How does Ghoulification work?

Añadido: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]Every ghoul from the Fallout universe, whether it's the two century old bounty hunter or the mindless creature scratching at a vault door, was once a perfectly normal human being, nearly biologically and genetically identical to the person they were on October 23rd, 2077, that started their day without any knowledge of what would unfold. Yet, ghoulification doesn't have only one effect. The results are extremely diverse. While some individuals emerge from this process with their intelligence intact, though aggressive but otherwise recognizable, some gradually fall into another state, while others undergo a much more drastic change, even transforming into something more akin to a living tree than a human.

[00:00:35]Same starting process, yet a completely different result. And while the question of what causes these differences has remained unanswered for almost 30 years of lore, there is a way to get an answer once you take a look into the science of ghoulification itself, psychology behind it, vaults which used it deliberately, and a TV show which has changed everything. Today we are going to discuss in detail how ghoulification works, exploring its effects both at cellular and psychological levels, all of the stages and what actually makes a ghoul. The spectrum. There is not a single result that arises out of ghoulification. Rather, there is a spectrum ranging from the 200-year-old fully functional ghoul to a man who quite literally became a tree. That man is known in the wastess as Harold, rooted in such a way as to form his body covered in bark. While a full tree grows directly out of his head that has been given the name Bob by him, once just a sapling sprouting out of a crack in his skull, yet still conscious and able to communicate beneath all that. Harold has experienced the most extreme stage there is. The most shocking case that there is no boundaries to how far the process of gulification can go. Harold's transformation makes it obvious that there are no limits that biology places on it, but rather an everextending boundary to what it can produce. Harold, however, is the horrifying exception.

[00:01:44]But what are the less monstrous mutations that can occur? An example of that would be Cooper Howard, star of the Fallout TV show. Former Marine, former Hollywood star, exposed to radiation after the nuclear explosions in California on October 23rd, 2077, yet walking around 200 years later. Cunning, lethal, determined. This is stage one transformation accomplished.

[00:02:03]brainworking individual remaining largely recognizable. And then we have Roy Phillips, a ghoul in Fallout 3 that resides in the sewers under Ten Penney Tower and watches himself fall, gradually losing agency over his own mind, sees the exact same phenomenon occurring in all of the ghouls around him with complete clarity as to what is taking place. Roy is stage two, the transformation into something known as ferocious necrotic posthuman or as everyone else refers to it as feral. The [music] feral stage does not require much explanation. As the name implies, gone is the human that used to exist.

[00:02:33]This would be the third stage in the ghoulification process. The feral point, known by the player by the sight of all those things walking through every single metro passage and destroyed buildings in the wastelands as enemies that attack you on site. Gone is the human that used to exist. But how does it really happen? What decides whether a person will retain themselves through all else despite their new appearance, slowly losing themselves until they are nothing more than a mindless feral living in a sewage pipe or even the bizarre metamorphosis into a tree. The explanation involves biology, psychology, a vault intentionally left open, and a TV show that redefined what being a ghoul [music] can mean. The war that destroyed physics. In order to define ghoulification, one needs first to realize how the bombings were performed. In Fallout, unlike any other textbook, the effects of the bomb turned out to be quite different than anticipated. The scale of the detonations in 2077 was so catastrophic [music] that instead of just blowing up buildings, it changed the very nature of the world and did so irrevocably on a chemical level. The [music] radiation itself did not decay the way any pre-war scientist had predicted, and the huge amount of energy released through detonation resulted in a cocktail of chemicals that the old physics simply had no language for. The soil took it all in, polluting all water sources, spreading to the ecosystem, corrupting all flora and fauna that comprised [music] it. In our reality, there aren't too many mysteries surrounding the effects of radiation. It breaks down cellular processes, breaks DNA strands, prevents proper replication, and ultimately the breakdown of the organism itself. Massive doses lead to immediate results. Lower, more persistent doses cause similar consequences over years and decades. In either case, the end result is cellular death. The manifestation of cancer, organ failure, immune system shutdown, and eventually [music] an agonizing death. It's what the bombs from the Great War caused for most of those lucky enough to survive the initial blasts, which is why most of the population perished during and after the apocalypse. The standard death from exposure to radioactive material that was promised by physics. The overwhelming majority of those unfortunate enough to be exposed to such high levels of contamination ended up dead shortly after without any room for redemption. Only a very tiny proportion of people were subjected to another form of experience, a different form of exposure. Perhaps genetic [music] markers that made certain people uniquely responsive to certain FEV contaminated places or prolonged radiation exposure caused their cells to undergo unique reactions unknown before.

