Ghouls (Fallout)

Happy new season! We're kicking off Season 6 with a fun one from the fictional universe of Fallout, we're looking into the horrifying-looking Ghouls! How do you become a Ghoul? What are the different types? Find out this week!

Transcript

INTRO:

Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world. 

These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.

I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.

Happy new year and welcome to season 6 of Myth Monsters podcast! If you’re a new listener or a returning one, thank you so much for tuning in. It’s a new year and new me, this year I’m picking up the once a week format as I’ve figured my life out a bit, so I hope you’re ready for some cool monsters that I’ve got prepped in this year's running order.

DESCRIPTION:

We’re kicking off the new year with a special one, and as a certified gamer, one that links to my favourite hobby. To celebrate season 2 of Fallout, this week we’re looking at the deformed Ghouls from the Fallout universe. 

We’re starting with a bit of fiction I know, but you never know how accurate Fallout would actually be - so maybe this is more a warning as to what would happen to those who wouldn’t die in the atomic blast from a nuke, as to what would happen to you if WW3 actually broke out - which based on the world right now, wouldn’t surprise me. 

So what is a Ghoul? A Ghoul is described as a post-human, they used to be normal people but have now taken on so much radiation over time or from an initial nuclear bomb drop that they start to mutate from the exposure. They are just normal people in the wrong place at the wrong time, so they act as usual human beings in a wasteland scenario I suppose.

Over a short amount of time, the person will have the usual effects of radiation poisoning, such as vomiting, diarrhea, hair loss, internal bleeding but then will find their flesh starts to melt off or hollow out, usually around their noses, ears and eye sockets - giving them a ghoulish appearance, hence the name. Their outward appearance may end up looking like a noseless mutant with skin resembling tanned leather, a burn victim, or a rotting zombie with exposed muscle, blood vessels, and in extreme cases even bone and internal organs.

They will continue to degrade over time, depending on how much exposure they had initially and how much they get over time, a process called Ghoulification.

Ghouls can do normal human things, like talk, fight, eat, sleep and can act completely normal, it would just be their appearance that is affected and generally their own personal health situation obviously. Eventually, the radiation does decay the flesh and rot their physical bodies, however, the brain isn’t usually affected at the same rate, and over years and years, they eventually lose their mental function and become what we know as feral Ghouls.

There are actually three types of Ghouls within the Fallout universe. The regular ones, who are just radiated people, but then there are the feral Ghouls, who are like they say in the name, become completely feral over time. These ones have completely lost their human mental faculties, and are rabid - they attack everything in sight and are clearly more mutated and physically degraded than usual Ghouls. They generally live in packs and shamble around acting as they would in life, kind of like how we would think of Zombies acting. 

The last is the most dangerous, the Glowing ones, who are so irradiated that they have bioluminescence, and give off a huge amount of radiation. These are highly aggressive as well and both Feral and Glowing Ghouls are super dangerous within the universe. 

However, getting back to the normal Ghouls, as this is the standard. I mentioned that they became this way due to radiation, but there is another way to become a Ghoul, such as genetic experimentation, which is rife within the Fallout universe due to corruption from those at Vault-Tec, the company that ran the Fallout Nuclear Vaults, where chosen people were meant to be safe, but were actually all means for different human experiments. Because of this, there was an evolutionary virus or FEV, too which also led to people becoming Ghouls. 

All Ghouls have massively expanded life spans, living for centuries in the wasteland, because of their prolonged and intense exposure as well as having supercharged regeneration of tissue if they’re injured. It is almost as if they are sustained by the radiation, with a group of Ghouls even being reportedly able to trap energy from lightning in their bodies and discharge it at will or a group being flayed alive and still able to live after.

They are also immune to disease and the direct degenerative effects of radiation, although too much radiation can evolve them into feral or glowing Ghouls faster. However, they’re not immune to conditions, such as dementia, cataracts, arthritis and glaucoma, as well as losing your voice through the degradation of the larynx and vocal cords.

Ghouls also need little food and water, able to survive for much longer without these than normal people. Because of their lack of noses, they are able to eat food that would repulse normal humans, and often engage in cannibalism because they can, basically. However, they have diminished ability to absorb nutrients from these, as well as drugs, so they would need double doses of any medications or recreational drugs to feel any effect of them. 

