Only reason Fallout got as popular as it did —
which was still nowhere close to the most popular fantasy RPGs — is because it had magical elements. Radiation is just codeword for 'a wizard did it' in Fallout terms.
Zombies Ghouls?
A wizard did it Radiation. etc.,
The reason most post-apocalyptic games(RPGs) flounder is they don't include magic.
Here's a good article on this topic from the tabletop side, but it still applies:
https://arbiterofworlds.substack.com/p/ ... protection
It also goes a long way towards explaining why Fallout's combat — and arguably character building altogether — has kinda always sucked. My dude in Fallout is probably remarkably similar to your dude, for example. If you disagree, I suggest contrasting the classic Fallouts with Arcanum.
FO4 has decent combat…. just because they bolted a decent shooter on top of it thanks to id devs lending a hand. But the setting itself benefits heavily from magical radiation and other forms of magical super-science.
I have no idea why I wrote this tbh, I wrote something small up then kept rewriting it into a tangent.