According to Fallout Lore, the "Resources War" occured shortly before the bombs fell. By "Rescources" we can safely assume Oil. However, if the Fallout world did maintian the 50's Retro state of mind that Fallout is set in, then why would they need oil? Nearly everything in those times was made of other resources, And the oil certainly wouldn't have run out by 2077. So, lets discuss what took all the oil that started the Resources War. The below comments apply to EVERY country. As apparently all countries followed Americas example.

Cars

Cars are apparently Fusion Powered, which I'm assuming is either Plasma or Radiation?
Their Paint and components would need Oil to produce in the first place, but again, this wouldn't be enough to take all the worlds' oil.

Plastic
Was never used for Domestic or industrial use before the 60's. Most things were packaged with Cardboard or Metal.

Metal
Hardly requires any amount of Oil to produce, however the amount of Metal demanded would have been substantial.

Glass
Clear Glass, that we use for Windows etc. does require Oil to make, but uses Sand also.

Factories
Would have used oil for Machinery, and factories were a very common workplace in the 50s. (As they are today.)
However, is the classic American lifestyle maintained its' "Perfect Family" look, (E.G. 2+ kids) Then the population would be very low, not nearly as high as it is today. Therefore Factories and other industrial plants would still exist, but not nearly as many would be used as they are today. This applies to everything in the Fallout Universe.

Miscellaneous Transport
Boats, Planes and Trains. Again, these would require a lot of Metal and Paint, but there wouldn't be as many Boats, Planes or Trains in the Fallout Universe as there are in ours.

Military
Guns, Missiles, Tanks and Armour, these would all have required Oil to produce. Military in the Fallout Universe would have been greatly improved during O:A (Which I don't have yet. :confused: ) This would require a lot of Oil, but again, not nearly enough to use up all the worlds' rescources.

Nukes
The Metal for the Nukes would require Oil, and whatever expolisve inside would require some sort of Crude Oil ignition. A lot of Nukes were made during the 50s Atomic era, and most still exist today.

Vaults(?)
It's safe to assume that Vaults are made out of Metal, but most buildings would usually require the same amount. Vaults are quite large, but again, Metal doesn't require much Oil to make.

Other
Feel free to post what you think would fall into the "Other" catagory, I will add suitable options. Try to keep them Oil-Related.

MISTER. BURKE! !!!1!!!one!Llama!!
Is Aweshum :3

Ok guys, DISCUSS! :thumbsup:

Materials.

Cars
- They work with nuclear power
Materials (Metal, Glass, Plastic.)
- Obviously. Even though out of those only plastic is made of oil.
Factories
- Factories don't work on Oil but maybe.
Miscellaneous Transport
- Yes.
Military
- Power Armor works with elecricity and Vertibirds with Uranium, but yes.
Nukes
- Nuclear weapons don't function with oil but missiles/bombers do.
Vaults?
- Isolation for more than two centuries would mean vast amounts of Oil, and I even cannot think of a Vault thing that'd consume oil.
Other
- Roads.
MISTER BURKE
- I doubt.

Fusion cars where invented only a few years before the holocaust. Before then almost everything where powered with engines running on either oil, diesel, petroleum or coal.

Quote from Wiki:
"Once the ore is mined, the metals must be extracted, usually by chemical or electrolytic reduction. Pyrometallurgy uses high temperatures to convert ore into raw metals, while hydrometallurgy employs aqueous chemistry for the same purpose. The methods used depend on the metal and their contaminants."

Basically, Oil.

I'm thinking they would have made Nucular power to do that, since in Fallout world it seems to be seen as a 100% good option to do anything from moving your car into solving diplomatic incidents.

Maybe resources refers to more than oil. Maybe overpopulation was draining the natural resources of the world. But oil is used for damn near anything so its easy to see why a war is fought over oil :cheat:

I doubt Overpopulation would have existed in a 1950's world.

:blink: ... please explain :cheat:

With all the nuclear power I dont think that oil was that important, just an excuse it could have been other rescources as nuclear power is non renewable.

