vajan is saying exactly that, that we can't trust it:

"yes in way, just that what the in game info say is not 100% truth, its may be from manipulated to pure fabricated info.... depends a lot where the info come from. and then the cans the computer files is corrupted and just miss lead it."


My argument is that there is no such thing as an objective source. You will never get an unbiased view. You can put question marks next to them all you want, but at the end of the day they are accounts of what happened. The events happened we know America was winning and would have won. We know this from multiple sources, granted they were all American sources but there are multiple sources.

We have the memorial. We have President Richardson. We have the mentions in OWB with "Little Yangtze." We also have accounts from Honst Hearts with Randel Clark's Combat Armour. There is the mention of the City of Nanjing being occupied by American forces. Two major Chinese Cities known to be captured by American forces along the Yangtze River, Nanjing and Shanghai.

I would like to point out that those sources aren't American news or media propaganda but for the Future Weapons Today magazine but that isn't run by the American government. So all those sources are independent free of media bias. These sources come from private companies, War department building a memorial, individual soldiers and records kept in camps. To say "well they are all American sources so we can question their legitimacy" to me is crazy.

America was clearly winning the Sino-American War and they would have won it.

I see this as a language barrier type of thing. The word "may" indicates that the is saying the data could have been manipulated. not that it was.






Maybe i am not sure which way the US forces went. But those cities would be amongst the first encountered if the invasion started by sea. What do we know about the interior of China?

As for Future weaopns today.
Ther are interviews ith government officials and if any military hardware is written about in that magazine. (pretty sure PA is on the cover?), then the US govt has to sign off on it. Usually in an instance like that the govt is painted in a favorable light.
Check out how movies with US govt hardware in them are made. They will not let you use their stuff, if they dont sign off on how you make them look. It is also entirely possible that a publication, which I would presume is very right wing- would be pro governement. |
a media outlet not being run by the governement means very little, especially in a culture like the pre-great war US.
Heck, Vaut Tek isn't a government owned company- They are a privately owned corporation. Sure they are hold govt contracts. But that is not the same as being a part of or being owned by the govt. What did the press say about the vaults?

Gun magazines often have articles about Military Weapons.

IMO given what we know about the Sino-American War America was winning. They had driven China out of Alaska. Their stalled invasion of China was finally broken by the increase of American T-51b Power Armour. The forces they had in Alaska could then be sent to China. How much of China did America conquer? That is up for debate but it would be safe to assume that it was enough to make China launch nuclear weapons which in turn started WW3.

For the invasion to start being successful China's Naval Forces were most likely severely decimated. Their airforce completely wiped out and their ground forces starved of fuel. With the mouth of China's Largest and most important river in the hands of America. They would be really screwed.

Fallout lore tells us China's annexed territories were in revolt

Our annexed territories revolted, too. The US interior was also breaking down somewhat.
This is exactly why the national image would have to be painted int he color of winning.

What would the backlash in the US do to war efforts, if it picked up momentum?

America sent troops with T-51b to Canada. As for the problems America was having, they would have gone away. I say this because of Dead Money. The machines in the Sierra Madre were going to go into nation wide production. As well as America discovering Cold Fusion their fuel problems wouldn't be as bad anymore. Technology was going to solve alot of problems America was having in 2077, only the Great War happened. If the Great War never happened things would have improved.

China was backed into a corner, they couldn't win. Their last kick of the can (Invasion of Alaska) failed and America was invading China itself. Without the fuel from Alaska their war machine would have collapsed. America T-51b PA which turns a man into a walking tank are nuclear powered and last hundreds of years. Fuel wasn't a problem for America.

People being executed by those in PA wouldn't just go away.
We are talking US citizens being murdered by their government and soldeirs being disillusioned by it. Cold fusion would quell people worrying about the future of energy, but not their fears of an over-reaching government that was turning into a totalitarianist state. I don't think it would be as cut and dry as all of that- not enough time passed bewteen that going down and the great war hap[pening to say how it would have played out..





