What's with the anti-ghoul sentiment?

[Shadow]

why does the sole survivor treat ghouls in a very rude manner? All I hear is the option to call them freaks.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by fauxpas:

Nope, nice try, but until someone in universe can test which ghoul might be hypothetically immune to becoming feral its perfectly justified to segregate them from humans.

Like I said before and it got buried...

Not every human exposed to radiation becomes a ghoul, so that means some sort of genetic anomaly or condition has to exist for it to occur. Otherwise the entire pre-war population would be ghouls.

Then you have the fact that ghouls go feral at different rates. Which could simply mean what genetic condition or anomaly that made them a ghoul was a different degree stronger/weaker in the ghouls.

Which could mean that some ghouls could be capable of being immune to becoming feral. While other could become feral really quick. Fallout 76 had stories of the first ghouls and some of the first non-ferals, however the lore was missing dates. Majority of the first ghouls were feral in Fallout 76 because people were surprised when they met a group of "talkers."

However it did say the ghoulification process was something around weeks to months. Yet that is contradicted in Fallout 4 with Hancock and Eddie Winters, the both of them seemed to have used some sort of drug and became ghouls. Then you also have the holotapes in the ghoul house near Bunker Hill where it was likea week to become a ghoul.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by fauxpas:

Nope, nice try, but until someone in universe can test which ghoul might be hypothetically immune to becoming feral its perfectly justified to segregate them from humans.

No it isn't, since it's not proven as a legitimate or significant risk. It's like claiming that normals can suffer brain cancer as a result of radiation exposure, which can sometimes lead to aberrant and dangerous behaviours, and then locking them up for it.

How often have you purchased special meteorite insurance, just because there's a wild off-chance of one hitting your car?

Originally posted by fauxpas:

That is of course assuming that the in game accepted fact that all ghouls will eventually become feral isn't true, and even if we were to assume that "modern ghouls" are less likely to go feral than the first generation ghouls were, it's still a common enough occurrence that the people who live in said universe and have access to the evidence we the player don't get to see understand the truth.

We actually don't have any proof of it as a common occurrence, just that people are paranoid about it. As in real life, it's perfectly possible for people to be wildly paranoid about things that aren't true.

Take the very fact itself that they think it applies to all ghouls. Logically, we know it's impossible for them to be certain of that, since there are plenty of non-feral ghouls, yet they treat it as a certainty anyway. Their conclusion isn't based on a logical assessment of the evidence, but on rumour and fear.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Then you have the fact that ghouls go feral at different rates. Which could simply mean what genetic condition or anomaly that made them a ghoul was a different degree stronger/weaker in the ghouls.

Personally, I think the nature and degree of the radiation exposure that induces the change is a large factor (perhaps even the only one).

Firstly, we know radiation is involved at all, so it's reasonable to assume its nature can affect the nature of the result. Then we have a whole bunch of ferals that all seem to derive from the original bomb blasts (based on their locations and apparent circumstances). And we also have notable stable ghouls like Eddie and Hancock who were changed by a much more modest and calculated exposure.

And we've then also got Oswald, who demonstrates that the amount of radiation exposure they get after they've changed doesn't matter much. If later radiation influenced them, he shouldn't be event remotely intelligible, let alone rational enough to perform his whole elaborate charade and reason with the Sole Survivor.

Another factor to consider is that it could be influenced by the person's mental state at the time they changed. If they're going crazy over the bombs dropping when they began to change, the renewing power of the process could lock them into a permanently frantic and primal tendency that eventually makes them lose their grip on their rational mind. Here again, the stable examples are also often the calmest; Eddie, Hancock (passed out at the time), Daisy, all seem to have taken it relatively well and even the Vault-Tec Rep seems more bitter and resentful about what happened, rather than completely overwhelmed by fear.

[danconnors]

@Douglas Grave: You keep referring to Hancock as stable. Why? The first thing I see him do after I walk in the gate of Good Neighbor is kill one of the inhabitants who mouths off to him. The second thing I hear him do is make a speech which results in one of the inhabitants being gunned down--a synth hiding amongst us. My next dealing with him is his underling White Chapel Charlie, who I con into paying me 400 caps to rub out 12 ghouls and 12 human hoodlums. Twelve ghouls is a substantial percentage of the ghoul population of Good Neighbor. I kill them all inside a 24 hour period.

Hancock is slaughtering his population! Sounds like he might be working for the Institute to me. But there is certainly nothing stable about him. Homicidal maniac is a more fitting description. At the rate he's going Good Neighbor will be a ghost town in a year or so.