So can you treat a Ghoul? Kind of, this was added into the lore much later and is present in the series - but a chemical called ‘The Fix’ was founded in the 23rd century, which stops the degenerative process and is administered through an inhaler. This can allow Ghouls to live for decades but is expensive and rare to find.

And can you kill them? Yep, they’re just like normal people and you can kill them in the same way - however, you would probably need to make sure they’re dead first, because if you do a fatal move on them, there is a risk that they may not be dead and regenerate, so make sure you’ve actually made a killing blow before you move on.

Ghouls are found all over the wasteland of the world post the bombs being dropped in 2077, but feral Ghouls can be found in caves, abandoned buildings and underground typically. Also, one last thing is that you should never call a Ghoul a zombie or an abomination, it’s seen as derogatory, but apparently ghoul is okay? I would not want to be called any of them, but ya know, just a note there.

ORIGIN:

So moving onto etymology, the word Ghoul actually comes from a mythical creature in reality. It’s a demon-like or monstrous human who eats human flesh going back to pre-Islamic civilization in the middle-east. It’s used as a derogatory term to describe someone who likes the macabre or whose occupation deals with death, such as a gravedigger or funeral director. It can also refer to someone who looks grave, gaunt or deathly - which is where this comes from in the Fallout universe at least.

I’ll cover actual Arabic origin Ghouls at some point, but as I’ve mentioned them now - just to be clear, this is a whole different monster from actual mythology that we’ll cover another time. 

For history, we have to do this in two parts - the actual history of them within the Fallout universe and the backstory to their creation in reality, so we’ll stay in IP first.

It’s important to know that in Fallout, the atomic bombs were dropped, as I mentioned earlier in 2077, so way ahead of where we are now in 2026 (although, I may still be alive in 2077 which is kind of weird to think about). Some people went and lived in these experimental Vaults, some went underground and some weren’t able or fortunate enough to do either - the few survivors from this were either ghoulified or lived for a short time before dying from the exposure. 

However, most Ghouls came from the survivors, where they may drink irradiated water or eat irradiated food, spend too much time outside in highly irradiated areas or even fall into irradiated water. But there are a few examples of Ghouls who are still alive from before the bombs dropped, such as the titular The Ghoul from the game and TV series, played by my favourite, Walton Goggins, who was a spokesperson for the Vaults and a movie star before the bombs dropped, meaning that when we find the characters in 2296, he’s been alive for nearly 300 years at this point. 

The Fallout timeline is that the series is the latest point in the timeline so far, with Fallout 76 set in 2102, Fallout 1 in 2161, Fallout 3 in 2277, Fallout New Vegas in 2281 and Fallout 4 in 2287 - with The Ghoul making an appearance in Fallout 76, but Ghouls within all of the Fallout games as interactable and sometimes playable characters. 

Moving onto developing the universe, the Ghouls were inspired by real-life survivors of nuclear war, such as the survivors of Chernobyl, Ukraine, where a power plant accident leaked radiation over most of Europe in 1986, killing around 4,000 people and affecting millions worldwide with radiation. As well as this, the 1945 atomic bombings on Hiroshima & Nagasaki in Japan, the only usage of atomic bombs in warfare EVER. This killed 246,000 people and affected millions more across Asia, leaving all of these places as complete dead zones and immensely dangerous to humans to this day.

The effect of the radiation on the people of Chernobyl, Nagasaki and Hiroshima were the inspiration of the Ghouls for Fallout, as the injuries and effects on the human body would be similar to what I have described, with the soft tissues being affected like on noses and ears, as well as the degradation of flesh on the face and severe burns across the body, as well as sterilisation or at least immense damage to the reproductive system, as well as cancer causing cell spikes. 

A quick note from me personally, all of these real life incidents are a stark reminder of the devastating effect of nuclear war in reality. The world is a scary place right now with threats of this happening again, and actually this topic highlights how important it is to make sure this never happens again, which we can all fight against with our votes and standing up for ALL humans, animals and our planet, no matter what they look like, what god they believe in or where they come from. It’s really important to fight for that, and I know this got political and real for a second for a mythical monsters podcast, but as I have a platform and a voice, I have a responsibility to use it to try and make a difference so I hope you forgive this little PSA.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

Now onto modern media, it’s a weird one whenever we do fantasy and fiction because they are usually stuck in this one universe, IP or franchise. However, with Ghouls, we can talk about Nuclear Fallout movies too, so I’ve popped a load of Nuclear war media in here.