That would be a corner about the size of the CONUS. PA is great, but it is slow, you couldnt be able to swim in it it is susceptable to ambush by mines.

If all events stay on the same track sure the US would win out. But unforseen variables are unforseen.
Lets throw a variable out and say China got information on fusion tech. Either through spy networks well before the US invaded China and had tie to study and begin duplicating PA, or after the fact, off of some early PA froma fallen soldier.

We cannot assume what China had in its interior.
China invaded alaska because the US sabotaged their oil field efforts.
Looking for future sources of oil doesnt necessarily mean they have or were even about to run out.

Let's add once more this argument into the fray:

October 23 2077: Nuclear War breaks out: The game tells us: Who struck first is unknown.
If China struck first: It would be logical a last effort to turn the tides..
If America struck first: Why... ?
From 2076 onward (according to American sources) American forces only had miltary successes..

The game however suggests that both nations were at a stalemate.. hence anyone could have launched first.. It is part of the games theme... War never changes..
In other words (the full truth) is in the eye of the beholder.

or to use your own reasoning:
Exactly.. the games ambiguity towards the nuclear conflict (who started) basically asks us.. to question the lore as has been put down.
Another argument: The ease with which China could infiltrate America basically shows that pre-war they were powerful but could alos show they were not nearly as powerful as we might think.

You realize that the reason there's no such thing as Chinese PA, is because their military complex couldn't grasp how to reverse engineer the technology, and instead focused their time/energy elsewhere and made themselves the Chinese Stealth Suit to counter in a way, American PA units which were cutting through their ranks rather easily.

China in real life has most of it's infrastructure on their coast, not the interior and I'm willing to bet the same can be said for China in the Fallout Universe. Most of that infrastructure would have been decimated by attacking US troops, and of course bombers from the air, etc.

Those people were technically US citizens becaused they were annexed. They were being executed because they openly rebelled against the United States government. For all we know those people killed a bunch of American troops that morning and are getting what is coming to them.

But it isn't just cold fusion that was going to make the world better. It was the replication technology in OWB. They could make whatever they wanted just like the machines in Star Trek. That would solve the food problems and the fuel problems. "Need more uranium, well I will just program the replicator machine"



Last I checked it isn't slow and we can swim in PA. Being susceptable to mines is just speculation.


It would be to little too late. China was losing the war badly that is why WW3 got started. If they got their hands on Cold Fusion tech or how to make PA it wouldn't to them any good. Their Cities are being invaded and bombed. They wouldn't have time to make enough to turn the tide of War. I am sure by the end of WW2 the Germans got their hands on all kinds of Russian tech and had pretty advanced tech of their own, but they couldn't use it because their cities were being burned to the ground and Allied and Russian troops overrunning everything. China as of October 23, 2077 would be in that same state.


The world was all but out of Oil. Alaska had the last of the worlds oil. China needed that oil so they invaded. You can draw parallels with WW2 Japan. They needed resources and oil. America cut off their oil. So Japan attacked America's fleet in the hopes it would buy them a few years to run wild in the south pacific. Japan also held hope America would be so demoralized by Pearl Harbor, that America wouldn't fight back. China needed Oil. America had the Oil and they weren't going to give it to China. So China invadeds Alaska in the hopes America would surrender, but America didn't give up.

Seems reasonable. But we are not given any information about secret programs the Chinese were working on and China is a mighty secrative nation . The idea is pure speculation, I admit.

Current day china is seeing people living in the country as being better off than those in shanghai, which they are considered tourists in. in another 60 years, the old infrastructure will be the ghettos. We certainly cannot assume that the coast is the center of everything just because it is here in our universe, which also happens to be in the past. To the contrary, it could be argued that given that the resource wars had been going on ,china would look to moving some of their infrastructure inland to protect it. It would seem pretty silly to put all of your eggs in one basket and hang said basket in front of the faces of those who are out of eggs and demanding them.

