I just wondered - the road and bridges in fallout are full of cars and trucks, but how can it be that there are so many when it was $7450.99 per gallon in 2077? Normal persones could impossible afort that :spotted owl:

Cars switched to nuclear energy or something like that. (Which is why they have their cute little minishroom effects when you blow 'em up.)

That's not canon and look at the above. Only high level events from Tactics are canon.

Gas prices sky rocket with the regular gas price being $7450.99 per gallon and $8500.99 per gallon for premium.

- The wiki.

Regardless of the source, You gotta gow ith Gabriel on this one. Before the Great War, cars started being built to run on nuclear power.
Another thing to look at is that we dont know the inflation rate in the last years of the pre-Great War Fallout universe. Look at the opening credits for F01 to get an idea.
Also, it is understandable that gas would be quite pricey, given that all of the worlds oil deposits were depleted, supply and demand would dicate a high price.

Part of that is due to soaring inflation. We don't really know what the inflation rate was, but $7450.99 per gallon is probably expensive, but not necessarily ridiculously overpriced.

A good example is that in the U.S. after the great depression.. there were times when you could pay 30 bucks for a loaf of bread, and have be cheap, due to inflation. I've heard stories of people who bought houses for a , and because inflation was super high, when it went back down, they ended up paying a lot less.

Just because there's cars on the road doesn't mean they necessarily were used. Many probably just abandoned their car and left it there. But I do agree with the first answer, they most likely by then used some other type of fuel, most likely a more eco-friendly one. You have to think, this is way in the future. We've only been using gasoline for about a century and a half at that, and we're already using different types of fuels.

That could have been only in the last couple of days before the Great War. The sign could have been busted :shrug:

Still it would have been insainly high. At some point I would think the American government would have stepped in an stopped the sale of Gas to civilians and used what was left for military use.

Cars were electric by the time of the Great War, powered by microfusion cells. Fallout 3 brought in the stupid Idea that some cars had mini nuclear reactors. New Vegas also shows people were trying to look into so called green energy, because Uranium was also running out. Would not supprise me that many cars were fueld by ethanol or even oil/gas made from coal.

The Car Ad for the CORVAGE:

Full anolog System
No Electronics!!!
No Computer!!!
800+ Horsepower
0 to 60 in 5 seconds

ONLY 199,999.99

That's alo of money for a car with no electronics and no computers in an age with AI computers and such. If people were willing to blow that much money on a car with the basic package, then paying hundreds of dollars for gas wouldn't be that crazy.

Okay; maybe the specific price isn't canon but if Gasoline/Petrol was available to regular people at that point; with the last supply being pumped and argued over its gotta only be available at an insane price.

The 1950's brought us the idea of nuclear cars Styles. Fallout 3 just capitalized on it. The HIghway man in Fallout 2 was a single vehicle there is no basis for it being a model for all cars. That being said the microfusion batteries exploding could be causing the radiation. The old FO2 style cells did have the radiation sticker on them.

They were still batteries and the car had an electirc engine. Bethesda did not need to come up with Nuclear Powered cars because Fallout already had microfusion electric cars. The very fact that the cars in Fallout 3 explode proves how very stupid the idea of a car with a nuclear reactor in it is.

You are driving you're nuclear powered car. You crash into a car infront of you. You die in a nuclear fire ball, which causes the cars around you to blow up, and that causes all the cars around them to blow up. Before you know it every car on the highway is blowing up, killing hundreds if not thousands of people. It will not stop until there are no more cars around to blow up. LA would have been nuked to hell by one careless driver getting into an accident, because of the famous traffic snarls its known for.

Then there is also the insain logic in giving anyone with the cash, their own nuclear bomb on wheels. Wouldn't need to stock up on fertilizer and get a rental truck anymore. Just go out an buy you're own nuclear weapon on wheels.

It would have been fine to say they had nuclear reactors. Totally stupid to say they blow up when shot at.

