iif you want to spin your wheels over an admitted mis-nomer, be my guest.



ummm the vaults as "experiments" were designed to fail one specific thing due to design of said "experiment".. not the vaults themselves physically failing. semantics like that will get you no where. See, the whole point of a control wault would be to not have it fail in any way shape or form, otherwise any and all "experimentation" is null and void. So.. either the control vauts (and hypothetically the rest of the vaults if they didnt have encalve "experiment" fail added to them) do their work-protecting inhabitants from the outside apocalypse, or your precious enclave "experiments" have yet another layer of fail added to them.... either way you look at it, your arguments suffer.

wow, i didnt know explorable area equalled total area...

yes we could ask president richardson.. or we could realize that the oil rig is in the middle of the ocean where saltwater would definately corrode any metal on the extirior over the 200+ years that it neesds to be there for the enclave to complete the monitoring of "experiments".. which is probably one of the reasons the original enclave plan was to return to the CONUS eventually-as bad as the rig is, its not quite so permanant.

Now I get it. Yes, they can provide good level of protection for a small number of people. 1000 people per 640 billion "Pre War US dollars".

A control vault failing though unintentional means does not make the other experiments null and void. That's like saying that if someone dies in a control study for medicine that the entire study has to be thrown out - it doesnt. It means that that particular vault failed, and that there are still lessons that the enclave can learn... What circumstances lead to its failure? Can those circumstances be replicated? Avoided?


It does mean though we've seen more of it that the vaults.

Its not as if it was unmaintained. The Enclave had a heck of a lot of technology behind them... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathodic_protection is what we have today, The enclave has on many respects a lot better technology that we do- I'm sure was no issue, its not as if deep sea mining facilities and undersea pipleines are hardly new to us, Fallout's world had many opportunities to improve on this technology.

Now I get it. Yes, they can provide good level of protection for a small number of people. 1000 people per 640 billion "Pre War US dollars".

A control vault failing though unintentional means does not make the other experiments null and void. That's like saying that if someone dies in a control study for medicine that the entire study has to be thrown out - it doesnt. It means that that particular vault failed, and that there are still lessons that the enclave can learn... What circumstances lead to its failure? Can those circumstances be replicated? Avoided?

It does mean though we've seen more of it that the vaults.

Its not as if it was unmaintained. The Enclave had a heck of a lot of technology behind them... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathodic_protection is what we have today, The enclave has on many respects a lot better technology that we do- I'm sure was no issue, its not as if deep sea mining facilities and undersea pipleines are hardly new to us, Fallout's world had many opportunities to improve on this technology.

perhaps youre not too familiar with how a control works.. it is the reference in an experiment.. how do you know if any of the experiment vaults came to their conclusion as a result of the variables placed upon them? you reference them to a control vault, otherwise theres no point in even having a control vault.. one thing you could learn though, the enclave dont know how to run an experiment.

im snot (heh, im leaving that typo) sure what that has to do with anytying.... 122 vaults have more square footage than the oil rig.

right, it can reduce, not stop corrosion.. but realistically this would be utilized in something that is going to be decomissioned after about 40 years..
could they? sure.. could they even go through he trouble of undersea welding every time the need to replace something arises? i am sure they could..
thats not the point.. the point is that the vaults were already there, sealed up in the ground, designed specifically to withstand nuclear war.. and they could have just as easily... nay, more easily populated the vaults as opposed to a rig.

Ah, so now we see your arguments making no sense. You're happy with the idea of spending 14 trillion real world dollars on 0.03% of the population, but the idea of an underwater shelter is too far? Let me guess, Apples and Oranges?

Thier experiments on social programs. Thats why it's like that. Also Inflation was high because in fallout 2 I think thiers a comercil for a car that costs 2 million. And the population was at 400,000,000 at that time.

I was going to post this in another thread discussing the logic, or lack thereof of the Current Canon Explanation of the vault Behavioral project, but these figures seemed interesting enough to warrant their own thread. Basically using canon sources where possible, and real world figures a google search away this is a breakdown of the scale of Project Safehouse, and highlights in my mind at least, why the vaults can never, from a in-game historical perspective have been intended to save the American people.

