Hate to say it, but I'm with TTT on this one. Realism is all fine and dandy, sure, but the pip boy was made by Vault Tec, right? They already have stuff that's outright impossible to make, or to make as small, yet you want to have to charge something vital to the game so that it can stop working?

They could run off of virtually any power source you can think of. Nuclear. Solar. Standard 9 volts. Anti-Matter Sublimation. Even Happiness.
Personally, I didn't think much about what it runs off of. Know why? Because everything in the Fallout World seems to not have energy problems. Even a old, rusted computer half buried in trash can still work, assuming it's turned on. Powered Armor, which would require big power sources, doesn't take any energy to run. It has a energy generation built into it, or at the very least a huge battery, and it charges with Kinetic energy.

Well if you really want to look at things from a realism perspective, how could anything be working after 200 years? Who's been looking after the power plants that create hydro for all the lights in the game during all that time? With no maintenance, there would have been no power or running water anywhere in the Wasteland, yet everywhere you go the lights are still on and the sinks still give you a drink of water. Realistically, every time you went into some building or into one of the subway lines it should be completely dark, since the power for the lights would have stopped years ago. And how did all that food, meds and ammo last that long before becoming totally useless? Most guns shouldn't even be working, since after 200 years with no one looking after them they'd be hopelessly rusted out. It wouldn't be much of a game though if everything was based on realism.

Rather true, Belanos. But the Fallout World had few traces of Realism in it when it was first made. Then again, I remember hearing it was made off of a idea that came from a drug binge from hell, so I guess that might explain why many parts assault realism.

I think you've missed my point. I'm not arguing that theses lapses of reality are bad, they're simply necessary in order to make the game fun for most people. If the game was totally rooted in reality, it wouldn't be much of a game. In the case of the Pipboy, most people would be extremely annoyed if they could no longer access their inventory in order to administer a Stimpack that will keep them alive, or switch weapons because the one they were using just broke on them. As a game, you need a certain amount of leeway from reality in order to make it playable.

After 200 years, wearing regular clothes should be fine. In Fallout 1, the pipboy didn't have a Geiger counter. I thought about a pipboy being made in real life to just have a geiger counter, radio, watch and a flashlight. That would be sweet.

I'm never said that things should be more realistic, what I was saying was that there's not even a little weasel-lore to explain why the Pipboy seems to run off nothing. Personally, I'm a more-realism-even-if-it-makes-life-insane modder. I like having to micromanage certain things, like where I allocate my ammunitions, how much to store, where to store it, and how many to sell, be sure to buy a fission battery because my Pipboy's running low, that kind of thing. I like having everyday challenges before I even have my cup of Rad-coffee.

And as I said, it was never a request. I was just wondering "out loud" if anyone had seen some information on it or had take a SWAG at it.

This is pretty much, just like those watches that are supposed to be powered by your normal everyday movements. (walking, eating, other things not mentioned but inferred in this thread)

I always thought that part of the retro feel of Fallout could be realistically explained as a national trend at the time of the war. Sort of like how car companies like to redesign their cars to look more like the models from 40 years ago, or those kids who think bell bottoms and paisley shirts with big collars are cool.

Think about this hypothetical situation; an earthquake causes a large section of a modern city to fall into a crack in the earth and it’s not dug up until over 200 years later. How would those future archeologists view our world based on the snapshot of what those people were doing right before the earthquake hit? What if that piece of land just happened to have a renaissance festival going on at that time?

What if there was a fad at the time of the war to make all the ultra modern gadgets look like they came from the 1950s? I mean it would be quite unwieldy having a CRT strapped to your wrist (not to mention dangerous) but it could be some form of holographic display that sits just micrometers above (or even below) the surface of the display panel to mimic the look and feel of a CRT. Perhaps there is some fancy power source that is only the size of one of our normal batteries but lasts for years coupled with some way of keeping it charged we can’t comprehend.