5 MORE Common Misconceptions About Fallout Lore

some time ago I made a video titled five common misconceptions about Fallout lore to this day it's still one of my favorite videos so it was really only a matter of time before I had to make the follow-up sequel this is five more common misconceptions about Fallout lore with the followed franchise spanning multiple decades developers and video game genres it's easy for some information about the Lord to be skewed misremembered or telephone gamed into something else and yes while some things have changed or have been added to the lore that doesn't disqualify it as a misconception though as far as I know there are no retcons on this list this time around so without further Ado let's begin misconception number one the vaults had tons of space I'll admit it this is one that I believed for quite a while especially in Fallout 3 and New Vegas the reality is even if we disregard the size scaling of the games many of these vaults weren't that big and actually housed a few hundred residents at most while the Fallout one game manual indicates that the franchise's original Vault vault 13 could house two people per bed putting the maximum occupancy at one thousand since then many of the vaults we see and learn about in-game house merely a fraction of that we know much of this thanks to Fallout 4 and Fallout 76. you see in those games usually inside the overseers office there is a blueprint of the Vault in addition to the floor plans and materials list the plans also indicate the vault's maximum capacity Vault 114 has Max Capacity 120 dollars Vault 95 can fit a maximum of 72 dwellers Vault 81 was 96 dwellers bolt 79 was 120 Vault 76 was 88 dwellers and Vault 75 was 88 dwellers as well but these aren't the only vaults that we know the max population of no there are a handful of others too from the Vault dweller Survival Guide we know that bolt 13 had a maximum capacity of 1000 the highest number for a single Vault we will see today from the front desk terminal in Vault 51 we know that there were 52 residents the vault-tec terminal entries in the Citadel reveal a few more Vault capacities Vault 92 housed 245 residents Vault 106 had 95 dwellers and 14 researchers putting it at 109 total Vault 108 had 475 dwellers quite a bit there and Vault 112 could house a maximum of 85 occupants and there are only two more vaults that we can confirm the population of that is Vault 96 which housed only five researchers and Vault 118 which housed 10 former humans now Robo brains and a single overseer putting the population at 11. if we assume that these known populations are representative of all vaults hint they're not really because there's so much variance between some of them then of the 14 known Vault populations there are 2 566 dwellers putting the average Vault population at around 184 dollars per volt if we use this number and multiply it by the 122 known volts that puts the total number of dwellers across all the known vaults at twenty two thousand four hundred and forty eight that's not a lot the United States population is about 330 million using these numbers the percentage of the population that could seek shelter in the vaults would be 0.007 percent or about one in every fifteen thousand people that is amazingly low of course this comes with a bunch of assumptions about the other 108 volts that we don't know the populations of but the point still stands that many of the known vaults didn't house a whole lot of folks an average of 184 dwellers that's just one neighborhood now with only 122 confirmed numbered vaults to exist of course a significant percentage of America's population wasn't going to be protected by these Fallout shelters but I didn't think it would actually be so few but even if the math and assumptions don't excite you we can always look at what is told to us in game during the trouble on the home front quest in Fallout 3 the lone Wanderer is tasked with solving and escalating issue in their old home vault 101. the population is divided some want to keep the Vault closed indefinitely and others wish to interact with the outside world while there are plenty of ways in which this dilemma can be handled if the lone Wanderer takes a diplomatic approach the overseer will reveal some shocking information the overseer reveals that as the population has dwindled there aren't enough unique genetic combinations between the current dwellers to keep the Vault experiment going much longer without being forced to resort to inbreeding if the Vault experiment has been going on for 200 years or about seven generations and the overseer is worried about the possibility of having no more unique combinations then the Vault 101 population like the other vaults in the capital Wasteland must have been no more than a few hundred now while 101 might be an outlier or unique both the math and the overseer's words show that these vaults didn't hose a whole lot of folk misconception number two the resource Wars could have been avoided this is one of my favorite misconceptions quite often I see people say if they had nuclear power in Fallout how come China invaded the us over oil and this is a logical thought it's certainly a question that I asked when I was first learning about the franchise to be able to answer this common misconception question we must understand the global climate leading up to China's invasion of Alaska in 2066 and a bit about the types of nuclear power it all comes down to the timeline of events let's go over that in the Fallout timeline and our own 1945 saw the world altering nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this marked the first use of nuclear fission since in Fallout nuclear fission power alongside oil became the cornerstones for American society powering new technologies for decades America using their newly harnessed nuclear technology produced produced produced and its people consumed consumed consumed this would lead to problems years later when shortages of both petroleum what is processed to get oil and uranium what is spent to produce nuclear fission power were running in short supply while uranium and fission power were primarily used solely for power oil had many other uses outside of fuel petroleum is commonly used in