Fallout (3) of Contact With The Outside World

Well, it's been summer (at least as far as college is concerned) and I have been home since May 18th, and so I really don't have any excuse. That is, for writing nothing new and leaving the same picture of Sameera up as e-flypaper in the hopes that she would sense a disturbance in the blog force and come here to post her apparently already done and long overdue entry. (I mean, hers is already done. I've got nothing here. Or, I had nothing - I promise, I have an idea. I've once again turned my insomnia into gold something.) To her credit, she's got a big [personal thing of hers that I am afraid to mention without her permission] coming up and has been put on house arrest to practice for it, as it is very important, so she is therefore excused. Besides, I can handle this on my own. Right? Right. You're always so supportive, suspiciously-silent-non-subscription-holding-and-or-comment-leaving audience.

 

As of late, since my birthday has come and gone, and I have lost the start-of-summer energy which propelled me to let my parents propel me into getting my driver's permit and cleaning my room, the bulk of my days has been spent playing Fallout 3 for around the tenth time through. This, combined with the early hour (3:20) led to the train of thought, "Man, I would not make it in a post apocalyptic, radioactive world." That is, in essence, the plot of Fallout 3. In intense, first day on the job layman's terms, there was a big world war, and the world went kaboom. People survived in underground 'vaults', and when it was over some came out and repopulated. Other vaults stayed closed. Now the world is a death trap and you're just an escapee from one of the closed vaults, looking for your father (who left, and is the reason you had to leave as well) trying to survive. Of course, radiation is a part of everything now; the water, the food, some of the people, the-

 

..Ugh. Bugs. They're all giant and junk. Radioactive. And it isn't as if they just run innocently around your kitchen, eating up the scraps - or, since they're so big, demanding a place at the dinner table and their own plate. No, no. They actually attack. For what reason, I do not know, but can only assume that they want me for food.  I find this hideously terrifying and would probably perish from a heart attack before a bug would ever come near me. They don't exactly have ambulances or functioning hospitals anymore, in Fallout universe.

Of course, there are certain bugs that can hurt you FROM a distance, but..why don't we just move on. There may be working hospitals in the universe I live in, but that doesn't mean I want to end up in one, and my imagination is liable to send me there if I let it run too far.

I love crab, but I have never been a fan of Maryland crabs, for some reason. Maybe it's because whenever I eat them, I'm forced to pick through dirty organs to get to the delicious meat I want. Too much work, and a little disgusting. Believe it or not, the Fallout universe managed to come up with something crustacean related that is more disgusting than the dirty innards of a regular Maryland crab - the clean outside of a mutated Maryland horseshoe crab. One day, on my first play through of the game, I was strolling along through the wasteland robbing the skeletal remains of pre-war homes when I saw something heading for me from the direction of the nearest water source. It was walking in a strange sort of way, kind of hopping from "foot" to "foot" and snapping fat claws as it neared me, fixing me with a menacing stare from a little circular crab-face in the upper middle of its gray armored torso.

 Of course, the first thing to cross my mind was, what in the holy hand grenade is that. And it wasn't just standing there looking angry, like in the badly drawn picture. It was hop stepping toward me at a manageable rate, but in an alarming fashion - and when it would get close enough, it would lower its armored head and charge at me like a determined football player.
This was when I decided that the wasteland was not a place to be taken lightly. I'm pretty sure that the first time I went up against a mirelurk (the technical term for crab demon), it killed me dead pretty quickly. All I had at that point in the game was a hunting rifle and a 10mm, with a lack of ammo and hardly any way to heal myself. I'm rather sure it was a bug that made it attack me that early on anyway, because I was right near the second suggested location. Either way, I learned a hard lesson, and this just reinforced the idea that I would not be alive in Fallout universe. Like I said, I hate Maryland crab. And I've decided I hate radiation, too. After all, it is responsible for almost every single animal that attacks me in the game as well as some humans. Radiation gave us the mutated mole rat, the radioactive bear and the fire breathing ant. And it's tricky.

After meeting up with some of the other critters running around the Fallout universe, I was actually kind of relieved to see that I was fighting an ant. I'd already fought other mutated bugs, so I was like, big whoop. But that's only because unless you have the good fortune to meet up with the right people before you get to the town of the fire breathing ants, you pretty much get no warning as to what it is they do. There's only a small chance you'll meet someone who will tell you about them before you get there, (in fact, I couldn't find the information kid  when I actually went looking for him in a later play through) and there's a good chance you will stumble upon the town without realizing it. It looks just like any other place. It's a serious mistake to make, because unless you're strong enough for them, the fire breathing ants will..well, end you. Frankly, if this were a reality, the fire ants would end you no matter what. I don't see how you could handle being repeatedly set on fire unless you were massively irradiated, and that's keeping in mind that I don't really know anything about the science of radiation. Not only will your character put up with being set on fire, but they will do it without screaming, and while firing whatever weapon it is you've chosen. That is just fantasy. But hey, I'm not here to disparage the realism of the game. (I do love it, after all.)

Let us move on to something other than the creepy crawlies and non-crawling creepers. At this point you might be thinking that the animals and insects are enough to prove my point (that I'd be super dead in the Wasteland). ..Well, that would be true, but I want this post to be long. So we're going to talk about some of the people you meet there.

