RobCo’s Secret

hey how's it going guys it's Nate here and as many of you are probably very much aware over the past couple of months we've been working on an enormous three-part Fallout Mysteries iceberg in a dramatic attempt to document and catalog virtually every major mystery and Theory present in the franchise and wrap it all together with a neat little bow now while the third and final episode of that Iceberg has actually still yet to be completed it should be out in the next week or two today I'd like to take a bit of a pause and focus on a specific topic that we covered earlier in the series which I think deserves way more time to dissect than the 2 or 3 minutes we originally gave it that being the question of what role ghoulification played in the prewar World ghouls are of course ubiquitous creatures in the Fallout franchise that have really helped to define the tone of the games they're gangrenous zombie-like mutants that were once human but have been transformed by radiation and maybe something else into one of the Fallout franchise's most defining elements beyond their unfortunate physical appearances ghouls have several unique characteristics that distinguish them from their smooth skin counterparts including incredibly longer perhaps infinite potential lifespans an immunity to radiation and a radically reduced need for food and water you probably already knew all that but it makes for a more dramatic introduction regardless the question we seek to ask today is that if ghouls are such a force in the Wasteland if they're so common they're all over the place and they're simply a product of too much radiation exposure then shouldn't this phenomenon have been present in the pre-war world as well I mean radiation was all over the place back in the day in the Fallout Universe the United States still deployed its Atomic Arsenal in 1945 people were still studying radioactive stuff all the time and that's not to mention the insane amount of radiation producing items which people were being exposed to on a daily basis so surely ghoulification was a force in society before the bombs came down right well to me indeed it was throughout the franchise we can encounter several ghouls who actually turned before that fateful day in 2077 and there's a surprisingly insane amount of lore on this subject that takes some shall we say very interesting twists that I'd like to share with you thus in today's video we are going to be investigating the strange story of pre-war ghoulification we'll start off with a bit of ghoul biology studying the exact changes that occur in these creatures and more specifically what exactly causes people to turn and why it seems as though only certain people are able to become ghouls from there we'll explore the known instances of people who goufi before the Great War examining what each can tell us about the phenomenon and some of the stranger conclusions were forced to come to before finally introducing some of the most bizarre pieces of this puzzle and trying to put it all together and make sense of it thus our stages set for another round of Fallout detective work so pour out a glass of your finest old Royale turn up your rad Kings volume and relax as we dive into the Curious Case of fallout's pre-war ghoul lore but first a quick word from today's video sponsor this video is being sponsored by Dungeon Hunter 6 a new mobile MMO action RPG where players and their companions fight their way through a shared Dark Fantasy open world while you're encouraged to share and fight over your experience in valenia with others via the guildmates and guild war systems you can also embrace the main campaign solo no friends no problem throughout your journey players can collect an assortment of AI Heroes to Aid them in their struggles and over 100 unique defeated bosses can even become potential squadmates who can be summoned or even shape-shifted into with a new boss Conquest system while the Dungeon Hunter franchise has been a staple of mobile gaming for over a decade now dh6 also adds a modern coat of paint providing the smoothest combat and most stunning Graphics yet download Dungeon Hunter 6 for free on the App Store or Google Play using my link or by scanning my QR code you'll get a special pack featuring 10 summoning Scrolls one SSR companion and one accessory pack all right in order to best understand pre-war ghoulification I think it's important that we start off with an understanding of ghoulification more generally a bit of ghoul ly 101 if you will specifically regarding what exactly causes someone to turn into a ghoul as Believe It or Not radiation may not be the only factor and there are some lesser known effects particularly worth dissecting and perhaps the best place we can begin our ghoul ly is at Fallout 3's underworld buried beneath the ruins of the Museum of History in Washington DC the underworld is a sprawling underground Metropolis populated exclusively by ghouls who have sought out the community as a refuge from the discrimination and Prejudice they encounter elsewhere in the Wasteland and are excited to be around their kin as the player approaches the entrance to the museum we'll be stopped by Willow a Sentry guarding the gates who will demand to know our motives but will'll always grant us permission to enter and will happily answer a few questions the lone Wanderer may have about her and her people Carol will explain all the basics of ghoulification caused by Rad's exposure ghouls don't need to eat or drink as much some do lose their minds and go feral all the basic stuff that you probably already know and that I'll skip most of however interestingly when asked about how the underworld deals with being so close to a nearby Super Mutant stronghold Willow will say something funny that the mutants don't really bother her people and seem to see ghouls as their kin take a listen those knuckle draggers nah they don't bother us ghouls maybe they see us as kids or something I don't know once we're inside the community we can encounter a dozen or so more ghouls who will ironically treat the player with contempt and discrimination