Oil is used for a lot of things that nuclear power cannot be used for, Oil would have been a very important depending on when they made the switch from gasoline would tell you how much of it would be left. The reserves would be no where near empty but that would not have stopped countries from hoarding what there was fro monetary gain and future usage :cheat:

six was very Taboo before marriage in the 50's, and even then you only had six to have children. Most people got married and had kids, but obviously without Teenage pregnancy etc the population would have remained about the same. It would have risen slightly each year, but not nearly as much as "our" universe.

Atomic cars were not universal. They did not come out until just a few years before the Great War, and only the wealthy could afford them. So there would still have been a large number of conventionally powered vehicles around, all needing petroleum to run. And AFAIK only the US had fusion powered cars. Countries other than the US were much more dependent on oil, and when Middle East oil prices became unreasonable the Resource Wars began..

you do realize that the teenage birth rates were higher in the 1950's than they were in say, the 1990's :cheat:

Dam you beat me to it

Version 1 - It was the food !!!

Someone found out how to turn food into oil (called bio-oil) to solve the energy problem.

Then slowly every farmer found out that he could earn more money if he didn't just sell his food, but instead turned his food into bio-oil and sell it for much more profit.

Finally no one was willing to sell food cheaply until the price difference naturally balanced out and food resources cost as much as oil, meaning that food to actually eat would cost a fortune and greater organisations and countries were willing to wage war to gain control over food resources.


Version 2 - It was the printer ink !!!

The price of printing ink was climbing steeply far beyond a dollar per milliliter until it was the most valuable resource on the planet and people stopped stealing gold and jewels but cartridges of printing ink and the law had to be changed to death sentence for stealing printer ink.

Finally the countries began to dispute about the ink resources until it went out of control.


Version 3 - Its just a game !!!

No one has thought that an omnipotent nuclear microtech with a potential to create even nuke-pencils would make oil so useless that the resources of oil left for other needs would be more than enough.

While one team in the game worked to expand the nuclear vision and future, another team in the game expanded the oil resource war. When finally they found out that it didn't make sense after it was too late, the reaction was company typical - cross the fingers and hope no one realizes.

Must have been alot of rich people then they are everywhere.

Tennage pregnancy is hardly what makes the world overpopulated...


Also why does it have to be oil? There are other resources in the world...

Teenage Pregnancy was an example. :shakehead:

And of course there are other resources in the world, But this thread is focusing on oil mk?

I think it's safe to say that the Resource Wars were about petroleum and uranium. I could be wrong, but it almost says so in the intro from Fallout 1 (or 2, not so sure anymore). "But this time the spoils of war were also it's weapons. Petroleum and Uranium. For these resources China would invade Alaska, the US would annex Canada, and the European Commonwealth would dissolve into quarreling, bickering nation-states bent on controlling the last remaining resources on Earth."

How about: all of the above?

You may have heard of a certain generation, that lived during the later 40's to mid 60's called THE AGE OF THE BABY BOOMERS!!! This took place, when all the soldiers came home from the war, and got with their wives or girlfriends, and began a mass popluation growth. Most of which hit its peak during the early to mid 1950s. Teenpregnancy wasn't as wide spread as it is now, in the US, but it was around then. But in the 1950s the birth rate was around 4.3 million a year, while before WW2, the average birth rate was 2.3 million a year. So that just goes to show that the American popluation rose quite rapidly, rather than remain the same. Statistics and facts will help your idea

All the thirsty Protectrons and Mr. gutsies, DUH!!!

Heheh.. Hadn't thought of that.

I don't think that's a safe assumption at all. Between metal (for machines/robots/etc), food, land, uranium (Nuclear = GOOD?! needs lots of fuel), etc...


...there's plenty of resources that people might want to fight over.


------
re: overpopulation.

Just because it's got a retro-future-50s theme, doesn't meant it was *in* the 50s. The war happened in 2077. Even with different population growth patterns than our world, that's still plenty of time for population growth. (I could counter the "premarital six = bad" thing with "large Catholic families and/or less birth control", but it doesn't seem like a useful direction to go. )