civilian centers that are not placed on hard rock. Which could lead to starvation because, technicaly, it would be impossible to protect all farms and settlements in the desert from underground assaults and it would be kind of hard to farm on rocks.

[UCEY]

They aren't much of a threat, and if on the off chance they do become a threat, the NCR would step in with countermeasures such as equipping every relevant settlement with floodlights or giving them flashbangs and flare guns. The only true threat to the Mojave is the Deathclaws

[Ciaran Zagami]

Originally posted by Dean Domino:

well, if the cloud from the sierra madre were to roll over the mojave, that would block out the sun permanently allowing the tunnellers to tear apart anyone who dared to step outside. this very thing happening is the main plot point for the F:NV mod "DUST". and as for the death of the tunneller queen, the tunnellers are very ant like in nature and like ants i would expect them to be able to replace the queen relatively quickly. as well as the fact that there may well be more then one queen and possibly more then one colony of tunnellers. though this is all just speculation.

There is one big issue with that theory.

The cloud is being pumped into the Madre, all the places we see the cloud it is being actively created and cannot be sustained for long outside of places where its generated.
The entire reason Elijah is there is to figure out how the cloud is made so he can remake it, its not something that can be moved by weather patterns.

[Ciaran Zagami]

Originally posted by Shiroi Ren:

Tunnelers could actually dig tunnels underground which would result in very-very comlicated undeground labyrinths. They could use them to hide from the Sun which would negate their weakness to light to some degree if we are talking about their spreading across the dessert.

The main problem would be inability to protect civilian centers that are not placed on hard rock. Which could lead to starvation because, technicaly, it would be impossible to protect all farms and settlements in the desert from underground assaults and it would be kind of hard to farm on rocks.

Even if they did dig, every single settlement I can think of has electric lights that are on all the time. Hell even the Legion have bonfires everywhere.

[Shiroi Ren]

Originally posted by Ciaran Zagami:

Even if they did dig, every single settlement I can think of has electric lights that are on all the time. Hell even the Legion have bonfires everywhere.

Doesn't really help if you will be dragged through weak points underground. Lights don't light up inside ground, only surface.

[4FCG]

I mean it depends, if you help the NCR and get the NCR ending, they thoroughly colonize the area. And eventually the NCR situation becomes a bit more stable. So I doubt they would not be able to dedicate their army to a bit of good old extermination. I mean they managed to defend against the legion and eliminate all the raider gangs around. I doubt they would let some diggy bois ruin their hard earned prize.

[Stellarbone]

Ulysses is a mentally deranged psychopath yelling about how a mailman made a delivery and destroyed his life and wants to launch more nukes at the major factions to prove how mean and bad and wrong the courier is. Nothing he says should be taken at face value. Especially when it comes to the tunnelers, which if they've been around for over 200 years, and were spreading that whole time, they would have already reached the Mojave.

That said, What the hell are the tunnelers supposed to be? 200 years underground is nowhere near long enough for humans to mutate to that level, even with the mutating radiation in fallout. They have huge eyes, large mouths of razor sharp teeth, scales, bio-luminescent growths on their shoulders, and reportedly breed in large numbers, 'like rabbits'. Some kind of mutated lizard or frog maybe?

Either way, first response was correct. They, and the line about them destroying everything, was Avellone trying to put a definite end to the Fallout story, so nobody else could write stories with any meaning in the setting. The real threats from the DLC's would be the Think Tank actually escaping, or the hard to achieve end to Dead Money where Elijah and the Courier team up and make more cloud.

[Ciaran Zagami]

I don’t think fallout ever cared about realistic mutations

Their origins don’t really matter to me
They could just be another escaped think tank experiment or more FEV rejects

It honestly all comes down to how much you believe the theories about trace FEV in the atmosphere after Mariposa got nuked.

Also I don't think Uylsses is a "deranged psychopath"
His entire thing is propaganda. Just like every other character you meet who spews propaganda putting their faction into a positive light and calling all the others awful. Only difference is Uylsess's calls EVERY faction awful.
His whole plan is not to show "how bad and wrong the Courier is" its to reenact the destruction of the Divide. Uylsess's gives you plenty of warning about ED-E if you just listen to his dialogue. He describes ED-E, talks about what happened when Six brought the robot back to Hopeville.

Its the same thing with his slander against the factions, he wants you to really think about the choices your making. Try to see them from the perspective of the people you're hurting as you try to "unite" the Mojave under one banner or the other.

The problem is Lonesome Road makes a lot of assumptions about the player's motive and how much roleplaying they've done. So it's lost on a lot of people because it tries to make Courier Six a defined protagonist.


Through I do agree with your point on the Tunnellers taking 200 years to spread, I hadn't thought about that at all to be honest.

[McJiggy]

Fun fact: When they were making the DLC working on the tunnel you first enter the deathclaw kept killing all the tunnelers every time so they had to resort to making the deathclaw have only 1hp making it a scripted event.

[UCEY]

Originally posted by JamestheFreak:

Fun fact: When they were making the DLC working on the tunnel you first enter the deathclaw kept killing all the tunnelers every time so they had to resort to making the deathclaw have only 1hp making it a scripted event.

The Deathclaws need a bit of a nerf. I had only a single weapon that was capable of killing them

[kireta]

They're as dead as Wanamingos, for very same reason: protagonist killed their queen. With entire race coming from one mother, this mutation lived in borrowed time and was destined to go extinct. Courier just accelerated their end.

[Nightkiller300]

Originally posted by Shiroi Ren:

Tunnelers could actually dig tunnels underground which would result in very-very comlicated undeground labyrinths. They could use them to hide from the Sun which would negate their weakness to light to some degree if we are talking about their spreading across the dessert.

The main problem would be inability to protect civilian centers that are not placed on hard rock. Which could lead to starvation because, technicaly, it would be impossible to protect all farms and settlements in the desert from underground assaults and it would be kind of hard to farm on rocks.

Plus, the environment and terrain is significantly more open and less cluttered in the Mojave. Let alone the Mojave desert's size alone. Not too mention the other areas they could possibly spread too.

[Nightkiller300]

Originally posted by Vassago Rain:

They're a poorly written Chris Avellone plot device, so no.

How are they poorly written?