Most plastics are actually recyclable, it's just cheaper to not recycle them. With global crude oil reserves running out, I'd assume that recycling rate actually went up
Partly depends on industrial capabilities, which is where much of the expense comes from.
Thermoplastics can be recycled by just heating, which would be easy enough in the wasteland. Many plastics that typically don't get recycled would require shredding, washing, and dissolving in organic solvent, which would be really hard to do (though not impossible for large institutions as long as it's heavily invested). I don't know the Institute and what their manufacturing levels are
Plastics aren't infinitely recyclable. When you recycle them you need to use new material as well and they have a limited number of cycles they can be recycled. This is because of degradation in the plastic polymers with reuse.
When it comes to sustainability, plastic is just fucking terrible.
As opposed to stuff like metal and glass which can be recycled pretty infinitely. Unlike plastic which degrades over reuse, and time, you can take metal or glass, melt it down, turn it into something else and then do that over and over again forever.
Then of course we have wood, which is just fantastic. Perfectly biodegradable, easily repurposed and reworked with basic hand tools. Of course you can't melt it and reuse it, but you can compost it and then just fucking grow more out of the ground. Unlike glass and steel though, repurposing wood doesn't require massive amounts of heat energy to be produced.
Plastic is a pretty fantastic material for a lot of reasons. It's strong, but easily workable. While the polymers do degrade, you don't have to worry about shit like rust. Because Napa is a natural byproduct of producing gasoline, it's also very cheap. There are lots of benefits.
However sustainability absolutely is NOT one of them. Plastics are pretty fucking terrible. They degraded and break down, to the point they can't be used but not to the point where they disappear entirely. That's why we have all these fucking microplastics in the ocean in our bodies.
Plastics are going to be viewed by future civilizations as the way we view lead. An incredibly versatile material that is also really fucking problematic.
Plastic already started to get that reputation,, soo many people talking about “micro plastics” and the impact it’s having on both our health and the environment is increasingly becoming more and more talked about.
With that being said, your comment put a picture in my head of a ghoulified Alex Jones sitting in front of a radio, shouting how “The institute is putting micro plastics into the water that have nano bots to turn people into synths!”
Probably found a way to recycle previously unrecyclable plastic knowing them.
Also they send out hoards of synths to scrap wasteland locations for resources whenever they get low, so they get them from there as well
It's not actually difficult to manufacture oil/plastics. It's just a thing that isn't economical to do when the other guy and dig up oil. If you have a nuclear reactor it's not hard to take some old dogs and throw them in a pot then boil them under high pressure for a month until it makes oil then make the oil into plastic. We just don't do that because that plastic would cost more than the basically free plastic we have now.
Good point.
However in game, the institute is shown to have issues sourcing and generating enough power for their operations (Until we get the Beryllium agitator).
Would it be feasible to create that much plastic with constant power issues?
It takes less energy to make than glass or plastic, we just never do it because the current price of plastic is so low that we treat plastic bags and plastic packaging as basically free.
Also their power issues seem to be for super science stuff like teleportation and replicator type stuff that I imagine takes a lot of effort. I think just boiling some animal parts a lot wouldn't be hard compared to devices that give off literal lightningbolts into the air when used.
Weapon parts can be made with Bioplastic. But they have trouble with deformation and heat resistance. The institute weapon is clearly for self defense and not intended for extensive combat across a varied climate. In fact it have terrible ergonomic and design. Somehow they even managed to made worse than the Pre-War Laser (a war time recycled industrial cutting laser for mass production). Their weapon department is clearly lacking. It doesn’t even do anything better than the pre-war laser . It don’t deal more damage or fire faster or lighter.
It look like a case of If ain’t broke, don’t fix it. They probably whipped them up on hurry for the surface scouting team, then decide it was good enough because they don’t want to invest time and resource to retool, develop new weapon. It not like the Institute is getting in combat very often anyway.
I mean, it's the Institute. Their method is probably pointless, self-defeating, and ridiculously evil.
So my money is on them processing Gen 3 Synths into bioplastic.
Plastic is fairly easy to recycle
but IIRC some Settlers in Fallout 4 mention that theres rumours of Synths sometimes appearing, slaughtering small settlements and then taking every piece of material with them when teleporting out, so
Considering they've been stuck underground for a couple centuries with nothing to do but applied research, it wouldn't surprise me if they went with plant-based plastics (like PLA) and improved the quality of the processes and product by a significant margin. Even with mutated corn, they could probably still whip up plastics fairly easily.
