Nuclear bombs kill the will to clean

[HK_01]

The reason why they don't clean is that it would kill the post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Imagine Fallout without all the broken stuff everywhere, it wouldn't really feel like Fallout.

It could still be interesting, though, since technology would obviously still be scarce. It would just be a completely different atmosphere. Thinking about it, I would actually like to see that.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

...because atmosphere, or perhaps because materials if there is actually a practical point to having a broken fridge. Or maybe there's so much dust around it's fruitless and you might as well not clean.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

Water might not be as irradiated in the Mojave, but it's still the most precious commodity in the wasteland. You're not going to waste it by trying to scrub off 200 years of dirt.

Good point. But you don't need water to throw out a 200 year old refrigerator sitting by your front door stinking up the place.

Added to this the wasteland as we all know can be pretty dangerous. Do you really want to be caught by the Raiders trying to move a junk refrigerator off your lawn? And even if you did try to move it there is Raiders at the junk yard.

Not every character in Fall Out was like us, fully enclosed in impenetrable power armor storming down a road like the incredible hulk shooting mini-nukes at rad-roaches for fun.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Its a game.

They don clean for the same reason 99% of places in RPGs don't have toilets.

Its a game, and the way we see the game world is not the way the actual universes world is.

^This, but you do find some clean[er] houses. Andale in FO3 was pretty clean. New Vegas is pretty clean, the casinos especially.

It might have to do with the temporary nature of everything in a chaotic state too. Why bother really renovating a house if marauders come next week and kill your family and force you to flee?

 

[ascorbius]

There's no excuse for it really (Apart from the energy it'd take to move it, that moving it means moving it away from your home and away from your home is occupied by large monsters and that moving something heavy in the desert makes you sweat and you need to preserve water... that kind of minimal stuff)

Apocalypse Lane never had any debris outside the houses.. the houses were dirty though.
Guess it's hard to paint a house when there's no paint anymore.

Dammit! Got me watching Apocalypse Lane again now..

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/apocalypse-lane/752-Episode-One-Big-Petes-Funeral



On the subject of oddities in games - who lights all the torches and places out the food in the dungeons in Skyrim?

 

[kingthrall]

Maybe they are expecting the Hard Rubbish collection truck on Wednesday's

 

[Storm Dragon]

The reason why they don't clean is that it would kill the post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Imagine Fallout without all the broken stuff everywhere, it wouldn't really feel like Fallout.

It could still be interesting, though, since technology would obviously still be scarce. It would just be a completely different atmosphere. Thinking about it, I would actually like to see that.

They wouldn't have to clean up everything, just the places where people actually live. This has always bugged me as well; you'd think that these people would find the time somewhere to sweep the floor of their house.

 

[Wayneguard]

A clean and shiny post apocalypse would be ineffective as a setting imo. Your dilapidated surroundings are a huge part of what gives the game an apocalyptic feel. Besides, fuck cleaning.

 

[monkey_man]

There's a difference in tidying up and living in a clean home.
If my house would have a bunch of dead 2 headed cows, about 24 cans and a lot of rubble next to it, I'd sweep that stuff up or away. I wouldn't dust, but still keep my tables empty. No need to let 25 different empty cans pile up, not even I'm that filthy. (23 cans okay, but 25? come on?!)

Mankind can only live so many years in filth before humanity starts to get annoyed about something, and when that happens, it'll rebuild the world. clean up, project purity, etc.

it won't go entirely to normal, but at least the world will stop looking like a big rubbish dump. Perhaps the mutants will get rights/be removed, cities rebuilt, so the rubbish won't last anyway.

So yeah, it's good for the atmosphere, and setting of a game, but in real life people'd cleaned up earlier, planted trees and stuff.

 

[Vault101]

snipk.

in that case then......in Fallout New vegas there are actually alot of locations that are more or less neat/well kept despite looking a bit worse for qhwew

not just the casinos, but some houses and official buildings (like Doc Mitche's house) at least from memory

 

[Zlatko Grom]

Also, remember fallout 2. Vault City and the vaults in general were clean, and that provided a stark contrast to the rest of the wasteland. It made the rest of the world so much more believable.