the creation of plastics construction materials clothing medicine electronics and maybe most importantly fertilizers and herbicides one year prior to the Great War food shortages brought upon by decreasing yields led to civilian riots and casualties Vault 22 would be dedicated to researching potential solutions to Global hunger in the absence of petrochemical fertilizers the ever decreasing oil supply was more harmful to the world of Agriculture than to the world of gas-powered Technologies the demand for uranium and petroleum would lead to some countries becoming more aggressive when it came to their acquisition of the two resources gone were the days of peaceful trade the dissolution of the United Nations marking the end of that according to the Fallout Bible in 2051 the United States after a series of destabilization efforts invaded Mexico forcing them to provide oil to the global superpower again following Fallout Bible Zero's telling of events the European Commonwealth followed suit and invaded many Middle Eastern countries for their oil these events would start what we know as the resource Wars the resource wars were the 25 years of conflict leading up to the eventual end of the world culminating in the Great War but the thing is once these invasions and Wars began there was no going back from 2052 onwards Global stores of petroleum and uranium were rapidly depleting due to mass consumerism and a lack of foresight this expenditure of resources only increased with global armed conflicts looming in response to the energy crisis companies began to invest in the development of alternative fuel sources the leading solution was again nuclear but it wouldn't be the wasteful fission but rather Fusion nuclear fusion power in both followed and our world is this proposed type of power generation that is leagues better than fission when properly optimized fusion power could create a clean and abundant source of energy compared to the highly radioactive and limited fission fusion was supposed to be the future from The Fallout Bible in 2060 gas becomes too valuable to waste on cars instead electric and fission-powered vehicles began to be produced pressure on companies to develop fusion power only grew in that same year the Euro Middle Eastern War would officially end with the complete depletion of oil reserves in the Middle East a new more local conflict would break out with the start of the European Civil War in 2065 due to a nuclear reactor meltdown New York had to enact power rationing later that year unworkable mechanized power armor prototypes led to breakthroughs in military construction and fusion Technologies and finally in the summer of 2066 the technology that could potentially save the world and prevent the Great War was finally produced the world's first Fusion cell had been fully developed if shared globally the fusion cell could potentially end Global unrest and end the resource Wars however this still came with a problem all of America's infrastructure and assumedly many other nations was still based on oil and fission power it would take decades to rid the state's Reliance on oil and fission the invention of the fusion cell was great and potentially World altering itself but it came much too late it would be in December 2066 that China would invade Alaska for its oil reserves the sino-american war would begin this conflict would lead to a massive amount of casualties and arms race that would expend even more resources and culminate in a global nuclear exchange that would end the world as we know it with the global climate and timeline established I think it becomes clear as to why nuclear fission power and later nuclear fusion power didn't stop the Great War oil was reliant on petroleum which was depleting fission power was reliant on uranium which was depleting and fusion power lacked the proper supporting infrastructure to actually put an end to the resource Wars in time the world ended 25 years before the Great War just no one knew it at the time misconception number three all super mutants are stupid with the rudimentary introduction of the dumb orange Super Mutant the capital Wasteland some might believe that super mutants are just built that way an increase in Mass from exposure to the forced evolutionary virus would lead to a decreased mental capacity we see this Trope used often in other forms of media right the big brood is the dumb simpleton so why wouldn't Fallout use the same Trope well the reality is that while some are crude and simple beings not all super mutants are stupid in fact it all comes down to luck and the type of fev1 was exposed to the original virus created at the West Tech facility before it was moved to the Mariposa military base quite often resulted in subjects having a higher mental capacity tests on white mice rabbits and raccoons also increased brain activity and intelligence though as further iterations of the virus came about the mutation of increased intelligence became more infrequent in subjects the mutants created at the Mariposa military base and part of the Master's Unity were exposed to The fev2 Strain when subjected to The fev2 Strain the change in humans was quite significant according to head scribe free a first generation super mutant is 10 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 800 pounds with 77 percent of that being muscle mass these things were massive however only a handful of first generation super mutants were estimated to have an increase in intellect while the rest typically experienced a 30 decrease from their former brain capacity as humans which when you think about it it's not that bad at the end of the first Fallout with the destruction of the Mariposa base and death of the master many first generation mutants sought fulfillment elsewhere gond joined up with the NCR Rangers and is treated as an equal Marcus founded the town of broken Hills with enemy turned friend Knight Jacob he would later set up a super mutant Haven at an abandoned Resort in the Mojave zayas became broken Hill's uranium mine Foreman mean son of a joined the West Side militia and Neil serves as a spy for Marcus keeping an eye on top of the state of Utopia it's the second generation of mutants that were exposed to the fev2 that were far less