Raiders would raid something fancier than a shack. Building like your neighbor actually makes sense, just don't forget to put a man hole leading to a military base somewhere inside.

They had Mr. Handy 1000 years ago? Machine gun turrents? Computer terminals? We certainly were set back, but not to 1000 years before. Population wise perhaps, but not technological.

In Fallout I'm talking about the 200 year mark and the general way radiation is depicted. I don't have a lot of Fallout Lore knowledge to draw from other than stuff I have read online and FO4.

In Skyrim I am talking about the time-span of all the games....and more recently they did EOL (and I know that wasn't specifically Bethesda's doing). I can't remember what year that's supposed to take place but it's WAAAAAAAAAAAAY before Skyrim and they clearly are using steel weapons and the general tech appears to be equal to Skyrim which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Fallout 4 is for having fun playing the game, within its rules. It is not for demonstrating logic. You wake up from from a deep freeze to immediately demonstrate demigod abilities by having mastery over matter and energy beyond the reach of any mortal. Just take a few cans, a couple of tea cups, a some random junk and you can set up a perpetual motion machine in a minute!

Assuming that something has to happen everywhere just because it happened somewhere is probably a mistake. Technological progress isn't inevitably pointed the same direction in all societies, nor does it move at the same speed and hit the same milestones.


The culture of the Americas had something like 13,000 years to develop technically before Europeans 'introduced' firearms to the locals, whose ancestors had come from the same place as the people who first figured out fireworks. Complex technology isn't just about being clever, and simple technology isn't about being stunted, it's about having access to a variety of cultures that develop in different directions, and then having the leisure time or survival need to synthesize the advances from multiple mechanical heritages into a single new family of devices. The gun is a little like the child born nine months after an orgy in a culture that hasn't figured out how to test for parentage. Nobody can claim sole responsibility for it.

No, it doesn't assume as much as you think. Human history AND the history of fallout show that humans would band together to overcome adversity (NCR and Legion)

We know that at least SOME of the people there are decendants (vault 88)

We also know meaningful skills survived (eg farming, water retrieval)

Well the robots survived so I'm pretty sure vehicles could.

No, I'm not assuming they're not under constant attack but the same was true of the NCR (and likely the legion) . In fact those pressures almost assures the rest would band together to protect themselves.

We know medical services can be provided. There are places dotted around the area and you can build your own medical stations

I don't know about education but skills are definitely being passed on. It's a matter of survival

I'm not expecting perfection but we know the tools and knowhow are around (if nothing else the various computer terminals plus printed materials would be enough to source it)

etc etc.

aboniks said:

Interesting theories. Thanks for that. I get what you are saying but to me that argument is only going to buy you so much extra time. Eventually I think it would have to happen. I've also heard the argument that because that world has magic that it somehow causes more "normal" tech to advance more slowly. I'm not sure I buy that.

Seems to me it would be far easier for them to simply come up with a time-line that is somewhat closer to history. Doesn't have to line up perfectly just be in the ball-park!

You know, wildlife really shouldn't be so different than pre-war. The Brahmin I get it, mutations that can happen in the next generation spawned by those irradiated. But giant skeeters? Deathclaws? What are deathclaws coming from? It should take at least hundreds of thousands of years for say an iguana to become a deathclaw. IMHO (if you want it) there shouldn't be much to note in the way of changes in wildlife over that much time no matter how many nukes were delivered.

That said it's not meant to be life like. If it were I'm sure our play throughs would be limited to hours. I would have died before dusk on day one had I experienced all that in real life. There's no disease.... It's all artistic liberties and I love it. <3 One day someone will create a game that is ultra realistic where you even have to go poo 45 minutes after you ate that questionable can of beans missing the label. One shot you're dead or bleeding out. Bear attacked you? You're done. Someone stole your food cache while out looking for supplies? Starving. Dead. Hooked up with a cute irish raider down from Maine? Leisions. Itchy. Weak. Dead. But that's not really what Fallout is all about.

Got me laughing.

Power Armour, ballistic weapons, laser weapons, all sorts of armour.

Constant warfare/raids means that it has to be produced somewhere, or it would have run out a long time ago.