for being a smooth skin an interesting reversal we can have more conversations about their condition but little additional Insight will be offered by their dialogue the residents of the underworld all just repeat the basics really however within the local infirmary humorously referred to as the chop shop and run by the enigmatic Dr Barrow we can gain some more valuable Intel that isn't offered anywhere else you see Dr Barrow considers himself to be and very likely is the world's foremost expert on ghoulification he spent the last century meticulously studying the condition in hopes that it could help him better treat his patients and oddly enough Barrow even thinks it might be possible to develop a cure for ghoulification outright currently he's attempting to treat several patients who have come down with a mysterious virus which he claims is weird because ghouls are actually supposed to be immune to the overwhelming majority of infections interesting though the real reason I bring this guy up has to do with a research terminal he has in his office where Dr barrows has been ing several of his more significant discoveries and notes now be advised that in the release version of Fallout 3 this terminal is actually bugged and while it can be accessed like you can sit down and open the terminal up none of the entries are readable it's not that Bethesda cut them from the game but the developers seem to have messed up by making the entry names too long and corrupting their ability to be selected nonetheless this can be fixed with an unofficial patch or we can just directly extract the entries from the files regardless one entry titled examination of the post necrotic human reads as follows quote in my S Dozen Years studying the ghoul Anatomy I discover more and more evidence to support my theory on the nature of the not radiological human or ghoul as they are commonly called in summary I theorize that our unnaturally long lifespan is due to a mutation within the autonomic nervous system of certain individuals following exposure to specific combinations of ionizing radiation with wavelengths below 10 Pomers this mutation it seems disrupts the normal process of decay in the neurotransmitters along the spinal cord specifically Al the transmitters affected are those responsible for cardiac and respiratory function in a healthy human according to my studies these transmitters are continually regenerated after mutation carrying sufficient oxygen to sustain the life of the subject while being insufficient to retain skin elasticity and avoid necrosis the result of which is the corpse-like appearance of post mutation humans it should be noted that exposure to radiation typically results in sickness followed by death and The X Factor that will lead to the mutation upon exposure in lie of the typical outcome remains unknown to this researcher in the coming months I will be assembling my findings on this subject into a full study end quote so in this document Dr Barrow is providing us what is a essentially The Fallout universe's best and most scientific description yet on the exact biology of ghouls noting that their unnaturally long lifespans seem to be the product of a mutation to their central nervous systems which disrupts the decay of neurotransmitters more importantly for our purposes though Dr barrows is suggesting that radiation exposure alone isn't the only cause for ghoulification not everyone can become a ghoul that the process can only take place in a select number of individuals who have a certain X Factor or who have been exposed to a certain X Factor and those who do not have that going for them will simply expire normally when exposed to too many rats so the obvious question this terminal leaves us to ask is what might that X Factor be well there are a couple of theories that have gained some steam in the community that I think are worth sharing with you perhaps the most popular suggestion out there is that this X Factor could be genetic in nature that certain people are carriers for a certain gene or perhaps genetic mutation that allows their nervous system to interact with radiation in a way that results in well you know the exact nature of this Gene IC component whether it's hereditary or dominant or recessive or if it's just a totally random mutation is Up For Debate across the Fallout franchise there are a few examples of family members who have been goufi at once which would imply a hereditary Factor but that's dubious furthermore this Gene would have to be a bit more common than Dr Barrow lets on as across the games there are several locations where the player can visit entire groups of people who were goufi at the same time Camp search light was an old NCR Outpost established on the fringes of the Mojave with a small Garrison of a couple dozen men to help monitor the frontier and specifically slow down legionary encroachment in the region alas unbeknownst to most of the men until it was too late the camp was built on top of a nuclear waste disposal site which was one day breached by legionaire sabator causing virtually all of the troops to gulfy in a couple of days in Fallout 4 we know that the entire crew of the yanga a Chinese nuclear submarine was gulfi at once in the aftermath of the Great War leaving no Exceptions there are dozens more examples of this thing happening but you get the idea in the Fallout Universe there are a bunch of instances of people groups of people unrelated who all got goufi at the same time and the the point stands that if Dr Barrow's X Factor really is genetic then this shouldn't be such a common thing to occur either that or the gene must be considerably more common than Barrow suspects the other big popular Theory which addresses our above concerns and I like a little bit better is that the X Factor isn't genetic at all but rather has to do with some limited exposure to the forced evolutionary virus the forced evolutionary virus or Fe was an artificial virus developed by the old US Government capable of forcing changes in a person's genome and organ system originally its purpose was meant to counter various