[00:04:47]But their cells did not cease replicating. Instead, they adapted themselves into a new cycle of replication and continued, only differently now. Their bodies had entered an unending cycle of decomposition and repair, where their body tissues would be constantly torn down as much as they were recreated in some form, and where neither process won any clear advantage over the other.

[00:05:06]That's stage zero, decomposition. Their skin cells died off, but were replaced by something even more hearty than themselves. Something almost like a callous spread across bone tissue rather than a [music] living tissue. Their nose cartilage disintegrated. Their hair follicles ceased functioning. Their eyes changed structure, somehow developing the characteristic glowing yellow color common to most ghouls without anyone ever figuring out quite how. All of which means that the end result is a walking corpse that somehow refuses to finish dying. And yet, for some reason, it works somehow through some unknown process. The biological and metabolic functions continue. Blood continues flowing to the brain. Consciousness persists and the affected person wakes up, looks at the mirror, and has the worst morning of their life. but keeps on living. This is ghoulification in stage zero, the gradual [music] change, the impossible survival. Vault 12, the gradual decay. One of Vault-Tec's most twisted and barbaric experiments can provide us with a good look at how ghouls [music] really became ghouls and came to be in the wasteland. Vault 12, which later became known as Necropolis, was located in Bakersfield, California.

[00:06:04]It was a big underground vault, a VaultTech standard meant to shield its inhabitants from being blown to pieces by nuclear hellfire. The Great War then started and ended as abruptly as it began with nuclear destruction on a scale incomprehensible. The families entered the vault and the door seemed to have sealed on them as intended. But little did they know that it had not completely and that was no accident.

[00:06:24]Unbeknownst to even the overseer of Vault 12, VaultTech conducted an experiment that was simple but horrifying. It was done deliberately to study the process and the outcome of a radiation of an entire population inside an airtight facility. But the people inside Vault 12 weren't aware of that fact. They believed that they had been put inside a secure environment to live out their lives during the end of the world and had no idea that the door behind them remained just slightly open the whole time. Radiation affected them slowly, continuously, no big waves.

[00:06:53]Instead, there was a long period of low levels of radiation exposure, enough to allow biological adaptation instead of complete body shutdown. For many years, maybe even decades, people from [music] Vault 12 were exposed to radiation.

[00:07:05]Their bodies managed to develop biological adaptation. As a consequence, they became ghouls. Not all of them, not all at once, but their bodies slowly began decaying and transforming through a process not without tremendous suffering. But a significant population of them survived and eventually made it out into the surface forever transformed. They started Necropolis, a city of ghouls constructed among the ruins of Bakersfield. One of the early examples of organized ghoul settlements in the west. Necropolis was a town of people who went through an experience not covered by any pre-war bureaucratic document trying to create some kind of community in its aftermath. In terms of the original Fallout game, this meant that Necropolis existed for more than a hundred years with the survivors of Vault 12 discovering their lives had been unnaturally extended far beyond regular humans. The experiment conducted by Vault Tech, whether they openly admitted it or not, could be described as a controlled ghoulification project.

[00:07:55]Radiation levels entering Vault 12 via its damaged door, were not randomly chosen. They were precisely calculated to achieve certain results within a specified time frame. What they needed to find out was exactly what the wasteland showed in its uncontrolled experiments elsewhere. At what point of radiation exposure does a human turn into a ghoul instead of dying? And what remains of the survivors after the transformation? Vault 12 provided the answer. That answer was their bodies adapted enough to build a city, enough intelligence to lead, and enough to recall mostly every detail of their former lives. enough sense of self to be angry at the injustice that was done to them by those who finally understood what VaultTech had done. The breach was the test. The ghouls were the result.

[00:08:33]Necropolis was what happened to the results when the scientists weren't watching the feral question. What is the crucial element between being functional ghouls that can build civilizations like those of Necropolis and Feral Ghouls?

[00:08:44]This is precisely what the series continually circles around unable to provide a definitive answer. And that's perhaps on purpose since in universe even those who've had years of experience studying ghouls can't provide a definitive explanation. Ghouls have been extensively studied across the wastes by the likes of the Brotherhood of Steel, the followers of the Apocalypse, and even individual researchers like Moira Brown at Megaton.

