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What's more interesting is this. Fallout 3 is set 200 years on from the war. Big town is where you go when you're 16(?) There's no Mungo's in Little Lamplight, so where do the kids come from? No adults, no procreation right? So are the kids born from the G.E.C.K and super mutants? Effectively being super mutant, mutants?
Going Feral in Ghouls is also caused by the brain getting cooked by Radiation as well, not just from slowly rotting. Remember that the higher functions of the brain are not protected, so the cooking brain can speed up the process of going Feral. If the new Genome of the Super Mutants were sequenced and studied perhaps some of the immunities they seem to possess could be added to the Ghoul Genome to curtail going Feral altogether. Perhaps through sequencing and studying the Genome of members of The Children Of Atom could reveal and benefit the Ghoul Genome as well, possibly even an end to the Necrosis and inability to breed that is the most prevalent part of Ghoul and Super Mutant physiology.
I would love if Nate read my comment and what he thinks of my addon for the process of Going Feral, but also my possible solution to Going Feral and even a possible solution to the most Prevalent Physiological Conditions of Ghoulification and even Super Mutation.
I know he's not pre-war. But Hancock is another interesting note as he sought out a drug that overnight seems to have turned him into a ghoul. 200 years after the bombs, in an era where being a ghoul is a death sentence, he found a drug that ghoulified him almost immediately. That's... Some weird screwed up stuff.
It's a curious thing how ghouls and chems have a weird history. Ghouls can't get high with regular chems so they make their own more potent version of them and even then, those super chems do not act like they would on say, a normal human with twice chem resistance. My guess is that Hancock was subjected to one of those chems and since he was already a junkie and an alcoholic, his resistance made it so the chem acted more like a catalyst rather than an additive to the "ghoulification" substance of the chem.
Ghouls having radiation resistance, being extremely long lived, and barely needing to eat would be pretty useful for traveling the stars- the pre-war research could tie in with a lot of factions aims for star travel
@@HighestRegards-ui1fh seria util, pero el problema de la infertilidad puede hechar a la mierda la teoria, aunque el replicador de nuka gen podria servir para crear nuevos humanos, si se tiene una base de genes previamente almacenada 😅
Back then I‘d never imagined someone would surpass Oxhorn, Fudgemuppet, ShoddyCast and so on, but the past two years you became my absolute favorite channel ❤
The saddest thing about the Feral ghouls is that at one point most of all of them were aware and humanish at the start of the war. Makes me wonder how long many of them lasted as their fellow ghouls started going feral. That would be an interesting side plot in a game.
Agreed, though I understand why they don't dwell on it. The series standbys include both (1) feral ghouls as conscience-free RPG monsters for players to massacre and (2) ghouls as a metaphor for outsiders, stereotypes and bigotry. When the games address that connection, it tends to get awkward-Three Dog in _Fallout 3_ hurriedly following up a speech on accepting ghouls as people with an assurance to the player that mass-killing insane ghouls is a great idea.
@@MegaZeta that's the ONE thing Nate skipped out on. WHY are some ghouls able to stay sane for CENTURIES, and some seemingly go nuts immediately? He mentioned THAT there's a huge disparity, but never really looked at WHY. Especially not in the context of Dunwich. Also, as a side-note: My personal theory is that FEV isn't a real virus, not in the sense people think. My hypothesis is that it's actually eldritch nonsense. It corrupts people and makes the eldritch monsters. "But X and Y researched to make it!" yeah, but was it biochemistry, or eldritch evil they were researching? Maybe the real research, was in how to take an eldritch concept and give it physical form?
Pretty sure this is one of the reasons for discrimination against ghouls, just the belief that each of them will go feral sooner or later. Like obviously they aren't completely immune to radiation and the brain damage does add up over exposure time considering there's only 2 seen in game glowing ones who hadn't gone feral. Another part is likely access to food and water since the deserted places don't end up sheltering a random non-feral neither do you see any desiccated non-ferals, wouldn't be surprised if pushed into starvation their bodies decide that brain is a secondary organ to have and instead focus on keeping the body moving.
Hancock and WInter both say the process felt great. I guess pre-war Ghoul making feels different to the weird "Oh I'm falling apart now" sickness that affects postwar ghouls. No postwar ghouls has said, "Yeah I felt great while turning into an immortal turbo-leprosy victim"
It probably has something to do with the way they were ghoulified, Hancock apparently took a drug that made him a ghoul and it's possible that was the intended side effect while winter had some weird procedure done on him that doesn't sound like it involves FEV or the sickness the ghouls have
It seems that controlled exposure to radiation can make the process easier for the body - it triggers the same mutation as in other ghouls, but it can avoid damaging he body as much (vocal chords, hair). Which honestly makes sense. A lot of stuff in medicine is based on small doses of something dangerous... and sometimes it was discovered by accident when people were exposed to that stuff in uncontrolled manner.
I actually kind of love it when RUclipsrs don’t upload for like a few months or even a year and just all of a sudden upload something like nothing happened Edit: I say this because there was that one time when he didn’t upload for like a year and I just think its funny when that happens
@@themarvellousmacca With our beloved EpicNate, his content is honestly really great. He puts in a lot of effort with lore videos and more and we simply enjoy them. It’s like a welcoming treat. He takes his time with his content and we’re excited to see what topic he covers next.
41:24 Please note, this drug is likely the same one that you missed mentioning during the Eddie Winters section (Nick mentions Winter’s doctor giving him an “experimental anti-radiation drug”), and that Hancock took in his quest for a new high that led to his ghoulification.
@@ShadowWolf2023-yp5zg “They” is a word that can be applied to any group or individual. if you are one of the “it’s a gender pronoun” fools, it is not, it is a gender neutral universal pronoun; if you are one of the “they is not singular” fools, it very much can be used that way, check the dictionary, even one from long before the gender madness.
Don't let the iceberg paralyze you. This is fun. This is art. This is not work. Release it whenever you feel it's done. We all trust your judgment around here, man. Don't let any one project drive you crazy
One person you have missed: Jason Bright from RepCon facility near Novac in Fallout New Vegas. While being ghoulified in effect of Great War, he is the only known sane and friendly glowing ghoul
When i hear about the doctors experiment, I think that doctor roberts fully intended the ghoulification to happen, but needed a volunteer so he made it sound like it was for the betterment of radiation medicine. Once he got one he actively lied and turned ger into a ghoul. Then when she either got stuffed into the upstairs, or stuffed herself in there. He did it again with others. Many others. Itd make a effectively depressing fallout story lol
It's interesting that the ghoul sentry says the super mutants don't attack their settlement, because in Fallout 4, the Slog (a ghoul-only settlement, at least when you first find it) has a problem with super mutants attacking them regularly.
It's possible that its tied to the type of supermutants or their motivation. The motivation of the Vault 87 mutants is to create more mutants and overall their intelligence is much lower than of other mutants - so either their are just focused on finding new source of FEV and mutants (and the ghouls don't factor in that in any way) or they feel the connection to the ghouls on some sub-intelligence manner. The Fallout 4 muties are much more tribal because they are more intelligent. But this tribalism may as well cause them to "override" their natural feeling of connection to the ghouls and see them just as an enemy "tribe". And since they are not searching for the means to procreate, they are more focused on territory control (again, tribalism), which can cause them to no longer view the local ghouls with the "live and let live" attitude. In the end, two different groups of humans can treat ghouls differently, so why cannot the muties do the same?
Fallout 3 mutants are instictyak dumb predators not inteligent infact the vault that creates them has a log stating within 14 days any infected with the exsperimental derivitive strain used lose mental cognitity While in fallout 4 the super mutants are inteligent they just are racist they see all other creatures as inferior
I actually have (what I think, at least) is a really good biochemical explanation for why ghouls seemingly age much slower while simultaneously seeming to "decay" physically AND eventually go "feral". It actually has to do with why we, generally, get cancer later in life. I want to keep this as simple as possible, but in order to keep living, we need to replace cells that die off. As our body grows new cells from our chromosome's DNA, but there is always a risk that the process can create a mistake. That is a mutation and the basis for evolution, but it is also what leads to cancer which is just bad cells that do nothing but grow more bad cells, that's tumors, basically. In order to reduce the likelihood that the growth of new cells will lead to cancer, at the ends of each of our chromosomes that are split and copied is a portion of DNA that is nothing but "junk" data, called telomeres. The reason it is there is because each time our cells split, it's most likely that a little bit of our DNA at the end, those telomeres, gets cut off in the process. So, the telomere sections get shorter and shorter the older you get and the more cell copies are made. Once you run out of "junk" data to lose, when you're older, it starts becoming more and more likely that you will lose essential data needed to grow a functional new cell and it will fail, or it will grow a cancer cell instead. That is why it's more likely we will get cancer when we are older - bad cell copies. My theory is that Ghouls look the way they do, and live for as long as they do, because their process of cell division is either radically slowed or stopped completely. I theorize the ghoulification process actually causes a strengthening in the cell membranes which allows the cells to become stronger, but too strong to allow for easy cell division, effectively stopping the growth and division process. This is why child ghouls stay children and why ghouls don't seem to age. They don't need to eat as much because they aren't actually using any energy to grow new cells. That is why their skin seems to decay, because they aren't growing new skin to replace any that dies or is lost, BUT since each cell membrane is stronger, that is harder to have happen. Since they can't grow new cells, they can't grow new cancer cells either. They can't catch most diseases because viruses can't penetrate the stronger cell membranes. This also explains why they eventually go feral as well, since becoming feral is really just a symptom of losing too many essential brain cells in the areas that are maintaining personality, aggressiveness, reasoning, etc. This is by no means an iron-clad explanation, but I think it is a reasonable one, or at least one that is on the right track, but my ego certainly won't be hurt if someone has a reason to blow this out of the water lol. I'm a chemical engineer and nuclear professional, not a biologist or doctor or anything. So, if there is someone that is that can improve on this, I'd enjoy hearing it as much as anyone 😁
@accelerationquanta5816 That's just it though, no one is even sure they HAVE to eat anything. Which is supported by the kid locked in a refrigerator for 200 years. It's inconsistent to say the least. I was just trying to pose a possible reason for why.
