Well thought out and plausible OP. I can hardly wait to find out if you are right.

I doubt it. The answer to many of those questions is "because they want to get you excited for the game"

Its a cinematic trailer that is meant to be dramatic and gripping and epic. its purpose is not to be a puzzle for fans to unravel the secrets to in order to find out what content will be in the game, its meant to catch your attention an get you hyped (more hyped) leading into the days to come when they start releasing info.

That's probably true, but they know people will break it down. It wouldn't surprise me if they "hide" stuff like this to get people hyped.

In October of 1952, the US detonated a 10.4 megaton bomb...... So, it's anyones guess what was "normal sized" in the FO universe.....

I still haven't given up that you are a prewar survivor who starts off in the game. But Bethesda spent a lot of money on the fallout e3 trailer that has that vault tek guy, which had nothing to do with the game

I heard Bethesda spent alot of money making Fallout 4, so maybe you can play Fallout 4

True, but then the first half of that trailer seems to be something that would perhaps have been shown on pre-war tv to convey what the era was like. The F4 trailer is very different because it looks like it could all be in-engine, and I genuinely believe it's a cinematic take on actual gameplay.

The developers didn't make the trailer though, as I recall they hired a studio to do it, its possible that they could have instructed the studio who made the trailer to go through elaborate lengths to hide secrets. but that seems overly complicated, not to mention the amount of suspension of disbelief and out right silliness that would be a result of some of the theories people have been posting about what they interpret from the trailer.

I agree with this.

As for spening a lot of time creating pre-war stuff, they show you like a neighbourhood and a hill, Yeah, so hard to make, so much time and money wasted... or not. If they get people excited by the trailer it will probably increase their sales, not that I think it was all that hard to make that small pre-war area anyways.

As I've said, the trailer is a trailer, if we're gonna everything we know off the trailer, then we're probably playing as a dog.

My claim was THAT family could not survive a 25kt burst going off at a distance 1.5 km. No matter how you cut it, no matter if we are talking a 20 ton Davy Crockett warhead or a 50 Mt Tsar Bomba, the time it took for the blast wave arrives makes the distance about 1.5 km. So you take the survival of one individtual who was TWICE (not very similar) the distance from a 15 kt blast as proof that the one in the trailer was survivable. Now when you consider that the REPUTED yields for strategic weapons in the Fallout universe run from 200 kt to 750 kt and that they are enhanced radiation weapons (i.e., neutron bombs), the "No chance in Hell" odds of them surviving becomes considerably worse.

But really, that is all moot. There are all kinds of impossibilities to be found in the Fallout Universe. Radscorpions and Giant Ants are impossible. We have all kinds of semi-plausible theories as to how they came into existence, but all if these theories fail to explain how such creatures could survive. The plain and simple fact is that a terrestrial creature of that size cannot exist with an exoskeleton. Arthropods of that size could not get enough oxygen for survival (they don't have lungs as we understand them) and even if you got past that little hurdle, in order for an exoskeleton to be strong enough to support a creature of that size, it would have to be so thick that there wouldn't be room to house the muscles needed for movement. These things are flat out impossible. Yet, there they are.

Does anyone really believe it is possible to burn an entire person to ash by hitting them in the hand with a laser firing a pencil thin beam?

Considering the fact that these people never invented the transistor and they are still using vacuum tubes, is there anyone that actually believes that a Pip Boy could be any smaller than a Corvega?

This isn't a game about reality, this is a game about imagination. So if the story for Fallout 4 requires that at least one person from that family survive, then they will survive, impossible or not.

The part about pre-war footage vs. post-war footage. There really wasn't much that was new. A Mr. Handy is a Mr. Handy. Change the texture and it goes from rusted to olive drab. Change the texture again and it has a mirror finish. Basically, it isn't new, it is the same robot with a fresh coat of paint. Almost all of the pre-war clothing has been seen before in previous games. The only things that I remember seeing that were truly new, was a partially obscured armored vehicle and the civilian cars. Just change the textures and they will go from brand new to rusted hulk in a heartbeat. So they could be used in game AFTER the war. When you also consider that these new things are pretty much just immobile and not being interacted with in the trailer, they may as well just be painted backdrops. I seriously doubt that they were very costly to develop.

