Fallout, how long will technology last?

[johnnyLupine]

The wastelands in fallout 4 look like they're running completely on second hand goods. I know that there are a few factions that aim to preserve tech and there may be others that are able to manufacture new goods but looking at the state of the wasteland as a whole it doesn't look like there is much in the way of industrial infrastructure.

There are a few, presumably old, quarries I've seen in fallout 4 but the factories I've seen out in the wastes have been completely dead and it looks like as soon as anyone tries to make some big noises outside of a city it's never long before something nastier decides to set up shop there and kills anyone capable of actually running something like a mine or factory .

People will run out of bullets and salvage strong enough to be used to keep things like power armour, robots and elevators that don't fall apart or blow up in their users face eventually, is there somewhere I don't know about where everyone gets all their raw materials safely or is everyone going to be murdered by supermutants once all the guns stop working?

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

It all comes from movie magic! You have some groups making new devices, but your basically never going to run out of salvage because it's a big part of the setting.

 

[Barbas]

Yep, that's basically it. It wouldn't work. All the potable water would've run out because all the parts for generators and purifiers would've been looted, so humankind would probably mutate into feral ghouls and then just die off over time. Nobody would be left who could manufacture or maintain vital equipment. The survivors of the vaults wouldn't emerge into a world of fear, desperation and murder. They'd just emerge to a totally bleached, barren rock. Then they'd die of thirst.

 

[WolfThomas]

This is a problem with Fallout 3, 4 and less with New Vegas

In Fallout 1, they introduced that the LA Boneyard were able to reload ammunition and was close to making their own brass. The hub had massive water wells/purifiers. Crops grown and brahmin herded for food.

Heck in Fallout 1, taking place only 84 years after the war (F4 is close to 200) there is practically no good loot just lying about in buildings. You only find good stuff in untapped caches like abandoned vaults, military bases etc. All which have some danger being it animal or radiation to keep people from finding earlier.

In Fallout 2 several factions were close to a pre-war industrial scale. The Shi were building new power armor and the NCR was quite advanced. There was a gold mining industry in Redding and Uranium in Broken Hills (though both did dry up).

Clearly the Brotherhood in F4 has some industrial base in the Capital Wastelands, as they made an airship. I wouldn't be surprised if they are making new power armor and vertibirds (or at least new parts for them).

Don't get me started on how dumb the Capital and Commonwealth having bottle caps for money is (please do actually).

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

If Warhammer 40k has taught me anything, technology can be buried in the dirt for millions of years and still be fully functional so long as it either A) glows green or B) is called Relic/Archeotech technology.

 

[vallorn]

If Warhammer 40k has taught me anything, technology can be buried in the dirt for millions of years and still be fully functional so long as it either A) glows green or B) is called Relic/Archeotech technology.

or if it's a daemon machine. Plus, the ones that glow green also kind of self repair like a living thing so, as long as they have power they would take a very long time to break.

Also gold, golden things never, ever break. The Emperor Protects (his technobling).

Back on topic. Yes, Bethesda Fallout Games make no bloody sense, however, 4 is less nonsensical than 3. read this if you want more on just how stupid Fallout 3 is.
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27085
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27089
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27091
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27095
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27097

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Also gold, golden things never, ever break. The Emperor Protects (his technobling).

Silver or brass are just as indestructible if not as powerful. Also extra endurance if you have gems on them.
Basically the fancier it is, the more The Emperor Protects.

 

[Souplex]

Is everyone going to be murdered by supermutants once all the guns stop working?

"Guns"? What do those have to do with punching mutants in the face? You can never run out of punches.

 

[Dalisclock]

Shamus Young actually wrote a fairly long article about this very subject back in July. http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27085

I never really noticed back when I played Fallout 3 but if and when I replay it I surely will. Most of the time, people don't notice this sort of stuff or even think about it.

Which is why you have stupid articles about conspiracy theorists claiming they see people and cars on Mars in the new NASA rover photos, somehow not considering the question "So, what do these martians eat? and breath? and drink?"

 

[vallorn]

Shamus Young actually wrote a fairly long article about this very subject back in July. http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27085

I never really noticed back when I played Fallout 3 but if and when I replay it I surely will. Most of the time, people don't notice this sort of stuff or even think about it.

