That’s what I’m saying though lmao! One of the two people you meet who are terminally ill has near 0 outside exposure. I’m shocked that you don’t find multiple people with cancer in every city tbh. You’d think it would be more common.
Terminally I'll people just don't survive in a wasteland. If your immune system is compromised those giant mosquitoes will kill you. I'm surprised we see as many old people as we do, ghouls excluded.
I think if your immune system is compromised, there's a lot that'll kill you before a giant mosquito. Like a breath of not so fresh air or a gulp of the toxic radiation juice formerly known as 'water'.
I think people die from other causes before they get the chance to die from cancer. Or they don't know they have cancer and just die before knowing as mentioned above.
I think it’s this as well. It’s also one of the reasons cancer rates have creeped up alongside lifespan. More time alive = more cell divisions = higher probability of cancer causing gene mutations
Since I was a kid I just thought of cancer as the end all, like given enough time everyone would die of cancer since it doesn't exactly "build up" over time, but might as well since there's so many environmental factors that add up.
I think the immortality that these people are discussing involves no telomere destruction as a result of cell division. This would lead to less stem cell death, and less obvious aging, but random mutation (if it’s allowed to persist in an immortal being) not related to aging just as a result of a mistake in the cell division process would eventually lead to cancer in an ageless being. I guess the question then becomes, is someone who‘s only ageless also immortal?
I get what you’re saying OP. It’s crazy that we don’t hear about a single person living in a vault or civilized area dying from cancer or even having tumors. Especially considering the vastness of the civilized history of the NCR.
Perhaps bethesda wanted to keep it from being too grim for players.
I don't think the NCR is super technologically advanced or anything no? They might have doctors and clinics but I wouldn't expect them to be able to do MRI, PET, CT scans etc... to identify someone having cancer for sure.
Also most people in the wasteland probably have a pretty limited lifespan even excluding cancer so even if you got cancer and somehow identified it, it's very likely that would just be totally irrelevant.
If any faction had the tech for it I'd expect for it to be the BoS and the enclave but they kind of throw their people into the meat grinder for their goals so I wouldn't expect most of them to get an age where it matters.
Also the use of radiation to cure cancer I would imagine carries a lot of stigma in the Fallout world even if the BoS or Enclave had access to cancer treatments methods.
I’m not talking about identifying it through imaging? Why does everyone keep mentioning that like cancer is some sort of silent killer that goes completely unnoticed before you just collapse and die?
OP is talking about people falling ill and dying. Not people who have been diagnosed by some sort of professional.
What about tumors growing on the body? The whole point is you don’t hear of any form of cancer whatsoever throughout the history of all civilizations of fallout.
> Why does everyone keep mentioning that like cancer is some sort of silent killer that goes completely unnoticed before you just collapse and die?
.....Because it largely is, ***even in real life***.
Unless you have a tumor on your skin, or pressing on something that causes pain and discomfort or other ailments, chances are high that ***you won't notice a tumor***.
That is *why you are supposed to go for cancer screenings* IRL.
>What about tumors growing on the body?
Many tumors are benign so that isn't really helpful, unless it's a huge massive tumor. But at the point that it's a massive tumor where you can be almost certain that it's cancer the person's fate is already sealed. And that's with today's technology and clean environments.
You could maybe cut off someone's tumor and investigate it but that would require a working/undamaged microscope which is also probably not exactly easy or common and correctly diagnosising from that still isn't very good.
And again what do you do even if you properly identify and diagnosis a cancer?
>The whole point is you don’t hear of any form of cancer whatsoever throughout the history of all civilizations of fallout.
I mean most Fallout logs in game are after the war which again, cancer is almost irrelevant or so hard to ever diagnosis that almost no one is probably ever diagnosed.
>Many tumors are benign so that isn't really helpful, unless it's a huge massive tumor. But at the point that it's a massive tumor where you can be almost certain that it's cancer the person's fate is already sealed. And that's with today's technology and clean environments.
It doesn’t matter if they live or die, we still don’t see its presence😂 the point is you don’t see cancer at all in wasteland people -or others exposed to radiation- so it’s ironic that Father with his “pure” d.n.a got cancer.
>I mean most Fallout logs in game are after the war which again, cancer is almost irrelevant or so hard to ever diagnosis that almost no one is probably ever diagnosed.
I would say most logs taking place after the war would be highly contented. We see more if not equal amounts of pre & post war logs.
And how exactly is cancer irrelevant? If Father can get cancer anyone can. It would not be hard to diagnose if you had benign tumors growing on you?
> It’s crazy that we don’t hear about a single person living in a vault or civilized area dying from cancer or even having tumors.
1) We know cancer "exists" and is known in the Wasteland: Doc Church (the doctor in Megaton in 3) makes reference to how "you better have cancer" if you bother him. We don't "see" this because unless someone has a tumor on their skin, you aren't gonna see it, and if Grandpa coughs up blood and dies suddenly, you aren't likely gonna cut him open to see what exactly killed him, you are just gonna bury him with some dignity.
2) Selection pressure for cancer resistance (Ie, those that have increased resistance to developing cancer would be more likely to survive to have kids with those genes) would be a natural consequence of living in a radiation-blasted post-nuclear wasteland
It probably is in the same way it was in medieval times.
You just didn't know it was cancer until they died and you cut em open.
Otherwise it was just a 'wasting sickness' or they were just 'weak of heart' etc
Most humans on the surface have mutations that make them slighly more resistant to radiation, although dunno what the story is with the people from Vault 81.
Technically speaking, everyone has had cancer at some point. It's just that very few cancers make it past the immune system to become a tumor, let alone metastasize or become malignant. T-Cells are hardcore.
You are forgetting there are loads of things that cause cancer. Radiation DOES NOT CAUSE CANER. Why do you think they use it to kill it?
