The SCIENCE! - Fusion Cores in Fallout 4 EXPLAINED 

Remember guys, all this fusion tech exists because the guy that invented the microchip died in a car accident, while in our universe, he didn't.

"Microfusion Cells are incredibly rare." Me, with over 10,000 in Fallout 3: What?

Dear past Austin, in less than 10 years we managed to do nuclear fusion, congrats!

Top ten rappers eminen was too afraid to diss

DO NOT MIX COCAINE WITH ENGINEERING!!!

Nuclear fusion in a nutshell: AN ATOM SMACKS ANOTHER ATOM SO HARD THEY BECOME ONE

He never told me to turn off the faucet. The water bill costs more than my house, please Austin, it's been 3 1/2 years!

Let's face it. A fusion core is an automotive ignition coil with a doorknob on the end and a fusion cell is a spin on oil filter.

1.28 gigawatts? Great scott, Marty!

I always saw the fusion cores as high capacity batteries that have gained their charge from a fusion reactor of some kind. As they're called Fusion cores and Micro Fusion Cells. These are terms for batteries. These are not actively performing Fusion. As to why they run down despite powering a building for 2 centuries. Well, it's simple. They weren't powering the building. Think when you disconnect them does the entire building go dark. No the lights temporarily dim meaning there's an outside power source and the cores were most likely meant to be used as emergency generators. And considering running redundant lighting is a low power operation compared to a suit of armour that is often compared to a tank in power consumption in the Expanded lore. That's where you get your answer as to why they run dry quickly. A few side notes just for fun: With a decent bit of luck (and maybe saving before trying) you can pickpocket the fusion core out of a raiders armour. This forces them to exit the armour and become easier to kill, you also get a set of armour with the frame. You can exit you armour when the core is at 1% remaining charge remove the core and manually insert a full charge one and the value of the core doesn't change.

Me: clicks on video than wonders if it is a game theory or shodycast episode. Austin:says the word foreplay Me:thank god

10:25: ShoddyCast: LMS class locomotive train engine Video: Shows picture of an LNER J71. Me: Excuse me wtf

Did someone mention PRECIOUS TRITIUM?! The power of the Sun... in the palm of my hand!

As an engineer, your description of nuclear power plants made me uncomfortable xD

Mega watts is abbreviated as MW. mW is milli-watt Time: 10m23s

DOC BROWN - " where am i gonna get 1.21 gigawatts from?" FALLOUT - " HOLD MY NUCLEAR FUSION CORE" ME- "CAN MY POWER ARMOUR TIME TRAVEL?"

Don't know what I just watched, but I'm subscribing.

1.28 gigawatts?! Too bad you ran outtatime or you you could have made a doc brown reference.

*About to take a big sip of water* "Oh no...no no no..."

I actually like the Fusion Core mechanic. It adds some counter-balance to the Power Armor's strengths. Personally, I'd say the cores should last maybe twice as long overall but that's about it. All in all, I do think Fallout 4 has the best implementation of Power Armor in terms of mechanics, if not balance.