I thought you'd mention Harold. He's arguably not exactly a ghoul, but he transformed into a ghoul-like mutant after falling into a vat of FEV. And he lives with the ghouls of Gecko as one of them. I know it's from the old-timey games but it's also interesting in my opinion.
More interestingly though, Harold's condition wasn't unique. There was another FEV ghoul in the game, Talius, who was one of the Vault Dweller's predecessors sent out into the wasteland for the water chip. He too was exposed to FEV by the Unity, but became a ghoul instead, and eventually joined the Followers of the Apocalypse
fev was cited by one the old devs as one the needed fctors to cause ghouls This is due to the fact radiation rapidly decays infact no bomb we seen has radiation decya long enough to last a year let alone the 100 for fallout 1 , basicly all the radiation zones in fallout 1-2 are either reactors still melting doan or fev labs
Not even a small mention of Hancock, who used a pre-war serum to turn himself into a ghoul. Or at least a ghoul like being. This has implications about ghouls pre-war.
@@RapWeasel22 Forgot about a central charecter on a topic that is inescapable whwn googled... That's not forgetful. That's incompetent. We where being kind by not pointing out directly.
he was not around before the war. which is kind of the main topic. not the serum, just what pre-war ghouls experienced since not all of them changed by the same means.@@damenwhelan3236
Considering that Ghouls can exist as sentient life with no nutrients and massive parts of their brains missing, the most likely explanations are either an FEV variant, Zetan experiments/accidents or something related to Lorenzo's artifact (which might also be Zetan?) - you could imagine a Cabot family member unknowingly unleashing a disease to the world that became the basis for FEV but was also mutated by radiation, for example.
They al.ost certainly survive off of radiation as an energy source. As stated by the foremost authority, it's definitely a mutation, one that doesn't affect everyone, and has very specific (and insanely potent) wavelengths of radiation that cause it.
I think the FEV explanation is impossible solely because of the crew of the Yangtze. They were in a sealed, underwater submarine, and from China. They would have had 0 exposure to FEV. The social isolation explaination for ferocity is also disproven by this (and that the group that glowing one guy in Nuka World is from) as Zhao makes it clear he was very close to his crew. Another note, that may just be a gameplay feature, is that many feral ghouls are seen with makeshift metal armour, meaning they must have been non-feral at some point and sought out armour.
If the "X-Factor" was FEV, this would explain what happened to Thaddeus in the Fallout TV series: The Snake Oil Salesman gave him FEV, and given that the whole wasteland was radioactive, this will eventually ghulify him
Ah, my thought was that Thaddeus was exposed to it passively from the shit farm, wherever that is, and the Chicken-guy just shot him up with enough rads to kill him. He either heals or dies, either way, it's a win for the "doc".
@@RedGreenLeft the ghoul? I'm sure the fallout lore accounts for this by the few ghouls before the war and the implications of testing on soldiers and the such.
I wonder why you didn't mentioned Moira Brown at all. I mean she got 'ghoulified' pretty much instantly after we blew up Megaton. Wouldn't that be a critical part in this investigation? Anyway, love the video, keep it up!
good point but I think thats just the Bethesda devs just taking shortcuts. Because come on... You cant just off Gloria. Shes too dumb and innocent to die.
Same thing happens to the side-cult of Atom worshippers from the Broken Steel DLC if you nuke Megaton. The leader goes feral but one of the other cultist keeps his wits. I mean... the guy was praying to atomic radiation before he lost his skin, so I guess he kept what little he had left.
Great video! I do think Dean Domino would be a pre-war ghoul to include amongst these other folks. You find him at the Sierra Madre in Dead Money in Fall-out New Vegas. He claims that he never lost his mind because of his obsession to break into the casino vault despite being relatively isolated in the Villa.
17:46 Ive had a hunch that Thadeus was going to turn into a supermutant and not a ghoul in the show. Our proper intro to them will be them catching Thad, sensing he one of them, and making him essentially a squire for a supe warlord or something
The super mutants not attacking ghouls reminds me of a movie where an entire hoard of zombies would ignore any regular living human if they were sick, but the zombies had to have some sort of sixth sense of knowing who is sick and who isn't without being able to see the sickness.
Yeah I always thought gouls were attracted to glowing ones, like that was cannon lore. You always find gouls near them, or near radiated places in general. So they're just attracted to radiation
Glowing ones must emit radiation because the otherwise inert elements in their body have been activated by radioactive particle strikes. Stable sodium becomes unstable sodium, carbon gains too many neutrons ect. Glowing ones must then be rare because either the sheer amount of saturation must be dangerous for even a ghoul-prone person with minor FEV exposure, or maybe it just takes a long time and a LOT of radiation to do it. However it happens, the result is a self perpetuating ghoul. They might even do that Radiation Blast move by agitating the elements in their body to cause a minor super-criticality event like the IRL 'demon core' accidents.
I remember watching this anime about the Nagasaki Bombing for a class. It was based on the actual first hand account of the author. And in the aftermath this he and his mother set up a place for survivors to come and get water and rest. But I specifically remember a lot of the people who came to them were mutilated beyond saving, and were burnt head to toe missing limbs, missing a peace of them, but the fascinating part was that they were able to walk here make it there. Then when they drank water and rested, their bodies finally gave it up, like the bodies will to survive, like Mother Nature alone was keeping them alive long enough, and I remember seeing them and making the connection to ghouls, they looked mutilated and ghoulified. I’m not sure if that had any impact on ghouls design or conception but I thought it was a fascinating real world parallel which you could consider a real like ghoul from an atomic bomb.
I have heard in a survival time the body can block pain signals to the brain in a attempt to survive it stops when I person feels safe which might explain how they made it then died when they felt safe like they had help
Nate I’m absolutely biased when it comes to your fallout content. The vibes are just always immaculate. I digress, take as much time as you need, I’ll simply rewatch them.
2:44am.... scrolling through, looking for something to wind me down so I can sleep, and what do I find? A juicy, irresistible video from Nate that is bound to be a treat for sure. Always top tier. Always something I missed or just didn't know about the lore, even after a few thousand hours.
I always got the impression that Research Assistant Peters was working on making a more advanced version of RadAway. She says that the serum was not ineffective at toxic levels which sounded to me like she was working on improving RadAway so it would work on people who would normally be too irradiated for even normal RadAway to work.
About the head thing, there were many depicted throughout Fallout 3 as well. Seems to be a callback to some 1950's deco stuff. Nate mentions that the head being at the bottom of the ritual site is used to justify a connection with the same head in the RobCo building, but if anything, it actually lends even more credence to Bethesda reusing assets that just *looked* like they could fit in a particular instance for creep value, like the ghouls.
I'm more inclined to believe the first theory you mentioned about the X factor being genetic. The Nuka-World DLC for Fallout 4 sees the Sole Survivor having to clear several theme parks, including Kiddie Kingdom which is inhabited by ghouls. During the course of clearing the park you can find a lot of terminal entries detailing the story of the park employees who took shelter in the tunnels beneath it. They were out fortifying their defenses one day when a rad storm rolled in and they were caught in it. After that, they all started ghoulifying and all eventually went feral, except for 1 who you meet near the end of clearing the park. In the entire series, all we've ever seen as results of FEV exposure is super mutants. So I'm inclined to believe ghoulification is genetics based and that whatever gene is responsible was fairly common in the wider population before the war.
@iakatat2 I have some hope for the series, but with many adaptations of popular media with lots of dense lore, things tend to get watered down or excluded for the sake of being digestible for audiences. I've seen very few rare examples of thick lore being respected in adaptations, but even then it's very niche. My only hope is that because the story for the series is supposedly brand new and based in a new place, that gives wiggle room. Time will tell. *Nate would be an excellent reference for lore, though*
Its too bad that VanBuren is non canon because I believe it would have revealed more about the FEV in the pre war era as derived from a "new plague" that swept across the US. How the "new plague" was also used to create a variant to be used as a bio weapon against the chinese, something that I believe is touched on in FVNV OWB with its small prison camp, and that all post war mutations are some combination of radiation exposure, FEV or its relatives, and biology. If you noticed humans are not the only creatures to ghoulify, most mammals and a few birds encountered in the game appear to have some form of ghoulification. Most mutated non-mammals don't seem to share this trait and are affected in a way that is closer to a Super Mutant.
thank you for doing more Fallout 4 or fallout itself content. I just love this game and the lore in it, it's so diverse and awe inspiring, also inspires a lot of theories itself. I love this stuff.