America invaded China while China still occupied Alaska. Once America took back Alaska they sent more troops and PA to China and broke the stalemate. From January of 2077 to October 23, 2077 America was kicking ass and chewing bubble gum in China and they were all out of bubble gum.

Yes, they of course would be Americans. But, given soldeirs themselves were breaking ranks.. that signals that people did not think it was OK to do.

Tharts well and good. But I am talking about civil liberties. I had phrased this with the question "what would the backlash do to the war effort if it picked up momentum?"

Relating to who struck first. If it were the US vs China- even if China were losing.. Why would the rest of the world be nuked? Think about how many nukes that would mean China had. I dont believe the US, if they were winning would nuke every other country in retaliation to China- what would be the point of that?

Could it be that another nation startlaunched.. And China and the US not knowing if said country (or countries) were working with their opponents or not panicked?

In times of war civil liberties go away. Chinese citizens being locked away in camps is a big break in civil liberties. This happened in WW2 with Japanese American but I am sure you already knew that. They were rebels and they were getting killed for it. I am sure many American's in the Fallout Universe would be ok with it. After all they are ok with the Chinese being sent way to camps.

It's not like they were gunning down Americans in the streets of NYC they were dealing with Canadian Rebels.

Mutual Assured Destruction. A nuclear war doesn't stay just between the two countries. Once one person launches everyone launches.

It's more likely that they would just defend as best they could, the locations of their infrastructure. It would take too much time and resources, to move it all, or most of it anyway, which China couldn't likely waste since the US was already deeply into the country. Their best bet China could do, would be as Germany and Japan did in WW2, where instead of moving their infrastructure elsewhere, they simply moved their troops and planes to the factories and plants, which were still working, and defend them there the best they could. It's likely China would take this route, as any country would really.

Then why... would they as is merely suggested (because of its ambiguity) possibly launch first...? If history is key here... than the logical conclusion would be China initiated first strike.. The fact that the omnipotent narrators keep this from us... (which is btw a play on war never changes... IE we will never know the truth) is for me a sign we don't know the absolute truth


Which is why we never had any Nuclear wars (as historians are concerned) because in our time it is an existing theory. In the FO world it became fact after the event.

You have to also consider the riots occouring over the New plague, info released about FEV testing and food shortages. Troops in PA were also sent to deal with those people all across America. We also cannot assume that most[i/] people were fine with camps that contain fellow americans, even if [i]some might have been OK with Chinese camps. Troops breaking ranks says volumes.

As an added note:
Warning Real world context

The advance of Patton:
Patton rolled with ease towards Germany in his WW II campaign

because of Market Garden the advance was held... because resources were reverted towards British infantry...
What if .... this were true for the american advance in the US.
Resources were, as the game puts it, gone... no more.. The edge by powerarmor might be gone because of environmental reasons... etc..

I am not saying that anyone really moved anything. What I am saying is that by the time the invasion happened, the coast might not even be the infrastructure. It wasnt that it was moved. It was that people living inland had more money and built up their local infrastructure over time- this is happening now and tehre are already huge cities being built- 50 years from now would be about the time of the resource wars. It would be very difficult to project how much could change in mainland China between now and then, but the current trend shows inward growth..
I cant say it would ahppen just because it is happening in our universe. But it certainly is a plausible option.


And of course right now Shanghia is a huge port city, because thats where you can get a lot of trade through comring from the Chinese interior, and to the Chinese interior. But as resources start dwindling? Who would they be trading with? Aside from Naval operations- theres no reason for anyone to be there. The resources would all be in the Chinese interior- being harvested. Why waste those resources moving frieight to a dead port city that has no one left to trade with?

well, it seems that with the mindless masses being so commenplace in both sides of the arguement, we would have destroyed eachother and there would not have been a post apocolyptic society.

