I also believe that Bethesda should have set fallout 3 something like 20-50 years after the war. Something like your parents were raised in the vault but old granny can remember entering the vault as a child. Everything would "fit" better if the war was more recent.

FONV works because it continues the lore of Fallout 1 and 2 with the NCR and an expanding area of control with a frontier. Since Fallout 3 mostly made its own lore and stories it could have started at a different time, especially since it is on the other side of the continent.

The better that the game world follows its own rules, the easier that it is to suspend disbelief and immerse yourself in the story.

BSG does never do that, going back in time. They always jump forward. And they find jumps like these practical so that they can reinvent practically everything. 200 years seemed good to them.

Thing is Fallout is still not the best looking Post Apo world I have seen.

That goes to Metro Last Light and second best goes to Rage, oh my glorious Rage.

I have advocated it over and over and over and over again. Ideas do not need to stick to one element, ideas are flexible. Bethseda should have honestly done their research a bit more and should have looked at other sources for ideas and inspirations.

Factories aren't necessarily all for trade, just for mass production.

You could be mass producing medical supplies, weapons, ammunition, tools, vehicles, things that produce/harness energy, pre-fabricated shelters or utilities for them... any number of useful things that either have extremely high trade value or grant you the power/ability to assert dominance/control.

And I really don't think that makes you a huge target for "raiders". I really don't think that crazed lunatics with automatic weapons are going to a thing like you see in the fallout and borderlands games. Namely because terrible people don't tend to get along with other terrible people. I think the crazies and savages are going to mostly kill eachother in disfunctional chaos. Building factories is going to draw in a lot of people and the vast majority of them are going to want to be apart of it in a posititve way. Progress tends to be attractive, especially when it means an improvement to your quality of life and safety.

I'd disagree about resources being all dried up... if the population has been decimated then there should be all kinds of available raw resources lying around. It's just a matter of converting them into a usable form. Probably, after scauaging has taken it's toll, the raw resources that are left lying around are in masses too large to move by hand and heavily oxidized. If you have a foundry and a factory to turn those raw resources into something useful then it's just a matter of hauling every piece of scrap metal you can get your hands on over to your electric induction furnace (or whatever they are using, I guess the FO universe is bigger on nuclear power) and melting it down.

In terms of "staying alive and not dying", finding time, yada yada... A real post apocalypse would be a lot different than the Fallout experience. It would be a lot less exciting... Once you have your basic needs tended to... all you have is time.

Pretty much every study conducted on the topic agrees that members of hunter-gather societies had a lot more time for liesure than the modern working man.

spoiler alert!!!

there was a 2nd great war. heheheh

Human progress, particularly technological, occurs exponentially. For thousands of years it seemed to be completely flat-lined. Thirty thousand years ago, a thousand years could pass with no noticeable progress from the previous thousand years. Only in the last several thousand years has the line started to head upward. That is consistent with how exponential curves work, they initially start flat and it takes some time for them to build to the point that they take off.

The last two hundred years -- which is what the OP was using as his/her measuring stick -- has been the most accelerated period of change in human history. In the last 200 years the exponential curve has been basically shooting straight up. But if there was a complete nuclear holocaust, this line would be sent straight back down and would return to the flat-line pattern that has characterized most of human history. Perhaps it wouldn't be as flat as it was during the pre-historic age, but it certainly would be much much more flat that it is today. I tend to think humanity would devolve back several thousand years.

Now if you went back in time several thousand years ago to, say, 3200 BC and looked around, and then time-traveled forward 200 years to 3000 BC and looked around, I doubt you would really notice much change. That's why the 200+ time frame seems realistic to me.

I couldn't agree more. The timescale of the fallout world does not make any sense.

All the valuable pre war stuff left lying around certainly make no sense. I find all the scrap cars fairly ridiculous. How many generations is 200 years. How many generations of people have lived their lives in Sanctuary Hills? Lived in the SS's house? I guess if human fertility has been severely reduced it might explain some things? Any suggestion of this anywhere?

Given that knowledge of science has not been lost, it should take a lot less than 200 years for society to return to its current state. The only possible explanation I can can up with is that the US has been a continuous battle ground for the last 200 years.

What we are seeing is not anarchy as a result of a nuclear war, but anarchy as a result of 200 years of constant internal warfare. I assume elsewhere in the Fallout 4 world there are countries that are much like current Western democracies who look down on the US as a some sort of 3^rd world combat zone.

Still I think its probably best to accept artistic licences and enjoy the game.

According to Bethesda, Europe is such a war torn [censored]hole people willingly make the trip to D.C. since its considered a better place to live.

America is pretty well off compared to the rest of the world.

Imo its all about migration. The remaining populations just keep moving around. I doubt the humans populating the map as we see it have all been in their current groups for 200 years. The constant tribal warfare and fighting for survival would give very little opportunities for wanderers like our character to go exploring and collecting.

My biggest issue is with the super mutants, if they fought the minutemen in 2180 that's only 100 years or so to mutate into what they are now.

Super Mutants are the result of people being infected with FEV, which can mutate someone in less then a day.

They aren't normal mutations from radiation like giant animals or ghouls.

