First.. I have not played any of the previous Fallout games but I have read up about them. From what I've read the West Coast has made many great leaps forward in recovering from the great war whilst the East Coast, Washington D.C and Pittsburgh have hardly made that much progress in the past 200 years compared to the West Coast?

Not really. Neither the west or the east coast has made 'great leaps' in anything. The west coast had the old relics of the U.S government there, such as Mariposa and Navarro bases, and The BoS and the Enclave. So most of the old technology was utilised more heavily in that area as the stuff was already there. Other than re-using old technology, there has been no more progress in recovery in the West coast than in the East coast.

Agriculture and the New California Republic.

Shady sands was a haven of diversity, and had a more-than-healthy agriculture. Lost Hills is the BoS HQ, and a technological mainstay. Adytum had scavs. which devoted their time to saluaging artifacts. It had the gun runners, who provided some of the best weapons in the region. It had Smitty, who made bullets. And it had the makings of its own agriculture, which included the cultivation of mushrooms. The Hub was founded just 16 years after the war, and united all the different towns through trading their most prominent commodities, the Hub also had the water, and was a culmination of the strengths of the surrounding communities. It was also the first community to accept equality among humans and ghouls.

The NCR, formerly shady sands, grew into a thriving territory consisting of 5 states. By the time of Fallout 2 it had a population of ~700,000.

The west coast came on leaps and bounds in less than 2 centuries. The East coast is nothing compared.

DOn't forget that the B.O.S. out west had started to build computers (I think I remember something about them supplying NCR with a super computer).

The West had 2 vaults that worked pretty close to what the marketing said they would - 15/Shady Sands, and 12/VC. It had leaders like Tandi, Sherrif Greene and Killian Darkwater who refused to conceed civilisation to the barbarians.

Its supermutant threat developed later, only with the ill fated expedition to mariposa by Richard Grey and Harold did the Supermutants become a major threat.

It radiation count was also lower, with DC being a bigger target for the nukes.

Rivet city and a massive robot.



Shady sands turned into NCR, a selective Right-wing city.



The Pentagon.



NCR supposedly controls all of southern california.





It was also crushed into oblivion by super mutants.



Megaton, Rivet city, Cantebury commons, Big town are all cities that 'refused to conceed civilisation to the barbarians.'



The whole world was burned to a crisp with thousands of nukes. The radiation wouldn't differ much around the whole planet.



The water in DC is now not irradiated. The BoS are also crushing the Enclave at the moment. There's no detail on whether the Enclave was wiped from the West coast with the destruction of the oil rig. Navarro base is still there.



I'll give you that one. Even if it is a bullying territory.

Massive robot doesnt count.. It was just sitting there unusable by anyone other than the BOS

I disagree its right wing. Its imperialist in some areas yes, but its one of the most racially tollerant places in the waste.

Again, sitting there unused.

Most of it.

Although decimated, it did survive in the official canon. It is now the capital of the sate of the Hub. One of the NCRs largest cities.

None of them have a strong leader like the ones I indicated...

Actually, it would. There would still be high areas, and low concentrated areas. Theres a heck of a lot more Water vapour in the air than there would be fallout even after a nuclear war, but there isnt even humidity everywhere is there? Heck, theres a lot more air than there is anything else, but there isnt even air pressure at every point at sea level at this very second.

Civilization-wise, East Coast of 2277 is behind the West Coast of 2161.



Navarro personnel was relocated to Raven Rock. And you're comparing the state of Capital Wasteland post-2277 with the Core Region in 2242. Not really fair, I'd say. If anything, we should compare the Core Region as of FO2 with what we know of the Capital Wasteland before the arrival of the BOS.



Both unused until the BOS came there from the West Coast.

East Coast has more problems.
The mutants, which are the greatest trouble to civilization run rampant on Capital Wasteland, while in West Coast they were taken care of enough early before they became a serious threat to humans.
Capital Wasteland also has much smaller population, much smaller territory and less resources. California is a big place, NCR alone could fill the map that FO3 uses.

Commonwealth seems to be much more advanced than East and West Coast, though. Maybe because they haven't encountered mutants yet.

West Coast is successful because humans are clearly dominant species there, with Ghouls and rest of Mutants packed in isolated locations. East coast is the opposite; humans are being oppressed by either themselves or their enemies.

NCR (the state) is much bigger than that. The whole FO3 map is the equivalent of one square on the FO1/2 world map.

The AI that replaced the Overseer in Vault 13. Installed by the BoS. Another AI in BoS base in San Fran.
Hardening power armor process. Post-war invention. Not present in DC.
Hubologists attempting to launch a space shuttle; BoS attempts to reverse-engineer vertibirds. The Shi and Hubologist conduct(ed) actiive research in various fields. One of those wiped San Fran out after FO2 though.
Active mining - Broken Hills and Redding.
Coins. Not bottlecaps, real post-war coins.
Jet. Myron, baby, Myron



Those should only be compared with the Den or Klamath. And never be in the same sentence as Vault City, NCR /Shady Sands/, or, New Reno... Not to mention San Fran.

