That's what most of the in-game(s) sources point to...
However, some things just don't add up....

1. Road blocks with sand bags in the middle of Washington DC (the ones with skeletons attached)


It seems to me that the US nuked itself in order to stop an advancing army...

1: Riots. The nuclear war would have exacerbated the already tense situation. There was at least some initial attempt to maintain some modicum of order; notice that, in front of the White House crater, there is a radiation warning sign. Some remnant of the government beyond the Enclave survived to erect that sign (but obviously not for long). I would also think that, despite their impaired cognitive abilities, that Super Mutants may also know how to erect sandbag walls.

It is very necessary to remember that the ONLY evidence of a Chinese presence on the West coast, the most likely and possible place to start a beachhead for an invasion, was a single submarine that crash landed. Unless the Chinese invaded through Alaska and then Canada, skirting passed the ENTIRE West coast, which would be like invading Berlin through the Baltic Sea while the Germans still had the Bismarck and a navy in World War II, it would be strictly impossible if not improbable.

Mind you, during operations in World War II, even though Seals had regular clothes with them, they would still have to have their uniforms around in order to have something to wear in case they would one day link up with their military counterparts in the success of an invasion. No DC was not invaded by the Chinese, it was infiltrated, the same thing the Japs did when they spied on Pearl Harbor for their attack on the harbor.

We won the war, beat the Chinese back and the Chinese decided not to sit under the thumb of the United States and fired their missiles, then we fired our's, MAD. End of story, the world ended, no other nukes were fired as far as I am concerned.

Sums up what pretty much happened to the earth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZMwKPmsbWE.

:rofl:

That video nearly killed me.... haha I have to watch it again.

The whole world was nuked, not just China and the US.

Hmm... but officially, beyond the limited exchange between Europe and the Middle East, only China and the USA let loose on one another. Really, if you've ever seen On The Beach, that is all it takes for the world to end. Otherwise, I've never seen anything that said there was a European, African, Russian or South American exchange, I could be wrong. I always thought of the exaggeration of the "world burning" meaning that the fallout touched down in Europe, Russia and Africa, but not nuclear weapons.

You're all forgetting one crucial thing: The Forced Evolutionary Virus.

The FEV is an American creation. It's unlikely that other nations had access to this technology (as it was created as a direct response to the war with China to create 'super soldiers' - China may have had a similar project given the fears of biological attack). The Super Mutants and Centaurs we see in Fallout are a result of the FEV, not radiation. Therefore, no FEV = no mutants.

The rest of the world may be a scorched barren wasteland like the United States, but it would not have mutants (beyond ghouls, which Fallout canon states are caused by radiation).

As such, although China may have some equivalent (we don't know, and are forced to infer), the less developed nations of Earth and those not involved in the Great War "won" in the sense that they don't have to constantly fight with hideous monstrosities.

yeah i wondered about that too, why would EVERYONE on the planet nuke eachother? did every nation have nukes even? why would Iceland nuke Norway? Italy nuke Spain? Madagaskar nuke Thailand?

i believe it was just China and US going at it, and the nuclear winter and failing resources did the rest of the nations in.

If I may return to the discussion about who bombed DC for a bit:
The logs in Germantown suggest that although there wasn't a Chinese invasion going on, there was enough reason to suspect a Chinese attack to start evacuations just before the bombs fell. They also mention DC was hit by multiple 'waves' of bombs (which can, of course, simply be the nature of the beast). Finally, these logs suggest the possibility that it was the National Guard that made the early relief effort that resulted in the various radiation signs, etc.
There's also Carol. She tells you DC (possibly the East Coast entirely) was hit after the West Coast. News of the West Coast having been destroyed managed to reach DC a good time before the city was hit. Of course this could just be a result of distance relative to China.

Finally, assuming it were simply the Chinese that bombed DC leaves only very unsatisfying explanations for the Megaton bomb and the crashed missile (which the game goes to great lengths to make clear it's US-built and carries a nuclear payload). A plane carrying a live nuke just 'happened' to be flying around near DC (to make it more juicy: right between Constantine, the presumed origin of the bomb, and DC, specificly the Pentagon)? A nuclear missile just 'happened' to crash in DC?

I'm not suggesting that it was the US that deliberatly bombed DC, just that I'm far from convinced it wasn't. There's a lot of (more or less explicit) coincidences.

And:
Iceland wouldn't have to nuke Norway. Someone just had to do it, no matter who.
For example, if the US had been anticipating full-scale nuclear war as an inevitability and made plans to ensure continued dominance after such a conflict, they would have reason to make sure everybody got a bomb or two.

