The Most Radioactive Locations in Fallout

foreign welcome rad friends one and all to this week's message from Adam that I am commanded to share the Wasteland is no stranger to radiation after the Great War the Wasteland was covered in Adam's holy glow but even before the Great War there was a concerning amount of radioactive waste throughout the games we have encountered radiation so intense mere minutes or even seconds are enough to send us to the great Vault above here we look at the most radioactive locations within the entire series across as many of the follow games as we can and rank them in ascending order starting with the least radioactive and working our way to the number one spot which is the most radioactive spot in the whole franchise so crank up those RADS and I better not see you popping any radex or rat away as things get toasty in the most irradiated locations in Fallout first on the list but dead last in the rankings is the most radioactive location in Fallout 2 and it is the gecko nuclear plant or rather the official name is the Poseidon oil reactor 5 but that name kind of makes it sound like an oil power plant rather than a nuclear one it makes sense that a nuclear reactor would be the most radioactive place in Fallout 2 but it is especially so because the reactor is not running very efficiently although it is functioning it needs some work to get it into tip top shape and most importantly it needs a new hydroelectric magnetosphere regulator shockingly someone doesn't have such a common item kicking around in their garage and the only known place that has one is Vault City only problem is Vault City freaking hates ghouls but to be fair they hate everyone that isn't them once you get the part it's super easy to fix you just need to amplify the plutonium Gamma shield de-harmonize the Neptune impeller calibrate the uranium Rod driver set the voltage on the Saturn class capacitor test the Jupiter wave compiler and lastly install the regulator that you hopefully stole from Vault City you got all that or instead of doing all of that just program the helper robot to do it because the air area right outside of the reactor is Fallout 2's most radioactive location the amount of radiation can only be measured if you are equipped with a geiger counter of which there are several possible ones that can be bought or stolen in the Wasteland but make sure its battery isn't dead or it won't be any help at all you can only get a reading when it is equipped and only when activated it gives one reading which is how much radiation is in the chosen one's body at that exact moment that is quite a bit different from later games where the geiger counter is incorporated into the Pip-Boy and gives a real-time readout of how radioactive the current environment is as well as the player's overall radiation level this also means that the geiger counter gives us measurements in Rems instead of RADS and this makes for an interesting difference RADS measure how much energy from radiation is deposited into something for example water or Organics Rems measure the dose of radiation that a person receives and lucky for us in most instances the conversion from rad to REM is one for one one of the exceptions is if the radiation source is Alpha radiation then the rad to REM conversion is not one to one but it's between 1 to 10 and 1 to 20. Alpha radiation is simply far more damaging if it manages to make it into the body so when converting the REM values in Fallout 2 to RADS I will take that into account as well lastly the radiation values that we get in later games are RADS per second but there isn't a good way to measure Rems per second in Fallout 1 or 2 so I take a reading with the geiger counter then wait in the Pip Boy for one hour and measure directly afterward then I convert that value into Rems per second alright so with all that fun stuff out of the way and against all the advice from the ghouls that are working in the gecko nuclear power plant I stepped into the blistering reactor area with no radex no radiation blocking clothing or armor and my radiation resistance set to zero with an endurance of one the amount of radiation I encounter is the most I can possibly absorb in between one hour Waits I encountered 30 Rems and this went until the chosen one died but it wasn't because of radiation in addition to radiation damage you will also receive normal damage and that is actually what killed me dead 30 rims per hour converts to a maximum of .00 RADS per second or if all the radiation was Alpha radiation which it probably wasn't then it would be .0004 RADS per second at the minimum that's well not a lot at least when compared to the other games the amount of time in game that it takes to die from radiation takes actually quite a long time I waited over four days in this location before I ran out of stim packs and died from a HP loss rather than radiation accumulation so it takes days of hanging out in here to kill the chosen one which might be fairly close to what it would be in real life based on the radiation levels I also wanted to compare what the real life effects would be based on these radiation levels and there are a few details here the RADS and Rams aren't actually the units of measurement that we use for radiation anymore rather most often we use Grays and sieverts I do think using the older terms RADS and Rems in the games are appropriate for Fallout though given the retrofuturism that is so heavily represented plus gray King and sievert King just don't have the same ring to it one gray is 100 rims and chilling in the reactor room for an hour getting dosed with 30 Rams would expose you to 0.3 Grays based on some acute radiation syndrome charts this is an amount that would have no obvious immediate or latent effects with a possible ability of a long-term effect being minor blood changes or reduced appetite I do have an honorable mention for a very irradiated location in Fallout 2 and that is the toxic dump special encounter where the map is filled with radioactive waste and geckos and