Let's see, clean up the streets or use every ounce of manpower to rebuild civilization? There's the question, cleanliness is an invention of established civilization. Look at all the communities in the U.S. that have axed their sanitation budgets now, they look a lot like FO locales.

Yah if you actually lived in a clean area you probably would not get diseased as easy. I mean I would expect rebuilding civilization would also get rid of garbage, lsay lets recycle these cans to make sheet metal to build houses, or pipes or bullets possibly. I dont now if that is possible but it would be a waste of resources to not recycle tthe garbage.

I guess if you spend your life in and around garbage and its everywhere you go you get used to it. You don't bother telling your children to clean up. Another by product of a nuclear armageddon, people forget that being clean means healthy. Just have to look at what happened to Europe after the Fall of Rome. Over a thousand years of people dumping all waste including human into the street or big pits. Not washing or cleaning. Some areas in FO2 we nice and clean. NCR Just go the the Mojave and they have other things to do besides clean. FO3 well that was the point of the game, nothing changed in 200 years.

All that garbage attracts ants and thoses ant can be used to make a tasty ant soup.

Considering that thrash and decaying edibles would be the target of Rats (bringers of diseases) It would make good sense not to have crap floating around. The more thrash lying about, the greater the risk for all sorts of diseases.

But then consider this:

New Vegas has alot of people and alot of them live in buildings... but where do they do "their business"? If it goes into the sewers those will be clogged pretty fast (if noone maintains them).

Seeing as there was a nuclear war people over 200 years would forget that rats (fleas on rats) bring disease. Some places are clean in Fallout. Romans knew that lead was deadly but after the fall of Rome people forgot that. People forgot how to build with stone and alot of math was lost. Thats why its the "Dark Ages."

FO1, FO2 has out houses and public bathrooms. FO3 and New Vegas have out houses. In the Cities its possible they did get the toilets running.

Seriously!? This hasn't died yet? Time to kill it with FIRE! :flamethrower:



Right, then. Let's get this thing settled once and for all. There are exactly TWO reasons why nothing is cleaned up in Fallout 3 and New Vegas.



The first, is simple... and our friend Styles has it right. Over the course of 200 years of struggling to survive... there are BIGGER [censored] fish to fry than keeping clean. Why should they want to? Why should they even know what benefits it brings? Hell... as previously mentioned... places like Detroit, Michigan already look -worse- than anything the Fallout universe has showed us, and that's in real life! Right now! When they -know- about soap and recycling and all that fun stuff!

When you try to apply modern-day logic to the Fallout-universe's logic, it doesn't work. There's no comparable time, in history, during which the human species has been so taxed. The closest you might find to a situation like Fallout, is perhaps the Dark Ages... at which point, the idea of hygiene and cleanliness weren't even thought up yet. The odds are highly in favor of most knowledge regarding cleanliness and sanitation being destroyed... and the means with which one would keep things clean even if they -could- would be largely destroyed or too technologically advanced to make for the common peasant.

Secondly, most of the cars and vehicles you see scattered around the Capital and Mojave Wastelands have -already- been largely stripped of anything valuable. The metal which remains is heavily rusted and weathered... and that's about all there is left to them, save for the ones which still have their nuclear power cells. Do you really think the typical wasteland scavenger is going to know how to handle a nuclear power cell?

And why should they salvage rusted, largely worthless metal when there are other sources of metal which have been partially maintained? Especially given that these cars are most frequently found in wide open areas, where stopping to salvage them would leave one open to attack!

It's a different kind of logic, these people use... and the reasons why they leave things the way they do are not something that anyone who has not had to make the same decision under the same circumstances has any authority to pass judgement on.


The second reason these things are the way they are... is atmosphere.

It is a design choice, by the developers, made to invoke visions of real world places... third world, war-ravaged countries... where the dead and dying and the waste and the refuse litter the streets of even the most prominent cities. It invokes destitution and misery... an inescapable squalor in which the bones of the old world are buried.

If this image is lost on you, that's fine...

... but it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with the game. It means that there's something wrong with the way you're -playing- it.

Yes, it's just that after the bombs dropped nobody bothered to tell their children how to clean up.

Orrrrrrrrrr...

It could be lazy textures.

I actually think it's great that nobody really worries about how clean and tidy the place is. Not having to vacuum, decorate, wash stuff - sounds marvellous to me! :thumbsup:

I would think places with Mr. Handys one would think would be cleaner.

I'd hate to visit your place.

Well, it's not quite as bad as the Capital Wasteland!

But seriously, don't you think that all the repetitive chores of 'real life' are a pain in the butt?