Mutations and their causes

Radiation


The various types of mutant creatures that inhabit the wastelands were mostly caused by radiation. This is where mantises, geckos, spore plants, deathclaws, radscorpions, brahmin and the various mutant rodent species come from. Also, this is how ghouls, decrepit, ragged, almost rotting, zombie-like victims of massive radiation poisoning, are made. Most ghouls were created from vault dwellers living in Vault 12 under the city of Bakersfield (better known as the Necropolis after the War). As part of the vast Vault Experiment Program, the Vault 12 vault door was designed not to close properly. Thus, massive amounts of radiation attacked those within the vault, most of whom were turned into the current ghoul population. Generally, in the Fallout universe, massive exposure to radiation causes humans to transform into ghouls. Also, all ghouls are completely sterile. There is only one generation of ghouls in the wasteland and it is the last. Furthermore, the ghoul transformation grants its subjects extremely long life. Ghouls created in the Great War of 2077 were still alive in 2241. Ghouls are generally as intelligent as normal humans. However, their extreme ugliness and physical frailty makes the life of a ghoul difficult at best. Ghouls are, naturally, immune to radiation. Radiation poisoning can't really get worse for them.

Many would question this and say that radiation wouldn't create giant scorpions and zombies, it would just kill you. That's entirely true for us. Fallout, however, is different. In this world, in accordance with the 1950's sci-fi physics, radiation just makes things bigger and meaner, though the player can still suffer radiation poisoning in the game and radiation in general is a bad thing.

FEV


The other source of mutations in the Fallout world is FEV: the Forced Evolutionary Virus. The super mutants, floaters, centaurs and possibly wanamingos were products of FEV infection. Harold was also mutated by FEV, even though he looks like a ghoul.

It was initially called the Pan-Immunity Virion Project and was created by West Tek, a major defense contractor. 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. 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 military prison inmates proceeded. 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, and the researchers were executed. Soon after, the bombs fell and the United States ceased to be.

The Military Base was quiet for a long time. It was, however, later discovered by a group of explorers including Harold and Doctor Richard Grey. Most of died when they encountered the automated defense systems. 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.

However, creating super mutants was a very hit or miss process. The great majority of super mutants produced by the Master and later his Lieutenant in Mariposa's Vats were big, dumb brutes. Physically, there were vastly superior to humans, but they had the intelligence of children. What exactly causes some mutants to be brilliant and others to be stupid is unknown. The Master was certain it was related to radiation damage: humans who hadn't been exposed to much radiation yielded better mutants (see his personal diary for his thoughts on this). His Lieutenant, however, had a different theory. 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. The ideal dipping subject was someone who hadn't been exposed to the airborne FEV. Both these conditions--no radiation exposure and no mutant FEV inoculation--were present in one population: Vault dwellers. Each one contained around 1,000 viable subjects to be dipped and turned into super mutants. Which factor exactly determines what you'll get from a dipping--radiation or inoculation--is still uncertain, though as a rule of thumb, the cleaner the subject, the better.

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.

Other Mutants


There are a few other types of mutant creatures in the wasteland that don't directly stem from FEV or radiation. These are mostly the intelligent animals and one spore plant encountered in Fallout 2. The intelligent deathclaws were an experiment conducted by the Enclave to create super tough soldiers to shred enemies to pieces that could respond to simple orders. The intelligent spore plant and radscorpion in Broken Hills were another, separate experiment conducted by a scientist there. Any other talking animals are flukes. All such creatures can be assumed to all have died the instant Fallout 2 ended. Similarly, the alien creatures encountered in Fallout 2, which were a pre-war experiment conducted by the US military similar to the Enclave's intelligent deathclaw research, were all, without exception, killed by the protagonist in Fallout 2. Frank Horrigan, Enclave super toughie, was produced by a series of treatments involving carefully modified FEV, surgery, a variety of other drugs and a great big suit of armor. He's dead, too. Lastly, Harold, who looks a lot like a ghoul, but he really isn't. Ghouls are the result of massive radiation exposure while Harold was mutated by brief FEV exposure without being dipped. FEV is at best unpredictable and you never can tell what'll come back out of the vats (just look at the Master). Harold is essentially a fluke, the result of a unique combination of a specific degree of exposure to the virus, a specific degree of radiation within his own body and any number of other factors. While FEV doesn't crank out ghouls as reliably as it does super mutants, it does occasionally spit out something that looks like one: Harold.

Variants
Over the years, different people have been in charge of Fallout canon and have come up with different interpretations on this subject. Mutant creatures and where they come from is one of the most controversial topics in Fallout canon and it's very easy to annoy veteran scholars of the setting by getting things wrong or even just partially right.

First, Chris Avellone seemed to prefer the "FEV explains everything!" theory of mutation. He suggests that when the Glow was hit by the Chinese warheads, the tanks holding the virus burst and the FEV was vaporized and shot into the air. It was then mutated by the radiation from the blast, ("remember, viruses are living organisms", says Avellone) and went on to help radiation create the various mutant animals we know and love as well as ghouls. The problem with this theory is that first off it's a bit redundant since Fallout radiation is already fully capable of producing the mutations seen in the gameworld. Second, we know from the Lieutenant's mention of inoculation from mutant FEV that any airborne strain of FEV could not cause these mutations. If it did, why didn't any humans mutate from exposure to the airborne FEV? Furthermore, if radscorpions, geckoes, molerats, deathclaws and other creepie crawlies are all products of FEV, how can they breed as much as they do? Remember, FEV causes sterility. Avellone eventually admitted that he was wrong, and that most mutations in the Fallout world were caused by radiation.

Next, Chris Taylor offers a different point of view on how ghouls are made. He suggests that when people with too much radiation damage are dipped, you get ghouls. When people with mild radiation damage are dipped, you get stupid supermutants. When people with very little radiation damage are dipped, you get intelligent supermutants. This would mean Harold is a normal ghoul. The trouble with this one is that it doesn't account for all the ghouls that are around, namely the Necropolis ones. Also, knowing the Master, any ghouls produced by the vats would probably be consumed or otherwise destroyed for being imperfect. You could say that the Necropolis ghouls were produced by Avellone's flying FEV, but that, of course, goes against the simple fact that FEV is not an airborne organism.

Related Holodisks

 * Alpha Experiment Disk
 * Delta Experiment Disk
 * FEV Experiment Disk
 * FEV Research
 * Richard Grey Audio Diary
 * Vree's Experiment Disk
 * Captain Maxson's Diary