I don't know if anyone here is familiar with the What If? series, but they were a series of comic books from the Marvel Universe. Each would take a big story from some character's canon and tweak a detail.

What if Spiderman's Uncle Ben never died?

What if Batman killed the Joker?

What if Professor X died (at some specific point)?

I had the idea for a Fallout world where the bombs didn't drop.

They instead progressed for some time, creating a near utopia.

My idea for the cataclysm that brings in a more Fallout-y world is a combination of; reliance on technology, a population spike, and an EMP.

I'll add in more details as I think them up, but I figure most of you can see where this is going so I'd love to see any input.

Does this idea sound interesting to you, would you be likely to participate, what effects do you think this would have?

I was reading some Time Travel SciFi when I got the idea.

Fallout, to me, has always been about mankind's self destructive tendencies. In Fallout the self destruction is touched off by different greedy countries battling over the last bits of natural resources to assure those individual countries superiority over the others...

In this idea what if instead they formed some sort of New World Order...and what if that NWO didn't immediately become an Orwellian nightmare but instead worked for some time. They advance science, cure diseases, perhaps even venture into space...but as they push further and further they become more and more dependent on the technologies they have developed. Without disease and with so many of their problems solved by this world wide governing body the population expands rapidly.

The only thing I've not worked out is what causes the EMP. I'm thinking either some massive machine which I've not thought up a purpose for yet, or perhaps a disaster in some space exploration program (similar to the Challenger exploding).

With all the technology deadened the population would find themselves in a precarious position. All the creature comforts they'd grown accustomed to are gone, all of the technological marvels surrounding them are now useless and thus devoid of any value, and there are an enormous number of people all growing increasingly hungry.

Think if/when I start it up I'll start it up as sort of one guy reminiscing.

Something about...

It was only a year ago I was teaching school children about the formation and rise of the World Union and the period of advancement known as the Second Enlightenment...

It was only 7 months ago that the lights went out

It was 6 and a half months ago that the riots started

6 months ago that martial law was declared

4 months ago that the quarantines began

2 months ago that the military disbanded after running out of food

It's been 2 months of hell with no end in sight.