We know sometime in the next hundred years there will almost positively a wwIII that will most likely involve nukes because of the amount of countries that are an enemy of the US that have them. What do you think?

Although I love the Fallout idea, I find any form of nuclear World War Three pretty far fetched. With modern forms of warfare prevention such as nuclear deterrent, it would make any country attacking the United States (China for example) dead already. I believe that any form of nuclear attack in the near future would revolve around terrorists getting hold of nuclear weapon. However, I find the idea of a vault system fairly likely. One of the parallels between the fallout universe and ours is sheer paranoia. People will go to great lengths money wise to keep themselves alive, and there are already private government vaults on the outskirts of D.C. as well as private bomb shelters.

We do? We never came closer than the Cuban crisis. I doubt we will ever get that close again... At least not on that scale.

Cold war stuff is fascinating. Unfortunately a lot of the stuff has already been torn down. The Pacific Coast especially had tons of missile sites, command and control bunkers, air fields, comm network bunkers... AT&T in particular had many installations for the DOD. Do a search on AT&T bunker.

The Baker CA AT&T bunker: http://www.flickr.com/photos/coldwararchaeology/sets/72157626486918624/with/5615034524/

AT&T Buckingham station: http://coldwar-c4i.net/ATT_Project/Buckingham/index.html

This stuff was all over the place. They intended to try and have a communications system that would survive. When you sometimes see a radio tower with those big weird looking horn things? That;s the remaining microwave relays for the comm system.

I would like to see more of this kind of thing injected into the game.

"We" as in who? I haven't heard that a prediction like that from anyone but doomsayers.

Currently Mutually Assured Destruction is the greatest deterrent to such an event, and it works quite well.

In the next 50+ years, with dwindling resources and an ever deteriorating environment, countries like China will have to expand or basically go into mass starvation. A US/China confrontation is very likely. The only question is when. 2077 sounds about right.

As for real life vaults look at NORAD. Built into a mountain, it's own air filtration system, enough fuel, food, and water to keep personnel alive for a year or so. Though it's a known fact that it would not survive a direct nuclear hit.

So far it seems doubtful. Even if some country managed to destroy all the US without return fire, they would still be screwed. Most of the worlds food comes from here. (Especially Russia who is the only country with another large arsenal)

-Beg to differ. A US Chinese confrontation isnt going to happen simply because the Chinese and whoever else for that matter knows that it cannot win a nuclear exchange. And whilst chinese politics is alot like 18th century europe its not as peculiar as mid east 15th century style politics where face > all.

Nuclear weapons as in Ballistic missiles will be obsolete the second high powered lasers gets miniturized. If you can blow a ballistic missle out of the air with the same precision and speed as lasers that are currently employed in discos to make fancy lightshows, the ballistic missile is obsolete. The time horizon for lasers that can do that job is less than 60 years I believe. And the field of abm rocketry is also progressing.

The next major arms race will be ABM. And certain nations allready have a lead.

World War III will necessarily involve the U.S. why? Besides, the concept of fortified, long-term bunkers and Continuity of Government has existed since the Blitz of London, like Missile Silos another concept we gave to the world but seldom utilised; the U.S. is crazy on them though, in Switzerland every home has a fall-out shelter too, or most after a certain period.

EDIT: Anti-ballistic-missiles can't possibly work, the lasers would be more effective.

-If there is one thing I have learned studying politics and the history of warfare since the Battle of Kadesh, its that there is no such thing as "can't". Given time humans will find a way. We are like rats in that sense.

Surely there's got to be a limit, how does one target and shoot down 12 free-falling kiloton warheads from incoming dozens of ICBMs across the country in less than a minute; before MIRVs it could have worked but in the new age of atomic weapons it just surely can't be feasable. I think that nuclear weapons are going to be around for a very long time to come, if people put lasers in space then people will find a way to shoot them down in co-ordination with a pre-emptive strike.

-Delivering 4.000 plus milkbottles in a minute on a target the size of a showroom window from 3 kilometers away seemed like complete science fiction less than 100 years ago. 60 years ago they predicted that the world market for computers was 5. Your average Iphone has more processing power than the computers used to launch guys to the moon.

Never is a looong time.

I never said the US/China confrontation would be nuclear. As for the ever changing face of war, who can say how it will be fought when it does happen? Biological or chemical is certainly an option. Also as you pointed out ICBM's may be becoming less useful but nuclear weapons are getting smaller all the time and could be transported to their targets via a number of means (suitcase nuke left in a parked car in Washington DC). Then again maybe when China does decide to expand we'll keep our noses out of it (unless they target Alaska which is doubtful). We seem to have a hard time minding our own business though........

"We" as in who?

The united states. Look at the countries that hate us. Some of those countries have nukes and as time goes on technology becomes stronger, so do weapons. I think you would be naive to not think at least just a little that there would be a wwIII in the next hundred years.

I'm not saying that we are going to be destroyed in the next hundred years, I was just suggesting the idea of real life vaults.

Honestly any nuclear attack on any country would spark a war. Every country has allies who would go against the offending country, who's offending country would go against the attacked countries allies. One nuke probably would mean one or more return nukes, then the other side would also send more nukes until resources run out, too many people die, or somebody manages to stop it.

Then I'm not quite sure what your point is.

Are you saying destruction is imminent and that we should construct a vault system?

Or are you saying that "Hey this could happen, we should prepare for anything"?

Also what is your definition of "vaults?" If its just underground bunkers, we have that in spades. The United States government has quite an expansive network of government military bunkers designed to protect the echelons of the government in the event of a nuclear war. Mount Weather, Site R Join Communication facility (Raven Rock), Cheyenne Mountain, and the (now defunct) Greenbriar Resort Bunker just to name a couple that we know about.

If you are suggesting an extensive network of publicly available vaults, then you are on your own in terms of putting that on the U.S. budget. With the United States in fiscal crisis, spending billions of dollars on such a system is neither practical nor would it be accepted by the public.

Otherwise, plenty of people build their own fallout shelters in their homes.