Styles have you ever watched an action movie? Or played a video game with cars in it. Cars explode all the time from crashes, being shot and other such calamities. Which we know to be impossible but still expect to happen in our fims and video games. They're applying the same logic that every action movie and video game has used for the past fifty years. Cars explode when damaged. So what if the explosion causes ten rads of radiation.

And the nuclear cars have been decaying for two centuries they might not have been so explosive two hundred years ago. And did you know that coal contains trace amounts of uranium and thorium. A Car that runs on coal gas which then explodes may well indeed release a few rads worth of radioactive material.

Yeah that's why I hate that the cars explode in Fallout 3. Because Bethesda worships at the altar of Michael Bay. Made Fallout 3 just like one of his movies, full of pointless explosions.. Hell they even had Optimus Prime in it.

Cars don't explode and Fallout isn't a FPS action movie type series.

I sorta have to agree with Styles on this one. I never really liked the idea of the cars exploding. I'm not going to call Bethesda out on it, but I do think it was a tad unnecessary. Just my thoughts (and for the record, I find the tendency of cars to blow up in action movies to be just as necessary).

Perhaps certain conditions should have had to have been met for them to blow up, rather than just shooting them with a .32 a few times (or whatever).

I never recall them blowing up from being hit by a super sledge. So it does at least require weapons fire.

I bet your feeling stupid re-reading my comment.

That's a start, but I would prefer if they only blew up with something like an explosive weapon (maybe just grenades or missiles).

Or alternatively not at all.

A car powered by microfusion cells would not release radiation upon explosion, because fusion reactions do not involve unstable radioactive isotopes of elements, where fission would. There would be some radiation, but nothing noticeable. I am no physicist, so I my assertion might be off.

I could see cars using electric power. High-powered batteries are likely to be highly explosive since there is a huge volume of potential energy stored in a concentrated battery. The explosion would release toxic liquids and fumes, but no radiation.

There is approximately 75-100 years worth of viable petroleum left in the ground, so it is extremely likely that for the price of such chemicals to skyrocket.

[quote name='Gurkog' timestamp='1320128662' post='19006425'

There is approximately 75-100 years worth of viable petroleum left in the ground, so it is extremely likely that for the price of such chemicals to skyrocket.
[/quote]
In our world right now that is the case.

But:
1) The great war happened in 2077 which is pretty close to your estimate
2) It is established in canon clearly that its all gone in Fallout's universe.

It makes no sense at all for nuclear powered cars to explode. At least gasoline is combustible. If a nuclear reactor malfunctions, it would just release a lot of heat and radiation but there would be no explosion at all.

Given the right circumstances nuclear reactor's can explode. For instance Chernobyl had exploded and then some. Having a mini nuclear reactor sitting there decaying for 200 years could have the potential for explosions. I don't really know how bullets effect them though.

Chernobyl blew up because it has a defect and it was full of graphite, but it wasn't like a nuclear bomb. A nuclear reactor turned off and left sitting would not explode. Watch "a life after people" the one where they talk about this subject. Nuclear power plants across the globe would be fine. What does explode are the storage facilities where spent fuel is sent to cool. They are keeped for years under alot of water till they cool. Once the water runs out they blow up.

Nuclear power plants don't blow up, as in can take out a whole city. If they did no one would build them. What they can do is get really hot, parts can blow up throughing Fallout over a population. Just as Giantevilhead said, heat and radiation but no boom (mushroom cloud).

First, I said under the right circumstances, and never indicated, besides that Chernobyl did explode, any reaction or effect or anything. And chernobyl would be considered the right circumstances to explode, so nothing wrong there. Also I wasn't defending the mushroom cloud, just saying a rotting mini nuclear reactor could have the potential to explode under the right sircumstances, never said a mushroom cloud.

Forgive my ignorance from my reading of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster


Surely a bullet exposing the graphite moderator (going through all that metal and equipment) has got to be an unlikely shot; not a common one (and thus inconsistent with the game).