I think that in the case of a nuclear war rural areas would likely survive whether or not there was fallout and by the appearance of brahmin in the Fallout canon it is clear that is would have been possible. As ranchers are mostly self-sufficient, it is clear that rural areas would have continued on although technology would have rapidly declined to levels compareable to 1850s. If cattle survived in city areas like Washington DC which was the target of several bombs, it is clear that horses should have survived in rural areas which would have been the target of few or no bombs at all.

I think a Fallout game set in an area with thriving ranching communities and towns would be brilliant, the fact that New Vegas has a little bit of a cowboy vibe appeals to me. I liked seeing an active world in the original two Fallout games, you could see how people survived. There were farms, cattle, mines and towns with trade supplying the various factions with what they needed to survive. Fallout 3 seemed pretty dead to me, the people there had apparently survived for 200 years on moldy packets of mashed potatoes and frozen tv dinners scavanged from supermarkets that haven't had refridgeration for centuries. New Vegas is at least a little more plausible, Las Vegas avoided the nukes and the Hoover Dam provided free water and power which would have enabled the people there to survive vaults or no vaults.

Does anyone know of any mods for Fallout 3 that resemble what I'm talking about? Does anyone want to make a mod resembling what I'm talking about?

Well, assuming that you probably haven't played the first two games, since you're mentioning only FO3, what you described is in a way, what the towns in the first fallout's represented.

I don't know about mods that do this, nor am I skilled enough and have the time to make one for you.

Although I agree with what you are saying, FO3 tried to give that feel, the live stock at Arefu springs to mind, and several other references are there as well. I guess it is there, but could have been more represented.

Then again, the constant threat of raiders and supermutants leads more to scavenging than to permanent settling. If everything you have gets attacked, stolen or destroyed. People tend to lean more to building defenses than civilisation.

I have played the first two games quite extensively including the Fallout 2 Restoration project which restores that game to it's intended design.

I just think the setting in DC is less plausible than the setting in Fallout 1 and 2. I'd just like to get that feeling of life going on after the bombs back from Fallout 1 and 2.

Rivet City and Megaton were dead. The Dunton Brothers manufactured jerky, had cattle. Torr had his own cattle and also supplied the Dunton Brothers. Fallout 1 had the water merchants and the first town you see has it's own crops. Mordoc had extensive farm land, do you see anything on that scale in Fallout 3?

You could guard cattle runs going between towns in Fallout 2. In Fallout 3 the settlements just seemed very hokey and contrived to me, the settlements were laughably small with no facilities to speak of. Morrowind seemed more alive than Fallout 3 to me and that didn't have the benefit of "radiant AI", Vivec in Morrowind was bigger than all of the settlements in Fallout 3 and it's DLCs combined. The only farm I remember of note was in the swamp DLC, those crazies had plants growing all over the joint.

Super Mutants were only really a threat in DC, their army was shattered in the west. Raiders themselves have to come from somewhere, they would have come from various communities across the wasteland and the very fact that raiders still exist would lead you to assume that the communities also still exist.

As for scauaging being viable, how many times can a building be picked over before it's been picked clear? 200 years is a long time, many people would been through all the easily accessable buildings taking anything that could be used or traded. Only places that were dangerous would be left alone and those places would be ideal for a player character to explore.