Yes, the Megaton bomb is most definately the piece that doesn't quite fit. It's an aircraft-delivered nuke (no ICBM attached ).
The crashed own ICBM can be explained by, well, okay, some sort of guidance failure or EMP or whatnot. But the MT bomb was deffinately at least *delivered* successfully /albeit it didn't go off/.
Something just doesn't add up. I think that either the US nuked the whole planet (itself included) with the idea of recolonizing it later on (doesn't quite fit with the Vault experiment though - if you wanna do that, you don't go "experimental" on the few you saved) - or, regardless of the propaganda, the Chineese were anything but close to defeat.

Just because we don't know the exact details about other conflicts doesn't mean there weren't any. They just weren't relevant to the story of FO1, 2 and 3, so they were not included in the timeline, and will be fleshed out only when the need arises. Emil Pagliarulo talked about how Europe is just as messed up (or worse) than the United States when commenting on Tenpenny coming to the US from England to seek his fortune.

this was must likely what did happen in the fall out universe ... except that seperating california and alaska part

well "messed up" doesnt mean "completely dead" like some guys here wants us to think, the US is quite alive with new cities and whatnot, so why not Europe?
sure they got nuked in the Resource wars by the Arabic nations, but we have no indications that the US or China sent nukes to Europe other then that intro thing with "burning world" which could mean anything. and besides, why would they? Europe was in shambles by that time. it would be like Russia declares war on US and Obama nukes Stockholm and Brussels and other cities in Europe while knowing that russian missiles is on their way to US cities. "if i cant have the cookie, no-one shall have it!"

too bad the original devs didnt have time to flesh these facts out some more, so we wouldnt have to argue about it here.

I mean that they are in a state similar to the United States as depicted in the Fallout games. There's no reason to assume otherwise.

In essence, that's what would have happened. Basically MAD. MAD is what prevented the Soviets and USA from having a full-blown nuclear exchange during the cold war IRL.

Given as it's based from the 50's World of Tomorrow, I'll go out on a limb here. Most missile establishments during the cold war were set with pre-designated targets, so that during the event of a nuclear attack they'd be able to quickly get their pay-load up and away. Theres no reason to assume that such a protocol would have been changed. Now here is the hard part, while the detection of a nuclear launch/attack can happen, it's generally hard to determine the exact trajectory of the nuke(sometimes, launching off the west-coast to China would be fairly obvious, as would be China to USA).

What raises a problem is US military installations, and presumably missile launch sites, within European nations. With that in mind and given the war, the Chinese would have European nations key'd in as targets.

So when a nuclear launch of the scale that happened, it pretty much destroys everything.

This is taking USSR missile protocols, which would have targeted every US Aligned European Nation in the event of a Nuclear Attack, and changing the USSR to China.

Likewise, the US targeted all USSR states, or in this case, all Chinese friendly nations.


However, I don't think it ever says really how the great war started.





FalloutWiki says that.

I think there is (or was) a US base on aussie soil, which could mean at the very least that we were nuked...

However, we also do have Uranium deposits, whether or not any was sold to China is unknown.

Its also probable that Tasmania was forgotten, everyone forgets Tasmania

FEV was NOT in direct response to the war in China, in fact it is debatable if it was at all in response to China. It was a response to suspected Chinese biological warfare, although anyone could have set it off since its origins are unknown, there was no evidence that included them in the original origins of the New Plague. We, also, don't know its extent in other countries, its doubtful that it effected the United States alone.



It is possible, because of the New Plague American nuclear power was used to contain it, as it was spreading across the United States until the Great War. That is when all died who were hosts.



But the thing is, if there were other conflicts I think someone would have detailed them by now. We know, however, FOR SURE that there was LIMITED nuclear exchange between Europe, who was firing them, and the Middle East, who was receiving them and using them on Israel. As far as the timeline from the Fallout Bible states, the Middle East didn't use nuclear weapons in Europe. Just because Europe is "messed up" doesn't mean they were nuked. World War I and II had devastating effects on Europe, for WWI where it was concentrated, such as the trenches of Northern France and Belgium, in WWII there was Total War and everything became a target, military base, city or even small town. I'm sure, especially with the horrible weapons that were in Fallout, damage had to be catastrophic in the Resource Wars, which would have made all of Europe look like Belgium after WWI since everyone warred with one another. Then you have Fallout from the nuclear exchange between the US and China, hell they wouldn't have needed to use that many for radiation to disperse across the stratosphere, that radiation being bad enough to kill plants, animals and people exposed.


That doesn't mean, however, there was direct nuclear confrontation, rather, Europe felt it indirectly.