new emergent diseases in the old world but eventually military scientists discovered it could be modified to create Ultra resilient Ultra cheap Super Soul soldiers who they hoped to eventually leverage for military gain alas the government's research was never finished and before the feev could be perfected the Great War broke down in the ensuing chaos several feev Labs were breached and thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands of survivors were exposed to variant of it creating the modern Super Mutant that we know of today super mutants have been rendered sterile by the fev but are are able to create more of their kind by capturing normal humans and dunking them into F tanks a particularly Sinister almost zombie like Behavior nonetheless many players and even a couple Fallout developers have suggested that some kind of minor much more limited exposure to the FV virus is The X Factor that Dr baros is mentioning in his research and and there's good reason for this after the release of fallouts 1 and 2 interplay writer Chris Avalon set about creating what has since been dubbed The Fallout Bible a collection of documents notes and interviews that he intended to use to create something resembling a consistent cosmology for the Fallout Universe it should be noted that Avalon's Fallout Bible isn't really Canon and especially hasn't been since asda's acquisition of the IP but it does provide us with some interesting insights regarding what the original developers were intending for several topics in the first volume of this Bible when describing how the residents of Vault 12 now known as necropolis were goufi Avalon asserts that feev exposure was an essential ingredient stating quote when the westtech research facility was hit it shattered the feev storage tanks on levels four and five and released feev into the atmosphere through some means perhaps propelled by the explosion the virus was able to reach the ghouls quickly and the mutation process began even as the radiation was rotting away their bodies how the virus was able to survive the blast without being sterilized is unknown it would depend on what type of Warhead cracked the westtech facil ility like an egg end quote additionally Chris Taylor fallout's lead designer said the following quote super mutants are humans with no or minimal radiation damage who have been exposed to F ghouls are humans with significant radiation damage who have been exposed to minimal amounts of the F furthermore this feev exposure might also explain some something we heard at the beginning of the discussion remember when Willow the underworld Century explained to us that the nearby Super Mutant hordes left them alone for some reason those knuckle draggers nah they don't bother us ghouls maybe they see us as kin or something I don't know perhaps it's not just that the super mutants recognize ghouls as fellow muties but that they specifically recognize them as fellow creatures who have already been infected by the Fe they have no desire to turn them because they've already been turned I mean super mutants will attack Myer giant ants and all sorts of radiation changed creatures it's kind of odd that ghouls are given this this special privilege of being left alone unless they may already share feev exposure as you can probably tell I'm a a fan of this explanation because not only does it put Willow's quote in this new neat context but also can provide justification for those Mass gulfy events you know if feev sites were hit across the United States at the breakout of the Great War then it would make sense that it could have leaked into the atmosphere and dozens hundreds of people could have been exposed at once providing justification for them all to gulfy furthermore it could help explain why ghouls were so rare in the pre-war World despite an abundance of radioactive developments even still though this theory is not without its own issues and detractors Tim kanaine one of the original creators and developers of the Fallout franchise disagrees with Chris Avalon and has argued that ghouls are a radiation only creation and in a later version of The Fallout Bible Avalon even ended up changing his mind and accepting Kane's argument CHR Taylor however has remained steadfast in his fev hypothesis still though Bethesda seems to have moved in a different direction already with Dr Barrow's terminal by saying that there is a certain X Factor involved they're explicitly implying that it's not just radiation anymore so it's hard to rule either way finally while we're on this topic it's worth asking what causes some ghouls to go feral and others to retain their mental faculties interestingly enough Barrow's broken research terminal has an entry on this phenomenon as well titled study of the Ferocious post necrotic distrophy it reads quote the brain structure of a feral necrotic posthuman indicates that the regenerative ability of neurological systems that affords necrotic posst humans their longevity does not extend into the higher reasoning functions of the brain itself this is a condition condition that I refer to as ferocious post necrotic distrophy as the reasoning and higher order thinking portions of the brain deteriorates the posthuman subject becomes increasingly hostile giving into a carnal need to feed as opposed to the capacity for thinking and reasoning that a typical necrotic posthuman retains it remains unclear what exactly precipitates this change in biology and psychology but anecdote evidence seems to indicate that nonsocial ghouls or those in isolation are more prone to develop the condition so Barrow is stumped on this question attributes Ferness to a breakdown in brain chemistry which may be caused by social isolation loneliness essentially we'll have more to say about this idea later on in the video but nonetheless now that we've learned a little bit about what's behind ghoulification and some of the mystery associated with it let's move on and turn our attention to some specific examples of ghouls who we know turned before the bombs fell as this gets us much closer to the root of our question