Lesson learned: The Fallout world is much less realistic than ours.

Honestly i think you guys are getting a little too serous on the logic here. This is VIDEO GAMES we are talking about here! One of the most popular video game ever contains a Fat plumber that finds a world of living mushrooms and goes and fights Giant turtles for a frigid princess! And you all are complaining about a game that has explosive radiative cars? WHICH MIGHT HAPPEN SOMEDAY! (note i dont have a link but it was something about nanobots that made decaying radiation into electricity or some such)

WHAT KIND OF GAMERS ARE YOU

I can definitely see where they are coming from, we just have different views on the internal logic of the game. They view it as, "Our world, but with more nuclear energy, and having been destroyed by nuclear war." I view it as an alternate universe based on the 50's view of the future, where they thought everything would be nuclear powered. Which it is, you just have to understand that it's nuclear powered even if it doesn't make sense to us, because it made sense to them.

The video posted sure as hell wasn't made in the eighties. And I never called it ramblings either. Unless you have a bomb-proof forcefield (and the enemy isn't using forcefield proof bombs), it's still the best thing you can do, and if you actually survived long enough to do it, it will raise your chances of surviving everything that follows.

Have you ever actually driven to another city? There are always fringe areas and outlying towns. There are going to be plenty of people in the zone where this may be effective(17-53 km in the case of 20 MT bombs, by the looks of it). I mean, what? Just because the nuke is so devastating at and in the areas close to its hypocentre we shouldn't be prepared for the rest of the effects? It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. And hell, in the chance that you do survive, this will probably reduce the severity of burns to your face and torso.

You're also assuming 100% success on the enemy's part to give them full coverage.

SO THAT FALLOUT 3 GAME IS GOING TO BE TOTALLY SWEET/COMPLETELY CRAP (choose appropriate)

I think that's what it was intended as, but it is pretty easy to forget that sort of thing.

It's funny really, this talk of ducking and covering not working, because people are forgetting another aspect of nukes (hint; it's in the title of this thread). If you didn't die from the initial heat blast, or didn't die from the shockwave that just rippled out and destroyed everything further afield, then the fallout will probably do the job anyway, especially if the wind is blowing you way. That shit can travel even further than the shockwave itself, and there isn't any ducking and covering from that.

No, Hawk. It'll just turn you into a super mutant.

Everything will be totally ok.

I'd just like to point out that there are things called Nuclear Batteries that work on natural radioactive decay and do not need all that much shielding as long as you stick with low energy beta decay or alpha decay. In fact beta decay requires no shielding at all really. With a combination of super high efficiency thermoelectric cells and direct to electricity from radiation cells one could effectively power a car. Now if one would call natural fission as opposed to induced fission nuclear power that's a whole other story.

Edit: They also wouldn't explode when shot either.

I find your scientific knowledge questionable, let me tell you.

And that would be ICBM, DFM. Intercontinental ballistic missile. :p


And yeah, nuclear cars (in the induced fission sense, anyway) are completely ludicrous.

The actual numbers depend on if you're Russia or you are being attacked by Russia. Mostly because we built bigger bombs but they built more of them. Generally speaking though if you're in range of the building destroying shockwave you are in range or the super hot thermal flash. The flash actually travels much further than the blast wave itself, unless you happen to have a mountain in the way. As such you're getting burned pretty badly unless you happen to be somewhere the superheated air can't get. Even then anything flammable outside the physical blast radius and inside the thermal blast is going to ignite. You'll get 2nd degree burns out to about 30 miles and its going to heat up everything which means everything around you his going to be hot enough to cause severe burns. About the only thing duck and covering does for that is prolong the agony of dieing from burn infections.

The point being is that if you were anywhere in the physical blast radius, the only place duck and cover does anything appreciable in prolonging you're life, you're getting trapped in rubble. Assuming you magically survive that you have burning to death to look forward to from the fires set by the super heated air that will be hanging around. Assuming you magically survive that you are well within the range of the fall out which was carried at least to your location by the shockwave that destroyed your building. Most of today's larger bombs give you complete destruction out to 5 miles and severe destruction to 7 miles. There will be second degree burns and fires out to 30 miles which is well into the suburbs. Basically you're best bet is getting into a basement which I guess could be considered ducking and covering but anywhere above ground within 30 miles is going to get you burned bad enough to die.