I've always raised my eyebrows at the logical contradictions that we see in Fallout, with regards to nuclear holocaust followed by recovery. We're talking about a bustling, golden age scientific breakthroughs that just ended a little badly, with nukes flying all over the place. Now, with the number of nukes dropped, I'm surprised that life still exists on this planet. But since it does exist and the wasteland is perfectly survivable, as portrayed in every single Fallout game to date.

So, let's take a tally on these recovering agitators, shall we?

• In Fallout 2, Arroyo got it's GECK set up, and Vault City was already a successful GECK settlement before those events.
• The BoS had a major successful campaign in Fallout Tactics.
• Project Purity was, assuming it's the canon ending, a critical success (even though it took time and probably another decade of continued research).
• New Vegas seemed to me like a GECK settlement as well (though I didn't pay attention to the lore of Vault 21, plus bombs didn't even drop in the Mojave Wasteland afaik).
• Near Jacobstown, we saw a lively forest, probably kept alive due to Vault 22 influence and, again, because nukes didn't drop closeby. The forest is also in an enclosed area.
• We know, from RL research, that nature is extremely capable of recovering quickly from death and decay. Surtsey island south of Iceland is one example of this.

Now, I've heard some of you comment on the Forest in Fallout New Vegas and that it was out of place. I can agree to some extent, but we gotta have in mind that the world is ever-changing and recovering from the nukes, and besides healthy vegetation has always existed in Fallout and so we can expect it to expand in time. A full recovery of America won't likely happen for another 500 years with a ton of GECKs being used up in the process, but from the first day a Vault Dweller set foot outside a Vault, unaffected by the radiation, the world started recovering. Shady Sands is now a major city and I imagine that the Capitol Wasteland will soon thrive under the rule of a more benevolent chapter of the BoS and with massive amounts of pure water, making it a bustling metropolis of science and commerce across the wasteland.

Now, to the discussion:

How much recovery is too much recovery? How messed up would you guys prefer to see the Fallout universe? Do we want the world to recover, and to what degree. Do any of you want to see even worse conditions in certain areas? What have Bethesda not yet tapped into of plot and story? We don't want them to set the world on fire, but we just want them to start a flame in our hearts. So what would that flame look like to you?

Ready, set, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l30HEde-QM4!

Well to nitpick.. Arroyo didn't get a GECK. Arroyo was destroyed. New Arroyo was founded by people from Arroyo and Vault 13 who survived the Enclave...

How much is to much recovery? I like to think the Fallout Universe will rebuild in the same way the world rebuilt in the book A Canticle for Leibowitz. There will be many new nations forming with different levels of progress with different ideas of what defines "progress." In the book things didn't develope to a post war state for thousands of years.

Fallout is alot like that. Many new nations with many different ideas of how to progress which leads to war. Hence "War never changes." Even powerful groups in the Fallout Universe such as the NCR are really just unified city states. Islands of civilization in a Ocean of wasteland.

To much recovery would be the point were the world (at least North America) has developed into a new state equal to or greater than what Pre-War America was at. If that is even possible, but that would take thousands of years. But then that opens the door to other nations around the world that developed to that point and nuclear war starting again.

If we're talking literal recovery in nature, I do think its time for us to see that the world is progressing towards a semi-similar state before the nukes fell. What I would like to see is wild, harsh looking growth that has started to take over many of the old world buildings and such. Only vegetation that can survive in harsh environments should be "bountiful". Don't get me wrong, I don't want to spend the next fallout traipsing through what appears to be a perfectly healthy forest, but I think Bethesda could do a little better than rocks as far as the eye can see.

We "should" see more recovery of plant life but its simple to explain why we dont and thats because game logic and real life logic are not compatible all the time.

Did you not pay attention? The Las Vegas region of the Mojave survived because House had his anti-missile defense grid do it. He managed to destroy 68 of the 77 warheads, the other 9 got through and can be seen in various corners of the Mojave.

Depends on the Fallout. All the Fallouts but for Fallout 3 (not counting Oasis and Point Lookout) have alot of plant life and show people farming and so on.

Yes Mr. House saved the Mojave area from most of the Nukes and some locations in Fallout 2 were created using a GECK (Vault City) but there was/is alot of other plant life out there that survived and is now thriving in the wasteland. Just look at Modoc if we help the Slags and Modoc work together, or just look at the Ghost farm. We see trees and cacti in much of the wasteland and in many settlements if not all have some area set aside for farming.

There is alot of plants that survived that we humans eat.

So it isn't that game logic and real life logic aren't always compatible or not. That is a part of it for sure, part of the reason we don't see iguanas and squirrels running around. But the decision to show or not to show a world with wild plant life and an ecosystem in which humans and other animals can logically survive and thrive, is purely a developer decision.

Yeah true but maybe they just don't want their world to be pictured in that way, they want Fallout to fell desolate and baron. Adding fauna would decrease that sense of feeling lonely and hopeless. But then again Skyrim did have some smaller animals running about and such so maybe we will see that in the next Fallout?

Holodispensers and Commisaries gave Homo-Nucleus the means to survive and thrive in the Centuries following the Great War. Scholars often forget Thier Roots and ignore the distrust of Science and Technology many of the Groups that emerged from Vaults and Bomb Shelters had in the wake of the Great War.

The ability to cleanse the Earth provided by Fusion should have been obvious to Our Ancestors, but the first uses of the Cloud were not done in a controlled Lab, but as an experiment upon the Populace by the Government. Sinclair Devices are commonplace to Us, but the Unfortunate People that first encountered unregulated Cloud spent Centuries as Mindless Beasts.

To add to your list the original shady sands settlement before it became the NCR was a small farming community with crops.


Technically Big MT was a independent research facility much like West-Tek, they just had contracts with the US government. The whole business with Sinclair was a independent contract completely different from US contracts, the suits were from Big MT sure but they didn't build the Sierra Madre they just made the holograms, hazmat suits, vending machines and a few other productions. The Cloud was the result of shoddy construction.

Edit: whoops nope, checked it out and you're right, the cloud was an experiment.

I personally feel that America has to always be rebuilding in the Fallout universe and still have scars left over from the great war or we have moved on to a new chapter in time and everything we know before it isn't relevant or has mutated into something else, there has to be a sense of something worth fighting for and conflicts on a large scale if America get's back to the state where the only "action" is two neighbors having a heated depute about how the neighbor's fence is taking up 3 inches of there garden it's over.

Fallout has to be chasing a stable rebuilt society but never being able to get there it's like a greyhound chasing the mechanical rabbit people are paying to see the chase not the greyhound chew a stuffed rabbit afterwords.

I don't think rebuilding how America was before the war is necessary, there are other stable forms of government that could be picked and honestly I'd rather not see a complete replica of the USA coming out on top.

I meant being rebuilt in any form i said that at the start of my post for me personally there will always have to be some turmoil but that surely can't go on forever.

I would actually prefer that America fractures into several powers, it certainly is a big enough country to do so and if the powers work well enough it's possible for a peace-like atmosphere.

Can Fallout operate as a series in a peace-like state though?

Among powers? Sure, inside the powers themselves? Nah I can imagine some stuff like bandit factions still existing and rebels.