Your looking at MAD the wrong way. Just because it was called "MAD" doesn't mean the whole world fires nukes all around, "well, chaps, the world is coming to an end may as well use these damn things," no, you need codes for all of that. We would have used launch sites that were pre-programed to hit Chinese specific targets, exactly as you had said, but not to just knock out Soviet targets as well as endangering Europe unless there was a damn good reason, like Soviet missiles were headed for America. MAD meant Mutually Assured Destruction because a war between any two powers would result in those two powers being annihilated, however, it would also have the side effect, if big enough, of worldwide Fallout, thus the premise of On The Beach. What happened during the war between China and the US was that it created planetary fallout.

So, when we ask ourselves who objectively won the Post-War, without a detailed picture of the rest of the world, no one did is the most credible answer that one can come up with when everything is taken into account.

I would assume, that as soon as the West Coast was hit, that SAC bombers, would have immediately headed for their targets in Red China, and the Soviet Union. With the PVO, picking up USAF assets in their air space, they would no doubt have launched. Also, I would guess that the Soviet Union, and the Warsaw Pact, would have made a grab for West Germany, after the Resource Wars. Of course, for all we know, the Soviets went pouring through the Fulda Gap, right after the conflict ended.

One point that was never addressed: Did the US, still have its European Bases during the Resource Wars?
Also by Annexing the Dominion of Canada, the US would also have gained a few more bases in West Germany.

You contradict yourself.

The evidence we have is that FEV affects the U.S. alone. Occam's Razor; the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. We have no evidence whatsoever that the FEV affects anywhere outside of North America, or indeed the former United States.

Most mutated creatures in the Fallout world (like all the giant versions of animals) are a result of radiation, not FEV.



Actually, the original timeline written for FO1 stated that the airborne version of FEV spread around the world, speeding up all the mutation processes. Of course, the super mutants and centaurs are not a result of the airborne strain.

As for New Plague, according to Van Buren it was actually created by the United States, but the outbreak was caused by Chinese spies in Hei Gui stealth armor who tried to steal it.

Um... I did not say FEV affects anything outside of the United States, even though it does as well, what I was addressing was the fact that with the outbreak of the New Plague, having little to do with the war in China, West Tek developed FEV. You can't really release FEV in the air unless you especially make it for that purpose, which the Enclave attempted in Fallout 2, it comes in vats. The New Plague, however, as far as I know, didn't reach across the entire globe or that far in the United States, it is more or less speculation on my part, as apparently an airborne strain of FEV did.



I did not know that, although, it could be contradicted later if Bethesda talks about FEV in any of the DLCs or sequels. Its speculation how far New Plague went or what methods were used to contain it, but usually airborne viruses spread fast so I could see the US government, especially if they created it, trying to control an outbreak in order to cover it all up.



And for all we know, the Soviet Union could have been an American ally trying to crush the Chinese, if you have already forgotten, America had pushed the Chinese out of Alaska as they had single-handedly invaded. The Soviet Union didn't wake up one morning and say to themselves, "those Capitalist pigs, they may have beaten China but they won't be the last one's laughing" and fire all their nukes, no, they were on the sidelines in Alaska for a reason and when America was invading China, they obviously didn't want an atomic war and certainly not a conventional war with the US, because they were watching China disappear under the boots of an American army defending American soil from a foreign aggressor. Hell, it probably helped the Soviet Union in gaining some power over south-east Asia or Europe.



I would think that it is pretty obvious by now, once the alliances started to break down our troops came home to defend the homefront from foreign and domestic enemies.

Exactly. So no FEV = no Super Mutants/Centaurs/who knows what else.

@ZA: FEV predates the Great War - October, 2077, as I'm sure we all know - albeit in different guises;




The New Plague is not really relevant as you state, it comes after the Great War and as far as we know only affected the continental United States.

New Plague (Limit 115) came before the Great War. FEV (originally PIV) was originally created as a cure to the New Plague.



There could still be other mutated created created either by radiation or by other viruses.

2055 - The West Tek Research Facility starts working on a new virus to kill the New Plague. Their viral research and close ties to the federal government eventually lead to them being chosen for the Pan-Immunity Virion Project twenty years later as well as Power Infantry Armor and laser research. - Fallout Wiki Timeline

FEV did, however, with radiation would effect the creatures that would still be alive, which give you giant ants or mole rats.



New Plague or Limit 115 is a socially transmitted plague which arose in 2053, killing approximately twenty thousand human beings in the United States, including cities such as Denver, Boulder, and Colorado Springs. The United States closed its borders and the first-ever national quarantine was declared. The source of the plague is unknown, but rumors persisted that it was a genetically engineered weapon. - Fallout Wiki Timeline