Your theory is clearly impossible, but as I hinted at before and what I have demonstrated, this isn't a game about what is possible and never has been. So, impossible or not, maybe you are right.

I'm feeling a bit loony right now, so here's a very unlikely (and fairly ridiculous) prediction I've cooked up:

Throughout the first half of the game, you believe yourself to be a pre-war vault dweller cryopreserved for hundreds of years. In reality, it turns out the real "you" melted from Post-cryogenic Syndrome shortly after being thawed, but the vault computer preserved your personality and memory (Vault-Tec intending it to be used for comparison to learn whether cryonically preserved subjects would experience neural degradation), and the Institute used it as a template for an experimental android: they'd let you "awaken" and emerge from the vault on your own, thinking yourself a pre-war vault dweller, all the while they observe you from afar, taking note of your choices, how you adapt, and what skills you pick up.

And yet the theory that you describe is still an interpretation, just a different one that mine. Neither of us can be 100% sure exactly how far away we were and how powerful the yield was. But we can look at what makes sense within the context of what we do know. And I'm pretty certain that we are seeing, for whatever reason, the same individual alive before the bombs went off, and then potentially two-hundred years later. As much as it could be the case that we end up playing as some kind of a clone or an android or something entirely different, playing as a human who has been through such an immensely traumatic experience would be infinitely more personal to play as. And if we didn't actually see the people above the vault being vaporised, then there is clearly a possibility of survival. Not understanding is not the same thing as not possible.

And who is to say that radscorpions and giant ants are "impossible"? As ridiculous as they may seem to us, we clearly do not understand all of the factors that led to them coming about in what is still an alternative reality. In ours, even the bumble bee is "impossible", but that fact doesn't stop many people from freaking out if one of them flies a bit too close! Also, with regards to laser weapons, pipboys and other technology, these things do exist in their current form in the fallout universe, and so certain obstacles and design challenges must have been overcome. Your logic seems to be coming from a viewpoint of what can't rather than what can.

With regards to the difference between pre-war and post-war footage, I think you are underestimating just how much effort it really takes to retexture an entire game, or even part of a game - just ask anyone who has created texture mods for any of Bethesda's previous games. It is a truly colossal task requiring dedication and a great deal of expertise. And this is not just a retexture either - many of the assets are very different between game worlds, and then there are items that have to be individually placed or moved. And what about the radio broadcasts and other audio components? These require script-writing and planning and recording and editing of the voiced lines or sound effects being used. All of this takes time, money and a lot of effort.

Finally, you have not, as you claim, proved that my theory is impossible - all you have done is tried to prove that the glass is half empty. I still stand by it being half full.

You definitely made some convincing points and I'll see today if I can find a comparison screen of the father of the family pre-war and the protagonist post-war. But I still think it's highly unlikely that we get to play as a member of that family simply because the narrative of the trailer strongly suggests that they die on top of the vault elevator. To me the trailer shows something that is one of the unique points of fallout and that is the stories you discover during scavenging, I'm not talking about quests but about the skeletons you find that gives you hints of their last moments before the bombs or the holotapes you find laying around. Now of course my argument comes from my own interpretation of the trailer and it is possible that you're right, but at this point I don't see enough evidence that could suggest the back story (introduction part) of the protagonist.

Thank you, a comparison screen would certainly be very useful.

I do believe that the scene with the detonation has been designed in a very specific way to cause us to question this. If we were shown a nuclear explosion way off in the distance, and then our protagonist were quickly ushered into the vault, it would still have a high level of impact but would be a lot more impersonal. We saw the start of nuclear devastation and lived to tell the tale. But if we managed to survive such horrifying and unfathomable odds in what would have to be a very close call, the impact would be far greater. We would constantly feel that we have genuinely cheated death, that we were perhaps saved for some kind of greater purpose. We would also have a much deeper understanding of just how destructive we can be as a species, and a deeper appreciation of the time we are given while we are here. Finally, if some of our family perhaps did not make it, then we would end up with a powerful experience of deep personal loss that would add real depth to our protagonist.

