you make a good point about the pre-war fission batteries and how the US tech worked... why would China even want the oil? Maybe they were 77 years behind the US in tech before the War. :brokencomputer:

maybe some of these will survive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_island_countries#cite_note-cfa-3

Hmmm, but in the Fallout Universe, NATO was never mentioned. So there is no indicator that Sweden would be neutral to anyone.

I doubt that NATO existed there at all or at least anymore in 2077 as there is not even the slightest indicator for its existence in the Fallout lore.
Instead the European Commonwealth existed of which's setup we know only very little. Its role in the nuclear exchange is also unknown.

We know that they when the buttons were pushed in the USA and China, fired all their nukes aswell but it was never mentioned on who and who might have fired back at them.

The middle east ? The soviet union ? China aswell ? So far we dont know.

I agree that they must have recieved their share of nukes aswell, so much is sure as simply nobody in the Fallout world seems to have ever heard anything from them.
It is said that Alistair Tenpenny came from Europe to the USA. We dont know when, we dont know how (a ship perhaps ? ) and we dont know why.

He surely had no reason to relocate to the Capital Wasteland if Europe would be a better place.

Even if there are lots of places who were not involved in the war they all must have been more or less affected by it.
In a global nuclear war nobody is far enough away or independent enough for not recieving his rightful bite from the (insert s word here) sandwich.

This. I would love to know that his is part of lore. I mean, I don't want to see my lands. (Mexico, Romania,Russia,Turkey) turn into a cinder. I prefer the above. Viva mexico, arriba!!!!!!

It is specifically stated in the intros of both original Fallout games that virtually the entire world was consumed in nuclear fire, Europe, China, Africa, Russia, practically the entire world was "burnt to cinders" or something like that was the line Perlman used in F2's intro.

In the Fallout bible it states of nuclear detonations in the Middle East prior to the Great War, 2053 sees Tel Aviv nuked off the map and 2054 has a nuclear exchange between several Middle Eastern countries. So the middle East already suffered from nuclear detonations, albeit limited, by the time the bombs fell in 2077.

While the games have focused on the exchange between US and China, what is implied by the information available and conversations I recall with npcs is that everyone launched their nuclear payload at each other, not just those previously mentioned 2 countries. It was a World War, not a war between 2 sides; everyone was engulfed in the nuclear fire.

Fallout intro:



Fallout 2 intro:



Jesse Heinig, one of the FO1 designers:



The very first Fallout 1 timeline by Scott Campbell and Brian Freyermuth (from which all other Fallout timelines in existence are derived):



Emil Pagliarulo, FO3 lead designer:



Tim Cain, one of the main creators of Fallout:

I think it would be something like this.
RESOURCE WARS:Very similar to our time,clan water is going dry,RESOURCES are also becoming extinct and in chaos to have main things for live earth become war torn place,people killed each other for bottle of water and so many smaller states become past,main powers are still fighting for that and so came BIG WAR.
All thats left of humanity is destroyed by main states and their missiles.And u get world like fallout.But if u look better that crap will happen to us sooner or later.

Well, since the war was between china, and the USA, i would think the rest of the world such as Europe, Africa, and possibly a small part of West Asia.

The war was between everyone and everyone, not just China and the US.

Totally agree here. A War between China and the US would galvanize the allies of each side into a full-scale world war.

Add to that the nuclear holocaust, and I don't think any country would escape a major catastrophe in their societies even if they didn't get directly bombed.

Heck all we would have to do is disrupt the global flow of trade to starve half the world.

M

You guys are missing it. All the timeline evidence is here, it just has to be put together.

Middle East nuclear war in 2053/2054.

That would put a damper on a significant, but not all, oil resources.

The United States begins developing atomic related infastructure. Cars, batteries, etc.

The Chinese, in the 50's, a little backward by western standards. They feel the pinch of the Middle East war before the United States, because of their lack of industrialization (takes 20 years or so).

The Chinese response, invade Alaska to get the oil. A short term solution to be sure. The United States kicks their butts, and it apparently doesn't sit well with the Central Party, and they launch their missles. World War III begins.

