Posted by The TV series Fallout is now on Amazon Prime and the plot needs to be explained: how did the ghoul and Moldaver survive for 200+ years?
The plot of Fallout, the sensational TV series that landed on Amazon Prime in April 2024, has so many fascinating aspects that we could stay here explaining every detail for days. The TV show is based on the popular game series since 1997 and revolves around a post-apocalyptic world that survived a nuclear armageddon: a setting that allowed creators to explore society, politics, human instincts, and philosophy, offering many inputs to reflect on.
The TV series Fallout is set in the year 2296. Centuries before, in 2077, a nuclear apocalypse changed life forever: the elite entered the vaults, a series of underground structures where you are supposed to perpetuate society, protected from radiation, waiting for the surface to be hospitable enough. However, life on Earth never ceased: chaos reigns on the surface, but humans are still there. That’s the reason why we see Moldaver, the Ghoul, the Brotherhood, and all those cool characters in the TV show.
Many points in the Fallout plot need to be explained: how did humans survive the radiation blasts, and who really are the Ghoul and Moldaver? The two most interesting characters of the series are particularly fascinating: are they really villains, like people in the vaults want us to believe? And were they alive when the nuclear bombs fell? In this article, everything will be explained. Come with us!
Amazon series Fallout explained: who are the ghoul and Moldaver?
The ghoul is one of the main protagonists of the Amazon series Fallout. He appears in every episode and is undoubtedly the most fascinating character in the plot: nothing can stop him, nothing seems to hurt him, and apparently, he knows everything about how the world has changed in the last centuries. In the beginning, we are led to believe he’s just a bounty hunter, but slowly, the plot reveals his real motives.
As Fallout evolves, we discover that the ghoul is Cooper Howard, a famous actor who was alive in 2077, when the nuclear bombs were dropped. He survived for more than 200 years, living on the surface. His wife, Barb, worked for Vault-Tec, the American corporation that owns the vaults: underground structures where people could survive the nuclear apocalypse.
What Cooper/the ghoul discovers in 2077 is that Vault-Tec has an evil plan for the end of the world: their vaults will be special laboratories where the most powerful men in the world can experiment with society. The government is involved, as we see in the last episode of the series. And since the nuclear apocalypse is not granted, the way Vault-Tec convinces the American government to support their plans is simple: they will be the ones dropping the bombs, marking the end of the world. The goal is to defeat all enemies and be the only humans to survive, factually killing everyone else.
Luckily, humanity has developed a resistance movement. Cooper comes into contact with them through a friend and meets their leader, Ms. Williams: years later, she’ll be known as Lee Moldaver, aka the Flame Mother, the leader of the resistance against Vault’s people. The plot’s beginning wants to persuade us that the vault people are good and the rebels are villains. However, as we soon understand, it’s just the opposite: people in the vaults were the ones who ended the world years before, whereas Moldaver and her people are trying to give life and dignity to the survivors on the surface. Cooper/the ghoul is not really interested in humanity: he just wants to find his daughter and face his wife for what she did.
This means that the ghoul and Moldaver can be considered positive characters, fighting against the people who made the world end. They have been around since 2077, surviving for more than 200 years, so the question is obvious: how can the ghoul and Moldaver be still alive?
How did the ghoul and Moldaver survive?
The TV series Fallout hasn’t really explained how the ghoul and Moldaver survive. However, it’s something that happened to many characters of the plot: even the vault overseers Hank MacLean and Betty Johnson were part of Vault-Tec in 2077 and survived until 2296. From what we see later in the plot, special serums have been developed over the years, and those who use them can survive radiation and basically become invincible: when Thaddeus is cured by the street doctor, he becomes a ghoul, a creature who will never die.
We can safely assume that Vault-Tec was perfectly able to guarantee the eternal survival of their key members, and that’s why Barb, Hank MacLean, and Betty Johnson are still alive 200+ years later. We know they were experimenting with humans in the vaults controlled by scientists, probably in order to develop a resistance to radiation. Since Cooper Howard has never entered a vault, we can assume he became a ghoul through the serum: as we understand when Lucy and Maximus catch up with Thaddeus, becoming a ghoul is a well-known possibility in the post-apocalyptic world. You just need the proper injection.
Those who know the original game series are aware of a second possible explanation: in the Fallout games, the ghouls are humans or animals who naturally developed resistance to radiation exposure. They mutate, their skin looks burnt or rotten, and in most cases, they lose their mental abilities. But some of them preserve humanity: those are the humans who survived the nuclear fallout and populated the Earth’s surface for centuries.
In other words, following the plot in the TV show Fallout and the evolution of the game series, there are many reasons why people can survive forever after the nuclear apocalypse. Some serums can turn you into a ghoul, a creature who becomes invincible. Scientific experiments have been conducted to develop humans who can resist radiation and live forever. And ultimately, humans can become immortal and radiation-resistant as a simple evolutionary effect, naturally developing this ability after the nuclear blasts. We don’t know what precisely made the ghoul and Moldaver survive, living for centuries in a world polluted by atomic radiation, but we know this is possible in one way or another. The ghoul Cooper and Lee Moldaver are not present in the game Fallout; they have been developed only for the TV series, and the creators have not explained in detail how they survived. It’s one of those aspects that could remain a mystery. Unless Season 2 comes, of course.
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