Ericka Elwood-Woolum

Fallout 4 character
Ericka Elwood-Woolum
Lore
Race	Human
Gender	Female
Affiliation	Cambridge Polymer Labs, LLC
Role	Doctor of Engineering
Family	Jon Elwood - husband
Gameplay
Location	Cambridge Polymer Labs
Appearances	Fallout 4

Dr. Ericka Elwood-Woolum was a CIT graduate, co-founder and project lead of Cambridge Polymer Labs, LLC, and wife of Jon Elwood, a fellow graduate.

Background

Ericka, her husband Jon, and their colleague Wilfred Bergman were the three co-founders of Cambridge Polymer Labs, LLC. The company's last pre-War research project, the Nucleostrictive Lining Project, was a U.S. military-funded venture to produce a nucleostrictive lining that could allow power armor to charge itself by absorbing ambient ionizing radiation and converting it into electricity. Ericka was instrumental to the project, laying out and recording the initial process to be taken for the research. She also reported on their problems, potential solutions, and setbacks. Their main problem was ensuring that excess heat would not destabilize the material while also finding a solution that would keep the material hardy enough for field usage.

When the Great War struck, Ericka and the rest of the research team survived, but were sealed inside the lab by Jon, who pretended that the chaos was merely military training exercises and nothing was wrong. Ericka was the only person to who he told the truth: the team desperately needed military aid to survive the war-torn city, aid that would only come if he could prove that they had finished the Nucleostrictive Lining Project. Jon needed Ericka to uphold the lie and assuage the team's doubts with her authority.

Ericka was skeptical, believing the lie would fall apart too soon for them to find a solution and questioning the morality of keeping the team from their families in a time of need. However, she eventually went through with Jon's plan.

Deterioration

As months passed, isolation took its toll and the lie began to unravel. The team fractured, with some members even attempting to cut through the walls but failing to break through, Wil Bergman among them. Bergman, thinking of alternative escape methods, offhandedly mentioned taking "a more oblique angle." This comment would inadvertedly inspire Ericka to find the solution to the Nucleostrictive Lining Project's thermal waste problem, by literally using oblique angles to control the flow of radioactive particles into the material. Ericka and her colleagues proceeded to try to collect the samples they would need to prove the success of their method.

However, they were too late. Bergman, realizing radiation was seeping into the lab, took control of the facility and locked down the isotope containment chamber which held the U-238 needed to complete the project, trapping Mary Goodman inside. Realizing Bergman intended to activate the facility's turrets and fight their way out, Ericka pleaded with him to stop but was unsuccessful. Desperate, Ericka finally decided to reveal the truth to the team and organized a plan to ambush Bergman in his office via a utility shaft. She had tried to contact Jon as well, but received no response, unaware that he had been shot and was dying from the wound gone septic. No longer able to see movement from his office, she sent him one last message of support before putting her plan in motion.

Ericka did not survive her plan, killed by a gun Bergman had rigged in his room for self-defense. The rest of the team were left to suffer a slow demise from the radiation leaking into the lab, leaving their project unfinished.

Notes

Ericka's name is spelled as "Erika" in several terminal entries.

Appearances

Ericka Elwood-Woolum is mentioned only in Fallout 4.

References

Cambridge Polymer Labs Quests Cambridge Polymer Labs Characters Molly Employees Jon Elwood · Ericka Elwood-Woolum · Wilfred Bergman J. Harvey · L. Reed · Mary Goodman · N. Stokes · Tom Franklin Related Piezonucleic Lining Project · Defense Experimental Research Project Initiative