Heh I always felt that after 200 years there is no way any of those foods would be anything more than dust no matter how many preservatives are in it!

The way the SS talks to a physician, " *mild wince noise* . . ugh, take a look at me Doc."

Doc: What seems to be the problem? Go through your symptoms with me one at a time."

SS: "*light moan* . . . ah, hurt all over."

Doc: "Scraqes and bruises. Still best to patch that up before infection sets in."

Animation of Doctor flicking gigantic syringe needle and cutscene . . .

Doc: "There, all fixed up. Now, take better care of yourself in the future. Don't waste my hard work and die out there."

Particularly funny delivered by the Doc in Diamond City who has a slight speech impediment.

and the half-dozen other variants of all these lines . . . sure not so funny after you've heard it 40 times, but ambient humor nonetheless.

200 years for them is 3 years in real life, the food would be fine.

Its all the preservatives.

beef jurky would be fine to eat if nothing else

I don't know a lot about the fallout lore but I'd think most of the humans did not come out from hiding for at least 75 years after the bombs fell because of rads so most of the world would have stopped till then execpt the mutants and monsters. So I could see how things are still ruined 200 years later.

Diamond City is well defensible. The surrounding buildings may be well defensible, but they are currently occupied by raiders, gunners, ghouls, super mutants and hostile robots.

Look up any post apoc story and you'll find a place like diamond city. It's a fairly common thing and makes sense in this context.

Nothing like 3 year old bubble gum or Sugar Bombs. Wait, so if we go with game time compared to real time, my character from NV could be almost 400 years old now, looks like he didn't age a day, or maybe that's it since all the clocks are stuck at 9:47 (I think) time just stopped, nothing is aging, time is man made after all except......

ya when you stop playing time stops in their universe lol.

well I am sure 200 year old Vodka and such would knock the player on their butts, I mean alcohol gets stronger the longer it sits doesn't?

That depends if yeast and sugars are still present to convert it to alcohol ( I doubt there would be after that amount of time). Otherwise, bacteria could be present causing the rot-gut, pounding headache type feeling that may make the alcohol seem stronger though it really isn't.

so you are saying either way this old alcohol we drink in the game should essential knock us out?

no it tastes better, like Benjamin Franklin's wine is worth $50 million a bottle because of its taste if it is keped in a relatively cool and dry environment without letting too much dust settle. Otherwise it would be a giant dust ball with a bottle inside.

Unless they are contaminated, distilled liquors cannot get any stronger from aging. All the sugar should have been used up before the liquor was distilled. Aging primarily changes the taste of distilled alcoholic spirits, though I believe there might also be a very slow process of ethanol breakdown, which would actually make their effects weaker.

After distillation, a liquor like whiskey or bourbon has aldehydes, esters and fatty acids still present, and it is the combination of these (as well as any trace compounds picked up from the barrel or other container in which it is distilled or aged) which give these spirits their distinctive tastes. Vodka has undergone multiple stages of distillation or filtering to remove as much of these as possible and it is why vodka has its "clean" or flavor less (though slightly watered down compared to "pure grain alcohol") ethanol flavor.

Whether it is intended by the game or not, there is really no reason that any of these spirits and beverages should ONLY be derived from pre-War. Fermentation and distillation, while subtle and easily messed up, are not particularly difficult and would certainly be among the skills people would retain! Depending on the top of stoppers or caps used, even bottling at a relatively large scale should be doable.

I agree that a lot of the bottles you find in various ruins, would SEEM to be from the original pre-War residents, I doubt there are very many that absolutely could NOT have wound up there more recently.

Not sure, but I'd guess a 200 year old bottle of vodka would taste pretty much the same as a 2 or 20 year old bottle. However, that assumes that the cap is perfectly hermetic. It is also possible that, even in a hermetic container there are very slow processes that lead to breakdown of the ethanol, but I do not know my organic chem well enough to say. So if anything, it might just taste weak. Stuff that has the other trace products of distillation present (whiskey, bourbon, etc.) might just taste more "smooth."

