More vault questions, sorry for the ridiculous number I've been asking lately.

On topic, however, recently people were discussing the vault facilities. Which, from my experience and knowledge are rarely to sometimes never shown. In Fallout 3, at least, one can assume pretty much the entire vault was locked off from you-it didn't matter so much in the game, because you're only in the vault for approximately a half hour of game time anyways. Unless you do a very specific thing to change that. The problem is, for me anyways, that it leaves a lot of questions on how the vault functions-especially with its facilities.

I only remember, when it comes to non-residential rooms, the room containing the machine powering the entire vault being shown out of all of them, the bathrooms, overseer's room, the prison, and the classroom in which you take the G.O.A.T. But, from what I hear and am presuming, there ought to be more than that-especially if the vault is expected to last for a long period of time. A recent discussion, for example, on that matter was on how the vault would supply itself with food without contact to the outside world. So what about the room that helps supply clean water, what details would there be to that? Or how would the vault repair itself when it needs replacement materials? Is it simply stocked up for the worst case scenario(with exceptions, obviously) to be prepared for ____ years(vaults vary, again rather obviously, on when they open)? How, exactly, are the residential parts of the vault set up when it comes to each room's spacing from other rooms, placement among them, amount of volume to them-and where are they in the vault when it comes to their proximity to the other facilities meant to keep the vault running? What about rooms purely for entertainment/exercise purposes? Where would the waste from the bathrooms go? How would the intercoms/lights/heating, and other electrically powered things, work? (For example, in Vault 101 they were always kept on because of radroaches, but are there actually light switches or something of that sort to every room, or no?)

I know it's a crap load of questions, I'm merely listing to give some examples in clarifying my question. This is technically all theoretical, unless you have facts from Fallout lore itself obviously.
And no doubt I'm spewing out a lot of ignorance here, so feel free to correct me in whatever stupid thing I said. =]

Well, Vault 13 had it's water purifier crap out so you had to go get a new chip. The vault also had a library. An armoury... Hydroponics is another room vaults are supposed to have. Quarters for singles, couples and family's. Vaults where built to be REALLY sturdy (Save one) and have lots of easily replaceable parts. As for the toilets I supposed the pee would be recycled into water (We can do that IRL) the poo I dunno. Fertilizer?

None of that is covered in game, and you can sometimes run into a thorny issue about game-worlds here.

There's a few people here who belive that what you see in game is the actual thing- if there's an area of a vault that's not mentioned, it, for all intents and purposes, doesn't exist, period. Of course, considering that Vault 101 existed for about 200 years with a population (seemingly) less than 50... well, bad things tend to happen if you think too hard from this standpoint.

You've then got others who belive that the game world is a mere representation of what's actually there- ever see the Super-Duper mart? It's actually BIGGER on the inside than it is on the outside! Same goes with Mama Dolce's Factory, and the Robot Repair Shop south of Canturbury Commons, to name a few. From this standpoint, the Vault is a representation of what "should" be there- yes, there's only a handful of people there, but if it wasn't a game, you'd expect the population to be at least 150 people, and a Vault to match in size. This would also mean that the support facilities presumed to exist do, indeed, exist, they're just not implimented in-game, either due to budget constraits or developer lazyness.

Now, to your questions. About repair-the vault probably stocks all materials it needs beforehand, and expects them to last for the run of the vault (from 20 to 200+ years). Food... well, there's hints that they create it a la Star Trek food synthesizers (read about the Orange Tapioca Pudding in either Vault 87 or 90-something if you don't know what I mean.) Waste is probably treated up the wazoo before being placed into the water system (what astronauts do, I belive... yeah, they drink their own pee... but it's been filtered to the point where it's basically tap water, if not better.) Extra water is probably pumped in from a nearby underground source of water (de-radiated, of course.) And finally, the electrical systems are run via Nuclear or Geothermal reactors.

Well I sure do not Know what makes up a vault but I do wanna know where the poo goes.... ohh ya and 100+ years of dead bodies too .. hehe do not think about it to much or you will realize just how they made the hamburger helper go so long after they ran out of hamburger...


hey whys my sloppy joe taste, well like Joe

To Hydroponics as fertiliser, and possibly methane reclamation plants for the energy source (last is pure speculation as never mentioned).

If I recall correctly, dead bodies are implied to be incinerated.

Vaults were meant to be massive social experiments -- something that deeply disturbed me the first time I walked into Vault 106 (or was it 108, not the Garys, the one with the purple gas), since Fallout 3 is my first and so far, only foray into Fallout in general. Many of them were in fact designed to be reopened or to fail after a certain amount of time, and not really to sustain people for much longer than that.

I'd wager that there were certain...pharmaceutical options for people who started asking too many questions about the mystery meat, though

Vaults do use Geothermal and Nuclear for energy (its mentioned in the Citiadel Terminals in Fallout 3). Also yes they All have a water chip which is what purifies water in the Vault (Fallout 1) and the dead bodies are burned (Birthday poem).