Ghouls in general--even if they already haven't gone feral can usually be found working with the lowest of the low criminal elements. I was told myself. "If you plan on staying here you need to join a crew." (a criminal gang). How does that compare to your description of hard working, decent--agit prop. My observations point to ghouls--both feral and non--being a vanishing breed. They don't reproduce (sterile) which is one of the main reasons they're disappearing. There is very little reason to live a decent normal life if you have no children to raise.

They won't be with us much longer, which is a good thing.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by danconnors:

@Douglas Grave: You keep referring to Hancock as stable. Why? The first thing I see him do after I walk in the gate of Good Neighbor is kill one of the inhabitants who mouths off to him. The second thing I hear him do is make a speech which results in one of the inhabitants being gunned down--a synth hiding amongst us. My next dealing with him is his underling White Chapel Charlie, who I con into paying me 400 caps to rub out 12 ghouls and 12 human hoodlums. Twelve ghouls is a substantial percentage of the ghoul population of Good Neighbor. I kill them all inside a 24 hour period.

Hancock is slaughtering his population! Sounds like he might be working for the Institute to me. But there is certainly nothing stable about him. Homicidal maniac is a more fitting description. At the rate he's going Good Neighbor will be a ghost town in a year or so.

As you're already aware, he's not a feral, and it's stability of mind versus that state we're measuring here.

Whether or not he sometimes kills people is a different question, and one which we might also ask of the Sole Survivor.

Originally posted by danconnors:

Ghouls in general--even if they already haven't gone feral can usually be found working with the lowest of the low criminal elements. I was told myself. "If you plan on staying here you need to join a crew." (a criminal gang). How does that compare to your description of hard working, decent--agit prop. My observations point to ghouls--both feral and non--being a vanishing breed. They don't reproduce (sterile) which is one of the main reasons they're disappearing. There is very little reason to live a decent normal life if you have no children to raise.

They won't be with us much longer, which is a good thing.

They're less common in criminal groups than normals, and when they do participate, it's in groups that are more sociable. As for sterility, I really can't say for sure on that; some people assume it, but such assumptions aren't based on any real evidence of which I'm aware.

In contrast, normals (at least in the wasteland surface) are frequently found as raiders and gunners and all other sorts of belligerents, and don't seem to produce enough children to sustain their own populations. They won't be with us much longer, which is a good thing.

[danconnors]

So the ghouls are members of the upper crust of scum and villain--as Obi Wan would say. They are less common in criminal gangs because THERE ARE LESS OF THEM. In the gang I slaughtered in Good Neighbor about half were ghouls. There is NO question that he's killing people, and instigating people to kill people. He doesn't need to progress to feral; he's already killed more people than any feral.

As for the Sole Survivor my girl sometimes acts as a hired gun--very successfully. She loses no sleep over the hoodlums she has put down. They all had it coming.

Everyone was talking, a page or two back, about how everyone stank because there were no operating showers outside of the Institute--where there are actually NO operating showers. Then I pointed out that I have an operating shower in every one of my major settlements. It's those so called anti rad arches I build everywhere. Every one of my settlements also produces enough water to give every member at least 5 showers a week--one gallon per shower. And you can SEE the arches spraying water, while Institute showers spray nothing.

I built those arches because the developers of survival mode made a major mistake with radaway, saying it causes a lowering of the immune system. The truth is high radiation levels cause a lowering of your immune system, and lowering the radiation level would INCREASE your immune system. The arches were the developers' answer to the problem of their own making. I have incorporated them in my settlement's hygiene. Clean people are generally healthier than filthy people. Now I need to simulate the laying of field lines for septic tanks, and get communal toilets.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by danconnors:

So the ghouls are members of the upper crust of scum and villain--as Obi Wan would say. They are less common in criminal gangs because THERE ARE LESS OF THEM. In the gang I slaughtered in Good Neighbor about half were ghouls. There is NO question that he's killing people, and instigating people to kill people. He doesn't need to progress to feral; he's already killed more people than any feral.

It's not just a matter of pure numbers. Ghouls show up randomly as 1 settler in 20, but the representation is lower than that amongst most criminal groups. And like I said, where they have involvement (with the Triggermen), the groups are more socialized and able to live in civilized communities.

The simple answer is that non-feral ghouls are more peaceful and less dangerous than normals.

Originally posted by danconnors:

As for the Sole Survivor my girl sometimes acts as a hired gun--very successfully. She loses no sleep over the hoodlums she has put down. They all had it coming.

Since she was working for Hancock in Goodneighbour in dealing with the Triggermen, she obviously supports non-feral ghouls as a legitimate authority.

[Stelar Seven]

Originally posted by fauxpas:

Originally posted by Stelar Seven:

If you generalize broadly enough everything is like everything, so no, lacking space, F4 isn't a space opera.

