The Lore And World Of ‘Fallout’
A power armor helmet with a couple of vault dwellers in the background in the wasteland.
Image Source: Money Control
The Fallout franchise began back in 1997 with the release of the first game. The basic plot of the games is survival in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that resulted from a nuclear war. Since the first game’s release, though, the games have expanded on and woven more intricate plot details and stories that have become one of the most beloved game franchises in history. Now it also enjoys the medium of television to expand on that.
The Context
In the Fallout universe, the first thing to understand is that this is an alternate timeline in which the world diverged after World War II. Retrofuturism is the term for the continued advancement of things, but the aesthetic continued to resemble a bygone era. Everything retains the look of the 1950s while technology continues to progress. There’s floating robots, computers, the internet, and eventually fusion technology…all while everything looks like something out of Back to the Future Part I.
A town of people watching a nuke explode in the distance.
Image Source: NAG Magazine
By the beginning of the 21st Century, China and the United States became the main rivals, and the Cold War ideological differences between Capitalism and Communism was still strong…and quickly consuming the world’s natural resources. By 2060, it was reaching a fever pitch, and quickly leading to global conflict again.
By mid-century, world oil reserves were quickly running dry through increased consumption. The United States faced economic collapse as cars could no longer operate as gas became scarce. The United States rushed to develop alternative means of power, like fusion, but the vanishing fuel reserves were already devastating the economy, and rationing for non-civilian use was implemented. It led to the United States invading Mexico to take its oil reserves (Sound familiar?). The energy crisis also led to the European Commonwealth to invade the oil producing countries of the Middle East, further exacerbating the energy crisis and ultimately leading to the dissolution of the United Nations.
To further muddy things, a plague began to spread. In the early 2050s, a new viral infection began to spread through the country, forcing the government to resort to authoritarian methods to try and contain it. The virus was brutal, eventually leading to external hemorrhaging. The government fed the paranoia of the public by restricting gatherings, increasing it’s anti-communist propaganda, and encouraging a new wave of McCarthyism by informing government authorities on “subversive” groups or individuals. (Sound familiar?)
Meanwhile, across the Pacific, China was burning through its oil reserves faster and faster, more reliant on it than the United States, which had mad headway into fusion technology. China began to resort to hostile methods from espionage to outright invasion in an attempt to secure more fuel reserves. By the mid-2060s, China could no longer sustain itself without American oil assets, and with the United States refusing to trade its oil with China, China invaded Alaska for its fuel resources.
Chinese soldier in Alaska with parachuting troops behind them.
Image Source: Fandom
This war lasted for nearly 10 years with a stalemate developing in Alaska and a resurgence of trench warfare. The situation in Alaska brought the United States to annex Canada, which led to riots and resistance and the implementation of martial law. Protestors were shot on sight. Martial law eventually came to the United States as well as the war dragged on and the U.S. invaded mainland China.
Things began to shift when the first power armor model was deployed on American frontlines and the Chinese began to fall back.
This is when propaganda takes over and the truth becomes buried. From what the public was made aware of, it would be China that struck first. They, afterall, had resorted to biological warfare after losing their control of Anchorage and the power armor units deployed by the U.S. were proving effective. According to the government, China launched first when negotiations broke down. According to the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction, the United States retaliated.
It became known as The Great War, and it lasted 2 hours. The world as they knew it was over, and the world entered a nuclear apocalypse.
The Vaults
One of the mainstays of the Fallout world is the vaults. On the surface, they’re massive underground (pun intended) shelters that people could retreat to in the event of nuclear war so that humanity could survive.
In truth, they were something far worse, and the focal point of the Fallout universe’s clandestine elements.
The entrance to Vault 111 in Massachusetts.
Image Source: IGN
With the global situation rapidly deteriorating, by 2054, the United States government launched Project Safehouse. They contracted out a massive underground shelter project to ensure the continuation of government and humanity in the event of a nuclear war and another plague. A company known as Vault-Tec won the contract, and the construction of underground shelters in the form of small cities began across the country. In the end, around 122 public vaults were constructed all around the country, in mountains and under cities. The idea, again, on the surface, was that they would be self-sustaining. Air, water, food, everything.
The illusion of choice was made to the public as officials from Vault-Tec would visit homes and offer the services of the vaults to secure their family’s future and survival in the event of the worst case scenario.
In actuality, Vault-Tec wasn’t interested in the survival of the human race. Well, not all of them. They were instead interested in market research. As the show comes to reveal, and expands on what was in the games, Vault-Tec and other corporations in the United States were interested in money and power. Even with the end of the world, they saw a future that they could shape. It was about control.
To these ends, Vault-Tec and, through their vaults, other corporations like RobCo (robotics company) used the vaults to conduct experiments on people. Without a functioning government to regulate them, they were free to test social, psychological, and even physical experiments on the people in the vaults, known as Vault Dwellers. 17 of the 122 public vaults were built as control vaults that would do as they advertised to the public. The rest, not so much. Since these were experiments, the Dwellers were selected, under the guise of choice.
