First let me say, I have done no research about any of this, this isn't a research paper I made. This is me playing the game, with experience as an American, casual research into history. Learning about civilizations, and being in the military. I have come to the conclusion, the Fallout universe makes zero sense.

Why does it make no sense? Because it doesn't accurately portray what humans would do in these situations. The people simply stop, they barely adapt, they barely invent, all they do is slap together old tech and try and get it to work.

No one is fabricating/ mass producing products on a scale I believe you would see. In a situation like this you'd imagine seeing fishing villages pop up, hunting villages pop up. People would be hunting gecks, gathering hides, selling hides to a community which would then produce armor and weapons, which you as a player could then purchase at will. Want to armor 3 companions in matching gear? Good luck finding the same gear.
I believe in a real situation there would be bazaars where geck corpses are hung from string at shops dotting the streets. You really don't see that here, you see pockets of what used to be, with people trying to patch together old tech.

I can fix this gun with duct tape! But I can't make a bow and arrow? No one is making spears? I have to go and find spears around the world, you're telling me no one said. "Hey, you know what, I have all this wood and very little ammo, maybe instead of slapping together old tech I should go back to much more available pre-tech."

Armor- I know the whole, duct tape armor look is cool in Mad Max. But these people are fixing robots, no one can tear these cars lying around into scrap metal and fabricate a full set of plate armor? No one is that smart? Not even the guy fixing the Solar powered generator plant? He couldn't figure that out?

Transportation. Okay, so there's people in VTOLS. But no one takes an abandoned car, strips off the brakes and stuff and hooks some cattle up to it to make a wagon? No one can make a wagon at all? Did we lose that technology?
Furthermore study of WW2 has shown us that a military without vehicles will pursue whatever allows them to increase their movement speed. In WW2 American parachute men utilized bicycles to move around Europe faster. In a situation like this one, I can assure you the military would not walk around the wastelands like idiots. They would make wagons with animals, they would create bicycles. They would do something. Hell even Chariots would be superior, why doesn't the legion have chariots.

House Construction- Look I get it, the world has ended, but why is your house made of 500 pieces of rusted metal. There are mud huts, there are tepees, wigwams, there is wood around, and (here's an idea) you can simply get a piece of metal large enough to cover your entire wall, you could make the pieces uniforms. Or you could make a DFP (Defensive Fighting Position.) To live in, like a military bunker.


I would understand if the world was like this 10-30 years AFTER the bombs hit. But for hundreds of years? Utter nonsense.

I love Fallout, but the world/ lore doesn't accurately portray humanity.
We survive, and we thrive. This is just a bunch of people desperately living in the past.

Depends on which Fallout you are talking about.

Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics and Fallout New Vegas we do see rebuilding. Building new buildings out of new materials, new weapons, rail roads, agriculture, fixing Hoover Dam and more.

Fallout 3 is the one where we see next to no progress in 200 years. Which is one of if not the biggest complants about Fallout 3.

Wagons made out of cars, Fallout and Fallout 2. The engine of Fallout 3 and New Vegas I think is why we don't see such wagons now.

Have you checked out the other Fallouts or just Fallout 3?

It's been forever since I played any fallout.
Been playing New Vegas, since it came out, off an on I mean.

Playing New Vegas recently made me come to these conclusions.

I don't see how your criticisms make sense for anything but Fallout 3.

Weapons and ammo and food are all being mass-produced in New Vegas, with minor success producing medicines. (Chems are being produced, but not as many as needed, though this is a part of "the more people we keep alive, the more demand for medicine there is" that Arcade explains) If you wonder why technology isn't being mass researched and produced, this is probably largely in part due to the Brotherhood of Steel being fairly powerful and influential, to the point where they can horde the working knowledge of how to produce such tech and discourage it's production from anyone else. The Van Graffs are clearly trying, but take a look at what the BoS does to them if given a chance...

You suggest plate armor from cars but metal armor clearly exists. Also the guy fixing the solar power array is Fantastic. Of course he's not that smart.

The transportation, lore-wise, we're led to believe the lack of wagons is a game engine limitation. The Legion was supposed to have "chariots" (basically cars) and I believe past fallout titles showed brahmin pulling wagons.

House construction, again, please name a community composed of metal rust buckets in any game but FO3. FO3 is the only one that comes to mind where people just stick slabs of metal and rust together and call it a home; the Great khans have yurts, New Vegas locals don't need to build anything because New Vegas was more-or-less left in tact, Shady Sands in FO1 and 2 clearly shows signs of homes constructed by them, etc etc etc. Only other town composed of Junk that I recall (if I'm recalling correctly) was...you guessed it - Junktown. AKA, it's unorthodox enough that the town was named for it.