[00:09:06]None of them have reached an absolute conclusion as to why certain ghouls behave the way some become feral while others don't. All that remains is an assortment of data points, [music] patterns, and theories along with one very disquing theory that the game hints at but refuses to outright state. The trend that becomes evident is this. A ghoul turning feral happens most often in situations where there is long-term exposure to radiation as well as social isolation and lack of cognitive engagement. A ghoul that interacts with other individuals in any way. A ghoul that has frequent conversations with others, makes decisions, and has something to retain their focus is much less likely to devolve into a feral state compared to one left in solitude in a cellar or a ruined building. If the ghoul is in an environment that constantly exposes it to high levels of radiation, and if they can neither get away from there nor receive help of any kind, the deterioration will happen faster. It seems obvious that hope and a drive towards some goal to achieve, some task to perform, somebody or something they hate, or some obligations to fulfill makes them stay mentally sound far longer than the one that doesn't.

[00:10:06]Thus, the process of feral transformation is both biological and cognitive in its nature. Since not only does the brain have to deal with all the biological stress associated with radiation, the structure of the brain seems to be changed by the stimuli it encounters. Take the ghouls that inhabit Rivet City from Fallout 3 as a case study. Rivet City is an enormous former aircraft carrier repurposed into a community built on the banks of the Ptoac River. And among its [music] residents are a few ghouls who coexist and interact with the human community.

[00:10:34]These ghouls being engaged with others in trade, discourse, labor, and social interaction are mentally acute despite having existed for over a century and a half. In many cases, they remain quite clearly and distinctly themselves, remaining cognizant, engaging in debates, and being bored in the way only a person can be bored when they possess a fully formed mind. Contrast this with the feral ghouls that roam the ruined remains of Washington DC, inhabiting the underground tunnels of the metro, fallen skyscrapers, and ruined parking garages of once great America. These ghouls, separated from any sort of contact with other human beings in heavily irradiated ruins for two centuries or so, have had nothing left to do for all that time.

[00:11:11]But think about nothing. They have gone nowhere, solved nothing, discussed nothing, and had no one or anything to resist the constant onslaught of radiation to their minds. And it's completely incomparable. There's no comparison between the DC downtown ferals and the Rivet City Ghouls. They might as well belong to two entirely separate branches of evolution. But the only major distinction that separates them, aside from the geography of their existence, is whatever mental stimulation they were required to undergo over the course of 200 years.

[00:11:38]That's the question of the ferals.

[00:11:40]That's how ghoulication proceeds if the environmental circumstances are not right. The show brought one [music] thing to the debate about ghoulification and feral ghouls that neither of the games ever considered, and it is relevant when considering the case of Cooper Howard and the ghoul's survival as a whole. During both seasons, Cooper is depicted using yellow colored liquid from small vials, either by inhalation or injection. This does not cure ghoul.

[00:12:03]It does not undo the physical changes in appearance of a ghoul or make it look like it looked before the ghoulification process occurred. Rather, what it does is prevent the neurological degeneration which would otherwise make it turn feral. Should he go without the injections, Cooper will go feral quickly. According to season 2, the time span for him doing so appears to be only about 6 to 12 hours after the last shot, as indicated in the episode where he is seen impaled on the pole near Atomic Wrangler Casino in Freside, convulsing and growling after that amount of time passed without him getting a new dose.

[00:12:32]And in order to remain sane enough to recognize himself, he needs to continuously repeat his name and other information out loud, confirming how ghouls need a sound mind, clear identity, and objectives to stay sane.

[00:12:43]This entirely changes the perception of how he and other ghouls survive. The 200 years of ghoul that he had been in a sense the functional and purposeful kind of ghoul that he had been described as throughout his life until now. It all happened while he had this incredibly costly and difficult to obtain chemical addiction to contend with at all times.