And thus, FO Universe is born.

Yeah, I've got extreme issues believing the 200 years thing in FO3. I think Bethesda was smoking some mighty fine stuff when they arbitrarily chose that number.

I could probably understand 30 or 50 years, and possibly even 75 years... but 200 years is absurd, unless radiation apparently has some magical means of preserving food left sitting on store shelves.

What amuses me the most are the quaint little setups where you see a skeleton sitting somewhere, like on a bed, and all of the person's stuff sitting around them - the Chinese spy in Point Lookout is a good example. Don't you think someone would have explored the area within the 200-odd years before the CO pops in? Wouldn't normal clothing degrade to the point of being unusable?

Two centuries seems pretty damn excessive.

Well, a nuclear bomb that's detonating produces an electromagnetic pulse. Of course, I'd imagine anything in range of the EMP would probably just get obliterated by the explosion itself, so I guess it's a moot point.

But the existence of pulse weapons (pulse grenades, pulse mines, pulse rifles) would imply the existence of EMP-based weaponry prior to the nuke launches, wouldn't it?

An EMP specific detonation, in the atmoshpere about in the middle of the country, would knock out all electrical/computer equipment across almost the entire United States. So really, you would only need a couple of devices; and they aren't necessarily nuclear devices; to knock out all electrical/computer equipment across the US.

EMP pulses only act on what is existing. anything built, developed after the pulse wouldn't be affected.

Imagine Mutant Kiwi's...

Dunno what happened to the rest of the world. But nuked it got. The fallout games are in some way a warning to the human race. Haven't u thinked about it?

North Pole survived, because the Penguins used there Anti-Global Warming shields as radiation came to them... sadly, the Mega-bears attacked them shortly after, and the Critter War happened...

...but penguins only live around the South Pole.

I my mind I like to explain away why there's still so many things standing, intact books and clothing, edible food, etc 200 years after being hit by nukes as the development of amazingly effective preservatives prior to the war and extremely well made materials. With regards to wooden structures, I like to think that in order to reduce maintenance, they were soaked in a preservative solution prior to being erected. Similar stuff could have been mixed into paint, paper pulp and ink, clothing dies and synthetic materials, and sprayed on to metal (along with the Fallout universe's seeming love with making things out of metal instead of plastic would probably mean they made advances in metallurgy that we can only dream of). Given the sale of things like fruit-flavoured mentats, I'm guessing the FDA wouldn't mind the use of dangerously effective preservatives in foods and other consumables, despite whatever health risks they presented to the people that actually ate them. Of course, in reality, regardless of how effective the nukes were at destroying things, after 200 years all the clothing, books, and food would have disintegrated, almost all metal objects would have become solid lumps of rust (just look at what happened to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19249855/ after being sealed under ground in a solid concrete vault for 50 years), and just about everything made out of wood would have completely rotted away. Not to mention 90% of the buildings would have collapsed due to materials deteriorating and plant-life reclaiming the cities.

Sure, but there aren't as many nuclear weapons floating around like there used to be. Both the US and Russia have cut their nuclear arms numbers down considerably. So now a days, all you have to worry about is some shady neighbor making a dirty bomb in his basemant and letting it loose on the world. At least, that's what you were told to think with 9/11 hysteria. So no, FO is not a warning to the human race. It's just a game, with the message: "This is our point of view of what 1950's Americans thought a nuclear holocaust would be like."

There's no UK anymore.

A few bombs onto it, considering it's highly allied with the US, would completely wipe out the tiny lil island.

How bout Scotland?

Possibly Heavily irradiated or got a handful of nukes.

Erm, I wouldn't say that.. Lore says that China almost won.. And in OA more than half the soldiers are captured, and in the trenches alot of soldiers are getting killed, not to mention the guy crouching head-in-arms looking like he's going insane. So, United States DID win, but they didn't really 'kick butt'..

Aswell the Chinese also had control of San Fransico (I think) from the crashed submarine.

No, they attempted to blow up Hoover Dam, but they were caught.