if you want to snack on something that will fill you with glorious RADS fruit is the only consumable in-game that will fit the bill okay so .00 RADS per second is less radiation than drinking just a normal Nuka Cola in Fallout 3 so everything has got to be up from here the glow in the first Fallout is Infamous throughout the California Wasteland for being the most radioactive location and indeed it is the deadliest place in the first Fallout at least with respect to radiation truth be told there are not really any other locations with large-scale radiation in the whole game so it kind of wins by default but at least it is more radioactive than anywhere Fallout 2. you have to travel over a very large distance to get to the center of the glow which was a fortified West Tech research facility that Drew the attention of the Chinese bombs because it takes a good deal of time to travel in the Overworld from the edge of the glow to the center it is a good idea to bring some radex and rat away but since I'm doing this for science I once again had zero rad resistance one endurance and no radiation resistant clothing or chems standing at the center of the glow I first measured how many Rams The Vault dweller accumulated from standing at the bombed out entrance of the West Tech facility which ended up being a hefty 1845 Rams and that makes the nuclear reactor in Fallout 2 just look so pathetic I wanted to test each floor in the facility and I was able to go down to the first level and wait for an hour and the first level is less radioactive at just 1230 Rems per hour and none of the other levels of the West Tech facility will allow you to rest so I couldn't test every level but level 4 has the zax super computer if you challenge zax to a chess match two hours will elapse I just checked my radiation levels before playing chess looked at them after playing chess and took into account that two hours had passed instead of only one level 4 had the lowest radiation levels of the other two locations and I have to say intuitively this makes sense I would have expected to encounter less and less radiation as we go deeper into the facility as there is a good chance that the walls floors doors and other barriers would have kept radiation from penetrating farther into the facility so let's look at the highest reading of 1845 rims per hour on the surface that is about 0.5 RADS per second or if all the radiation were Alpha radiation which it assuredly isn't but I'm just doing due diligence it would be a minimum of .03 RADS per second 1845 Rams in an hour would be 18.45 Grays which would put you in some very bad territory at least for all of you not endowed with Adam's blessing the immediate effects would be nausea in five minutes or less and latent effects are pretty horrific diarrhea gastrointestinal bleeding and Rapid cell death will occur but the body will often then enter a phase called The Walking ghost phase where all symptoms will kind of go away and energy levels will go back up almost like you're recovering however this will only last at most two weeks where the terminal phase begins and the exposed person gets a high fever falls into a coma and will die within a week in game you can only stand at the entrance for about 21 hours with no radiation protection before the Vault dweller succumbs to acute radiation syndrome which again is probably not far off from real life at those radiation levels so even though the glow ain't playing around there are four more games with radioactive locations that make this look like just eating a banana and speaking of fruit in Fallout 1 fruit is once again the only Radioactive consumable in the whole game third from the bottom do you know which game has the next most irradiated location yes it is the one the only Fallout New Vegas it's funny how the three interplay slash obsidian games were all at the bottom of the list well I guess I haven't mentioned Fallout tactics and I might as well state right here that it actually won't be on the list mostly because there are once again very few locations with a bunch of background radiation but also because there's no way to measure the radiation amounts in game because the geiger counter was cut the only way to know that you're irradiated is to see if a team member starts getting penalties to their special stats and that reminds me of another thing the first three games fallout Fallout 2 and tactics all use the term radiated when the player gets a significant amount of radiation but the term should be irradiated interplay what sillies forgive the tangent back to the Mojave since Fallout New Vegas uses Fallout 3's engine as well as a lot of the same assets and systems the way the radiation is detected and shown to the player is the same new system now Fallout 3 introduced the geiger counter provides constant real-time feedback to the player displaying the amount of radiation in an area or the amount ingested when ingesting a consumable or chem this is displayed in RADS per second so we get some really good granular results to find the precise location of the most radioactive areas of the Wasteland of many irradiated places in the Mojave do you know where you can bask in more of Adam's glow than any other it is the location of dry Wells which is only reachable by The Courier after the events of The Lonesome Road DLC and only if the Courier chose to aim and fire the nukes at the legion drywalls is a legion camp south from Cottonwood Cove along the banks of the Colorado River and this location had significance to Ulysses the protagonist of the DLC it was part of the territory of his old tribe the Twisted hairs before the tribe was destroyed and assimilated into the legion so what I'm trying to get at is that the legion freaking deserved it the location itself is just destroyed buildings random fires a smoky Haze and at the very end of the area a crater from nuclear detonation The Courier has to fight their way to the crater fighting brutally difficult irradiated legionaries and eventually facing off against Gaius Magnus the