I realize that information is non existant, but is it plausible a wastes traveler could stumble upon this road? I realise travel by land in the mid west would be problematic at best, but all the more reason for keeping a well defined road. I know the east and west are isolated, but perhaps only stretches are known to each local settlement? I'm curious, because I'm writing short story, and I want it to mesh with the current, Fallout codex. No, its not inspired by Mad Max.

Thank you

A road is pretty resiliant, and it occupies a lot of area. Sure, it will be damaged, but I immagine that there will be a lot of roads that exist as streches of damaged macadam/ferroconcrete/tarmac running in a line from one ruin/crater/whathaveyou to another.

Very true, robovski. Just to be clear, I wasn't asking if huge stretches of the road took direct hits in the war(because that would be rediculuos), just if large segments were ever "forgotten". Hypothetically speaking, grandpa may have told you a story about some idiot who actually followed the road beyond the horizon and never came back.

Thanks for amusing a noob :thumbsup:

Assuming the road still exist, it makes a decent path way to get to one side of the State to another for travelers, traders, wanderers, or etc. Its more organized and more visible then a dirt road or having no road at all.

In all likelyhood, the road still exists out in the desert. The major cause of road damage is rain and grass; rain will get into microscopic cracks, freeze, causing the cracks to expand, and repeat the process over several years. Grass (or any plant) can then grow into a large enough crack, causing the crack to expand and... well...

At any rate, a desert has neither of these in any appreciable amounts. Therefore, barring the occasinal vandal or earthquake, the road should be relatively pristine. That doesn't mean it wasn't buried by sand over the years...

Roads are the best locations to be ambushed. Travel at your own risk!

All good points. Would emp's from the nukes, carried along the telephone wires, have caused many of the vehicles on the road to stop? One more question, for the moment, would Enclave be interested in keeping the road relatively secret, as a means to better control each coast? The antagonist of my story is actually a female anologue of The Master (pheromonal attraction ensnares the mutant), not Enclave, but they should factor in somewhere. :shrug:

Imagine, crawling across the desert road for days, but finally you've come to an abandoned gas station. Once you stand, chaffed knees buckling, reaching for a crutch, you tilt your neck to http://www.legendsofamerica.com/photos-texas/Road%20Does%20Not%20End-500.jpg peeling from the collapsed sign you're leaning to.

I don't think it would be particularly usable by vehicles (well, vehicles that wouldn't do just fine off road anyway).... But I'd imagine its still followable.

you have to rember that in desert locations, theres no root systems to hold sand and soil in place..... while it wouldnt bury the entire road, there would most likely be places that would be covered in a layer of sand or possibly even dunes.

Yeah, a flash flood would cause erosion that can wipe away stretches of the road. It's not that it doesn't rain in the desert, it's that it doesn't rain much (but often when it does in a burst). Give it 200 years and you have a lot of damage.

Well, in my story, alot of it is lost for many of the above reasons. I didn't think about flash-floods. That's a good point, considering the weather across the midwest is incredibly violent (supposedly lots of funnel clouds in the big variety), and route 66 cuts through tornado alley.

An interesting idea. I'd imagine most of the road would be deteriorated and nearly gone, but the path of the road would most likely still be there along with the remains of the towns that were set along it.
It is intriguing what would become of the interstate system in a nuclear apocalypse. I'd imagine in Fallout's universe there'd be mass migration to the west coast with the promises of a better world, since places like NCR are rebuilding. With mass migration, there is all sorts of possibilities for what could happen to the routes; Smalll trading towns and rest stops for travelers; Raiding parties to kill and loot the travelers; Mercs that could be hired to protect the travelers; and I'm sure skirmishes would breakout between factions that would want to control the route.
This could have potential for some great stories. I hope it works out for you.
A quick idea came to mind; After receiving a message from his family, whose recently emerged from a vault. A man from NCR sets out East towards, lets say Normal, IL to reunite with them. Fighting off raiders, rad-creatures, starvation, radiation, and highway madness, all in the hope to see his family once again.
You've got me thinking again, :swear: .

What's important with a settlement first and formost is water. All human habitation requires a ready fresh water supply, be it an oasis, a spring, a river or a lake. You can have technical solutions to make say salt water useable (desalination, for example) but such tech would be a left-over from befoe the war for what you describe. The Midwest has a large natural water supply, with the Mississppi river system draining throughout so the likes of Illinois would be relaint on available fresh water. I think Normal is in central Illinois, the major near river wouldl (I think) be the Illinois, there are likely smaler tributaries feeding through the area.

The second consideration in human settlement is ready food. As an agrian society, this means farmland, for a more nomadic approach, hunting. Central Illinois was excellent farmland, but how it was treated by a hundred years of Science! food production and land management is hard to say; also there are the effects of global nuclear war to consider (albeit 200 years past, but likely targets St. Louis, Kansas City and the the silo fields are just over the Mississppi in Missouri/Kansas). This is a contintious point in cannon, so I'll leave that there.

The third consideration is shelter/defense. The ruins of Normal might be useful this way (along with providing other resources). It also leads me to suggest Cave-In-Rock on the Ohio river (a former 18th/19th century river pirate base).