Which is why you have stupid articles about conspiracy theorists claiming they see people and cars on Mars in the new NASA rover photos, somehow not considering the question "So, what do these martians eat? and breath? and drink?"

I think I pre empted this by posting exactly the same source.

Is everyone going to be murdered by supermutants once all the guns stop working?

"Guns"? What do those have to do with punching mutants in the face? You can never run out of punches.

You need them for gun punching. [http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Ballistic_fist] The best kind of punching.

 

[Dalisclock]

I think I pre empted this by posting exactly the same source.

My eyes somehow completely skipped over those. Sorry about that.

 

[vallorn]

I think I pre empted this by posting exactly the same source.

My eyes somehow completely skipped over those. Sorry about that.

A ninja post hides in plain sight. Don't worry about it. It's fun to see I'm not the only one who was reminded of that by the OP.

 

[Fijiman]

Don't get me started on how dumb the Capital and Commonwealth having bottle caps for money is (please do actually).

So you're saying that it's physically impossible that someone from the West Coast(like the BoS or someone looking for a fresh start) eventually made their way over to the East Coast and managed to convince people to start using caps, or that someone on the East Coast could have possibly thought to start doing it themselves?

OT: Yes, usable materials would eventually run out, though how fast would depend on a number of factors. However, I think it's safe to say that in most areas where people have survived most of the usable materials would have been used in the 200 years time since the bombs fell.

 

[WolfThomas]

So you're saying that it's physically impossible that someone from the West Coast(like the BoS or someone looking for a fresh start) eventually made their way over to the East Coast and managed to convince people to start using caps, or that someone on the East Coast could have possibly thought to start doing it themselves?

No its not impossible. It's just that Bethesda doesn't understand why it was money. Caps weren't valuable by themselves. The water merchants of the hub used them as they were scarce to represent X amount of water. That is what you were trading with them.

Then in Fallout the NCR had actual money made out of redding gold and backed by the stability of a large nation. Caps were useless. You found a stash in a well and it was a joke item.

In New Vegas they explained that after the gold ran out the NCR used paper money but due to inflation water merchants and brahmin barons went back to caps as well. But ones that they produced themselves. To complicate things further Caesars Legion had silver and gold and made there own money. So traders between the two used all three. You can find all three in Fallout New Vegas.

This is a monetary system with some thoughts. In both the Capital and Commonwealth there is no equivalent mentioned and really no power able to back the caps. You mention the BoS which leads to another interesting part is that in Fallout Tactics the midwest BoS had their own paper money called scripts and the non BoS society had ring pulls as money but they clearly had large towns like Junction City and Quincy.

 

[briankoontz]

Some of you guys are messing up the mythology. It's like Dr. Strangelove says (paraphrased) - we're (the chosen ones) so awesome that it doesn't matter how devastated the world becomes, we'll just remake it in our image and it will be better than ever.

The purpose of an apocalypse for the current wealthy is to cull the weak, the poor, and the otherwise unwanted by the wealthy and powerful. The idea is that once those people are gotten rid of, the very people whose pathetic nature is holding back the world from becoming what it could be, the amazing rich and powerful can truly shine, and create a new world far better than the old. Zombies are not so much a plague as an *opportunity* for the "humans" (the wealthy) to murder them not just without moral qualms but in *celebration* of their virility and service to the New Human Order, similarly to the cleansing of Palestinians by Zionists, Trevon Martin by George Zimmermann, and Norwegian political opponents by Anders Breivik.

This is part of the underlying motivation for gentrification, as well as the whitewashing of New New Orleans - Hurricane Katrina was a new hope, enabling a cleansing of the poor in a way that was politically impossible otherwise.

In the current apocalyptic culture there are two kinds of people, the Chosen Ones and the Left Behind. The Chosen Ones will live within their bubbles, their gated communities, behind their walls, with their armed guards, security systems, and computerized order. The Left Behind get to exist, or preferably not exist, in the Fiery Desert outside.

Fallout is a strange world. The apocalypse has already happened but the Cleansing is ongoing. The Monsters are cleansed by the New Human Order, comprised of "civilized" humans and their allies, with the protagonist hero serving the Order by killing thousands of Monsters per game. As the Hero might say - "The Cleansing is a Celebration!", sobered only by the ammo depletion which accompanies the cleansing.

