The SCIENCE! Behind STIMPAKS in Fallout 

Alternative version: Stimpacks contain a tiny wizard which uses a healing spell to heal you.

No joke, radaway in the lore actually gives you "the runs" so you actually get diheria from using it.

it gets worse. you go through the entire game with only 1 pair of underwear, which you never remove.

Ah yes, the era of Austin being able to swear freely. Good times ^.^

Why nobody talk about the best medicine in Fallout 4? Beds

So in fallout 3 if you help the outcasts and ask for radaway as a reward the guy straight up says it makes him get the shits “stuff goes through me like a rampaging Brahmin”

You taught the healing stage of a cut better than my biology and health teacher did.

I love how Stimpaks just have exposed needles when you find them. Still think you don’t need that nap?

Just confirmed. Bethesda is going to send an update to Fallout 4, now whenever you use Radaway or a stimpack there will be audible fart sounds.

To think, some guy in Nevada is able to make these things in a bathtub.

Simple, stimpacks are filled with healing potions from the elder scrolls universe, brought over by a secret government alternate universe portal project that allowed them to mass produce the formula, because magic.

The weird thing is that the actual "Stimpack" wasn't a healing item at all, it had a bunch of amphetamines and shit to get the soldier's all amped up going before the battle.

"Dear Bethesda" *TRIGGERED*

What fascinates me is the fact that I was made in 9 moths but it take 2 whole years for my body to fix a stupid papercut.

The "Shit your pants" part was the best.

I just assume Stimpaks are stem cells that repair damaged tissue. As for Rad-X I assumed they were iodine tablets.

who else "lost their shit" at the end?

No wonder all the toilets are broken

lol, and I thought stimpacks were supposed to be stemcell injections

In fallout 2 Radaway is said to give you the runs.

Fallout 5 is going to have a new innovative shitting system now.

So that's what the doctor in Fallout 4 means by "flushing your system" when you ask him to heal you from rad damage

Body: Fully develops into a baby in 9 months Also body: can take 2 years to heal a cut... Wtf

So my guy shat 29 times during that fight with supermutants in his only underwear

Still makes more sense than healing with an apple pie

I think that in order to discuss what Stimpacks are, we need to first discuss what HP truly is. In my mind, HP is the capacity of the body to suffer damage before collapsing. When it hits 0, the body has suffered too much damage and you presumably die of heart failure\stroke. So having a full HP bar, does not represent being completely healthy, it doesn't mean you're healed, it just means you can take that much more damage before you die. So what DOES a stimpack do? Well Stimpack is short for "Stimulant Delivery Package" I don't think it heals your body as much as it pushes death further away. In Fallout 1,2 and New Vegas' Hardcore mode, Stimpacks COULD NOT heal broken bones.Which leads me to believe Stimpacks DO NOT heal you. They simply allow you to keep functioning with the damage you've taken so far and be able to sustain more damage before dying. In Fallout 4, all limb damage auto heals to 1 after battle, but it can be healed with a Stimpack, that isn't to say that a stimpack necessarily heals the damage, as much as it makes you able to use the limb (despite any pain or damage it's suffered). All in all we need to keep in mind that many functions are not displayed to us as players and are implicit. For example, I believe any bowel movements happen while you're "resting" or "waiting" (fast travelling, if you don't play on Survival) or also possibly that power armor comes equipped with a built in disposal system for urine that can be emptied, just the same as it is implied that any and all "romantic" interactions with your lovers take place while you rest. So resting does not necessarily represent the act of sleeping, but a period in which the PC is resting. Went on more of a tangent than I thought I would. But I hope I was able to bring my point across and I would be more than happy to have a discussion about it.

Did you know that if u take a stimpack on survival, it will dehydrate you

"You're absolutely, POSITIVELY, Gonna Shit your pants." Lol best. delivery. ever.

I'd always thought of Stimpacks as a big ole' shot of pain-killers and adrenalin. xD

You're gonna shit your pants -Austin 2016

All science should be taught with cussing in it. lol

I need to bring up the fact that you can use stimpacks on Dogmeat. So stimpacks also works on animals.

