Background
When Myron (a drug making child prodigy) first encountered the Mordinos (a greedy gang), they were farming peyote cacti and selling it to tourists as the "Reno Experience." Unfortunately, as Myron explains, peyote trips last too long, and profit is generated by fast turnaround and a high addiction rate. Furthermore, the climate was far too ravaged and irradiated to grow anything but the hardiest of plants. So, Myron began delving into growing mushrooms. Hallucinogens have low overhead and thrive in plentiful brahmin dung (Brahmins are heavily irradiated cows with two heads). From there, Myron began experimenting with derivatives of lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin and THC. However, the Mordinos still desired something a little harder and more addictive that could aid them in gaining control of Redding. The solution to the problem came from the brahmin fertilizer itself.
In the pre-War days, big meat companies had experimented with a cheap protein extract for growing food. However, the product had to be abandoned because any bacterial contamination (even from common skin bacteria) resulted in a complex reaction, ruining any meat and causing it to act like methamphetamine. To cut their losses, farmers fed the extract to their cattle.
Myron discovered that the fumes generated from brahmin who had been fed the contaminated protein extract could be used to create a powerful drug. By placing the augmented brahmin dung in large vats, Myron and the Mordinos were finally able to begin producing the potent drug they had been after. About a hundred slaves were killed in initial testing—mostly results of heart attacks, cerebral hemorrhages, and psychotic episodes—but jet was ultimately produced.
Thanks to Myron and jet, the Mordino family were able to build their drug empire. Grateful, they supplied their boy-genius with anything he wanted, usually whores and drugs. The Stables research team would further Myron's work, hoping to create a stronger and even more potent version, codenamed jet beta. However, the results were unsuccessful, as they could not quite get the kinks out (e.g., nasal bleeding, hallucinations, heart attacks). But they did increase the duration of its high - from 15 to 60 minutes.
Myron would die less than a year after the Chosen One defeated the Enclave, somewhat ironically stabbed to death by a jet addict while drinking in a bar at the Den. While no one remembered that Myron created jet or even remembers his name, his creation would live on, even spreading as far as the Capital Wasteland, where Murphy would attempt to produce an even more potent version, named ultrajet, designed for use by ghouls, who are barely affected by standard jet.
Meanwhile, in the Mojave Wasteland, some of the more scientifically enlightened learned about the secrets of ultrajet and sought to make it themselves, and home chemists developed a potent form of jet called rocket. Surprisingly, rocket was one of few drugs that is not known to the Great Khans, who have the drug trade in a stranglehold.
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