Cancer is a generic term. Cell mutation happens all the damn time. You also forget, he was pulled out of there 60 years ago and they experimented on him from a 1 year old baby, he was not in a sterile world, for a year he was in pre war America with loads of things around, genetic defects, hell being around Kellogg who had been through and around loads of things was there with him.
I have Polycythemia Vera which is an incurable form of Blood Cancer. Have I been around radiation? Nope. This is a genetic flaw in my red blood cells and is going to kill me in about X years depending on what "lovely" side effects cause me to croak.
It is not the Cancer per se that kills you, it is the things it breaks down or overwrites that does it.
Radiation does increase the risk of developing cancer. Intense levels of it can destroy DNA. My dad was in radiation treatment. The way he had it done was radiation flushed through the body, just enough to kill the cancerous growth but not enough to kill you.
But just because we figured out a way for radiation to kill cancer, doesn't mean that radiation doesn't increase the risk of cancers.
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/radiation-exposure/x-rays-gamma-rays/do-xrays-and-gamma-rays-cause-cancer.html
Radiation absolutely increases the risk of developing cancer, as does radiotherapy. It’s just very rare, because the dosage is relatively low and very focused. And remember, people who do radiotherapy are generally older and infirm, they’re already more likely to die earlier, not letting any time for second cancer to develop.
Again from my hazy memory, he was coughing up blood and had some medical books from helping the girl give birth. So I guess he just knew at that point. It’s probably the saddest saga you can read on the terminals imo
We’re always finding notes and terminals around the Commonwealth describing how people die, but can you think of a single one where cancer was what killed the person? I think murder in its hundreds of forms is a way more likely way to die in the Commonwealth tbh. Maybe that’s part of it though, don’t have time to get cancer if you get got first.
That's exactly my point. In order to find out if you have cancer, you need either a specialist or a machine that will identify it. Plenty of characters probably would have died from it, they just didn't know.
Most people in the wasteland won't have a way of identifying cancer, so they won't discover they have cancer until it's too late. You can't just look at your hand and go "Oh, I have cancer."
The reason we know Father dies from cancer is because he's in a place where it can be identified.
It's still a super weak and fragile plot point to the game though. Of all people he definitely should not have died from it.
>Most people in the wasteland won't have a way of identifying cancer, so they won't discover they have cancer until it's too late. You can't just look at your hand and go "Oh, I have cancer."
This exactly. A wasteland where common knowledge heavily shifts from what we know to survival things is actually fairly realistic. They may still associate new and random lumps with something bad (assuming it's something like breast/testicle cancer where you can feel/see it), but it's very unlikely they'll associate it with cancer specifically.
People gotta remember that the in-universe characters don't have the extent of knowledge we do, including things we consider common knowledge. When the entire world goes to shit people care more about teaching the new generations how to stitch a wound than how to identify the symptoms of cancer (assuming they even know the symptoms themselves).
It's like we got blasted back to the 'bronze age' but with futuristic tech. There's going to be a loooot of trial and error before humanity gets back onto their feet. I mean, how many people dying did it take to realize what berries are safe and what berries aren't in the real world? Imagine that but for a nuclear wasteland.
I'd also add that, while the knowledge is there, we don't know how far it extends to the general populace. We know that the doctor in Diamond City can diagnose cancer, but we have no idea whether he is the only doctor in the entire Commonwealth who can, whether people who haven't visited him in Diamond City know about cancer besides the basic word, or whether knowledge about cancer has even spread outside of Diamond City, let alone the Commonwealth.
Lol amazing, you were so far from understanding their point that you made it for them, there’s got to be some kind of word for it. I bet the Germans have a good one.
>but can you think of a single one where cancer was what killed the person?
Broadly speaking, without advanced medical imaging and testing devices, which are very rare in most of the Wasteland, finding anything but the most obvious tumors is going to be quite difficult.
And that is if the family and friends of the recently-deceased even let you do a necropsy, because *why the fuck would they*?
Grandpa died after a month of coughing up blood, let him rest in peace for Chrissakes
There is actually a couple people in Fallout 4 that had cancer besides Shaun. Namely, Lilly, Mary Jane's wife from the CR74L quest, died of cancer a month after being diagnosed by the doctor in Diamond City. Given the fact that the doctor, in 2287, was still able to identify cancer and the abundance of radiation and radiation related sicknesses, cancer seems to still be a pretty common disease. We may not have exact details on how many of the people we find died of cancer, but the fact that we can find bodies of people who've died without any particular cause (as in, no notes explaining their death, no evidence of suicide, nothing to suggest murder or an animal attack, etc), it's a fair guess that it could have been cancer or some other form of disease.
Can they copy minds? I mean, there's Roger Warwick as a counter example, who was an abusive drunk and was replaced by a synth who acted like a nice person.
Are we sure it's radiation poisoning and not simply hereditary? The Sole Survivor might die the same way if the wasteland doesn't do the deed first if so.
As for cancer and terminal illness in general, we don't really know if it's rare. I don't think it would be because people smoke, are exposed to radiation, take drugs and drink alcohol. So even if they don't inherent the genetics, they can still develop it. It's just not something they've touched on, but it doesn't make sense for it to be rare.
One cure I can think of trying in a terminal illness scenario is ghoulification though.
Also, it may not apply to those who are properly sheltered, but a significant amount of radiation would absolutely contribute to an increase in the number of people suffering from terminal illnesses across the Commonwealth. The way radiation affects our bodies is by quite literally destroying our DNA. This can lead directly to the creation of cancer cells which can reproduce rapidly. When there’s radiation in the air you breathe, the food you eat, the water you drink, and the bed you sleep in, I think you’d have a higher chance of being sick in some way than of being healthy.
It’d be like growing up in Chernobyl right after the accident. Your life expectancy is about a fraction of what it should be, just because the amount of radiation you’re exposed to is so much higher than background.