Lots of swearing here, reminds me of old youtube before they put that damn rule because of kids

I'm imagining Todd Howard watching the beginning of this video and looking on in horror as a RU-vidr fantasizes about caressing his face. The internets a weird place.

"Without stimpacks and rad-away your games would be really, really short because we'd... be dead." Jon from Many a True Nerd begs to differ....

These videos were the bomb 4 years ago, loved them so much. The consistent intro, the email format, the classical Music (love the Bizet) it all coalesces into a fantastic series.

With all the monsters and irradiated creatures in the Fallout series, which ones could potentially exists and which ones are improbable - like in a biological sense?

the vitamin alphabet: A B B B B B B B B B B B B B B C D E K

Few things wrong here, while a lot of it is correct, bilary excretion isn't used to dispose of dead cells (red blood cells/eurythrocytes do however get somewhat disposed in this manner as haemoglobin is broken down into the bile pigment bilirubin) dead cells are mainly a collection of proteins, nucleic acid, glycoproteins (peptide chains with carbohydrates attached), and a lot of lipids, for most part these will often be broken down by phagocytes in the are such as monocytes and re-released as free nutrients, any of the toxins produced in such process like possibly ammonia, and sulphuric acid from break down of amino acids (the latter is for sulphur containing amino acids like cysteine and methionine) are all water soluble, while they are capable of crossing into the colon by simple diffusion the majority is excreted by urination, however due to stimpacks most likely increasing certain hormones that are hydrophobic they would also likely be excreted by bilary means, though the majority of the problems would be excessive urination rather than chronic shitting.

"Mystery Jizz"

Fallout: Pants-shittingly awesome.

I always assumed stimpacks just stopped you feeling pain and made you super alert and awake - i.e. stimulated you - so you could keep going despite your wounds. I mean, Med-X doesn't make your skin tougher, it's just morphine, it just means you feel less pain so you can keep going despite greater injuries.

Whats in a stimpak?? Fiction, pure unadulterated fiction.

Years later, I still rewatch these. Your videos make me happy. Thank you, Austin.

I've always thought of stimpacks being less of a "healing item" and more of something that something that kickstarts JUST the coagulation process to prevent you from bleeding out, along with powerful painkillers to make the wound feel like less of a problem.

What's inside a stimpack? *Nanomachines, son!*

Man, I remember in high school when my principal stopped my friends and I and told us to stop swearing. Because, "You can't have intelligent conversation while swearing." And that's bullshit. You prove that really well. I love your videos man. Good on you.

“O-negative ask you mom why”

I learn more in these videos than I have from 12 years of school.

Austin: Attractive group of gymnists...while has girlfriend Bad Karma gain Laughter as well

Science behind the power fist or power sledge?

All the Otakus and Weeaboos out there, when he was describing the inflammatory stage of healing, you were thinking about Cells at Work. Don't lie to yourself.

The white blood cells act like how you would act when you get your first minigun in fallout 4

Im actually very surprised he didnt talk about the fact that all these "increases cellular regeneration" medicines basically translate to "shortens your lifespan" by an equivalent amount. By forcing your cells to regenerate 3 months worth of healing that means 3 months worth of cell division as well as 3 months worth of degradation, continually shortening the characters alleles and quickening his inevitable death.

My stimpack is a 20 ounce bottle of Sprite/ Coke and a line of Pure Columbian cocaine.

