i have a few questions

1. When did the fallout world peal away from ours

2. Who launched first

3. Why where vaults made

4. and are they're some places barely even touched

1. At some point in the 1950's. It isnt a specific event or date that caused the split.

2. It remains a mystery. Its also pretty much irrelevant, thats the way MAD works.

3. To test upon sizable populations the effects, and possible ways to avoid the pitfals of, long term space travel with the intention colonising a new planet.

4. civilisation worldwide has pretty much fallen, even if the nukes didnt hit.

mind answerer one more

How are people still outside

Not everywhere was hit by nuclear fire... There are some areas far enough away, or in Wind-shadows so that deadly levels of fallout never hit. Others could have stayed inside long enough in some areas (which were hit by fallout, but not the bombing) for the fallout outside to drop to less dangerous levels (usually about 2 weeks according to some 80's UK government information pamphlets). Others built their own shelters.

ok so lemme guess this

like nothin was in nebreska that was important(i dunno if this is true) it was never nuked ....so could there still be waving fields of wheat?

First off, Dont doubt the value of wheat, in the western world its a staple food, and as Ol' Boney was fond of saying, an army marches on its stomach. Maybe the farms themselves might not have been a target, but the transport links (railroad yards/stations/junctions, Airports, sea ports, highways, etc) would be targets.

Second, are there Army Bases? Factories? Research centres? As rural as it may be, it cant be 100% farmland.

Lastly, fallout is carried by the winds... What are the wind patters in Nebraska? What direction do the winds come from? What is in those directions?

i was just sayin it was just fields nothin more and it has nice winds now and again

Doesn't mean anything. At the height of the cold war, both Russia and the 'states had enough nukes stockpiled that they didn't have to save them for "high priority" targets. Presumably China and the 'states in Fallout's setting had comparable arsenals.

Fallout Travels a long way...

If you're interested in the effects of nuclear war on a farm, you might find this interesting:
http://www.cybertrn.demon.co.uk/atomic/farming/main.htm

It also shows an example fallout trail from a H-Bomb, so you can see we're not talking about a small area of effect.

However, its also worth pointing out, the Fallout world doesnt rely on "Science", but "Science!" - Whatever seems cool at the time.

spooky

Actually, those "empty" states in the middle of the country are the best place for military installations:

Nebraska - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offutt_Air_Force_Base
Kansas - http://www.riley.army.mil/ ; http://www.strategic-air-command.com/bases/Forbes_AFB.htm ; http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/
Oklahoma - http://sill-www.army.mil/
Colorado - http://www.norad.mil/ ; http://www.usafa.af.mil/

Those are just off the top of my head. I know there used to be a lone missle silo about 5 miles from the farm I grew up on in Kansas. Plenty of high-priority targets in the middle of the country that have the added advantage of taking out the food producing areas of the country. And that doesn't even get into taking out major centers of learning to prevent your enemy from rebuilding (KU in Lawrence, K-State in Manhattan, NU in Lincoln, etc.).

FT

ahh ike tinker air force base about 50 miles away from where i live i see

seems like it would be almost impossible extremely costly and almost pointless to nuke the entirety of the US. I would imagine huge swaths of land would be habitable and might even florish... im not sure how all that stuff works though. How much of the population and infrastructure would need to be destroyed to cause almost permanent lost contact between cities, states, regions of the country and rest of the world. And also to put humanity (or the US) into an almost vegatative self destructive no progress state. (which one might argue we are actually in now) \

It would be interesting if just the US and the majority of Asia were considered Nuclear wastelands uninhabitable and not even worth contact. And the rest of the world somewhat quickly moved on, new centers of commerce trade and power were established and the older super powers were somewhat quickly forgotten as no one went near the wastelands and everyone wanted to forget.

Nope, most of the planet was destroyed, and nearly all humanity was extinguished.

As per Ausir for Fallout Lore.

In terms of the real world, I can offer an anecdote from the Potential Ecological Effects of Nuclear War class I took at KU (yes, it was a real class - 500 level as I recall). You would be suprised how hard it is to find meaningful targets for all the nukes at our disposal. We were given an assignment to cause the maximum amount of human casualties based on the known USSR arsenal circa 1989, known bomb characteristics, and a list of the 100 largest US cities. You ran out of good, dense population centers WAY before you ran out of nukes. Trust me, we have plenty to destroy the planet many times over.

FT

Just on that, I remember a documentary on one of those 60 minutes style shows about a decade or so or something (probably longer), it was looking at one of those closed russian towns - the type that the soviet union didnt admit existed back in its day, and you still need authorisation to visit today. The town's major economic (I suppose is the word...) centre was this nuclear fuel enrichment facility, it was the reason this town existed... The output of this nuclear fuel factory was crazy (even with it dialed down) enough to build a crazy number of nukes... It couldnt just be shut down as it would mean the people of this town would have no hot water / heating, etc as that was all supplied by the factory.

I doubt it was the only one they had.