Dude it's been over 200 [censored] years since the Great War. Maybe we should stop sitting on our asses and QQing about it and, yknow, go rebuild society.
And that's exactly what people are doing in New Vegas.

The only way that I can conceiveably explain the high amounts of radiation with the lack of total destruction in the Captal Wasteland would be neutron bombs. Look at Vault 87. The entrance suffered at direct strike, yet the fragile wooden door that leads to the main entrance is still intact. Despite this, there are still some problems and contradictions that I can't explain.

A wizard did it

I'm lazy and it's late(early, but no sleep) so I'm just gonna respond to the title.
It's not supposed to be post-apocalyptic, it's post-post-apocalyptic.

And exactly how strong are the Chinese nukes? How many of the nukes were detonated in the atmosphere?

Off the top if ny head, in DC, I remember one crater, the white house, which would give evidence of one surface impact.

How many others are there?

Btw, construction of buildings is also better in 2077. You can say that doesn't matter, but take San Fran for example and the code they have to follow, to protect themselves from earthquakes. Nuclear weapons do not have to blow down buildings to kill people.

The atomic bombs detonated in 1945 had the blast yield of about 22 kiltons of TNT, the blast yield of the Tsar Bomba(detonated in 1961) was about 50 megatons of TNT. That is our history, in the Fallout history with tension of nuclear war much higher, I'm guessing that China would be stockpiling thousands of nuclear warheads. The Great War occurred over 100 years after the largest man made bomb ever detonated, the constant threat of nuclear war would have seen larger bombs. Besides nukes aren't detonated in the atmosphere, a standard air burst can occur from several hundred to a few thousand feet in the air.

I'm not really understanding why you are trying to defend Bethesda's poor world design.

This.

During the cold war , the USSR had allotted 20 nuclear warheads for Washington DC alone.
Not for tactical reasons ( besides the Pentagon ) but for a blow to the US moral.

China would do the same.

In a real war..DC would be a charred pit.

It's relevant in the sense that being forced into subways doesn't generate an authentic feeling at all. If FO3 was really more post-apocalyptic (how do you actually measure that) than why is everything so conveniently connected by an underground that funnels you right to where you need to go?

The truth is, FO3 is just more grey and darker. Easy trick to make people think it really is more post-A. But when you look at things like the Mad Max film, what's so wrong with a sandy wasteland?

FONV and FO3 are both post apocalyptic, they just present themselves in different settings.

This discussion about which cities China would bomb more is kinda all over the place and 100% speculation .

And the Tsara Bomb is not practical. The bomb in Megaton, sure looks like a gravity bomb to me.

Point is, this is !SCIENCE!, and we have no idea about the Chinese nuclear capabilities, or what the bulk of their bombs consisted of. These bombs could be anywhere from 1-500 kilotons.

Also, pretty sure bombs can be detonated in atmosphere, if you want to take out enemy satellites. But, again, also pretty sure as you stated, you can get different results depending how high off the ground the detonation occurs.

Anyway, the divergence occurred in the 50s. We have no idea what these bombs were like.

However, I'm still wondering, was the crater at the white house the only seen evidence of a surface impact? I can't remember.

Even if they used smaller dumb bombs(easier to mass produce) like the one in Megaton then they would have carpeted the Capital, there wouldn't be anything standing.

In the end though this can all be explained one way, poor world design by Bethesda.

Note: Fort Bannister got a direct hit and I do remember a large, heavily irradiated pit somewhere in DC.

http://images.wikia.com/fallout/images/2/28/White_House.jpg is the hole where the White House was and http://images.wikia.com/fallout/images/2/21/Pennsylvania_Avenue.jpg is the surrounding area. Notice the fence at the bottom of the screen, Bethesda messed up.

You are kinda assuming.... no idea Chinese offensive abilities, especially seeing how USA was winning and advancing in China. For example, how many launch sites were taken over? We do not know.

You have two examples so far of hits inside DC...

Interesting pic, rotate around ground zero...hey, what that tree doing!


http://www.360cities.net/image/hiroshima-after-atomic-bomb-nuclear-5-ground-zero#397.99,-4.43,109.6


Now, this video totally reminds me of the FO world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VsxW1pAFBk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Other things to consider: the economic state of China. If for example, a car in the USA cost 100,000, how much ya think a nuclear bomb cost?

Again, have no real knowledge of how nuclear weapons progressed. Also, add in the research in other avenues. My point is, the nuclear weapons in the FO world could be more similar to 1950s nuclear weapons, than 1990s.

I wouldn't make such a bold statement like that in the New Vegas section.

I too am a Fallout 3 fan and I thought the same thing. Once you play the add-ons and listen to the storyline and your companions. You will get that wasteland feeling.

But not as much as Fallout 3.

The Fallout 3 wasteland was too much "in your face", as in See, here, wasteland -- lots of sand and rubble, right here! but it didn't feel all that convincing as it wanted because it was basically as populated as a rainforest or a large End of the World themed zoo/amusemant park.