and offers us an insane and sometimes surprising amount of insight regarding what the old world knew about the phenomenon thus without any further Ado let's do further so the first Proto ghoul that we're going to investigate and really the first one to ever appear in the franchise is Desmond lockart a mysterious Great War Survivor whom the lone Wanderer can encounter during Fallout 3's Point Lookout DLC Desmond lockart was a former British intelligence operative who sometime in the 2070s figured out that the Great War was imminent and unavoidable so he took a radical step to ensure his survival here's how the The Fallout 3 official game guide describes his character quote before the bombs dropped Desmond was a player in international intelligence at the highest levels Desmond's motives and obsessions have been scarcely affected by the apocalyptic Devastation of the planet Desmond and those he would consider his peers knew for some time that the Great War was inevitable Desmond himself could have been directly involved in the actions leading up to the nuclear exchange facing Atomic Annihilation global leaders and members of the intelligence Community made their personal bids for survival in the new world feev cryogenic stasis AI Consciousness even in Desmond's case controlled exposure to normally lethal doses of radiation were among the wildly risky and experimental techniques pursued in the name of survival in a world without modern infrastructure old rival reason vendettas were not forgotten in the ashes of nuclear winter those who managed to survive quickly set about doing what the bombs had not wiping out any remnants of the old world that may be a threat to their personal and political agendas end quote lockart is one of Point lookout's main characters as the dlc's primary quest line centers around a jockey for power between himself and his arch nemesis a fellow Great War Survivor named Professor Calvert Calvert and Desmond were evidently going at it well before the bombs fell don't don't don't but they haven't let the apocalypse stand between their Mutual hatred of one another Well Desmond preferred ghoulification Calvert's mechanism of survival was to preserve his brain in a secret underground lab where he's remained for the last 250 years Calvert's experiments have gifted him with the rather unique ability to communicate telepathically with others and by the time of the player's arrival in Point Lookout he leads a small band of tribal Warriors who worship him as a god Calver hilariously seems to hate these people and resents them but hopes to leverage his small army into turning him into a real God and achieving what he calls psychic dominion over the region Desmond lockart however is the one thing standing in his way the lone Wanderer will ultimately have to decide between helping the power mad brain in a jar achieve his Divine dreams or helping Mr lockheart stop him by installing a psychic Jammer and putting the brain out of its misery while Desmond's motivations for opposing the crazy Professor are purely personal and selfish and he's actually one of the rudest and most disrespectful characters in the game he is considered the good Karma option and like any heroic NPC he drops an ear when slain if you have the contract killer perk so he's a sort of anti-hero to Calvert's villain unfortunately no matter which side the player chooses Desmond will share very little about his past when asked upfront about it he simply tells us that it's none of our business and to bug off indeed the only reason we know he's a pre-war ghoul is because the official game guide spells it out he never actually opens up about it though there are some vague hints that something special about him for whatever reason Desmond's been able to preserve his hairline despite ghoulification but alas aside from Mr lockheart Fallout 3 doesn't really give us any more pre-war ghouls to look at however thankfully Fallout 4 very much does so let's take a look at the several pre-war ghouls found in Boston Massachusetts first up let's talk about Wayne Gorski he's unique among many of the ghouls on this list inov it that he had no idea he was becoming one nor is it entirely obvious or not that his transformation occurred before the war gorsky's cabin can be found near a radio tower on a desolate patch of land in Fallout 4 on the Northwestern side of the map upon inspection the isolated structure seems to be of little significance but the nearby root Celler we can access tells a more intriguing story within the cabin Cellar we can find the small Workshop of a Madman alongside a feral ghoul named Wayne Gorski as well as gorsky's terminal which contains a series of entries documenting the man's story evidently in the leadup to the Great War Mr Gorski was a survivalist and Doomsday prepper of sorts who harbored a limitless suspicion of the federal government's activities apparently in the spring of 2077 a new radio tower began construction nearby Wayne's cabin which he believed was being used as some sort of government mind control or manipulation device as he explains in his terminal gorsky's only rational response would be to build the nuke and blow the thing up himself indeed throughout his Workshop we can find an assortment of Contraband like materials as well as an actual mini nuke just sitting on a bench it's not clear why he didn't just use the mini- nuke or where he got it from but I digress it would appear that Wayne failed to take the necessary precautions before tinkering with such radioactive material and inadvertently got himself goufi in the end the Chinese would beat him to the punch and his efforts would be rendered redundant by the Sino American war anyway it remains unclear when exactly Wayne turned and went feral his terminal entries suspect it was sometime around the summer of 2077 but we can't be sure he could have been down here for a few years or transformed only after Massachusetts was hit oh one more thing going back to Dr Barrow's terminal entries in the Underworld you have to wonder if gorsky's isolation being alone in this bunker for at least two centuries is