24:33 had me in stiches... especially after nate had realized what he had said... I'm sorry big guy... but you made some of us chuckle more than you'd imagen!
it's not long after or before he explains that the two had been going at it (the brain and this ghoulishly handsom gentleman), which with a dirty mind could mean something entirely else, hence the "Don't!" - hence me giggling, because it A) caught me off guard. and B) I'm not old enough for things like that to not find it's juvenile gags funy... I'm simple like that.@@cybercase_7807 (milliseconds into 24:32)
My personal theory for feral ghouls has to do with serotonin and hope. When a ghoul has hope and are at least periodically experiencing happiness, they maintain their humanity. However, when a ghoul loses hope or subjected to long periods of unease or even misery, they tend to go feral. Using the kiddiekingdom in nukaworld as an example. The regular guests and employees went feral one by one, leaving only Oswald and his gf/wife (forgot her name off hand) with their minds fully intact. That is until she leaves to find a cure. Once she found out there was no cure for her friends and started to head home, did she start to lose her mind. Within sight of home, she finally gave into her sorrow, and the feralness took over. The lack of serotonin probably makes the receptors become less and less able to release or uptake, leading to a downward spiral of depression. As this compounds over time, normal brain functions start to suffer. As they slowly lose their minds, some lock themselves away while others leave in the hopes that they won't hurt the ones they care about. Only issue with my theory of the serotonin being the sole reason, lots of non feral ghouls are miserable, hence the hope. Hope that tomorrow will be better (the slog). Hope that loved ones will be safe (Oswald, Billy and his parents). Hope that they'll restart their criminal empire (Eddy Winter). Doesn't seem to matter what the hope is it helps them hold onto their sanity. Maybe it keeps a minimal level of neuro transmitters going or its more of a spiritual factor. Thank you for listening to my Ted talk, please tip the ghouls by the exits, else they may bite.
So I have a question about something I noticed when in the Mechanist lair, before the war the lair was a lab for human experiments on robobrains but in a room where they would do the operations I noticed on one of the boards showing X-rays is 2 images of a deathclaw head, why would that be there?
I may be misremembering, but I thought there was a retcon that something similar to Deathclaws was being experimented on pre-war but it didn't come to fruition. I think the X-Rays are a reference to that, I remembered noticing the same thing in my playthrough. I may be wrong though, and if so, I have no idea why those photos would even exist in-lore and as far as video game assets go...maybe it was originally art for a cut quest that was repurposed?
@@Supercohboy iirc I think I remember seeing something saying that deathclaws were something created prewar and when the war happened they broke out, might be something non canon though
55:45 Couple of things. The kind of radiation that counts as 1 rad per second would still be an insanely high dosage. It can kill you in minutes. It quickly drops off with distance, but extended time around that obelisk could still heavily irradiate a person. Plus the picometers isn't a reference to strength of dosage, just the wavelength of the EMF in question. Specifically gamma radiation around that wavelength.
God the joy I feel when there’s a new EpicNate video is the closest thing I’ve felt to Christmas morning since I was tiny. Absolutely stellar work, 12/10💛
Hey Nate there’s an editing error here 39:22 You say “so” and it’s cut suddenly. Just making sure we didn’t miss out on something important you were saying about the first holo tape by the researchers assistant
I am surprised that no one's made a theory about it, but something that always has been stuck with me is how in the beginning of fallout 4 just before you get out of cryo pod the automated voice says "remote override" and when you check the terminal in the pod room and check everyone's status you find out that your spouse's pod was manualy overrided, who was killed by the bald dude with gun but yours was remotely overrided, which means there was a third presence aware of your existence and was able to remotely override your specific cryo pod from some location, most likely by a terminal and by hacking into the vault tech network. I'd to love to see an investigation video about that Another thing i find is that there is an empty cryo pod in the room, which was most likely because it never had an occupant but if it did then it means there were other vault 111 survivors who managed to get out of the pod
Actually it’s far more likely that the remote signal that released you from your cryopod was from the Institute. After you deal with the Synth under bunker hill, Shaun meets you atop of the CIT building where he tells you about how he had you released from the cryopod because he was curious. He wanted to see if his surviving parent would look for him. Whether that parent would even survive the wasteland and if s/he did look for him, how hard would the parent work at it or give up.
@@mikoto7693 oh i never managed to play that far, i would only play the begining for a while before making a new game. Btw is there information regarding other vault 111 survivors
@@helo9316 As far as I remember, everyone else who made it to Vault 111 perished. The staff died fighting each other about six months later after the food ran out. And everyone else who was frozen except for the Sole Survivor and Shaun died by suffocation either while you were watching Kellogg shoot the spouse and kidnap Shaun or shortly afterwards. They refroze the Sole Survivor immediately and kept the life support system intact. But they disabled the life support system for every other pod. From the way the bodies were still frozen 60 years later it looks like they kept everyone else thawed until the oxygen in the pod ran out and they died then re-engaged the cryostasis system afterwards. Personally I think that was monumentally stupid. The whole reason they were there is because they needed pure human DNA that hadn’t been affected by radiation. Presumably they picked Shaun because a baby is easier to control and experiment on than an adult. And they refroze the surviving parent in case Shaun died. They make it obvious that pure untainted human DNA is limited and valuable-not even their own DNA is pure. So why kill dozens of these super rare genetically pure humans? Combine it with the absolute stupidity of the Institute’s opinion that they are going to be the final survivors of humanity as everyone on the surface will eventually die despite two centuries of evidence to the contrary and it becomes even worse. Even if you account for ingame limitations and the population is bigger than shown, inbreeding will become a problem if not already. The smartest thing would have been to thaw everyone in controllable groups, show them a hint of the wasteland and offer membership into the Institute on the condition that they breed with an Institute scientist. It would not only widen their gene pool but actually help bring the Institute population closer to “pure.” Oops, I kinda went on a bit of a tangent there. I’ll conclude with noting that the Institute could have done even better if genetic improvement had been their goal by approaching Vault 81 with a similar deal. They’re pure, and afraid of the surface world too. Anyway the Vault Tec salesman you met just before the bombs dropped survived as a Ghoul. But everyone else in Sanctuary either died when the bombs dropped or survived as feral ghouls. One of the saddest random encounters in the game has you encounter them. It proves that some tiny fragments of the person they once were remains in feral ghouls because they roamed the Commonwealth together as a single pack for the two whole centuries-until they run into you. It’s entirely possible not to even realise that. It’s just a pack of named feral ghouls that has no meaning if you don’t recognise the names. I recognised them, and didn’t like killing them but it was necessary. I suppose the player could just run away though.
I imagine all youtubers like him have to tap into every resource they can for these videos, from other fan theories to forums to whatever concrete established lore they can get ahold of. No one knows all the lore. What they provide though is a very neat and polished product bringing many ideas into one place and keeping things interesting and entertaining.
thank you for your content, man. i’ve been real depressed and nerding out on Fallout lore always helps a bit. not all heroes wear capes, buddy! you’re awesome!
I've always liked Desmond. I like that he doesn't spill his whole backstory. As a player, I appreciate that the devs allowed a character to remain mysterious, and as a character in-game, I liked that he was about his business and didn't care about making friends; he just wanted to get a job done.
Raul (if i remember his name correctly) in New vegas is the only person to get close to the supermutants in black mountain, He is a ghoul. "But he is forced to be there" yes, by nightkin. Nightkin in new vegas have attacked ghouls and other supermutants because of their addiction, even so supermutants see the problem and want to help them. Not sure if this is mentioned but it also helps prove that Supermutants see ghouls as some sort of ally/help.
I have always kind of theorized ghoulifaction has something to do with the new plague. Maybe people who have the gene to be a carrier or something also means they become ghouls when mild FEV exposure and radiation mix. It doesn’t fully explain it, though.
I wanna mention Hancock. He's not pre-war ghoul, however he's still a handmade) As far as I remember, he told that he used some drugs and became ghoul.
I love the research assistant’s tapes. The way it starts you think she’s just some heartless scientist… but it turns out that she’s sacrificing herself for a theory she truly believes in and thinks will help everyone. It’s somewhat alarming that she asks for “permission” to abort the trial, as that implies that there actually IS a moral-free scientist involved… DAMN YOU ROBERTS!!! (Also, please do a Bostonian accent every single time you say doctor from now on: let’s get that in the channel mythos…) And I do think that Occam’s razor is far more likely with regards to the ghouls and mutants in the Mechanist lair. It’s entirely possible that the robots brought live or post-mortem specimens back for the mechanist. She was convinced that the tech worked, if we consider this. Therefore, wouldn’t it be far kinder to use mutants and ghouls for the brains, rather than human prisoners? I expect this didn’t work, in fact of course it didn’t - she’s completely wrong about the tech! And thus it was abandoned. The system is automated, after all. And this accounts for the total absence of any evidence for the research being done on pre-war ghouls and mutants. Not saying I’m right; just that the converse does require quite a large assumption, based on what we are presented with (the utter lack of document evidence, the mechanist’s belief that the process is viable and her complete shock that the robots are explicitly attacking everything they find). Just an observation, doubtless crammed with holes and gaps. ;)
That was the exact same conclusion that I came to. That the robots brought back “samples” from the wasteland. Ghouls, super mutants and even a deathclaw.
