One of the most controversial things people have to say about Fallout 3/4 is that it seems unrealistic that after 200 hundred years from the war people still live in shacks between ruins.

I never really thought about it.

But in fallout 4 the glowing-sea might be the answer to that question.What if the east coast was pretty much all like the glowing sea for the firs 50/70 years after the war?

I mean considering how RADIATION! is so overexagerated in the SCIENCE! of the fallout universe it might be possible that the radiation levels have been near deadly for a long time after the bombs fell.

I mean the Bomb that created the glowing sea is probably the biggest we have seen untill now in this franchise.Other than the Glow in fallout 1 we have pretty much only seen low yeald warheads craters dotting the wastelands.

And still after 200 years the Glowing sea area is supposed to be pretty deadly rad-wise.What if going back 100 years in time almost all of the commonwealth was part of a "Glowing sea"?.

What if the population at the time was 1/10 of the one we see in 2287?

I think this way of thinking about the whole timeline thing makes the state of the world much more believable.

Am I right?

Or am I missing something important?

Star Trek and FO4 take place at around the same time.


I think it's absurd that we'd get to Star Trek level of technology in 200 years, but it's fun so I suspend my disbelief.


Fallout's situation is less absurd, but still questionable. But, again, it's fun so I'm willing to suspend my disbelief.


That said, part of what interests me about post-apocalyptic is helping to build a new civilization. And sitting around in bombed out buildings rather than building new ones isn't the best way to do that. The shacks we see that are built from scratch are just horribly engineered, and nuclear fallout is no excuse for such shoddy craftsmanship.

I dont think the way people are living is strange. With all the devestation and conflict it doesn't seem so strange. 200 years is a lot of time on our modern times, but when nuked back to "the stone age" time will move a bit slower

The population is small and everyone is not exactly coexisting peacefully with eachother. Nope, the living standard of the people in the wasteland doesn't bother me. For me it's more strange to see food and other useful items laying around and haven't been touched for 200 years, even places that seem relatively safe has food untouched with no signs of anyone else have been there.

To me the weirdest part is that the pre-war buildings are in such good shape. There really shouldn't be to many 2+ story buildings standing so close to the blast radius. Add 200 years to that and none of the wood based buildings should be standing at all.

In order to have a civilized society basic needs must be easily met for the majority of people and then enforcement of law must also be achieved. Neither one of those requirements can be met in the current setting so any gain by one group can ultimately be taken by another.

Maybe the game's 20:1 timescale really reflects the passage of days in the Fallout universe so that the war was actually just 21 years ago our time.

But they weren't exactly nuked back to the stone age. Many pre-war weapons and technology still exists and there are people trained enough to construct and use advanced technology. Honestly , it is surprising that after 200 years so little progress has been made that we're living in small isolated settlements of less than a dozen people (not to mention it would be almost impossible to propogate the species like that). People tend to band together and 200 years is a LOONG time (the USA is barely older than that)

I'm not sure I agree. I mean both the NCR and the Legion managed to do a lot more in a lot less time. It makes sense that people would band together have, hire or elect lawmen and soldiers.

There's plenty of food left lying around and apparently farming know-how is prevalent in the current setting and banding together would provide security against raiders.

Also history has shown that you can have a "civilized" society when basic needs aren't being met for the majority of the population.

The current level of technological progress for the past few centuries is very rare in history. The very gradual technological progress is the usual state. Recovering from nuclear devastation would certainly slow down our level of technological progress to what it was 1000 years ago.

What starkaos said.. 200 years doesn't have to be that long, if you look back in history.

Diamond City is supposed to be the mega settlement of the Commonwealth, but it looks like it was put together in a year or two and no one has worked on it since.

200 years is a long time, especially when there's still technology all over the place that can be taken advantage of, but for some reason hasn't been. 20+ suits of Power Armor and no one has touched them in 200+ years?

Some very good points made in the thread already. I agree that some of it seems very inconsistent, but I've never really tried to rationalize it for the simple reason that: almost NOTHING in the game world makes sense based on real world models of what would happen to planet Earth as a result of a global nuclear war.

