"Global" =! "Even". By their very nature, some places will be effected more, or less seriously than others. Part of this will be weather conditions, part of this is DC's very nature as a huge target.

The core region is very different from the DC area, even today without radiation. I think the core region is probably a fair comparison for Florida and is a good baseline for what may be happening there... But I think DC being more radiated makes sense.

The way I see it is while I can absolutley understand FalloutChris and others points as they are completely plausible, so is bethesdas take on it.

Aslong as beth has something that is atleast reasonably plausible I will accept it as they are now in charge of the fallout worlds direction.

Should the D.C Area be a little bit more advanced? Yeah, there probably should be a little bit more advancement

Is it plausible that the dc area could be in the state they are in now, yes I can make rationale for it.So I can accept it.


Obviously thats only the way I see it and I am by no means trying to force my opinon upon others.

The main thing is the cities WORK. People survive, they're reasonably safe from the outside world. One city would never accept being ruled by the other, so the only way I could see them becoming united is by conquest, and why would the inhabitants of a city compromise their safety to go to war? The main reason for war is resources, so without any resources of any note in any part of the wasteland, what's the point of territorial expansion? Much more likely they'll accept their secure environments and not bother with something as trivial as a bit more land, hence the individual cities we see in Fallout 3.

But the original games were no different. The towns didn't unite yet were tied by trade routes, Shady Sands had the agricuture, the Hub had the water, Lost Hills had the tech, each had their own commodities that deemed them significant. In FO2 we saw an evolution in the form of communites attempting to expand to one another, Vault City, NCR and New Reno were fighting for Redding and it's associated ore resources. There was a spy in the NCR that was working along side John Bishop, the head of a family/gang in New Reno, who was trying to get a hold on Vault City in an unorthodox form of subjugation. And Vault City would have eliminated their ghoul neighbours if it wasn't for the Chosen One's intervention. In the end the NCR didn't so much wage any wars, it just expanded and annexed territory as it did. It was in Van Buren when we'd actually see the factions come to a head, and the story was to be based on uniting the factions. In this sense we saw a world that evolved through time, from survival, to progression, to full on humanity all over again.

D.C just sat there for 200 years it seems, nothing remotely similar, not just because "the core region did it" but because it's the basis of human survival and progression, towns wouldn't expand a little and say "that's it, I'm tired" their very existance shows the drive and determination to want to survive and succeed in this new world, and from there they would expand, not stagnate.

Here is something interesting to consider: Under certain "theories" of nuclear war, the major seats of goverments *may* not be targeted very heavily. The theory goes, and I'm not joking here, that you would want the other side to be able to communicate its surrender to its forces and stand down. Now, TBH I think that is total BS for two reasons: Most major seats of government also have some really jucy primary, secondary amd tirtiary targets surrounding them (for example, the chineese may wish to spare the white house so the pres can surrender, but there is no way they're not attacking the pentagon, the naval shipyards and a ton of other targets nearby.)

I could totally see caravan on the scale of the originals, 3-4 carts with between 6-12 guards and several traders possibly. easily fighting off the paltry enemies that are on the megaton/rivet city route. Hell I could see Mercs easily fortifying the Mutant forts along the way to stop the incursions forever. Raiders are nothing 2-4 guys can be easily gunned down. It basically comes down to the world gamesas made seem to have been static for 200 years. Seems only vault dwellers are capable of any change in the world. Hell if Shady Sands can be turned into NCR in what 80 years, why hasn't Megaton advanced any? Also how would places like Megaton even survive if the "mutants and raiders where closing in" they have nothing in the town to sustain them. Unless you can live on water alone. Seem scav teams and the tiny caravans are the sole sources of food for the town. They would have been sieged out along time ago.

It's always seemed to me that the Capital Wasteland only recently started getting any real development going on. I believe it's a fair assumption that the D.C. area would have been hit harder than much of the rest of the US, and remember that out in the Core Region most of the places that had some agriculture going - like Shady Sands - were a good distance away from major urban areas like L.A. and Bakersfield, and those areas are in pretty poor shape in FO1 (at least before the Vault Dweller shows up). Additionally, in D.C. there are a lot of Vaults that were designed to fail some way - only one control Vault is mentioned on the Pentagon computer and it's never seen in-game. So that removes the Vaults as a source of population and technology and stability, as Vault City (sort of) was.

I get the feeling that while Megaton and Rivet City, and maybe Underworld, were able to scraqe by in the years following the war, they only just recently managed to start getting things under control enough to start growing and expanding. Before then the Capital Wasteland was just a hellhole of slavers, raiders, and super mutants. Lyon's trek across middle America and his change of heart probably helped the situation a bit by keeping the nastiness in D.C. bottled up, though he hardly deserves all the credit. Overall it just seemed to take longer for the Capital Wasteland to recover from the War, due to various security issues and getting hit hard by the War.

Ashur alludes to this during his speech in the Pitt. While he's obviously embellishing life in the Pitt and exaggerating about the crappiness of other areas, I don't think he's just talking about out of his ass when he says that the security of the Pitt is "the envy of the Capital Wasteland".