As for ghouls evidence was asked for. We have. In game, people going feral or not when they become ghouls, and one ghoul in nuka world who went feral. But was also exposed to a unique magic powers ghoul.

So too many variables there to generalize.

Uh-huh, at this point you might as well join Flippy and his everything is caused by space aliens club; we get to listen to the tape of a ghoul in the process of going feral, and we know that its common knowledge that ghouls go feral, but yet it's all a grand conspiracy fueled by mere prejudice in your mind?


And no, "space opera" doesn't require the setting to involve space to be useful, but even if you insist on a literal space components, the FO universe has always had little green men, had an entire DLC devoted to said little green men and thier spaceship, and said little green men even exist in this game.

If you are going to stir things up you should at least be capable of arguing for your position. Insults aren't arguments.

First off right out of google.

"space op·er·a
/spās ˈäp(ə)rə/
nounINFORMAL•NORTH AMERICAN
a novel, movie, or television program set in outer space, typically of a simplistic and melodramatic nature."

Fallout 4 is science fiction. It has plenty of those elements but the setting is not space.

What anyone arguing it can be called Space Opera is pointing to is the malliability of the english language.

F4 is closer to a soap opera than a space one. At least soap operas are generally set on earth.

As for the ghouls, we have one highly specific and unique instance of a ghoul going ferral. So in at least one instance a nonferal ghoul became ferral.

However the claim is all ghouls become ferral, and that needs more evidence than your say so. Claims that "everyone knows" don't hold up. You need actual facts that support your position, not bluster.

[danconnors]

As long as the pay is right. And the showers???

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Then you have the fact that ghouls go feral at different rates. Which could simply mean what genetic condition or anomaly that made them a ghoul was a different degree stronger/weaker in the ghouls.

Personally, I think the nature and degree of the radiation exposure that induces the change is a large factor (perhaps even the only one).

So what you are saying is the majority pre-war population became ghouls.

Better luck next time.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

Personally, I think the nature and degree of the radiation exposure that induces the change is a large factor (perhaps even the only one).

So what you are saying is the majority pre-war population became ghouls.

No, I imagine a lot of them just died when the bombs fell.

But with the much larger population of the pre-war society, even a relatively small percentage of them surviving to change results in a lot of ghouls. If bomb exposure, in providing an intense and uncontrolled dose of radiation, is likely to produce unstable ghouls, it would explain the large number of ferals we see.

So the bombs drop, and a lot of survivors get enough radiation exposure to turn them into ghouls. But because it's usually intense, uncontrolled exposure, a lot of them are unstable and become ferals. A smaller number of ghouls that (by chance) happen to get a weaker or steadier exposure, something more like Eddie Winter's and Hancock's, end up as stable ghouls.

And as enough time goes by the ghouls tend to separate into two distinct groups. Those with any significant instability turn feral, and the non-ferals that remain are stable enough that they'll never turn. Since there aren't a lot of sudden nuclear explosions anymore, most new ghouls also tend to be stable since they get exposed to weaker and more consistent radiation doses (like eating irradiated food, or living somewhere where they modest exposure), which is why we don't see "fresh" ferals turning up.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

So what you are saying is the majority pre-war population became ghouls.

No, I imagine a lot of them just died when the bombs fell.

Do I really need to point out what that cause of death was?

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

A smaller number of ghouls that (by chance) happen to get a weaker or steadier exposure, something more like Eddie Winter's and Hancock's, end up as stable ghouls..

So science is based on chance now....

You should reroll your points.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

No, I imagine a lot of them just died when the bombs fell.

Do I really need to point out what that cause of death was?

Exposure to extremes of heat, pressure, and radiation does tend to kill people more often than it turns them into ghouls. Not that this makes any difference to what we're talking about.

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

A smaller number of ghouls that (by chance) happen to get a weaker or steadier exposure, something more like Eddie Winter's and Hancock's, end up as stable ghouls..

So science is based on chance now....

People were not experiencing a carefully controlled experiment in radiation exposure, so it is largely a matter of chance as to whether they were in a place where they suffered an intense radiation dose that might incline them to instability (if they survived and became a ghoul).

It's not some magical thing that different people had different circumstances, nor does it make any difference to scientific examination of the results.

[Stelar Seven]

Well this is interesting.

Based on the data compiled in the wiki, the right dose of rads turns a human into a ghoul and some ghouls exposed to some rads may, but also may not, become feral.

Prejudice against ghouls is no more warranted than any other anti human prejudice.

https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Ghoul

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

It's not some magical thing that different people had different circumstances, nor does it make any difference to scientific examination of the results.

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

You should reroll your points.

Roll again because you failed your saving throw.