So again, the ONLY game your criticisms seem valid for is FO3, which yes, does suffer from a culture of "let's sit on our asses and do [censored] all to adapt" as the people lean some pieces of scrap metal against each other and call it a home, then finish the day with a meal of 200 year old Salsibury Steak. Every other community, save the Capitol Wasteland, has shown efforts to advance and adapt.

Really New Vegas?

Fallout New Vegas has the Gun Runners making new weapons, we learn that the NCR is making cement from the Quarry that was taken over by Deathclaws. We learn that the NCR has been building rail roads and fixing up LA. We see agriculture, learn of fixing of water lines, power lines and people working on Hoover Dam and all this is just the fronter of NCR. There's alot of rebuilding, at least the attempts to do so while dealing with the Legion and the aftermath of the Divide and political problems, again it's the fronter.

Fallout and Fallout 2 we also see alot of that. People building new towns and cities out of new material. We see carvans with carts made from cars being pulled by brahmin.

Fallout 3 is the Fallout with next to no progress, what you talked about in your opening post.

The over all Series makes sense when you talk about progress.

Alot of progress is being made in a world in which before the nuclear war resources such as uranium and oil had all but run out. Where the only beast of burden people have after the War are mutated cows. Most of the population killed during the war and most of the suvivors would have been pretty dependent on robots and other technology so they would have had to learn how to survive as best they could and teach what they learned to their kids and so on down the generations. Things like GECKs were rare items.

Look guys I'm not super into the lore, I played the games. Loved the atmosphere and played New Vegas, while I didn't know there were engine limitations, that's super disappointing.

Even playing New Vegas has left he disappointed with the advancements the humans are making. While there are pockets of advancements (VTOLS, and Power Armor) it seems like the common person just pisses about doing nothing. The Sheriffs house in Primm is sheet metal, glued (or something) together awkwardly.

There are abandoned cars EVERYWHERE (It's super annoying to walk past broken transportation with a repair of like 100) motorcycles in front of the starting town just lying on it's side.

Alcohol EVERYWHERE, which I'm sure someone could convert to fuel, to power said abandoned motor cycles.

Honestly I think its pretty lame to use a game engine that can't accurately portray a game's atmosphere. But I'm no DEV.

The Las Vegas area before Mr. House woke back up was all but abandoned. There was little to no human activity. After all it is the Mojave Desert, after a Nuclear War and 200 years of neglect. Who in their right mind would want to live there?

Only small places such as Primm existed and that was because of the springs. Other than that you just had nomadic peoples such as the Boot Riders. The bulk of the people we see in the game are actually from the NCR and they moved into the area not that long before New Vegas starts. The Khans, Followes and BoS, Enclave remnants all came from the NCR. The Legion is also another group that resently moved into the area but from the East but Caesar was born in the NCR.

Mr. House noticed NCR scouts so he got the idea of fixing up the Las Vegas strip and securing Hoover Dam. He made deals with NCR. Traders and tourism followed the NCR into the area and people started to settle down.

The Mojave, New Vegas is the Wild West (in this case the Wild East) of the NCR. Progress is coming into the area but there are problems. Problems such as Caesar's Legion. Losing supply routes (The Divide) and having Powder Gangers (criminals sent to work on the railway) revolt and as always, bureaucracy and politics.

1) The Cars in the Fallout universe run on nuclear reactors. After 200 years these nuclear reactors would be unfixable.

2) See above. The Vehicles don't run on fuel

3) At the time there was not an engine that could run vehicles in such a huge world.

Edit: And on the shacks you really think a small town has the rescources to build a house for the sheriff?

All you need to know is that literally almost every thing you've complained about was in fact depicted in Fallout 1/2. Then Fallout 3 came around and homogenized and cut a lot in order to cram itself into the Bethesda open-world format. New Vegas just followed in that legacy. With the short development time I don't think anyone was going waste time making brahmin cart models.

Well that's reassuring. It's been forever since I played the other Fallouts so all I remember is the intro where you're in a tribe or something. Again I love the fallout atmosphere, but I play the game and say "These DEVs think we're just a bunch of dummies..."

So humans in the other Fallout games are smart, that's good.

I'm still mad I don't have a bow and arrow though...

New Vegas has alot of what we saw in Fallout, Fallout 2 minus the carts and as you said they didn't have time (if it was even possible ) to do that.

Everything and more when it comes to progress is in New Vegas. It's a new fronter region with a hostile invasion force moving into the area and bureaucracy and politics crippling progress if not stopping it but it is there.