So I slowed the video down to .5 He sounds drunk af

Dear Austin, Hi! It's me! Seth! "LMS locomotive train engine"?! What the hell, Austin?! The LMS was an English railway company (standing for "London, Midland and Scottish railway") that used engines built exclusively for them (a common practice for companies at the time). So the engines built for them were given names and designations - most commonly beginning with the term "class" - to keep track of them. One example is the class 3F. It was called a 3F because that was also its strength rating (other railway companies were much more imaginative with their designations). F represented Freight. There were also P for Passenger and MT for Mixed Traffic, which meant it could pull either freight or passengers effectively. The 3 in the designation is its power in its respective category. The highest strength rating in the F category is 9F, so a 3F is a relatively low power rating. So, since each class usually belonged to only one company, they would be referred to like "LMS class 3F". (Though modern enthusiast usually omit saying the word class when talking about locomotives unless they're diesel locomotives, but that's a topic for another day) And now for the picture you used! The engine in the picture does NOT belong to the LMS. As you can see written on the side, it belongs to the LNER (London and North-Eastern Railway). Dude! Come on! You're smarter than all of this! I know you are! This engine started its life as a NER (North-Eastern Railway, which was the basis for the amalgamation of companies that formed the LNER) class E. When the LNER formed, these locomotives (which were quite old by that time. almost 40 years old, in fact) were renamed J71. AND there's the problem of power! Going off of the J71 in the picture, since no LMS locomotive is specified, your information is WAY off. A J71 at its most common travel speed of about 30 miles per hour (13.4112 m/s), pulling the heaviest train it could while maintaining that speed, would only be producing 724.2048 kW, or 0.7242048 mW. And through long and difficult calculations, I determined that 0.7242048 is less than 2.06. Now, the most powerful LMS locomotive ever produced was the class 8F which could produce 3225.3936 kW or 3.2253936 mW. But there are engines that surpass the English strength rating system entirely. The Virginian Railway class AE is the strongest steam engine ever built (to my knowledge) with a fucking ridiculous 175,000 lbf of tractive effort. For reference, the J71 has only 12,130 lbf of tractive effort. You'd need 15 J71s to match one AE. But what does that mean to us? At a slightly generous operating speed of 30 mph under maximum load, the AE would be producing 10433.9136 kW or 10.4339136 mW of energy! And then to get nitpicky; "locomotive train engine" is a horribly redundant statement. "Locomotive is correct". "Engine" is also correct. "Train Engine", while being a very strange way of putting it, CAN also be considered correct. But smashing all of those together is like saying; "This is my new automobile driving car." or "I'm going to use the ATM money machine. I recommend using "Locomotive" from now on. That way; people will always know what you're talking about. Whew... I think I started turning into you while writing this.. Better be careful! I might be doing your job soon! Just kidding! (not kidding) Sincerely, Seth

Also, 5mm Remington is a rimmed cartridge, and is a rim-fire cartridge. The 5mm ammo in Fallout is center-fire, and is comparable to 7.62x51mm NATO, in shape and size (this is based off the assumption that the .308 cartridge in FO:4 is identical to its real-world counterpart) also, the box of “5mm” ammo is marked as 7.62x51mm NATO, which kinda odd, despite matching up with the real-world m134 minigun

The way you combine actual knowledge with hilarious comedy is really a special attribute to why your videos are so good man.

Remember don't mix cocaine and engineering. Unless you need to speak fast

I wish ShoddyCast was my science or math teacher I would love to be in a science or math class with him.

I'll say this Austin.. you've taught me more about fission and fusion in less than 20 minutes compared to the 5 or so years I learned in highschool. Or really just school in general. Really goes to show that presentation is the key factor in teaching. This is how you get people interested in fields of study, especially in the younger crowd.

11:26 - 14:26 That was absolutely exhilarating. It's like pure cocaine...but SCIENCE!!!

HOLY SHIT! First off, thank you. I feel accomplished today for being mentioned in a video. Sucks that I really despise editing because now I want to get back in the upload game (my editing software sucks majorly and I am BROKE). Also, thank you for doing the math for us. I tried taking into consideration decay over the years, but kept throwing it aside (possibly subconsciously) to the fact that not every core you find is in use. So like an idiot I threw out idle decay. But more importantly, you solved MY issue (because the comments on the last video got way out of hand, down to it not even being about fusion cores, but if synths could really blend in with human society. I stopped following along after a while, especially with some of the silly things people were saying like how fusion generators just power light bulbs. I'm starting to get long winded.) BUT REALLY, THANK YOU! This also means that whenever we get another fallout game, we can call total bullshit on there being power armor and gatling lasers unless they give a way to recharge them, which I would suspect would only be possible by organizations like the BoS, Institute (which is most likely lore blown up), and the Enclave (also blown up). And then we can revisit this issue (in 8 years with our luck) in Fallout 5. Until next time, later! -Crow

if you throw enough shit at a wall it will eventually stick.