IMO the towns would look so much more alive if you saw that, even though the streets were broken and turned to rubble, some people started cleaning up.
Consider a settlement where you see an old guy with a broom sweeping out a ruined home, a huge junk pile just outside town, stores with repaired shelves, an old lady sewing clothes for her family. Wouldn't the world feel more organic, and in the end, worth saving?

I find it really hard to believe that every merchant you come across has a selection of 30+ different weapons and thousands of rounds of ammo and grenades, yet he just can't find a dozen nails anywhere.

 

[Worgen]

How they portray the post apocalyptic setting always bugged me since it wouldn't look like it did in fallout. Plants and trees would have taken over, it wouldn't be a bombed out waste land, it would be green as hell since nothing was there to stop plant growth, the only time it would look like a bombed out waste land would be within 5 years of it happening and probably not even that long.

 

[lord.jeff]

It's not about logic it's about aesthetics, in other words it's not post apocalyptic without a shit load of dust and garbage.

 

[Random berk]

Eh, I wouldn't look too much into it. I mean, a TON of things don't make sense in the fallout universe. Food/medical supplies that are still usable/edible from before the apocalypse? As if that's possible.

100 years and all the people were able to do is make small, mostly primitive settlements? We went from the invention of the telephone to right now with our computers and such in about 125 years or so. Even with survival being priority, advancement would have been far greater. The world feels more like 10~20 years after the apocalypse.

For that matter, laser guns, but no working transportation? How does that work?

Etc etc. It's a game. An rpg at that. Just sit back and enjoy.

The population in the Fallout universe is likely a whole lot lower than the real world of the late 19th century though, and probably isn't increasing at a rate any higher than it would have in the Dark ages. That would probably slow technological and cultural advancement quite a bit.

 

[Phrytar]

Keeping a 200 years old refrigerator reminds me of George Carlin talking about "stuff". Look it up if you haven't seen that yet.

OT: Tenpenny tower is somewhat clean (before the uprising) compared to Megaton. It's all about priorities. I guess once you are all set up with a decent supply of water and food, you can start worrying about how you look and how clean your house is.

 

[teebeeohh]

How they portray the post apocalyptic setting always bugged me since it wouldn't look like it did in fallout. Plants and trees would have taken over, it wouldn't be a bombed out waste land, it would be green as hell since nothing was there to stop plant growth, the only time it would look like a bombed out waste land would be within 5 years of it happening and probably not even that long.

and people wouldn't be turned into ghouls by radiation, they would just die.
physics work slightly different in the fallout universe and the lack of plant life is because the background radiation of the nuclear prevents the growth of most plants in the fallout universe. kinda sucks BUT radiation also gives you superpowers so who am i to complain

 

[Slycne]

Cause no one wants to play a game in the post-post apocalypse.

One possible in canon explanation would be that the Fallout universe is going through a Dark Ages of sort. The suggestion from much of the in game advertisement and such is that robots were doing much of this manual labor. So coupled with the fact that most manufacturing is gone and the people who knew how to rebuilt/remake it as well, you're left with a lack of know-how and resources. For example, could you tell me what the chemical composition of Windex is?

 

[BeeGeenie]

Easy: Before the war, everyone had a Mister Handy to do all the cleaning for them! After a few years, nobody remembered how to sweep or dust anymore! Cleaning is a lost technology XD

 

[Worgen]

How they portray the post apocalyptic setting always bugged me since it wouldn't look like it did in fallout. Plants and trees would have taken over, it wouldn't be a bombed out waste land, it would be green as hell since nothing was there to stop plant growth, the only time it would look like a bombed out waste land would be within 5 years of it happening and probably not even that long.

and people wouldn't be turned into ghouls by radiation, they would just die.
physics work slightly different in the fallout universe and the lack of plant life is because the background radiation of the nuclear prevents the growth of most plants in the fallout universe. kinda sucks BUT radiation also gives you superpowers so who am i to complain

There is a certain level of fantasy to any fictional universe but we have more than a few examples of what would happen with a big radiation eruption in the real world and plants retake that shit fast. I'm not even going into the whole, if plants couldn't survive then how could humans and what the hell do people eat, etc etc arguments.

 

[Padwolf]

Ahh the good ol' Fallout garbage. Wouldn't be the same without it! It's not logical but it just goes with the setting and atmosphere.