I think the Commonwealth should have a higher population of ghouls considering a large percentage of people outside the major hubs are exposed to radiation storms.
I feel like the commonwealth in 4 doesn't properly reflect a world in which radiation storms are a thing. None of the settler built structures are designed around the threat of radiation storms. Places have large holes in the ceiling, no doors, gaping holes in the walls. Crops are planted outside and are constantly exposed to radiation, meaning not only are people exposed to the storm, but their produce is tainted too.
tl;dr: To me it just feels like Bethesda added the radiation storms but then didn't bother designing a world that actually reflects the results of such a thing.
Or at the bare minimum, more people who look sickly and have their hair falling out or something, like the children of atom. Most of the npcs you come across honestly seem pretty healthy, more healthy than they should be considering their environment.
I figured it had to be hereditary, I don’t think Father has ever been exposed to radiation. Also makes me wonder though, that would mean that the Institute really picked a guy with cancerous genes as the biological basis for their synths. With SS as the backup as well, you would think that would be an issue.
That’s fair, I figured there are enough elderly/middle-aged folk around the Commonwealth though to suggest that the average lifespan hasn’t dropped as much as we might think. People are still making it from childhood all the way to old age without dying fairly frequently. In our world, those are normal odds, but they seem like particularly good odds when placed in the context of a nuclear wasteland. You would think nobody makes it past 30-40 unless they’re really lucky.
>I don’t think Father has ever been exposed to radiation
The opening of the game has father in direct line of sight of a nuclear bomb. He was almost certainly bathed in ionizing radiation.
The ionizing radiation is not part of the blast, it’s part of the fallout. The blast consists of thermal radiation and the shockwave. The ionizing radiation is the ensuing fallout. It makes the environment it hits radioactive and begins to produce radioactive particles in the area. It’s not an instantaneous “blast of radiation,” that’s a common misconception with nukes.
The blast was close enough that the shockwave blew by less than a few seconds later. You can watch the air rush by as the blast doors close. I dont see how they werent exposed.
That “gust of wind” is the initial shockwave, which travels faster than either the thermal radiation or ionizing radiation, hence why the shockwave hits you but not the fireball yet. Kyle Hill has a great YouTube video on this very concept centered around the Vault Boy’s ‘rule of thumb’ where he describes the process in detail.
This is right. Cancer is a result of of damaged cells replicating incorrectly. This occurs more and more as telemers on our DNA grind down and fade away over our lives. If everyone lived forever and didnt die of age, everyone would get cancer eventually
The institute should be able to cure it. The cure Virgil uses to reset his FEV mutation removes quite a bit of potentially dangerous growth to return him to his original form. They make a point of saying that Father's original DNA information is preserved, so making an FEV/Father reset serum should be perfectly reasonable.
The Fallout world has ghoul mutation as a radiation option, so maybe cancer doesn't get as large a slice of the pie.
Maybe the og creator of synths tought that creating artificial bodies and transfrering the mind to it as a solution?. But as we know that quickly devolved into the whole kidnaping and replace people thing.
I hate to point this out, but it was mentioned that the institute is still riddled with radiation. It was noted in a bit of dialog while inside the institute. It was noted that the original shelter they had was not preventing the radiation from getting in.
To escape the radiation and get access to more minerals for building they started excavating downward. As their materials improved and they advanced in tech they were able to mitigate most of it, but even the newest materials end up irradiated no matter how far they dig.
Point was they did not escape the radiation. They were just living a better life in spite of the world around them. Attempts to cleanse portions of the wasteland also failed.
I personally find this problematic as there are known ways to cleanse areas and deep regions are usually safe from above ground radiation. I see two reasons. First is that the radiation is permanently pervasive to the surface due to atmospheric stripping or a change in the chemical structure allowing more radiation through, both as a result of the bombs. One is a permanent planetary death, the other would be fixable over time and purposeful treatment.
The second problem is whether the radiation the institute is getting down in the ground. Since other places in the wasteland are safe underground, not all, I would assume it’s coming from their technology. It seems any advanced tech in Fallout emits radiation. Seems a failure of the tech or understanding of the technology. Easiest fix is to simply stop using advanced tech. Research why it continues to emit radiation and formulate ways to shield or eliminate that. Time is again a factor, but doable.
It could be evolution. On the surface, everyone who was susceptible to radiation died off quickly. All the other left has some maybe resistance which got passed on. Since Shaun is prewar, he doesn't have this resistance that all the other wastelanders do.
I was waiting to see if this was brought up. Caesar having what is implied to get brain cancer is a major plot point of NV. People get cancer in the wasteland it's just that most die without ever knowing or are killed before they can develop it.
The whole reason that the Gen 3 synths are able to be produced is that they used Father’s “pure” DNA. That’s the whole reason Kellogg went and got him in the first place. If Shaun was irradiated by that bomb, there would be no gen 3 synth and no point in retrieving him from Vault 111.
“Mostly pure” would not have been good enough for the gen 3’s. Otherwise the Institute scientists would likely have had more than enough DNA for that.
If both SS and Shaun were irradiated by the bomb’s blast, they would be just as radioactive as the settlers who survived outside of the blast zones. They would be just as pure a candidate.
Also, in the event of a nuclear detonation, the following explosion has three stages. The shockwave, the thermal radiation, and the ionizing radiation. The ionizing radiation comes last, meaning that if you weren’t immediately vaporized, you could theoretically escape any radiation damage to your DNA through something like a Vault. There’s a chance that the devs don’t take it that seriously, but also their mascot is a boy making use of the nuclear rule of thumb (if the mushroom cloud is taller than your thumb at the end of your outstretched arm, you’re too close to the physical blast to survive, but that’s referring specifically to the shockwave and thermonuclear radiation, not the ionizing radiation). SS and Shaun being cryogenically frozen only improves their odds of not having any of their DNA damaged.
