I have always been so interested into the world of Fallout and its reality, I only played Fallout 3 out of the whole Fallout series. One of the things I've always was interested in, is just the history of the Fallout world and how it quit doesn't match up with our world. It has been quoted many times, that it takes place in a far future world and where it seems as the styles and clothings from the 50's or 60's came back. I any noticed in one of the loading scenes, a advertisemant for a rocking horse and its cost shows major inflation.

I had some thoughts on the reality of Fallout, that this game all takes place in our reality but in a future that does not exist yet. Though after exploring the Wastelands, I came across something quit interesting at The Museum of Technology. I found the Virgo II Lunar Lander: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/e/e3/Virgo_II_Lander_from_Museum_of_Technology.jpeg

Heres the problem, I read a panel next to it talking about its history and so on...and to quote off The Vault site:
Valiant 11 was the name of the Virgo II Moon landing mission's lunar lander. It was used in the first manned lunar landing mission, and made contact with the lunar surface on July 16, 1969. The crew of this United States Space Agency spacecraft consisted of Captain Richard Wade, Captain Mark Garris, and Captain Michael Hagen. These American astronauts became the first humans to walk on a celestial body other than Earth. On November 14, 1969, the Virgo III Lander Valiant 12 also landed on the Moon.

A replica of the lander was on display in the Museum of Technology in Washington, DC at the time of the Great War in 2077.

Thats when I realized this, 1969 sounds just like the first moon landing so I asked my dad while playing. "Dad was there ever a Virgo II?" He replied "no." Thats when I got thinking hmm, that can't be right.

Then later on I went to Wiki/The Vault site and they had this to say about it:
The Virgo II mission is the Fallout world's counterpart to the real world's Apollo 11. The date given for the Virgo II landing is the launch date for Apollo 11, four days before the latter landed on the Moon.

The craft itself greatly resembles the LK lunar lander of the real-world's ultimately unsuccessful Soviet lunar landing program.

But you see Apollo 11 was the first mission to land the first humans on the Moon. Launched on July 16, 1969.....the same date and thats when I asked myself this question, "what reality is this?" Is the Fallout world suppose to take place in a different reality from our own? Is there any more data or information to help us understand how differ the Fallout world is from our own? Like this game takes place in 2277, but if the moon landing mission is very different from our world then it makes me wounder what happen in the 1990s or earlier 2000s... What if the 50s or 60s we know in our reality, but in the fallout reality the 50s and 60s don't happen in 20th century but the 50s and 60s really happen in the farther future?

What are your thoughts on this?

- Jack Conner

That's sorta correct. The idea of the world of Fallout is that we are supposed to be in a future which people from the 50's would have imagined (a sort of naive vision of where technology would lead to). So the future doesn't exist yet, or ever, aside from in the minds of people from the 50's. There's a good heap of information at the Fallout wiki called The Vault which you should definitely go and give a few peeps to if you're really interested in the history and universe of the game, which it seems like you really are. Heck, even Chris Avellone wrote a Fallout Bible back during the days of Van Buren. Plenty'a fun stuff to read!

Wait now that makes sense, back in the 50s people always thought Nuclear was the way to the future lol. They thought it would provide flying cars, and all kinda of crazy stuff. You see they need to make a movie out of this game, it brings a very interesting story line.

Yeah I'm a history nut, ether its about Fallout or history about world war 2 I like to read about and learn about. History is my favorite subject in school.

The "Fallout" universe splits from our universe shortly after World War 2. It is also subject to unrealistic scientific facts and discoveries. Remember, it's SCIENCE! not science.

Also the Great War pretty much took places in 2077 as the end result of the previously ongoing Resource Wars

America annexed Canada too

Alternative Timeline, kiddo.

Exactly, Alternative Timeline.....So basically like when Doc and Marty went to the future and Biff took the DeLorean, and went back to 1955. Gave young Biff the book containing 50 years of sports statistics, which then Doc and Marty went back to 1985 and everything was screwed up.

kinda except we just went with tubes then microchips. And nuclear. lots of nuclear stuff. It then leads into really fears of war erupting over oil which some started predicting like in the 80s so I guess they put that with fallout and made it 2077.

Yeah, pretty much what everyone's said. Alternate timeline that (ostensibly) split from our own sometime around the 1950's. It's also important not to overthink this thing too much, however. It's not as if Fallout was designed as a logical interpretation of any specific divergence (ie, the guys who originally came up with the core details of the franchise didn't sit around coming up with a complete timeline from 1950 or so to 2077...)

The pertinent facts are that 2077 in the world of Fallout ended up looking quite a lot like the "World of Tomorrow," as imagined by pulp sci-fi visionaries. And then it got blown up. Various details have been added after the fact - either through in-game factoids or things that have been confirmed in the "Fallout Bible." But it's also not the sort of thing that you can really apply too much logical to, either.

