Justified on its own? Not necessarily, but when you look at the Capital Wasteland as a whole, with its rampant mutations, hostile humans (which make up the majority of the pop) and individuals who blow up towns for sheer enjoyment, there isn't alot that shows how progressive they are.

The point though, is that Eden's purpose is not to wipe out the wastelanders, he wants to take care of the hostile mutations and begin the process of rebuilding the landscape unhindered. The wastelanders just get caught up in the mess.

The FEV is also a decisive knock-out to the growing power of the Brotherhood on the East coast. Which the Enclave also must defeat.

Besides that, Supermutants will not just "die off" by themselves. They can only be killed in a reasonable amount of time through military action, and there's probably just as many of them as there are of the Enclave. Once again, the Enclave would have to fight them and lose men in the process. Not only this, but the rebuilding process will be significantly more difficult if every few hours a deathclaw or some random wasteland abomination wanders into the construction and settlement areas as well.

But if you value the wastelanders above all else, then anything I've said is obviously not going to be a good justification and nothing will be. You either agree or you don't.


Opening and using Vault 101 would provide a good boost to their population, plus as you know, I believe that Eden's virus wouldn't wipe out every wastelander. Those who were relatively unmutated would survive to be incorporated.

Without having to deal with the raiders, rogue wastelanders and mutants, in my opinion it comes out just as well. The Pitt isn't a threat at this point and it will be awhile before they reach the strength to become one, and that's IF Ashur would be unreasonable enough to not attempt diplomatic negotiations. The Commonwealth is concerned with itself alone and indeed could be a valuable ally or even incorporated into the Enclave's new state based upon their technological advancement. The MWBOS is "in decline" in the Midwest (thus not much of a threat at the moment) and both they and the Legion act as a buffer to the NCR in the far west.

So it will be quite some time before the Enclave has to deal with a rival hostile state. With their rate of production, they would be well on their way by that point. Even if it comes to all-out war, the Enclave has been the only faction to develop biological warfare, they'll likely think of someway to ensure their victory.

The CW is really an excellent position for the Enclave to rebuild itself strategically.

I'm not saying that Autumn is wrong, I just believe that Eden's plan is a more secure plan. I just don't trust the wastelanders or believe that its a good idea to take on the problems of the wasteland by fighting them head-on.

That's probably of little comfort to them. "Your sacrifices will be honored in the coming empire"


Aren't you just valuing the enclave above all else? Why are they so much more important? Autumn's plan at least takes the wastelanders into consideration instead of treating them like disposable vermin.

True about Vault 101, though it is heavily implied that its population has fallen so much they could not continue on their own - which means Vault 101 has only about 200-300 people in there. While certainly a good help it's barely enough for the Enclave which itself has no doubt little more than a thousand or two members.

Eden's FEV will wipe out every Wastelander. Quote:
"Anyone or anything that has been affected by mutation will be eliminated. You will likely be immune, thanks to your upbringing in the vault. [...] I understand that you may have become sympathetic to certain individuals in your travels. Individuals this will eliminate."

There is also the ending slide, "humanity will be preserved, but only in its purest form".

On how the Enclave should extend its power I agree. They are very straightforward plans which depend more on the other factions than the Enclave.

As for which plan is more secure, I consider Autumn's plan better simply because 1) there is a reason viruses are not used in warfare and 2) because the Enclave with Project Purity could easily assume control over CW and use the Wastelanders for all the hard work. Sacrificing the genetic purity of the Enclave is a sacrifice I would be willing to make, since these are dire times and the more people the Enclave has on its side the better.

Pretty much yeah.

In my view its Enclave first and everyone else second.


At a certain point however, if the virus targets based on mutation, individuals will be spared if they reach above a certain "threshold." I don't believe it would be a great number, but I think it would still be there.


I don't necessarily agree with it (and not because of a sense of keeping the Enclave genetically "pure") but I certainly see why you support it and respect that.

I've often said that I really don't care which plan the Enclave used as long as they had won in Fallout 3 and I definitely mean that. In my mind, both Eden and Autumn were both a bit foolish in that they decided to fight over the plan rather than work out a compromise of some sort.

