Well as we know, the Vaults were never going to be the answer to repopulation, even if the 122 Vaults were designed to spec, that's only 12200 people provided every spot was filled. But instead we get 17000 commited to a repopulous effort, again provided the Vaults are full to capacity, which they weren't. These would turn out to be fragmented communites, but still much better off than most other self-made communities (Vault City for example). But the Enclave thought it would be fun to seek out and terminate these inhabitants, and they're a government body, which worked beside Vault-Tec before the Great War anyway. Vault-Tec could even be a government division. And the government had their own personal populace away from civilisation. I think it's safe to say the public Vaults were no more than experimental holding cells to satiate human sociological curiosity.


There were 17 control Vaults.


Vault 13 wasn't a control Vault. The water chip was planned to fail with no replacements. It was then on the Overseers initiative that the original vault dweller was sent out into the wastes for a solution.

I thought the chip failure (and the lack of spares) were both accidents.

Vault 13 experiment was being closed for an especially long period of time.

Yes, it was desgined to be closed for 200 years. This is the main experiment. The chip malfunction forced the overseer to take initiative and ensure the survival of the Vault, though it wasn't the main experiment, it was definitely a spanner in the works to 'rock the boat' as it were. You could also argue it was a foreshadowing of the original intention of Vault 13, or the darker side of any non-control Vault for that matter, many people associate Vault 13 with the failed chip, more than the prolonged sealing.

Indeed. To be exact, a huge shipment of spares was sent to vault 8 by mistake.

This is yet another foreshadowing. There were many 'mistakes' made to do with surplus and lack of equipment in the Vaults. It's the same reason the devs made Vault 8 a control Vault, to hide the darker intention of the other Vaults.

On the other hand, all Vaults received one G.E.C.K. for when they re-open and one as a spare. Vault 8 had no such spare - it was accidentally shipped to Vault 13, hence why you go there looking for one.

Also, did they ever decide whether the water chip was intended to break? There are three possibilities:
1) The water chip breaking was indeed an accident. Of course, we all know that after the Vault Dweller's journey, the experiment was pretty much doomed to fail as from there more and more members of the Vault set out to join him (and later form the village of Arroyo).

2) The water chip was intended to break. This may be possible, but I'm not entirely sure. I find it interesting how Vault 8 opened 14 years after the war, yet Vault 13's original date (or rather, the "expected" date in the eyes of its denizens) of opening was in a few hundred years. This may give more reason to believe that the water chip was meant to break, though.

3) There's a Fallout 2 random encounter where you go back in time to Vault 13 and, well...you break the water chip. :rofl: If only they coded the event to allow us to create a paradox by bringing one of the useless spare chips you can find in Vault 8 back to the past and leaving it there for our granddaddeh.

some are simply flavor as well, mentioned places like the FO bible and nowhere else, like Vault 69, which had 149 woman and one lone man.

I love that encounter Easy experience and a one-of-a-kind energy weapon to be had ^_^ Though a replacement means you would suddenly cease to exsist.. But then I suppose that's the paradox. Then again who actually has taken a chip from VC and placed it in the special encounter V13


Flavour indeed, but endorsed by the devs aswell, so it's safe to say those Vaults are spoken for. I personally find Vault 69 one of the least interesting of the experiments, but it gives many sixually angst pubascent teenagers something to work toward in life :P And there were closer to 1000 habitants in Vault 69, oh my >_<

Vaults 68 and 69 are interesting canonically because they show some of the vault experiments had little or no real scientific purpose. They were just messing with people they had godlike control over. They weren't testing the effects of breakthroughs in mind control, psychoactive chemical weapons or forced evolution, they were just messing with those poor girls. Same with the Utah vault full of Mormons which had suit extruders set to fail after a short period, just messing with people.

I thought the California vaults were only built for a few hundred, but I could be wrong, they've been kinda inconsistent on that point.

My personal FAVORITE vault experiments are 65 and 56. 65 had no entertainment tapes or materials at all, 56 had only one notoriously bad comedian. Vaul-tec scientists were apparently taking bets as to which one would mass suicide first, smart money was on 56.

Exactly, most were them were just incomprehensive, whimsical social studies. Although Vault 70 did have an unexpected outcome, whilst the experiments may not have been made for any more than the gleeful study of human chaos, they could still pull through with a bit of luck and perseverence.

Nuuu Cali Vaults were built for 1000, like all the other Vaults. Many weren't full to capacity though, it's safe to assume none of them were (depending on whether you consider the Keller Family Transcript canon or not). In what way would it be inconsistent though? If you're talking about the Vault interiors, just like FO3, the Vaults in the originals were also severely scaled down, they all look like they can house a couple hundred at most, but there's alot that's been cut out, devs don't want to create spawns and spawns of living quarters thousands of feet below surface level.

And those were experiments 55 and 56, this is the reference I usually use to adhere logic to the illogical purpose of the Vaults.

I disagree.

Human civilisation as we know it tends to follow mating pairs... What would a civilisation look like where there was only 1 male, or only 1 female? Would a female dominant society "Nuke a different country once a month" like the joke suggests? Or would the removal of the "Hunter" from the position of power make things more peaceful? How would a society survive with such little genetic material to go around? Indeed would it survive (only a single Y cromosome to go around in 69's case). Would the less present six move to a godlike status? Could a group of men surive with just a single female paring... Would there be an increase in same six intimite relations?

(note, none of the questions reflect my opinion on those subject... But are examples of potential questions posed that could be answered)

There are very interesting questions that could be asked, and when you're trying to rebuild civilisation on another world (as was the original plan), these answers could be very helpful in planning how that would look.

I am assuming by the vault's code number that this was the hypothesis of the vaul-tec engineers.

And you're right in a way about the gender thing, but nvde mormons? bad comics? panthers and dolls? some of them seemed to have tenuous scientific validity at best. Oh, and of course they're all N=1 trials, not valid anyway.