I'm not going to go over every complaint you have here, because I'm just not in the mood right now, but I'll touch on this one. You were in the military, so I would guess you wore an interceptor vest rated to stop at least one 30.06 AP round......... I think that is level IV rated. Some soilders don't even want the plates for the sides of their vests, or the shoulder protection, or the neck protection, because in restricts movement. So,why in the world would you want to have armour built of of car sheet metal? I shoot through car parts for fun with my SKS. If you lined up 3 fenders the 7.62x39mm round moving at an estimated 2,650 ft per second will go through all of them. You want to wear 300lbs of sheet metal? For what????????? Why? You would be hit no matter where you got shot.

As for the rest of it......some of it you are right........some of it I don't think they put it in like....... why would you playing a video game want to buy gecko hides? It would be a waste of game space. Some of it I don't think you get humanity as much as you think. If it all went wrong right now, would I use my SKS and 700 rounds, and all my doomsday stuff to help rebuild a town or rob people? It;s way easier to steal from those who can't protect themselves than it is to try to fight off 50 armed crazies so someone can build a house. I'd like to think I would use my SKS for good, but I think I would be dead faster that way than if I used it to help myself.

Everyone one thinks that when it all goes wrong people are going to be the same and just start working together like it's a bad Barney rerun, but in reality way more people are going to take what they want by force. The "rebuilders" will be killed for their stuff or worse. It would take way longer to get together builders and a security force to build a town than if would for some guys with guns to decide to get together and take what's easy. Why do you think everyone would be so quick to do things the hard way? The people that were not armed already would so paralized with fear they would hide in a hole if it would keep them safe. They are not going to gather 2x4s and build a house during major social unrest. Once the trend is set that the evil and unmoral run the show very few will step to them. NCR would be lucky to even exsist. NCR is about as good as it could possibly be. You think people want to get together and rebuild lol You don't know squat about humanity.

This is not entirely true. I'm not going to get out the Fallout timeline to get the exact year, but nuclear powered cars were not intoduded to the FO pre war universe untill about 2070-2074. The main reason they were built was because there were no fossil fuels.

Why the great people of FO and FO2 never created alternative fuels for these cars is a mystery to me. FO3 just followed suit I guess. Shady Sands was able to be built and maintained under the watchful eye of 4 armed guards, while an entire encampment of raiders near by for some reason never over ran it. You would think in thier life of carefree bliss they would have made alternative fuel for the cars while they were building a town and growing food with raiders just watching near by.

It's really hard to flesh out everything, and you can't use gameplay as a representation of what the fictional world is. It's limited by the current engine. I'm sure the developers would rather want to have wagons instead of brahmins for trade caravans, or vehicles. Maybe we will see them one day. Camp McCarran's military trucks are supposed to have been fixed and in working condition. I'm pretty sure Shady Sands have running cars.

People still produce things, where do you think bullets come from? Or materials to make NCR uniforms? The writers wouldn't go into details on how town A grows how much cotton so that city B can make them into pockets lining for NCR uniform. NV's Quarry Junction was an NCR limestone quarry to make cement before the Deathclaws moved in.

Armor - I'm sure the Brotherhood mass produces power armor. The NCR scrapped together pieces of salvaged power armor to make... well, the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/NCR_salvaged_power_armor And I don't think slapping pounds and pounds of steel plates on your body would qualify as effective armor, even though http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Metal_armor. Why do you think we abandoned plate armor? Gunpowder happened, that's why!

Weapons - The Legion makes spears. I'm sure they make bows and arrows as well, but gameplay simply doesn't allow it.

House construction - Would YOU really attempt to build a military bunker all by yourself? I'm sure the NCR and the Legion build a ton of them, since the Brotherhood can easily whip one up in NV Hidden Valley. And I'm pretty sure people make small-scale Tatooine-style houses in the Mojave to retain moistures, but designing them is hardwork and it takes time and developers are lazy. And it's just much easier (and more efficient) to put together existing metals to make houses and towns (Like Megaton) instead of building them out of sand and mud; unless you HAVE to.

Details will come with time and better technology. This series is still a work in progress.

Alternative fuels such as Ethanol? So in the harsh wasteland where settlements are few and far between you suggest people turn what little food they have into fuel for vehicles? But that being said we do see examples of it being made. With the Boomers in New Vegas and the NCR must be making alternative fuels as well since they also make use of Vertibirds and the vehicles in Tactics would have run on ethanol.

The Khans wouldn't overrun Shady Sands because it would mean they would lose supplies and so on. It would be killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. If they overran NCR then where would the khans get their food from? No more farmers to steal from. Merchants would stop coming into the area, so no more caravans to raid.

But you are right about nuclear powered cars, they weren't around that long. It wasn't like sometime during or just after the 1950s nuclear powered cars were invented. They didn't come into being until Oil ran out and when Cold Fusion was discovered.