No the alien ship in was an Easter egg. The "Aliens" walking around the wasteland were http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Wanamingo.

Well thats obnoxiously misleading, none the less.


What I meant by it not being able to knock down buildings, is that with so much mass cluttered into one giant city, the building formed a sort of wall, where as the flames could not simply disintegrate the entire thing, it just left it in surprisingly well upheld shambles.

Many of the buildings may have been built (during the war with China) to withstand bombs better.

The momuments of Washington DC were built long before the Great War. Only the White house failed to survive.

The idea that the building being close together some how saved them does not work. LA is a large city and the population would have been even bigger in 2077 and much of that city was wiped of the map. What was left standing where burned out shells. What destroys buildings is the blast wave. Bomb goes off in the air the City gets hit twice, blast going down then back up. Then the fires and in Fallout 200 plus years of weather and neglect.

Everybody knows that Fallout 3 is full of canon ****ups, inconsistences, and plot holes but that's not what this thread is about.

From what I understand, the bombs were smaller in the Fallout universe than what we have in stockpiles today. In essence, because atomic energy was used for industrial power and military ordinance, societies used less for bombs. So instead of multi-megatonic fission loads, the majority of bombs would be one megaton or less, more likely a few hundred kilotons. Thus their overall blast capability would be smaller, but they would spread radiation further by using a bunch of these bombs instead of one big one. My theory is LA, as the largest single metropolitan area in the US, would haven gotten several of the big, several megaton'ers while the rest of the cities got smaller bombs. Also, the White House was a direct hit, whereas it seems most of the other land marks weren't that close to a large blast.

But it's also fiction, which means anything is possible.

People in the 50s took the UFO threat serious until the USAF denied they existed. An event in 1952 because quite famous over night involving UFOs over Washington D.C. So someone explain to me again why Aliens have no place in Fallout. Its part of 50s American culture that spawned much of the Sci-Fi of the day.

We don't know for sure that the bombs in Fallout Universe were all small bombs. Still LA is not only City wiped off the map. Vegas is the only city that lasted in the West and it has a reason. Even Tactics has no standing Cities. DC is the capital of America so one would think it would take alot. 77 nukes were for the Mojave alone. If the White House was hit dead on then everything around it would be gone. DC is in to good of shape and so is Pittsburgh.

"But it's also fiction, which means anything is possible" is total crap. Yeah its Fiction but Fallout has its own set of rules. If other Cities were wiped clean off the map by these "smaller bombs" then so should DC.

Aliens destroyed the missiles using their repulsor rays. I mean they made that pretty clear from the intro.

I'm just stating what is obvious, that is, what is given in games and interviews with the developers, tie-in literature, etc. There is likely a concrete reason why some places survived while others were wiped clean, but in the end, it doesn't really matter. If you have ever seen DC, you'll know that the in-game city is completely decimated from what exists today. In the original games, the idea of what an entire city would look like is not present, though San Francisco does a pretty decent job. Bethesda's representation can't be simply called infactual because too much of the original city is left. Think about it - mostly stone and concrete structures are what you seen standing. The shockwaves from bombs can take them down, but flame and radiation/fallout are the most destructive forces to inorganic and organic entities, respectively. So fires aren't likely to take out stone/concrete structures, and obviously billions of people died from the blasts and radiation/starvation/raiders/radscopions/FEV experiments that followed. But having no precedent in the series for a representation of a full city post-war, I think there is nothing non-canonical about Bethesda's DC.

The firestorms would have burned anything not stone away. Every Building would have been burned out shells with nothing much in them, just like any standing buildings in Fallout. Many nukes over and over would have brought the buildings down.

Jokes aside, I really think we should stop saying how the DC couldn't have survived and concentrate more on how it could have survived. Why? Well, it's canon, stupid as it may seem like the Star Wars Prequels it happened and no matter how much fanfiction you write what Beth says goes pretty much, because Fallout is their intellectual property.

I don't think there is a logical way for the City to have survived and for DC to look so dead. Its a damned if you do and damned if you don't.

One: DC was not hit that bad after all, even though its the capital, which means there should be way less Radiation and trees and plants and a blue sky.

Two: DC was hit way worse then even the Glow, which explains there being no plant life but then how the hell are there still buildings?

Also Pittsburgh some how survived and Point lookout as well and there's trees all over that place.

Then there is: how the hell did no one figure out how to farm but yet can do complicated facial sugurey? There is no working ecnonomy. If the place is so bad why stay?

C'mon, Styles. This is the third time I've seen this bit of yours about 'no farming but they have facial surgery'. It's just one guy who's a certified genius, hiding out in a high tech lab. You make it sound like there's 'New You' boutiques everywhere.

