Hey what’s going on guys, this is Mike, and this is a Nuka-Cola. In Fallout, Nuka-Cola
is a unique soft drink that gained widespread popularity sometime before the Great War.
It comes in a few flavors like Original Nuka-Cola, Nuka-cherry, and Quantum. Nuka-Cola Quantum
was advertised as having twice the calories, carbohydrates, and caffeine of the original
with an extra kick being a mild radioactive Strontium-90 isotope.
So, what if Nuka-Cola Quantum was real?
To get a better idea of what’s in Nuka-Cola Quantum, let’s first take a look at what's
in the regular original Nuka-Cola.
Taking a look at the label, it’s pretty clear that the original Nuka-Cola has the
same basic nutritional makeup of something like Coke or Pepsi. This trend continues down
into the basic ingredients as well.
So so far, Nuka-Cola in the game should have the same flavor and nutritional value as any
other Cola drink in the real world. But to go from Original Nuka-Cola to Quantum, it
reportedly contains a mildly radioactive strontium solution.
Strontium-90 is a synthetically derived radioactive element present in radioactive fallout. Unfortunately,
there’s no indication that radioactive Strontium would glow blue in water. Not only that, this
metal is incredibly toxic, as it displaces calcium and primarily targets bone health.
This only intensifies as the strontium you’re replacing the calcium with is also radioactive.
According to the FDA, they do test food that originates from places with nuclear fallout,
or nuclear leakages, such as Japan. However, the FDA has approved irradiation techniques
to kill bacteria in bugs in food with the use of GAMMA and even X-Rays.
What if Nuka-Cola Quantum didn’t include radioactive isotopes at all? What if it was
a marketing tool during the nuclear revolution? They may have used the FDA approved irradiation
techniques to ensure sterilization, but they probably didn’t intentionally pollute the beverage.
It’s a much better guess to assume that the blue glowing attribute of Quantum doesn't
come from a toxic strontium-90 radioactive particle.
Unfortunately, the only Nuka-Cola Quantum that can be tested in Fallout 4 is about 200
years old. After that amount of time, less than 1% of the original Strontium 90 would
be left due to its 28 year half life.
Still, with that said, Nuka-Cola and Nuka-Cola Quantum both deliver the same amount of radiation
to the consumer, 5 RADS. Therefore, there is no indication that Quantum ever contained Strontium-90.
Assuming the body absorbed the energy evenly, one bottle of Nuka-Cola is enough to put you
over your yearly recommended dosage, drastically increasing your chance of cancer and infection.
Without care and within rapid succession, you’d only need to consume between 40 or
50 bottles to effectively destroy your DNA at the atomic level. Basically, you’re going to die.
For more on radiation, be sure to check out this video, where I go into all kinds of details
on nuclear Fallout.
If it isn’t Strontium-90 that makes Quantum glow, then what else could it be?
A big indicator is the color. Most bioluminescent plants and animals do glow blue, just like
Nuka-Cola Quantum. Though most bioluminescent organisms are at least minimally toxic to
humans, but not all are.
In Seattle, people were reporting that their shrimp, fish and crabs were glowing blue when left in
the refrigerator or when the lights turned off.
When questioned the FDA reported that no scientific studies on the consumption of bioluminescent
bacteria was done in almost two decades. Nobody reportedly got ill from eating the glowing
sea food, but some reported nausea that may have been derived from the glowing bacteria.
There’s a pretty good rule of thumb out there, if your food is glowing, you probably
shouldn’t eat it. Put simply, there are less edible glowing objects than there are
edible ones.
Whether it be glowing mushrooms, poisonous bacteria, or toxic chemicals there are a lot
better ways to get the appearance of glowing food and beverages than eating toxic material
and probably dying.
Anyways guys, this has been Mike with ShoddyCast. Be sure to subscribe to this channel as well
as following a link down the description to my channel for more great videos. If you wanna
see me more often on this channel be sure to let them know in the comments down below.
Anyways guys, thanks for watching.