Centurion that commanded the legion forces in this area right before they met the might of atom the crater is unsurprisingly the hot spot for the radiation in this area and there is a strange effect where the screen will dim to Black when entering the crater although after several seconds the dimming effect will go away entirely I measure 240 RADS per second at the center of the crater but if you toggle Collision off and go into the air above the crater a little bit you can find a max level of 308 RADS per second and again this is with a character that doesn't have any radiation resistant armor clothing or perks 308 RADS per second could be either 300 rims or as high as 6160 Rams if it is all Alpha radiation going straight into our veins and that's a very large spread converting these values works out to a range of 0.31 to 61.6 Grays per second so one single second of exposure could vary between no immediate effect or nearly instant coma and disorientation using just the conservative .31 gray measurement at these radiation levels it would only take one minute of exposure before for the long-term prognosis would be certain death in one week or less and four and a half minutes of exposure at this level would cross the 80 gray cut off where it is theorized that instant unconsciousness and death within 24 hours would occur that is one Spaceballs standing at the center of the crater with no radiation protection will kill you dead in four seconds flat which is really fast and is also faster than what would happen in real life some honorable mentions from Fallout New Vegas are the Courier's Mile another location that can be nuked Through The Lonesome Road DLC let the peak radiation here isn't even close to dry Wells sitting in the 20s likewise the crater at the long 15 which is the site where the nukes bomb NCR positions is only around 20 RADS per second at the most interestingly the only place most people think of in New Vegas when intense radiation is mentioned is Camp Searchlight which is unique because it was a position held by the NCR until a covert sabotaged Mission by the legion Uncorked some pre-war nuclear waste that had been sitting in the fire station for centuries this quickly irradiated the entire area killing many NCR Personnel ghoulifying many others but the max radiation I found here was in the fire station at around 18 RADS per second this does make it the most irradiated spot in the base game but it is a far cry from what we see elsewhere Camp Searchlight is also the spot with the most irradiated consumables all of which dose the player with 10 RADS per item so go ahead and enjoy these refreshing beverages if these radioactive places just aren't quite doing it for you so we have made it to third place what is the third most radioactive place in the whole game kinda sort of not really well we have to travel to Appalachia to find it and go back in time to only decades after the Great War to a place known as the Emmett mountain disposal site the radiation and radioactive containers outside of the disposal site gives us a hint as to what we will be encountering inside where things are so much worse this disposal site was operated by the department of energy and chosen specifically due to its geology as a place to hide away hundreds of barrels filled with some of the most dangerous radioactive waste imaginable in true Fallout fashion the construction efforts were shoddy cutting corners and using inferior materials this resulted in a partial collapse of some of the underground portions of the disposal site trapping two workers and crushing the barrels holding the nuclear waste This Disaster led to the leaching of radioactive material into the groundwater and a temporary suspension of work as the site was sealed off the crew in charge of the site got almost zero assistance although they had an environmental disaster on their hands and the only doctors sent to monitor the workers seemed less interested in treating any potential exposure and instead more interested in gathering information on what effects the Personnel were experiencing due to the radiation supervisor after supervisor would suddenly go missing after they tried going to Washington DC themselves to try and get answers as to why they were just being left out to dry after the war the facility unsurprisingly became infested with ghouls around the exterior and after the release of the wastelanders update has become a hotbed of scavengers and others who are trying to mine the irradiated ore you know what they say one man's bone rotting environmental disaster is another man's livelihood or something going inside there are a few places where there isn't at least a little bit of radiation and so plenty of radics rat away and radiation resistant clothing is a must for exploring in any great amount or you can just do what I did and spam the hotkey for rat away until I break my freaking keyboard the highest levels of radiation are near the end of each disposal area of which there are four that are explorable their Peak radiation numbers were all around the same so there isn't one that stands out from the rest but the highest radiation seem to consistently be right before you get to the end which I kind of found surprising I had guessed that the most radioactive spots would be at the very end you can find areas with 600 RADS per second with a peak of 623 converting that to Grays per second it would be between 0.62 and 124.6 Grays that is the difference between some vomiting lower blood cell count and impairment of the immune system with a high likelihood of survival to near instant death at .62 grades per second it would take just over two minutes of exposure to immediately lose Consciousness and die within 24 hours unfortunately it seems this was the exact fate of the two workers who were trapped in the collapse but uh the bright side is that they didn't have to resort to cannibalism and turn into a grotesque rage monster so winning I guess in game with no radiation resistance the player dies in two seconds flat wow that is quick