Before I begin let me say I am by no means a expert on fallout cannon so if I got some things wrong please, you Fallout Veterans set me straight.

So I been wondering how did the powers that be let the nuclear war happen. Things had been tense for decades. And our history has shown on every occasion when faced with the possibility of a nuclear war we always found a way to pull back from the brink.
I don't think the leaders of the world, even in the skewed world view of Fallout would have been so arrogant to think it was winnable.

So my question is did they let it happen? Did the Governments of the world think somehow this was for the good of all mankind? Population control? Less people to use the dwindling resources? A sort of reset button?

Or was there something working behind the scenes to hinder the efforts of the superpowers to avert this calamity? Could it have been the Enclave they existed before the great war, And had connections in all avenues of political power and corporations. They instigate this nuclear exchange and when the most powerful nations in the world or wiped out they emerge to cease control. Sounds familiar.

Perhaps the U.S. government thought it could ride out the war on one of the Ballistic Orbital Missile Bases, B.O.M.B 2 was destroyed by a asteroid after the great war but B.O.M.B. 1 is damaged but could sustain people and is still up there Either way at the time it could have been considered a viable option. Could people still be up there?

Perhaps they knew the super computers were going to start it no matter what and there was nothing they could do to stop it and just rolled over and let it happened

Or maybe it was Vaut.-Tec, maybe they wanted to do these social experiments so bad that they somehow instigated or perpetrated the first strike. Consider that 25 years prier that there was a limited Nuclear exchange between Europe and the Middle east. Perhaps they looked at this and thought, in a twisted way that a nuclear war would be manageable.

So what are your thoughts, not on who started it but why the powers that be couldn't prevent it.

1. The "MAD" policy wasn't devised until late in the cold war. Fallout canon stems from the mid 50's, when little was actually know about the long term effects of nuclear weapons. From their point of view, Nuclear war was NOT the "End all" deterrent we see it as today. After all, nuclear powered things became common place.

2. There aren't many things in existence that can stop an ICBM, let alone with nothing but 50s sci-fi tech. Most of the stuff that could possibly do anything were all experimental and not readily accessible on the fly. At best, if they did manage to stop the missile itself, the payload could still go off, causing a crap ton of damage even still.


Could it have been prevented? Sure, that is always a possibility, no matter how small the likelyhood.

If you go by markings on the Desert Ranger Armour then we know that US Forces were fighting in Shanghai and Nanjing, Vickers had spent months in one city before then being reposted to another which would suggest somekind of long-term operation to claim both cities. President Richardson in Fallout 2 says that "Our gallant soldiers fought from the Yukon to the Yangtze," and then "We were winning, too. And then those damn Reds launched everything they had. We barely got our birds up."

The US was very much winning the war in China, and whilst I partly agree with the sentiment about MAD not having been devised (that we know of) it's clear that neither side considering using their nuclear arsenal as conventional weapons. China was getting beat badly, it makes sense that they launched first; no real conspiracy.

And BOMB-001 is not canon and doesn't exist. And the US Government hid out on facilities on the Earth, the Raven Rock bunker and the Oil Rig to name a couple, Hidden Valley in Nevada was also designed for this.

China didn't want to face losing to the US so they launched everything they had to avoid it. The US then retaliated and shot everything they had.

Even in non-canon Van Buren the B.O.M.B. 001 wasn't made to house a space colony or anything. It had the same purpose as the (canon) Bradley-Hercules.

If you look at the design documents, there isn't exactly a large living quarter on the B.O.M.B. 001. It only has like six beds for a small crew.

Alas, not everything... there were still plenty of missiles left over in the Divide!

Simple: Mutually Assured Destruction or M.A.D.

American forces had driven China out of Alaska and started invading China itself. American forces were very active in the Yangtze River which is in the heart of China and captured Shanghai. American forces were also in the Gobi Desert.

So the hardcoe Maoist communist government that ruled China for a 128 years couldn't face the cold hard fact that they were losing and losing to their worst enemies, the capitalist Americans. So backed into a corner and hiding in their bunkers, they were left with one last option. "Take them down with us." Launch what ICBMs they have and along with their sub missiles and start MAD. It worked.

President Richardson Quotes: "Our gallant soldiers fought from the Yukon to the Yangtze." " We were winning, too. And then those damn Reds launched everything they had. We barely got our birds up." "Well, no it didn't. But at least it knocked the damn Red menace back into the stone age."