....that your PC encounters all across the DC, NV, and now Bostonian/New England wastelands. We get a clear indicator of how all these cars ended up abandoned in the present day wasteland from the official trailer i.e. being directly destroyed from being in the blast radius. The tons of abandoned cars make perfect sense for the urban wastelands like DC and now Commonwealth. Urbanized areas like this would have hundreds of people caught driving their vehicles. And who were unprepared and caught off guard when the bombs fell. So seeing all those empty junk yard wrecks you come across in the DC wasteland makes sense. Because the DC wasteland was the Capitol, so more bombs on average fell there in 2077. So these vehicles and their owners would have obviously been obliterated if they were within the blast radius at ground zero (e.g. in a region like the Glowing Sea the location of which is heavily implied by the nuclear cloud shown in the trailer).

HOWEVER in a rural, undeveloped desert like area the way most of NV was prior to the fallout: Very few bombs fell in the desert interior that made up the NV wasteland. Also Mr. House can take credit for neutralizing the threat most of the few bombs that targeted NV.

So where the heck did all the corpses and bodies of the former vehicle owners go? The pile up of vehicles on that road leading up to the NCR Mohave Outpost have not a single corpse in them. The bomb's blast radius clearly didn't extend that far due to the lack of elevated radio levels. And the cars are in very good condition compared to the DC wasteland. So if these vehicle's occupants didn't die in them, and got out seeking a safer place, then where the hell are their skeletal remains?

Why is it that all the vehicles in the NV wasteland are always completely empty?

Why don't these abandoned vehicles have no owners/passenger skeletons inside them? Or immediately outside them? Or in the general vicinty of these cars?

Where are the only abandoned truck vehicles at or near the NCR bases? Why aren't there more motorbikes all around the wasteland??

Same deal for the houses that were well outside the blast radius. When you look at the final seconds of the official video, it's clear the cul de sac suburb where the protagonist lived was on the perimeter of the blast radius. Because while many homes in the former subdivision were reduced to rubble, the PC's house is STILL standing intact. Same goes for several other homes. But yet the streets weren't littered with skeletal corpses? Or formed a trail all the way up to that check point to the vault where those PA soldiers were standing guard and keeping all those ppl out? Shouldn't there be a WHOLE bunch of corpses piled up at that check point instead of the 2-3 we see when Dogmeat runs toward the vault entrance?

And what the heck happened to the children? Where the hell are all there skeletons? I've yet to find any in my wanderings of either wasteland (save those placed from mods like Wild Wasteland etc).

Why does Beth hate vehicles, children skeletons--hell all skeletons in general--so much?

Guess what I'm rambling about is the logic behind all of the rubble in areas that WERE NOT DIRECTLY HIT or HUNDREDS OF MILES AWAY from a nuke strike. Places similar to NV in environment like the farmland states located in the middle of the US. It wasn't possible to hit every single city, town, village etc. in the entire continental US. So there has to be at least one prewar home that is intact AND in pristine condition (minus the rust, disrepair factor). And at least one vehicle with a corpse or family of corpses inside them or in the imediate vicinity.

And at least one school or daycare building where Beth managed to stuff all of the missing children, toddler and baby skeletal corpses in the DC, NV and what now appears to be the Commonwealth wasteland.

Beth really shot themselves in the foot with the logic on this IMO

Bethesda is very against children being attacked or shown hurt ect. I don't blame them for having no child skeletons. The parent skeletons I understand and don't know where the heck they are.

Maybe someone scavenged all the cars. Maybe all the corpses were taken away to be eaten by some crazy cannibalistic cult. Be creative.

Because game development and time constraints? Also, have you ever been near the detonation of a nuclear weapon. Anything in the immediate vicinity (specifically humans) would be incinerated, thus no remains. If these individuals were outside the immediate blast radius, they also aren't likely to die immediately from the nuclear detonation. If anything, like the exposure of nuclear radiation and gusts of wind blowing it around the city would cause many to die of cancer and other diseases after the fact.

BGS generally does not allow kids in their games because they have a "no killing kids" policy. Going all the way back to Morrowind, BGS likes to give the player as much control as possible, that means killing to. Obviously killing kids is morally questionable behavior, so instead of just having invincible kids that can't die (which they did in Skyrim), they just don't have any at all. As far as child bones, again probably too dark and morbid for BGS to tackle. The same logic can be applied to why you usually don't see mutilated female corpses in games. Only advlt male bodies are typically seen mutilated.

Cars are there as a gameplay opportunity. Whatever rational basis you try to apply to their location will fail because they are there for more environment destruction and more opportunities to the player. These games are not a realistic depiction of what living in a post-apocalyptic USA would be like after a nuclear holocaust, obviously.

Also, how long do you think it actually takes for a human skeleton to decompose? Keep in mind the game takes place 200 years after the bombs fell. Scavengers, critters, etc. could have taken the bones, destroyed them, there could be a multitude of reasons for their absence.

EMP Thttps://youtu.be/LlwZD1e9MN8?t=93

Are we really at the stage of complaining about the lack of corpses now?

