I think that the majority of the population in the Capital Wasteland are descended from people who lived in Vaults, and some knowledge from those places are better preserved that others. So I suppose James's parents were probably better at preserving that information, or he was just able to have the opportiunity to get educated. He may have even come in from the Commonwealth which would explain his education. Anyway, most people in the Capital Wasteland aren't very clean, and can probably bathe in irradiated water and survive because prolonged living in such a hostile wasteland probably gave them so kind of Rad resistance. And finally, just because they haven't said that they can read doesn't mean the majority of characters in Fallout 3 can read.

I dunno, multiplayer FPSes do quite well.

I kid, I kid.

I'm thinking there were enough educators that lived through the Great Atomic War to instill a basic amount of literacy in all the normal wastelanders. Plus the intact Prewar Books are legible enough. If the Lamplighters could get themselves to a junior high literacy rate with their old textbooks, imagine what the wastelanders could do if they got enough books and combined brainpower. Then take into account the few Vaults that weren't sick torture porm experiments and were instead controls that opened, you'd have clusters of intelligence spring up in those 200 years here and there around the Vault Dwellers that weren't killed or eaten right away.

Education in general has probably more to do with how it was done in the 19th century frontier than anything else for most inhabitants of the wasteland. Most children will be educated by thier parents using what is available, focusing on the practical. Reading is important in that it can give you warnings or allow you to utilize resources from the past, and so could in this way to still be seen as valuable. There are 3 schools in Fallout 3 that we are certain of, one in Vault 101, the others in Little Lamplight and in the Republic of Dave. These are settlements large enough to have enough children to make the specialization of a teacher worthwhile (like a frontier town instead of just a steading, a teacher can be supported). The quality of education will as always be dependent upon the educator, but generally we see a lot of resources available like books. We don't see slates but they are a good way to work around a shortage of paper.

its the whole "200 years later" that is the problem.

if it had been 30 years since the bomb it would have made more sense.

In addition to any possible surviving pre-war books, the Vault computers had extensive collections of knowledge and information, one such terminal I believe can even be used in Fallout 1 to give you a bit of experience. The GECKs had holodisk libraries which also taught essential skills for settling and cultivating the land, so I'm sure these sorts of practices spread by word of mouth and exhibition as they did here on Earth pre-writing.

There are plenty of books and terminals about, as well as passed down knowledge. Joseph in Little Lamplight says he uses an old terminal he found and some books and holotapes the scav team brought back, this is probably how it worked in all settlements.

And they don't seem very clean from what I gather.

Maybe they had psychic attack dogs teach everybody like in A Boy and His Dog? >;)

A formal education isn't the only way people can learn things. Someone had to know the things we're taught before they could be written down in text books, after all.

There may not be any formal schools, but people can still learn in the ways people did without that sort of thing. Their knowledge could be passed down from people who know such things. Perhaps the doctors learned it from other people who were doctors, maybe their knowledge was passed down from doctors who survived the war, or they might have learned it from medical books, or maybe some things people just discovered through experimentation. There are a fair amount of books still around in the game, you just need to read them. It's not like after the apocalypse everyone become an uneducated idiot automatically. It does seem odd that the literate population appears higher than I'd expect, though, while people in towns may have time to learn to read and right, I'd expect most wastelanders to either have no way to learn such things, or not focus on them because they're more interested in learning skills that are necessary to survive in the wasteland instead.

As to how they stay clean, I'd say that sanitary conditions in the Fallout universe are far from ideal. At least with raiders, it's pretty obvious that they're rather dirty too. Towns like Megaton which have their own water purifiers I could see providing water for people to bathe, though likely not as regularly as we would in real life, since without Project Purity, their ability to purify water is likely limited and they need to conserve it so they have eniugh for the most essential purposes (Such as drinking, staying clean probably takes a lower priority to that.)

There's a quick solution to this question you long for...

It's just a game, in a game, anything can happen, just have fun playing it, there's no point pondering the illogical.

Really? You have to go to college to be a respectable scientist?

Don't tell that to Einstein.

About the other education - my 4-year-old can read. I'd imagine the wastelanders and raiders have a life span of well over 4 years, or else the game would have tagged them as "unkillable".

Teaching is easy to pass down, lets face it they don't need a formal education, simple literacy is easy enough and from there self education isn't a stretch with books (which are everywhere, even a half burnt book can be half read and they seem to have them on their tables/desks). For the scientists/doctors you're looking at a combination of apprenticeships and the approach cutter(?) of reilly's rangers took, he learnt from info in the hospitals they entered, it isn't hard to envisage the original survivors compiling their knowledge and going from there.

Whats more the people aren't exactly brilliant thinkers, good engineers are hard to come by, good doctors similarly rare.

You assume that you HAVE to go to school in order become a functioning person. Not so, ever heard of the Egyptians, or the Celts? No schools, and they founded the modern world. Aside from that, as said before, there are still books around and lots of other places to find at least a standard-low education.

Also, some people would actually argue that taking showers in irradiated water is even better, as the radiation kills bacteria :hehe: And you along with it, but hey :shrug: Being clean is more important than staying alive right... (That sums up the whole 'shower' subject)

They DO have purified water by the way. The cities that is. And I'm sure Raiders and Marauders don't take showers.

Bull puckey, plain and simple. You wouldn't last very long in a disaster struck place like Haiti, or the US after WW3.

Some of the most influential, respected, and prolific minds of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries had little more than a grade school education....a few, even less than that! A few of them never even had access to any sort of books on advanced theory regarding anything. They came to their conclusions and realizations about the physical world around them through intuition, common sense, and a strong grasp of what works and what doesn't.

Furthermore only an extremely dense or shortsighted person would reject access to past knowledge as being unimportant in the face of survival. Humans know that knowledge often *IS* survival. A person with half a brain would spend their evenings by the fire learning to read whatever ancient texts they could find and understand any holotapes or computer entries they came across, in addition to attending to the immediate needs of survival.

Something as easily dismissed as an old Boy Scout Explorers manual would take on an importance on a level with the ten commandments in a war ravaged world, and whoever possessed...and could read...such an object would tend to be on the forefront of society, both in terms of survival, personal wealth, and influence among other survivors.


James was a scientist. That intimates he came from a background with access to technology and information. What exactly that background is, is left for us to wonder. He himself could be a vault dweller, or an escapee from the Pitt, or a former Lamplighter, or he could be from the Commonwealth, or the West Coast...all places where the savvy could find huge amounts of information to learn, not to mention technology to take apart and mess with. Personally, I figure James hails from the West Coast, and has probably at least BEEN TO the Commonwealth.

On the topic of cleanliness.

Before there was toilet paper, there were corncobs, rags, leaves and even sticks, not to mention (in some Eastern countries) a good left hand.

Beyond this, before there was soap, a common device among Romans, Greeks and other 'civilized' countries was a simple wooden scraqer, which was used, with water, to literally scraqe the crud off the skin. In the absence of, or the unsuitability of, raw water, everything from beer to fruit juice was known to have been used...even milk.

We also know that early man made heavy use of mud and clay, both in personal hygiene as well as construction...and even in record keeping! (clay, wax and stone tablets)..

...and still some people complain about the world today. <_<

I didn't trust toilet papers, a good left hand indeed... (and water n' soap)

Correction: Romans bathed in bath houses where slaves would massage oil upon their skin which would suspend any "Crud" or dirt inside of it. After this massage, the Roman would then use a combination of water and wooden scraqer to remove the oil and dirt as well. It was surprisingly effective, don't look down on it.