Whether China's infrastructure was newly built inland, is speculation that will just have us going in circles again and again, with neither of us being able to conclude to one another, what's what since it's simply speculation. But if we take where Chinese's infrastructure was in the '50s and still mostly is today, we can say that it's without a doubt, on the coast and that's where Chinese infrastructure in the Fallout Universe, is too. So if it's still mostly on the coast, then that means China would have to, whether they wanted to or not, continue to move resources brought from the interior, to the coast because that's where most of their working infrastructure would be. They couldn't just build a ammunition factory in the interior, and fire it up. It would be more reasonable and viable really, for China to instead of spending the resources they could on that new factory, instead send them getting to the coast to an already operating ammunition factory and probably pumping out millions of rounds a day.

Most of the time it's best to continue on with the direction things are, than try and divert them somewhere new because it usually takes up more energy moving them somewhere new, than somewhere that's already doing what the new place is supposed to do too.

This thread of course is supposed to be all about speculation.

Continuing on with the way things are isn't the way the nature of anything works. The only constant is change. Thats what makes the satement "War never changes" so dramatic.

Lets try looking at this another way. I live in CA. People and businesses are fleeing this state. Too many people, too much beaurocracy, cost of living is getting to high and with those businesses leaving, people arent being paid as much, which messes with taxes and adds to school systems failing.. The social infrastructure is not working properly, as a result, all the people and businesses that are leaving are moving inland- because there is room and potential for growth there. At some point it becomes cheaper to build somewhere else, than to rebuild the ruins of an aging infrastructure, all the while trying to beat out competitors that were much more established than you.

Currently, Mainland China is seeing the same thing. The people in the country are becoming more wealthy. The people in the big cities used to look down on them because they were so poor. But now they are upset, because all of the rich country folk are using their cities as tourist destinations and cloging up their cities.. Those country people come to visit. Not to stay. With a port city as old as shanghai, there is no room for someone to come in and set up shop. Everything has already been built and built over... So they re-invest their money where they are, in the country, where it has more growth potential and their reigion sees a return of the money they spend.
_it wouldn't even need to be about a port city like shanghai failing. It is more about the rest of China growing up and getting bigger. A lot can change in 50 years. 15 years ago, here I sit at this very moment was a wild flower field with rolling hills in the background - as far as you could see. Now, I would guess there are at least 5,000 residences immediately visible.
Think about the sheer number of people that there will be in the next 50 years. Some may go for the sci fi future cities.. But droves of people will develop the interior- thats just numbers.

It is about speculation, but like I said, it'll just end up with us going back and forth, in a never ending circle if we keep debating whether Chinese military infrastructure was moved inland. It's already starting to turn into that, because you keep bringing up the point about bringing things inland, while I say it's not likely to be as strong as what's already in place and being used, which happens to be on the coast.

I live in California too, but you can't compare what's happening here economically, to what happened to China in the Fallout Universe. They're two very different sides of economic failure. What happened to China, is more like what happened to Germany and Japan near the end of WW2, not what started happening to Cali in late-'07 and '08. It's not about businesses building factories and plants inland, moving money, it's simply getting out as much product as you can, with what you have left to produce with. China's economy would have been in the toilet by the time of the Great War, and throughout the entire US invasion of it. Their key military infrastructure would have been major targets for US Bombers and the like, just like in WW2, and anything new would have been bombed before it could properly be put to use, forcing Chinese troops and planes to defend what factories and plants they were left with. Just like Germany and Japan in WW2.

Like I said, it's more viable really for someone to use what they already have, than to build somewhere new and divert resources elsewhere. It's easier to repair and keep working on what's there already, than to create something entirely new and waste resources directing new things to the new plant or factory. California is a completely different case than a collapsing Chinese military complex. China in the Fallout Universe was running low on resources, because they'd lost their hold on what remained of reachable oil, and that was Alaska, so what they had left they were probably using for what was left of their war effort, not putting money into business to build new factories or plants because the business was likely not there, or able to function properly enough to make anything stick.

China was faced with no other option. They were going to lose, 128 years or so of communist leadership finally faced with being defeated. They couldn't take it. They had no way of winning but they could play the spoiler. They commited suicide, taking the world with them.

"We were winning too, fought them from the Yukon to the Yangtze, but then those damn Reds launched" President Richardson.