It seems to me, and if this has already been discussed I apologies - but, it seems to me that Boston was only hit with one nuke - the one from the intro, and that it hit with the sentinel site in the Glowing Sea being the target.

The rest of the Boston area seems to have suffered more from decay over the years than anything else (in terms of damage). Its rather undamaged, otherwise.

I think its odd they didnt drop more bombs in the area.

Maybe if they didn't waste so many nukes on places like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, they'd have more to send to Boston.

Alternately, depending on how the nukes were delivered, it might not have been feasible to carpet-nuke Boston. ICBMs would require a lot more fuel to reach the east coast, while aircraft could be intercepted on the way there.

My personal hypothesis was that they settled for one "salted" bomb, explaining why the after-effects of the bombing are so nasty even after 210 years.

I am not aware of any information to explain why there isn't that much damage to Boston itself.

But Washington DC (Fallout 3) should have looked like the Glowing Sea in Fallout 4 or worse given that it is the capital of the United States and therefore the number one target.

To explain Fallout 4 and Fallout 3's main cities being remarkably intact we can go with developer comments on Fallout 3. Paraphrasing: "playing in a completely destroyed city wouldn't be fun."

Still that being said the Boston Area shows signs of rebuilding, possibly by the institute at some point in the past. The people in the commonwealth themselves have a better degree at rebuilding than those in the DC area.

We also know from Fallout 1 and now Fallout 4 that the enemies of America put more emphasis on destroying locations associated with research rather then cities. Area's with research that clearly aren't destroyed as badly as the Glow and the Glowing Sea might have not been known to the enemies of America and or were classified as civilian and therefore low priority.

But yeah the cities should be far more destroyed then they appear to us, but it wouldn't be as "fun" if you couldn't recognize the city you are playing in. After all we all know full well what a single nuclear bomb can do to a city let alone dozens or hundreds.

Crimson Paladin, Id agree with you except I believe a certain Chinese sub captain said he had launched all missiles but one from basically near Boston harbor. Its entirely possible the reason most of Boston is spared is because that one un-used missile was going to for CIT... But see my next point re: salted bomb ...

Styles, I think the Glowing Sea is as bad as it is because there was also a nuclear reactor nearby that melted down when the nuke hit - this compounded the radiological effect . In DC I believe there was at least one bomb crater in the middle of the city (thus more destroyed solid structures).

The Glowing Sea impact crater is admittedly the largest, but I've found a "Mini-Glowing Sea" along the upper north western corner of the map, suggesting another impact site.

It was stated as far back as Fallout 1's manual that the Fallout universe largely gave up high yield nuclear devices in favor of far smaller ones that produced more radiation.

This is why, even as far back as Fallout 1, places like L.A., and Bakersfield, where shows/described as having numerous tall building left standing.

The nuclear device that created the glowing sea, according to laoding screens, was one of the few high yield bombs still left in either countries, arsenal, which is why it produced the effect it did.

the rest of Boston likely got nukes just as hard as any other city, btut due to all the bobms being small, with a focus on radiation over explosions, there wouldn't have been much damage to the city itself.

It's possible, if not likely, that the bomb isn't the soul cause of the intense radioactive climate in the Glowing Sea. There is a large decayed and destroyed nuclear reactor site in the sea that undoubtedly released tons of radiation into the surrounding region. This would certainly explain why the region is so much worse off than most other locations that were hit around the same time.

I was wondering around down there and there is also a large store house of nuclear weapons. So yeah lots of nuclear things were in that area.