ADDIT: Ah hold on, http://www.shakestir.com/features/id/551/science-of-barrel-aging Seems that after 15 years (and assuming the container is sealed) the consensus is "no changes occur!"

Actually you're wrong with regards to TES: It is 18 years from TES: 1 to TES: 2, 12 years from TES:2 to TES:3, 6 years from TES:3 to TES:4 and then 200 years (there's that number again...) from TES:4 to TES:5

ESO takes place 900 years or so before Skyrim, roughly (originally it was said it would be exactly 1000 years before Skyrim, but apparently they changed their minds, if one counts it out it adds up to 900something IIRC)

Isn''t the NCR mentioned by traders in FO4?

There are several unrealistic elements that don't help the game, others being fine for the sake of gameplay (like zombies, monsters).

One issue is the absence of vegetation after two centuries, even though we know from nuclear tests or catastrophes that nature is quite resilient and will regrow pretty quickly.

Since we have the example of NCR and other groups, it is hard to believe that people haven't created some powerful modern settlements, even cities, around vaults (that had technology, information, materials, tools, parts, etc) in 200 years! There is even a Vault City in Fallout 2. A lot of ruins could have been demolished and rebuilt. The DC settlement in Fallout 4 is a real let down. It is just a shanty town, not even like Rivet City in Fallout 3.

Having all kinds of dangerous enemies, and harsh environment are even more reasons for people to form groups to survive, but also to fight off the threats! The Gunners are such an example, but there is no other join-able faction on the good side like them.

Since everything is so destroyed, it is hard to understand how most people know how to read and write, especially raiders or mutants

Everything looks like the bombs fell a year ago, not 200 years. I would expect more diversity, like we have the Covenant settlement, clean and rebuilt, or even new structures, not just shacks made out of junk.

Unfortunately, the game lacks the option to rebuild (and clean) certain places, by quests or by using the building engine within settlements. It would be nice to repair the old pre-war houses or build new ones. There is little sense of improvement, since your communities are still living in shacks, around debris, junk piles, and using makeshift technology. Later in the game there are no advanced settlement options, like better structures, generators, living conditions, sanitation, education, etc.

I disagree that everything should be more restored to pre-war levels. If you have actually studied history, you know that the damage from wars sometimes take literally hundreds of years to restore. True, in other instances stuff gets fixed faster, but not always.

It is also possible that, there WAS a higher degree of rebuilding at some point in the past and that intervening events have led to a second cycle of decay. The Institutes meddling seems to have correlated with Shaun, so that is what? 100 years at most? (assuming they were just 'getting going' with meddling around the time he was abducted, and then another 60 years of his life).

The fact that some areas of the world are largely rebuilt means nothing. The United States, indeed ANY "states" no longer exist. What we have _at best_ are isolated city states that are surrounded by harsh and largely inhospitable teritory. The NCR, the Legion, whatever regional organizations that existed in FO1 and FO2: these are the exceptions not the "norms" and clearly they are even portrayed that way in those games.

The one thing that I do find a bit unbelievable:

1. The common person just seems to be fairly feckless, at least as they are portrayed in FO4. I would think that a flavor more like the Pashtun tribesmen would be more fitting for the civilians, but then I think Beth wanted to make them more familiar so they are more like suburbanites than armed pastoralist defenders/raiders.

2. Lack of a caste system and a social order that too closely resembles a vestigal 21st century America. At minimum, a warrior caste and a "scientist/priest" caste would seem to have emerged and persisted across most all groups. Beth nods that they acknowledge this eventuality when it comes to "raiders" but then regular people are just these vanilla flavored lost suburbanites wishing for new items in the grocer aisle.

That might have some credence if we both places we'd seen on the East Coast looked more damaged than they are. But there's still skyscraqers and elevated highways and, my personal favourite, the entirety of Pennsylvania Avenue is completely fine even though the White House is a ground zero.