MW4 DMZ Irradiated Containers: locations, routes and weapon manuals

Watch the videos first

This guide follows three creators, so please start with their videos. TheSpazo's is embedded at the top of the page; IceManIsaac's and MrDalekJD's are just below, and all three are linked here. TheSpazo's video is 22 minutes 36 seconds long and has a sponsor read from about 0:24 to 1:00. IceManIsaac's is 24 minutes 37 seconds: he talks until about 19:15, and then a 10 minute speed run plays with no commentary. MrDalekJD's is 23 minutes 41 seconds and edited: clips from other runs are laid over his main run, as he says himself, and we mark them as clips. IceManIsaac is on his main channel here; our Re-Education Center and Iron Citadel guides credit his second channel, IceManIsaac Academy, which he mentions himself. Every method, number and opinion on this page belongs to one of them, by name, unless we say it is ours. TheSpazo refers to an earlier video of his about the clinic strategy; it is not among our sources, so we only repeat what he says about it. We could not download captions for IceManIsaac's video, so we transcribed his audio ourselves and watched the footage; a few words may be misheard. For MrDalekJD's video we worked from YouTube's automatic captions and his on-screen text, so some words in his captions are garbled, and we say where we read through that. We have not played any of this, and nothing here is a promise that it will work for you.

Watch TheSpazo's full video on YouTube → Watch IceManIsaac's full video on YouTube → IceManIsaac on YouTube → Watch MrDalekJD's full video on YouTube → MrDalekJD on YouTube →

What an Irradiated Container is, and what the item says

TheSpazo says weapon recipe, IceManIsaac says weapon recipe, and the game's card says Manual. The card we read on screen in TheSpazo's video is Manual: VEL 46, Weapon Manual, and its text says it unlocks the ability to purchase this weapon in the Gunsmith. So a weapon recipe in these videos is a weapon manual, not one of the 3D printer recipes on our recipes page. The item both of them farm is the Irradiated Container. On TheSpazo's stash screen it is an Ultra item with the text "An irradiated container with unstable chemical residue. Must be decontaminated at the Haneul Nuclear Reactor." He has six in his stash. IceManIsaac calls it the red irradiated container and says it may be the best single piece of loot he has found, because one container leads to blueprints, recipes and red and gold weapons. That is his opinion. Both say the container is how you get a manual, and the rest of this page is where they say it comes from and what they do with it.

Carrying them in: secure slots

TheSpazo says to put the container in your secure slot, so you keep it if you die. His first raid carries one container, and at about 6:37 he says he was nervous to bring two because he did not know if you could. At 10:05 he finds you can bring in two, and in the third raid he carries three: he wears a Large Backpack for two secure slots and puts the third container in a slot that is not secure. He does not own a bag with three secure slots. At 9:48 he also notes that if you put a container in the machine and someone kills you, they can loot it. He says there is an enemy spawn on the route to the reactor. IceManIsaac says there is a secure slot in his backpack and that he decontaminates as soon as he finds a container. He gives no count.

Watch the two-container moment (10:05) →

Decontaminating at the Haneul Nuclear Reactor

Both creators end at the same place: the item's own text says a container must be decontaminated at the Haneul Nuclear Reactor, and each of them takes it there. TheSpazo spawns close with a story mission. He says to run the casino mission, or the reactor mission if you have it. In his footage the mission is Operation Silent Ledger, Approach the Casino, and he thinks that may be why nobody else is there. He drives past Cheongun Village and the South Korean Border Zone to the reactor, shown with a High threat tag. Inside, the compass reads Reactor 02 and the machine carries an HNR marking. He puts the container in, lets it work and loots it, and complains that extraction is far from the reactor. IceManIsaac uses the last story mission, Operation Fallen Ember, which he says gives a basically perfect spawn. In his footage that is a road just south of Compound Delta, a short drive from the reactor. He says the highest concentration of lockers is right next to where the containers get decontaminated, so you can loot one, go to the machine and come back, over and over. We did not see the machine on his camera, so our ring on the map stays an area around the reactor marker. For the radiation both bring a durable gas mask, and TheSpazo says his lasts about 20 minutes. He printed a lot of stims at the 3D printer first, and says a chem suit would be nice but you lose it on extraction. IceManIsaac says a durable mask, which you can get by killing bots, or stims, which he says are cheap to craft, are enough for a fast run. He adds that masks sometimes hang in the underground passage or the medical tents, and that the game equips a spare when one breaks.