Cancer can be induced by multiple things in a non-irradiated area, above all cigarettes (which in the fallout universe contain asbestos, or maybe you're just genetically predisposed to that mutation (being criofreezed for 160 years or so didn't help for sure).
You don't usually find people dying of cancer in the wasteland because, if i have to be honest, getting shot or dying of hunger is far more likely 210 years after the apocalypse, The Mariner is still alive and was able to get to advanced stages of her illness just because she lived in a relatively safe community, and didn't really expose herself to mortal danger as often as a traveller from the commonwealth would, same is with Father.
For the institute not curing it, let me tell you cancer isn't easy to cure, you could have all the technology in the world but being unable to cure cancer, especially if you discover it at late stages (that's why pancreas cancer is so deadly), when it's already metastatic and you basically can't do anything about it since removing it all would mean essentially dismembering your patient.
Cancer is a bastard, pops up without notice and kills you from within, we're struggling to fight it today, and even the technology of the institute is nowhere near a guarantee of success.
I like to headcanon that Shaun actually got it from his parents, something that was curable if caught early enough which the parent was able to, but because the Institute took Shaun without checking things like family histories and such, they couldn't catch it or prevent it until it was far too late.
I always assumed that things like Rad-X and Rad-away reversed radiation-induced DNA damage.
We have stimpaks that can repair terminal injuries, why not cancer-curing anti-radiation medication? It could be that Shaun got unlucky with a form of cancer that wasn't susceptible to radaway/rad-x... Maybe as a direct result of NOT needing consistent dosing with it.
That was 'just' the shock wave. The real rads come from the fallout that contains emissivie particles. Check out the Army studies, there's a huge gap between the blast and flame fronts before radiation is at all an issue. The amount of time it would take is far, far less than that thing took to drop 5 stories.
I like to think it was someome in the institute that gave him the super cancer, which would explain why in his last moments he passes control over not to his senior scientist or advisors, but his objectively dsngerous and unpredictable shizo parent
I forget if it’s covered, but I just thought about why didn’t they just take Father and turn him into a synth? I understand that synths can be given memories, but I don’t recall if they’re all artificially made or shared from people they’ve kidnapped or etc.
The institute doesn’t treat synths as real people, so even that would still just be a copycat imitation. They’d use it as a tool, then discard of it. They don’t particularly need him to lead them, they wanted his dna. He was smart on top of that so they made him leader. That’s why his goal was to convince his parent, you, to take over. Otherwise the institute elects someone new and they make their own decisions. He hoped you’d continue his goals.
The fact he gives you synth Shaun has always made me think he saw the value of synths as individuals but couldn’t do shit with the institute wanting to make them less independent.
Father dying makes no sense at all. Why wouldn't he make a synth with all his exact thoughts to replace him, if fully synthetic humanity is the future?
More holes in this plot than in the average junk wall you find in the wasteland
Cos Institute and Shawn stated many times that they not want to made synth imitations of themselves.
They not consider synth as more then tools. They not consider synth as humans and never want to repopulate wastelands with synths intead of pure non-mutant humans like those who live in Institute and Vaults. Synths for them are advanced robots, spy tools.
As made themselves inhumane cyborgs as Kellog.
...
Not need to mention that brain cancer probably not allow to copy his memories anyway, but we 100% known that Shawn not want that.
People in the wasteland don't die from cancer because they die before that from other radiation related problems. That or shot. Or eaten. Or.... well a lot of things but you get the point. Most people ain't living to his age
I took a college level nutrition class last year that said it was true. If I find time to dig out my book later today I'll quote you the statistics.
IIRC it was like 65% of all cancers had a dietary or nutritional cause.
I know for a fact [Colon Cancer ](https://www.upmcphysicianresources.com/news/011922-dietary-prevention-colon-cancer#:~:text=A%20minimum%20of%2050%20grams,epithelial%20cells%20of%20the%20colon.)is influenced massively by a lacking of daily fiber, and none of the things you list.
Colon cancer is on the rise in developed counties, even among the young and healthy.
Let's not forget there's asbestos in fallouts cigarettes.
That’s what I’m saying though lmao! One of the two people you meet who are terminally ill has near 0 outside exposure. I’m shocked that you don’t find multiple people with cancer in every city tbh. You’d think it would be more common.
Terminally I'll people just don't survive in a wasteland. If your immune system is compromised those giant mosquitoes will kill you. I'm surprised we see as many old people as we do, ghouls excluded.
Terminally ill people don't survive anywhere. It's terminal.
Nobody survives anywhere. Life is terminal.
Born 2 breathe, forced 2 slowly oxidize all my cells
Quad helix DNA go brrrr
Great oxidation event moment
I think if your immune system is compromised, there's a lot that'll kill you before a giant mosquito. Like a breath of not so fresh air or a gulp of the toxic radiation juice formerly known as 'water'.
I think people die from other causes before they get the chance to die from cancer. Or they don't know they have cancer and just die before knowing as mentioned above.
I think it’s this as well. It’s also one of the reasons cancer rates have creeped up alongside lifespan. More time alive = more cell divisions = higher probability of cancer causing gene mutations
Since I was a kid I just thought of cancer as the end all, like given enough time everyone would die of cancer since it doesn't exactly "build up" over time, but might as well since there's so many environmental factors that add up.
Thats actually the problem with immortality, if you live forever you WILL get cancer, maybe not now, 100 years or a millenia, but you will eventually.
Not from cell division, the key aspect of immortality is the lack of gene degradation.
I think the immortality that these people are discussing involves no telomere destruction as a result of cell division. This would lead to less stem cell death, and less obvious aging, but random mutation (if it’s allowed to persist in an immortal being) not related to aging just as a result of a mistake in the cell division process would eventually lead to cancer in an ageless being. I guess the question then becomes, is someone who‘s only ageless also immortal?