but also probably much quicker than real life there are a few other quite radioactive areas in Fallout 76 such as the federal disposal field agency 121 and some nuclear exhaust ports near some abandoned mines and asheep which have higher Peak radiation counts but they're not quite as flashy or cover an area nearly as large as a nuclear blast zone the fissure sites are also radioactive but at a more disappointing 49 RADS per second but it does have a lovely effect of insta killing anyone who goes down and touches the beautiful green goo also a special mention to the pit Expedition which has you exploring what is left of Pittsburgh not long after the war and is the largest area with permanent radiation levels that can vary quite a bit but don't reach the highest levels scene at Emmett Mountain if you want to complement your stroll through Emmett mountain with a spicy beverage the toxic goo you get at the West Tech Research Center will hit you with a whopping 125 RADS in one go and there are an insane number of consumables that are radioactive in this game if you think you know what the second place on this list will be 99 of you are wrong sorry it's just statistics don't take it personally the second most radioactive place in the entire series is the positively glowing vault 87 entrance you thought that would be number one didn't you we will get to that in a second but the entrance of vault 87 is irradiated to an absolutely absurd degree vault 87 was initially meant to conduct Research into an unknown project before scrapping those plans and pivoting towards fev research instead it became the source for super mutants in the capital Wasteland and although it's never stated directly why the area just outside of the Vault entrance is horrendously irradiated like glowing piss bone aching levels of radiation there is a sign near the entrance that seems to be pre-war in origin since it is an industrial type sign that is warning of radiation exposure and even says that the annual radiation dose for a human will be reached in 0.5 seconds and let's remember this for a little later I don't really see why such a sign would be put up in the post-war and why they would even bother to write in the amount of time it takes to get the annual exposure I'm sure in the post-war world the annual exposure is much higher than the pre-war as well so if this was erected in the pre-war what could have possibly caused all this radiation at the absolute peak of the radiation I measured a maximum of 3933 RADS per second although some have claimed to get over four thousand the hottest spot is several yards away from the entrance proper but for The Adventurous among you the entrance does have a few surprises the Vault cannot be opened from this entrance sealed either on purpose or as a result of time and Decay with a number of skeletons holding suitcases strewn about interestingly there is also a deceased scientist in a radiation suit so it seems we are not the only ones that find this hot spot interesting it's just too bad that she didn't have access to console commands 3933 RADS per second is nearly four grays which that alone is enough exposure in one second to induce vomiting fever diarrhea and emaciation for up to two days the long-term prognosis also is not good with hair loss bone marrow damage and internal bleeding being the result with a fatality rate of 50 percent within six weeks and that is just from one second of exposure it would only take 20 seconds to go into the theoretical territory where it's believed one would suddenly lose Consciousness and die within 24 hours in the game with no radiation protection you die within less than half a second deer atom above there isn't anything you could do in that amount of time to save your life so back to that sign that spoke about the annual allowable radiation level that level is five Rems which depending on the radiation level can equal just a straight five RADS five RADS a year at the most a radioactive spot we hit that limit in 0.3 milliseconds yowza so that sign at the beginning that mentions the annual dose being achieved in 0.5 seconds is off by a factor of three I know I had said that the Emmett Mountain site was the third most irradiated before and you know what I lied to you and I liked it since we are going by game that wasn't really truthful since Fallout 3 also technically has the third most irradiated place in the Wasteland that we know of and it is in the pit DLC yes I mentioned this when talking about Fallout 76 but the pit is monstrously irradiated and that serves a key plot point in the pit DLC where it is discovered that a baby has been blessed with Adam's gift and is immune to radiation the monongahila river flows beneath a bridge that is crossed shortly after the beginning of the game in order to enter the pit if you jump down into the water and go east which you can only do with console commands there will be a hot spot that maxes out at 2665 RADS per my observations another honorable mention is what happens if you decide to activate the Geck inside vault 87 instead of taking it like the main quest wants you to after navigating through three different menus again the game really doesn't want you to activate it a blast of energy will knock the player down and they'll be unable to get back up the amount of radiation isn't nearly as high as the other places but being unable to move means that you eventually succumb to the 80 to 140 RADS per second that you get after activating it also the pit introduced the most irradiated food item the incredibly named slop which is made from trog meat which are just hideously mutated humans and is a part of a ballast breakfast and so we have made it to the number one spot and it is going to require a little explaining but hear me out the most irradiated place in the entire Fallout series isn't the creator of atom or anywhere in the irradiated fog on Far Harbor it is actually the reactor room in the mass Fusion building Mass Fusion was one of the major power suppliers to Boston and the surrounding areas but