[00:13:00]The vials are not easy to come by. There are the organ harvesters in the Los Angeles region who seem to be the main source of the substance for the ghoul community in the show. And this is telling the audience quite a bit about where the production process comes from and what might go into making the substance. But here's where it gets really serious. Because if the medication can suppress ferality, and if these supplies have been around in some shape or form since at least the post-war period based on how developed the network for their distribution is by 2296, the question about all the ghouls becomes all the more haunting. Just how many of them turned into monsters simply because the cure was not available to them? How many of the creatures without any semblance of consciousness that roam about the metro and its abandoned buildings were once living humans? Who could have survived? if anyone managed to give them a vial. In every one of the video games, the concept of ferality was seen to be inevitable given the right circumstances. Something that eventually occurred to each and every ghoul if decayed enough, like a clockwork process that could not [music] be stopped. The new show, on the other hand, offers a different perspective on the issue, suggesting that there is a universal possibility of chemical suppression of ferality. It is no longer just a biological catastrophe. It's a systemic one. The ghoulification of the wasteland's feral ghouls shifts from being a result of biological and psychological forces to a victim of economic and availability issues. While the ghoulification process was always a grim image in the games, the new series take on it has made it more sinister in a whole new way. There never was a neat and conclusive definition for ghouls turning feral throughout the whole series. There were always holes in the lore. Various games have made additions that don't completely match [music] up with previous information, just like the creation of the vials for the TV show.

[00:14:39]Writers have disagreed with one another in various entries, and the in-game science of ghouls is intentionally unfinished since there is not an operating authority within the wasteland that could do proper research on the matter. This vagueness is inherent to the game and has been designed that way, in part consciously and in part due to the nature of a multi-deade old franchise. The Price of Sanity Roy Phillips sets the example by how volatile Ghoul's state of mind can be by getting one of the most quietly devastating and brutal endings in the entire franchise. Surrounded [music] and standing on top of nothing but corpses, the aftermath of a blood bath. Roy Phillips is a ghoul living in the sewers under Ten Penney [music] Tower. And he has been there for so long that the odor no longer affects him. Tenpeny Tower is a rare pre-war luxury building within the capital wasteland which has been [music] repurposed as a human bastion.

[00:15:26]This fortress is ruled by Alistair Tenpenney, a man who has chosen to exclude ghouls from his compound, even those who possess normal cognitive faculties due to their lack of aesthetic appeal to him. Roy and several other ghouls have been occupying the underground maintenance area of the building for an extensive period [music] of time, pleading for admittance, but failing to gain any ground. On paper, Royy's quest in Fallout 3 is supposed to read like a tale of civil rights. Ghoul exclusions from settlement based on looks alone. Roy wanted entry for his people, so the player makes a peace treaty for everyone. On paper, Royy's quest reads like a tale that ends happily for everyone if the player acts appropriately. But it doesn't. Even through the peaceful route in which the player manages to convince Ten Penney to take in the ghouls, even with Roy getting exactly what he demanded, Roy remains unstable. He does not calm down, and in no time at all, the people in Ten Penney Tower are either dead or expelled, massacred. While Roy and his group of ghoul friends have claimed the entire place, the piece didn't break because of human actions against the ghouls. It ended because Roy Phillips had already gone too far into his own descent to maintain anything when it was all settled down. There is a piece of information Roy reveals to the protagonist during their conversations, which goes unnoticed by many on a first-time gameplay. It appears that Roy [music] mentions the deterioration of the ghouls around him, those who went feral, whom he couldn't help, whom he watched turning into monsters. And then slowly and cautiously, Roy confesses that it may happen to him as well.

[00:16:47]Nothing tragic here, nothing dramatic or [music] a plea for help. Simply a fact and a realization he reached. Something Roy noticed and something he understands might be his future. It is that honest admission that made Roy Phillips a disturbing and the most uncomfortable character of the Fallout franchise. Not because of the fact that he is evil [music] or monstrous, but rather because he is aware that he is becoming feral, yet has no way of stopping the inevitable. The isolation has been there for too long. The resentment has existed alongside of his rational thoughts for too long. And now it all began to merge and fuse together. He is neither feral nor redeemed. He's already in the state of transition. And what's scary about this is that on the inside, apparently, there isn't anything particularly remarkable about it. It just means feeling tired all the time, caring a bit less about the things you've cared about before. the growing sense of your inability to distinguish what's right and what you want to do growing slightly less as time passes by. Roy Phillips is in the process of becoming the feral ghoul that the franchise tends to skip ahead to. They want the functional ghoul. They want the feral ghoul, but he's not neither yet. Possibly never either, but most definitely both soon.

[00:17:54]The game leaves you with that feeling without an option to resolve it. Nothing but fate. But fate can be changed. And the next ghoul knows this all too well.