Considering that we have data on how isolation effects the brain (and why solitary confinement is literally a form of torture), it makes sense that it’s a contributing factor to going feral…it’s just not good for your brain’s health to be deprived of social contact. Regular socialization and interaction is better for your mental and neurological health, and it’s probably why ghouls who are part of a community would be more resistant to the kind of deterioration that would cause them to lose their minds.
33:17 The body language of how excited you got balancing the soup bowl on the checker board seems to be a universal thing lol gotta wiggle the mouse or right stick a bunch and jump around cuz how else are you gonna celebrate?
I am surprised you missed Dean Domino from the Dead Money DLC of Fallout New Vegas. He is a major character The Courier has to deal with, AND he provides insight into why some ghouls overcome going Feral. Basically, he claims to overcome becoming feral because he has something to focus on, to think about, and exercise his mental faculties. The Glowing One at the rocket factory further confirms this theory as he strives to deliver his group of ghouls to The Great Beyond. As does Oswald at Kiddie Kingdom in the Nuka World DLC of Fallout 4. And....there is the Fallout 4 attribute chart. You said nothing of the Ghoulish Perk, which The Sole Survivor can attain, IF The Sole Survivor has enough endurance, lending to a genetic predisposition being involved. And, the Sole Survivor has no way of being exposed to FEV.
So far as the older lore goes, the Sole Survivor started breathing trace amounts of airborne FEV the moment they left the vault. It's everywhere. it's why the insects and other animals got huge. (Most if not all fallout-mutants are the result of the FEV, either direct experimentation or indirect exposure to the escaped virus. Considering that, the ghoulish perk might be the result of a "prime normal" encountering the trace FEV and High Rads (Boston gets constant Rad Storms after all) possibly the SS might even be the first successful ghoulification that didn't melt the skin of it's victim.
Another thing that I think might be interesting in this investigation is the Children of Atom. Considering they are a cult or religion in which the followers welcome unprotected exposure to rads, you would have thought that all of them would be a ghoul, or in some stage of ghoulification. But thinking back on this, I don't think I've ever met a Child of Atom ghoul in the game. Maybe they just eliminate a follower who shows signs of ghoulification, as though Atom has chosen a sacrifice for them, but that seems less probable for a seemingly [mostly] peaceful religion. So why is their prolonged exposure to rads not turning them into ghouls? This seems to suggest that it isn't rads at all that is the catalyst for ghoulification.
Jury is still out on whether or not that was just a sample of FEV that the Chicken Lover dude gave him. Seems more likely he'll turn into a Super Mutant I think given that level of healing factor seems more in line with FEV than ghoulification.
The best in the business and I still get chills when I hear that line”Hey how’s it going guys it’s Nate here” 😮❤😅, awesome job again legend. As Bethesda fans we are so spoiled to have you as Bethesda fan too. I can’t wait for the next gen patch and to replay Fallout 4. Thank again.
I had a theory for a while: Ghoulification would occur in people with certain ressessive gene markers exposed to low amounts of radiation over an extended period of time. I figured that they would slowly change over an extended period (1-2 years) because they weren't getting enough rads to be considered harmful, but enough to trigger mutation (I.E.: less than 1 rad a second for most if not all of that 1-2 years).
that story with Research Assistant Peters is crazy. A Sievert of exposure alone is absolutely nuts, but I thought she was doing it through some kind of controlled external exposure from a low penetration radiation source like Tc99m (used in medical imaging) to reduce exposure to those outside the room. The fact you can hear the Geiger counter when she checks implies she ingested or injected something into herself that was radioactive and was emitting radiation the could be picked up outside her body at a rate she equated to giving herself the 6 Sievert dose. That might have been a major difference in why the process went less ideally for her and why she was freaking glowing as a ghoul in combination with the serum. doesn't explain the others in the building with her though...
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Ok, but what I really want to know is, did you get that spoon balanced?
What's more interesting is this.
Fallout 3 is set 200 years on from the war.
Big town is where you go when you're 16(?)
There's no Mungo's in Little Lamplight, so where do the kids come from? No adults, no procreation right?
So are the kids born from the G.E.C.K and super mutants? Effectively being super mutant, mutants?
Going Feral in Ghouls is also caused by the brain getting cooked by Radiation as well, not just from slowly rotting. Remember that the higher functions of the brain are not protected, so the cooking brain can speed up the process of going Feral. If the new Genome of the Super Mutants were sequenced and studied perhaps some of the immunities they seem to possess could be added to the Ghoul Genome to curtail going Feral altogether. Perhaps through sequencing and studying the Genome of members of The Children Of Atom could reveal and benefit the Ghoul Genome as well, possibly even an end to the Necrosis and inability to breed that is the most prevalent part of Ghoul and Super Mutant physiology.
I would love if Nate read my comment and what he thinks of my addon for the process of Going Feral, but also my possible solution to Going Feral and even a possible solution to the most Prevalent Physiological Conditions of Ghoulification and even Super Mutation.
I like that you couldn't help but laugh at the line "No friends? No problem!"
I know he's not pre-war. But Hancock is another interesting note as he sought out a drug that overnight seems to have turned him into a ghoul. 200 years after the bombs, in an era where being a ghoul is a death sentence, he found a drug that ghoulified him almost immediately. That's... Some weird screwed up stuff.
Great and incredibly valid point. How does Hancock fit in all of this "Ghoul lore"?
It's a curious thing how ghouls and chems have a weird history. Ghouls can't get high with regular chems so they make their own more potent version of them and even then, those super chems do not act like they would on say, a normal human with twice chem resistance. My guess is that Hancock was subjected to one of those chems and since he was already a junkie and an alcoholic, his resistance made it so the chem acted more like a catalyst rather than an additive to the "ghoulification" substance of the chem.
A *pre-war* experimental “anti-radiation” drug.
Yeah almost like Bethesda doesn't know what the fuck their doing
I was surprised this wasn't in the presentation. This could be another connection to the DOCTOR.
Ghouls having radiation resistance, being extremely long lived, and barely needing to eat would be pretty useful for traveling the stars- the pre-war research could tie in with a lot of factions aims for star travel
Vis é vis, Vault Tech Among the stars in the Nuka World DLC...
@@HighestRegards-ui1fh seria util, pero el problema de la infertilidad puede hechar a la mierda la teoria, aunque el replicador de nuka gen podria servir para crear nuevos humanos, si se tiene una base de genes previamente almacenada 😅
They aren’t radiation resistant, they’re actually healed by it.
@@jasperlazuly6623well they could have humans in cryo which I imagine they would along with probably a place to fertilize eggs unnaturally.
@@purpleranger5987knowing robco they def have a vault jus for repopulation
Back then I‘d never imagined someone would surpass Oxhorn, Fudgemuppet, ShoddyCast and so on, but the past two years you became my absolute favorite channel ❤
Im sure by now it's very possible to surpass Oxhorn. After a while, it feels like his fallout content repeats itself.
I will always love my sweet sweet oxhorn videos nothing to watch time to rewatch oxhorn fallout videos from 1 up to 4
@@TheFeltmeister lol his FO1 and 2 series are gold to me tbh
So what's radking then? Chopped radioactive liver?
I don’t even mind the sparse uploads. Quality over quantity 🫡
Take a shot everytime he digresses
Your a mad lad
Sounds simple enough
Old Longfellow like that
I don't have a death wish. 😂
Thash a grape idea *passes out*
The saddest thing about the Feral ghouls is that at one point most of all of them were aware and humanish at the start of the war. Makes me wonder how long many of them lasted as their fellow ghouls started going feral. That would be an interesting side plot in a game.
Agreed, though I understand why they don't dwell on it. The series standbys include both (1) feral ghouls as conscience-free RPG monsters for players to massacre and (2) ghouls as a metaphor for outsiders, stereotypes and bigotry. When the games address that connection, it tends to get awkward-Three Dog in _Fallout 3_ hurriedly following up a speech on accepting ghouls as people with an assurance to the player that mass-killing insane ghouls is a great idea.
@@MegaZeta that's the ONE thing Nate skipped out on. WHY are some ghouls able to stay sane for CENTURIES, and some seemingly go nuts immediately? He mentioned THAT there's a huge disparity, but never really looked at WHY. Especially not in the context of Dunwich.
Also, as a side-note: My personal theory is that FEV isn't a real virus, not in the sense people think. My hypothesis is that it's actually eldritch nonsense. It corrupts people and makes the eldritch monsters. "But X and Y researched to make it!" yeah, but was it biochemistry, or eldritch evil they were researching? Maybe the real research, was in how to take an eldritch concept and give it physical form?
Pretty sure this is one of the reasons for discrimination against ghouls, just the belief that each of them will go feral sooner or later. Like obviously they aren't completely immune to radiation and the brain damage does add up over exposure time considering there's only 2 seen in game glowing ones who hadn't gone feral. Another part is likely access to food and water since the deserted places don't end up sheltering a random non-feral neither do you see any desiccated non-ferals, wouldn't be surprised if pushed into starvation their bodies decide that brain is a secondary organ to have and instead focus on keeping the body moving.
