Here's a question... when did the cloning process start? What little information we have doesn't provide a date. Cloning was not part of its original mission so we shouldn't assume they started cloning Gary's right after the doors sealed. Either the terminal in the entry in the Citadel about the vault's purpose was a lie or the Cloning process started long after the vault first closed.

They ate them.

Prove its the same clones oh and prove the log wasn't written a year ago.

Ah but look at how it strings together with a couple other vaults.

Vault 87 was retooled for researching FEV

Vault 108 ended up producing clones

Vault 92 tried to use "subliminal suggestion." to program people.

Taken together you have an army of genetically enhanced super soldiers you can grow in lab and program to your heart's content. Of course each experiment was a partial failure

"Prove its the same clones oh and prove the log wasn't written a year ago."

I can't prove that it wasn't written a year ago and I never said they weren't. In fact I actually mentioned that time issue.

It's the same clones (which is why the process wasn't automated) because there is no Gary 55. Every Gary we encounter is in between the numbers 1 and 54. Like the log says, 54 were created. So the log refers to the ones we encounter.

Prove that they didn't do it a year ago? Well, seeing how the Vault was scheduled to fail, and lose power after 20 or so years, I would say it would be pretty hard to sustain an entire vault of people for 200 some years.

Not to mention, you say that cloning wasn't planned for the vault. So, what they do, create the cloning system themselves out of toasters and steam gauge assemblies? That another plot hole. Hey, cloning won't be done here, but here is a bunch of hi-tech cloning equipment.

Not to mention I guess we also supposed to assume that people kept giving birth to super smart scientists who and pass down their knowledge on this 200 year old equipment so that 190 years later their descendant super smart scientist offsprings can finally do cloning.

Man, really?

Another "solution" could look like this:

-Vault 108 shipped with scientists and the experimental pre-war technology of cloning inside.
-The actual 'Project Safehouse' experiment has nothing to do with the cloning (this is safe data).
-We can imagine the cloning lab like the research of Vault 22 - people wanted to continue their promising developments even in times of war and made a contract with Vault-Tec who financed and put their name on it (maybe not even that). The scientists wanted to help humanity. Or maybe they just wanted to experiment.
-After the war, the cloning either was never done or never successfully done for unknown reasons.
-After the Vault opened, the Vault was overrun by critters and everyone died. The technology remained there though.
-Post-war scientists like James' team was are contacted by prospectors who entered the vault (and forgot some jet in there), got rid of the critters and found the technology inside. They got some serious caps for their discovery.
-The scientists (among them Dr Peterson) set base inside the safe Vault and begin to study the devices and reinstall power. Their thirst for knowledge and admiration of pre-war science is extreme.
-They find out about the purpose of the labs and decide to test it for unknown reasons (maybe they want to sell many many slaves).
-Gary volunteers as genetic donor.
-The rest is history.

The main power supply was intended to fail after twenty years but that doesn't mean no one could have figured out a way to fix it. Or some contractor saw the error in the power supply design and fixed it without telling anyone.

The Citadel computer on the vault 108 outlines the Vault experiment, which did not include cloning research. In fact it set up an entirely different kind of experiment. So either the terminal entry is a lie in which case none of the information can be trusted including when the MAIN power supply would fail. Or the residents of the vault survived the experiment and fixed the problem before going on to other things.

We also don't know what would be standard equipment in a 2077 medical or science lab.

The Gary's are also listed as being increasingly hostile not unintelligent. Aside from having a language made up entirely of different ways of saying "Gary" they aren't actually any dumber then the random NPC's you encounter in combat.

Hell we don't even know if the cloning experiment was done by the original inhabitants of the vault. Some other group could have laid claim to the abandoned equipment and retooled it for their own purposes.

So what you're saying is education doesn't exist, that one generation can't raise and train the next generation? Maybe you should go criticize the existence of the Enclave in Fallout 2 for doing that exact same thing.

Now we have contractors fixing vault experiments? Lol.

Cloning equipment is standard 2077? Lol.

Big difference comparing the resources of the Enclave to one single Vault. Huge difference. Not to mention Enclave not stuck in a Vault and free to look for any othet resource they need.

Why would these original vault dwellers be training their offspring on something they for some reason didn't use? For 199 years people just looked at this cloning equipment, grew old and died and just stared at it.

Plenty of things went wrong with the Vault experiments usually to the misfortune of the residents, Vault 13's spare waterchip got sent to a different vault for example.(speaking of which its possible the cloning equipment was shipped to the wrong vault) Its not unreasonable that someone building Vault 108 notice the fault in the main reactor and not knowing it was intentional fixed the problem. OR that the residents fixed it themselves.

How do you know what equipment is required? YOU DON'T how do you know that the equipment couldn't be modified from something else. YOU DON'T. Vaults are supposed to have population control, they recycle waste, grow their own food all these things to make them completely self sufficient for decades or even over a century.

A medical lab capable of growing clone organs as donations would be in short supply isn't unreasonable standard equipment.

The Enclave was stuck in isolation on an oil rig for a century before they ventured out to explore the wasteland. So they were stuck in in their own vault long after most others had either failed or opened to the wasteland.

Again you make this assumption that the equipment had to be made for cloning and cloning only and couldn't possibly have been modified from something else such as just cloning organs for transplant. Or that it maybe took awhile before they produced the first successful Gary.

Sorry, but yoy don't know that as a fact, that the Enclave stuck in isolation. We know nothing about prior Enclave activity that was not revealed in FO2. Which, in FO2 we know they were doing stuff on mainland at least 50 years before FO2, and who knows what up to before that.