I always viewed them as a car battery, needed to start up the actual thing generating power, and maintaining operation if the actual energy producing component is damaged. The explosions that occur when you shoot a fusion core off a power armor user or a robot may be due to the same reason modern electrical cars combust in flames when the batteries get damaged in a crash.

Atoms: reach 100 mil K° Atoms: *i’M FaST AS F-hEcK, BOi*

Austin, your kelvin joke was awesome

So basically 62 days after Fallout 4 starts the entire wasteland would explode...again.

I always taught the sun itself is a fusion reactor with all the plasma inside it

Tod Howard: Oh hey a Email! *Reads Email Email: Dear Bethesda... Tod Howard: OH GOD NOT AGAIN. Edit:Holy CRAP 170 likes that's awesome, thanks everybody!

Fusion cores can power a building for two hundred years because they have help from the giant machine you find them in. It can hardly work as a legitimate power source on its own (as compared to when it's inside a fusion generator)

Wrong. The most badass piece of tech in the Fallout universe is the Stimpak.

“Do not mix cocaine with engineering” Yes

Shoddy: "Strap yourself in!" Me: *looks around* * looks up* My mind: "No. why." Me: *Puts neck support on forehead* My mind: "WHY YOU PIECE OF PEA"

11:26 put it on 0.5 speed to get DrunkyCast

Okay, you have to make the science behind Stimpak. And RadAway.

Scientists in Fallout: *makes fusion cores, laser rifles, and stealth possible* The entire US Military making Liberty Prime: *gets stuck powering it*

I know this is 4 years old but I wanna say, I loved the kelvin joke, and appreciate literally any time anyone refers to kelvin. The sped up math and science was absolutely amazing! I know it’s kinda pompous to say but watching this makes me feel pretty smart. Also superiorly nerdy

most difficult fap don't judge me

10:42 1.26 gigawatts..... that's so close to 1.21 gigawatts.......

Amazing man, love the tasteful swearing and enthusiasm. Made the video better, everything else was also amazing. Keep it up bro

you failed to mention the muon fusion of the actual 1950's, still an amazing video

the SCIENCE is the only reason i subscribed to this channel

I actually understand this... Holy shit, thank you Chemistry.

You really make me smile; I appreciate your drive, as well as your work!

I wasn't prepared for this much science

I got your Kelvin joke.

Naw, if you have the secret of fusion you'd be in an unmarked grave outside of Vegas.

Amazing job. Thank you for putting so much work and thought into this. Great vid!

This was, hands down, the most entertaining science lecture I've ever listened to.

So to beat the brotherhood, wait 2 months in game, and they'll all blow up, noted

I understood about 80% of it after watching the rant twice at full speed should I be proud

I loved this video so much mainly cause of how enthusiastic you sound about science. I love science so much and watching a video with science combined with such a great video game is amazing

i was so impressed with the work you put into this, that i actually watched the whole squarespace ad. haha.

10:41 And more than it takes a Delorean to timetravel

Fun fact: A nuclear powered aircraft carrier can run with out being refueled for about three years

That was a fascinating nerdout, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Fun fact! Before fallout 4, power armor was running off a micro fusion pack, not a core. That pack could have ended the war and prevented everything if it was further developed.

11:45 *switches to 0.5 speed

>Using lower case shorthand for metric prefixes Maximum Triggered Tomahawks targeting shoddy HQ, Ready to fire

Dude, love the video so much great research shown here

Holy god that was a lot to take in! That was pretty awesome to learn! Thanks for the info, always happy to learn something new

400 people that watched this don't like science. remember folks, you only have 62 days in Fallout 4 to use your Fusion Cores!