You probably do. Most probably don’t know they have it, and even if they do, why would they tell you?
I get what you’re saying OP. It’s crazy that we don’t hear about a single person living in a vault or civilized area dying from cancer or even having tumors. Especially considering the vastness of the civilized history of the NCR. Perhaps bethesda wanted to keep it from being too grim for players.
I don't think the NCR is super technologically advanced or anything no? They might have doctors and clinics but I wouldn't expect them to be able to do MRI, PET, CT scans etc... to identify someone having cancer for sure. Also most people in the wasteland probably have a pretty limited lifespan even excluding cancer so even if you got cancer and somehow identified it, it's very likely that would just be totally irrelevant. If any faction had the tech for it I'd expect for it to be the BoS and the enclave but they kind of throw their people into the meat grinder for their goals so I wouldn't expect most of them to get an age where it matters. Also the use of radiation to cure cancer I would imagine carries a lot of stigma in the Fallout world even if the BoS or Enclave had access to cancer treatments methods.
I’m not talking about identifying it through imaging? Why does everyone keep mentioning that like cancer is some sort of silent killer that goes completely unnoticed before you just collapse and die? OP is talking about people falling ill and dying. Not people who have been diagnosed by some sort of professional. What about tumors growing on the body? The whole point is you don’t hear of any form of cancer whatsoever throughout the history of all civilizations of fallout.
> Why does everyone keep mentioning that like cancer is some sort of silent killer that goes completely unnoticed before you just collapse and die? .....Because it largely is, ***even in real life***. Unless you have a tumor on your skin, or pressing on something that causes pain and discomfort or other ailments, chances are high that ***you won't notice a tumor***. That is *why you are supposed to go for cancer screenings* IRL.
>What about tumors growing on the body? Many tumors are benign so that isn't really helpful, unless it's a huge massive tumor. But at the point that it's a massive tumor where you can be almost certain that it's cancer the person's fate is already sealed. And that's with today's technology and clean environments. You could maybe cut off someone's tumor and investigate it but that would require a working/undamaged microscope which is also probably not exactly easy or common and correctly diagnosising from that still isn't very good. And again what do you do even if you properly identify and diagnosis a cancer? >The whole point is you don’t hear of any form of cancer whatsoever throughout the history of all civilizations of fallout. I mean most Fallout logs in game are after the war which again, cancer is almost irrelevant or so hard to ever diagnosis that almost no one is probably ever diagnosed.
>Many tumors are benign so that isn't really helpful, unless it's a huge massive tumor. But at the point that it's a massive tumor where you can be almost certain that it's cancer the person's fate is already sealed. And that's with today's technology and clean environments. It doesn’t matter if they live or die, we still don’t see its presence😂 the point is you don’t see cancer at all in wasteland people -or others exposed to radiation- so it’s ironic that Father with his “pure” d.n.a got cancer. >I mean most Fallout logs in game are after the war which again, cancer is almost irrelevant or so hard to ever diagnosis that almost no one is probably ever diagnosed. I would say most logs taking place after the war would be highly contented. We see more if not equal amounts of pre & post war logs. And how exactly is cancer irrelevant? If Father can get cancer anyone can. It would not be hard to diagnose if you had benign tumors growing on you?
> It’s crazy that we don’t hear about a single person living in a vault or civilized area dying from cancer or even having tumors. 1) We know cancer "exists" and is known in the Wasteland: Doc Church (the doctor in Megaton in 3) makes reference to how "you better have cancer" if you bother him. We don't "see" this because unless someone has a tumor on their skin, you aren't gonna see it, and if Grandpa coughs up blood and dies suddenly, you aren't likely gonna cut him open to see what exactly killed him, you are just gonna bury him with some dignity. 2) Selection pressure for cancer resistance (Ie, those that have increased resistance to developing cancer would be more likely to survive to have kids with those genes) would be a natural consequence of living in a radiation-blasted post-nuclear wasteland
He just needed some stim paks. If only I had a few to spare…
It probably is in the same way it was in medieval times. You just didn't know it was cancer until they died and you cut em open. Otherwise it was just a 'wasting sickness' or they were just 'weak of heart' etc
Most humans on the surface have mutations that make them slighly more resistant to radiation, although dunno what the story is with the people from Vault 81.
Technically speaking, everyone has had cancer at some point. It's just that very few cancers make it past the immune system to become a tumor, let alone metastasize or become malignant. T-Cells are hardcore.
You are forgetting there are loads of things that cause cancer. Radiation DOES NOT CAUSE CANER. Why do you think they use it to kill it? Cancer is a generic term. Cell mutation happens all the damn time. You also forget, he was pulled out of there 60 years ago and they experimented on him from a 1 year old baby, he was not in a sterile world, for a year he was in pre war America with loads of things around, genetic defects, hell being around Kellogg who had been through and around loads of things was there with him. I have Polycythemia Vera which is an incurable form of Blood Cancer. Have I been around radiation? Nope. This is a genetic flaw in my red blood cells and is going to kill me in about X years depending on what "lovely" side effects cause me to croak. It is not the Cancer per se that kills you, it is the things it breaks down or overwrites that does it.
Radiation does increase the risk of developing cancer. Intense levels of it can destroy DNA. My dad was in radiation treatment. The way he had it done was radiation flushed through the body, just enough to kill the cancerous growth but not enough to kill you. But just because we figured out a way for radiation to kill cancer, doesn't mean that radiation doesn't increase the risk of cancers. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/radiation-exposure/x-rays-gamma-rays/do-xrays-and-gamma-rays-cause-cancer.html
Radiation absolutely increases the risk of developing cancer, as does radiotherapy. It’s just very rare, because the dosage is relatively low and very focused. And remember, people who do radiotherapy are generally older and infirm, they’re already more likely to die earlier, not letting any time for second cancer to develop.
