Do the ham radios serve any purpose in Fallout 3?
The ham radios don’t serve any real purpose, other than to add to the general atmosphere of the game. For me, it adds to the feeling of isolation when you turn on a radio that probably once had music and now only receives static. And sometimes, you can hear the echo of music or an old broadcast that just makes you experience even more the isolation of the Wasteland. I found a forum thread that says this: “There’s one Ham Radio I know off that’s actually active. When somewhere, near a radio tower you can tune in and hear a Ghoul breathing. Once you find the entrance you can find a Glowing One standing over a Ham Radio…” A response goes on to explain that if you activate some radio towers, you can pick up sounds and eventually find the broadcast location if you look. I wasn’t aware of that and sounds pretty interesting. Also, some of the radios broadcast a signal in Morse code. These sometimes lead to a corpse holed up in a bunker sitting beside a radio. Just makes you picture somebody