>using 5mm Remington as the mingun cartridge NO! BAD! You NEVER want to use a rimmed cartridge in a self loading firearm, it makes your weapon very very susceptible to rim lock, makes extraction a chore and is just generally bad design. It's also RIMFIRE! Rimfire is simply not reliable enough for military use, especially not in high volume use like a minigun. The 5mm round in Fallout is most likely a specially packaged version of 5.56mm NATO. Possibly the telescoped ammo used by the LSAT, though that doesn't explain why it was used in Fallout 1 when the LSAT wasn't conceived of until 2004. The energy comparison is totally flawed due to this, IMO.

10:39 1.28 gigawatts.. Isnt that a quote in back to the future? A fusion core had the same power as a bolt of lightning

"yo wait, you got 1000 juuls, lemme have some".*Gets lit up by a goddamn minigun*

definitively not the video to learn english ^^

12:20 RUN HE'S GOING TO BLOW

*music starts playing…* “Hi! Dear Bethesda… It’s me! Austin!” Me: oh, holy shit…

"Do not mix cocaine and engineering" My friend, you just got a sub

18 mins, exam tomorrow and 10 more pages at an essay. It better be good !

I had to set the playback speed to 0.75 % to actually hear it all

I just learned more in this video than my whole life in school

This is simply the best Fallout 4 related video I've ever seen. Hats off to you, Shoddy.

The most badass scientist goes to... Shoddy!

Simple Answer: Power armor and the fusion core weapons are insanely inefficient

This is literally the best RU-vid video I've ever seen. Massive Kudos xD

11:27 my ex when she gave me reasons to break up

wait you said 1.28 giga watts AND NO REFERENCE TO BACK TO THE FUTURE? ( i know its 1.21 gW but COME ON its close)

I have an answer for their longevity. The fusion cores are not active all the time Instead, they have an electrochemical battery to kick-start the reaction. They could even be designed to restart the reaction as needed to keep the battery conditioned. This would make far more sense, as back-of-the-hand math suggests that storing a lot of idling fusion cores would quickly become infeasible due to the accumulation of waste heat. Alternatively, they could use a primary battery to start the reaction. That would mean that each fusion core would be limited to a fixed number of duty cycles, and also explain why refueling them is extremely difficult.

Can you imagine how smart the Think Tank could have been if Mobius didn't change their programming and put them in a loop? They were the top scientists who produced Fusion and the Sierra Madre vending machines.

I got your Kelvin joke, and it gave me a little chuckle. I APPRECIATE YOU AUSTIN!!!

I got the Kelvin joke Austin, good job man

As far as all the videos that I seen since RU-vid came out.you sir take the cake, any video you do you take the time to do it right and do the research figure out the ins and outs and then explained it in such a way that anyone can follow, my hats off to you good job keep up the good work!

2:04 This is how I'm pronouncing analogous now

I would think that the reason the fusion core is at 100 percent in buildings is the constant supply of hydrogen. So you would have to account for the constant fusion for 210 years.

Mega Watt. milli Watt

"So cool it has to be measured in Kelvin" to which i respond "Negative Kelvin" I know the Kelvin scale doesn't go below 0, but i still think negative kelvin would be pretty cool.

I totally forgot about these videos, so happy this came up on my feed. Hope being a father is treating Austin well ✌️

11:28 Litteraly my Electrical Engineering Professor during lecture

This is another reason why the institute truly is the best thing for the commonwealth, even though there di*ks, they could commandeer the mass fusion building and recommence the production of fusion cores and be the greatest power in the commonwealth (maybe even America) surpassing the brotherhood and starting a new order and eventually share their technology with the commonwealth. It'd be the overall best ending.

Hello, I noticed a small mistake at around 10:52. In gigawatts the g in gW should actully be an uppercase G, according to the SI standardization. A good rule for this is that everything in y where in x*10^y where y > 1 the prefix should be uppercase, for instance kilo K, mega M, giga G, tera T, peta P. Wich means that when y < 1 the prefix should be in lowercase, for instance milli m, pico p, atto a. Hope i helped, great video! You have done some really good math here!!👍👍

I absolutely love your laser energy presentation. It will be a real joule in my memory.

Can't wait for the science videos to be like this again ☺️🥰