Both plans were right to some degree, but it doesn't really matter now does it? You can't join Autumn, because if you give him the code, he shoots you. Thanks Bethesda. If you join Eden, nothing changes in broken steel and Ravens Rock is destroyed. What a bunch of crap.

I think Autumn should have just used his self destruct code to kill Eden. Why not? He's a computer, sentient or not. I also love how they dropped the ball on the Enclave in F3, plus the whole deal with your Dad saying why you left and why didn't you stay when clearly you had zero choice in the matter/

Indeed, why is the Enclave so important? They aren't, they're just surviving. Eden, himself an amalgamation of Presidential personalities, chose to re-use his immediate predeccors plan for a different end; immediate survival as opposed to long-term prosperity.


Or maybe it just killed everything, I mean it's not like Eden lies to his own allies at all is it - let alone an outsider tool. Come on man. He says that the LW will take Autumn's role, to lend any creedence to anything Eden says is tandamount to madness. Probably vaccine based, anything else would probably be dangerous, why create uncertainty? Just kill everything that's not you like it's supposed to and move on.


Because Raven Rock is their home and Command Center? I doubt even Autumn would be so crazy to destroy the facility which provided the Enclave the means to survive so long.

I suppose I trust that Eden was not lying. He is after all, under the impression that the LW is a vault dweller and thus a pure-strain human. I don't believe Eden would have just handed the LW a Colonelship, but if the LW had proven his loyalty by inserting the FEV virus, I would hazard a guess that he would have been given a place as a Presidential confidant as some sort (which is what Eden offers him). I can imagine Eden thinking along the lines of the LW acting as the Frank Horrigan to Eden's Richardson.

Could it be that the virus kills indiscriminately? Perhaps, but there isn't really any proof to definitively prove this.

If Eden trusts an outsider then I can only find his judgement highly questionable, "We killed your father but would you please just look past that and help us make the world better?" Damn I mean I'm not a fan of Eden but I at least read that he was using the LW as a mere mean to an end - the guys killed U.S. Citizens and he just gets a pardon for doing a task that he is only tentatively qualified to do? How do you ensure the loyal of such an asset? Horrigan was at least a fanatic in his previous life.

Makes more sense to me, how does one engineer a virus to ignore pre-war humanity?

He very well may still be using him as a means to an end. Eden may very well know that he isn't truly a vault dweller, in which case the LW would die.

I guess my point is that Eden "using the LW" doesn't prove that the virus doesn't work the way he says it does.


Well, how does one engineer it to change the very structure and genetic makeup of the body?

Okay fair enough. I did actually mean to include an addendum about that, basically I know that bio-engineering in Fallout isn't realistic but to have it so specialised seems like it would require better facilities than the Oil Rig and it just seems like a pointless thing to make the virus do; and for what? Just so it can be removed as evidence that Eden wasn't lying to the [censored] Lone Wanderer of all people?

Not necessarily better facilities, just perhaps different information. Eden and Raven Rock is, after all, a repository of pre-war knowledge gleaned from the Federal Government, due to its function as the backup pentagon.

Raven Rock may contain information about the FEV virus and its workings that the Oil Rig simply did not. Eden has had 200 years to mull over every scrap of information about the virus as well as the information gained from Vault 87.


It doesn't really prove that Eden wasn't lying. Nor do I argue for it in order to prove that.

I prefer it because it makes the Enclave's plan a whole-sale fight against mutation, rather than just humaniod based mutation. The hostile wastelanders are certainly a threat (such as the raiders), but so is every single other form of mutation in the Capital wasteland. It transforms the Enclave's plan from a matter of genetic purity to even more of a matter of security than it was in Fallout 2.

I believe Eden's plan wasn't out of some fear of the wastlanders, but a belief that in order for the Enclave to rebuild in earnest in the CW, every threat posed by mutation must be eliminated.

"The good people of this country, cannot regain control while mutation runs rampant across our land. My soldiers cannot stem the tide, nor can the cult you've come into contact with-this Brotherhood of Steel."