part of the reason he went feral rather than retain his brain chemistry like lockart or other ghouls perhaps Bethesda was making that point on purpose but I digress let's move on to the next pre-war Boston night ghoul the next Proto ghoul we'll be taking a look at is probably the most recognizable from this list meet Eddie winter once upon a time before bombs rained on the city from on high Eddie winter was Boston's most notorious Crime Boss the Sinister Irishman l a gang responsible for a string of murders kidnappings and various chem deals indeed he was such a prolific figure that we can actually read about him in many of the newspaper articles published before the Great War Nick Valentine our synthetic detective friend tells us that he inherited his Consciousness and memories from a cop of the same name who evidently had been moved from Chicago to Boston specifically as a part of a plan to catch Eddie winter in a mission codenamed operation Winters end the original human Nick Valentine was apparently hot on Eddie's Trail having busted a number of his associates and proving immune to the gang's attempts at bribery in an effort to get some payback winter had Valentine's young wife killed earning him a spot as one of the Fallout franchises most hated characters in Fallout 4 synth Valentine will reveal all of this to the player after you've maxed out his Affinity ranking despite being an Android he feels an incredibly close connection to the man his personality was based off of and his experience has brought him tremendous trauma fortunately he has an opportunity to avenge his namesake you see like Desmond lockart Eddie winter had been well aware of of the impending nuclear battles having allegedly been tipped off by some government folks in his pocket and took steps to ensure his survival partnering with a brilliant but corrupt and mysterious doctor winter secured samples of radioactive material and began the process of gulfy himself through composed exposure sometime in September of 2077 here's how he describes his transformation and motives in a holotape originally destined for his romantic partner a woman named Claire CLA it's me Eddie it's been too long I know but I'm okay we're okay I know it's weird me disappearing just when the heat died down but there's a reason what we talked about it's happening soon bombs missiles huh I don't know what but the end is coming I can't even tell you how much I paid my Cloak and Dagger friend for this info so I guess me building that shelter was a smart idea after all huh but look baby there is one more thing the reason I haven't been around for a while you know those idiot brothers at Wicked shipping the ones smuggling the radioactive material I put the screws to him got some of the stuff I've been working with this doctor in East Boston guys are a genius listen I know it sounds crazy but he had this Theory the right kind of radiation exposure at the right amounts it can change human cells mutate them baby I can live forever yeah I know it could kill me I'm willing to chance it but I can't risk losing you so I'm the guinea pig and I've been getting treatments but don't worry I'm fine more than fine I feel great amazing even eventually this war will blow over and when it does I'm going to walk out into Boston and pick up where I left off I'm going to own the future thus for the last two centuries a goufi Eddie winter has been quietly controlling elements of Boston's Raider network from his Still Standing bunker beneath the Andrews train station during the companion side quest Long Time Coming the player in Nick Valentine will track down the goufi crime boss to his shelter and once and for all deliver Justice to his victims two centuries in the making there will be a final confrontation between the Crime Boss and Nick Eddie will initially try to talk his way out of it before getting angry and Valentine will put the ghoul out of his misery assuming you don't beat him to it nonetheless winter next to lockart is probably our best documented case on pre-war Transformations and we can infer a good bit from his dialogue and holotapes in his message to CLA he claims Army intelligence tipped him off to the impending Great War after a significant bribe that he was smuggled radioactive material by the folks at Wicked shipping and he was working with a doctor from East Boston who had theorized that ghoulification could be achieved notably absent from Winter's account of events though is is the presence of any additional X Factor that we've been talking about radiation is the only element He discusses so perhaps Bethesda is moving away from that idea or winter just didn't know the full scoop of what the doctor was doing like Desmond Eddie was somehow able to retain his hairline but not only that his vocal cords don't seem to have been disrupted either he still sounds like his normal self when you meet him in his bunker you know how ghouls have that croaky voice the Hello darling he doesn't have that perhaps this doctor friend of his had a solution but regardless with winter now dissected let's move on to the next of fallout's Proto ghouls who may have known Eddie's doctor research assistant Peters south of Bunker Hill in an unmarked home within the Charleston neighborhood of East Boston the player can enter to find the property infested with feral ghouls on the top floor locked in the Attic will lie a feral glowing one named research assistant Peters well the ghouls themselves obviously don't offer much dialogue a series of holotapes left behind by the research assistant would tell her story they're a little long like five or so minutes in total but I'm going to play the whole series because I I think they're super good and worth listening to if you would like to skip this part there will be a time code on screen for you to jump to now anyway here are Peter's journal entries entry three recorded by research assistant Peters on February 26th 2077 time it's 12:35 hours subjects direct radiation exposure level increased to two seevers per 24 hours in Tri Venus fluid intake increased to 1 liter subject reports localized pain