Dear Austin, I really enjoy your work and all the thorough thoughts you put into the BS-Science of the fallout franchise. While I was already quite impressed by your insides into the biology of viruses and your understanding of genetics and gene-splicing through CRISPR-CAS, it is apperant that you do not have any medical-scientific background. Which is Ok, not everyone can be a Doctor after all. Now, the explanation of how your body heals wounds is correct, and I am impressed how easily and precise you can describe the steps and processes involved, explaining a rather complex matter to a wide audiance, focussing on the relevant aspects and not deviating from the underlying science too much (you should really teach ppl, none of my biochemistry or physiology books were as clear in their explanation...plus all were a lot less entertaining), I do believe that your premise on what stimpaks would or wouldn not do in order to keep the fallout 4s player character alive is wrong. And therefor the conclusion is wrong. And there are several smaller things I could also claim to be wrong or at least not correctly contextualized (the growthfactor wouldnt work in the way you would want it to for example) but they are unimportant in the larger scheme. So, you claim that in order to keep the player healthy, the stimpak would need to immediatly or at least very fast heal the most recent received wound. I do understand the interpretation of the HP-Bar, however I do not think, from a medical point of view, that thats a viable way of keeping the player alive. You see, when you receive a wound, you do not die of bleeding out necessarily, in fact, even with a major artery burst, it takes some time to really bleed out (exception would be the Aorta, which could easily make you die of bloodloss in a few minutes or a direct rupture of the heartmuscle). In most instances, you die or pass out to a major wound, because of shock.Now a shock has 3 potential causes: 1) Lack of blood/fluid in your bloodvessels (hypovolamic shock); 2) heartfailure; the heart can not build up the required bloodpressure to pump blood into your brain (kardiogenic shock) and 3) a systemic vasodilation, leading to a rapid and severe drop of bloodpressure (distributive shock). It is possible for 2 or all 3 of these causes to happen at once. While a light shock-symptomatic might only cause dizziness, nausea, desorientation and loss of concentration and focus, in most cases a shock leads to a rapid loss of consciousness. Thats what I would think is symbolized by the HP-Bar: How much more can you take, before your body goes into shock and you loose consciousness or die? This theory is reinforced by the fact that if you drop too low in health, you will start to experience symptoms of a light shock: you will hear an elevated heartbeat, your vision gets blurry, your breathing gets faster. All these symptoms are physiological reactions of your body to prevent you from going into a shock: 1) elevated heartbeat: if the bloodpressure is not high enough or there is not enough fluid in your system left, your heart can not simply produce more pressure with each heartbeat, in fact your heart measures between two beats how much blood is filling up the heartcaverns by measuring the dilatation of your heartcaverns by specialised nervcells. If your heart is dilatating a lot (because a lot of blood is going/bloodflow is increased) it will pump stronger (Frank-Sterling-Mechanism); so if its not dilatating enough, the heart will build up less pressure and beat weaker. However, to compensate for the lack of pressure, and because its relaxation is much faster achieved after a weak heartbeat, the heart will pump faster to ensure that a steady volume of blood is pumped over the same time. Its ineffictient, but ensures that all organs are receiving enough oxygen. Also: trauma and pain are alerting your body, they are activating the sympathic-nervous-system, which elevates heartrate on its own (to keep you in a fighting or fleeing state), it would also try to increase your bloodpressure by increasing the heartmuscles contraction (strenght of each beat, positive inotropic effect). All countermeasures to shock. Ill spare the details on breathing and blurry vision (the latter is probably only supposed to reflect dizziness and desorientation).... So....if we establish, that the HP bar is showing you not how healthy you are or if you have wounds or not, but how far away from a state of shock your body actually is, a stimpak in its name would make much more sense than a conglomerate of wound-healing factors. A mix of adrenalin, noradrenalin, dopamin, sugar, insulin, some clottingfactors (only FX would be really needed in the acute situation) and maybe a protein with a high colloid osmotic pressure in a physiological Na+ K+ solution would ensure your body to