they do not use Fusion to do it like their name implies they were fooling people into thinking they were getting clean fusion power when in reality they were still using fission to generate electricity behind the curtain however they were actually trying to create a viable Fusion process and had a breakthrough when they created the beryllium agitator but before they were able to capitalize on this success the Great War erupted across the globe the main quest will take you to this location when siding with the Institute or the Brotherhood of Steel and the main item of interest is that agitator which will require you to enter the reactor room there's actually not much background radiation here unless you decide to jump into the water below but even those radiation levels aren't all that impressive just at 45 RADS per second none of the Machinery appears to be radioactive and neither does that bright blue beam although it will definitely insta-kill you if you touch it so why is this the most radioactive place in the series well if in the course of fighting through levels of enemies and robots you find yourself a little thirsty in the reactor room and decide to take a quick drink from the water below that will be the last thing you do but and this is a big butt the thing that is killing you when you drink the water is not any special sort of toxic substance it is radiation the only way that we can uncover this is by using one of my favorite clothing items the Robes of atoms devoted these special robes have a unique attribute where the more irradiated one is while wearing them the greater your radiation resistance this has what is possibly an unintended consequence but maybe the developers meant to do this where you can fully irradiate yourself without dying Fallout 4 had changed the radiation system where your radiation level caps your health and if you get too irradiated you'll have no more HP and with no HP you die so this is cool for a lot of reasons and I have a whole child of Adam build video that uses the robes and shows all the stuff you can do when you are filled with Adam's holy glow and if you're interested in that go watch the video all that matters here is that once you are fully irradiated you cannot die from radiation exposure although it does look like you have no health so put on the robes irradiate yourself fully and go down to the water to drink rather than instantly dying like before you briefly get hit with RADS and it is so much that it maxes out our Geiger counter we take an astonishing 999 RADS in one second although it's impossible to say if the true value is higher or not maybe if we had a dosometer that had a higher threshold we can know for sure and this whole thing is giving me major Chernobyl Vibes but let's just use that 9000 rad figure that would be a great dosage of between 10 and 2 000 Grays since we are ingesting the water this is the one location that has the highest likelihood of dosing us with Alpha radiation which normally cannot penetrate the skin and must be brought into the body through some other means like ingestion you know the thing we just did at 10 Graves per second it would take eight seconds to hit that 80 grade level that would knock us unconscious but the fact that we just straight up fall down completely dead like my hopes of ever buying a house leads me to believe that the rad count is much higher and we are just limited by the geiger counter display alternatively maybe the rad count is correct but it's all Alpha radiation and so the actual Rems are way higher this actually could make sense since swimming in the water is only 45 RADS but ingesting it is way more what is really interesting too is that if you wear the Robes of atoms devoted and don't completely irradiate yourself before you drink the water it will actually kill you even though the robes should keep you from dying to radiation damage I tested the blue beam to see if it it was also radiation that insta kills us and sadly it's not that one seems to be just straight up damage Boo the amount of time it takes to die from this radiation level is instantaneous as soon as the drinking animation is done and the RADS are applied you're dead unless you have Adam's holy protection some honorary Fallout 4 mentions are Hugo's whole which is The Hideout of a Raider that has been booby trapped with a number of things including some radioactive barrels the USS democracy that is located inside the nucleus on the island the most radioactive part of the sub are the ICBM tubes that house the nuclear warheads which are also the most radioactive location in the entire nucleus the crater of Adam should be quite radioactive but I could only ever measure a peak of 16 RADS per second and a small hot spot of 19 if you clip beneath the surface oh and the most radioactive of all consumables can be enjoyed thanks to the far Harbor DLC which are the sludge packs there are several kind that can increase stats like agility or damage resistance delivering a whopping 150 RADS in one dose which is the highest of any consumable in the game and it will deliver a stat increase that is relative to how much radiation you currently have making them super powerful when coupled with my child of atom build there are fallout's most irradiated places it is fun to see how the Bethesda games generally speaking are much more radioactive than interplay and obsidian and Fallout 3 has more Super High radiation locations than any other game I would love to hear your comments on this and big thanks to my patrons and especially my two new patrons Sydney H and Alex owensby whose support helped me make videos like this which I had a really fun time running around in game and investigating if you would like to show me support check out the video description walk in Adam's Holy Light take care of yourselves please and I will see you soon [Music] foreign

Channel: RadKing

Views: 647,790

Keywords: fallout, fallout lore, radiation

Id: gYrG8H2rFW4

Length: 33min 36sec (2016 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 18 2023