Please let me know if you spot a mistake in the caluclations, or know of a better canon figure to use.

There are 122 vaults, with an "normal" designed capactiy of 1000 inhabitants. Thats 122,000 people saved at maximum capacity.

Wikipedia gives 308 Million people living in the USA today. Lets be ultra-conservative and assume that the US population at the great war is the same as it is in the real world today (that for some reason or another the US's population in Fallout's world before the bomb grew a lot slower than in the real world). On that figure, 0.03% of the population can fit in them ( *Much* Better chances getting a spot in a lifeboat on the Titanic).

Vault 13 we know how much cost to build: $645,000,000,000 (645 Thousand Million, or 645 Short (American) Billion). Assuming that this figure is similar across all vaults, thats $78,690,000,000,000 total cost of building the vaults. The total costs is almost Seventy Nine Thousand Billion Dollars. Each Inhabitant's survival costs 645 Million Dollars!

Fair enough, these figures do not include inflation. There is only one thing I can think of that has a Pre-war price established in canon, that has a comparable product available today - The Family Car. We know a Chryslus Corvega had a list price of $199,999.

Granted, this comparison isn't ideal - In a war economy, the materials to build the car are likely to be more expensive and scarce as more and more resources are pushed into building the tools of war. Add to this many Chryslus plants being drafted in to make military vehicles and other equipment means that stocks are going to be scarce, pushing up the price of the car even more in respomse to demand - given that the average family's gasoline car is at that point useless except as scrap, I can see an Nuclear car being particularly desirable! However, on the side that maybe this is a reasonable figure, the stuff that goes into making a vault, the electronics, metals, etc, are probably also in demand by the military, as are the factories that make those things.

In any case, its the only number I can think of that we can compare, and gives us a conservatively high inflation rate.

I've just had a quick look online, and a ford dealer in Manhattan puts the list price of a Ford Taurus at about $37,170 (I'm happy to consider other figures if folks think they're fairer). That puts an inflation rate between our world and Fallout's at the time the bombs dropped at about a factor of 5 (a shy over 538% to be exact).

Based on this number, each vault costs about $120 Billion in todays money. Fourteen thousand six hundred and forty billion US Dollars for the whole project. The US Department of Defense's annual budget in 2009 is $651 Billion. These figures at face value say the US Department of Defence today could fund about 5 vaults a year if it spent nothing on anything else, no troops, no civil servants, no ships, no guns, ammo, etc... Project Safehouse from start to end has the same cost as defence budget over 24 years.

Is saving about 0.03% of the population worth that much money? Would a politician (President, Senator, etc) who is making a decision to save the american people going to think that the vault project is good value for money? At 1000 people per vault, 5 vaults per year, it would take 61,600 years to safely house the 308 million in vaults, if I've got my figures right.

Unless there's another reason to do it, The vaults as safe houses simply do not make sense.

I was going to post this in another thread discussing the logic, or lack thereof of the Current Canon Explanation of the vault Behavioral project, but these figures seemed interesting enough to warrant their own thread. Basically using canon sources where possible, and real world figures a google search away this is a breakdown of the scale of Project Safehouse, and highlights in my mind at least, why the vaults can never, from a in-game historical perspective have been intended to save the American people.

Please let me know if you spot a mistake in the caluclations, or know of a better canon figure to use.

There are 122 vaults, with an "normal" designed capactiy of 1000 inhabitants. Thats 122,000 people saved at maximum capacity.

Wikipedia gives 308 Million people living in the USA today. Lets be ultra-conservative and assume that the US population at the great war is the same as it is in the real world today (that for some reason or another the US's population in Fallout's world before the bomb grew a lot slower than in the real world). On that figure, 0.03% of the population can fit in them ( *Much* Better chances getting a spot in a lifeboat on the Titanic).

Vault 13 we know how much cost to build: $645,000,000,000 (645 Thousand Million, or 645 Short (American) Billion). Assuming that this figure is similar across all vaults, thats $78,690,000,000,000 total cost of building the vaults. The total costs is almost Seventy Nine Thousand Billion Dollars. Each Inhabitant's survival costs 645 Million Dollars!

