The Pros And Cons Of Super Mutants

The wasteland of the Fallout universe is riddled with grotesque beasts and creatures that defy explanation. One of the many creatures that are encountered throughout the American wasteland are known as Super Mutants, nasty humanoid creatures that are a product of a science experiment gone horribly wrong. The uncanny nature of the Super Mutants, paired with their increased aggression and unnatural physical and mental state lead to humans of the wasteland to fear the very mention of the beast, regardless of whether the Super Mutant wants to cause physical harm or not Although many creatures across the American Wasteland are the direct product of the global nuclear warfare, the Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV) is one of the few exceptions in the Fallout Universe. The FEV started as a biological weapon manufactured by the Americans as a way to combat increasing suspicion that the Chinese were developing biological weapons
that would decimate entire army and civilian populations without firing a single shot. The intention of the FEV was to expose the American population to it as a way to make them immune to the potential use of bio-weapons. As one might expect, the testing was a failure, but was secretly moved to the Mariposa Military Base in California to continue trying to perfect the virus.
The effects of the FEV are many and change the subject both mentally and physically.
As a species, Super Mutants come in three different variation of colors; yellowish, grey, or green. The virus increases muscle development and rapidly increases cell regeneration, which causes the mutants to be immune from radiation and illness and also makes the Super Mutants unable to die from aging, but are still able to die due to injury. The skeleton structure of those with the virus has drastically changed causing the average super mutant to stand over ten feet tall, but, due to muscular and skeletal composition, most stand with hunched backs making the average Super Mutant stand a little less than eight feet. The virus causes increased aggression and decreased mental capabilities that are equivalent to that of a six year old. From the point of view of a Super Mutant, the only genetic flaw present is the virus causes the virus to become sterilized. The sterilization of the Super Mutants leads to the species abducting people from unprotected settlements to become Super Mutants as a result from being affected from the FEV. There are a few strains of the FEV, but only a couple stand out as being radically different from the rest. The Mariposa FEV strain is the strain the US military attempted to perfect before The Great War, but it had very odd and grotesque side effects. Many of those traits are shared among all Super Mutants, but there is one distinct difference. Super Mutants, as a result from the Mariposa facility, are not all aggressive. Many of the Super Mutants are aggressive due to the FEV diminishing the brain, but not all of them go out and hunt people. For instance, in the almost untouched reaches of Las Vegas, now named New Vegas, there lies an old manor that serves as a rehabilitation center for all Super Mutants that wish to control their violent tendencies. While there are plenty of Super Mutants that want to attack and kill everything in sight, they are reacting that way because they are a product of an extremely hostile environment where Super Mutants are not tolerated. The mutants from the east coast of America are a bit mentally different from their west coast counterparts.
The FEV came to the capitol, now called the Capitol Wasteland, from experimentation in Vault 87, a pre-Great War vault designed to house generations of survivors from nuclear fallout. The experimentation in Vault 87 of a different strain than that used in the Mariposa facility lead to a more heightened aggression and little brain capability. All Super Mutants, with the exception of one by the name of Fawkes, in the Capitol Wasteland are belligerent beasts that want nothing more than to rid the world of impurities, which are creatures that are not mutated. A group known as the Brotherhood of Steel took it upon themselves to rid the Capitol Wasteland of this scourge, but their rival, the Enclave, a group comprised of the descendants of U.S. political figures, wants to rid the world of all mutation by infecting the water supply with a modified working FEV virus that kills all mutated life while keeping the non-mutated people from being
affected.