keep going and not fall into shock. The adrenalin would tell your heart to beat faster and stronger, thus rising your bloodpressure, the noradrenalin would constrict your arterys which would 1) lower the bloodflow to any bleeding wound, 2) further rise your bloodpressure, the dopamin would constrict arterys in your splanchnicus-area (around your intestines and stomach), thus fewer blood flows through these large areas and instead delivers oxygen to your muscles and brain (pretty much shifting volume from an unneeded compartment of your body in an acute stress-situation), and the colloid-osmotic pressure would force fluid out of your millions of red bloodcells into the bloodvessel, while the cells are being compressed and getting smaller, the volume in the bloodvessel itself actually rises signifacantly, a high enoug colloid-osmotic pressure would also force water in your extracellular matrix, surrounding the bloodvessel, to migrate into the bloodvessel, thus further increasing the available bloodvolume and countering the effects of bloodloss. The loss of cells is not that immediatly dangerous actually, we have a very huge tolerance for loss of red bloodcells before our oxygen-deliverysystem collapses, the loss of volume in your bloodvessels is what is killing your bloodflow and sending you into shock, thats why a high colloid-osmotic solution would make perfect sense for this scenario. The clottingfactor FX is activitating Factor II to Factor IIa, factor IIa, factor IIa is activating Factor I, which is called FIBRIN. Thats what closes your wound initially, its the most important thing in haemostasis! I will spare you the details why I would give Factor X (Stuart-Prowling Factor) instead of Factor II. Lets just say its complicated and Im getting tired of typing about this stuff in a foreign language, but Factor X makes a lot more sense than FII in this reagard! Now that method wouldnt be without risk, as it could raise your bloodpressure to unsafe hights, burst aneurysms, cut off bloodflow to some areas (like the splanchnicus area, thats why dont use dopamin anymore in intensive care) and cause organfailure (but only to the digestive tract...who needs to digest and shit anyways???), cause a stroke and send you in a hyperdynamic shock, crush your redbloodcells by a too high colloid-osmotic pressure and so on...buuuuuuut....its Fallout, Sci-Fi, right? So lets just assume, you do not inject yourself with pure adrenalin, noradrenalin and so on. But instead, an analogue substance that activates alpha- and betareceptors but has a different, for acute response maybe more suited receptorkinetic. Its not that far fetched, we are replacing monoamines like dopamin already with artificially created substances that activate the same receptors but with a different kinetic towards them or only a affinity to specific subfamilies of said receptors (we have more than one type of each receptor, specific to their originating tissue and with a variety of functions), thats how modern parkinson-medication works (and why its causing delirium a lot more often than regular dopamin) for example. So lets suppose, that in the future of fallout, medicine is advanced enough to have created substances, that interact with receptors for adrenalin, noradrenalin and so on, but in a much safer way than the original substance, maintaining a physiological balance of heartrate, bloodpressure and bloodvesselconstriction/dilatation instead of just increasing the effect further and further the more receptors are activated. Thats also not that far fetched, with aripiprazol we have a neuroleptic agent, that blocks the D2-Dopaminreceptor just like other neuroleptics. But also activates it. Just a lot less than dopamin would. This way, we get the neuroleptic, antipsychotic effect of blocking the dopamin D2-receptor, while not causing the sideeffects and keeping a low dopaminerg activationlevel in your brain present. The science is all existant today already. Till 2077, we should have figuered it all out (its not that hard actually, its biochemistry to the most well known and most researched receptorfamilies in all our bodies...we can paint them aminoacid by aminoacid in their quartary structure). So yeah.... closing a wound immediatly and healing the skin above it however....is not necesseraly helping you to stay in a fight, if your loss of blood was already too significant it wont get you anywhere. And the application of half a liter of blood would require you to inject the needle into a vein. Something you are clearly not doing. Everything I described can be injected into the muscle or below the skin and will find its way into your bloodflow safely via the capillaries below your or between your fatcells. And everything that I described would fit into the syringe. Sincerly, an ordinary psychiatrist from germany.

