i would say unless you built that self sustaining island nation, making it impossible for anyone to know about it, youds till get a wave of people fleeing the carnage on mainlands.. or the carnage would come to you, since youre the only self sustaining place left

True on both counts, but still, something, be it fallout or dark skies, is gonna make food stocks scarce, and lead to raids on the areas that happened to survive the bombs.

hows about the radiation killing off the plantlife (which in the FO universe means they dont grow back as fast as IRL) that would effect everything

Well... No Man (or Self-Sustaining Island nation) is a (metaphorical) island... They would still need to import something, be it fuel, minerals, manufacturing items, medicines, even if the food is self sustainable.

Whilst the populace gets news of the world falling to bits outside this would undoubtedly effect civil order, fringe groups using the confusion to stage attacks on power, peace activists protesting the war, hawks protesting the lack of involvement in said conflict....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Southern_and_Antarctic_Lands, intriguing place, right smack in the middle of ocean.

(to be more precise, I am talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerguelen_Islands)

Nuclear Winter IS NOT Discredited. Carl Sagan's figures, yes, those are out the window. Observe:

One has to admit, the nuclear detonation rips open the sky like a scroll, pouring material into the stratosphere like krakatoa did which made year in which the world had no summer.

In the case of the massive volcanos, its SO2 in the high atmosphere changing the planetary albedo so we reflect more light into space, and yes, S02 is a pollutant produced by dirty industry. (Sulfuric Acid Rain whe it mixes with water in atmosphere).

Consider it all.

Most amazing is how ancient man could describe these weapons so well in writings 2 millenia and/or older.

The war would reach everywhere by one simple mechanism - starvation.

What the war Would do is completely break-down the global trade system over-night, and many billions of people depend on food and other critical aid from over-seas countries. Industry would fail, and as such no one would be "making" food anymore on a large scale.

Most of those who survived the day of the war would then die of starvation and common diseases (by our standards) within the weeks to follow. What food was still around on trees would be covered in Fallout, so I think food is globally affected in any such war.

Miax

Untouched by the war? Are you serious? The bombs have irradiated the world so badly that even ghouls and mutties are out.

Well, maybe some part of the world would not be as badly wasted as in the wasteland that we know... but they will all still be affected.

Id still see some native guys in the pacific survivng

Somewhere some Filipino fishing village is completely oblivious to the worldwide destruction that ravaged the world 200 years ago. At the same time some tribal hunters in the Amazon are wondering where the [censored] all these massive roaches, flies, and scorpions are coming from... and how they got so friggin lucky! YUM!!

Very correct here. Those thinking that there would be Pacific Island Oasis's from nuclear fallout are kidding themselves in the case of a full-scale nuclear war.

Those islanders would be no better off than anyone else, much worse in fact if the radiation kills alot of the surface fish in the ocean. I think food would be an even worse issue there.

No one gets to "hide" from a nuclear war.

Miax

unless theyre in a vault-tec vault!

Antartica. Except wind patterns would choke it with fallout along with Australia.

I'm sure there are some places that are doing fine after the apocalypse, but that wouldn't make a fun game if fallout was set there now would it?

Not according to Fallout 1/Fallout 2 which clearly state that the world was engulfed in a grand scale nuclear war.

ah but what about tribes in deep jungles with no contact with the outside world?

There would be pockets of land not messed up or radiated. Just pockets.

even the most remote places would feel the effects through a changing weather system, which would change an eco system..
then theres that whole pesky food chain getting some links taken out and/or added.
you would also tghinkthat any rad free oasis has the potential to be flocked to by survivros, essentially making it a battleground or at the least depleating its resources.
global scale nuclear war is just that-global

There's also the economic effects... lesser access to imported food which may result in starvation in some already marginal habitable areas, lesser access to the technology/materials to maintain the technology that are responsible for modern life (Electrics, Plumbing, etc), limited access to medicines and vaccines.

agreed (WOW!) hahah

LOLZ. OZ and Austrailia have several large US space tracking stations (For satelites, space missions, ect) Plus, if I recall from my days in the service, both nations serve as ports of call for many US military vessels.

Short version is: Both countries would have warheads paying them a visit.

(Forgive any spelling or grammar errors, got out of surgery yesterday and they have me taking Oxycodone for the pain.)

Assuming a similar treaty situation existed in the fallout world as in the real world, Australia would be compelled to join the war on the US side by way of the ANZUS treaty.

ANZUS was signed in 1951 (near the point of divergence), which increases the chance that it did exist at one point, if not at the point of war.

Until 1984 the treaty also would have compelled NZ to come to the defence of the US as well. As this change was definately "post Divergence", it could well mean that NZ would have been compelled to act too.

Australia, NZ and the US are also signatories to the UK-USA security agreement which gives us the ECHELON signals interception which is designed to intercept as many satelite transmitted communications as possible. Although Echelon dates from the 60's (Post divergence), it is an extention of previous treaties signed in the 40's, meaning in fallout's world Australia and New Zealand could have played a very important role in the US's intelligence gathering network, making them targets.

all of north america would be destroyed, not just U.S. [note]

To add on this, the Pitt wasn't nuked but the people are so mutated because of irratiated rivers and pollution. South Africa might be a target in an all-out destruction war for example, and this would irradiate half the rivers in Africa, even if nobody thought to nuke them they would (according to fallout Science!) have mutations as well.