[00:18:01]The weight of outliving everyone. While Roy Phillips represents the fate of those who [music] never managed to establish themselves in a place where they can feel safe and grounded, Raul Tahada from Fallout New Vegas represents the fate of one who found such a place and saw it ripped away from him repeatedly and over the span of centuries. Raul was ghoulified during the nuclear holocaust in 2077. At that time he was already an adult male with a past and friends and family and his ghoulification didn't erase that history for him. He remembers it clearly as he has been able to ruminate on it and think back on it from multiple angles for about 200 years now. He has spent 200 years reconciling with some things while discovering others that deserve grief because grief in the wasteland has more than enough fuel to keep going forever. [music] Over time, he became a gunslinger. An extremely good one, too.

[00:18:48]Not because he had to be simply because staying alive in the wasteland for 200 years with the face of a ghoul without any political clout demanded nothing less. He became quick. He became efficient. He stopped considering the firearm to be a weapon and began to view it as a language, the only dialect understood by the wasteland. But finally, he grew tired. When the courier finds Raul locked inside a radio tower in the Mojave, the old ghoul is not reverting to his feral instincts. His intellect is wholly intact. His skills still remain intact, too. To me, he remains one of the best companions in the game. Yet, he has become tired. He has made his calculations and realized that there is a point where the wasteland will take away everything from you, even the desire to fight back against your foes. Raul's quest line, Old School Ghoul, deals with whether this feeling can be sustainable for an extended period of time. That is, whether a ghoul is capable of retaining his or her mental sanity despite lack of purpose, or if that corner and those idle moments are simply a slower manifestation of what Roy Phillips was going through in the tunnels. Raul's response depends completely on what the gamer chooses to do. And that response will ultimately be correct because no one knows the point at which that rest turns into something else. What Raul could come to represent is Cooper Howard after losing more or what [music] Cooper is going to look like once he has exhausted all his options and lost all hope of reuniting with his family. That being his core goal. However, the longevity provided by ghoulification does not come at no cost. It comes with the expectation of continuously looking for reasons to justify it. The brightest leader. What if I told you that ghouls could glow in the dark? Being so irradiated that merely standing near them for a short period of time could burn your skin off all the way to the bone. Those are the glowing ones. ghouls that were exposed to such massive amounts of radiation during their transformation process that they emit a vivid green bioluminescence, turning them into living conduits of radioactivity. This transformation occurs when a ghoul's system stops filtering radioactive particles absorbed through the blood and tissue, causing the radiation to build up and glow visibly, especially in the dark. Jason Bright is a glowing one. A ghoul so radiated that he glows with the very light of radiation. A light so bright that he can be recognized from afar as a danger of radiation that can harm anyone standing nearby. Jason Bright is the head of the Bright Brotherhood group of ghouls in Fallout New Vegas. Stationed at the old test site of RepCon, where he prepares for the launch of a set of rockets that will bring them somewhere far from the hatred of humans and the horrors of the wasteland. Jason Brite is a man who turned faith into purpose. Not faith alone, but purpose-driven faith.

[00:21:11]Faith that has goals. And it was this faith that made him focus on the future rather than dwell on the hardships of being a ghoul in a wasteland that despises them. And their community benefits from Mitt. The ghouls of Bright Brotherhood are not hostile. They do not automatically attack the courier either.

[00:21:28]They are simply a community looking for a way out, a solution to the problem of ghoulification that would not require anything but themselves. Since they have realized that expecting any betterment from humans is a waste of time. This method of theirs is brilliant. perhaps tragic and quite poetic and it does work or rather almost worked if the player gives them a helping hand. This is where the character of Jason Brite makes the discussion of ghoulification interesting. He is a glowing one and glowing ones are the ghouls who have absorbed so much radiation from their surroundings that they are now emitting radiation themselves. In other words, they have moved beyond normal ghoulification and cannot contain all that radiation anymore. However, Jason Brightite is entirely mentally coherent.

[00:22:10]He is a man who thinks deeply, communicates clearly, is genuinely and carefully spiritual, and appears to be wholly capable of handling his cognitive capacities. This makes him far more competent and indeed more consciously calm than was Roy Phillips at a lower radiation level. This shows that the theory of higher radiation equals more feral state is not necessarily true.

[00:22:30]Jason Bright is an anomaly to this hypothesis. He is a glowing being, and thus his radiation levels far exceed those of the norm and is perfectly fine.