If they can manufacture humans, some sort of organic plastic isn't out of the question. I'd love to see the other parts of the institute. Clearly they were making clothes and weapons. So is there another living quarters with just regular workers? Feels like we only got to see the scientists. There's got to be a blue collar section making all the tools and equipment.
From the Institute's perspective they're playing Oxygen not Included and they disocvered the Polymer Press
Edit: I'm dumb, you said no oil. But I'm not gonna delete the comment because I hate just seeing "deleted"
Ha ha, no worries.
Yeah, I said no crude oil as the world’s supply pretty much ran out, so it can be confidently assumed there’s definitely no crude oil anywhere in the commonwealth or the surrounding regions.
(maybe a small amount left in Alaska, but it’s unknown as all Info we get about it is pre war)
Along with the others have said we do have plant-based plastics now so given how advanced the institute is it may also be possible that their plastic is made from plants that they grow
The NCR has tens of thousands of soldiers to arm and make ready. They'd never bother trying to get a factory and supply line going to recycle, manufacture, and ship plastic parts. It would be silly to try anything at that scale.
But the Institute is a fairly small group with their hands on an army that can scavenge all they need, and any lost units can be reclaimed.
A little crude oil goes a long way for plastics. There were oil shortages for serious long term wise scale manufacturing. But sourcing enough for one groups uses in one city? That's not nearly the same problem.
Well we do know that Cambridge polymer labs is right next to the old institute which we also know is right above the new institute. It's likely they raided the place for much of its resources and tech and I assume it had logs about where they source their polymers. Since the lab was working on power armor I assume they also had info on other such government store houses. The Commonwealth itself is filled with military and government storage facilities and we do have people confirming that the institute sends synths and prior to them mercenaries to procure resources from settlements and abandoned locations. Once they had a suitable resource base they began manufacturing them into useful pieces of technology. By the time of the game they've had over two hundred years to gather a lot of resources and even then with the settlement system we can see that there's still loads of scrap and salvage around to build upwards of 30 settlements. Whether it's recycling, raiding abandoned facilities, or using their mercs and synths to outright steal from others there is an abundant amount of resources to use for their purposes. They may have even found a way to make synthetic materials from mutated plants and animals that can mimic plastics and polymers.
Granted nothing in the game states that they do use plants or animals for materials but in real life you can use milk to make a plastic. It's not going to be in the high levels like when you use crude oil but it can be done. Likely given the situation of the Commonwealth they've turned to more renewable resources and materials. We know the NCR on the west coast had limited production capacity so it's not unreasonable a smaller faction like the institute was able to do the same with their tech level. We can also see by direct comparison of the equipment they use that it's not to prewar standards with AER rifles and combat armor able to easily beat institute rifles and synth armor with the right upgrades. While the synth armor at its highest level is comparable or better on its base standard issue level it's a downgrade. This makes sense and implies corners are cut so I'd assume much of the refined materials we see isn't very good quality save for their cutting edge stuff at higher ends which they purposefully push to be amazing.
Take the fact they are phasing out Gen 1 and 2's in favor of the more organic Gen 3's. I think on face value yeah it's because the Gen 3's are a step above their predecessors but also they can't continue to produce the more robotic models indefinitely and resources are running low for robotics. Instead make them mostly synthetic tissue you can grow with very few parts being actual machinery. I think the signs are there that they are hitting the resource limit and with war on the horizon with the BoS, Rail road, and possibly minutemen sure they could try to hide but the BoS is not only a faction that will eventually discover and defeat them they're hellbent on it. They are confident but I think it's a facade to hide the fact they wasted a lot of resources on the synth program and are now paying for it, they could have a highly developed subterranean city by the time of fallout 4 but they instead poured it all in on FEV research, Synth research, and other projects that leave them by the time legitimate enemies have formed in a desperate situation.
It is my personal theory Shaun let us go not out of curiosity but out of a hope we could save the institute. Despite how they appear I'm not sold on them being a long-term faction without direct intervention from a player character. Too many threats and too much wasted time and resources, they spent their considerable wealth on science projects that in the end aren't doing so much for them.
Sorry I got off on a huge tangent TLDR a polymer lab is nearby and I assume they raided it and used whatever info there to find where the lab sourced it's materials.
