Would There Be Overgrowth And Abundant Plant Life In Fallout?

[Random | Wholesome Degenerate]

So I installed the mod for seasons in Fallout 4 and went with Spring. While I myself feel it's possible and even likely that 200+ years after the nuclear apocalypse flora would thrive and grown untamed, it's still jarring to see green in the Commonwealth. Though even with the abundance of flora it still feels ruined and dead at times from sparse civilization, crumbling ruins, and extended periods of silence and loneliness.

However, I'm a bit anal about staying lore-friendly whenever I add mods to games and I'm debating whether or not to keep this mod. I look to Chernobyl with its rampant overgrowth and in some cases even animals and think, with 200+ years to recover then surely "Mother Nature" would retake places not completely dominated by concrete and steel.

What do you think?

[paugus]

In 200 years, nature would retake even steel and concrete structures. I've seen breakdowns of how long after the extinction of humans our cities would last, and it's not nearly 200 years.

That being said, Fallout regards radiation as some kind of mystical force capable of giving you superpowers, so god knows what wacky rules concrete goes by.

[Random | Wholesome Degenerate]

I imagine a place as ♥♥♥♥♥♥ as the Glowing Sea and areas nearby in some 5-15 miles would be ♥♥♥♥♥♥, but most of the Commonwealth should be fine.

[Von Faustien]

It depends how utterly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the overall climate is if mass desertification happened radiation or not large scale plant life isn't going to be a thing

[Random | Wholesome Degenerate]

Well there's plenty of grass in the Commonwealth, though not green at all. Only the Glowing Sea has been truly transformed into a wasteland.

[paugus]

Originally posted by jrr101:

It depends how utterly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the overall climate is if mass desertification happened radiation or not large scale plant life isn't going to be a thing

There are plants in deserts.

[Random | Wholesome Degenerate]

There is also an abundance of water in small ponds, lakes, and streams to support your theory.

[Minty]

I believe the lack of overgrowth was covered in the first Fallout. Radiation has so heavily impacted the planet that only small shrubs and weeds are able to grow without direct help from humans. All the trees in the Commonwealth are dead.

That said, previous Fallout games were MUCH more barren - the Commonwealth is full of dead trees that shouldn't even be there, because they would have rotted away long ago.

[White Knight]

I think it depends on the extent of the damage and the effects that stem from that.

In my mind, nature is far more powerful than anything humanity can cook up but this "supremacy of life" kind of argument does not exist within a human lifespan. We certainly could wipe life of the crust of our planet and make it a place that is inhospitable to most forms of life for centuries. It's just that in time (possibly eons?) nature will take over and reassert herself, long after we are gone and forgotten.

We also haven't seen much of the world in our games. The little we have seen of the continental United States has plenty of life - much of it is messed up, but stuff lives and grows and in some cases, flourishes. Regions that were never hit directly and aren't down-range of horribly toxic areas that were, would presumably bounce back a lot sooner than places like the Glowing Sea.

I think the game does a pretty decent job at playing "what if". Some places are toxic waste sites, some places aren't so bad and others are...different.

In the game, the story tells us that we messed up our entire planet but the G.E.C.K.s have helped us to reclaim the land. You cannot underestimate the powers of imaginary, futuristic, alternative universe, alien techonolgies!

[Von Faustien]

Originally posted by paugus:

Originally posted by jrr101:

It depends how utterly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the overall climate is if mass desertification happened radiation or not large scale plant life isn't going to be a thing

There are plants in deserts.

But not a lot of them the odd shrub cactus and tuff of grass isn't abundant overgrowth in the slightest.

[paugus]

Originally posted by jrr101:

Originally posted by paugus:

There are plants in deserts.

But not a lot of them the odd shrub cactus and tuff of grass isn't abundant overgrowth in the slightest.

You should look at the number of different biomes "desert" can describe. Not every desert is miles of empty sand dunes.

[Shadow The Innkeep]

Idk about Fallout Universe rules, so I am not sure how nature would behave in span of 200 years after nuclear war.

In real life, I have watched a documentary about Japanese studies of how radiation impacts animals and plants. The research was based in Japan in the area that was affected by the nuclear accident after an earthquake or tsunami. Anyway, they analyzed plants and animals from the hot zone of the accident, from the outskirts and from the area that radiation hasn't reached. It appears that trees misinterpreted some of the radioactive particles for nutrients and started absorbing them. Same as animals that actually eat radioactive food. The research was done on molecular level as they were trying to see how DNA chains were affected, and it appears that animals that live on the ground or underground (where radiation levels are higher) have not been affected much by it. Nature basically adjusted to it. So I would imagine the Earth would be very much coevered in forests.