Same goes for the Nuka Cola and whatever dog food. No one's going to drink/eat something that has been rotting for 200 years. How many of you have ever opened a can of Surstromming? I haven't, but I have watched enough YouTube videos to know that it wouldn't be a pleasant experience, never mind the whole eating it thing.

Common sense says that it has to be produced somewhere.

If everything were as bleak as some people mention here, the game should resemble something like Far Cry Primal. Sticks and stones, javelins and bow and arrows. Those are the only things that can be produced in the absence of any technology. And then there should be feces everywhere. Without any civilisation, order and a standing government, no cleaning services would be available and no large scale cleaning effort can be directed. So there should be a lot of mosquitos killing people by spreading diseases. Especially that disease that's due to corpses lying around. Rats (ok, molerats) should also be a common place in settlements.

And speaking of feces, why're the tanks at Warwick Homestead still full of "water"? Super feces? Super radioactive feces?

Lastly, people have, since time immemorial, cleaned up the immediate area where they live. It is quite dumb that in Fallout 4, people live with junk and debris everywhere, even in their own living spaces.

This is exactly the historical blah blah that I avoid. Who cares about plausibility when playing a video game?

In reality, you would be carrying one light weapon, be sick from radiation, and one bullet would take you down. The whole game would last about 3 minutes.

Honestly, because it's fun to talk about.

Good point.

Deathclaws are created with the FEV(forced evolutionary virus), just like supermutants. Several other creatures as well. So that's the explanation for that.

You are mistaking technological progress with a civilization's current level of technology. Technological progress is how technology improves over time. It doesn't matter what level of technology a civilization it has, but how fast it changes. The last 100 years had the highest level of technological progress compared to the rest of history. We went from most people using horses as transportation to sending men to the Moon and back and seeing far beyond the limits of our galaxy. Whether technological progress is good or bad depends on the person. Slowing down our technological progress would certainly have limited our chances of destroying the world with nuclear bombs, genetically engineered viruses, or some other WMD, but it is a bit too late for that. At least WMDs currently require the resources of a country and not some kid in their garage.

Try to come up with the same amount of discoveries from 2078 to 2178 compared to 2000 to 2077 after nuclear devastation. It is just not possible. Our level of technology would decrease due to the infrastructure to support our technology being destroyed and the people with the right expertise dying or too busy surviving rather than preserving their knowledge while our technological progress will almost come to a halt. Most of our technological progress would amount to strawberries are now carnivorous so don't eat and other survival facts.

I find, that comparing an imagined world with real world is moot, on all aspects. *shrug*

Not always. There are lots of people that have tried to translate Star Trek technology to the real world and as a result we have the iPad.

All the technology in world is worthless if the people have no will to wield if for the benefit of mankind. In this universe the number of entities holding back progress far outnumber those trying to move forward. The world is stuck in a stall mate and as a result all technological and social advancement has been slowed to a snails pace.

I should have been more precise I guess. Comparing Fallouts universe with the real world is moot. I'm well aware of the inspirational effect imagined things can have, but that is not the subject here tho.

The glowing sea has so much radaition after 200 years because there was a nuclear powerstation there.

The people who get together and develop society would be the first targets of any raiders with half a brain. We could imagine in this 200 years that people have gotten together and were shortly after wiped out in a repeating cycle. Even the commonwealth is just haning on by a thread.


As complex as our modern society is, the collapse of the central government alone could take centuries to recover from even without mutants and fallout. Heck we thought a computer glitch was going to wipe society out in 2000.

Whoa. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Forced_Evolutionary_Virus

Thank you! Clearly FO4 is my entry into the Fallout world.

yep, I watched a show once that showed how if all people were gone how fast the earth would reclaim everything pretty quickly, but that would make a boring game...

when your able to enchant items with magic or wield the raw power of magic in your hands to shoot off devastating exploding fireballs or pin point accurate lightning bolts gun technology wouldnt be necessary. Of course as time goes on they create new weapons/technology but with a world filled with magic these new weapons will look and function differently.

200 years living in terror of mutants and anarchy groups can really slow down civilisation, although some have succeeded in creating a small town.