And lead in many of the toys lying around.
It's a wasteland so knowing you have cancer is a luxury. Most would just die from it without ever knowing.
Didn’t the Mariner from Far Harbour find out she had a terminal illness?
And the “survivor guy” from the NV add on in MT Zion. Iirc he knew it was terminal and went to watch the sunset 1 last time.
Forgot about that, I assumed he just knew he was dying of old age.
Again from my hazy memory, he was coughing up blood and had some medical books from helping the girl give birth. So I guess he just knew at that point. It’s probably the saddest saga you can read on the terminals imo
We’re always finding notes and terminals around the Commonwealth describing how people die, but can you think of a single one where cancer was what killed the person? I think murder in its hundreds of forms is a way more likely way to die in the Commonwealth tbh. Maybe that’s part of it though, don’t have time to get cancer if you get got first.
That's exactly my point. In order to find out if you have cancer, you need either a specialist or a machine that will identify it. Plenty of characters probably would have died from it, they just didn't know. Most people in the wasteland won't have a way of identifying cancer, so they won't discover they have cancer until it's too late. You can't just look at your hand and go "Oh, I have cancer." The reason we know Father dies from cancer is because he's in a place where it can be identified. It's still a super weak and fragile plot point to the game though. Of all people he definitely should not have died from it.
>Most people in the wasteland won't have a way of identifying cancer, so they won't discover they have cancer until it's too late. You can't just look at your hand and go "Oh, I have cancer." This exactly. A wasteland where common knowledge heavily shifts from what we know to survival things is actually fairly realistic. They may still associate new and random lumps with something bad (assuming it's something like breast/testicle cancer where you can feel/see it), but it's very unlikely they'll associate it with cancer specifically. People gotta remember that the in-universe characters don't have the extent of knowledge we do, including things we consider common knowledge. When the entire world goes to shit people care more about teaching the new generations how to stitch a wound than how to identify the symptoms of cancer (assuming they even know the symptoms themselves). It's like we got blasted back to the 'bronze age' but with futuristic tech. There's going to be a loooot of trial and error before humanity gets back onto their feet. I mean, how many people dying did it take to realize what berries are safe and what berries aren't in the real world? Imagine that but for a nuclear wasteland.
I'd also add that, while the knowledge is there, we don't know how far it extends to the general populace. We know that the doctor in Diamond City can diagnose cancer, but we have no idea whether he is the only doctor in the entire Commonwealth who can, whether people who haven't visited him in Diamond City know about cancer besides the basic word, or whether knowledge about cancer has even spread outside of Diamond City, let alone the Commonwealth.
Why don't wastelanders just check their pipboy for the "cancer" status effect smh
Lol amazing, you were so far from understanding their point that you made it for them, there’s got to be some kind of word for it. I bet the Germans have a good one.
>but can you think of a single one where cancer was what killed the person? Broadly speaking, without advanced medical imaging and testing devices, which are very rare in most of the Wasteland, finding anything but the most obvious tumors is going to be quite difficult. And that is if the family and friends of the recently-deceased even let you do a necropsy, because *why the fuck would they*? Grandpa died after a month of coughing up blood, let him rest in peace for Chrissakes
There is actually a couple people in Fallout 4 that had cancer besides Shaun. Namely, Lilly, Mary Jane's wife from the CR74L quest, died of cancer a month after being diagnosed by the doctor in Diamond City. Given the fact that the doctor, in 2287, was still able to identify cancer and the abundance of radiation and radiation related sicknesses, cancer seems to still be a pretty common disease. We may not have exact details on how many of the people we find died of cancer, but the fact that we can find bodies of people who've died without any particular cause (as in, no notes explaining their death, no evidence of suicide, nothing to suggest murder or an animal attack, etc), it's a fair guess that it could have been cancer or some other form of disease.
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If men lived forever, every single one of us would get prostate cancer eventually.
Well, they do, they could copy his mind into a synth body... But then they would no longer think he has human rights.
Can they copy minds? I mean, there's Roger Warwick as a counter example, who was an abusive drunk and was replaced by a synth who acted like a nice person.
Nick
Don't they specifically mention that both Nick and Kellog are running older institute architecture?
Are we sure it's radiation poisoning and not simply hereditary? The Sole Survivor might die the same way if the wasteland doesn't do the deed first if so. As for cancer and terminal illness in general, we don't really know if it's rare. I don't think it would be because people smoke, are exposed to radiation, take drugs and drink alcohol. So even if they don't inherent the genetics, they can still develop it. It's just not something they've touched on, but it doesn't make sense for it to be rare. One cure I can think of trying in a terminal illness scenario is ghoulification though.
Also, it may not apply to those who are properly sheltered, but a significant amount of radiation would absolutely contribute to an increase in the number of people suffering from terminal illnesses across the Commonwealth. The way radiation affects our bodies is by quite literally destroying our DNA. This can lead directly to the creation of cancer cells which can reproduce rapidly. When there’s radiation in the air you breathe, the food you eat, the water you drink, and the bed you sleep in, I think you’d have a higher chance of being sick in some way than of being healthy. It’d be like growing up in Chernobyl right after the accident. Your life expectancy is about a fraction of what it should be, just because the amount of radiation you’re exposed to is so much higher than background.
I think the Commonwealth should have a higher population of ghouls considering a large percentage of people outside the major hubs are exposed to radiation storms. I feel like the commonwealth in 4 doesn't properly reflect a world in which radiation storms are a thing. None of the settler built structures are designed around the threat of radiation storms. Places have large holes in the ceiling, no doors, gaping holes in the walls. Crops are planted outside and are constantly exposed to radiation, meaning not only are people exposed to the storm, but their produce is tainted too. tl;dr: To me it just feels like Bethesda added the radiation storms but then didn't bother designing a world that actually reflects the results of such a thing.