Let’s be honest if ghouls existed we’d have no problem discriminating against ghouls in a resource scare environment
It's not that deep, bro. Ghouls are literally subhuman (like Zoomers) so it's not bigoted to say they aren't Human
Hancock and WInter both say the process felt great.
I guess pre-war Ghoul making feels different to the weird "Oh I'm falling apart now" sickness that affects postwar ghouls.
No postwar ghouls has said,
"Yeah I felt great while turning into an immortal turbo-leprosy victim"
It probably has something to do with the way they were ghoulified, Hancock apparently took a drug that made him a ghoul and it's possible that was the intended side effect while winter had some weird procedure done on him that doesn't sound like it involves FEV or the sickness the ghouls have
I mean Hancock took an experimental radiation drug so he might have just been high out of his mind during the process
It seems that controlled exposure to radiation can make the process easier for the body - it triggers the same mutation as in other ghouls, but it can avoid damaging he body as much (vocal chords, hair).
Which honestly makes sense. A lot of stuff in medicine is based on small doses of something dangerous... and sometimes it was discovered by accident when people were exposed to that stuff in uncontrolled manner.
@@polytanksan5761Was it specified what Winter did to become a ghoul? I kinda assumed that Winter and Hancock took the same drug.
@@mikoto7693 he got nuclear waste from the Wicked Shipping owners. did you get far enough into the video to hear his holotape to his girlfriend?
I actually kind of love it when RUclipsrs don’t upload for like a few months or even a year and just all of a sudden upload something like nothing happened
Edit: I say this because there was that one time when he didn’t upload for like a year and I just think its funny when that happens
Why are people liking this?
@@themarvellousmaccabecause we agree
@@themarvellousmacca you don't know about Steve1989 MRE reviews eh
@@themarvellousmacca With our beloved EpicNate, his content is honestly really great. He puts in a lot of effort with lore videos and more and we simply enjoy them. It’s like a welcoming treat. He takes his time with his content and we’re excited to see what topic he covers next.
@@hoddtoward Godd Howard. We're not worthy. We're not worthy. We're not worthy
41:24 Please note, this drug is likely the same one that you missed mentioning during the Eddie Winters section (Nick mentions Winter’s doctor giving him an “experimental anti-radiation drug”), and that Hancock took in his quest for a new high that led to his ghoulification.
You mean you wanted to bring it up, not that the channel "missed" anything. It's okay to own your interests.
@@MegaZeta They were attempting a full cover of the info about the character’s ghoulification prewar, so yes they missed that piece of information.
@@nvfury13 I agree. Leaving out Hancock was rather disappointing considering (if true) how he became a ghoul.
Nate is a he not a they. Try again...
@@ShadowWolf2023-yp5zg “They” is a word that can be applied to any group or individual. if you are one of the “it’s a gender pronoun” fools, it is not, it is a gender neutral universal pronoun; if you are one of the “they is not singular” fools, it very much can be used that way, check the dictionary, even one from long before the gender madness.
like the mysterious stranger he always knows when to arrive and fire off an epic game theory like a revolver
Don't let the iceberg paralyze you. This is fun. This is art. This is not work. Release it whenever you feel it's done. We all trust your judgment around here, man. Don't let any one project drive you crazy
Getting a new video from Nate is like seeing your food come to your table at a restaurant
Weirdly enough, yeah it is 😂 I can't wait to get back from work to watch this.
And getting a notification for a short and thinking it's a full video is a server taking food to a different table
Especially if you’re eating at granite city
@@all_guys_blazing2104 oof. so true
One person you have missed: Jason Bright from RepCon facility near Novac in Fallout New Vegas. While being ghoulified in effect of Great War, he is the only known sane and friendly glowing ghoul
When i hear about the doctors experiment, I think that doctor roberts fully intended the ghoulification to happen, but needed a volunteer so he made it sound like it was for the betterment of radiation medicine. Once he got one he actively lied and turned ger into a ghoul. Then when she either got stuffed into the upstairs, or stuffed herself in there. He did it again with others. Many others. Itd make a effectively depressing fallout story lol
It's interesting that the ghoul sentry says the super mutants don't attack their settlement, because in Fallout 4, the Slog (a ghoul-only settlement, at least when you first find it) has a problem with super mutants attacking them regularly.
It's possible that its tied to the type of supermutants or their motivation. The motivation of the Vault 87 mutants is to create more mutants and overall their intelligence is much lower than of other mutants - so either their are just focused on finding new source of FEV and mutants (and the ghouls don't factor in that in any way) or they feel the connection to the ghouls on some sub-intelligence manner.
The Fallout 4 muties are much more tribal because they are more intelligent. But this tribalism may as well cause them to "override" their natural feeling of connection to the ghouls and see them just as an enemy "tribe". And since they are not searching for the means to procreate, they are more focused on territory control (again, tribalism), which can cause them to no longer view the local ghouls with the "live and let live" attitude.
In the end, two different groups of humans can treat ghouls differently, so why cannot the muties do the same?
The Muties just after a piece of Hollie’s tarberry pie 😝
I was thinking of the exact same thing!
Fallout 3 mutants are instictyak dumb predators not inteligent infact the vault that creates them has a log stating within 14 days any infected with the exsperimental derivitive strain used lose mental cognitity
While in fallout 4 the super mutants are inteligent they just are racist they see all other creatures as inferior
Sure but the mutants in fallout 1 were being commanded to follow the orders of a particular individual. The mutants in fo3 are self governed
That's why so many people were added to the vaults. Everyone who was predispostioned to ghouling was left outside.
Aside from the necropolis vault, of course
I actually have (what I think, at least) is a really good biochemical explanation for why ghouls seemingly age much slower while simultaneously seeming to "decay" physically AND eventually go "feral". It actually has to do with why we, generally, get cancer later in life.
I want to keep this as simple as possible, but in order to keep living, we need to replace cells that die off. As our body grows new cells from our chromosome's DNA, but there is always a risk that the process can create a mistake. That is a mutation and the basis for evolution, but it is also what leads to cancer which is just bad cells that do nothing but grow more bad cells, that's tumors, basically. In order to reduce the likelihood that the growth of new cells will lead to cancer, at the ends of each of our chromosomes that are split and copied is a portion of DNA that is nothing but "junk" data, called telomeres. The reason it is there is because each time our cells split, it's most likely that a little bit of our DNA at the end, those telomeres, gets cut off in the process. So, the telomere sections get shorter and shorter the older you get and the more cell copies are made. Once you run out of "junk" data to lose, when you're older, it starts becoming more and more likely that you will lose essential data needed to grow a functional new cell and it will fail, or it will grow a cancer cell instead. That is why it's more likely we will get cancer when we are older - bad cell copies.
My theory is that Ghouls look the way they do, and live for as long as they do, because their process of cell division is either radically slowed or stopped completely. I theorize the ghoulification process actually causes a strengthening in the cell membranes which allows the cells to become stronger, but too strong to allow for easy cell division, effectively stopping the growth and division process. This is why child ghouls stay children and why ghouls don't seem to age. They don't need to eat as much because they aren't actually using any energy to grow new cells. That is why their skin seems to decay, because they aren't growing new skin to replace any that dies or is lost, BUT since each cell membrane is stronger, that is harder to have happen. Since they can't grow new cells, they can't grow new cancer cells either. They can't catch most diseases because viruses can't penetrate the stronger cell membranes. This also explains why they eventually go feral as well, since becoming feral is really just a symptom of losing too many essential brain cells in the areas that are maintaining personality, aggressiveness, reasoning, etc.
This is by no means an iron-clad explanation, but I think it is a reasonable one, or at least one that is on the right track, but my ego certainly won't be hurt if someone has a reason to blow this out of the water lol. I'm a chemical engineer and nuclear professional, not a biologist or doctor or anything. So, if there is someone that is that can improve on this, I'd enjoy hearing it as much as anyone 😁
@accelerationquanta5816 That's just it though, no one is even sure they HAVE to eat anything. Which is supported by the kid locked in a refrigerator for 200 years. It's inconsistent to say the least. I was just trying to pose a possible reason for why.
Username checks out
Worth the read good theory both realistic and sound. I feel like I learned something lol
@@taukebro Why thank you very much.
@@taukebro And they told you gaming would rot your brain 😁
I thought you'd mention Harold. He's arguably not exactly a ghoul, but he transformed into a ghoul-like mutant after falling into a vat of FEV. And he lives with the ghouls of Gecko as one of them. I know it's from the old-timey games but it's also interesting in my opinion.
More interestingly though, Harold's condition wasn't unique. There was another FEV ghoul in the game, Talius, who was one of the Vault Dweller's predecessors sent out into the wasteland for the water chip. He too was exposed to FEV by the Unity, but became a ghoul instead, and eventually joined the Followers of the Apocalypse
fev was cited by one the old devs as one the needed fctors to cause ghouls
This is due to the fact radiation rapidly decays infact no bomb we seen has radiation decya long enough to last a year let alone the 100 for fallout 1 , basicly all the radiation zones in fallout 1-2 are either reactors still melting doan or fev labs
iirc Harold is not from pre-war.
