Falloutis set over the course of hundreds of years, giving it plenty of time for factions, places, and mutated monstrosities to develop. As different pieces of media set in the world ofFallouthave been released, they’ve added to the lore of the franchise with each addition. Some parts ofFallout’s lore have endured as long as the very firstFalloutgame. One such example is the Forced Evolutionary Virus.
Biological disasters often happen in the world ofFallout, but FEV gives different stakes than radiation, which is often the result of an accident. FEV is a virus that was created to be harmful, and its very nature makes it the perfect bioweapon fordifferent factions that have sinister goals inFallout. Players not only have to confront the hostile super mutants that result from an FEV infection, but also the factions who modify and deliver FEV to create monsters to fight for them.
The Source of Fallout’s Forced Evolutionary Virus
Fallout’s Forced Evolutionary Virus, also known as FEV, is avirus that was created by West Tekand has been present since the firstFalloutgame. InFalloutlore, FEV has been around since before the Great War and has primarily been used as a biological weapon because of its difficulty of casual transmission, and because of the ease with which it can be modified for the user’s purpose, with different factions modifying the virus to create different mutations in their victims. Common mutations include super strength, immunity to radiation, and a loss of intelligence and speech.
FEV isn’t airborne transmitted, but instead is passed to others through direct contact with the virus or via injection. It’s an extremely hardy virus and immune to radiation, which gives it an advantage in thenuclear wastelands of the USA after the Great War. The virus works by adapting to its host’s DNA, forcing unpredictable and painful mutations upon its host. For those already damaged by the effects of radiation, the result is often death. Those who do survive become mutated and lose their mental faculties during the mutation process.
How FEV Has Been Used Across Fallout
Because of FEV’s flexibility in the effects it causes, it’s been used by various organizations and individuals across theFalloutseries for different reasons. Notable cases are the Master, the leader of Unity inFallout, who used FEV to create a race of super-mutants, and the Enclave, which attempted to wipe out all humans who existed outside the Enclave using FEV.
FEV also appeared inFallout 4.The Institute is largely responsible for the super mutantsseen wandering the Commonwealth inFallout 4, and were created as a part of the Institute’s synth project. Unlike the mutants seen in other parts of the Wasteland, the mutants of the Commonwealth are capable of speech, although their intelligence is still limited.
Themost recent appearance of FEV has been inFallout 76, where the super mutants of Appalachia have existed since the pre-Great War period. Unlike the other, controlled infections in other regions of the nuclear wasteland, the source of the infection for the people in this region was a river spill from a West Tek facility, although this was also proven to be a part of an experiment. Like the Commonwealth mutants, the mutants ofFallout 76are more intelligent than those seen previously, and some are even friendly to the player character.
