Just wondering how it would have panned out if the nukes had never been launched.
Obviously "there would be no Fallout games" is an answer. But I am wondering what would have heppened. In other places.

John Maxons groups desserting- rammifications?

Would the "bickering nation states" of the EU continue bickering? OR would some nation states eventually gain power, bringing larger factions to battle or ultimately stablize the reigion?

Would nuclear power as an energy source eventually spread around the world and not just reside in the US, making the resource wars for not? What other means of nergy would there be and would people really need nuge energy sources after their nations were forced to start over, with less people?


Purely speculation of course, but I would like to hear what you all would think might happen.


Cheers

Those that rebelled at Mariposa would have been dealt with by the military.

America would have taken over China. Tech seen in Dead Money would have put America back on top again.

Humans would be trying to inhabit mars with a lot of the funds coming from Mr. House.

They would also start making other energy sources, like hydrogen or something.

Black-bagged, all of them.

There would be no fallout. The world would be plunged into nuclear caos without fallout, and then fallout would appear even after that.
There is no way to stop the great war, watch Terminator and it explains that the ends of days has to come.

Because war (you know this one). War never changes.

Well it actually does..
during the cold war.. Atomic war was always looming but not very likely to happen... Why MAD (mutual Assured Destruction)
I hate to reference a thriller author but I will anyways.
In 1986 Tom Clancy wrote a new thriller " Red Storm Rising" .. OK you say.
The book is based on a war game scenario designed by Clancy and Larry Bond.
It basically deals with a conventional war between the Warsaw Pact and Nato. Although fiction.. a lot of war hypotheses put forward in this novel have actually been proven to be correct by the first gulf war.
And the main hypothesis that a conventional WW III with no or limited (tactical)use of nuclear weapons, would have been more likely than an all out nuclear war.. is actually a very popular theory with military historians.

However the political system as well as world politics as described in FO are very different.

It an ok theory, but as soon as tactical nukes are used, it would be inevitable that full fledged nuclear war began.

WWII in the Battle of Britain began as "strategic bombing" but eventually turned into the bombing of anything and everything. If a war ever started and someone decided to try tactical nuking, I would prepare for the end.

With that said, in the FO world, nuclear war could have been inevitable as well, with the shaky world politics and resource wars.

Rather than seeing a nuclear end to the world, it would have simply been a global resource collapse. Like what people nowadays are always going on about, with oil theorists saying that oil has peaked, and our national reserves starting to deplete as we have to draw from them more and more, the world of Fallout would have seen what people nowadays in the real world, speculate we'll see sometime in the future.

Europe in the Fallout Universe, as we already know, collapsed from resource depletion after fighting in the Middle East, that's why they dissolved into a continent of fighting nation-states. The same thing would have simply happened to North America, Asia, and the rest of the world. The US would likely see some of the mutations and experiments done in secret like in Fallout, but there wouldn't obviously be Ghouls or Super Mutants since they need some amount of nuclear radiation to be created in the first place (along with of course FEV for Super Mutants). There would definitely be things like Nightstalkers though, and other things created in labs that got out and bred across the land.

Governments would likely fall because of a lack of control, letting newer groups form, which would probably be regional and not national. Some claiming to be the real government, while others claiming to be something new entirely. Groups like the NCR, and Caesar's Legion would probably never form, or form as we see them in the games/lore. The Enclave, would likely have to redirect their mission to something new, seeing how they were all ready for nuclear annihilation and there wouldn't be any so called "mutants" for them to purge and create anew.

Actually... that is exactly what military historians are debating..
Was the MAD doctrine effective in preventing a nuclear war..? Thank God we will never know.. I do feel that it helped certain conflicts from escalating or prevented militairy intervention by both the US or The USSR during the cold war (Nam,Afghanistan and the cuban missile crisis spring to mind)
I don't have any empirical proof for it.. however nor does the notion that the use of tactical weapons would escalate an ongoing conflict.

The problem with the premise you put forward is that you compare an escalating conventional war... with a theoretical situation.. in which we know both the attacker and the defender would be destroyed.
And I actually disagree. Germans started bombing large English cities to induce fear. The bombing of Hamburg and large industrial cities, disgusting as it might sound, were in the beginining of the US/RAF campain mostly aimed at both factories and workforce. It was not until the end of WW II that both nations started to also target pure civilian targets to hasten the end of the war.