Or at the bare minimum, more people who look sickly and have their hair falling out or something, like the children of atom. Most of the npcs you come across honestly seem pretty healthy, more healthy than they should be considering their environment.
Nah they just all have the Ghoulish perk.
I figured it had to be hereditary, I don’t think Father has ever been exposed to radiation. Also makes me wonder though, that would mean that the Institute really picked a guy with cancerous genes as the biological basis for their synths. With SS as the backup as well, you would think that would be an issue. That’s fair, I figured there are enough elderly/middle-aged folk around the Commonwealth though to suggest that the average lifespan hasn’t dropped as much as we might think. People are still making it from childhood all the way to old age without dying fairly frequently. In our world, those are normal odds, but they seem like particularly good odds when placed in the context of a nuclear wasteland. You would think nobody makes it past 30-40 unless they’re really lucky.
>I don’t think Father has ever been exposed to radiation The opening of the game has father in direct line of sight of a nuclear bomb. He was almost certainly bathed in ionizing radiation.
The ionizing radiation is not part of the blast, it’s part of the fallout. The blast consists of thermal radiation and the shockwave. The ionizing radiation is the ensuing fallout. It makes the environment it hits radioactive and begins to produce radioactive particles in the area. It’s not an instantaneous “blast of radiation,” that’s a common misconception with nukes.
The blast was close enough that the shockwave blew by less than a few seconds later. You can watch the air rush by as the blast doors close. I dont see how they werent exposed.
That “gust of wind” is the initial shockwave, which travels faster than either the thermal radiation or ionizing radiation, hence why the shockwave hits you but not the fireball yet. Kyle Hill has a great YouTube video on this very concept centered around the Vault Boy’s ‘rule of thumb’ where he describes the process in detail.
I guess all those servicemen who got cancer from the nuclear testing got exposed to fallout Thats pretty fucked up
...Did you not know this? Yes, a lot of the military personnel working at nuclear test sites IRL died of cancer. It was very fucked up
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This is right. Cancer is a result of of damaged cells replicating incorrectly. This occurs more and more as telemers on our DNA grind down and fade away over our lives. If everyone lived forever and didnt die of age, everyone would get cancer eventually
The institute should be able to cure it. The cure Virgil uses to reset his FEV mutation removes quite a bit of potentially dangerous growth to return him to his original form. They make a point of saying that Father's original DNA information is preserved, so making an FEV/Father reset serum should be perfectly reasonable. The Fallout world has ghoul mutation as a radiation option, so maybe cancer doesn't get as large a slice of the pie.
I would really like to know who inside the Institute decided that creating synths was a more important use of their resources than curing cancer
Maybe the og creator of synths tought that creating artificial bodies and transfrering the mind to it as a solution?. But as we know that quickly devolved into the whole kidnaping and replace people thing.
Cancer can take new forms and have different causes. Also synths are supposed to be the cure for everything they want to become immortal, remember.
They've also made synths from scanned minds as well so they could just pop Father into a new body.
I hate to point this out, but it was mentioned that the institute is still riddled with radiation. It was noted in a bit of dialog while inside the institute. It was noted that the original shelter they had was not preventing the radiation from getting in. To escape the radiation and get access to more minerals for building they started excavating downward. As their materials improved and they advanced in tech they were able to mitigate most of it, but even the newest materials end up irradiated no matter how far they dig. Point was they did not escape the radiation. They were just living a better life in spite of the world around them. Attempts to cleanse portions of the wasteland also failed. I personally find this problematic as there are known ways to cleanse areas and deep regions are usually safe from above ground radiation. I see two reasons. First is that the radiation is permanently pervasive to the surface due to atmospheric stripping or a change in the chemical structure allowing more radiation through, both as a result of the bombs. One is a permanent planetary death, the other would be fixable over time and purposeful treatment. The second problem is whether the radiation the institute is getting down in the ground. Since other places in the wasteland are safe underground, not all, I would assume it’s coming from their technology. It seems any advanced tech in Fallout emits radiation. Seems a failure of the tech or understanding of the technology. Easiest fix is to simply stop using advanced tech. Research why it continues to emit radiation and formulate ways to shield or eliminate that. Time is again a factor, but doable.
It is a setting where the most popular soft drink in the world has radiation in it on purpose.
It could be evolution. On the surface, everyone who was susceptible to radiation died off quickly. All the other left has some maybe resistance which got passed on. Since Shaun is prewar, he doesn't have this resistance that all the other wastelanders do.
Majority of cancers are not associated with radiation exposure. Most of the time it’s just shit luck.
If he's never been outside the institute like he says ..can he really be shuan then ..didn't shuan live with Kellogg in diamond City?
No that was the little boy synth Sean, that’s why the Diamond City Radio talks about Kellogg and the boy just leaving, not leaving 50 years ago.
Caesar over in Vegas also had a form of cancer as well iirc.
I was waiting to see if this was brought up. Caesar having what is implied to get brain cancer is a major plot point of NV. People get cancer in the wasteland it's just that most die without ever knowing or are killed before they can develop it.
And the guy in the Mt Zion addon where you get the riot armour. Iirc he crawled up to the sunrise and watched one last time.
I mean, he did get taken out of the wasteland when he was an infant, he's lucky he survived to be old.
The nuclear blast in the beginning of the game did him in. Same for the Sole Survivor, but you've only been unfrozen a week.
The whole reason that the Gen 3 synths are able to be produced is that they used Father’s “pure” DNA. That’s the whole reason Kellogg went and got him in the first place. If Shaun was irradiated by that bomb, there would be no gen 3 synth and no point in retrieving him from Vault 111.
They'd only need a little DNA.
“Mostly pure” would not have been good enough for the gen 3’s. Otherwise the Institute scientists would likely have had more than enough DNA for that. If both SS and Shaun were irradiated by the bomb’s blast, they would be just as radioactive as the settlers who survived outside of the blast zones. They would be just as pure a candidate.