But remember, 200 years being above ground and being prone to the weather and ran and any and all rodents or creatures, I doubt there would be much if anything left

Animals likely would have eaten most remains of people in the streets, anyone not killed immediately in the blast would also go looking for shelter and thus would have died indoors or underground. For cars the EMP from the blast may have fired the electrical circuits so the vehicles would have been abandoned.

I can't. I'm a Bosmer sworn off eating mystery meat.

I thought Bosmers were sworn to only eat meat?

edit: suddenly occured to me of the illogical setup on many of the interiors. For those buildings like RobCo and the Goodsprings school house which are 95%+ intact, why are the entire interiors of these buildings so utterly destroyed? On the top floor restroom of the RobCo building, the executive suite bath room had litterally been caved in. Also the first floor backroom had collapsed into that secret back room where that unique weapon was being kept. Yet 100% of the RobCo building exterior remained intact--with all of the original windows and doors?

Guess I forgot to add the /sarcasm> tags to that earlier post

I got that it was sarcastic but I don't think the joke works for a race with a strictly meat eater reputation. If you said "I may be a Bosmer but" it'd have sounded better.

There is actually a very simple explanation concerning the lack of bodies/skeletons in all of those abandoned cars.

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/ancient-aliens-it-was-aliens.jpg

If they put fresh bodies laying around from 200 years prior the discussion would be about how unrealistic it is to have 200 year dead corpses laying in the streets and in the cars.

Y'know, 200 years of organic material being exposed to the elements and scavengers tends to not leave much evidence of the previous occupants.

Well again there is always going to be a lack of realism in some regards for the purpose of taking creative liberties and gameplay constraints. Nevada is a rather barren state besides Las Vegas as it is, so not the greatest location to have a post-apocalyptic game to start. Aren't you somewhat answering your own question that because less nukes were used on Nevada that this may explain less skeletons?

It's quirky but it's a game... I'm sure you could use environmental storytelling to rationalize why there was a car in the middle of nowhere. Heck, maybe nuclear detonation caused a shockwave that tossed the car? Maybe a tornado? Maybe someone was drunk/high and didn't know where they were going?

It's worth noting those bones were preserved in a way where they could be found (Pompeii was covered by lava and ash). While bones may not decompose, they can be destroyed, which is why we rarely find entire skeletons of specimens that are hundreds of thousands if not millions of years old. With how hostile the environment is, there are a variety of reasons why all the bones could be missing, other than negligence on the part of the developer or wanting to lessen performance hits on hardware.

you also have to realize that predation by everything from Bears to rats would end up scattering the remains of anything that actually died and was not burried.

After all EMP probably did not kill very many people apart from thoes who reliey on things like pacemakers. odds are a lot of people close in probably tried to get out on foot.

anyone who died either was burried or otherwise disposed of by survivors, anyone not "disposed" of by human survivors. .. well

Seriously if they cant keep wildlife from hauling off 200 pound hog carcases with heavy guage wire mesh and rebar sunk 2 feet into the ground....well....

Bigfoot did it. He and all his other little creature buddies like the Chupacabra and Nessie, started cleanup after all the bombs fell.. They are totally immune to the effects of radiation so they pretty much assumed the world was finally theirs now and they could stop hiding. But then, once they saw that humans were starting to come back out only 10 years later, they decided to stop their efforts and go back into hiding. The End.

p.s. This is all completely true and totally canon. ..

No, there won't be intact prewar buildings, unless people take care for them. Otherwise, what's left intact by bombs, will be destroyed by mother nature. There is a nice docu called "life after people" thats shows what happen to our cities, once there are no people any more. After 200 years you will have only ruins of very big/massive buildings. Most other buildings will be a pile of bricks at best. ( and everything made from wood would have been rotten ). Just alone the effect of freezing water in cracks will break up most buildings.

Same would be true for the cars, they would be dust already after all this time.

I think the TV show 100 got it right. After 200 years you would have mostly wilderness, with only a few remains of the previous civilization here and there that you would only notice if you look for them.

Most of Fallout looks like the war was just a few month or at best a very few years ago, but not 200 years.

As said above, those buildings won't even exist any more, if people don't look after them. Whats illogical in regards to the interiors however is this. In those buildings that are used by people, no one repairs the interiors or remove those things that are destroyed. Not even one in 200 years?

Scavengers would dispose of corpses within days.

Simple answer.

Rodents needed something to gnaw on to keep Their incisors sharp.

Radroaches were not always gigantic in size.

Every Scavenger knows Marrow is often left by Predators and is packed with Energy

Actually in Oblivion there was a ruined fort full of child-sized skeletons.

Normally I skip YouTube ad's but by coincidence the ad was the live action trailer for FO4, so I watched it when I clicked on your linky.




Yeah I was gunna say, I can't remember if it was FO3 or FONV, but I've definitely seen small skeletons somewhere.

In Fallout 3 there were children's skeletons at Springvale Elementary School (in a jail cell) and maybe a few other places.