Pre-war protagonist has a certain probablity to it. However, I'm still very sceptical about that whole pre-war content we might actually get to play.

Did it occur to you that most of the pre-war stuff we got to see in the trailer will reappear (exactly like that or in a different/extended cut) as nothing more than part of an intro movie sequence ? Both predecessors had some (rather short though) IIRC.

And as for all the details and the exegesis going on about them: Don't disregard the possibility that you folks are more thoughtful and meticulous than some trailer-producing studio; that you might be seeing hints in things noone put much thought into on the producer's side apart from "Hey, let's do this and that, it'll be cool".

You may be heading flank speed for disappointment.

Just saying...

consider how the PC in the trailer is means to be a super generic guy still makes the theory fall flat because for all we know the reason they look alike is because Beth cut corners by reusing models that麓s never meant to have any signifigance, in this case the dad from the pre war times, honestly if the pre war content is used for the game, I麓m more inclinded to think it will be the typical "war...war never changes" intro common to the Fallout games, it麓s just this time they decided to be more fancy by making it in engine.

I have downloaded the uncompressed trailer and viewed it several times. The last we see of your alleged protagonist and his wife and child, they are stood on the closed elevator and the shockwave/blast front is about 100yards from them. They are very much dead.

Uncompressed trailer can be streamed and/or downloaded from http://www.gamersyde.com/download_fallout_4_trailer-34774_en.html

The blast wave from a nuclear explosion - which contains around half of the total energy released on a low-yield device - has a definable lethal range, inside of which you would stand zero chance of survival. Within this area, entire buildings and other structures are swept away due to the massive overpressure and the immense speed at which the air is travelling. As the wave extends beyond this point, your chances of survival increase exponentially. In the case of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, as noted in point 3 of my original post, the distance from ground zero was under two miles on both occasions. The lethal blast radius for each of these explosions was just under a mile, so although he would have most certainly been hit by both blast waves, he was clearly outside of the lethal range. In spite of injuries sustained at the time, he not only survived, he lived for a further 65 years after the event. Looking back to the explosion in the trailer, if the vault was within the lethal blast radius, the electrical pylons in the distance would have been torn to shreds, but we see the blast wave travel well past them in our direction, and they are still intact. As you even pointed out, we see the blast wave travel within around 100 yards in front of our view - I would suggest that it is actually much closer than this. Yet the pylons are a great deal further away and appear to be unaffected. Although such a blast wave could cause lethal injuries at this range, I still maintain that there could also be survivors. The insta-death argument simply does not hold up in this instance.

Another quick point has to do with the actual radioactive fallout itself, most of which will end up in a concentrated area very close to ground zero. Some of this fallout will be thrown up into the atmosphere, and depending on a number of factors will fall settle in a much larger area over a period of several hours or more, greatly increasing the range at which death could occur. The events of the trailer do not appear to be in real time, and are clearly brief snapshots of what is going on. Given this fact, we do not know how close the vault lift was to actually being opened when the bomb detonated. Injuries aside, after the blast wave has passed there would be a definite window during which any survivors could activate the mechanism to open the lift and then access the vault before any fallout reached them.

I'll refrain from posting all the old arguments and stick with the cardinal truth of the Fallout world, if your outside of a secure location (Vault/Bunker) when a nuke hits your turning into a ghoul.

So for the couple theory to work, you have ignore them being out in the open near a nuclear blast, you have to ignore the fact that the vault would have to be sealed before the nuke or it would have been irradiated (also the reason it wouldn't have been opened after the blast), you have to come up with a scenario that explains what they are alive centuries later and you have to ignore the cardinal thruth of the Fallout world nukes=ghouls.

You can come with lots of theories to explain all of that, the bomb is a lower yield than the lore says, they are further away, the radiation somehow doesn't reach them, etc, etc but you're trying to use real world facts to challenge Fallout world facts.