[00:22:38]Perhaps he can even be called serenely composed. Here once again lies the core of the difference between the two. Jason Bright has something that makes him get out of bed and continue living day after day. He has people to answer to. He has responsibilities and goals that are sufficiently concrete for him to move forward, but at the same time important enough to motivate him to do so. There are certainly some good points about the glowing ones. While many of the glowing ones the player comes across are in fact feral and some of the most dangerous of the feral ghouls due to the radiation signature they possess and the fear this generates causing them to be cast out, avoided and left by themselves. Jason Brite avoided such an end because he was able to find others before the process of isolation could fully take place. The difference between the two groups of mutants lies in this one variable. The dose type and time spent in radiation does not play as great a role as whether there is something else to live for once the mutation process is completed. For Jason, there were the rockets. For Roy Phillips, it was the sewer system under the ruins of Los Angeles. The unbroken gunslinger Cooper Howard wasn't anything special in terms of ghoulifying, at least not that we know yet. The series hasn't explained when and how this happened. This is the intended approach and it remained unresolved even after season 2. The information that can be derived from the timeline [music] is plain and simple. He lost his family during the bombing of Los Angeles. He wasn't inside a vault and he was affected by the nuclear explosion in full force. His ghoulification most likely followed the regular pattern. The process of turning into a ghoul occurred due to excessive irradiation. There is nothing unusual about the case of the former marine and Hollywood celebrity who once appeared on the posters of VaultTech. Everything that followed is the point where Cooper's tail takes a turn. And this turn is not due to any superiority in his case compared to that of other ghouls, biological or otherwise. Rather, it is a set of things which are common individually, but come to form something special when viewed from outside after two centuries. One of these things is his military training as Cooper was part of the Marine Corps that participated in the Sino-American War, specifically the operation of Alaskan Reclamation. Such service does not render a person immune to anything.

[00:24:42]However, it provides them with a way to function in environments that are specifically designed to destroy their psyche, to cope with fear, overcome panic, and coordinate actions towards objectives in conditions where everything around goes wild. After gullification robbed Cooper of one existence and put him in a world where there was no place left for Hollywood actors, all these skills remained at his disposal. They did not protect him from becoming what he was. Yet they helped him to find ways to survive tomorrow and the day after. Bounty hunting is the second. [music] And you know what? It fits perfectly into the model. You find your target, you locate your target, you bring them back, you collect, and you get another contract. Bounty hunting wasn't something that Cooper took up out of romance. He did it to keep himself active, keep his mind [music] on things practical, and most importantly for the caps. Not for sustenance, but for the vials. And that's where the idea of Cooper Howard as the two century old monument to sheer willpower and self-discipline starts to show cracks because the vials are a crucial element.

[00:25:36]If not for the constant doses of the yellow drug he constantly takes during both seasons, Cooper Howard would probably have gone feral after only several hours. This aspect becomes clear in season 2 where Cooper is rendered immobile after an incident at the Atomic Wrangler. His bag lying right under him but just out of reach. After only several hours of not receiving the required amount of drugs, Cooper Howard went into convulsions and started snarling. He loses language skills and loses consciousness, having to recall his name for himself to keep himself conscious. My name is Cooper Howard. I have a daughter. Her name is Janie.

[00:26:07]She's alive. He needs to keep repeating his name and remembering his family as a way to recall his true objective of reuniting with them as his body tries to push him somewhere from which he can't get back. That rescue brings into play an element that puts not only Cooper's survival, but the whole biology of ghouls in the series in a different light. A mysterious super mutant drags Cooper to a church, supports him, and forces a large piece of green radiation emitting uranium into the very spot where the pole had injured Cooper in his abdomen, and the injury starts healing.

[00:26:36]In other words, we see on screen as literally and vividly as possible what has previously been described in the game texts without being proving this directly. Radiation does not only help ghouls withstand it. It is the power that drives their biology, the healing process that makes the life of ghouls possible, that allows their body parts to regenerate, their injuries to recover, and their organisms to survive for centuries under the constant attacks of time and decay relies on the radiation they endure. It is the fuel for their healing process, just like calories in human bodies. Without this fuel, healing fails. With plenty of it, a mortal wound becomes a scratch.

[00:27:13]However, the uranium remains inside him.

