...did MIT have a means to defeat the bombs like Mr. House did?

MIT was probably a major technological development center for pre-war America, it'd likely be high in the target priority (not as high as DC, but still high). Since House had the means (and also was a MIT alum), perhaps the folks at MIT had a similar contingency plan to hack/laser-swat the nukes, and had only one failed target (unlike House)?

Maybe they had developed similar anti-missile shield (ie; intercepting missile system) as Vegas had. Only reason so much of vegas was still lost, was that the Plat. Chip was not at Vegas intime to stop the bombs completely. Otherwise house his anti missile defences would likely have shielded the entire mojave.

Indeed - though the people would have probably still died (Fallout from surrounding areas), still House could have probably rebuild earlier and he wouldn't have had to let the NCR in (with his full Securitron army at his disposal and with their full potential unlocked (weapons, self repair, better personality for war etc.)) and would have killed the Legion off just for trying to take "his" city

greetings LAX

ps: Of course, the New Vegas storyline wouldn't have happened then - so I prefer it this way

Keep in mind radiation in Fallout is less of an issue then in real life.

Fallout has rad-x, rad-away & auto-docs that do very well at reducing/eliminating radiation poisoning.

It's still very much fatal - but you have treatment options.

And even without those we have ghouls as a prime example that living with radiation is possible, even if it means you keeping track of various bits that fall off at times.

Sounds likely.

In trying to save themselves, they saved most of Boston.

Too bad Boston was too tied in to the rest of the county to fully survive it's demise.

Just in Time supply systems are a [censored] for natural disasters and nuclear wars.

Having all the manufacturing capacity in the world does you little good if you only keep 48 hours of parts on hand and your suppliers are located all over the country.

And grocery stores are nearly as bad.

Add in starving refuges from all over the New England area likely dying from radiation poison...

Plus any bioweapons the Chinese sent over.

Raiders fighting over the remains....

I'd expect any surviving military forces to rally to Boston, but maybe they did then became part of the Institute.

Military Science Department of course.

I'm interesting to see how detailed Bethesda is on how Boston got to where it is 200 years after the war.