Don't forget the airplane carried bombs.

A fast moving Tupolev with the 60 MT Tsar Bomba Hydrogen Bomb, really, but then REALLY screws up your day...

Although it is unlikely a lot of planes would have made it to the US, it is a plausible course of action.

The US military would rather use a B2 bomber for a strategic nuke, than a ICBM, the B2 (satellite guided warhead or not) would have a greater accuracy, then again, specs of the nukes and airplanes in fallout is as big as my will to kill myself. Non Existent.

To my knowledge, the Tsar was never placed into productions.

The "Tsar Bomba" was never actually put into production(ablight being an extremely impressive atomic weapon). The USAF would probably have used the B-36 and B-52 and possibly even the XB-70 Valkyrie(if it was put into production in the Fallout Universe). The "Stealth Bomber" would probably have never existed in the FO Universe, but the USAF might have used the Northrop YB-49(Flying Wing).

There are lots of illogical things regarding the nukes of Fallout 3.

Just look at "Minefield". Several wooden houses, all still standing but a totally demolished beton building stands right next to them.

Unless the building was, for some strange reason , blown up at some point after the war this makes no sense at all.

Also take a look at the White House which is propably supposed to be "ground zero". Nearly all buildings right next to it are still standing and show very little damage while others that are much farer away are totally destroyed.

Although i understand that for gameplay and fun reasons you cannot make the Capital Wasteland a giant flattened glass field for sake of realism, these two things are peticular rediculous and awkward pieces of level design. They just scream "This makes no sense" to you.

Maybe this is the result of the devs scaling the DC area down in size. In the latest interview with Todd Howard he confirmed that the DC Area was twice as big in a earlier version of Fallout 3 but was brought down to its current size as "players got lost too easily" and this was not really fun from a gameplay perspective.

So they propably erased entire sections of the map and just stitched the key zones together in the end.

Or what about Adams Air Force Base ? A high profile military target still stands almost unscratched while Fort Bannister was leveled ? Air Force bases would be among the TOP TEN most important targets for nuclear attack. Every single one of them would recieve adequate attention.

But it seems that only the ready-airfield next to the runways which were not part of the map have been bombed. Almost needlessly btw. As not a single plane or wreckage of them can be found throughout the base. It seems all birds got into the air in time.

Of course, it is absolutely plausible that not every target would be hit in a nuclear war.

Bombers would get shot down before reaching their targets, missles would get intercepted , submarines would get sunk before being able to fire their missiles, missile bases would get nuked before being able to launch a single missile of their own.

But that again is the point that screams for a continuation of the Fallout bible.

I'm not sure about the rest of DC, but the White house was hit with a suitcase bomb so that's why other buildings are still standing around it. And DC probably would have been hit with a dirty bomb detonated above street level to kill the population but protect the buildings and infrastucture and the collapsing buildings could be due to 200 years of decay.

The hole in the ground at the "glow" crater may just be the part that was penetrated by the detonation.

The map indicates that the overall area is part of a much bigger crater that was propably caused by several nuke hits in that area.

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/6/6d/Fo1_Glow_Location_Card.png

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/thumb/c/c5/Fo1_WestTek_Surface.png/800px-Fo1_WestTek_Surface.png


The girl in that library north of Adytum in the Boneyard tells the player that something so important was down there in the south (West-Tek Research Facility) that the area was hit by dozens of nukes to ensure it was completely taken out. Which suceeded as we know.

There are also the two extremely large craters on the F2 map which are not part of any game location.


You can see them here : http://wikicheats.gametrailers.com/images/thumb/f/fa/Fallout2_worldmap.jpg/975px-Fallout2_worldmap.jpg

If they make the maps of following Fallout games even bigger than that of F3. They should really take the time of putting one of these in to show why modern civilisation did not survive 2077.

I would say that the Chinese would have used a combination of tactical nukes and neutron bombs. If you take Vault 87 as an example, the radiation just outside the front door is incredibly high, yet the fragile wooden door is still standing. It is conceivable that the Chinese wanted to kill off the population of the capital and the surrounding areas, but not destroy everything. There would be much in the way of valuable information and resources in D.C. that would otherwise be lost is if were flattened. We also do not know the prevailing military doctrines concerning nuclear weapons in the Fallout Universe. It could have been that military minds decided that it was better to use a bunch of smaller bombs to target specific targets rather than just flattening cities. Why waste the resources on a 100MT bomb when a dozen or so 100kT bombs would do. It might be worth looking into what Science! and the "World of Tomorrow" said about nuclear war to figure this problem out.