Forced Evolutionary Virus

The other source of mutations in the Fallout world is FEV: the Forced Evolutionary Virus. In the years leading up to the Great War between China and America, both sides were scrambling to research something that would give them an edge in the coming conflict. What the Chinese research teams developed is unknown, but America tapped its resources of private industry for a secret weapon to beat the Chinese. One company, a high tech outfit called West Tek, was a major defense contractor. In the first Fallout, the player explores a location called the Glow, which is in fact an underground West Tek research facility that was directly targeted by Chinese warheads during the War. While exploring the heavily radioactive ruins, the player discovers that West Tek created a number of useful things for the American military. Laser and plasma weapons were being experimented with here. Power armor, massive self-contained suits that turned a single soldier into a walking tank, was developed here. And most importantly, some terribly important research into immunity drugs was being conducted at West Tek.

One fear among the US military was that the Chinese would deploy biological weapons against American troops: powerful superviruses that would decimate armies without a single shot fired. Thus, West Tek began the Pan-Immunity Virion Project (PVP) to develop a way to counteract Chinese biological agents. It was determined that the way to achieve this was to alter the subject's DNA to cause immunity. During testing of PVP in 2076, abnormal side effects were observed in test subjects. The test animals began to grow dramatically and their brain activity increased. Seeing the potential there, the Army sent its own people to secure the project and renamed it FEV: Forced Evolutionary Virus. Not content with mere immunity to disease, FEV would turn soldiers into abnormally strong and intelligent supermen. When testing on animals reached its logical conclusion, the US military moved FEV research to the Mariposa Military Base where secret testing on human volunteers (read: military prison inmates) proceeded.

However, the grim nature of the research being carried out at Mariposa greatly unnerved the garrison guarding the base. The nature of the scientist's work, which had until then been a secret from the Army grunts, caused them to more or less revolt once they found out. The colonel in charge of the garrison lost his mind and committed suicide. His second in command, Captain Roger Maxson, took command of the troops and began interrogating the scientists. Rattled by the vile things the scientists were doing to test subjects and incredulous of the claim that the science team was only following orders, Maxson had the researchers executed one after the other. Later, he announced the Mariposa Military Base to be in full secession from the United States. Soon after, the bombs fell and the United States ceased to be. Disgusted with the Mariposa base, haunted by the test subjects and the executed scientists, Maxson decided to lead the troops and their families to the Lost Hills government bunker, where they would later use their high tech military equipment and knowledge to form the Brotherhood of Steel.

The Military Base was quiet for a long time. Not long after the war, however, a group of explorers, including Harold, entered the Military Base looking to end a peculiar proliferation of mutated animals which seemed to be coming from the base. The exact date of the expedition is unknown, but Harold's presence as a human being leads me to believe that it can't have been more than ten or twenty years after the bombs fell since Harold is known to have been a vault dweller who emerged shortly after the war's end. Thus, to still be alive and human, he'd have had to have entered the Military Base not long after the war.

Leading the expedition was Dr. Richard Greyâ€�?previously known as Richard Moreau until he was exiled from Vault City. When Grey's team entered the Military Base, most died when they encountered the automated defense systems (robots). Soon, only Grey and Harold remained. Harold was knocked out (he never did find out how) and woke up out in the desert looking like a ghoul. Grey, however, was headed for bigger trouble. He had made it to the vats room, where massive bubbling cauldrons of thick, green FEV waited to be experimented with. Grey was knocked into a vat by a crane and managed to crawl out. FEV was initially meant to be injected into humans, but Grey soon found out that direct physical contact worked as well. He began to mutate in horrible ways, turning into a sort of blobby kind of thing. He developed psychic powers, which were enhanced by consuming living minds to expand his own brainpower. Slowly, as wanderers made it into the base themselves, he started doing his own experiments with FEV.

Grey found that many of the test subjects were turning giant, mindless brutes with the brains of a child, if they survived at all. However, a rare few test subjects yielded super mutants. Immune to disease and radiation and blessed with exceptional strength, intelligence and endurance, super mutants were superior to humans in every way. They also possessed the exceptionally long life of the mutated as well as the total sterility. Grey--who now called himself the Master--lamented the needless destruction of the war. In his warped state, he decided that he would have to force humanity to evolve. If everyone could be as perfect as his super mutants, there would be no more conflict. Those who could not evolve would die. The Master began seeking out uncontaminated humans with which to create mutants and build his super mutant army.

The problem was that to build his army of super mutants, the Master would need uncontaminated humans. But not humans uncontaminated by radiation. Rather, he needed humans who were clean of the mutated strain of FEV from West Tek. When the bombs hit the research facility and turned it into the Glow, they cracked open a few tanks filled with FEV. The bombs' radiation then mutated this FEV into an airborne strain. But this new airborne FEV didn't have any real mutagenic effects on people. All it did was inoculate human subjects against the real FEV, acting as a sort of vaccine, which was troublesome for the Master and his Lieutenant (whose dialog tells us about this FEV inoculation). The ideal dipping subject was someone who hadn't been exposed to the airborne FEV. Such a population was availible: Vaults. Each one contained around 1,000 viable subjects to be dipped and turned into super mutants. This is why the Master is so hell-bent on discovering the location of the Vault Dweller's home.

Aside from super mutants, the Master also created a variety of other creatures. No one is sure where the floaters came from, but then again most would rather not know. Centaurs were created by tossing a varied mix of dogs, cats, brahmin and other animals into a vat and seeing what came out the other end.