I've already said loads about this over in the http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1576890-dirty-water/ so I'll link to that and leave it at that unless someone has any questions.

To put it succintly: everywhere within 100 to 200 miles of a "primary target" for nuclear weapons (which would probably include large portions of the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S.) should be essentially burnt to a crisp.

Sprinkle on that a liberal dose of nuclear fallout that would pollute the atmosphere and spread it in a coating around the globe, toss on top of that a global "nuclear winter" (from all the particulates released from continental scale firestorms), let it sit for 200 years and . . . Vault 111 might well be under a sheet of ice that was several thousand feet thick and extended all the way across the continent to the Pacific . . . If such a nuclear winter were to extend into an Ice Age that is . . .

In such an eventuality, the southern U.S. would have a climate more like northern Scandinavia. The Gulf of Mexico would be largely dry (owing to so much water being sequestered in giant continent-covering sheets of ice), and Central America, while polluted with some Fallout might be relatively intact (depending on how many targets there were there), but with a climate that was shifted to be more like current day "Temperate" or "Arid" climate zones. The tropics themselves would be compressed into a more narrow strip around the equator. Across all zones, there would be prevalent high winds and aridity would be universally more common with high-rainfall regions more limited and isolated.

Applying observations of the effects of recent ice ages, the winds in some regions would likely be enough to keep constant dust storms blowing and resulting in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loess deposits hundreds of feet thick in some regions.

I'm no expert on nuclear inahilation and fallout, but I presume most area (espacially the primary targets that has all this advanced technology) wouldn't be at all hospitable until decades have passed since the bombs. So with this in mind, places like Boston and other major cities haven't been "developed" for 200 years. How does the fallout lore stand on this? Wasn't the idea at first that alot of the organized groups was formed from people released from the vaults and their offspring is a major part of the wasteland population.

Assuming the weapons used were about like those which comprise most of the Cold War and current arsenals (bombs like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W88 warheads used in contemporary U.S. Trident II MIRV SLBM missiles or the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W76) then the areas which took direct hits would not be inhospitable necessarily based on radiation levels, though would likely be on fire for many days or even weeks after the attacks. Most major cities would literally be turned into charred rubble and with high regional saturation of targets the fires would spread outward for large distances from each primary target.

Unless the bombs in question were designed to be more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout#Factors_affecting_fallout than are typical strategic nuclear weapons in the real world the radiation at each target site wouldn't be the big problem in the days and weeks after the attacks. The fires, the smoke, and then the lack of clean water, the pestilence and then the looting and disorder, those would all make it inhospitable. The amount of fallout released could be quite high IF the bombs used in the Fallout Universe are different from those in the real world Cold War, and that could also explain why they appear to have been a lot less destructive.

If many of the weapons used on 23 Oct 2077 were https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout#Factors_affecting_fallout and/or specifically designed to produce more fallout than weapons typical for real world Earth, then you could maybe get really high levels of radioactive fallout as are presented in the game.

I don't think it's so absurd. Think of what it took to build our society of skyscraqers and paved roads; thousands of people at a time cooperating, using heavy machinery like bulldozers and cranes. Using things like concrete and steel that came out of complex factories.

Now imagine trying to clear all that crap away (much less rebuild it) without the heavy equipment, and with most of the people who know how to do it dead. And while contending with super-mutants.

I think that people continuing to live in ruins requires a lot less suspension of disbelief than radscorpions and ghouls.

I agree with that.

Bombs in fallout lore are an exploding radiation dose.Considering they leave green air and puddles.Considering that weapons grade uranium IRL is opaque black and in game is bright green we can say that those bombs would live a comically intense rad fest behind.

Things would probably be less chaotic if the Institute didn't use the Commonwealth as its FEV subject dumping grounds. Or, for that matter, if they weren't so callous about collateral damage in their surface operations.