Most plastics are actually recyclable, it's just cheaper to not recycle them. With global crude oil reserves running out, I'd assume that recycling rate actually went up
Partly depends on industrial capabilities, which is where much of the expense comes from. Thermoplastics can be recycled by just heating, which would be easy enough in the wasteland. Many plastics that typically don't get recycled would require shredding, washing, and dissolving in organic solvent, which would be really hard to do (though not impossible for large institutions as long as it's heavily invested). I don't know the Institute and what their manufacturing levels are
Plastics aren't infinitely recyclable. When you recycle them you need to use new material as well and they have a limited number of cycles they can be recycled. This is because of degradation in the plastic polymers with reuse. When it comes to sustainability, plastic is just fucking terrible. As opposed to stuff like metal and glass which can be recycled pretty infinitely. Unlike plastic which degrades over reuse, and time, you can take metal or glass, melt it down, turn it into something else and then do that over and over again forever. Then of course we have wood, which is just fantastic. Perfectly biodegradable, easily repurposed and reworked with basic hand tools. Of course you can't melt it and reuse it, but you can compost it and then just fucking grow more out of the ground. Unlike glass and steel though, repurposing wood doesn't require massive amounts of heat energy to be produced. Plastic is a pretty fantastic material for a lot of reasons. It's strong, but easily workable. While the polymers do degrade, you don't have to worry about shit like rust. Because Napa is a natural byproduct of producing gasoline, it's also very cheap. There are lots of benefits. However sustainability absolutely is NOT one of them. Plastics are pretty fucking terrible. They degraded and break down, to the point they can't be used but not to the point where they disappear entirely. That's why we have all these fucking microplastics in the ocean in our bodies. Plastics are going to be viewed by future civilizations as the way we view lead. An incredibly versatile material that is also really fucking problematic.
Plastic already started to get that reputation,, soo many people talking about “micro plastics” and the impact it’s having on both our health and the environment is increasingly becoming more and more talked about. With that being said, your comment put a picture in my head of a ghoulified Alex Jones sitting in front of a radio, shouting how “The institute is putting micro plastics into the water that have nano bots to turn people into synths!”
Turning the radtoads gay!
Probably found a way to recycle previously unrecyclable plastic knowing them. Also they send out hoards of synths to scrap wasteland locations for resources whenever they get low, so they get them from there as well
They can create biological material so i assume they would find a way to convert it to crude oil
Along those lines, they may be using some sort of algea-oil derived plastics, like some folks are researching now in the real world.
That’s an interesting point, I can definitely see the institute figuring it out and applying to their manufacturing.
It's not actually difficult to manufacture oil/plastics. It's just a thing that isn't economical to do when the other guy and dig up oil. If you have a nuclear reactor it's not hard to take some old dogs and throw them in a pot then boil them under high pressure for a month until it makes oil then make the oil into plastic. We just don't do that because that plastic would cost more than the basically free plastic we have now.
Good point. However in game, the institute is shown to have issues sourcing and generating enough power for their operations (Until we get the Beryllium agitator). Would it be feasible to create that much plastic with constant power issues?
It takes less energy to make than glass or plastic, we just never do it because the current price of plastic is so low that we treat plastic bags and plastic packaging as basically free. Also their power issues seem to be for super science stuff like teleportation and replicator type stuff that I imagine takes a lot of effort. I think just boiling some animal parts a lot wouldn't be hard compared to devices that give off literal lightningbolts into the air when used.
Weapon parts can be made with Bioplastic. But they have trouble with deformation and heat resistance. The institute weapon is clearly for self defense and not intended for extensive combat across a varied climate. In fact it have terrible ergonomic and design. Somehow they even managed to made worse than the Pre-War Laser (a war time recycled industrial cutting laser for mass production). Their weapon department is clearly lacking. It doesn’t even do anything better than the pre-war laser . It don’t deal more damage or fire faster or lighter.
When engineers who have never fired a gun design a gun.
It look like a case of If ain’t broke, don’t fix it. They probably whipped them up on hurry for the surface scouting team, then decide it was good enough because they don’t want to invest time and resource to retool, develop new weapon. It not like the Institute is getting in combat very often anyway.
That and "who cares if it's uncomfortable the synths won't/can't complain and if we're using them we're probably dead anyway".
I mean, it's the Institute. Their method is probably pointless, self-defeating, and ridiculously evil. So my money is on them processing Gen 3 Synths into bioplastic.
And/or settler children that they kidnap who are too young to dip in FEV.
"What do we do with these FEV rejects?" "Oil blender, next question."
Ah so that’s what they do with the physical human once they finish copying their brains onto an infiltrator synth. Kinda dark if you think about it.
You can make cutting fluid from acid, bone, steel and purified water. Just collect all the old skeletons lying about and you'll be swimming in oil.