For example, it's pretty much up in the air whether or not say, Bill Clinton, was ever president in the Fallout Universe. Just because we're dealing with divergent timelines doesn't rule any specific event in our own world from having happened (unless of course something in-game has come up which would contradict that, of course.)

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Divergence.

Yes, except there isnt one key divergence point. Technology kept to tubes, and society kept to the 50's opinions and style.

So like this is an example on that page about the Divergence:
For example, certain residents of Megaton in Fallout 3 occasionally utter the phrase, "Don't let them fool you with their hippie crap." While the term 'hippie' existed as early as 1945, it didn't enter the popular American lexicon until the 1960's in our reality[1]. Clearly, in the Fallout universe, something similar to the rise of anti-war hippie culture in our world also occurred.

Here is another way to look at it, anyone here seen the new Star Trek movie? Well in that movie the old Spock from the future goes back before any Captain James T Kirk was born, and along with him the bad guys also from the old Spock's future. In this process it basically effects the whole time line of Star Trek and what we know of the Star Trek timeline, in this process somethings are changed but still some things stay similar to the original Star Trek timeline. Like Spock is the captain of the Enterprise instead of Kirk, but yet things still stay the same later on and Spock and Kirk become buds, and also Kirk still becomes the captain of the Enterprise....just the out comes went a lot different from the original reality of Star Trek. But yet some stuff stayed the same.

Well anyway the details of Fallout's history is unclear, it is still really interesting how someone makes a game with so much crazy history involved, (whether clear or unclear) and puts it all in a game. And The Vault, that site is like a living historical data base for the whole Fallout Universe. I am going to have to sit down on a good day, when I'm willing and can read a lot that stuff. It would take me a whole year I bet to really scratch the surface of the Fallout reality.

Bethesda's strong suit isn't exactly writing or sticking to previous canon, so it's probably just an oversight.

There's no oversight to be made in reference to "hippies," however. Like has already been said, Fallout's "divergence" doesn't necessarily mean that nothing from our own reality carried over into Fallout's universe after the (hypothetical) split. If anything, it only confirms that no particular event, phrase, person, etc necessarily "has" to be a part of the Fallout world.

(ie, a building constructed in 2010 in our own world could very well still exist in Fallout's. It doesn't particularly have to, but there's also no reason that it couldn't be there in Fallout's either.)

Well I'm playing the game again, lets see if someone said hippies once.

I see SCIENCE! all over these forums but never figured out what it's from...

Care to elaborate?

I think it means this: "Remember, it's SCIENCE! not science." Its easy, it means the "Fallout" universe/world has advanced in science way beyond our world. So when he says "Remember, it's SCIENCE!" Those cap words are telling you the Fallout world has big advanced science! And when he says "not science." He means with those smaller cap, in other words not science of our world that is not any close to the advancements of the Fallout world. In fact, a lot of the stuff in the Fallout world are impossible for our world to create.

It's just supposed to be an entertaining story. Not some reality or other dimension.lt's a creative spin on the '50's era idealism and Americano optimism; placed in that "what if" situation of a communist clash and world war.

SCIENCE! is unabashed fiction. Perhaps in reality it's not possible, but in Fallout's world it's possible through the miracle of modern technology.

Consider Arthur C. Clarke's third law - "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Just pretend it works by magic, because that's essentially the logic in Fallout.

I can't say that this is Authoritive, but I first encountered the term Science! in a GURPS rulebook (GURPS is a Pen and paper roleplaying system), so I'm not sure if maybe thats where it started or if it was borrowed from somewhere else...

Basically Science! is the way "science" works in movies and TV, its like magic, and can make anything that the plot needs to happen happen. Its not based on real world scientific principiles, it just uses those as a kinda covering.

Remember, it's SCIENCE! not science.

Its almost like that line came off a movie or something, but yeah it seems like I've seen it said before.

I keep saying this to people I just got tired of typing it.

Yeah I agree, that's what it is set on. Which was mentioned a couple times on this post.

The world of Fallout is believed to have diverged from our own sometime just after the Second World War. It is from here that things change, at first subtly, then drastically. For instance, in the Fallout universe, they kept to the cultural and technological norms of the 50s, living in a stagnant reality, where Nuclear power became dominant, with small fission reactors being installed in cars, the micro chip was never invented so all electronics remained large and bulky, but they still kept up with things such as email etc. In the fallout universe, the transistor wasn't invented until about 2067, and the microchip is believed to have been invented and produced, in incredibly limited amounts, around the time the bombs fell. It's a perculiar universe, but one you've got to love.

I'v heard about that, but as far as i know its just theory at this time. But it is an awesome idea, that the world in which we play with the game Fallout 3 would actually exist somewhere. Imagine them thinking of our universe existing somewhere.