Imo.

I don't know man. . . I still see 20 ruins for every standing building in those hiroshima pictures. And even if DC was a side thought and relegated to only a couple nukes, all that destruction was from one miniscule sized compared to today. If nukes in the Fallout world aren't on the scale they are today, they would almost certainly be stronger then the ones dropped on Japan.

There is just too many intact building in fallout 3, even in DC proper it's a maze of skyscraqers.

I'll throw it in once more: 200 years have past...

Now I can buy some arguments saying how society will not have completely rebuilt (barely).. but nature, nature can not be contained.

The truth is that neither Hiroshima, Nagasaki or highly irradiated areas like Chernobyl or Fukushima look anything like the barren waste that is FO3's Washington DC...
If anything: the wastes after such a period of time would be like jungles.. things like moss would grow everywhere.. etc. etc..
Now if one takes a look at the 360 picture posted by evlbastrd, that is how we associate the looks of a post nuclear warzone.. It's images like that and the 50's testing that make us view post apocalyptic landscapes like we do..

What Bethesda has done is basically the equivalent of a photograph. They took the lore, emphasized elements like the retro 50's atmosphere and flash.. dropped the look of Hiroshima on a well known American city.. This is how we view the era.. this is how people lived when it happened and this how the landscape looks like.. It works, like so many things, perfectly well when one sees FO3 as a self contained new title.. The problem for people who actually like the lore etc.. it doen't make sense that after so many years the area is still as irradiated as it is and how barren it is..
The problem with NV is that people who played FO3 first and love that game will be disappointed.. because it doesn't fit the post-apocalypse feel of what they think is the real deal.

Compare that first pic you linked versus the ones I linked, the difference is huge. Trees bend and have large route systems that keep them anchored, concrete buildings have very little tensile strength when compared to trees.

A nuclear bomb would cost millions of dollars to produce, but China in the Fallout timeline is a superpower that is powerful enough to put the fear into the Americans. They must have a huge stock pile of nuclear warheads.

We have proof that technological progress did not stop in the 1950's in the Fallout universe. It just doesn't make any sense that both sides wouldn't be constantly trying to make more and bigger nuclear ordinance during the entire war.

Interesting though this discussion of nuclear warheads and blast yield is, I admit that it is all speculation and it is all irrelevant when you actually take a look at the pics I linked before and look at that fence that is still standing, at those buildings that are untouched just across the street. Even the glass in the clock tower is still intact. None of that is about whether or not they used a neutron bomb or if the warheads were of a lower yield, it is entirely due to messy design by Bethesda.

when I walk around in fiend terrortory, the westside, freeside, or anywhere in the north (actually pretty much everywhere in the game except for jacobstown)...I definetly feel like im walking through a post apocolyptic wasteland........after the apocolypse, survivors would band together and make small settlements , which is done in both fallouts so i reallydont see one as more post apocolyptic than the other.............saying that it felt like the 1800s is ridiculous, there wasnt destroyed cities where fiends, gangs, and junkies holed up in city ruins in the 1800s, at least im pretty sure

Thorgal:

The difference is, there is no relief effort.

So, what would it look like in 45 if the USA just kept nuking. Then, left it?

There are no construction vehicles or workers to clean up. It is a jungle. It is a concrete jungle.

A fence, by the way, has a lot of give. Go push on one some time. What happens? It springs back. I have seen videos of trees from the force of a blast bend over and spring back. The force lasts a split second, not constant.


A human on the other hand, does not have a lot of give. These weapons are designed to kill people, not knock down every single structure. So, I'm not saying FO3 is perfect. What I am saying is:

No idea the strength of Chinese nukes in FO world. Don't know how many were direct hits in DC.

And.. it is a game. For a urban setting, and their first FO game, I think they did a prettt good job, and it really isn't something to moan about. Except for the folks who like to moan about anything FO3.

Well that's what they were referring to I tihnk, the dark atmospheric feel and hostile environment, not that it is authentic.


This is what the Fallout Wikia says

"In the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_world, megaton-class thermonuclear weapons had largely been retired by the major nuclear powers in favor of much smaller-yield warheads by the time of the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Great_War. An average strategic warhead in 2077 (with a few exceptions, such as the weapons which fell on Washington D.C.) had a yield of about 200-750 kilotons, but with a massive increase in radioactive fallout in place of thermal shock, much like a neutron bomb in our own world. However, despite the apparent reduction in raw explosive power, this arsenal was far more dangerous to the Earth's ecosystem, as it deposited far greater amounts of fallout in the atmosphere than had been assumed by pre-War models.^"

Which would suggest to me that the weapons that fell on washington dc were much stronger than the average weapon and significantly stronger than the weapons that fell on Japan.


I always imagined the nuclear destruction to be like what it was in the playground scene in Terminator 2...though that is a movie, but it seems to me to be realistic enough, surely using much more powerful bombs than that which fell on Japan.