Fallout in Nile’s End: how to walk around a plume
Fallout in the game is not a glow on the screen. It is something with a shape on the ground, and the shape follows the wind. If you understand it you walk past it. If you don’t, you get a surprise.
Twelve places were hit
The game starts three weeks after the war, and the strikes are the same in every game: Cairo, Giza and Helwan; Alexandria, El Mahalla and Marsa Matruh; Port Said, Ismailia, Suez and the other canal towns; and Aswan’s airport. The dam itself held. And Upper Egypt, where the story begins, was not hit.
The strike and the plume
Each strike left a very hot area around it. From that area a plume of fallout runs with the northerly wind, roughly south. The bigger the city, the longer the plume: Cairo’s stretches for tens of kilometres.
The dosimeter
Without a dosimeter in the pack you know nothing: the radiation slot on the screen is a question mark. With one, it tells you whether a place is safe, a little elevated, high or deadly. What you take in adds up as a dose, and the more dose you carry, the worse radiation sickness gets.
What protects you
Distance is the best protection. Travel counts a hot area as longer and harder, so a route goes around it by itself when there is another way.
After that, a gas mask, because it keeps the dust out. A gauze respirator is better than nothing. Being inside a town helps a little, because walls stop some of it. And if you have already taken a dose, a radioprotector flushes part of it, and potassium iodide cuts what reaches you for a day.
New fallout
Sometimes the wind carries a fresh patch to a place it was not. With a radio in the pack, you hear about it a day or two ahead and it is drawn on the map. What you have not heard about stays invisible until you get close. So listen to the morning bulletin before you pick a road.
A small note
Real fallout fades much faster than it does in the game. We made it fade slower so the contaminated areas stay relevant over a long game.
