Plot
Workers at a mine in Utah blast their way into a mountain cavern in search of a large uranium deposit. Their Geiger reading comes back at almost zero, which makes no sense given the geo-studies, and one of them declares that someone made a mistake. Pressing deeper, they reach a deposit that looks eaten away. The meter spikes, and a glowing creature rises up behind them and roars.
At the Firehouse, Janine is on her way out the door to visit her sister Doris and is trying to leave Egon a set of instructions before her taxi arrives. She walks him through the pre-made meals she has labeled in the refrigerator, hands him a list of things he might forget, and reminds him that the phone bill is on final notice and has to be paid before 3 p.m. Egon promises he will handle it, sends her off, and closes the door with Slimer in relief.
Across the city, at Science Hall on the New York City College campus, a student named Andrea comes looking for her professor about a term paper. The professor, busy with a radioactive isotope, warns her to wait outside. The Utah creature enters, knocks him aside, swallows the isotope, and phases out through the chalkboard. The professor calls for the Ghostbusters.
The firehouse office is already in disarray. Egon cannot find the computer backup tapes, panicking that everything is falling apart with Janine gone, until Kylie points out she only left that morning. At the campus, the team examines the scene. Roland suspects the strange flux on the P.K.E. Meter is just the ambient radiation giving a false reading, and the professor sarcastically rejects Eduardo's theory about frat hazing. Garrett collects a slime sample left on the chalkboard. Meanwhile, at Memorial Hospital, the creature drifts through the halls and consumes vats of radioactive waste in a radiology room.
Back in Egon's lab, the slime turns out to be a new mutant strain with a cellular composition close to uranium. Kylie Griffin produces a Salt Lake City newspaper article about miners who excavated a uranium deposit only to find it gone, then ran into a strange apparition. Egon concludes the ghost is a mountain spirit that was trapped near the uranium and adapted over time to feeding on it, and that the miners accidentally released it. He warns that if it eats enough isotopes it could become toxic enough to wipe out major population centers. He digs out the original team's old radioactive hazard suits.
The Ghostbusters stake out the Isotope Research Center, the second-largest storehouse of isotopes in the northeast, betting the ghost will choose the closer target over the larger one in Norfolk, Virginia. They find it feeding, but the proton streams only make it grow larger; it can eat their fire. Cornered, they throw their packs to the creature and run. It finishes and sinks through the floor.
Regrouping, Egon proposes reconfiguring the nuclear cores to fire hybrid inert isotopes that would bond with the free electrons in the radioactive isotopes and render them inert as well. Only a few scientists know the formula, so he faces a long internet search, which then fails because the phone line is dead. Egon had forgotten to pay the bill. Roland reroutes the line from the corner phone booth so Egon can get online. Eduardo Rivera and Kylie, tracking the ghost across Long Island, radio in its position, and Egon determines it is headed for the South Shore Nuclear Power Plant, where it could grow too powerful to stop.
Garrett Miller and Roland Jackson head for the plant while Egon races to finish synthesizing the isotopes. With the facility under evacuation and no working packs, the team improvises. Eduardo startles the ghost with a fire extinguisher, and the others join in until they run out of propellant. Roland reaches the control room and a technician, and tries to fuse the ghost to the reactor core with a controlled meltdown by sealing off the core and inducing a temperature spike to destroy it. The plan fails, and they evacuate as the ghost swells to the size of the building and lurches toward Virginia.
Egon arrives by taxi with the modified packs, having forgotten money to pay the fare; the driver takes one look at the ghost and leaves without his $43.85. Egon warns that if the isotopes go unstable they will trigger a chain reaction equivalent to 20 Megaton Hydrogen Bombs. The team fires anyway. The ghost detonates, but the cloud is non-radioactive: the isotopes worked, and the creature returns to its original size. Kylie traps it in the blast crater.
Janine comes home early to find the firehouse apparently in working order, and Egon boasts that he and Slimer ran a tight ship, right up until she opens a closet and a pile of stuff spills out. The team keeps eating pizza as she gives in and hugs Egon, and Slimer sheds a tear.
The Radioactive Ghost
The episode's antagonist is a large, green, insectoid spirit that Roland classifies on-screen as a Class 4 Ethereal Entity. According to the in-universe reference book "Spirits of North America," aboriginal peoples of western North America believed in ethereal entities dwelling among mesas and volcanic rock formations. One of these spirits became trapped inside a mountain near uranium deposits in present-day Utah. Over a long period it adapted to its environment and developed an appetite for uranium, slowly consuming the deposits until a mining crew accidentally released it in 1997.
Once free, the ghost traveled east, growing larger and more powerful with each radioactive source it ingested. By the time it reached the New York City College campus it had already stripped the Utah deposit bare. The team's proton streams prove counterproductive, as the creature absorbs the beams as readily as any other energy source. Roland's attempt to fuse the ghost to a nuclear reactor core via controlled meltdown likewise fails. With the creature now large enough to irradiate all of Long Island as it moves toward the naval base in Norfolk, the modified inert-isotope formula becomes the last option. It works: the isotopes neutralize the ghost's charge and restore it to its original, trappable size.
The Radioactive Ghost later makes a non-canon cameo on the variant cover of Ghostbusters Issue 9 (Cover RI-B, the Spook Central variant).
Cast
The regular voice cast includes Tara Charendoff (later known as Tara Strong), Maurice LaMarche, Jason Marsden, Pat Musick, Alfonso Ribeiro, Rino Romano, and Billy West. Guest voices are Rene Auberjonois, Michael Corbett, and Stephanie Faracy.
Connections and notes
Janine's trip is to visit her sister Doris. The Melnitz family, including a character named Doris, appeared in The Real Ghostbusters episode "Janine's Day Off."
A second RGB parallel: the original team also tangled with a mutated Native American spirit in "Follow That Hearse," and the new team here draws on the old team's radioactive hazard suits.
Kylie names the naval base in Norfolk, Virginia, where nuclear-powered submarines are outfitted, as the largest storehouse of isotopes in the region. This is Naval Station Norfolk.
In the broadcast running order, "Fallout" follows "Moby Ghost" and precedes "Eyes of a Dragon."
References
Fandom Ghostbusters Wiki, "Fallout" and "Radioactive Ghost" articles.
