It was the Easter Islanders.

The timeline makes it sound like the declassification of FEV to the world put the world on edge. Somebody twitched. Really I like it being vague. Makes it a condemnation of humanity as a whole as opposed to any singular country/ideology. Any country in the world capable of blowing us all up. Because War...

Han clearly fired first.. It shouldn't be up for dispute

richardson, in FO2, tells pretty clearly that the chineses fired first.

Why would he lie? I think he is not lying, since on the next messages, he is pretty honest about the tortured fate of most vault dwellers.

Guess that is the closest to an answer we can get:

{216}{prs32}{We were winning, too. And then those damn http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/China launched everything they had. We barely got our birds up.}
{217}{}{Doesn't seem as though it helped us much.}
{218}{prs33}{Well, no it didn't. But at least it knocked the damn Red menace back into the stone age.}
{219}{}{And us with it.}
{220}{prs34}{Well, no. No... not quite. You see, we had planned ahead. We were ready. }
{221}{}{What do you mean?}
{222}{prs35}{We had a number of sanctuaries that would enable the glorious American civilization to endure. These facilities - the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault - were part of the great plan.}
{223}{}{Those damn vaults didn't work the way they were supposed to. A lot of people in them died.}
{224}{prs36}{Actually, they worked almost exactly the way they were supposed to. You might call it a social experiment on a grand scale. }
{225}{}{An experiment?}
{226}{prs36a}{The vaults were set up to test humanity. Some had not enough food synthesizers, others had only men in them, yet others were designed to open after only 6 months. They each had a unique set of circumstances designed to test the occupants.}
{227}{}{What about Vault 13? What was it's purpose?}

I disagree the subtitles are still in there and if they ment to cut it they would of removed the whole log.

the concepts of mutual assured destruction was only realized ilate i,n the 1960 s in our own world and only after it was realized they had more weapons than needed to destroy each other

it is possible that concept was never created i the fallout universe , do not forget that untill the cuban missile crisis both side strategist thought a nuckear war could be won with acceptable losses

Honestly it was probably some 99 Luftballons [censored], people just saw sunlight reflecting off a cloud from an early warning satellite and thought the other side had shot off its missiles

(That actually almost happened in 1983)

Does this seriously even matter?

I guess the FO4 protagonist might care (seeing how what they personally lost), but I fail to see how placing definitive blame on any one side or person would change anything or even have any hopes of providing any "closure" since everyone involved with the button pressing is now (most likely) long dead? Also, it would still be a matter of trusting 200 year old records left by a VERY untrustworthy source.

Ya 200 years is a long time to wonder or blame someone........

But might be nice to meet a ghoul that CLAIMS they did it.

Indeed! It is one of those things that you really WANT to know, but you also realize as soon as you do, it would ruin your day. Because in your head it simply works better. Mystery is sometimes a quality for it self, if it's done well. See the Alien movies. The fact that you didn't knew what it really was, created a lot of the tension. Now? With certain explanations, it seems like a lot of the magic is gone. Or ... do I really have to say midi-chlorians? Not everything needs an explanation.

woow i still remember that sonng when it first came out in the rarly 80 s when the cold war was at its peak

atleast the world looked less complicated than now

i must be getting old

I like to believe it was the US who shot first because I'm Australian and I hate Americans

Go eat some cheeseburgers

I just think it would make a really quest or even a dlc but of course it wouldn't effect my choice to buy fo4 at all but im just a lore [censored] and want to know everything I find fallout to be the reverse of star wars ie the newer games are far superior to the old.

Yeah, but would Mad Max be a better franchise if you knew who caused WW3? It's just the setting. Nothing more. Nothing less. And I don't even find it that interesting to be honest. China? US? Maybe even Russia? Who cares. It adds to the mystery and it highlights the nature of humans. It's an irony if you think about it. They build and stockpilled all of those weapons for politics and they wanted to kill each other for an ideology but in the end no one even remembers who did what. It's forgotten.

I hope they don't reveal it at all and the SS have knowledge doesn't make sense for multiple reasons. I like my head canon based on real events. A USA bomber broke up over the USA and the nukes it was carrying detonated causing a chain reaction of attacks by both sides.

In 1961, a B-52 bomber carrying two nuclear bombs broke in half flying over North Carolina and dropped its payload. And, as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it back then, "By the slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted."

Snnnrk...

Some drunk Ghoul somewhere.

"Yeah, Yeah I did the thing. That's right, all of this? It was me! Me!"

We will never know...

Logically since the US was conquering mainland China, a nuclear war was probably inevitable, but given how the Fallout World works it was probably due to a shadowy conspiracy or a total accident.

On the off chance that you are joking (and not just being a typical cyber-jerk speaking from the protection of anonymity), take this with the same context.

No doubt the world has plenty of reason to hate the US in general (some justified, some not), but hating the people that live here based on our government's past actions is as bigoted as me assuming you MUST be lowlife criminal offspring for being from Australia....see how that works?

I think you misunderstood me when I said the SS having knowledge of who struck 1st I ment the ss could have the knowledge inwhich would assist him/her in finding out the truth like the known location of a bunker that records satellite data or something like that. Didn't know that thanks fod the history tip bit i enjoy learning about cold war history.

The Chinese intern at Pentagon.

https://youtu.be/r-M_GqSEDDk

Right on =)

I still think Vault-Tec firing the first warhead is the best fit for Fallout canon wise.

The Chinese were losing the war, they'd been defeated in Alaska, ending ten years of occupation and the Americans had landed in Shanghai and Nanking and were firmly entrenched there. There is no reason why the U.S. would have shot first and as for Richardsons account - he never lied to you once, tells you his entire plan and provides all the backstory on it, ergo I don't find his account of the war to be a lie.