Fair enough, these figures do not include inflation. There is only one thing I can think of that has a Pre-war price established in canon, that has a comparable product available today - The Family Car. We know a Chryslus Corvega had a list price of $199,999.

Granted, this comparison isn't ideal - In a war economy, the materials to build the car are likely to be more expensive and scarce as more and more resources are pushed into building the tools of war. Add to this many Chryslus plants being drafted in to make military vehicles and other equipment means that stocks are going to be scarce, pushing up the price of the car even more in respomse to demand - given that the average family's gasoline car is at that point useless except as scrap, I can see an Nuclear car being particularly desirable! However, on the side that maybe this is a reasonable figure, the stuff that goes into making a vault, the electronics, metals, etc, are probably also in demand by the military, as are the factories that make those things.

In any case, its the only number I can think of that we can compare, and gives us a conservatively high inflation rate.

I've just had a quick look online, and a ford dealer in Manhattan puts the list price of a Ford Taurus at about $37,170 (I'm happy to consider other figures if folks think they're fairer). That puts an inflation rate between our world and Fallout's at the time the bombs dropped at about a factor of 5 (a shy over 538% to be exact).

Based on this number, each vault costs about $120 Billion in todays money. Fourteen thousand six hundred and forty billion US Dollars for the whole project. The US Department of Defense's annual budget in 2009 is $651 Billion. These figures at face value say the US Department of Defence today could fund about 5 vaults a year if it spent nothing on anything else, no troops, no civil servants, no ships, no guns, ammo, etc... Project Safehouse from start to end has the same cost as defence budget over 24 years.

Is saving about 0.03% of the population worth that much money? Would a politician (President, Senator, etc) who is making a decision to save the american people going to think that the vault project is good value for money? At 1000 people per vault, 5 vaults per year, it would take 61,600 years to safely house the 308 million in vaults, if I've got my figures right.

Unless there's another reason to do it, The vaults as safe houses simply do not make sense.

Other than a mythical mathematical exercise, your calculations are pointless. The whacked out prices on stuff are there for only a few reasons:

1. To make you do a 'wuuuut?'
2. To show the devaluation of the dollar. Go check the price, in Japan currency, of a Fresh Watermelon in Tokyo and you will see what I mean.
3. For comic relief
4. Because the devs got a kick out of it.

The cost of vault 13 was most likely either intended as a joke on the part of Black Isle developers, or to intimate the (at the time) well known fact that the government lies through their teeth about spending.

At the time Fallout 1 came out, the government was just starting to come out of an era where jackasses were gleefully dropping contracts for 10,000 dollar wrenches, 1,000 dollar 1/4" screws, and 100,000 dollar toilet seats onto corrupt private contractors, and Black Isles crazy price listings could easily be taken as a 'dig' at that.

As far as I can recall ever reading, nobody has ever specifically, in CANON, mentioned the state of the US Dollar on the world market at the time of the war, nor delved too deeply into what, really, is nothing but a 'wabbit hunt'.

So, since you can't take those prices as 'canon', just accept them for what they are...one more interesting yet ultimately pointless MINUTIAE of the Fallout game series.

Sounds a bit off, I agree. I think the vaults shouldn't have cost that much if they were using robotic workers - however... Does the cost of the vault refer to its value, or the actual finance spent by the US Government to build it? I ask this, simply because if I have a car that costs $36,000 dollars, that doesn't necessarily mean I spent anything at all to 'acquire' this car, if you know what I mean?

Also, I think its worth noting that the US Government probably sold "tickets" to the Vaults before they were even built to further finance the project from the peoples' pockets.
In turn, this would be a somewhat effective way to essentially make people pay for their own salvation.

I'm not saying they are canon, but they are based on items that are unarguably canon - including the manual.


True, but we're not looking at a small figure here, we're looking at a figure that represents a great percentage of the economy, an economy that was already heavily taxed with the US war machine.

Which could only cover a small proportion of how much each "seat" costs.