For art, have a look at fan art of the Ghouls from Fallout, people really do make some cool things around them!

In movies, we have; Day One, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, 20 Days After, Battletruck, Dead Man’s Letters, Zardoz, Genesis 2, The Book of Eli, Rats: Night of Terror, Creepozoids, Five & Iron Sky.

For TV, we have; Fallout, The 100, The Incredible Hulk, Sacred Games, Vigil, Warriors of the Deep, Operation Buffalo, The Peripheral, Adventure Time, Jericho, The Man in the High Castle, Terror in Resonance, Whoops Apolocalypse, Atom Squad, Dragon Flyz, Oppenheimer, Barefoot Gen, War and Remembrance, Doctor Who, Flanders Company, The Red Green Show, Ultraman, The X-Files, The Simpsons, Total Drama Island, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Cockroaches, The Twilight Zone & The Mask.  

In video games, we have ones such as; Fallout, Aquanox, Duke Nukem, Metro 2023, Speed Kills, 2027, Vector Thrust, Shin Megami Tensei, Mercs of Boom, Might and Magic, Shardlight, Atomicrops, Final Fantasy, 7 Days to Die, After Armageddon Gaiden, Splatoon, Anno Domini, Skyhill, The Fall: Last Days of Gaia, Xenogears, Archimedean Dynasty, Wargame: European Escalation, Sheltered, RAD, Nuclear Throne, Far Cry: New Dawn, Mutant Football League, I was a Teenage Exocolonist, Halo, Steel Assault, Breath of Death 7 & After the War.

My book recommendation this week is not for a monster book, but one that’s actually interesting about the topic of nuclear war, After the Blast: A Comprehensive Scenario of Nuclear War and Its Global Impact by Jessica Rivera for a good look into actual research around nuclear warfare. Or you can look at Fallout: A Journey Through the Nuclear Age, From the Atom Bomb to Radioactive Waste by Fred Pearce for a full look into radioactivity history.

DO I THINK THEY EXISTED? 

Now it’s time for, do I think they existed?

I mean, I said from the get go that this would be fictional and they’re from Fallout, so I hope I made that clear enough where you’re like, Erin of course not. 

HOWEVER, whilst they’re definitely not real now, they are inspired by some of the states of radiation burns and extreme radiation survival, which does give real people these aesthetics, but not any of the ‘powers’ that Ghouls have in the Fallout universe. In reality, we know what radiation does to people and that the likelihood of survival is immensely small. 

But humans are known to survive without noses and ears, we see this in cancer and burn patients - which might resemble the Ghoul look, and I mean this in the kindest way possible.

If you’re a fan of the Fallout game series, as well as the TV series, you’ll know more about the Vaults, and I think this is more screwed up thing that happens within this universe, a fake, experimental haven from the fallout where each one is different and almost torturous is more horrible to me honestly. 

I’ve actually only played a bit of Fallout 4 in complete transparency, because any of my friends and family will tell you that I am awful at aiming, and whilst Bioshock is one of my favourite game series of all time, I struggle with first person shooters, let alone third person shooters - give me a staff and some spells or a sword and I’m good, but guns - nah, I’m a really bad shot, hence my aversion to the Fallout series. But the show is great and I love the lore and history within it, so that’s why I thought this one would be fun to cover.

I think the Ghoul is pretty cool, bar all the horrible things he does - and Ghoulification is just a side effect of being in the wasteland within this universe, so it is what it is I suppose. 

But what do you think? Would there be Ghouls if we did have a Nuclear situation? Let me know on social media!

OUTRO: 

What a fun one, and anything where I can talk about my beloved Walton Goggins is a favourite of mine, so I hope you enjoyed popping into this universe with me and I hope I didn’t freak you out too much with the nuclear war talk. I am laughing nervously here honestly.

Next week, we’re heading over to the beautiful land of Japan for a mystical hybrid monster. Try and keep your dreams and ambitions to yourself to hide them away from the dream eater, Baku next week. 

For now, thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got loads of social media for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok, YouTube and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, twitter is mythmonsterspod and BlueSky is mythmonsters. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk, and you can also find us on Goodpods, Buymeacoffee and Patreon if you want to help me fund the podcast too.

Come join the fun though and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.

But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.