There is a very depressing movie from 1959 called On The Beach, in which a nuclear war has devastated the Northern Hemisphere.

The remaining people in Australia know that it's only a matter of time before the fallout reaches them and many commit suicide rather than face death by radiation poisoning.

That's what would have happened in Van Buren. http://fallout.gamepedia.com/Cheyenne_Mountain

That is some genuinely scary stuff.

Our alert load was 12 AGM-86 cruise missiles, at 150 kilotons each. That's 10 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb, each.

In the bomb bay we carried 4 free-fall bombs, either B83s or B28s. Each of those was around 1.45 megatons or about 96 Hiroshima bombs.

Add all that up and we're looking at 500 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb, on one aircraft.

As an Aircraft Commander on alert the chain of command was me -> CINCSAC -> President of the United States.

Lot of responsibility for a 28-year-old.

"responsibility" is always such an odd word in contexts like this.

how'd ANYBODY, regardless of their age, be held "responsible" for potentially thousands and thousands of dead in worst case?

it just burns the whole term down to a hollow collection of letters.

...glad you didn't nuke a couple places to impress babes anyway ,-)

The weapons couldn't be armed without the PAL codes, which were sent by coded message from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Without the correct codes they were just very expensive paperweights.

Im not sure what I would have been like where I am (the UK) as there isnt really much said about it in Fallout lore, lots said about the US and China and a bit about Russia but I havent really seen anything much about Europe and nothing about the UK. Given the 50s style ethic of Fallout, at that time the UK wasnt that integrated with Europe so what has been said about Europe seems to be more about the "mainland" countries.

I'm currently living in a small town in Bavaria, roughly in the middle of a triangle between Munich, Stuttgart and Nuremberg.

Which makes me feel pretty safe, but assuming Germany gets more or less carpeted by MIRVs the fallout will get me even here, I suppose.

You guys know the goold old Nukemap? http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

Really fun educative tool, you can even determine the fallout area, based on detonation height, yield and current wind.

Still I live just outside Washington DC.........I am died from the nuclear explosives.

If I do survive the nuclear denators I would be either visting relatives in rural Connecticut, eastern Maryland, Rural Maryland , rural Mass. , or at my brother cabin in Canada

Well, I live in NYC and it has been confirmed that on 10/23/77 at 9:42am that NYC was hit with nuclear weapons.

If I was still alive I would either be a ghoul struggling to live another day along with other survivors. Or I would be a feral ghoul roaming around the greater NY area munching down on some yummy human thighs.

I live in a rural area, thus, I'd probably be safer than most.

I live in Australia, so after the fallout I would be battling against giant flies, super venomous snakes and spiders, huge lizards and the coasts would have poisonous jellyfish and angry sharks...

Actually, I think the only thing that would change is the background radiation.

According to Canon my city would turn into a dull mining town filled with jetheads and wanamingos

i also can't really remember much about europe from actual game lore.

i do remember lots and lots of posters claim it'd been nuked out of existence

I was thinking about this recently. I live in a rural area south of Kansas City.

Everything is pretty much scavenged already. Most people are poor around here and you see a lot of addicts. When I first moved here I was approached by them quite frequently for money. A few times I thought I was going to be robbed.

It's rare you see an aluminum can laying along the road because people collect them for money.

They rip apart street lights here to get the copper wire out of them.

Cut the ends off air hoses all the time at gas stations for the metal.

Murders, raqes, drive-by's, abductions, all the norm on the news.

A couple of years ago a woman escaped from a house of torture someone set up in an abandoned house near downtown KC. It was a horror scene when she led the cops back to it.

Raiders/Chem heads all around. I found a one hitter packed solid 10 feet from my front door a couple months ago. Just laying in the driveway.

Had a guy knock on my door at 9pm one night wanting to come in and clean my carpets. Had another guy stop one night trying to sell what looked like Rad Stag ribs out of the back of his pickup truck. It was some Italian sounding guy (It's ok, I can say that, I'm from NJ) with a big gold chain around his neck, halogen white sneakers, jeans. I said, "You ain't from around here are you son?".

Three people on the street I live have been robbed in the last year. They smashed the one guys windows out of his truck and stole everything out of it three nights ago. I have no idea how all the free running dogs in the neighborhood are allowing this to happen.

Caught a group of people making a film in my front yard late one night.

People let their dogs run loose all the time, a couple are nasty Pit Bulls. I have to keep my dogs inside and on a leash when I take them out.

And I live out in the country out here where it's safe.

Minus the radiation, it's pretty rough here as it is now. I get that same foreboding feeling when I drive through parts of this area as I do in the areas surrounding Diamond City.

Oh, yeah, I just remembered. I stand corrected. They did record higher amounts of radiation in the snow the last few winters here. They said it's fallout from Fukushima.

If I still lived up in Iowa I think I would have a reasonable chance of making it, at least for a while. Here, not a single chance in hell. I can't even drink the water here as it is without radiation.

There's a lot of military bases in California, so I probably wouldn't survive as most of them would probably be prime targets for nuclear missiles.

Yeah I was sure it said something somewhere about that but for the life of me i can't remember WHICH of the Fallout series I have played said that it in, I dont't think its Fallout 4. Having said that if memory serves it seemed to imply that it was continental Europe. The UK in the 50s had a fair few US military base so Im guessing quite a bit of it would have been nuked, so I suppose the UK would be like a smaller and probably nastier version of the US mainland, just without the masive vehicles.

Croatia... I assume I'd be somewhat fine.

if we derive a nuke's radius from what we've seen in previous fallout games,

and weigh that against europe's size and topography,

it'd be (within fallout logic) virtually _impossible_ to completely nuke it out of existence.

hell if the glowing sea's a direct hit, it'd take 5-6 direct nukes for friggin' andorra alone!

and that's not even counting remote alpine valleys, mediterranean peanut islands etc.

and even in the glowing sea, there's life.

i just don't buy the whole "europe eradicated" thing.

eradicated from the map, maybe. eradicated from existence, definitely not. we'll all be happy ferals i say

Likewise. Fairly major target still these days. However there are some very deep underground tunnel networks (the Tube) so that could be a place to survive. Would be pretty grim though.

wow, why on earth did you even _move_there_ in the first place?

Well...some things are similar..but scrunched together. Park Street Station , Public Gardens (Swan Boats) , State House, Fountain with the nymphs...are in the right places sorta but scrunched.

Combat Zone is kinda the old Orpheum theatre... Diamond City is similar to Fenway Park. The Esplanade and Hatch Shell are kinda in the right place.

Malden Center is totally different...and right next to Medford Hospital...well there is a hospital in Medford but these are scrunched.

So lots of things are similar enough that it's fun. I wish they had real subways like in Fallout 3 because the subway in Boston is a hundred years old and all under the city.

some of the tunnels can actually be walked for quite a long distance, but no ways to completely pass through (none i found yet at least). definitely gonne be done by a mod though (if nobody else does it, maybe i will - definitely planning a mod around the third rail (which is a part of the subway system after all) anyway)

I live in the Rogue Valley in Southern Oregon, so there isn't really any cities within close proximity as a target. I'm not entirely sure exactly where Arroyo is located, but I know it's Southern Oregon so I imagine my area would be doing relatively well and I'd be close to Arroyo. All in all, my area is a pretty good place to be.

I live in Memphis. We prolly wouldn't even notice.