Watch a container go into the machine (4:11) →

TheSpazo's route: the clinic loop

His strategy in one breath, at 1:01: hop in at the Air Base, go to the clinic, loot all the yellow containers in the clinic, then leave and go around the entire map hitting all the other clinics and looting the yellow containers, the ones that have a ton of stuff in them. He says that let him farm all of his containers in just a few hours, and at 14:16 that he got them all in not 24 hours. He gives no order for the clinics after the first, and which yellow container holds the Irradiated Container is in his earlier video, not this one. His numbers: he says he was getting one container about every third game when running the clinics, and that the clinic run only takes 10 to 15 minutes. From those two numbers he says one manual about every 45 minutes, and that he could unlock every weapon in a few days alongside other things. "Guaranteed" is his headline; in the video he says he is "pretty sure" and wants to run it a few times first, and his evidence is three manuals from three containers. That is a good sample for a video and a small one for a rule. He also notes the results were not always the guns he needs: he wants snipers, launchers and pistols. On our map we read his Air Base clinic as the official Clinic marker beside Chang-san Air Base, and the map has seven Clinic markers in all. Both the reading and the count are ours, not his.

Watch his clinic loop explained (1:01) →

IceManIsaac's route, part 1: the reactor lockers

IceManIsaac's first route, from 1:20 to 8:00, works the ten chemical storage lockers inside the reactor. He spawns on Operation Fallen Ember, which he calls the very last story mission. On our map the spawn is on the road about 80 px south of the Compound Delta marker. He skips the weapons crate in the compound beside the spawn, says nothing there is worth looting, and takes an LTV in. Before he goes in he wants radiation cover: a durable gas mask, stims, or blue and purple radiation blockers. Inside he starts on the east side. He says four lockers are close together, one upstairs and two right beside it, and that one container from his intro came from this stretch and went straight into the machine outside. He cuts through pipes on the left, which he calls a little nerve-wracking and a route he thinks nobody else knows, then crosses a catwalk (6:21 to 6:26) to the west side, where three more lockers are. At 7:21 he counts ten in all, seven on the east side and three on the west. No container shows in his walkthrough, because the clips are cut. He leaves in the LTV and says you could extract there, or, if none showed, go on to the hospital or the clinics. He also says to put on double XP, because the gun in your hands as you loot gets the XP. Everything here is his claim, and none of it is tested by us. The pins on the map are registered from his minimap, good to a building and not to a locker. The ring at the reactor holds the area.

Watch IceManIsaac's reactor run begin (1:20) → Watch the four close lockers (4:15) →

IceManIsaac's route, part 2: the hospital and the clinics

If no container showed, IceManIsaac drives to Mirae General Hospital (8:00 to 9:25). He says a hospital chemical lab has a pretty consistent spawn, and that he found no other chemical lockers in the hospital. A hospital chemical lab key spawns somewhere on the top floor, in the boardroom, on the bookshelves or on the side bookshelf in the hallway (12:25 to 12:47), and he calls it a pretty common key. It opens a door in the hospital. If you hold any of these keys in your stash, he says you can chain up to three for a guaranteed spawn, which he calls a niche thing. We register his stay inside the building at Mirae General Hospital; we cannot say which floor. The clinic run follows (13:40 to 18:50), by LTV: Cheongun Village, Cheongun Outskirts, Imjin Farmland and Wolves Stadium, as his compass reads at each stop. At each one he opens a yellow chemical storage locker, which he says is one guaranteed in every clinic. Each of the four stops lands within about 12 px of an official Clinic marker, which is how we checked our registration. He says that on this path he gets an Irradiated Container about once every 30 minutes to an hour, depending on luck. He also stops at a Korin Oil gas station, which is not a clinic. The video ends with a 10 minute speed run on an on-screen timer that repeats the reactor and the same four clinics. He says nothing during it, and he says in his pitch that the speed run takes under 10 minutes every single time. We did not draw the speed run. If you do not have the story mission or do not feel confident, he calls the hospital the safest path: one from the hospital, plus any you have saved in your stash, and he says he had three or four saved up.

