Water Purity...How on earth does it work?

AeonG

AeonG

First time out of the vault
Something that's always bugged me about the West vs the East is the water purity. In the Mohave wasteland, the water is radiation free in Lake Mead, which leads to the Colorado river. In Bethesda games, the water is so tainted by radiation Fallout 3 was heavily focused on it. You could argue that since the Mohave Wasteland was mostly spared thanks to Mr. House, the water could be less tainted, but to me that still doesn't make sense. You need the stream of water to keep flowing, and rain, while there isn't much, needs to come from somewhere. In Bethesda games, the water is very tainted, but holy crap, apparently this whole time the residents of the Capitol Wasteland could have built MINI FILTERS instead of making a giant one. Are those even possible with how damaged everything is, and how for some reason no one past Fallout 2 (except the Enclave) is competent enough to make new things? How would you take junk and turn it into a competent radiation filter?

I'm honestly asking this because I'm trying to write a fan story: Say the Midwestern Brotherhood, in their time of reign before loosing power, wanted to purify the Missouri river so pure water would be easier for anyone to access and so crops could be grown alongside the river again for better fertility. Sure, with their resources they could probably build a dam that acts as a purifier, but with all the radiation around, rain, and other effects, would that even be worth it? What probably costly if not impossible steps such as removing nearby radioactive objects would they have to make to make sure the river water within their territory is pure?
 
Pro tip: Disregard Bethesda's wonky water logic.

However perhaps you could take a more realistic approach to your fan fic, and do a little research on how fallout actually effects static and dynamic bodies of water. At least from there you can make an educated judgement on which direction to take as well may enhance the quality of the work.

I hope my input helped.
 
I have been summoned?
Anyway, rain shouldn't be very radioactive at this late point. It would only rain black and glowy for a short while after the War until all the radioactive dust blown up by the bombs was rained out. There'd be fallout on the river banks that could continously pollute the river, but given the amount of water flowing down a large river and the time that has passed, it would be unlikely. A large river would be rather clean quite quickly as far as I know. Standing bodies of water, at least smaller ones, could accumulate quite a bit of fallout, though. However, if it's deep enough the radioactive particles would sink to the bottom, leaving the surface relatively clean. Filtering through the earth would be a very important thing, too. Rain seeps through the ground to the ground water level and on the way most of the radioactive particles get left behind. Pumping up the ground water carefully would already yield somewhat clean water.
For final filtering, not that much would needed to be done. The radioactive fallout is fine dust, just filter it out by various means. Fine cloth, paper filters, centrifugal filters, cook it off, lots of methods to clean water that are easy to build.
The last thing you'd want to do is build a highly complicated machine at the mouth of a river where it flows into an ocean that, by virtue of being FUCKHUEG dilutes everything anyway and is salty. At the mouth of the river you wouldn't do shit to the rest of the river, anyway, and there's no need for a machine that for some reason accumulates ALL THE RADIATION.
But nobody would be that stupid, right?
 
Hassknecht said:
The last thing you'd want to do is build a highly complicated machine at the mouth of a river where it flows into an ocean that, by virtue of being FUCKHUEG dilutes everything anyway and is salty. At the mouth of the river you wouldn't do shit to the rest of the river, anyway, and there's no need for a machine that for some reason accumulates ALL THE RADIATION.
But nobody would be that stupid, right?
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I always thought Project Purity should've been near Raven Rock and the Enclave headquartered somewhere in DC. That would make so much more sense. You have the purifier much further upstream where it would actually be able to purify a lot of water.
 
Ben Soto said:
I always thought Project Purity should've been near Raven Rock and the Enclave headquartered somewhere in DC. That would make so much more sense. You have the purifier much further upstream where it would actually be able to purify a lot of water.
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Absolutely. If the river was still highly irradiated for some reason it would have made much more sense to locate a filter upstream so the whole rest of the river would be clean to use. But they wanted Project Purity in that memorial thing for EPICNESS, so now people have to walk there with buckets and get their water like that.
 
Hassknecht said:
Absolutely. If the river was still highly irradiated for some reason it would have made much more sense to locate a filter upstream so the whole rest of the river would be clean to use. But they wanted Project Purity in that memorial thing for EPICNESS, so now people have to walk there with buckets and get their water like that.
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Actually, the game registers the entire river as radiation free, meaning somehow, the purifier is sending water upstream.
 
Ben Soto said:
Actually, the game registers the entire river as radiation free, meaning somehow, the purifier is sending water upstream.
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Don't want to talk about logic in world with talking mutants and immune to radiation Children of Atom.
 
wait there is a terraforming device in fallout universe now? i dont think i remember it before...
 
Prone Squanderer said:
FTFY.
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