20 minutes? God damn this is gonna be good

WHY DOES EVERYONE SPELL IT "STIMPACK?" It's stimpak. The games kinda throw that in your face lol

“Nanobots man.” -Tinker Tom

I always though stimpacks used to be morphine, but they were like naw that's too druggy so they made up somthing new.

So wait, every time you heal fast you load your pants? Soooo... does that also apply to Wolverine and Deadpool? That would explain the former’s anger issues and the latter’s insanity. Edit: over 100 likes!? WOW!

How they work, three words: fucking nanomachines son!

Ever gonna do the SCIENCE behind Deathclaws?

Amusingly enough, Tim Cain and company covered the "after effects" you mentioned. I still remember, in fallout 2, there was a minor side quest to get an NPC some Radaway. When you complete the quest, as the NPC walks off, he says: "I hate how Radaway gives me the runs".

ShoddyCast is the Game Theory we deserve

I always assumed stem packs used a mixture of stem cells and nano bots, the nano bots immediately transport and deposit the stem cells in the damaged location where they are converted into the needed tissue.

Numbers are not fucking simple, have you SEEN Quantum Physics?

Austin: “cause you would be dead” Jon in YOLO challenges: “you fool”

Broc flower + xander root + empty clean syringe = stimpack , enjoy

never used a stimpak for like 200 hours of the game, only ate shitty food and drank water, lead belly is the best

"IT'S ME, AUSTIN".......I want that as a ringtone.

7 years later, still watching Austin‘s videos saved in the playlist and i love them

The gag was not getting hold I was enjoying it a lot actually :( 3:37

"Holy shit something happened!" Me after doing anything for any amount of time.

Austin, here's a mathematical problem for you! Take a gander at the grappling hook system in Just Cause! I mean, how does that shit not yank off his arm and destroy his internal organs? Check out the physics in it!

(me) "uses a stimpack" hmmmm something does not feel right (Stimpack) "blows a hole in my arm" (Me) AHHHHHHHHHHH

I can imagine the EMS people seeing him fall while they're eating corndogs and funnel cake and saying, "Dude. Really? How did you even- OK we need to take you to the hospital." That would be hilarious to see.

Dear Austin. I work at Bethesda. Please stop sending us emails. We have enough on our plate trying to change everything to suit your needs for the next fallout. Thanks.

4:12 I'd argue that pain is actually the most important part of the healing process though. No matter what your body does, if there isn't pain you just keep opening up wounds and starting the healing process from scratch.

Fun story to go with that healing timeframe I detached a finger on a bad Friday with a power saw. 6 months of therapy was needed before I could even move it safely without possibly destroying it forever and it took 6 YEARS before the nerves grew back which surprised everyone as it was expected to take somewhere between a decade and never for that to happen.

Stimpacks, nanomachines could do it! Boo ya.

i fucking love this channel with everything in my being

This shoddycast is getting shoddier and shoddier with each episode.

" pain is pretty damn important " My body: Pain? A shit ton of blood is good enough.

Here's what's actually in stimpacks Antiseptic. Blood.

I would love a video explaining THE SCIENCE! behind Tracer's Chronal Accelerator.

The use of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture makes this so satisfyingly dramatic.

On a real note… did Austin think about Rad-X just transferring a man made mineral or compound into the body to eliminate the output of the radioactive fallout occurring inside the body, basically balance out the radioactive particles with a pill that only targets the atoms which are producing the radiation?

Stimpacks sound like a fast way to get some sort of cancer

My buddy says I misunderstood stim packs for STEM packs but what if they had a fuckton of stemcells in them?

Could you describe the potentially terrifying science behind Halo's ODST drop pods?

17:10 The huge problem that, even if all of this were possible, still remains:

Who else lost it at "YOUR GOING TO SH*T YOUR PANTS!"

..... and no one is going to say how you can make stimpacks in New Vegas by getting Broc Flowers and Xander roots? no one? k thx

#YOURGONNASHITYOURPANTS

Stimpacks actually made me forget that Fallout doesn't have a regenerative health system

In my opinion stimpaks are just a mix of morphine and "sulfa" powder. Aka: The meds of ww2 and korea and early Vietnam (which makes it lore friendly).

Hi person reading the comments... If you read this i hope you have a good day

Want to know what else has all the nutrients you need... newborn babies

I think a brotherhood of steel outcast in Fallout 3 mentions how Radaway gave him the runs.