in frontal and parietal lobe accompanied by severe nausea with vomiting on average 3 to six instances per 12 hours solid food no longer viable by Oral intake other symptoms include General weakness in limbs bleeding of gums severe abdominal cramps and diarrhea dark stool indicates possibility of an intestinal bleeding shortness of breath also an issue I will now describe changes in mood or thought process I have never in my life felt as horrible as I do right now the discomfort is almost too much to bear I often contemplate termination of this trial but I know I know it'll only be a few more days before I reach six seevers then I can administer the serum we'll get our contract renewed serum will go to the market and it's going to help people it's really going to change the way we live and me I'll be fine I'll be fine cyclical thoughts no other no other developments to report entry six R Peters it's March 1st I've I mean the subject has reached saturation threshold safely taking measurement now confirm six seabirds rapid fluid loss due to Fever HED IV intake all previous symptoms are still present tissue damage visible on arms neck and hands necrotic slopping of the skin topical and ingest antibiotics applied to control infection now injecting first dose of serum sample 42 ba7 into bloodstream no immediate effects observed animal trials yielded results in less than so second nose of sample 42 ba7 injected hours ago no effect no effect I contacted the lab to terminate this trial but I need to doctor hang on what's that my teeth oh several teeth dislodged feels like necrotic tissue damage throughout oral cavity Serum is ineffective at toxic levels request to terminate trial was ERS are to remain in quarantine for the duration of the experimental period I understand I'm going to die that's obvious it's right here our failure if you would Dr Roberts please deliver the following to my family mom dad I love you yes I volunteered for this it sounds crazy but I believed in it there'll be nothing left worth bearing just no I oh no that's a bit too sentimental let me think about it so as a part of a medical trial in March of 26 77 Peters deliberately gave herself radiation poisoning in order to test the effectiveness of a new cure serum however after administering herself The Cure her symptoms failed to improve and her requests to terminate the experiment were just ignored now you'll note while Peter is locked upstairs behind a pickable door as a glowing one there are like 10 other ghouls in this property if you include the ones on the porch which is completely unaddressed by the holotapes and even weirder is that this house is clearly furnished to only support one person it's odd what are 10 ghouls doing in here if it was just Peters the story that I think Bethesda is trying to tell is that sometime near the end of her life Peters must have realized what was happening to her that she was becoming a monster she may not have understood ghoulification but she realized she was a danger and in response somehow mustered up the strength to lock herself in her attic for the sake of anyone who may come looking for her or maybe she was found by loved ones who couldn't bring themselves to call the government and just hit her in the Attic after the Great War came to pass several months later other ghouls attracted by the fact that there was a glowing one upstairs slowly began to trickle in hence constituting the horde we find upon our arrival the exact reality ities of Peter's experiment are also suspect I mean there's already a cure for radiation poisoning it's called rataway and we can find it everywhere it's extremely cheap so what was she doing perhaps working on an alternative the consensus online seems to be that her boss this Dr Roberts purposely gave her an ineffective Placebo rather than the real serum which may very well be the case perhaps Peters was unknowingly in a control group but it's also possible that the serum was just ineffective or perhaps had Hidden Side Effects she wasn't aware of you know you'd think if she was in the control group for radiation poisoning uh this would have been done in a supervised environment where there was a bunch of rataway ready for an emergency it's it's very weird sword Quest the author of The Fallout Wiki's page on pre-war ghouls is of the opinion that Dr Roberts the guy director the experiment may have also been the doctor Eddie winter was working with the connection is rather tenuous but they're both located in East Boston and given the medical staff's ambivalent response they were probably bound to learn a thing or two about ghouls anyway nonetheless let's move on from this humble ra and discuss some of the rather shocking revelations made by the automaton DLC on this matter because boy does it have some serious implications on pre-war ghoulification that aren't as disgusted as they should be released in March of 2016 automatron was Fallout 4's first major DLC and is often its most overlooked while it introduced a few new locations which will be relevant to this video it didn't really send us to any new lands in the fashion of far Harbor or NAA world automatron story instead centered around the recent emergence of a mysterious new villain calling themselves the mechanist who had recently Unleashed a wave of hostile robots upon the Commonwealth who have been wreaking havoc on trade routes and settlements the sole survivor would be tasked with tracking down the mechanist and putting an end to their reign of terror in a brief 3 to 6h hour long story along the way we would be able to recruit an assortment of our own robotic companions and were given some truly neat customization options which served as the dlc's big selling point really anyway at the climax of the quest line we would track down the mechanist to their Lair an old secret research lab and factory located beneath a robco sales and service building where we would confront the character and they would reveal their true identity turns out the evil mechanist was actually a well well meaning woman named Isabella Cruz whom after discovering this facility a few years