Well, I've read the wiki, and I know all about the Great War. But in the wiki it said that the bombs fell mainly on the US, parts of Canada, as well as parts of Europe who were allied with the US and I think I even read about Australia being hit.

But why didn't the world band together and try to survive, why didn't continents like Africa and South America try to invade everyone else? I know they were both troubled but they had the power. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Could somebody explain or am I just thinking to hard?

I'd like to think that the entire world was just covered in Nuclear fallout and Europe, Africa, Asia (duh), and South America all had similar yet not as drastic fates as the US did. They were torn apart and similar settlements and organizations sprang up.

What do you guys think?

i think the story might have meant to just make a fairly large patch for the player to be inside of and to feel otherwise cut off.

all normal services are severed. comms and travel systems are all kaput. the rest of the world might be in the same situation or not even there. Zimmer still gets where he wants from Canada though, and apart from him i can't think of another example now.

the world might be split into patches of survivors and that 'little' piece of the US is a tough enough place to just gather food and get basic medical help, and so on, without thinking about further mass destruction.

after all, most people have ended up wondering where their next piece of incredible power giving hat is coming from. or where to get another 3 million rounds for their quadruple power mega laser multiple moose launcher.

i suppose it was meant to come across as civilisation springing back up out of the vaults and rebuilding itself. i really don't know.

early on i stopped even trying to take notice of what would made sense on a global scale or of Fallout canon and just 'went with it' on a superficial level. i found it more fun to think of it like a big mental paintball game in a bashed up old theme park.

Massachusetts. The Commonwealth is centered around the old MIT.

Hm. Canada probably didn't get bombed. The radiation seeping up from America probably kicked up the temperature real good.

In "The Pitt", Ashur talks about the Pitt's might being the envy of 'Ronto' - presumably Toronto. I think that's the only reference to any non-US location after the War... ignoring a vague reference on Dashwood's terminal to Moriarty having 'ended up in this country as a kid', and the loading screen that says Tenpenny's from Britain.

As for what's happened in the rest of the world - well, the situation was meant to be pretty grim even before the bombs started falling; the world's oil and gas were all but exausted, the European Union had gone to war with the Middle East before collapsing into internal warfare. Presumably oil-rich nations like Venezuela and Nigeria were also targets of invasion by the great powers. If the US was desperate enough to annex Canada... well, knowing American history, they'd probably also already sent troops to ensure compliant governments were in charge in most of Latin America. Fallout's pre-war world wasn't a particularly nice or stable place.

And once the bombs start falling - well, Fallout's world seems to have avoided a nuclear winter, but there's still plenty of excess radiation, and even if you're not hit directly by the bombs, the fallout is still going to cause global problems. The southern hemisphere may be in better shape than the north - certainly, it's hard to imagine they're worse off than the Capital Wastelands - but that doesn't mean they're anywhere near recovering enough to be able to contemplate conquering other continents.

And even if they are - why would they? What's the blasted ruins of North America got to offer anyone? Maybe there are powerful and secure post-nuclear nations in Africa or South America, and they view the Capital Wastelands in the same way the Western world today views places like Somalia - not worth doing anything about their problems except those that cause direct problems for us...

I always wonder about people like Colin Moriarty and Dad who have Irish/English accents respectively and must have come from the UK to the bombed-out US. Why?? Also Dukov coming from Russia.

But, why ask why... just a game...

Well, if they came from the UK, they must have some form of transport...

I live in the UK and the plane ride to NY took 8 hours, and I was told that was fast.

If they take a boat, who knows what sort of mutated giant Sea Creatures are floating around?
I guess we'll just have to say this is an aspect of FO that Bethesta will have to work out.

During the Cold War we had nukes aimed at the USSR's Warsaw Pact "allies" and they had nukes aimed at ours. When the general exchange began the US and China also hit the allies of the other. Rather than completely obliterating them, they just hit thier capital city and major ports and industrial centers....which would have been enough to throw them into chaos.

I wonda what happened to Hiwaii

Fallout doesn't seem to take reality into consideration much. America's capitol would have been hit by a nuke for sure, there wouldn't be the DC ruins for the super mutants to crawl all over or a Pentagon left for the BoS to occupy.
Plus, as someone mentioned earlier, there wasn't a nuclear winter either. It sounds more like the super powers just hurled a bunch of dirty bombs at each other and the radiation alone did all the damage :shrug: .

That being said, radioactive fallout alone would have done a helluva lot of damage. And in an exchange large enough to wipe out America and China, the entire world would have had it rain down on them. Even the areas that didn't suffer a direct strike from a nuke would still be blanketed with radiation.
The rest of the world probably isn't much better off.

Sounds like most of the explosions (such as the one that took out DC) were air bursts, and not ground bursts. That would more easily account for the condition things are in and the diminished fimbulwinter.

lets just say this...


The whole world is suffering from extreme amounts of fallout, and everywhere there are variations of Raiders, Slavers, BOS etc etc. Thats what I think. Tons of plant and animal life are gone (due to the rain that happened after the bombs fell). And as for the areas that aren't burnt out like the Capital Wasteland, its most likely to be a lot like Chernobyl, lots of Radioactive duststorms and its uninhabitable.

Hows that sound?

The only obvious explanation is that those places must have it even worse than D.C., otherwise who'd want to move?

As for how the great war affected the globe:

It seems like the country that survived best would hve been New Zealand.

lol kiwi's

Nah, Radioactive Mutant Sheep would've got them

one nuke couldnt wipe out australia


anyway, i believe they try t osay that the nuclear winter and nuclear fallout killed off many of the others. So there is a very fragmented world. A good example is the pitt, no nuke landed there and look how it turned out...

Of course Nukes landed in the Pitt! Just not where the DLC takes place.

Remember its Fallout 3, takes place 200 years after the bombs fell ( or something like that). Maybe they explained it better in FO1 and 2? but war...it never changes :fallout:

The 200 years lap it was poorly implemented, especially when you get so many out-of-reason elements in the game. Wood, intact glass on buildings (White House is one big nuclear crater, but the buildings across the street still have their windows intact), 200 years old food, 200 years old computers and so on.
As for the rest of world, even in the other FO games, they were not even mentioned. Most likely survived in one form or another, but frankly, America no longer picks their interest. Who would be interested in a radiated Wasteland and why would they even consider helping the 2 countries who caused the war in the first place (US and China)?

In Fallout 1 and 2 it said that the entire world was "consumed in flames". So everything got hit. Everybody died (except those who didn't. Does that make sense?).

The US economy is so bad that China won't take our bottle caps for currency!!

Europe was going to be nuked in a USA-USSR war, that's for sure. Every country except maybe Swizerland and Sweden were going to be nuked atleast 4 times.

Heh, I reckon this makes New Zealand an economic powerhouse now!