Watch the hospital chemical lab key (12:25) → Watch the clinic run begin (13:47) → Watch the 10 minute speed run (19:20) →

MrDalekJD's route: Air Base, fire stations, hospital, reactor

MrDalekJD's farm is one raid from the Air Base to the reactor, and he says it all stayed within 30 minutes (22:00). He queues Operation Iron Citadel, which he says places you by the air base, and starts at the Air Base clinic: he calls it the most lucrative clinic on the map for these containers, counts eight chemical storage lockers across its floors, and says the hard part is getting in without the AI going crazy on you (1:28 to 3:20). He took a med kit and a binding catalyst there and no container. On our map the stop is on the official Clinic marker beside Chang-san Air Base. He then gives two choices (3:20 to 4:05): search the clinics on the left first, one chemical locker each, or go straight to the middle of the map, where he says each clinic has two. The video then visits Cheongun Outskirts, a fire station with its key room and the Cheongun Village clinic beside it (the next section), Mirae General Hospital, a clinic east of NuriGO Mall that has no Clinic marker on our map, a second fire station, the Wolves Stadium clinic and the reactor. No container is seen coming out of a locker at any clinic or fire station. At the hospital (8:00 to 10:56) he says he has had about 50% luck, mainly because of keys. The chemical lab is locked. He credits IceManIsaac as the first he saw show it, and says its key, a little blue one, usually spawns in one of three offices on the seventh floor, in about half his runs and not in this one. With the key, he says, the lab has one free chemical locker and three more that are locked and need keys from the morgue. He asks viewers in the comments where else the key can spawn. IceManIsaac says the key is on the top floor and a pretty common spawn; the table below shows both. At the reactor (14:40 to 20:55) he takes the front entrance with the gas masks from the fire station and looks for a hazmat suit at two spots, finding none. In reactor 2 he opens two lockers side by side and says one more is up the stairs, then uses the decontamination machine: the prompt reads Process radioactive material and the compass reads Reactor 02. This is the first time we place the machine on the map. He then crosses to reactor 1, where he says a hazmat suit is always on a wall on floor two, opens several more lockers, and later swims through a tunnel in reactor 2 to one more. He leaves by jeep and waits for the exfil helicopter. He says you can secure a container, extract, and launch from the reactor mission on your next infill to use it at once. Everything here is his claim, and none of it is tested by us. The positions are registered from his minimap, good to a building and not to a locker. The video is edited with clips from other runs, and the drive from Wolves Stadium to the reactor is cut, so the line on the map is a drawing aid between registered points.

Watch MrDalekJD begin at the Air Base clinic (1:35) → Watch the hospital chemical lab (8:17) → Watch the decontamination machine (17:20) → Open MrDalekJD's Irradiated Container route on the Hajin map →

Fire stations: the key room and the gas masks

Fire stations are the one stop on this page that neither TheSpazo nor IceManIsaac names. MrDalekJD says a fire station holds two chemical storage lockers in a locked second floor room that few players use, and that the key is always inside the same fire station, on the ground floor, where he checks a table, the small rooms and the shelves (5:45 to 6:49). The pickup in his footage reads Fire Station Storage (6:40). He says it is one use and opens both lockers, which show on camera with Cleaning Solution inside (7:00 to 7:05). He also says guaranteed durable gas masks spawn at the fire station, several of them, which he calls huge for a squad, and a Durable Gas Mask pickup shows in the same room (7:21). He ties this to the reactor: he says it is easy with the fire station masks, and he finishes with a durable still at 100% use (20:35). That fits our own Fire Stations layer, which already describes them as radiation gear and parachutes; the locked room and its key are what he adds. Two fire stations are in his run. The one beside the Cheongun Village clinic (6:15 to 7:30) had the room, the key, the lockers and the masks, and no container. The one east of NuriGO Mall (12:03 to 12:50) was locked and he did not find the key on that run. That is a non-finding, not proof that the key is absent, and his captions are garbled about whether it has spawned there before. He says to head for the fire stations at the top middle of the map and not the ones on the left (4:29 to 4:53); his captions then say the other sides have fire stations with secret rooms in a way that could mean either that they do or that they do not, so we do not say which. The official map has six Fire Station markers; his two stops each sit within about 15 px of one, and all six stay on the Fire stations layer. We have not tested any of it.

Watch the fire station key room (6:40) → Open the fire stations on the Hajin map →

Duplicates, blueprints and the gold camo

TheSpazo says duplicates are still worth it, because you get the blueprint for that gun. He describes a secret gold, animated camo that appears in the blueprint section when you extract three of the same manual, and says that with two APOG manuals he needs one more. He gives the example of three AK manuals, which the captions write as Castoff. IceManIsaac says the same in his own words: three of the same weapon recipe gives a gold camo for your gun (0:13 to 0:31). These are their claims, and we did not see the camo. TheSpazo's camo tip at the end is to do the long-shot challenges in DMZ and not in multiplayer, which he says is much easier.