However... there is a large difference between our world and the picture painted by the FO world, which would make it more likely to cause a apocalyptic nuclear conflict.
There is isolationism at a much larger scale than in our world, broken as it is we are at least still talking other nations in the UN.
There is a much larger use of nuclear power.. thus even a conventional war could lead to a lot of nuclear collateral damage.
There is a chance we don't know anything about the MAD doctrine.. Hence we believe that China only has a limited first strike capability and that we have a full blown first as well as a second strike capability.

My point is that in a normal setting a full out nuclear war was nor is very likely and that a conventional war would be more likely, however the FO universe does not fit our convention..

Yeah but i was talking about the fallout world (one with mutants and radiation and crazed tribal warbands and more). It would just be a futuristic GTA with 50s theme (LOL)

Microfusion cells would become the new power source. No longer having to fight for resources, much of the warfare would stop. The United States would probably continue fighting China because of their irrational fear of communism (or rather, 'Communism, the boogey-man of the Cold War' as I've heard it called ^.^). If the US survives whatever happens, they would have to immediately improve food stocks to quell food riots, and focus the majority of their forces in Canada to crush the resistance fighters, or grant Canada their independence.

the resource war must have kept going in till no one had any offensive capability and everyone dig down in defensive stand then after that its 3 ways out:

• Till some "nation" (or what the faction will bee) recover and start to rebuild
  
• USA and ev, oter surviving major nations will break apart in a civil war and rebel force's, the USA occupation of China will probably be very similar to whats happen in occupied territory in WW2
  
• But most i guess an combo of 1 and 2!

Well, the USA would have dreadful international relations, not only with the USSR and China, but also with the Commonwealth of Nations (well, they did annex Canada - though it does remind me of War Plan Red, the 1930 American planned invasion of the British Empire via Canada) which is not good if they want to get Australia's Uranium (at least, peacefully), and the relations with the former European Commonwealth can't be that stellar. Speaking of which, it wouldn't likely be the end for them, I'm not sure about the rest of Europe, but I do know that Britain currently has enough coal to theoretically last for 300 years. I think the Resource Wars was a way for the writers to maintain the 50s America view of Europe as recovering from war, and a way for before the said conflict for European nations to be powerful, which diminished drastically after the war, without the aid of Empires, plus the disbanding of the United Nations mirrors the collapse of the League of Nations before WWII).

I think that the US could possibly take over the world. From what we know the US was just rolling through China, and China was the only real threat if you discount the nuclear stockpiles across the globe.

Unless the USSR is just way more powerful than we think, or someone like Brazil or India is a secret super power, there doesn't seem to be too much opposition.

I seriously agree, hell if it wasnt for the chosen one and Lone wanderer then Enclave would probably have taken over the world by the New Vegas time.

Everything we know about the great war... is based on in game (sort of) american sources... in other words.. subjective reports. (history is always subjective)
China invaded the US as well and (be it limited success) thus the conlusion that without nuclear escalation the American commonwealth would rule the world is mere speculation based on their own sources.
However, quelle surprise, I do agree with R.J that the enclave would (at least) have made a serious impact on the wastes and possibly the world had they succeeded.

(Btw : Read the what if.. books .. these are essays by historians on keypoints in history. Example what could have hapened if Nazi Germany didn't invade Russia. or what if Kennedy hadn't been assassinated etc.. etc.).

yes most think we know about the fallout history spec about what happens in the rest off the world is US government propaganda. Just for the propaganda say they win the war in china, It might not go that well in real battle. they might very well still be digged down in shanghai ....

It wasn't government propaganda. America invaded China all the way to the Yangtze River which if you ever looked at a map of China you would see that river is right in the middle of China. There is a Yangtze Memorial in Nevada. Building a memorial to a campaign isn't propaganda. America captured the city of Shanghai. America was totally kicking China's ass in the Sino-American War.

The whole reason why the Great War was started was because China was losing, they had no other option but to play the spoiler and take the whole world with them.