In this dialogue he even refers to the threat as being outside that of normal wastelanders, which the Brotherhood of Steel are essentially "normal wastelanders" in the sense that they are mutated as well. The wastelanders cannot fight off the mutation, so it falls upon the Enclave, who simply don't have the resources to spare either. Thus Eden turns to his plan.


The wastelanders could be left alone if not for the fact that they are mutated to some degree, and in engineering a virus to wipe out mutation, they are simply carried along as collateral damage.

It still seems un-necessary. Just requiring a vaccine worked fine enough, no need to make the thing seek out "mutantions" or what-ever.

Except that doesn't make sense? What does mutation have to do with building a stable government? Didn't stop the NCR. How do soldiers "stem the tide" of mutation exactly, how could they - aside from the obvious which I don't believe you are proposing? Oh and niether can the Brotherhood of Steel either, he makes sure to make that point because it's all spin and [censored].

Eden certainly wasn't acting out of fear, he was taking a prudent step in the survival of his people by just cleansing the whole area and giving them somewhere safer to rebuild proper - I also believe it served Eden's own fetish related to the U.S. Government and the capital in-particularly but that's neither here-nor-there. What your suggesting here is more a genetic crusade, the type propositioned by our other-wise uneducated opponents; supposed genetics in the Enclave relate to simply having a healthier populace as we've clearly seen that mainlanders have no problem forming large empires and sprawling bureaucratic governments.

Quite a bit when you are down to only a few hundred in population. Every man killed battling any sort of hostile creature (just about all of which are mutated) is a valuable man lost.

Assuming we want to keep the population of the Enclave stable, secure and healthy, there is only so much manpower which can be brought forth.


I suppose I didn't really clarify my position. I'm not saying that the Enclave is on some sort of genetic crusade simply to kill mutants for the sake of killing mutants. Rather, the purpose should be directed towards the security of the Enclave in the CW and the quick unhindered rebuilding of the region.


It almost did though. The mutant threat posed by the master nearly snuffed the fledging NCR out.

I wasn't aware that was even contested? Of course that's the whole point, who's saying otherwise?

I'm a bit confused where we are differing in opinion. I suppose that's my problem.

You'll have to bear with me for a moment, my mind's not where it should be today.


We completely agree on this I would say, which is basically what I'm saying (or at least attempting to say). I'm arguing that Eden took Richardson's plan and modified to fit the CW, which he planned to be a homeland of the Enclave. Rebuilding would be difficult for a small group like the Enclave with the threat of mutations, so Eden modified the virus to not not simply wipe out any human not inocculated, but anything with a certain level of mutation. This wasn't based on any pseudo-scientific pnotion that mutants are "evil" but that its a general fact that most hostile creatures are mutated ones. I'm not advocating that the non-hostile wastelanders should be incorporated into the Enclave, but rather that if not for the threat posed by other mutants to the Enclave, they wouldn't necessarily need to be killed since they pose absolutely no threat. Richardson himself remarked that plenty of near-humans were not hostile and that it was 'unfortunate" that they would have to be killed.

I understand your point with the NCR, but I would also argue that at one time they were threatened by mutants. Eden doesn't believe the mutants of the CW can be wiped out so easily by either the Enclave or the Brotherhood of Steel, so he's taking a more secure approach.

Autumn was right. The majority of humans who did not grow up in vaults die under Eden's plan. How in the world could that plan be correct? Please tell me how killing the majority of people you are supposed to be trying to govern and keep safe is correct? The FEV doesn't just kill mutants. If you watch the end of the game in the ending when you do side with Eden it even shows mostly human deaths. Also if you do the survival guide quest then it would also kill you as the main character because Moira Brown says the radiation poisoning(if you do the one that goes over 600 rads) caused mutation and if you have radiation poisoning from that point on crippled limbs begin to regenerate. So if you, someone fresh out of the vault for less then a year, would die from it then who exactly would live besides the Enclave themselves and other vault dwellers? Eden says you would live, but he also doesnt know that you HAVE in fact suffered from mutation. Basically almost every one dies. Not just the super mutants. The purest form of humanity thats left would unclude almost no one you had a conversation with in the game.