So, here we are, 200 years after the bombs drop. Survivors, such as they are, have access to basically an infinite supply of building materials, lumber and hand tools. And yet all they can build are tumbledown shacks that half the time don't even have complete walls.

200 years is at least six generations. All those people, all those children, and not one of them decides to take up the lost art of framing, insulation and plaster? In Diamond City they even have a citizen (two really) dedicated full time to producing a newspaper, but they can't sweep the trash out of their living room.

I just think, that if I were in their shoes I might take a little pride in my home. Clean up the trash, insulate the walls and hang brahmin hides over the windows to, I dunno, keep out the frigid Boston winters maybe. They even have an apparently unlimited supply of electricity (I don't ask how they're refining petrol), but it seems not a single vacuum or leaf blower has survived the end of the world.

Sorry. This just bothers me every time I build a shack in one of my settlements.

With all the raiders, wild animals, feral ghouls and even freaking super mutants roaming around, just surviving day to day is a chore out there, ya think they have time to fiddle around with anything more complicated then said shacks?

And in NV we learn that, outside of New Canaan, and Tuscon, the states of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, were nothing but tribal groups, with no farms, no trade routes, no mines, no roads, no calendars, no idea how to maintain basic weaponry, and were so plagued with raiders it was impossible to trade two miles down the road.

By those standards, Boston is beyond advanced.

They aren't....

Everything in Fallout is nuclear powered and can last hundreds of years.

Yes, absolutely. Like I said, there's two people running a newspaper, various shopkeepers, a mayor with a receptionist of all things, etc. There appears to be a glut of labor.

And also, six generations. You'd think some of them would want their kids to be able to sleep in a house with actual walls.

Makes sense, but then why does the generator at my settlement sound like a gasoline engine?

Because diamond city is a rare exception, outside of the city, yeah Im sure they want to, but they cant, to busy making sure they dont die.

They are living in a provisional scavenging society, especially outside the cities. I agree with you that in cities, with relatively stable populations and new cultures developing, the nature of the dynamics of urbanism would make finer craftsmanship, as well as other cultural pursuits like art, music, theater, develop pretty quickly.

Out in the hinterlands, though, I don't have trouble believing things are the way depicted. Why would they take the time and effort and resources to develop manual building techniques and material refinements when there's plenty of scrap everywhere that you can easily handle with basic fabrication and jobber techniques? Especially with the instability, raids, wild animals and creatures, they probably don't end up sticking around too too long in one place.

In the cities where they have the luxury of being static, as well as the means to amass materials and craftsmen, I would expect more of what you describe.

Why not? Its a game, things are designed to be identifiable by both visuals and audio. More people assosicate that kind of noise with a generator then the silent thing we would get with a nuclear powered one.

It's a little unbelievable but I'm a Medieval historian.

Rome during the Borgias looked like a Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland. People living in the ruins of the Roman houses because they couldn't afford, didn't know how to, or otherwise repair the structures around them.

But I also tend to think humanity has been under siege by monsters for 200 years anyway.

So it's like the Dark Ages only much much worse.

The Great War never really ended.

You know very little about the world, travel to any third world country and see how slums look there. Ever been to Africa? Or maybe do some research how countries under constant oppression and war between multiple factions looked like. You never had a chance to live through war, be happy about it:) Only with that, the progress is completely stopped, nothing bigger than metal shacks is built, because it is better to have movable, easy to rebuild home. It's happening already all over the world, just look at the pictures, google it. People live in piles of trash right now, and you wonder how would it be if they added mutated wild animals, zombies and huge mutants, radiated food and water, and slavery all at once? If anything, it is unrealistic, because 200 years in it would probably be a desert like in Fallout 1

I find that fairly plausible. Definitely though in the cities I would expect people to be building cinder block castles .

For consistency? Hey, here's a fusion powered microgenerator, but we're gonna add baseball cards to the spokes so it sounds like a real motorcycle! lol

This.

Do you know how to make insulation, drywall, etc.? What makes you think survivors would have the knowledge and means to produce such things? It seems like they don't even make their own lumber but use scrap wood to build, which is why everything is not flush and form fitting.

If you've played New Vegas and visited their casinos, you'll see that there's definitely the possibility of approaching pre-war standards of quality, even if there'll be dark spots in places. However, it is established that security being what it is and given that the infrastructure has broken down, stylistic consistency has been tossed aside. People prefer to do things quick and dirty, in order to get back to the order of the day. It's lazy, but effective. You as the player might want to have perfectly neat fences, but who in your community wants to make those? Are you building a town all by yourself? No, you probably have people under you to make the things you need and they don't have the same standards you do.

I am mostly bothered by the fact that some walls and buildings are haphazardly thrown together, even when that compromises their security (such as corrugated sheets of metal intermeshed with planks of wood).