Cafe room of Vault 101
Image Source: RPGamer
Most of the vaults failed. Despite the evil machinations of the corporations pre-war, the best laid plans can’t account for everything. Inbreeding, mechanical failures, corruption, you name it, most of the vaults fell victim to these things as the years went by and the prophesied Reclamation Day, the day they would open and the Earth would be repopulated, did not come. Furthermore, many of the vaults had planned years of operation. Few had the capability to last as long as it would take to safely repopulate the surface, through the pitfalls of capitalism, like corruption, budget restrictions, cutting corners, etc.
Factions and Surface Dwellers
One of the reasons for the failure of the vaults and the real start of the war was factionalism.
One of the most responsible was the Enclave. Playing into every conspiracy theory about a deep state there is, the Enclave was a highly secretive and exclusive group of elites that worked behind the scenes. High level members of the government, corporate executives, scientists, and other high powered individuals made up it’s ranks. They were responsible for the vault experiments. Through the show, it’s clear they were also responsible for the start of the Great War. Their ultimate goal was to use the vaults to gather data and figure out how to build a ship to colonize another world. Eventually they decided to just stay here and repopulate Earth, using the data to shape the world in the way they wanted. There’s a strong genocidal element to their machinations, as they believed in a pure version of humanity.
After the war, new factions and old surfaced. One of the most powerful is the Brotherhood of Steel. This is a quasi-religious, fascist, para-military organization that grew out of the absence of a real government post-war. They commandeered pre-war military equipment and seek out advanced military technology that was lost during the war to further their quest to rebuild the United States, but in their image. They are most commonly seen wearing the remaining power armor suits that were used by the American military.
Brotherhood of Steel outpost with a paladin and two knights in power armor with the Brotherhood’s Logo
Image Source: IGN
Other major factions have arisen in the 200 years that the games and show take place within. One of the biggest power players is the New California Republic. Created out of the remnants of the state of California, they expanded into Oregon and other surrounding states like Nevada, Arizona, and even Northern Mexico. However, they were heavily weakened after the capitol, Shady Sands, was destroyed by a bomb, one detonated by Hank Maclean. They were further weakened in position when NCR forces were attacked by BoS knights over cold fusion technology.
The NCR was also opposed by the city of New Vegas, built around the remnants of the city of Las Vegas, and the army of Caesar’s Legion. Caesar’s Legion, led by a man of the same name, amassed an army in the Mojave and directly challenged the strength and power of the NCR. They were one of the two main opposing factions in Fallout: New Vegas, and one in which the player can align themselves with. They fashion themselves on the ancient Roman military, even wearing Roman styled armor and helmets and using similar weapons.
Underground city where the Institute resides in the Commonwealth
Image Source: IGN
One of the last major factions to mention is in the Commonwealth. This is the remnant of the state of Massachusetts, calling themselves the Commonwealth in the former Northeastern United States. It’s not so much a faction but a major region of settlement. One of the major powers in the Commonwealth, aside from the BoS, is the Institute. This secretive group is highly reliant on science and technology, being a holdover from the pre-war Commonwealth Institute of Technology (the Fallout world’s version of MIT). They use and work with humanlike robots called Synths.
Life In The Wasteland
The strength of the Brotherhood of Steel’s knights in power armor is only matched or surpassed by Super Mutants. They are highly mutated human beings that have become enlarged, green, and incredibly difficult to harm. They are semi-tribal, with no real unified national aspect to them. They are intelligent enough to create clan-based societies, fortifications and dwellings, and craft armor and weapons. They eat humans that happen to fall into their clutches.
Speaking of mutated humans, Ghouls are another group that roam the wasteland. Instead of being mutated into superhuman behemoths with incredible strength and resilience, they came to resemble zombies, with much of their flesh melting off and the radiation scrambling their brains typically into hostility. Some ghouls maintain their human mind and function somewhat in the surface societies that arose after the war, but most ghouls are considered feral, and typically attack on sight. Some are even so irradiated that they explode if attacked.
Image depicts a deathclaw in the Wasteland
Image Source: Fandom
None of this compares to the greatest threat of the Wasteland: Deathclaws. They’re about the closest thing to dragons in the Fallout universe. They have curved horns like the balrog in Lord of the Rings. They are lizard-like, and incredibly aggressive and violent. Extremely hard to kill in the games, we’ve now seen them in the live-action show. The result of biological warfare experiments conducted by the United States government attempt to make a superior weapon that didn’t risk losing more soldiers. They escaped and rapidly multiplied, and soon became the biggest predator in the wasteland.
There’s far too much to go over with regard to the Wasteland. It’s irradiated, but life goes on. People, animals, plants. Everything you eat or drink is poisonous to the extent that it exposes you to radiation each time beyond the lingering radioactive air. One of the goals of the ambitious is to try and purify water. In fact, that’s one of the major plot lines of Fallout 3. It’s anyone’s world on the surface, and that’s what everyone’s doing, trying to create the new world that has arisen from the failures of the old world.
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Source: Fandom
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