The thing is...as much as I LOVE Bethesda one thing they seem to have a real problem with Lore-wise is saying TOO MUCH time has past! They did the same crazy thing with the Elder scrolls. They say HUNDREDS of years have past between the games and we know from our own history (and yes I know this is another world) that it simply couldn't go down like that unless the people are somehow intellectually/technology STUNTED. I'm talking about the bronze age-steel age, iron age and finally the gunpowder era. There just isn't any reason why a society would not have come up with guns after HALF (or less) time has passed!

They should tighten it all up unless they really do want to introduce firearms in Elder Scrolls (and I'm not exactly wanting that either). And they are doing a different "time" problem in Fallout insofar as the Nuke questions.

The problem with the 200 years passed argument is that it "ASSUMES"

It assumes that people will naturally work together to overcome adversity.

It assumes that inhabitants in the wasteland are desendants of people that have always lived in the wasteland IE not people that had to hide away in Vaults, Subways, Hurricane/Tornadoe/Bomb Shelters....Hide away in Mountains, or otherwise find a means to escape Nuclear annihilation.

It assumes that people with meaningful skills survived.

It assumes that EMP did not destroy vehicles.

It assumes that people are not under constant assault by Mutants, Raiders, and Organized Militaristic Groups.

It assumes that medical services can be provided.

It assumes that education is/was provided.

It assumes that those skills would be passed on.

->The skills that are important for the wastelanders are not the ones that we enjoy and use in our comfy backgrounds.

It assumes homes would be rebuilt or proper maintenance could be performed all along on existing structures....

-->Doesn't account for the idea that the people with those skills may not be alive

-->Tools may not be available

-->Time and workforce may not be available

It assumes that the American Landscape

->Isnt littered with Pre-War weaponry that is still active

>Robots going nuts killing off anything

>Land Mines, Bombs, and undetonated IED's

>Surviving Invaders

>Faction, Tribal, and Anarchists

It assumes that the audience of the game would expect Lush Forrested Enviroments along with the description "just after Nuclear Destruction"

->Sorry but if you presented a lush forest that'd destroy the whole concept.

It assumes that plants would flourish in radiation just like it can in some real life examples

Whereas a game universe like Fallout 2 plants adapted by eating people.

I find it hard to believe there wasn't a faction that run Boston. The Institute could have been that faction but they stayed in the shadows because reasons

The world of Fallout is one where people who didn't escape certain doom by hiding away somewhere........

Became mutants....Ghouls, Super Mutants, and other stuff yet to be discovered

But

The fate of those that remained on the surface certainly would have changed them, they wouldn't be the humans that we think of.

Nor anything else left above.

All the plants, animals, and well everything living above would have been changed and the whole idea is that everything living up top side is different from what we the game player would expect in our own world.

The amount of time passing isn't really going to matter what matters is that its a world that is not conforming to what you find palatable and that's the point.

The inhabitants are not capable of working together on their own to turn it all around, the whole setting is put together to prevent that from happening until the player character a person from another time arrives to put back together that broken egg.

But there are no housing codes!

What are you talking about?

Fallout

36 years passed between the events of FO2 and FO3. Only 10 years between 3 and 4. Blame the original creators for bringing the time line forward 164 years with the first two games.

TES

Can't find any game years listed anywhere for TES but if I'm not mistaken the events of MW, OB and SK all take place within a 100 year span.

Hurricane Katrina

Only killed off like 1,000 people.

108 Billion in total damages though.

New Orleans really has only just recovered in the last few years....

It took a whole lot of relief effort to fix that up....

Now imagine that its world wide...No where is unaffected and there is no relief force coming ever at all.

Top that off with the emergence of hostile man eating wildlife that is capable of withstanding outlandish futuristic weaponry.

The rise of Super Mutants that are totally immune to the worst of the environmental effects heck they were purpose built for this landscape and they have weapons on par with any holdout group....Some of these Mutants are organized as well....That's freaking crazy to figure that people that have just been through a world wide changing event would be able to handle that.

I would say that in fact Ghouls should be more common than actual humans.

Ghouls, pretty much a condition of all people that couldn't escape to somewhere safe...Even then how many of them really survived probably just enough but certainly those first years when your peers start to transform around you and start losing their minds killing others around them? Would have been like an endless walking dead marathon.