Computers, elevators, electronic doors, robots and even lights still work in otherwise abandoned and torn apart buildings after the apocalypse 200 years ago, that also destroyed the power grid. Is there a lore friendly explanation for this? Other than places that have their own power plants, like vaults and the institute.

Uh, fusion? Honestly I don't know. It also doesn't fit the lore that every vehicle laying around is nuclear powered either. Nuclear cars were only invented right before the war and were incredibly expensive. Yet they're everywhere.

It's a game... just let it slide.

There is a whole lot of things that is wrong with Fallout 4 if you tried to apply common sense / "real world" thinking. Such as:

1. Why are there lit candles providing light in places that have clearly been abandoned?

2. Why are there fresh veggies still in SuperDuper Mart?

3. Do "Junk Fairies" exist, 'cuz I could have sworn I emptied out various containers...

4. Would you really want to eat a can of Cram that is 200 years old? Do you think a can of Spam produced today would be edible in 2215?

5. Did raiders develop transporters 'cuz they spawn in the middle of many settlements?

Whenever you have a question like this, the answer is always the same: "It's Magic".

Nuff said.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the fact that wooden walls only need 8 wood and 5 steel if I remember correctly....

That means all you really need are 8 pencils (1 wood each) and 2.5 tin cans (2 steel each) to create a wall that is probably 10' x 10'.

Just accept it and move on....

fusion batteries

Did you find the memo at the Atomatoys factory? The little horse toy sold for $16,000 - so apparently inflation went thru the roof. Im guessing the average yearly salary was about $2.5M

1. a whole lot could be explained by random drifters/gangs

2. ummm xD

3. see #1

4. sadly yes i do think it'd be edible and probably as about as nutritious as the day it was packaged xD

5. only time i saw something like this was with ghouls when i was called to Sanctuary to defend it, they all spawned in the middle of the street in the middle of the settlement (right in front of me while i was standing there xD)

I'm gonna go with, yaaay, elevator! I can loot more upstairs!

Because interesting gameplay.

edit: Ah, "lore friendly". Never mind

Nu-cue-ler power!

Probably as edible as it is today...

Fusion cells.

In 2066 America started moving to fusion technology. The first crude fusion cell was developed, and by 2077 micro fusion cell technology had matured and now powered weapons, power armor, and practically everything else.

Oddly enough had the great war not started fusion cells could have fixed the resource shortage across the world.

I think I have another take on most of these:

1. Candles- recently occupied, most likely by roaming gangs of Raiders. (This thinking can actually be applied to several points here).

2. Again, Raiders and/or scavengers or those settlers that keep coming to my settlements.
I guess they stored some veggies for later and then died or finished mutating into ghouls.

3. And again, raiders or such... Wut? You think you are the only hoarder running around the wasteland?

4. Yeah, have to hand you that one.... Blech. But maybe our fun loving and oh, so clever ancestors from the 2060's had developed better food preservation methods? You know, what with having unlimited energy and all...

5. Nah, just new gangs move in on the territory. They were using stealth, you just didn't see them.
Just my thinking 馃槈

When I first started playing, I could not understand why there was a need for gas stations like Red Rocket. I was boggled. Cars are fusion powered, right?
Then I actually paid attention to the pricing sign outside the station - they sold coolant.

I was also a bit confused as to how they managed to use up all the other resources seeing that they had this wonderful unlimited fusion power. War came due to fighting over the resources.
What would you need crude oil for? Water? All of it?
Look around, see all that plastic? Yeah, that comes from oil.
Water? Well now, gotta cool all those reactors. Makes dirty water.

See, now, we can rationalize away all these fears and discomforts, lol.

Edit: to the OP's point. There are still generators running in basemants, what I can't understand is how come they don't [censored] down when I pop the fusion cores?
If you'll look, sometimes you'll see wires running from some of the terminals and things as if they've been rigged up by the occupants.

Only America developed fusion tech to such a degree.

Most countries relied on fossil fuels and it wasn't until 2066 that America had even a working fusion cell prototype.

The micro fusion cells werent mass marketed and in heavy usage until 2077 with a majority going to the Military to power practically everything they used....and the world never made it past that before the bombs fell.

Had America had time to fully integrate fusion tech and them sell it across the world the resource crisis would have been over.

Those candles are the worst. Enter an area that has been abandoned for 2 centuries, and there are lit candles and oil lamps burning next to the skeletons of the original occupants.

Plenty of things from antiquity that still work today. If something is built to last a long time it will

I have two little headcanons that cover this:
1) A lot of buildings are huge and covered in rubbish. We can't perfectly clear them out the first time go, and there is a lot of non-interactable trash left behind. Respawned loot is simply stuff we couldn't carry/didn't notice the first time around.

2) A single building can double for several buildings of its type. Is the city of Boston really a couple of blocks big, with only a handful of actual buildings you can go inside? Nah, let's just... let's just pretend that some of the buildings just look awful similar to ones you've cleared previously.

I like when companions comment that we must be the first people to step foot in somewhere in ages... as raiders carry loud conversations or hunt for us no more than ten feet away.

I looked it up on Wikipedia and apparently it's possible to build a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, that can power devices for centuries (the fuel Americium-241 apparently has a half-life over 400 years). An RTG has no moving parts and juts converts the energy release by radioactive decay into useful electricity. So it'd juts be waiting there for you to use it and would continue producing power until the nuclear material decays away and it cools down too much to keep doing so (though at 2 centuries the drop in power would be noticeable).

So, it's plausible in a nuclear powered 1950's future that even every house has their own RTG and you literally just need to plug into it for trivial things like a lightbulb and the CLI driven terminals.

Though I think the canonical answer is that fusion cells and cores (which are fictional technology) work like a combination of an RTG and a fuel cell. Basilcy they have no moving parts (like an RTG) but only deplete their fuel when actively producing power (like a fuel cell). So they can last even longer on the shelf even though they don't necessarily last all that long under load.

2 megaton logic bomb went off,