Related guides, and other places weapon manuals show up

These are other creators' runs, not ours, and each is marked in its own guide. IceManIsaac's Re-Education Center and Iron Citadel guides on this site are routes from the same creator, on his second channel. The Iron Citadel gold key run is the guaranteed gold key guide he mentions in the first seconds of this video, and in both guides guaranteed is his word, untested by us. MrDalekJD's compound loot farm queues Operation Fallen Ember and spawns at the same Compound Delta area as IceManIsaac. Schlayer's Cheonwang Peak Array run found a PPSh-41 Weapon Manual in a safe, in our farming guide. Shirasu's key armory run reports a weapon manual that adds the VEL 46. TheGigaDad says the weapon lockers in the Chang-san bunker have given him weapon manuals, but that run was patched on the day it went up, so we keep it only as a reference. The Irradiated Container is different in kind: a repeat loop that both creators say you can plan around, which is why it has its own page. Late in TheSpazo's video, at 20:32, he meets the Tank near extraction and says he wishes he had a warhead; his Tank video is covered in our solo Tank guide.

Re-Education Center loot route → Iron Citadel gold key loot route → Solo compound loot farm route → 3D printer farming and Commanders → Roze's key armory, tested 5 times → MW4 DMZ farming: Chang-san bunker run (patched) → How to kill the Tank solo → Loot routes: every route on one map →

On the map

Five things are on the map. The Clinics layer shows the seven official Clinic markers: the clinic nearest Chang-san Air Base is the one we read as TheSpazo's start and is MrDalekJD's first stop, and each clinic stop of IceManIsaac and MrDalekJD lands within about 25 px of a marker, except one building east of NuriGO Mall that has none. The Fire stations layer shows the six official Fire Station markers; MrDalekJD entered two. The farming layer has area rings: the Haneul Nuclear Reactor, the chemical lab at Mirae General Hospital, the two fire stations, the NuriGO East clinic, and three more at the reactor for the machine, the hazmat suit wall and the swim-through tunnel. All are areas and not surveyed spots, and the unmarked clinic is low confidence. The Routes list has three routes. TheSpazo's has two steps and no drawn path, the Air Base clinic and then the reactor, because he gives no order for the other clinics. IceManIsaac's has twelve steps from the spawn to Wolves Stadium, and MrDalekJD's has sixteen, from the Air Base spawn through two fire stations and the hospital to the reactor and the exfil. Both are drawn on the Official skin and registered from the creator's minimap, so they are good to a building and not to a locker. Each step card links back to a section here.

Open the clinics and the reactor on the Hajin map → Open IceManIsaac's Irradiated Container route on the Hajin map → Open TheSpazo's clinic loop on the Hajin map → Open MrDalekJD's Irradiated Container route on the Hajin map → Hajin map: 13 POIs →

What we haven't confirmed, and where Wing Mait fits

We have not played any of this. We have not seen how the Irradiated Container drops from a locker: TheSpazo leaves it to his earlier video, IceManIsaac's clips are cut, and in MrDalekJD's footage we did not see one come out of a locker. We have not confirmed the drop rates, that a container always gives a manual or a weapon on top, that the hospital chemical lab key works as IceManIsaac and MrDalekJD say, that every clinic holds a container, that the story missions work as a spawn, that the fire station key room, its one use key and its gas masks work as MrDalekJD says, that a hazmat suit is always on the reactor 1 wall, or that duplicates count toward the gold camo. The count of seven clinics, the reading of TheSpazo's Air Base clinic, the reading that yellow containers and chemical storage lockers are one locker, the unmarked clinic east of NuriGO Mall, and the registered positions are ours. A patch can change any of it, and IceManIsaac himself warns that it might be patched. What is on screen in all three videos is text and HUD: the item cards, the compass, the threat tag, the radiation countdown, the key cards and the extraction screen. Reading on-screen text is what Wing Mait does, so a callout can tell you what a locker gave you without you looking away. DMZ support is in development, and Wing Mait doesn't read game memory, inject anything or send inputs to the game.

Watch TheSpazo's full video on YouTube → Watch IceManIsaac's full video on YouTube → Watch MrDalekJD's full video on YouTube →