I have just purchased Fallout 3 and am stuck, please could someone direct me to Silverdale?? :brokencomputer:

That's going to be a little hard to do as there is no Silverdale. There is however a Springvale, is that what you mean? If so, it's just outside of Megaton. It's the first bunch of destroyed houses that you come across after you leave the vault.

There is no Silverdale. There is Springvale the destroyed town outside Vault 101. That mgiht be what you mean.

No. Because it doesn't exist in game.

There is a NPC named Silver, who lives in a "house" in Sprinvale, which which between Megaton and the Potomac River.

But no Silverdale, at least not without mods.

Yeah, the only Silverdale I know of is out on the peninsula. Nice town. One giant strip mall

Well, there is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverdale,_Pennsylvania in Western Pennsylvania. That wouldn't be in the CW, of course, but neither is the Pitt, Anchorage, Raven Rock (the actual one), or Adams AFB.

A point of relevant trivia:

In the real life DC area there is no Spingvale (or Silverdale). However there is a Springfield in in the Virginia Suburbs in very roughly the same place as Springvale. There is also a real life Annandale in very roughly the same location as the in game Andale. And there is a real life Warrenton some distance south of DC, in roughly the same orientation as Warrington.

Kind of makes me wonder why they apparently changed some names slightly, when so many other names are real names, for example Fairfax, Falls Church, Germantown, Bethesda, Arlington, and many others are all real places in real life.

Well it has been over 200 years, language usage can change drastically in that amount of time. Just take a look at some old documents from 200 years ago, you'd probably have a hard time understanding some parts of them.

I'm pretty sure Andale was an intentional change, just like Pittsburgh devolved into The Pitt and Arefu bases its town's name on an old 'CAREFUL' sign.

And Warrenton, Springfield, and Annandale are all towns with separate local governments, and you don't want to get sued. So you ask the respective governments if you can use their town's name in an upcoming game that takes place in the area, and some of them say "No," hence a similar sounding name around the same location.

When you approach the city you'll see the old pre-war city sign on the side of the road. But it's been damaged and the only part that's still readable is Pitt. You can't make out the rest of it, just that part.

But so do Bethesda, Fairfax, Falls Church, Arlington, Germantown, etc.

So why use those real names but not others?

Sorry, don't mean to berate you, but that theory is complete and utter nonsense. A town doesn't have a copyright to its name.

Sure, anybody can sue anybody for anything, but that doesn't mean that they will get anywhere.

And if there was any validity to the theory, don't you think using a similar sounding name would present a similar problem?

No, the reason the names are changed is quote "realistic". As Belanos said, words, including place-names, have a way of changing over time.

Annandale -> Andale is pretty obvious: Take a street sign, remove the first 3 letters, and you got the new name of town.

Warrenton -> Warrington looks quite clearly like a shift due to oral tradition of the name.


Springfield -> Springvale is not easy to explain. I don't know. When was Springfield founded? Past 1945, perhaps?

I was thinking of commenting on that one but you beat me to it. A town's name would be considered public domain. After all, the town isn't actually owned by anyone, it belongs to everyone who happens to live there.

I think Silverdale is derived from Silver Spring.

Because it is a alternate reality. It is not meant to be this world. It is a alternate world. It is a dark, sick, world were everything is nuclear. Some places have the same names, some don't.
It is'nt meant to be this world.
Also the names could have changed over time from the time that the world diverged from this in the fifties.
Place names change over time anyway.