Have you ever stepped inside a badly maintained building? I have. It looks exactly what Fallout makes places look like. It's not neccesarily filled with debris, but if there's water damage, it is clearly visible through a hanging roof and black streaks across the wall. If there's a window open for birds to sit in, there'll be a heap of birdpoop on the floor that nobody cleans up. If there's a kitchen that hasn't been maintained in years, there'll be this really nasty layer of almost fatty tissue on top of it. There's pockmarks on the floor. It's all perfectly livable, but it doesn't neccesarily look the nicest.

That is what Fallout is like, except much worse. If you get an intact building like I used, you'd be the richest popo in the New Vegas strip. Who are you going to hire to maintain the building that perfectly? Nobody, since nobody studies pre-war architecture that way anymore. When things break, people have to make do. It's more pragmatic not to worry about the look of things beyond what's utilitarian.

I don't disagree, I dislike the aesthetic at times when it tries too hard to look post-apocalyptic, but it makes sense overall.

A. 210 years..

B. Houses in fallout 4's timeline were built differently, probably due to more advancement, say for instance; santuary houses are built up of 2 layers of metal square sheets

C. The apocolypse - nuclear devastation - destroyed ALOT of pre-existing structures and 210 years of degrading leaves things like fiberglass a rare resource

D. Before the war, EVERY natural resource was in short demand - america annexed alaska for its old and china retaliated causing massive scale war

E. Living in the wasteland is dreadful, if it was reality. Sure it looks cool. But constanly having the threat of any sort of mutant or person could just walk up to you, shoot you and take everything youve got

With everything like that, why would you even care about a mess? You're scavanging 210 year old items that've endured mass nuclear attack

Yes? Insulation is very simple - air. Basically ANYTHING is better than a couple planks with large gaps between them. Use some creativity! It doesn't matter if the lumber is scrap, there's probably as many wood saws out there as there are ball peen hammers but they just weren't added as an item in the game.

Do I know how to make drywall without googling it? No, but I know how to plaster a wall, and if the number of bags of concrete mix lying around in this game are any indication, I suspect you could probably find some plaster. Or just use concrete and make some stucco. There's also oodles of cinder blocks scattered everywhere.

I just find it believeable that a people who can use their ingenuity to make guns out of pipes and screws that work better than a 200 year old 10mm pistol could probably turn their minds now and again to figuring out the basics of construction to create the foundation of the happiness pyramid - food, water and SHELTER. Especially with the abundance of materials and tools.

Thanks. I was rounding, but we sure don't want to confuse people.

Germany and Japan rebuilt really brilliantly after the wars, so not really comparable

We can suspect excess radiation and extremely low population density in the initial stages. Even low population density can rapidly rebound if not for the abject radioactive state of the world

Possibly some kind of massive dysgenics as well. There was a massive die off

You had enough food and atleast basic education that allowed your brain to develop normally. Hypothetical people of wasteland are born into famine, and ridiculously hostile environment. If you want to compare it to anything real, it would be like favelas in Brasil, parts of India or slums in Africa. That is the closest thing there is. People there already live the way Fallout 4 depicts, while having only a tiny fraction of problems, wasteland settlers would have.

I mean really, millions of people in India take a dump outside their house on the streets, and throw trash outside windows, and you are telling me a wastelander that never saw a book in his life running around hungry, trying to dodge raiders, mutants, agressive wild animals, radiation storms, would freaking mop the floors or build insulation. Come on... real world examples show that is not like that.

Yea after... the wasteland is at war for 200 years and still going, that is the point. It is comparable to how Europe looked like during war, not after. And it looked similar.

Yeah 200 years, but how many of them outside of a Vault?

BIGGEST POINT, is a game and to make a setting about it they going this direction. u cant hope to make it feel real bc 200 year have pass

And didn't have nearly as many problems as the Fallout universe does.

Forget about the valid points of impoverished people living similar to this, have you seen http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/detroit-abandoned-buildings-joe-gee.jpg? That looks like a scene straight from the game and it's in present day America...why would think other cities like Boston wouldn't turn to crap after a nuclear fallout?

I wouldn't expect a wasteland vagabond to study architecture and hospitality, no. The ones that live in the cities I would expect to at least clean the straight up debris out of their living spaces, yes. Are you gonna spend decades living in a home and have to step over broken masonry and boxes of Abraxo to deliver dinner to the table? I absolutely cannot believe anyone here could keep a straight face and say yes.

And are these wastelanders really as helpless as bawling babes? They can design a cornucopia of interchangeable gun parts out of PIPES, but they can't have a single specialist in a city (that even has a mayor) that can figure out how to cut scrap lumber into pieces that fit flush? That doesn't take a degree from Harvard, although maybe they could find one in the wreckage .

BTW India has poor people living in desolation but they also have people who DON'T.