How many days a year in Fallout universe and what is the thermodynamics entropy formula in Fallout universe?

Man, just enjoy the game

Mutants, Ghouls and Deathclaws in the game and we're talking about 200 years being unrealistic? Oh my!

Don't forget giant airships and how with enough perks, our character can survive a point-blank Fatman blast to the face.

Yeah, I just enjoy the game and relax.

Realistic=/=internal cosistency.

That quote is the reason he's so...uh...insults.

General comment. Once known, almost all knowledge will continue to exist... somewhere. "Bombed back to the Stone Age" actually will NEVER apply. Physics, Mechanics, Business, the Scientific Method, etc. are all too widely known. You can kill people in genocidal numbers, but left alive -- short of senility -- you can't make EVERYONE unlearn the how-to procedures. The Dark Ages only temporarily ... misplaced information. (Squirreled away in monasteries for the most part.) The Dark Ages dragged out for so many centuries because, comparatively speaking, the body of knowledge concerning how to do things was so small. Destroy the Library of Congress and the knowledge that had been contained therein still exists. And that body of knowledge is several thousand times greater than what existed at the onset of the Dark Ages.

IMHO, the entire FO series would NEVER have developed post-Apocalypse. As long as people grow new generations, the elders WILL pass on to the children as much how-to information as the children need to "survive, revive, and thrive". Having near-total literacy going into the Apocalypse practically assures that subsequent generations will be near-total literates. (What else do they have for entertainment except reading old books? Can't be dancing and feasting forever.)

Rage was such a small area and there was no variety in the environments. It had some cool stuff for sure and a distinct style, but as a "world" it didn't do it for me.

I admit I didn't play Last Light but I did play 2033 - and I kept thinking, I wish I could interact more with all these people, instead of basically just going from mission to mission. Again, the Metro games had a very distinct style... and while there was some great stuff, 2033 also didn't build enough of a world for me.

Interesting stuff for sure though, I am always interested in post-apocalyptic settings.

Ummmm no, sorry MRE's were not even used until the late 80's maybe a bit later. I was in the Army in the late 70's All we had for field rations were C and K rations. I do remember getting a C rat with the date 1954 stamped on it, being that I was born in 1954 (ok so I have just aged myself) I thought it was kind of funny that I was eating a rat as old as I was

All made of stone. We are talking steal sky scraqers here. If you want to get a good idea of what would happen to our cities with no one to maintained them there is a show on the History Channel Called "Life after People" where scientists, structural engineers, and other experts speculate about what might become of Earth should humanity instantly disappear. Keep in mind that it is based on what would happen if we all just disappeared. Add in a nuclear holocaust and realistically there would be very little left after 200 years.

First, with what we know of Pre-War USSA, that is EXACTLY what they would do. "But sir! The protectron circuits aren't designed for complex social interaction!" "Eh, have it shout out some pre-recorded law enforcement warnings. People will get out of the way."

Second, even if they could, the entire infrastructure is blown to hell and back. Mining, production, transport, power are all gone overnight. Manufacturing is a web of interconnected parts, and the whole thing grinds to a halt if one of those is out if whack, let alone ALL of them.

Yep - widespread irradiation would pretty much kill off most bacterial life for quite awhile, so most of those preserved foodstuffs are effectively sterilised. It would take a long time after the radiation levels had died down for the microscopic-level ecosystem to return to any kind of sustainable balance.

I have had this avatar for the majority of my time here. So I hope that was me - I probably found that quote somewhere, because I do believe that, but would have had trouble articulating that succinctly.

And yeah, sometimes I have to work harder than other times to suspend my inner frowny-faced logic girl. But I almost always find a way to do so, because I love games, and fantasy books, and sci-fi books and movies and... and... lots of things that have no bearing on a real life, however well-lived. But they sure do add to a life well-lived, I think. It's not that I can't see or understand a flaw or a bit of utter silliness or break in logic. Its more that I can accept them. (And note, I am not talking about bugs or glitches or technical issues) I have a tremendous amount of enjoyment and respect for people that can build their worlds, even if its not always a favorite. And the ones that are my favorites - I go back to the well frequently.

dude did you ever read the lore of the universe? the world was destroyed in nuclear fire in 2077, people didnt start coming out of they're shelters till maybe 100 years later( guessing here, keeping thinking back to a new vegas log in the honest hearts DLC that maybe mentioned something like this), and the commonwealth was ruined by super mutant who are not very smart…..

how about you just stick to playing the game….. ok?

I am no food expert but doesn't most food need these things to have real nutritional value? So if all the bacterial life has been snuffed then would that not include what is making the food what it is? Just think, popping a 200 year old coke, what would that taste like? I would guess it would not even be a true liquid any longer more like sludge

About the only foods that rely on their bacterial content for their nutritional value are cheeses and yoghurts. Many other foods, if vacuum-sealed, would retain at least some nutritional value for a long time if properly sterilised. Honey has a natural antibacterial quality, and sealed jars of honey have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs that were so well-preserved that they could've been spread on bread and enjoyed as though they'd been sealed yesterday, instead of thousands of years ago.

I don't care about the buildings and whatever, I do care that so little human history seems to have happened over that course of time. Yeah I know, apocalypse. But still.