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

No ... by subjective history I do specifically mean the pre-war descriptions.
Everything which is described pre Great War as well as accounts about the early hours of the great war is described in game.. Though they are based on in game sources... The wars as described still happened.
My comments should be read as how we (westerners for the most part) would describe (for example) the first gulf war.
(media showed us a different picture than we heard, and it was one of the main reasons media coverage was organised more strictly (embedded journalists) during the 2nd Iraqi war)

However... everything post war is known by the way the producers have described the world..
Even though history writings (!) are subjective .. one (that's why we have historians) can easily anolyze the outcome to be either true or false. In other words the outcomes are prove by the games lore.. The way in which this lore was established could be taken with a grain of salt.

For FO this means both nations were destroyed.. end of the line.. There is no global powerfull section left.... Live with it.. (iow there will not be a FO outside the US)
It is the pre-text on which I was commenting.. (lore even states we are not certain which nation initiated first strike, but we can be certain that US had significant successes in invading China. )

edit:
What's going on with the whole " someone posted a comment thing" ... (not seeing it... )
Again this and in addition to what styles said.

you cant deny that a lot of in game info is fabricated propaganda from the US government and some private corps!!

Lore suggests we dont know who struck first.

Richardson claims the Chinese did, and given that we were doing well in the war, I might agree. But it could always be possible one of the smaller neations that had nukes might have kicked it off I do take it that pretty mcuh everyone had nukes, otherwise, ereyone would not have been nuked. ? YOu could also easily say the enclave were anxious to start over again and kicked it all off. its also been mentioned in the FB that it wasnt just ICBM launches, but that there were planes everywhere dropping bombs- and still says no one knows who launched first..

Regardless, an in game account doesnt necesarily equate truth. It is someones account of what happened. It's like if you are taught that candy is good for you. You might believe it is good for you and tell others that it is But it doesnt necessarily mean it is so.






OK.. SO what if the US had beaten China and not one got in a hissy and launched? You would ahve isolationaist USA, with no major threat and a buch of nations that are imploding. Does the US just sweep the map, Do other nations welcome it, just so they can gain stability? Or would they band together?

It isn't all propaganda. I love that when people are faced with facts they play that "well it's only propaganda." Another thing that many people don't seem to realise is that Propaganda isn't always lying. It isn't always a bad things. Showing off your Victory over an enemy is also propaganda.

We know America was winning the Sino-American War. China would have lost the that war. China is most likely the reason why the Great War was even started. They were losing, they couldn't face defeat at the hands of their mortal enemy so they commited suicide, taking the whole world with them.

They invaded Alaska, that alone shows their desperation for resources like oil. America didn't surrender and was in time able to develope effective power armour (T-51b) and drove China out of Alaska. Without oil China's war machine collapsed and America's powered armoured troops invaded half of China in less then 10 months.

Such a collapse due to lack of fuel isn't unprecedented, it can be seen in WW2 with the Germans.

Edit: President Richardson has no reason to lie about who fired first in the Great War. Still with everying I said it makes sense it was China. America had no reason to nuke China. They were WINNING the Sino-American War. An Third Party wouldn't have much reason to nuke America first.

According to history every empire and superpower nations need to have a common enemy to gather against to not fall apart on one way or another .... so what you think happens if they are the last country standing!
And just count on how much it will cost for them to keep all occupied territory in control.

Well who said America was going to keep China after the Sino-American War? It is possible they would have done what they did with Nazi Germany and Japan after WW2. Keep alot of troops there and set up a new Government to oversee China. That is alot cheaper than trying to make it apart of America. Which wouldn't be an option.

"There will always be another enemy" -Midwestern Brotherhood saying.

Again I was ninja'd by you
However..
To put a little nuance into the fray.
FO History:
What do we know, objectevly, for certain.
1. America invaded China
2. China invaded Alaska
3. Nuclear exchange between China and America.

That's about it. Even though I hate to admit it, I sort of to have admit that Vajan has sort of a point: Everything we know about the war is (in game) written by Americans.
Lore specifically says we don't know who commited first strike.. Hence we can ask questions about how...the war between China and the US was developing.

One can compare it to WW II:
Let's take Market Garden
We know the plan..
We know how it worked out. (fact Germans with a limited force decimated Alied forces and held a bridge vital to the operation)
Obectively the operation was a complete fiasco for the Alied and a roaring success for the Nazi's
However if Montgommery's view (as well as the Americans) was the one historical notion we followed.. it would be an operation which was 90% succesful

What kind of argument is that...?
This is a view propagated by both communism and fascism... not a general accepted notion.