@@TheoRae8289 no he was born in pre ncr californiaa and was friends with the creator of the supermutants on the west coast
@@demonic_myst4503 ah. Gotcha
Not even a small mention of Hancock, who used a pre-war serum to turn himself into a ghoul. Or at least a ghoul like being. This has implications about ghouls pre-war.
Nate seems to leave out shyt all the time.
Well. Darn
Omfg he forgot something??? How dare he 😮
@@RapWeasel22
Forgot about a central charecter on a topic that is inescapable whwn googled...
That's not forgetful. That's incompetent. We where being kind by not pointing out directly.
he was not around before the war. which is kind of the main topic. not the serum, just what pre-war ghouls experienced since not all of them changed by the same means.@@damenwhelan3236
God I love that bell. Thanks for the top tier fallout content!
Considering that Ghouls can exist as sentient life with no nutrients and massive parts of their brains missing, the most likely explanations are either an FEV variant, Zetan experiments/accidents or something related to Lorenzo's artifact (which might also be Zetan?) - you could imagine a Cabot family member unknowingly unleashing a disease to the world that became the basis for FEV but was also mutated by radiation, for example.
Perhaps FEV was derived from Zetan DNA by the prewar military?
They al.ost certainly survive off of radiation as an energy source.
As stated by the foremost authority, it's definitely a mutation, one that doesn't affect everyone, and has very specific (and insanely potent) wavelengths of radiation that cause it.
Now that, is an interesting theory.
I think the FEV explanation is impossible solely because of the crew of the Yangtze. They were in a sealed, underwater submarine, and from China. They would have had 0 exposure to FEV. The social isolation explaination for ferocity is also disproven by this (and that the group that glowing one guy in Nuka World is from) as Zhao makes it clear he was very close to his crew.
Another note, that may just be a gameplay feature, is that many feral ghouls are seen with makeshift metal armour, meaning they must have been non-feral at some point and sought out armour.
also in FO3 that one girl in megaton turns into a ghoul right after you blow it up.
If the "X-Factor" was FEV, this would explain what happened to Thaddeus in the Fallout TV series: The Snake Oil Salesman gave him FEV, and given that the whole wasteland was radioactive, this will eventually ghulify him
Ah, my thought was that Thaddeus was exposed to it passively from the shit farm, wherever that is, and the Chicken-guy just shot him up with enough rads to kill him. He either heals or dies, either way, it's a win for the "doc".
But how do u explain the Bounty Hunter(yes I forgot his name). He saw the explosions in LA…. Did his wife expose him to FEV?
@@RedGreenLeft the ghoul? I'm sure the fallout lore accounts for this by the few ghouls before the war and the implications of testing on soldiers and the such.
I wonder why you didn't mentioned Moira Brown at all. I mean she got 'ghoulified' pretty much instantly after we blew up Megaton. Wouldn't that be a critical part in this investigation? Anyway, love the video, keep it up!
good point but I think thats just the Bethesda devs just taking shortcuts. Because come on... You cant just off Gloria. Shes too dumb and innocent to die.
Same thing happens to the side-cult of Atom worshippers from the Broken Steel DLC if you nuke Megaton. The leader goes feral but one of the other cultist keeps his wits.
I mean... the guy was praying to atomic radiation before he lost his skin, so I guess he kept what little he had left.
Great video! I do think Dean Domino would be a pre-war ghoul to include amongst these other folks. You find him at the Sierra Madre in Dead Money in Fall-out New Vegas. He claims that he never lost his mind because of his obsession to break into the casino vault despite being relatively isolated in the Villa.
him and the Mexican guy, whose name I can't remember because I haven't played NV, I just read a lot of wiki pages.
Dean wasnt a ghoul before the bombs dropped, he became one afterwards
Same applies to Raul
Both are interesting and well developed characters but neither is a prewar ghoul in the same ways people like winters or desmond were
@@chipexe1312 that's true.
17:46 Ive had a hunch that Thadeus was going to turn into a supermutant and not a ghoul in the show. Our proper intro to them will be them catching Thad, sensing he one of them, and making him essentially a squire for a supe warlord or something
You forgot about Hancock,who became a ghoul by taking an experimental drug.possibly a later version of what made eddie winter a ghoul
An experimental "radiation" drug.
The super mutants not attacking ghouls reminds me of a movie where an entire hoard of zombies would ignore any regular living human if they were sick, but the zombies had to have some sort of sixth sense of knowing who is sick and who isn't without being able to see the sickness.
World War Z
@@TimW0918 which was pretty crappy. My suspension of disbelief took a 3 weeks vacation 15 minutes in.
I can't believe how time flies been a member of this channel for almost 2 years and do not regret being one, I still love the videes!!
Yeah I always thought gouls were attracted to glowing ones, like that was cannon lore. You always find gouls near them, or near radiated places in general. So they're just attracted to radiation
They almost certainly use it as an energy source, which is why they barely need to eat or drink.
@@iami3rian394ghouls are healed by radiation, so having a glowing one nearby would up them from “don’t need much food/water to not needing any at all.
Glowing ones must emit radiation because the otherwise inert elements in their body have been activated by radioactive particle strikes.
Stable sodium becomes unstable sodium, carbon gains too many neutrons ect.
Glowing ones must then be rare because either the sheer amount of saturation must be dangerous for even a ghoul-prone person with minor FEV exposure, or maybe it just takes a long time and a LOT of radiation to do it.
However it happens, the result is a self perpetuating ghoul. They might even do that Radiation Blast move by agitating the elements in their body to cause a minor super-criticality event like the IRL 'demon core' accidents.
I remember watching this anime about the Nagasaki Bombing for a class. It was based on the actual first hand account of the author. And in the aftermath this he and his mother set up a place for survivors to come and get water and rest. But I specifically remember a lot of the people who came to them were mutilated beyond saving, and were burnt head to toe missing limbs, missing a peace of them, but the fascinating part was that they were able to walk here make it there. Then when they drank water and rested, their bodies finally gave it up, like the bodies will to survive, like Mother Nature alone was keeping them alive long enough, and I remember seeing them and making the connection to ghouls, they looked mutilated and ghoulified. I’m not sure if that had any impact on ghouls design or conception but I thought it was a fascinating real world parallel which you could consider a real like ghoul from an atomic bomb.
I have heard in a survival time the body can block pain signals to the brain in a attempt to survive it stops when I person feels safe which might explain how they made it then died when they felt safe like they had help
Made up bullshit that you saw in an anime 😂
@@infamousprime694 it was based on the writers real life experiences from the atomic bombing as he was in Nagasaki
Man can't read @@infamousprime694
Nate I’m absolutely biased when it comes to your fallout content. The vibes are just always immaculate. I digress, take as much time as you need, I’ll simply rewatch them.
2:44am.... scrolling through, looking for something to wind me down so I can sleep, and what do I find? A juicy, irresistible video from Nate that is bound to be a treat for sure. Always top tier. Always something I missed or just didn't know about the lore, even after a few thousand hours.
Watching this channel grow over the years fills me with so much joy.
I always got the impression that Research Assistant Peters was working on making a more advanced version of RadAway. She says that the serum was not ineffective at toxic levels which sounded to me like she was working on improving RadAway so it would work on people who would normally be too irradiated for even normal RadAway to work.
About the head thing, there were many depicted throughout Fallout 3 as well. Seems to be a callback to some 1950's deco stuff. Nate mentions that the head being at the bottom of the ritual site is used to justify a connection with the same head in the RobCo building, but if anything, it actually lends even more credence to Bethesda reusing assets that just *looked* like they could fit in a particular instance for creep value, like the ghouls.
We were all wrong, it's magic yellow ghoul vape juice.
I wasn't wrong. That same drug was used by Hancock, Eddie Winters, Desmond Lockheart and probably others.
@@korstmahler What drug?
@@onepuffman Hancock refers to it as an experimental radiation drug, the others in similar ways.
Been a tough few years… but Nate and his fallout videos have gotten me through all of them!!
I'm more inclined to believe the first theory you mentioned about the X factor being genetic. The Nuka-World DLC for Fallout 4 sees the Sole Survivor having to clear several theme parks, including Kiddie Kingdom which is inhabited by ghouls. During the course of clearing the park you can find a lot of terminal entries detailing the story of the park employees who took shelter in the tunnels beneath it. They were out fortifying their defenses one day when a rad storm rolled in and they were caught in it. After that, they all started ghoulifying and all eventually went feral, except for 1 who you meet near the end of clearing the park.
In the entire series, all we've ever seen as results of FEV exposure is super mutants. So I'm inclined to believe ghoulification is genetics based and that whatever gene is responsible was fairly common in the wider population before the war.
There were often mentions of some people dying quickly if I recall.
Nate: *uploads an hour long deepdive on ghoul lore*.
Amazon's unreleased Fallout series: *sweats*
Well the way Amazon has been going with series. This is probably better in every way.