I've seen you make some very good points elsewhere and I enjoyed joking with you about the bears, but this is not your best riposte. Please retire it?

Respectfully, really.

What makes it all the sillier about the farming thing is when you read these http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Hilltop_farm_ruins_terminal_entries:facepalm:

I'll think about retiring it. I know he's the only one and he's a loner not willing to help. My point is the Wasteland is full of doctors and lab workers and its been 200 years and yet not one has figured out that if you put seeds into the ground those seeds will become plants that you can then eat/get more seeds from them. Or to get a bunch of Brahmin and breed them. I am not saying they should know all about irrigation systems, crop rotation or animal husbandry but they should know the bare basics.

In Fallout one if you have enough intelligence/science you can go to a farmer in Shady Sands and let him know about crop rotation.

I'm sure some one tried to plant crops; those mysterious folks from Hilltop Farm had some success.

Planting doesn't work now, though. It makes me wonder (and this is just fanwank) if there was some special property to the bombs that targeted DC (Heh. I.. can.. just.. reach.. it...) that retards plant growth?

Oh, and one more thing that occurs to me. We always seem to be talking about how the DC society should have reached this or that level of development. Here's something to chew on -- maybe we should regard it as a society in decline, at the point of collapse? That would have eased a lot of the arguments; just say that the DC area is doomed unless the purifier is successfully implemented.

The real problem, of course, is the writing staff at Bethesda. Morrowind was okay, but Oblivion and Fallout 3, as obsessively fun as they are, are designed as playgrounds. It always irked me that they didn't put more thought into their world design, like the way that you can sail from the Imperial City to the sea via a river that doesn't reach the sea, or the utter lack of roads leading to other provinces. In Fallout 3 we are given the wonderful (YMMV) atmosphere but only sketchy information about how it got that way. I know I'm overthinking this. I accept what I see, but some explanations would have been nice. You shouldn't have to go the WIKI for answers, you know?

Anyway, peace, Styles, and retire that pony! :biggrin:

I'd say Enclave should be Tier 1 in terms of organization and ability to project power, but this is combined with a Tier 3 population at best.

Let's not get into the tired "Fallout 3 has no visible agriculture, so its settlements couldn't survive" bit again; they clearly get food from somewhere, probably at least partially from farms that just weren't put ingame for understandable reasons. More clarification would have been nice, but it is what it is.

Maybe because the "settlements" in FO3 are 4 guys or less in shacks most of the time? XD

Tell us those understandable reasons.

Well I have some ideas why DC is such a [censored]hole but still standing.

1)It wasn't hit by nukes, but poor management of power plants before the war and no maintenence after the war made them slowly decay and now they're poisoning the city indefinitely.
2)Idiot management by companies like robco and repconn made them dump barrels of goo all over the place.
3)All the crops are located outside of DC, and are conveniently off the map in Virginia or Pennsylvania.
4)The game mechanic "radiation" is actually representing generic toxic fumes, not just nuclear radiation(like why it's in so much water)
5)Everybody has an underground mushroom or hydroponic farm hidden underneath settlements.
6)Fancy Lad Snack Cakes were just so delicious, a nearly infinite supply was sent to DC before the war, and everybody's chowin' down on them there.
7)Bethesda herp'derped.

The climate in the DC area in Fallout 3 is like that of a place that lacks a lot of water- either some type of desert or grasslands/steppe. This would explain why there is very little farming, and most people raise brahman or salvage/hunt for food (hunting or herding animals is usually the only way to survive in real life places that aren't suited for agriculture, such as the arctic or many parts of central Asia). The water being too heavily irradiated/toxic for most crops (instead of an outright lack of water) is what it preventing large scale agriculture. The lack of agriculture also explains the smaller population when compared to places like the Mojave, and the small population (but relatively large numbers of raider and dangerous creatures) explains the lack of developed civilization. It's a mystery though why the water supply would be so bad after 200 years though. It's a good thing your dad Liam Neeson was there to help fix the water problem though.


Edit: added Canterbury Commons to Tier 3.

Yksmi, you do know Fallout and Fallout 2 also take place in desert like areas and yet they have farming. DC did not look desert like to me, it was just dead. There are rivers in DC and water puddles and only Arefu had brahmin and not that many.

Raditation in Fallout works much differently than real life, and from what I can understand most of you all are over anaylsing the situation.
A. The buildings stand so we can explore
B. There is no agriculture because the water's impure
C. No agriculture produces large amounts of raiders.
D. Raiders further stop delevopment
E. The water's still impure.

Yes! That simplifies everything. Honestly, I hadn't thought of it that way, but I can see that. My only complaint is after the endgame, there should be a change in the game world. But that's an arguement of "Should Broken Steel have happened or not?" I guess.