Now I am not sure if nuclear materials used in Japan and Chernobyl were the same. When it comes to Chernobyl, the deadly dose of radiation is only in specific proximity with the reactor chamber itself due to the rays being gamma rays. Gamma rays projectile spreads the further away it moves from its source therefore they have lesser chance of damaging DNA sequence in human body the further away a person stands. When the dome was being built recently to cover up the original Sarcophagus, they had to hustle when moving it - the closer they were getting to the reactor, the shorter their shifts were so that workers wouldn't get radiation poisoning. They also had to start construction so far away otherwise, people would get sick and die. Gamma rays that are the deadliest, and that is actually mentioned in FO4 by one of the NPCs, I believe, in DC.

[Dex]

200 years is a LONG time. The idea that people would leave pre-war artifacts remain sitting in garbage cans, rusted cars remain sitting by their houses, don't even paint their house, leave broken furniture just sitting around, is just ludicrous but it fits the theme of what we think fallout is, so we go with it.

[White Knight]

^^^ I'm in full agreement on the people not living in rubble and filth for generations. That part is just silly. It would only take a tiny handful of people with just a smidgeon of self-respect before inhabitable areas got cleaned up. I don't care how sick or depressed I get, I won't be living in a house with holes in the roof, letting irradiated rain drip onto my mattress, when there are ample construction materials laying all around me.

The original Fallout had the right idea - we were living like aboriginal people with Stone-Age techonologies. We weren't junkies living in squalor.

If that's the natural progression, from living off the land to becoming a species of jet-addicts in the years from Fallout to Fallout 4, then maybe the human race would be a lot better off if that first Vault Dweller never came topside to find those water chips?

Chernobyl and other reactor accidents may well be the best evidence available to us but they are nothing compared to the devastation of an all-out nuclear holocaust. We've seen what a couple of rudimentary prototype bombs can do, but we can't even begin to guess at what a limited, local spat might look like, let alone a worldwide armageddon.

Any attempt to dismiss or minimize the threats of nuclear war are completely misguided and idiotic. We simply cannot know and erring on the side of "meh, how bad can it be?" is absolute suicide for us all.

We all live together on this one planet. Surely, the only rational question is "How can we make sure that we never find out how bad a nuclear war might be?"

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Fact is, we don't actually know. Total Nuclear war would change weather patterns, and the biggest nuclear disasters in history that people use as guideposts for how plant life would recover, are extremely small scale and also have to factor in immense cleanup efforts by humans. (Chernobyl, Fukushima, Hiroshima, Nagasaki)

If a "Nuclear Winter" happened, it's likely a huge % (Upwards of 95%) of plantlife would die similar to a catastrophic meteor impact, and recovery would be exceedingly slow. On the order of THOUSANDS of years. Suffice to say, we just don't know enough about how thorough the destruction of the world was.

Based on information obtainable at Finch Farm, the ability to even grow crops is less than 50 years old. It's possible within the timespan of Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, rain finally did return and begin to leech away into the oceans and rivers, most of the poisoned topsoil.

Originally posted by Dex:

200 years is a LONG time. The idea that people would leave pre-war artifacts remain sitting in garbage cans, rusted cars remain sitting by their houses, don't even paint their house, leave broken furniture just sitting around, is just ludicrous but it fits the theme of what we think fallout is, so we go with it.

But yes, short of hardened concrete structures and ceramics, most human structures would have collapsed, especially so close to the ocean which is legendarily harsh on structures. Deeper inland, we may be able to argue that even some wood structres could survive 200+ years if the atomic war sufficiently evaporated enough moisture in Earth's Crust to induce a dessicated landscape, but since it rains the Commonwealth pretty often...

[paugus]

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

If a "Nuclear Winter" happened, it's likely a huge % (Upwards of 95%) of plantlife would die similar to a catastrophic meteor impact, and recovery would be exceedingly slow. On the order of THOUSANDS of years. Suffice to say, we just don't know enough about how thorough the destruction of the world was.

Thousands of years is actually geologically insignificant.

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Deeper inland, we may be able to argue that even some wood structres could survive 200+ years if the atomic war sufficiently evaporated enough moisture in Earth's Crust to induce a dessicated landscape, but since it rains the Commonwealth pretty often...

Unless the entire ocean was somehow transported off of the earth... I mean, if the water evaporates it goes back into the water cycle, it doesn't just vanish.