back decided to mass produce an army of robots to purge the Commonwealth of Raiders and super mutants she never intended for her Creations to harm civilians though she thought she was saving the Wasteland from Evil not manifesting more of it suffice to say Isabella is horrified to learn that a bug in their code has caused her automated Legion to indiscriminately attack and pillage the peoples of the Boston area she will recoil in horror upon learning this news and beg for forgiveness and a chance to atone the sole survivor will be given the choice between forgiving Miss Cruz for her horrible mistake and granting Mercy or well doing the opposite whatever the case the real reason I bring this whole story line up is something that's sort of tangent mentally revealed at the climax of the quest line you see as we stormed the facility and begun to break through the automated defenses into the subsections the soulle Survivor would quickly learn that more than just a generic robot assembly operation was being conducted here indeed as terminals reveal robco had a secret partnership with the US government to supply them with a number of prisoners who various experiments and operations were being performed on within the complex the terminals don't get into the exact specifics of what the company was doing we only know that inmates were being provided by the feds and that the US military seems to have also had a presence in the base and was actively supervising Rob CO's operations the environmental storytelling if you will seems to suggest that the majority of the inmates were having their brains harvested for the creation of Robo brain automatrons however some met a different though perhaps creepier fate after the Soul Survivor made their way out of the bunker after confronting the mechanist they'd stroll through what is essentially a small prison with several feral ghouls locked trapped behind iron bars in cages and some even strapped to medical beds being prepared for transportation what on Earth what are feral ghouls doing in this robco facility from before the war at first glance you can almost explain this away by arguing that maybe the creatures in these cages weren't goufi until after the bombs fell like maybe these were just normal human inmates that only turned after the Great War kicked off and RADS began trickling into the facility never mind the fact that the facility is explicitly sealed airtight well For Better or Worse any doubts one may have will soon fade as the player enters the research Labs where in one specific laboratory called Robo brain R&D the Soul Survivor will encounter several petrified feral ghouls in bombed in test Chambers indeed robco and the old US Government were clearly using this facility in part to experiment on feral ghouls before the Great War seemingly in an attempt to integrate them into the robo Brain Project also in this facility a super mutant head can be found in a jar which is itself a massive Revelation because it may suggest a broader link between this facility and the fev virus or maybe they just imported the head from a different government facility but I digress you get the idea this place is a big deal robco and the US were messing around with ghouls in a serious secretive research capacity sadly however despite the dramatic things we see none of the terminals comment on the ghoul or Super Mutant experiments they all pertain exclusively to the broader Robo brain project and are extremely vague at that presumably they were trying to study how feral ghoul brains would work in Robo brain models but nothing's really confirmed additionally if ghouls were being used for such Niche experiments down here one can assume that there was probably similar work being done on ghoulification across the country and broader old world presumably researchers must have had a reasonably good idea of how ghouls were created if robco was seriously considering integrating them into the robo Brain Project they wouldn't run all of these tests if they weren't confident that a vast Supply could be secured furthermore this isn't even the only robco facility where we can find evidence of pre-war ghoul research in Fallout 76 in the southeastern region of the map players can stumble upon a site known as the robco research center a massive laboratory where the company and its military partners were conducting research on various robots and vehicles when we encounter it in Appalachia it'll be heavily guarded by an army of automated Defenders so be prepared to fight your way through a few waves of Mr gutsy and protectrons inside the building are the remains of various scientists and folks in military fatigues huddled around their incomplete projects most of the stuff here isn't super significant they seem to have been condu ing some tests with auto turrets building protectrons playing around with Robo brains all very normal robco activities however within the structures basement we'll find something a little more to our tastes the Subterranean section consists of a small laboratory built around a trapped feral ghoul in an isolated armored room indeed they had a ghoul stuck down here which they were researching a holotape in the room provides some context though it's extremely vague take a listen Serge I don't know what you think you heard or who you think you heard it from but we are not I repeat not conducting experiments on overcoming pain threshold tolerance nor and I cannot stress this enough nor are we prototyping appendages for so-called Mr torturers for any agency of the government and look even if we were which we aren't it wouldn't be torture it'd be improved interrogation this is America for Christ's sake the context clues around here seem to suggest that the scientists were shocking the creature perhaps testing its response to pain or electrical stimuli their ultimate aim seems unclear robco is also a particularly interest company to have been working on these projects as we know its founder and CEO Robert house was alerted to the imminence of the Great War early and spent extensive time and resources trying to develop a protocol