Can Nuclear Fallout Create Ghouls?

If there’s any “upside” to nuclear war in the FALLOUT universe, it’s that you might get such a high dose of radiation that you turn into a “ghoul” – a radiation-eating, skin-not-having, nigh-immortal zombie. Is any part of “ghoulification” actually possible? Noted nuclear zaddy Kyle Hill explains.

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[lyrkn]

Preston truly is the most horrific consequence of nuclear war.

[craigdellicarpini]

The science of becoming a Ghoul is interesting. You know what else is interesting? That settlement that needs your help. I’ll mark it on your map.

[BiohazardEXTREME]

You said Goggins looks gross? He might actually be the best looking ghoul in the whole franchise.

[bearlogg]

If a 9-5 schedule can do it, radiation isnt a stretch

[ernestareheart]

Being ghoulified is horrible. Being ghoulified and stuck in a refrigerator? Peak evil.

[bpbp]

If you were a Ghoul you'd be the rarest Ghoul because you'd still have your hair.

[kalkuttadrop]

Something about Nuclear Waste I recently learned that might be useful to note when you discuss is, while nowadays it's solid material as you said, in the early days the largest producers DID create liquid radioactive waste, notably Hanford and Mayak, who's chemical seperation processes to make material for bombs created liquid wastes, which did leak on several occasions.
Non-weapons plants don't have this issue, and even modern weapons production generally uses physical seperation like centrifuges instead of chemical treatments, but I think teaching the history on how we made things safer is useful. Nuclear in the 40s, 50s, and 60s WAS genuinely dirty and dangerous in many ways, and we fixed it.

[ClearComplexity]

It's ok Kyle, Curie is the best companion. She has the best character development, from a modified Miss Nanny to having more emotion and asking more human questions than basically any of the companions (aside from maybe Nick... whom is an early Synth).

[thomasvarney]

One thing with Fallout you can’t disregard is what happened when WestTek / The Glow got hit - the FEV storage there was aerosolized and spread worldwide. Everyone not in a Vault got a little of that sweet, sweet military grade mutagen.

[kylehill]

Testing out some FALLOUT videos with all the game-related stuff coming out this year. Let me know if you want more! (And come on chat, like for the beef in the ad alone.)

[trogdor]

One of the big questions of the Fallout universe was how the Children of Atom manage to live in highly radioactive areas, without dying or turning into ghouls. Did they have some secret technology, or was their god Atom real, and granting its faithful supernatural protection?
The Far Harbor DLC finally answered this question with "idk some people are just born immune to rads I guess, and the rest of us have to use radiation medicine like everyone else." Because, you know, that stuff just grows on trees out in the Glowing Sea.
10/10 writing.

[matthewcarpenter]

DUDE! You are literally posting some of the most entertaining and educational material for me to get my Radiography students to watch.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!
I am making this video an assignment for them now!

[aboutgrams]

Preston did nothing but good for everyone in game (provided they weren't actively trying to kill the minutemen) and gives you easy farmable early quests and everyone just shits on him. Poor, poor Preston. He's always so blinded by settlements needing help he forgot to help himself.

[leadfoot]

"...like some fungi in Chernobyl. Heh, that's me."

The fact that this took a second to land, but man, when it did...well done, Kyle.

[dumbbirdwayne]

As a long time viewer, I’ve always loved how Kyle’s videos are either really dark, depressing, horrible cases of accidents, or silly science stuff about funky video game enemies but irl, the tonal whiplash is amazing - also as someone with a huge interest in Biological changes because of environment, that part about the fungi was really cool!

[GGBlaster]

I could see a couple potential ways ghouls could be created:

First might be that the people who became ghouls possessed favorable genetic traits that developed and proliferated long before MAD. These could include higher radiation resistance, a primitive form of radiosynthesis, or traits that, while not directly helpful for surviving nuclear radiation, happen to perform well enough for the ghoul to “tough out” the radiation. Of course, these ghouls would have still had to reproduce post-MAD so that their traits could combine and develop further, as it’s unlikely those traits would be pronounced enough to produce the ghouls we see in-game.

The other (more likely) explanation is that Vault-Tec was doing some shady genetic research. And at this point, is there any shady science Vault-Tec hasn’t done?

[chameleonx]

Building on this, there's non-ghoul humans in Fallout 4 that are immune to radiation, particularly among the Children of Atom. There's also significant evidence that ghoulification has a genetic component, as families tend to all become ghouls together.

It's plausible that the constant exposure to low-level radiation in the Pre-War (as nuclear reactors were literally everywhere) caused a percentage of the population to develop the ability to metabolize ionizing radiation, as Kyle surmised.

Then, when the bombs dropped, it was this trait that allowed some people trapped outside the vaults to become ghouls, rather than just dying.

The humans in Fallout 4 who are immune to radiation might then be the result of this trait evolving even further, to the point where exposure doesn't cause necrosis.

[xSanityControlx]

"What makes Goggins here looks so gross?" *presents the most beautiful ghoul to ever live* 🤣

[mad_scientist]

There is at least one ghoul who seems to be eating and digesting normally in the fallout universe, so they probably don't all rely on radiosynthesis.

In some place in New Vegas (it might be FO3 but I think it's NV) you can meet a non-feral ghoul who is hiding from something in a fairly large room. Aside from what he is hiding from, he will tell you that he spends his days eating something and that he does his bussiness in the corner. I think you can find the corpses of whatever he eats in the room as well, although I wasn't there myself to smell the corners.

A lot of feral ghouls are also found in places with no radiation detected by the pipboy, like subway tunnels and stuff.

Ghouls and glowing ones also need to drink water as is obvious from the events of Fallout 1.

[keeganplayz]

I've actually been wondering about this for a long time (fallout is a top favorite game series of mine). Thanks for the analysis, Kyle! I really love every single on of your videos!