The Talon company are a group of for-hire mercenaries that some jerk has hired to kill you, if you're a good person in the game. They're supposed to be hired by someone, anyway, because you can often find the contract on one of the attackers, but when they first attacked me, I don't think I had done anything of major importance yet, and was highly taken aback by someone's interest in my immediate death. It basically went down like this:

 

 

I don't remember if I escaped with my life or not. But I think it's safe to say that if I had somehow survived the bugs, I would have died then in reality. I don't know when the Talon company starts to attack your character, but once they start they'll never stop showing up. You could collect infinite copies of your own death contract. It's a document creatively entitled "Kill [Your Name]!". It seems funny to me that they're sending group after group of Talon soldiers who never come back, and that doesn't seem to bother anyone at Talon central. I suppose the game does that because it's kind of helpful if you want to sell their armor or tape it together to make a stronger version of the Talon armor. And it does make me laugh to think of myself sitting on the ground taping together pieces of used armor, and then slipping them on somehow. I don't think I would be that crafty or keen on sitting alone in dangerous territory for extended periods of time. More would probably come for me if I did.

The Fallout Universe has its own answer to the issue of racism (not to solving it, but to showing that it exists without making the game so depressing). People seem to have advanced beyond racism as we know it as far as I can tell, which is nice, but that's only because a race of mutated humans has taken the place of the minorities. Which is, of course, even more ridiculous than modern racism. That's like hating disabled people. Hell, that IS hating disabled people. They were mutated by radiation, so to normal people they look like zombies from old movies, with their skin falling off and such. Personally, I love the ghouls in the game. For the most part they're nice and hardworking, determined. Freedom fighters, even. They kind of have to be. I mean, of course there are a few bad eggs..there's one that asks you to kill human bigots by shooting them in the head like an old zombie movie.  And then you find out that not all of them are bigots, they just have keys to another location that he wants. But for the most part, I actually really like the ghouls - I'm just afraid that in real life I wouldn't have as much charisma as my character has, and they'd kill me before realizing I was a friend. I'm pretty inept at social situations.

I don't know why people waste their time hating ghouls when they could be hating, excluding and killing the real mutated-from-human assholes. They're big, yellow, muscular and terrifying, with loud hateful voices and a bloodthirsty attitude that nearly all of them share. (I've only met two that don't.) They have the ability of "intelligent" thought, though it doesn't mean they're particularly smart, and make the conscious choice to kill humans or turn them into one of them. People would say that they hate ghouls because the "feral" variety similarly attack humans - but their brains have been scrambled by radiation, and they haven't the cognitive faculties to make the choice. They just kill whatever isn't themselves. Without getting too political about it, I can see that if I could manage to make it past the ghoul hate lightning I just made up, they would be my allies in the wasteland. And there are plenty of people besides the yellow death and the talons that you would need to be allied against. Slavery is a thing again. With electronic collars. No thanks. ..This keeps almost turning into a review of the game rather than an explanation of why I wouldn't survive if the game was reality. I'll just need to try harder.

Something that I noticed while I was running around was that everyone in the Wasteland seems to be skinny. Maybe not fit and healthy, but skinny. One would say that this was because everyone is living in a time in which food and water are scarce and need to be scavenged from old vending machines and the like, or hunted and killed - and everything is irradiated. But think about it; your character in the game comes from spending a lifetime in the vault. An underground safe-house where there is barely room to run around and there are a variety of snack foods, and little old ladies to bake you sweet rolls. In other words, you live in your house and you can never leave it. If you don't actively pursue good health, you'd be fat. In other words, I would be fat. But in the game I didn't see one overweight person in the vault, and of course, there were none outside. You have to take the clothes you wear off of dead people, or find someone who can make them for you in the vast desert of near nothingness. This fact alone proves that I am not fit for the Fallout world. (Hey, I made a pun.) I would come out of the vault as a fat slob and waddle my way down to the first city I found, if I didn't meet any irradiated animals along the way, and then have a heart attack once inside when I found a giant roach in my house. Isn't that a romantic tale? Hell, I don't even know what I would do if I could manage to survive. What I would do is hunker down in a safe town and never leave it for fear of dying, but if you do that, all you can do for entertainment is talk to people, unless you manage to find a magazine to read from some vendor (to scavenge them yourself you'd have to leave). That means there is no television, and certainly no internet. Could I even make it without the internet? This blog post alone proves that answer to be a definite no. Not to mention the fact that I'm watching television while writing it. But, you know. If you did decide to go out, you could always go and visit the DC ruins, around which Fallout 3 takes place. You know, if you're not me. I grew up being constantly shuffled to DC to see the monuments and museums and all that in an educational setting, and I think the child in me is sitting on the ground with her hands over her ears and her legs crossed. Still, I do find them a lot more interesting in the game, where it is necessary to shoot your way through.

 I'd just like to have a combination of the two worlds, with the adventure and heroism from Fallout 3, and the safety and familiar comforts of my life now. But, seeing as that is most likely impossible, it seems I'll have to stick to playing the game. Ah, well.