to cheat death and extend his own life at Infinium of course rather than turn himself into a ghoul house ultimately opted to make use of an advanced cybernetic cryonics chamber to achieve his own longevity aims still though the Revelations made by the automatron DLC and this facility we find in Fallout 76 seemed to prove that house and his company were at least very much aware of ghoulification and who knows what else they might have been doing with that information but regardless with those final Revelations we have completed our catalog of known pre-war ghouls right from Desmond lockart to Wayne Gorski to assistant Peters to Eddie winter and finally the dozens of UN fortunate test subjects held by the robco company we've done it all and arrived at the pretty solid conclusion that pre-war ghoulification must have been well known to many of the elites and governments of the old world and that there seems to be a hidden X Factor perhaps genetic or feev related that kept gold ification rare and out of sight to the common man so we're done right well we would be if it weren't for there being one final difficult to place peace to this puzzle you see in Fallout 3's Dunwich building a corporate office on the south eastern edges of the map the lone Wanderer can investigate the corporate headquarters of a pre-war mining company known as Dunwich borers LLC who it's later revealed were secretly enamored in a series of bizarre occult rituals attempting to summon and discover strange eldrich Gods when we visit their office building we find it infested with feral Ghouls and inside will be a series of holotapes left behind by a man named Jamie who evidently came here a while back in search of his lost father as we progress through the compound and uncover more and more of Jim's holotapes we literally listen to him start to gulfy and lose his mind something in this building was transforming him and at the bottom of the structure we'll discover a large Subterranean Cavern with a strange Obelisk being worshiped by an assortment of feral Ghouls and that Jamie guy will also be down here ghoufi and he'll turn hostile upon detecting us the Obelisk down here actually does emit radiation but the dosage is small like one or two RADS and you have to get really close seemingly well below the 10 pikam meters Dr Barrow implies as necessary to trigger ghoulification so what's going on down here why is this occult Obelisk turning people into Ghouls and why are ghouls so drawn to it later on Fallout 4 introduced a new location simply called Dunwich borers which was a large mine owned by the company where the player would experience bizarre Supernatural flashbacks alluding to a paranormal presence in it too was swarming with ghouls just all over the place towards the bottom of the facility we'd have one final particularly dramatic flashback that seems to have depicted an ult sacrifice with a captive audience and when that Vision ended we'd be attacked by the goufi participants the structure would also reveal a small flooded hole which we could swim down to to discover an irradiated Temple light structure where a unique blade called crva tooth could be acquired serving as our reward for clearing out the dungeon nearby the blade would also be a pair of mini nukes which must have been put down here by the dun witch cultists furthermore all throughout the complex we can actually find a few mini nukes cleverly tucked away in dark Corners perhaps this is just bethesda's way of rewarding curious players or perhaps it's symbolic of a deeper meaning was the pre-war dun witch company deliberately honoring this site with mini nukes why you get the idea there's this weird association between radiation ghoulification and some of the love crafty insights across the games that are difficult to square maybe Bethesda is just using ghouls in these situations because they're the most fitting assets they have in their library right like ghouls are the most zombie likee spooky horror enemy in the game it would make sense for them to put these in their sort of Haunted House locations without there being a big genuine deep lore connection here I would be inclined to endorse this Theory the idea that Bethesda is just using spooky assets without much meaning if it weren't for the fact that at the bottom of the sunken hole thing in the Dunwich Quarry we can find this giant metallic eye staring back at us we've talked about this eye before extensive on the channel so I won't get too deep into it but basically if the player noclips around it or just takes a look at its asset ID in the creation kit you'll realize that this eye is a part of a much larger uh metallic head bust sculpture and it's a bust that we see displayed across several prominent Fallout 4 and 76 locations including the Appalachian robco robotics facility indeed overlooking the complex in 76 is one of these same metallic assets just menacingly supervising the factory it makes you wonder if perhaps robco and the old US Government had some knowledge of what was going on in these dun witch quaries or even not necessarily that just some vague understanding of the occult forces behind the world and was actively engaged with those perhaps this X Factor with ghoulification isn't genetic or fev related at all it's something Supernatural something Elder in nature alas with that now I have finally said my piece ladies and gentlemen today we talked about the origins of ghoulification investigated its potential causes explored several examples of ghouls who transformed before the war and learned of strange experiments going on under the supervision of the robco company before the war and finally dealt with the curious potential lovecraftian influences on it as well I think it's safe to say that the mysteries of ghoulification and specifically its relevance in the pre-war are far more mysterious questions than initially meets the eye thanks for watching everybody

Channel: TheEpicNate315

Views: 905,253

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Id: 8J646OeJNX0

Length: 60min 12sec (3612 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2023