Is there any information on this? how is it created and where do it's components come from? i assume the vault's technology doesn't include technology that can create stuff like that out of nothing?

The Vaults came pre-loaded with large stockpiles of Canned Goods and other storeable foodstuffs. But the vast majority of the Vault's food production - and almost all of it, after the first few years - would come "locally grown" from Hydroponics Labs. Be it fruit and vegetables to the flour used in baking, everything would eventually end up "natural" simply because no matter how vast the stockpile, if it becomes contaminated you need something to fall back on.

This also means that within a generation, the population would be Vegan through necessity. There's no practical means of supporting a livestock population large enough for long term Vault operation, and the chance of disease running rampant throughout the herd would be astronomically high.

You mean to suggest it's not possible to keep eating Blamco Mac and Cheese and Salisbury Steak for 200 years? :laugh:

Not so much not possible and more they'd eat through it after awhile, unless stockpiling the Vaults is what lead to the food riots in the days leading up to the Great War. A Vault has around a 1,000 person capacity. Three square meals a day for 1,000 people for just a year comes out to 1,095,000 boxes of food. And that's assuming all the meals are in self contained and single serving.

But that's also only factoring in a Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. That's not counting variety, nor is it counting anything other then water to drink. Or Dessert for that matter. Snacks also aren't factored into it.

We've already topped a Million Boxes of Blamco Mac and Cheese, and we haven't even gotten started on just Food stuffs to go into storage. What about Medical Supplies? Spare Parts?

yeah, so it'd require a massive amount of storage. but also, things like flour require base ingredients. do you think they'd have massive underground wheat fields? they'd probably have to be insanely large to support a population like that. what about synthetic food factories? it seems to me that one of the only things they have an abundance of is energy, with a nuclear reactor or a geothermal plant, and vault-tec would invent/use the most efficient foods possible requiring as little space, base ingredients as possible, while relying on a lot of energy?

It's not about volume, it's about nutritional content and calories.

Fast food restaurants have been finding ways of packing more and more calories into smaller and smaller portions of food. In the alternate future of the FOS, they might have it perfected.

I would like to know too because I'm making a large underground bunker and want to make a food production level and need some realistic ideas on what to fill it with (with existing game assets or mod/resource ones). At first I was considering creating large pools in which fish are harvested, but I don't think there is an actual fish model in FNV that'd be suitable for this? It's not supposed to be a vault for like 1000 people but rather a luxury shelter ran by maybe 40 people and there are also some of their children, and the bunker is open to the world but still self-reliant indefinitely when need be. Would wheat fields and flour/bread production facilities be practical in such a situation? I suppose having cattle underground would be a waste resource-wise but still, it's a luxury bunker so there should be facilities to support it, and when there is a shortage meat production can always be halted.

More input would be welcome.

It really depends on the amount of time the Vault was designed to stay closed for. Assuming even the "Weaponized" Vaults of Fallout 3 were eventually supposed to open to the outside world, then most Vaults would have to have massive Hydroponics Bays. Vault 22 is a good example of how such a endeavor would be undertaken while being mass restrictive. (Though do keep in mind Scaling is in effect in these games. Vault 22's Hydroponics Facilities are far vaster then they appear within the game)

But again, it boils down to how long the Vault was slated to be sealed shut. For Vaults like Vault 8 - which were issued the All Clear Signal within a few Decades - their production facilities wouldn't need to be as expansive as Vault 101, which was designed to remain sealed permanently. Vault 13 is another good example in expansive hydroponics, since they were to remain sealed shut for two hundred years. Yet there are also Vaults like Bakersfield, which likely had zero production facilities due to the fact the Vault was designed to fail.


As for a Luxury Vault were cost is no object...you could get away with a Cattle Yard and Fisheries, but they wouldn't be able to be maintained indefinitely. For starters, the inhabitants of such a Vault wouldn't dare do the agricultural work themselves, thus would rely on Protectrons and Robobrains. But also, just like the Dwellers themselves Fish and Cattle would run the risk of inbreeding after awhile. Faster for Fish and Cattle, given consumption rates.

It would actually be an interesting Failed Vault experience, really. A Luxury Vault where these people had gotten together and "stocked" it with all the necessities to maintain their lifestyles and the Robots needed to look after their investments, but no personal know-how of things like fixing said robots when they broke down, or how to maintain their luxurious food supply on their own. Or even adequate knowledge of how to effectively transplant these luxuries (Devote all this time and energy into building a winery, only to have the graqes wither and die on the vine).

Right now, I am looking at a frozen "pot pie" - the box measures 5" x 5" x 1". This seems like a good starting point . . . let's figure that food in storage would be highly compact, high in calories and be foritified with maximum nutritional content. Three meals a day is unneccsary - a person could easily live on one or two meals, provided the nutrional content was sufficient.

But let's take a worst case scenario - each person eats 3 meals a day with a max capacity 1,000 person Vault. Food is stored in boxes that measure 6" x 6" x1". These are designed for very long term storage in the event of . . . world destruction.

Okay, that makes 48 boxes that can fit into one cubic foot. 1,000 vault dwellers eating 3 meals a day equals 1,095,000 boxes of food.

One chamber that measures 50' x 50' x10' contains 25000 cubic feet. That is 1,200,000 boxes of food that can be stored . . . so a one year supply only takes a 50' x 50' room with a 10' high ceiling. Yeah, you couldn't walk in it, but you get the idea. Storage space would actually be fairly easy . . . underground there is virtually unlimited room. Vast cavernous chambers could be carved out - they wouldn't have to be finshed and pretty, just large and open.

A 50 year supply . . . even a one hundred year supply wouldn't take an exorbitant amount of space and realistically, food stores could be made to fill much less volume that above - especially since the vaults didn't really hold 1,000 individuals. I think fallout has already made the leap of faith that food can be stored for verrrrryyyy loooonnnngggg periods of time.

Something alot of people over look is that most of the vaults would open after a few decades at most. Only a few like Vault 13 and Vault 101 were meant to stay closed for hundreds of years. Other vaults opened but there people decided to stay. So they are getting their food from outside the vaults. Its only with games like FO3 and New Vegas are we seeing a trend for Vaults to still be closed or just opened within the last 30 years or so. Like Vault 21 or vault 3. When there was only FO1 and FO2 I got the impression that all the vaults but a rare few have long since opened and A ) become vault cities like Vault 8, one of the lucky 17 that were not apart of the vault experiments. Or B ) become abandoned. Back on topic not all the vaults were to stay closed for several decades or more so they only needed a small supply of food (10 to 20 years worth). Also the vaults are larger then are shown in the games. There are always areas cut off from us.

Well canon is that food (and clothing) comes from dispensers.

So what is a fooddispensers?
My guess: a thingy that turns foodstuff into food.
So whats foodstuff? well here we have many possibilities.

Perhaps its a was supply of tiny foodcubes, add water and you get a soup or a slab of spam.
Perhaps its a vast supply of powders that can be "built" into food. (or foodcubes)
Perhaps the powders are resupplied by having human waste enter algeavats, algea that are then broken down to powder.
Perhaps we can skip the algea and have wasteconverters turning crap into foodcubes.

And then we have Star Trek. Break it down to energy and rebuild it to icecream! :icecream:

Pre-war bulk storage of processed foods, a water purifier, hyrdroponics, and food processor units. The Fallout wiki really disects a Vault for you.