@iakatat2 I have some hope for the series, but with many adaptations of popular media with lots of dense lore, things tend to get watered down or excluded for the sake of being digestible for audiences. I've seen very few rare examples of thick lore being respected in adaptations, but even then it's very niche. My only hope is that because the story for the series is supposedly brand new and based in a new place, that gives wiggle room. Time will tell. *Nate would be an excellent reference for lore, though*
I love the idea one of the factor of a ghoul being feral is social loneliness. That means we saved Raul from becoming feral by being his friend.
It genuinely makes me so happy that you're back posting again Nate. Great work fr!
26:10 i love the game he plays while waiting to record the audio tape and you can see him jump for joy when he succeeds its so wholesome and cute
Just wanted to say i love your content and appreciate the amount of work you put in these videos.
Its too bad that VanBuren is non canon because I believe it would have revealed more about the FEV in the pre war era as derived from a "new plague" that swept across the US. How the "new plague" was also used to create a variant to be used as a bio weapon against the chinese, something that I believe is touched on in FVNV OWB with its small prison camp, and that all post war mutations are some combination of radiation exposure, FEV or its relatives, and biology. If you noticed humans are not the only creatures to ghoulify, most mammals and a few birds encountered in the game appear to have some form of ghoulification. Most mutated non-mammals don't seem to share this trait and are affected in a way that is closer to a Super Mutant.
thank you for doing more Fallout 4 or fallout itself content. I just love this game and the lore in it, it's so diverse and awe inspiring, also inspires a lot of theories itself. I love this stuff.
I’m so glad this channel still updates. I still love Fallout just as much as I did YEARS ago when I started listening to Nate. Please never stop
24:33 had me in stiches... especially after nate had realized what he had said... I'm sorry big guy... but you made some of us chuckle more than you'd imagen!
I'm a little confused, am I missing something?
it's not long after or before he explains that the two had been going at it (the brain and this ghoulishly handsom gentleman), which with a dirty mind could mean something entirely else, hence the "Don't!" - hence me giggling, because it A) caught me off guard. and B) I'm not old enough for things like that to not find it's juvenile gags funy... I'm simple like that.@@cybercase_7807 (milliseconds into 24:32)
@@cybercase_7807"going at it" can be used as a euphemism for having sex. So...
My personal theory for feral ghouls has to do with serotonin and hope. When a ghoul has hope and are at least periodically experiencing happiness, they maintain their humanity. However, when a ghoul loses hope or subjected to long periods of unease or even misery, they tend to go feral.
Using the kiddiekingdom in nukaworld as an example. The regular guests and employees went feral one by one, leaving only Oswald and his gf/wife (forgot her name off hand) with their minds fully intact. That is until she leaves to find a cure. Once she found out there was no cure for her friends and started to head home, did she start to lose her mind. Within sight of home, she finally gave into her sorrow, and the feralness took over.
The lack of serotonin probably makes the receptors become less and less able to release or uptake, leading to a downward spiral of depression. As this compounds over time, normal brain functions start to suffer. As they slowly lose their minds, some lock themselves away while others leave in the hopes that they won't hurt the ones they care about.
Only issue with my theory of the serotonin being the sole reason, lots of non feral ghouls are miserable, hence the hope. Hope that tomorrow will be better (the slog). Hope that loved ones will be safe (Oswald, Billy and his parents). Hope that they'll restart their criminal empire (Eddy Winter). Doesn't seem to matter what the hope is it helps them hold onto their sanity. Maybe it keeps a minimal level of neuro transmitters going or its more of a spiritual factor.
Thank you for listening to my Ted talk, please tip the ghouls by the exits, else they may bite.
So I have a question about something I noticed when in the Mechanist lair, before the war the lair was a lab for human experiments on robobrains but in a room where they would do the operations I noticed on one of the boards showing X-rays is 2 images of a deathclaw head, why would that be there?
I may be misremembering, but I thought there was a retcon that something similar to Deathclaws was being experimented on pre-war but it didn't come to fruition. I think the X-Rays are a reference to that, I remembered noticing the same thing in my playthrough. I may be wrong though, and if so, I have no idea why those photos would even exist in-lore and as far as video game assets go...maybe it was originally art for a cut quest that was repurposed?
@@Supercohboy iirc I think I remember seeing something saying that deathclaws were something created prewar and when the war happened they broke out, might be something non canon though
Really? I'm going to go back and look around in The Mechanist's Lair for that....and the Super Mutant head in a jar.
@@polytanksan5761thats exactly the canon explaination for their existence and why they're so widespread.
Deathclaw robobrains. DEATHCLAW. ROBOBRAINS. Just imagine the potential!
55:45
Couple of things. The kind of radiation that counts as 1 rad per second would still be an insanely high dosage. It can kill you in minutes. It quickly drops off with distance, but extended time around that obelisk could still heavily irradiate a person.
Plus the picometers isn't a reference to strength of dosage, just the wavelength of the EMF in question. Specifically gamma radiation around that wavelength.
Another amazing and informative video. Thank you for this content, always nice to learn more about the Fallout universe
God the joy I feel when there’s a new EpicNate video is the closest thing I’ve felt to Christmas morning since I was tiny. Absolutely stellar work, 12/10💛
Hey Nate there’s an editing error here 39:22
You say “so” and it’s cut suddenly. Just making sure we didn’t miss out on something important you were saying about the first holo tape by the researchers assistant
I too also noticed that and thought my video had skipped :D Nates gotta fix this lol
not seeing the spoon balance ontop of the cola is a huge cliff hanger
NOOO! You failed me, why didn't you show whether or not the spoon was placed correctly????
I am surprised that no one's made a theory about it, but something that always has been stuck with me is how in the beginning of fallout 4 just before you get out of cryo pod the automated voice says "remote override" and when you check the terminal in the pod room and check everyone's status you find out that your spouse's pod was manualy overrided, who was killed by the bald dude with gun but yours was remotely overrided, which means there was a third presence aware of your existence and was able to remotely override your specific cryo pod from some location, most likely by a terminal and by hacking into the vault tech network. I'd to love to see an investigation video about that
Another thing i find is that there is an empty cryo pod in the room, which was most likely because it never had an occupant but if it did then it means there were other vault 111 survivors who managed to get out of the pod
Actually it’s far more likely that the remote signal that released you from your cryopod was from the Institute. After you deal with the Synth under bunker hill, Shaun meets you atop of the CIT building where he tells you about how he had you released from the cryopod because he was curious.
He wanted to see if his surviving parent would look for him. Whether that parent would even survive the wasteland and if s/he did look for him, how hard would the parent work at it or give up.
...it was sean
@@mikoto7693 oh i never managed to play that far, i would only play the begining for a while before making a new game. Btw is there information regarding other vault 111 survivors
@@helo9316 As far as I remember, everyone else who made it to Vault 111 perished. The staff died fighting each other about six months later after the food ran out. And everyone else who was frozen except for the Sole Survivor and Shaun died by suffocation either while you were watching Kellogg shoot the spouse and kidnap Shaun or shortly afterwards.
They refroze the Sole Survivor immediately and kept the life support system intact. But they disabled the life support system for every other pod. From the way the bodies were still frozen 60 years later it looks like they kept everyone else thawed until the oxygen in the pod ran out and they died then re-engaged the cryostasis system afterwards.
Personally I think that was monumentally stupid. The whole reason they were there is because they needed pure human DNA that hadn’t been affected by radiation. Presumably they picked Shaun because a baby is easier to control and experiment on than an adult. And they refroze the surviving parent in case Shaun died. They make it obvious that pure untainted human DNA is limited and valuable-not even their own DNA is pure. So why kill dozens of these super rare genetically pure humans?
Combine it with the absolute stupidity of the Institute’s opinion that they are going to be the final survivors of humanity as everyone on the surface will eventually die despite two centuries of evidence to the contrary and it becomes even worse. Even if you account for ingame limitations and the population is bigger than shown, inbreeding will become a problem if not already. The smartest thing would have been to thaw everyone in controllable groups, show them a hint of the wasteland and offer membership into the Institute on the condition that they breed with an Institute scientist. It would not only widen their gene pool but actually help bring the Institute population closer to “pure.”
Oops, I kinda went on a bit of a tangent there. I’ll conclude with noting that the Institute could have done even better if genetic improvement had been their goal by approaching Vault 81 with a similar deal. They’re pure, and afraid of the surface world too. Anyway the Vault Tec salesman you met just before the bombs dropped survived as a Ghoul.
But everyone else in Sanctuary either died when the bombs dropped or survived as feral ghouls. One of the saddest random encounters in the game has you encounter them. It proves that some tiny fragments of the person they once were remains in feral ghouls because they roamed the Commonwealth together as a single pack for the two whole centuries-until they run into you. It’s entirely possible not to even realise that. It’s just a pack of named feral ghouls that has no meaning if you don’t recognise the names.
I recognised them, and didn’t like killing them but it was necessary. I suppose the player could just run away though.
The incredibly loud "BUT" @25:14 made me laugh so hard...
Always great to hear these!
No matter if they have previously known info, it's always great to hear everythin' again to catch up!
I imagine all youtubers like him have to tap into every resource they can for these videos, from other fan theories to forums to whatever concrete established lore they can get ahold of. No one knows all the lore. What they provide though is a very neat and polished product bringing many ideas into one place and keeping things interesting and entertaining.