[00:27:16]This is the aspect that the series fails to address entirely because a piece of extremely radioactive metal inside [music] a ghoul's body is an ongoing process. The steady emission of radiation from an embedded piece of uranium whose energy directly impacts the ghoul's biology over time is precisely what gives rise to the glowing ones. According to the lore, ghouls who've been exposed to high levels of radiation for so long that their bodies become bioluminescent and emit radiation capable of healing other ghouls or harming humans. Though this particular scenario has yet to be confirmed by the series, it has made significant preparations. Cooper Howard, who was already well into his second century as a ghoul, now has a radioactive core embedded inside him after being helped by a super mutant that knew exactly how to manipulate ghoul biology. The implications of this for ghoul healing are important as well. This means that the substance that is responsible for their ferality, which involves constant radiation that gradually deteriorates the brain, is also responsible for everything that keeps them from being killed instantly. The biological system that keeps the ghoul going, is the same biological system that will one day bring about its demise. The process of healing and decay are not opposites that come out of separate biological systems.

[00:28:23]Instead, the two are the same biological system running in opposite directions at the same time. As radiation fuels regeneration of the body while slowly damaging the brain, the end of the spectrum. Herald is the place where ghoulification ceases being an illness and becomes something philosophy lacks an actual name for. His first appearance was in the original Fallout, released in 1997, already standing out in terms of personality and physical appearance amongst the ghouls of the West Coast.

[00:28:49]Harold is an enigmatic drifter with a minor tumor on his forehead that he calls Bob. Bob is strange yet manageable. He is not an ailment, just an anomaly, an eccentricity. Something interesting to talk about. Harold regards him much like an old skin ailment that needs no further [music] discussion. He hadn't yet processed it all. Harold was there when the master's FEIV tanks exploded before Fallout 1 and had experienced both intense radiation exposure and a concentrated dose of forced evolutionary virus. This process didn't do what ghoulification usually does. It keeps evolving. Ghoulification hits a certain level and then just stops. It reaches a new point of homeostasis and stays there in a hideous and eternal state of being. Harold's case never stopped. Bob becomes a twig.

[00:29:32]The twig grows into a branch. In Fallout 2, this branch has grown into a tree, sprouting right out of Harold's head.

[00:29:38]But by Fallout 3, when the player meets him in the secret grove of the capital wasteland known as the Oasis, Harold has blended in with Bob's roots. surrounding him. Oasis flourishes the real incredible vegetation growing outwards from Harold's root system in all directions. The richest soil for miles around in an expanse of lifeless land.

[00:29:55]The children of the Oasis, a religion of people who worship plants, have formed around him, treating him as a deity representing rebirth and fertility.

[00:30:03]Harold [music] despises all of this. He is capable of speaking. He still has thoughts. He can remember how the food used to taste back then, how things looked before everything happened. and his humor has an entirely specific quality of somebody who had been through too much for too long and knows [music] that nobody surrounding him understands what he means. However, Harold does not wish to be woripped. He wishes to die.

[00:30:25]Harold has been wishing to die for a very long time. Not necessarily because of despair, but more of the reasonable and practical belief that it has been enough. He pleads with the player to kill him by lighting the tree up and to put an end to his suffering. The children will not let him do this as the regeneration is much faster than normal.

[00:30:42]There is no escape left to him. And perhaps this is one of the most herald things about him. Herald is the answer to the question that never came up when people marveled at how anyone was able to survive after the bombings. What happens if surviving becomes a never-ending process that continues even beyond the physicality and the identity of the person. It is not a tale of horror but a failed negotiation. The bargain between a man and his biological fate. The latter won the war so thoroughly that the man remained trapped inside, speaking, recalling, waiting, sprouting into the ground bit by bit.

[00:31:14]And there you have it. Ghoulification, mutations in the cells that allows a body to live, but quietly strikes deals with everything else. The mind, the self, the will to be the person they were before the end of the world. Some come out on top with their brains in perfect condition and their sense of purpose unharmed. Some slip into the dark, knowing what's coming and unable to stop it. Some revert to primal instincts inside an abandoned skyscraper without any eyes upon them, erasing the past two centuries from their minds. And then there's the one who became a tree and continues talking. And in its own way, that's the most human end possible.

[00:31:46]War never changes, but what it does to the people who survive it is still being written. If you've enjoyed the video and want to know about every single Fallout vault explained in detail, click the video on the screen.