Although the Fallout world's serious problems are said to begin with nuclear holocaust, it's really the subsequent Cleansing that is preventing the world from improving.

 

[IceForce]

Electricity is another thing that doesn't quite make sense. Or rather, the fact that electricity is still working all these years later.

Fallout 4 introduces Fusion Cores, which can be found still powering certain areas (and when you take the core out, the lights go out), and these cores are still providing power to their receptacles more than 200 years later. And yet, when you take one and put it into your power armor, it loses its charge crazy-fast. How does that work? How can a battery provide power to a building for more than 200 years without breaking a sweat, but can only power a set of armor for about 20 minutes?

To make matters worse, some buildings have no obvious power source at all. Like Covenant (to give but one example) is presumably linked up to the (still functioning) power grid, because it has lights still on in the houses. But when I claim the place as a settlement, for some reason I can't link into the same power source. Instead, I have to build a SEPARATE power generator, even if I just want to add some more lights to the place.

And I haven't even touched on the fact that when a nuke goes off, it sends out an EMP which destroys all the power grids in the area.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

A friend of my mother's husband deals in cleaning out the homes of dead people. He told us, a few years ago, that they had been in the house of an old woman and had been clearing out her food storage when they had come across a ready-to-eat cake from the 60's, still in its' original box. Out of curiosity they had opened it and inside the plastic wrapper the cake looked just like it did on the front of the box and it smelled just like normal. They even cut out a piece and could confirm that it looked perfectly edible on the inside too.

They never ate it, so I can't say if it actually was edible, but whenever I find the pre-war food items in Fallout I am reminded of this story. To me those pre-war foods are sort of a take-that at the extreme amount of preservatives that were used in ready-to-eat meals back in the 50's and 60's. A cake that was almost 50 years old showed no signs of mold or rot, so why not?

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

snip

Not the 60s, but close.

https://youtu.be/Z2zXt6irnOg

 

[Dalisclock]

Part of the problem with trying to judge the fallout games by realism is that a lot of the design decisions are stylistic. It's meant to evoke the future according to the 1950's/1960's, down to the original game having vacuum tubes powering the water chip you were sent out to find and bring back.

This doesn't really mesh very well with things like vertibirds which are much closer to being realistic military hardware then plasma rifles and giant robots. Just like FEV was created as a justification for the super mutants and giant mutant . The giant mutant whatevers are very 1950's whereas a virus/bioweapon that can mutant you into something else is a lot closer to 1980's/1990's(TMNT and all that). That's not even counting all the things that were clearly inserted for the humor of it(the Pinky and the Brain rats in Fallout 2, for example) or that were screwed up by glitches(The intelligent death-claws allegedly being genocided by you, no matter how you treated them).

Trying to reconcile the everything is an exercise in frustration, though the Fallout Bible did a pretty decent job trying. Too bad it really only applies to the first two games(as far as I know). You're supposed to enjoy the post-apocalyptic world and not think about it too much(though Shamus made some really good points about FO3, for what it's worth).

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Part of the problem with trying to judge the fallout games by realism is that a lot of the design decisions are stylistic. It's meant to evoke the future according to the 1950's/1960's, down to the original game having vacuum tubes powering the water chip you were sent out to find and bring back.

It isn't about realism as much as it is about internal consistency and a believable world. The first Fallout game was great with internal consistency, it explained how Caps became a currency, how the various settlements interacted and why various aspects of the world were what they were. Fallout 2 went a lot harder on "rule of cool", especially in New Reno, but even then it had justification for the more whacked out places and things maintained something of an internal consistency. Fallout 3 dispensed with the internal consistency entirely. Things were brought in from Fo1 and Fo2 with little regard for what they represented or how it had meshed with the original game world, which creates some jarring inconsistencies for those that are all about their Fallout lore.

As for the FEV, the idea of science creating monsters and mutations is old, The Flash was introduced in 1940 and got his powers from a chemical reaction. FEV exhibited a lot of the Science!-era ideas about mutation, like how you were dipped or "exposed" to FEV and how it turned things into monstrous versions of their former selves. It is not entirely grounded in 1950's concept of science, but aesthetically it is a great fit. Even the Master is a good fit for a 1950's horror story, with his overtones of Communism in the hive mind.