I still think that sometimes a trailer is just a trailer, that there is no secret message for us to interpret, no secret code we just have to work out, its a trailer to draw in new players and gives you the basics of the Fallout world, pre-war, nuclear war, vault survivors and cool stuff....buy our game.

If this is true then being outside at any distance from an atomic blast would surely turn you into a ghoul, but this would be ridiculous. There has to be a sensible cut off point where this would no longer be the case - otherwise you may as well argue, for example, that falling from any height would instantly kill you. And what if you are right but the process actually took some time and could be prevented given the correct treatment? As for the vault being sealed and the radiation, see point 5 of my original post as well as my other post immediately above your own. I believe that a more than reasonable explanation is given, and yes - real world facts do at least have some bearing here, as much of what we see in the real world also applies in fallout. Also, with regards to being alive centuries later, just because some refuse to accept the idea of anyone developing workable cryogenic tech within the pre-war fallout universe doesn't mean that it couldn't happen. I have yet to see anything so far that absolutely disproves my theory. I could be completely wrong, but based on the weight of evidence, I somehow doubt it.

Edit: "Ghouls or necrotic post-humans, are decrepit, rotting, zombie-like mutants. They are recipients of intense and prolonged radiation sickness which decays their skin, and in some case their ligaments."

...except it is still crystal clear that the point of that nuke scene in the end is to drive in the drama that the pre war family is dead, because nuclear war is horrible

We know from talking to pre-war ghouls that being nearby is enough, I believe its supposed to be a combination of fallout and the FEV virus that leads to ghouls.

And what if you are right but the process actually took some time and could be prevented given the correct treatment?

Since nobody knows how to cure ghoulism and we have no idea how to prevent it beyond avoid nuclear blasts treatment would be hard.

As for the vault being sealed and the radiation, see point 5 of my original post as well as my other post immediately above your own. I believe that a more than reasonable explanation is given, and yes - real world facts do at least have some bearing here, as much of what we see in the real world also applies in fallout.

Well its an explanation, how reasonable or likely it is to be correct is just an opinion.

Also, with regards to being alive centuries later, just because some refuse to accept the idea of anyone developing workable cryogenic tech within the pre-war fallout universe doesn't mean that it couldn't happen. I have yet to see anything so far that absolutely disproves my theory. I could be completely wrong, but based on the weight of evidence, I somehow doubt it.

In regards to the cyrogenic theory, the problem is there is nothing to back up coming to this conclusion, workable cyrogenic tech is shown to work once in the Fallout world and then its by aliens in a DLC that many consider to be a joke rather than official lore. There is nothing in the trailer that shows any thing that even hints at cyrogenics.

The problem is that your 'weight of evidence' is its a lot of tap dancing around established lore to make a theory work, your theory is interesting but your trying to convert people to your belief rather than proving anything with facts. Nothing in the trailer even suggested the people seen being hit by a blast wave seconds after the nuke hits survived....the one link is that the shown MC is white and the couple are white, thats kinda it......if we want to take this a proof why aren't any of the other people fleeing to the vault a possible MC.

Crystal clear based on what? Oh, but they must have died "because nuclear war is horrible". Show me a trailer of somebody being blown to pieces and I'll pretty much accept that they're a gonner. But show me one in which we only assume that they died but didn't actually see it, and add to that a ton of evidence to support the possibility of their survival, and I'm sorry but I'm just not buying it.

and by a ton you mean stuff that most likely is just Beth cutting corners and not meant to be so ridiculously overanolysed as you done.

To be fair, the Fallout 3 trailer had just as much pre-war content (the commercial for Vault-Tech), yet the game itself had no pre-war content

We'd also need to know the yield of the nuke to know if the trailer family died. If it's a "Fat Man" (the WW2 bomb not the in-game weapon) type nuke... then maybe, MAYBE, they survived the blast. Any larger and their chances go down drastically, especially since it went off right next to them. Even if the blast didn't kill them... they'd likely have gotten a lethal dose of radiation, unless the Vault door opened, they climbed in, and it closed again in about 2 seconds. Again, they're right next to the blast.