I don't see how either of those make the East Coast even as remotely advanced as the West Coast. Did you even play through Fallout 2?

East coast had a higher population density, and therefore, a higher nuke density as well.... they would also be on the receiving end of more fallout... kinda puts a damper on things, not to mention the chinese invasion... not that it lasted long.....

seattle supplied the west coast with a hell of a lot of coffee. this allowed them to work in the mornings, almost doubling their rebuilding rate. over on the east coast the closest thing they have to a strong seattle brew is rhode island coffee milk.

I wish I had cofee like that, and its 2009 and I live in PA, Damn mornings.

I saw it awhile back in another thread, but one idea is that the it may have been that since the "east coast" (primarily DC) was hit harder because, well, it's DC, the capital of the most powerful superpower. It's going to be the most targeted area.

Another is that since the east coast is such densely citied (not a word, but oh well), other countries might not want to damage it too badly (maybe they hoped that if they survived they could raid the pentagon or something), and used higher air-burst bombs as well as so called "neutron bombs." Said bombs supposedly produce more radiation in lieu of high damage. Basically, this scenario would make the area around DC more structurally intact (as opposed to FO1 and 2, where the only major pre-war city left is San Francisco) even though it would be a high priority target, AND it would have a higher amount of radiation - meaning normal humans couldn't repopulate until much later. This delay would also give the super mutants more time to dig in, thus slowing human's expansion even more.

Beyond that you have only, what, one known vault that isn't made for experiments and no major (populated) military base. Also, even if there are more vaults in the area, it appears none of them used GECKs to found a city like Vault City did, and it seems few people from the experimental vaults escaped, unlike the several ones on the West Coast. (The only one I can think of at the moment is the one that became the necropolis).

There is also the consideration that maybe it is just a fluke no one is there. Apparently it's hard to grow food, and there aren't any major scavengable finds that are readily available for those without main character support (every FO game has stories about how large groups of armed men fail miserably where one uneducated rube from a vault lays waste to everything in his/her sites), and we know super mutants where there a lot earlier then the west coast. With those three things combined, why would anyone voluntarily expand there? It's not like there's a premium on space anymore.

Edit: I just did some reading on the fallout wikia, and the west coast area in FO1 and 2 has 5 available vaults, of which 4 produced settlements (necropolis, Vaults City, Shady Sands, and Arryo). The East Coast area has 6 known vaults, of which all but two lost all their residents due to the experiments (FEV, violence inducing white noise, crazy gas, and crazy clones). Of the other two, only three people are known to have ultimately escaped, and two of those weren't originally vault dwellers (James and the PC, the third being Butch). Said escape also happens 200 years after the bombs dropped, as opposed to ten years like Vault City. The other vault, well, no one ever gets away from a little girl named Dr. Stanislaus Braun. This all points to a much smaller population of people to expand, with less materials to do it.

The real word is "urbanized".



Thing is, the 5 vaults in FO1 and FO2 were for the whole of California and parts of Nevada. FO3 has that many vaults for the DC and its immediate surroundings alone, which is equivalent to one map square in FO1 and 2.

The higher population and city density in the east/northeast would mean is probably received a lot more incoming nukes then the west. Even if you nuke the major western cities, there are still large areas that are not directly impacted. Compare that to the northeast, where there are closely spaced targets from Boston down to DC.

Also, another angle to consider is that DC may have fallen back from an earlier recovery. For example, consider the adventures of that Dashwood guy. In his notes he talks about places that don't exist anymore and also refers to a plague that killed off a lot of people. Plus there is a lot of talk about things getting worse once the supermutants showed up.

Can't we assume there were a lot more vaults in FO1 and FO2 that we never saw, be they closed or abandoned? The thing with games that have a world map like that is you have to assume there is a lot you aren't seeing.

The programmers in FO1 and 2 had a lot of limitations, I would say the lack of vaults has to do with the reason ghouls arent potrayed with armor.

I wonder if Fallout will ever feature a world that has made great leaps. A rebuild Fallout-world? I don't know it seems that it wouldn't be fallout anymore. You think it could be possible that the future fallouts will rebuild the world piece by piece, every new part of the series a better world? Interesting to think about because people are creative and builders by nature if you ask me. I think the only way to have the original fallout world to remain is to have the new parts in the series to be at the same time, another place, because it wouldn't fit with human nature to have this world forever. Right?

We can, but considering that there were only 122 vaults in total, it still doesn't make much sense to have 5 of them around just one city.

I agree but from a design standpoint, they were probably trying to set the feel of the major presence 'Vault-Tec' for the new audience in the fallout world.

From a lore aspect I just try to think that there is more Vaults because it is around the nations capital(Pretty flimsy I know, but I have to make some reasoning).Plus it's only 122 'known' vaults to the goverment, isn't it? Although I know all of the vaults in D.C were officially sanctioned apart from maybe Vault 87(Memory is abit fuzzy can't remember).

The 122 numbered vaults were the official ones. Any unofficial ones would not be numbered, like the Secret Vault in FO:BOS (which is non-canon anyway).