We are obliged to spread the love for Paul, we are all a part of the MittenSquad.
thank you for your content, man. i’ve been real depressed and nerding out on Fallout lore always helps a bit.
not all heroes wear capes, buddy!
you’re awesome!
You're srill epic Nate, thanks for the great work
I've always liked Desmond. I like that he doesn't spill his whole backstory. As a player, I appreciate that the devs allowed a character to remain mysterious, and as a character in-game, I liked that he was about his business and didn't care about making friends; he just wanted to get a job done.
The "longest week or two" in history
Eh, I bet it will be great when it comes out.
I want to thank you Nate, for reteaching me how to play games. I’ve missed so much in these games that I never would’ve known.
Raul (if i remember his name correctly) in New vegas is the only person to get close to the supermutants in black mountain, He is a ghoul.
"But he is forced to be there" yes, by nightkin.
Nightkin in new vegas have attacked ghouls and other supermutants because of their addiction, even so supermutants see the problem and want to help them.
Not sure if this is mentioned but it also helps prove that Supermutants see ghouls as some sort of ally/help.
If ghouls dont need to eat as often, for weeks at a time, why do ferals have the "urge to feed!"?
Maybe they don’t NEED food often but still feel hunger, and as they convert into feral ghouls that hunger just gets stronger with their reduced smarts
I have always kind of theorized ghoulifaction has something to do with the new plague. Maybe people who have the gene to be a carrier or something also means they become ghouls when mild FEV exposure and radiation mix. It doesn’t fully explain it, though.
Fev exposure would have made them completely immune to radiation tho even if just mild exposure
I wasn’t thinking it….until you said “dont”. Now I can’t stop.
I saw a mudcrab the other day. Horrible creatures...
I wanna mention Hancock. He's not pre-war ghoul, however he's still a handmade) As far as I remember, he told that he used some drugs and became ghoul.
I love the research assistant’s tapes. The way it starts you think she’s just some heartless scientist… but it turns out that she’s sacrificing herself for a theory she truly believes in and thinks will help everyone. It’s somewhat alarming that she asks for “permission” to abort the trial, as that implies that there actually IS a moral-free scientist involved… DAMN YOU ROBERTS!!!
(Also, please do a Bostonian accent every single time you say doctor from now on: let’s get that in the channel mythos…)
And I do think that Occam’s razor is far more likely with regards to the ghouls and mutants in the Mechanist lair. It’s entirely possible that the robots brought live or post-mortem specimens back for the mechanist. She was convinced that the tech worked, if we consider this. Therefore, wouldn’t it be far kinder to use mutants and ghouls for the brains, rather than human prisoners? I expect this didn’t work, in fact of course it didn’t - she’s completely wrong about the tech! And thus it was abandoned. The system is automated, after all.
And this accounts for the total absence of any evidence for the research being done on pre-war ghouls and mutants. Not saying I’m right; just that the converse does require quite a large assumption, based on what we are presented with (the utter lack of document evidence, the mechanist’s belief that the process is viable and her complete shock that the robots are explicitly attacking everything they find). Just an observation, doubtless crammed with holes and gaps. ;)
That was the exact same conclusion that I came to. That the robots brought back “samples” from the wasteland. Ghouls, super mutants and even a deathclaw.
25:15 That *BUT* vibrated my eardrums through my subconscious into my dreams and shook my reality until I woke in a frenzy to protect myself. 10/10
the best Bethesda games lore man, my favorite fellow "lore-maniac", love you Nate ❤
Considering that we have data on how isolation effects the brain (and why solitary confinement is literally a form of torture), it makes sense that it’s a contributing factor to going feral…it’s just not good for your brain’s health to be deprived of social contact. Regular socialization and interaction is better for your mental and neurological health, and it’s probably why ghouls who are part of a community would be more resistant to the kind of deterioration that would cause them to lose their minds.
I thought this said robocops secret and was very confused for a solid 30 seconds
Dead or alive, you're a ghoul
Getting ready for the New Vegas festival in Goodsprings! Hope to see many of you guys there!
The goat is back!
33:17 The body language of how excited you got balancing the soup bowl on the checker board seems to be a universal thing lol gotta wiggle the mouse or right stick a bunch and jump around cuz how else are you gonna celebrate?
rest in love, mitten squad.
I didn't know he passed until I read this comment.
I am surprised you missed Dean Domino from the Dead Money DLC of Fallout New Vegas. He is a major character The Courier has to deal with, AND he provides insight into why some ghouls overcome going Feral. Basically, he claims to overcome becoming feral because he has something to focus on, to think about, and exercise his mental faculties.
The Glowing One at the rocket factory further confirms this theory as he strives to deliver his group of ghouls to The Great Beyond.
As does Oswald at Kiddie Kingdom in the Nuka World DLC of Fallout 4.
And....there is the Fallout 4 attribute chart. You said nothing of the Ghoulish Perk, which The Sole Survivor can attain, IF The Sole Survivor has enough endurance, lending to a genetic predisposition being involved. And, the Sole Survivor has no way of being exposed to FEV.
So far as the older lore goes, the Sole Survivor started breathing trace amounts of airborne FEV the moment they left the vault. It's everywhere. it's why the insects and other animals got huge. (Most if not all fallout-mutants are the result of the FEV, either direct experimentation or indirect exposure to the escaped virus.
Considering that, the ghoulish perk might be the result of a "prime normal" encountering the trace FEV and High Rads (Boston gets constant Rad Storms after all) possibly the SS might even be the first successful ghoulification that didn't melt the skin of it's victim.
Love your videos man, it always makes my day! Keep it up!
Needs a Part 2 after the Fallout Series. Snake Oil Salesman clearly has a serum that causes instant ghoulification.
Another thing that I think might be interesting in this investigation is the Children of Atom.
Considering they are a cult or religion in which the followers welcome unprotected exposure to rads, you would have thought that all of them would be a ghoul, or in some stage of ghoulification.
But thinking back on this, I don't think I've ever met a Child of Atom ghoul in the game. Maybe they just eliminate a follower who shows signs of ghoulification, as though Atom has chosen a sacrifice for them, but that seems less probable for a seemingly [mostly] peaceful religion.
So why is their prolonged exposure to rads not turning them into ghouls? This seems to suggest that it isn't rads at all that is the catalyst for ghoulification.
Jury is still out on whether or not that was just a sample of FEV that the Chicken Lover dude gave him. Seems more likely he'll turn into a Super Mutant I think given that level of healing factor seems more in line with FEV than ghoulification.
Nah, I'm like 99% sure it was FEV. Ghouls don't have that near instant regenerative property.
Is it just me or did Nates voice get deeper.... ???😲
It's the pot. You gotta smoke alot to get the deep and wild into lore. Smokers rasp
If it was FEV-related, how does that explain the Chinese submarine? That would have been sealed and thus not exposed to FEV.
In a terminal in fallout 3 you read that they sent it through nuka cola onto the sub
Didn’t Hancock turn ghoul because of a drug? What if the government and companies only told you it was the rads to cover their actions?
"A DOCTA" LMAO keep up the great work thanks for the laughs
Thumbnail of my ex wife
😂😂😂and you still married her!!!!🤣🤣🤣🤣
just when i needed something to allow my brain to focus while i do other things nate comes in clutch!! so glad you're back nate
When somebody's channel has this much production value I expect it to take a little bit of time
Hey Nate I have one for you. What if the raiders are actually the good guys? Everyone else is just clinging on to the old world .
*inhales* "Nick Valentine-" *proceeds to use literally the most ominous shot of him I've ever seen*
what a great mini intro to a character lmao- 30:18
This channel as well as fallout and TES have become such an integral part of my life, thank you for contributing and making such an impact!!
The best in the business and I still get chills when I hear that line”Hey how’s it going guys it’s Nate here” 😮❤😅, awesome job again legend. As Bethesda fans we are so spoiled to have you as Bethesda fan too. I can’t wait for the next gen patch and to replay Fallout 4. Thank again.
I like that Bethesda went with the story you have different dialogue options if you show up at the mechanist lair dressed in the silver shroud costume
“Should be out in a week or two”
*5 months later*
“Alright here it is”
You deserve Fallout video of the Year sir. Have an Ice-Cold Nuka Cola Victory. You earned it. Take a victory lap.
The sudden yelling of the word “BUT!” at 25:25 was very funny and caught me off guard
I had a theory for a while: Ghoulification would occur in people with certain ressessive gene markers exposed to low amounts of radiation over an extended period of time. I figured that they would slowly change over an extended period (1-2 years) because they weren't getting enough rads to be considered harmful, but enough to trigger mutation (I.E.: less than 1 rad a second for most if not all of that 1-2 years).
that story with Research Assistant Peters is crazy. A Sievert of exposure alone is absolutely nuts, but I thought she was doing it through some kind of controlled external exposure from a low penetration radiation source like Tc99m (used in medical imaging) to reduce exposure to those outside the room. The fact you can hear the Geiger counter when she checks implies she ingested or injected something into herself that was radioactive and was emitting radiation the could be picked up outside her body at a rate she equated to giving herself the 6 Sievert dose. That might have been a major difference in why the process went less ideally for her and why she was freaking glowing as a ghoul in combination with the serum. doesn't explain the others in the building with her though...