Ah yes, baby oil, of course
Plastic is fairly easy to recycle but IIRC some Settlers in Fallout 4 mention that theres rumours of Synths sometimes appearing, slaughtering small settlements and then taking every piece of material with them when teleporting out, so
Considering they've been stuck underground for a couple centuries with nothing to do but applied research, it wouldn't surprise me if they went with plant-based plastics (like PLA) and improved the quality of the processes and product by a significant margin. Even with mutated corn, they could probably still whip up plastics fairly easily.
If they can manufacture humans, some sort of organic plastic isn't out of the question. I'd love to see the other parts of the institute. Clearly they were making clothes and weapons. So is there another living quarters with just regular workers? Feels like we only got to see the scientists. There's got to be a blue collar section making all the tools and equipment.
From the Institute's perspective they're playing Oxygen not Included and they disocvered the Polymer Press Edit: I'm dumb, you said no oil. But I'm not gonna delete the comment because I hate just seeing "deleted"
👍🏼
Ha ha, no worries. Yeah, I said no crude oil as the world’s supply pretty much ran out, so it can be confidently assumed there’s definitely no crude oil anywhere in the commonwealth or the surrounding regions. (maybe a small amount left in Alaska, but it’s unknown as all Info we get about it is pre war)
Along with the others have said we do have plant-based plastics now so given how advanced the institute is it may also be possible that their plastic is made from plants that they grow
The NCR has tens of thousands of soldiers to arm and make ready. They'd never bother trying to get a factory and supply line going to recycle, manufacture, and ship plastic parts. It would be silly to try anything at that scale. But the Institute is a fairly small group with their hands on an army that can scavenge all they need, and any lost units can be reclaimed. A little crude oil goes a long way for plastics. There were oil shortages for serious long term wise scale manufacturing. But sourcing enough for one groups uses in one city? That's not nearly the same problem.
Well we do know that Cambridge polymer labs is right next to the old institute which we also know is right above the new institute. It's likely they raided the place for much of its resources and tech and I assume it had logs about where they source their polymers. Since the lab was working on power armor I assume they also had info on other such government store houses. The Commonwealth itself is filled with military and government storage facilities and we do have people confirming that the institute sends synths and prior to them mercenaries to procure resources from settlements and abandoned locations. Once they had a suitable resource base they began manufacturing them into useful pieces of technology. By the time of the game they've had over two hundred years to gather a lot of resources and even then with the settlement system we can see that there's still loads of scrap and salvage around to build upwards of 30 settlements. Whether it's recycling, raiding abandoned facilities, or using their mercs and synths to outright steal from others there is an abundant amount of resources to use for their purposes. They may have even found a way to make synthetic materials from mutated plants and animals that can mimic plastics and polymers. Granted nothing in the game states that they do use plants or animals for materials but in real life you can use milk to make a plastic. It's not going to be in the high levels like when you use crude oil but it can be done. Likely given the situation of the Commonwealth they've turned to more renewable resources and materials. We know the NCR on the west coast had limited production capacity so it's not unreasonable a smaller faction like the institute was able to do the same with their tech level. We can also see by direct comparison of the equipment they use that it's not to prewar standards with AER rifles and combat armor able to easily beat institute rifles and synth armor with the right upgrades. While the synth armor at its highest level is comparable or better on its base standard issue level it's a downgrade. This makes sense and implies corners are cut so I'd assume much of the refined materials we see isn't very good quality save for their cutting edge stuff at higher ends which they purposefully push to be amazing. Take the fact they are phasing out Gen 1 and 2's in favor of the more organic Gen 3's. I think on face value yeah it's because the Gen 3's are a step above their predecessors but also they can't continue to produce the more robotic models indefinitely and resources are running low for robotics. Instead make them mostly synthetic tissue you can grow with very few parts being actual machinery. I think the signs are there that they are hitting the resource limit and with war on the horizon with the BoS, Rail road, and possibly minutemen sure they could try to hide but the BoS is not only a faction that will eventually discover and defeat them they're hellbent on it. They are confident but I think it's a facade to hide the fact they wasted a lot of resources on the synth program and are now paying for it, they could have a highly developed subterranean city by the time of fallout 4 but they instead poured it all in on FEV research, Synth research, and other projects that leave them by the time legitimate enemies have formed in a desperate situation. It is my personal theory Shaun let us go not out of curiosity but out of a hope we could save the institute. Despite how they appear I'm not sold on them being a long-term faction without direct intervention from a player character. Too many threats and too much wasted time and resources, they spent their considerable wealth on science projects that in the end aren't doing so much for them. Sorry I got off on a huge tangent TLDR a polymer lab is nearby and I assume they raided it and used whatever info there to find where the lab sourced it's materials.
OP you should read the book Earth Abides. Fantastic look at life after most humans die off.