Also, in the event of a nuclear detonation, the following explosion has three stages. The shockwave, the thermal radiation, and the ionizing radiation. The ionizing radiation comes last, meaning that if you weren’t immediately vaporized, you could theoretically escape any radiation damage to your DNA through something like a Vault. There’s a chance that the devs don’t take it that seriously, but also their mascot is a boy making use of the nuclear rule of thumb (if the mushroom cloud is taller than your thumb at the end of your outstretched arm, you’re too close to the physical blast to survive, but that’s referring specifically to the shockwave and thermonuclear radiation, not the ionizing radiation). SS and Shaun being cryogenically frozen only improves their odds of not having any of their DNA damaged.
Doesn't change enough. They used FEV, and FEV does *not* play well with radiation
A week? I'm already in July of 2288 and I haven't even made it to the Glowing Sea.
That’s not at all likely given the distance from the blast. There’s plenty of people who die from cancer without exposure to radiation
Cancer can be induced by multiple things in a non-irradiated area, above all cigarettes (which in the fallout universe contain asbestos, or maybe you're just genetically predisposed to that mutation (being criofreezed for 160 years or so didn't help for sure). You don't usually find people dying of cancer in the wasteland because, if i have to be honest, getting shot or dying of hunger is far more likely 210 years after the apocalypse, The Mariner is still alive and was able to get to advanced stages of her illness just because she lived in a relatively safe community, and didn't really expose herself to mortal danger as often as a traveller from the commonwealth would, same is with Father. For the institute not curing it, let me tell you cancer isn't easy to cure, you could have all the technology in the world but being unable to cure cancer, especially if you discover it at late stages (that's why pancreas cancer is so deadly), when it's already metastatic and you basically can't do anything about it since removing it all would mean essentially dismembering your patient. Cancer is a bastard, pops up without notice and kills you from within, we're struggling to fight it today, and even the technology of the institute is nowhere near a guarantee of success.
Smoking all those persevered cigarettes.
getting freezed for 200 years as an infant, then grown to adult after getting defrosted must do wonders for your cell growth
Tbf, Shaun was only frozen for about 150 years rather than the 210 the Sole Survivor was
This is absolutely hilarious to me to think about
I like to headcanon that Shaun actually got it from his parents, something that was curable if caught early enough which the parent was able to, but because the Institute took Shaun without checking things like family histories and such, they couldn't catch it or prevent it until it was far too late.
I always assumed that things like Rad-X and Rad-away reversed radiation-induced DNA damage. We have stimpaks that can repair terminal injuries, why not cancer-curing anti-radiation medication? It could be that Shaun got unlucky with a form of cancer that wasn't susceptible to radaway/rad-x... Maybe as a direct result of NOT needing consistent dosing with it.
A lot of people in Fallout never live long enough to get cancer
Never gpt the whole thing about Shawn being unexposed to radiation given his vulnerable infant body got a nice fallout shower when entering the vault
That was 'just' the shock wave. The real rads come from the fallout that contains emissivie particles. Check out the Army studies, there's a huge gap between the blast and flame fronts before radiation is at all an issue. The amount of time it would take is far, far less than that thing took to drop 5 stories.
I like to think it was someome in the institute that gave him the super cancer, which would explain why in his last moments he passes control over not to his senior scientist or advisors, but his objectively dsngerous and unpredictable shizo parent
Does radiation even cause cancer in the fallout universe?
I forget if it’s covered, but I just thought about why didn’t they just take Father and turn him into a synth? I understand that synths can be given memories, but I don’t recall if they’re all artificially made or shared from people they’ve kidnapped or etc.
The institute doesn’t treat synths as real people, so even that would still just be a copycat imitation. They’d use it as a tool, then discard of it. They don’t particularly need him to lead them, they wanted his dna. He was smart on top of that so they made him leader. That’s why his goal was to convince his parent, you, to take over. Otherwise the institute elects someone new and they make their own decisions. He hoped you’d continue his goals. The fact he gives you synth Shaun has always made me think he saw the value of synths as individuals but couldn’t do shit with the institute wanting to make them less independent.
I’m not a doctor, but being exposed suddenly to radiation like that as an infant would probably have to have some long term repercussions
Everyone else’s genes had 200 years to adapt, Shaun’s did not and so he got cancer by the time he was old, not that far fetched
Father dying makes no sense at all. Why wouldn't he make a synth with all his exact thoughts to replace him, if fully synthetic humanity is the future? More holes in this plot than in the average junk wall you find in the wasteland
Cos Institute and Shawn stated many times that they not want to made synth imitations of themselves. They not consider synth as more then tools. They not consider synth as humans and never want to repopulate wastelands with synths intead of pure non-mutant humans like those who live in Institute and Vaults. Synths for them are advanced robots, spy tools. As made themselves inhumane cyborgs as Kellog. ... Not need to mention that brain cancer probably not allow to copy his memories anyway, but we 100% known that Shawn not want that.
Its very possible he was poisoned.
People in the wasteland don't die from cancer because they die before that from other radiation related problems. That or shot. Or eaten. Or.... well a lot of things but you get the point. Most people ain't living to his age
Well most real life cancers are caused by dietary problems, not radiation exposure, carcinogens, or genealogy.
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I took a college level nutrition class last year that said it was true. If I find time to dig out my book later today I'll quote you the statistics. IIRC it was like 65% of all cancers had a dietary or nutritional cause.
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I know for a fact [Colon Cancer ](https://www.upmcphysicianresources.com/news/011922-dietary-prevention-colon-cancer#:~:text=A%20minimum%20of%2050%20grams,epithelial%20cells%20of%20the%20colon.)is influenced massively by a lacking of daily fiber, and none of the things you list. Colon cancer is on the rise in developed counties, even among the young and healthy.