So now they taking equipment used to clone organs and modifying it to clone entire people. Lol.

What I know is that cloning equipment is not some common thing. If it was, you just opened up a Pandora's Box. It is bad enough that functioning cloning equipment is just sitting in a vault in the CW that the BoS or Enclave could get their hands on and create massive clone armies, but now you trying to say it standard, which considering that we have never seen one in a Vault before I think it IS safe to say it would NOT be standard.

As far as the faulty reactor I would assume if it going to fail after so many years, the problem which would result in failure wouldn't be something easily noticeable or fixable by a mechanic with a wrench and tool box.


But, this whole what if what if back and forth is proof of the poor writing. Leaving too much information that we have to come up with explanations is not good writing. There is a difference between having a little mystery and having huge gaps that WE have to grab shovels (or bulldozers) and fill in.

I agree, I enjoyed playing Fallout 3, but it's increasingly clear that any attempt to anolyse it in any kind of depth exposes a multiple number of problems. Problems that we would expect developers to have thought about rather than just thinking "a whole vault? Filled with people who just say 'Gary?' Cool.”

I agree too. It's like David Lynch psycho movies. They aren't much fun anymore, when you realize that the creator didn't really put any thought in these and doesn't have an interpretation himself.

But what about my "solution"? Aren't any holes in it if the cloning tech was experimental.

-Vault 108 shipped with scientists and the experimental pre-war technology of cloning inside.
-The actual 'Project Safehouse' experiment has nothing to do with the cloning (this is safe data).
-We can imagine the cloning lab like the research of Vault 22 - people wanted to continue their promising developments even in times of war and made a contract with Vault-Tec who financed and put their name on it (maybe not even that). The scientists wanted to help humanity. Or maybe they just wanted to experiment.
-After the war, the cloning either was never done or never successfully done for unknown reasons. Or maybe it even was done, but it's of no consequence, as:
-After the Vault opened, the Vault was overrun by critters and everyone died. The technology remained there though.
-Post-war scientists like James' team was are contacted by prospectors who entered the vault (and forgot some jet in there), got rid of the critters and found the technology inside. They got some serious caps for their discovery.
-The scientists (among them Dr Peterson) set base inside the safe Vault and begin to study the devices and reinstall power. Their thirst for knowledge and admiration of pre-war science is extreme.
-They find out about the purpose of the labs and decide to test it for unknown reasons (maybe they want to sell many many slaves).
-Gary volunteers as genetic donor.
-The rest is history.

And these 2277 prospectors scientists decided that wearing Vault suits for the Gary was cool, and they found a whole bunch of pip boy in there too.

Why the prospectors not just snag the cloning equipment and other such things and sell to highest bidder? Plenty of people would want that.

Even if it could be, shouldn't have to think that stuff up.

Yeah, the suits were there already. Maybe the Clones took the Pip-Boys (after killing their creators) and didn't manage to properly wear them, causing themselves harm because they somehow implemented the Pip-Boys in their arms forever.

The prospectors couldn't snag the cloning equipment. Too heavy. They didn't know what it would be useful for, just that they looked quite scientific. Maybe one of them was a scientist's relative or something. They sold a lot of the Pip Boys though (to the scientist team also).

Yeah, we shouldn't, because if you have to 'construct' an entire history onto a scenario that displays itself obviously as something else, it feels very 'constructed'.

Nothing is ever too heavy when it comes to making loot. It got in there in the first place and it wasn't driven in there, which means there would be a way to get it out, I would imagine they have dollys in the FO world.

True, but it wasn't worth the effort in the eyes of the prospectors. And they're still out fine if they got money for the discovery.

It's of course just trying to make sense out of something which didn't have a sense when it was created at all.

Wait, Pip - Boys are permanent? Why?

Pip-Boys aren't permanent. But Gary 23's Pip-Boy (and I think every Pip-Boy of F3's) is permanent, because the Outcasts cut off his arm to get this interfering device for the Anchorage sim - doesn't make sense otherwise. I tried to also put an explanation for this into the theory. Plus for the jet in pre-war facilities.

No Pip-boy is permanent, it is however suggested it is bio-metrically locked, so the user him/herself would have to take it off, or they would need very specific Pip-boy unlocking tools/knowledge.

The Gary clones are too stupid to remove it themselves, and the outcasts wouldn't have the tools to do it correctly, so cutting of his arm would be the only way.

If it's biometrically locked, the Outcasts could have circumvented the problem (simply coercing the clone to do what they want, unless they don't know how it's locked, which isn't plausible for a tech crazy faction).

You can't "make" or "coerce" Gary clones into anything, they are mindless and violent.

And its entirely possible they dont know how its locked because the BoS deals mainly in weapons tech, not Pip boys, which incredibly few people in the wastes actually have. Knowing a lot about guns doesn't make one a robotics expert.

A pip boy isn't a "mysterious wonder" to the BoS. They have dealt with people who would of had one before. I'm sure they know how it works.

They have dealt with people with the pipboy 2000, entirely different model, that isn't biometricly sealed.

That you know of. It seems pretty far fetched they never seen or worked with a PipBoy 3000 seeing how they in FO3 and NV.

Lyons likely left before the BoS moved into the Vegas area, and there's all of about what? 5 people outside vault in Fallout 3 that actually has a pipboy?

is it possible Lyons died from natural causes as old as he was?

So, you must picture the BoS as a fairly lazy group. There are many vaults BoS could have checked out or many people they could have met during the time they went east to setup shop in DC. They sure don't act amazed and in awe at LW pipboy.