intelligent but fev2 isn't the only strain of the virus in vault 87 there was The evolutionary experimentation program strain developed separately from the West Tech and Mariposa strains Eep was different first subjects didn't need to be exposed to the virus through massive green Vats the Dwellers of vault 87 had the virus aerosolized and deployed through their ventilation systems this new version the virus saw near constant mutation in the first three days subjects grew in size developed a different skeletal structure and lost reproductive organs after 10 days the subject's skin began to turn yellowish grew thicker and resulted in better immunity to environmental hazards and at 14 days the subjects became feral exhibiting extreme aggression at anything non-mutant these rapid changes combined with excruciating pain of transformation is likely what brought upon the Fallout 3 Super Mutant severe mental decline while still capable of rudimentary speech most Eep mutants are incapable of critical thought and reasoning though there are some exceptions Fox displaying uncharacteristic levels of intelligence and empathy was imprisoned in Vault 87's medical Wing where his peers turned mad after exposure he did not retaining his ability to reason the second instance of an intelligent Eep mutant is during a random encounter in Fallout 3. Uncle Leo was exiled from vault 87 for his pacifist ways the roaming mutant is quite friendly always up for a conversation now it's in the two most recent games that things start to become a sort of combination of the two while both at the Huntersville and Institute strain superimunes are not as smart as some of the first generation superimutions they are certainly leagues beyond their feral counterparts in three these mutants are capable of following a chain of command setting up traps and ambushes and even capable of executing extended assaults and battles mutants like Big Mac hammer and grun have established themselves as Leaders of Superman strongholds across the Commonwealth fist the leader at Trinity Tower uses Rex Goodman as bait to lure heroic humans to their demise and the super means of Appalachia staged lengthy attacks against the Brotherhood of Steel on two occasions once in the Battle of Huntersville and the other against the expeditionary Forest stationed at Fort Atlas although the intelligence of super mutants varies from mutant to mutant there are quite a few that prove themselves to not be bumbling carnal beasts misconception number four deathclaws are a product of the Great War the biggest baddest creature in the entire Wasteland is the deathclaw while you the player May encounter a deathclaw during any given gaming session these beasts are near mythical status for the average wastelander many folks in the hub don't believe that they exist or think there's some sort of ghost or demon as such one might believe that the deathclaw and some other mutated creatures in the Wasteland are the result of latent radiation in the atmosphere following the Great War the truth is that the deathclaw was actually the product of genetic engineering done by the United States military prior to the Great War according to the Fallout 2 official strategies and secrets guide the deathclaw was originally created to replace humans during close combat Search and Destroy missions however with that being said there is no documented case of them ever being used in combat following the events of the Great War the beasts escaped confinement and spread across the United States with some being later refined by the master and fev a terminal at the Appalachian Enclave research facility has an entry about a captured deathclaw subject c-01 the entry notes that the deathclaw is a product of a very precise genetic manipulation and questions if it was their doing implying that perhaps the West Coast Enclave may have had a hand in creating the deathclaw but it's not only the deathclaw that came to be before the Great War according to Fallout Bible zero the one of Mingos from Fallout 2 share a similar tale to that of the deathclaw created as a result of fev experiments the Wanamingo was intended to be used as a weapon for war following the Great War they managed to break free by the start of Fallout 2 they are often confused as aliens and can be found seeking shelter in the great Wanamingo mine in reading and two more pre-war fev experiments are revealed in Fallout 76 separate from their Western counterparts westex East Coast Branch had been performing their own sort of fev testing while their results were more often than not failures two mutants were deemed a success after escaping confinement following the Great War these two mutants would eventually turn into what we now know as the Grafton monster and snallygaster outside of the truly terrifying deathclaw those Folks at West Tech and the federal government truly were cooking up some of the wackiest creatures in the game misconception number five transistors don't exist this for some reason has always been a hotly debated topic does the transistor a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power exist and follow and the answer is yes it does the transistor in our world is one of many building blocks of modern Electronics many consider them to be one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century without them a lot of our Electronics would be a whole lot bigger and much more complex before the transistor was invented however there was the vacuum tube this was what the Fallout Universe would use quite often vacuum tubes are a device that controls electric current flow in a vacuum between electrodes to which an electric potential difference has been applied yes I'm getting these definitions from Wikipedia vacuum tubes actually made electric Computing possible for the first time isn't that neat and some vacuum tube electronics are still being used today like in microwave ovens but many folks believe that Fallout solely used vacuum tube electronics instead with the transistor having never been invented this is false while vacuum tube Electronics remained quite popular in the Fallout Universe the transistor was invented and is used in several machines and electronics in Fallout 4 a terminal entry by Jack Cabot written in 2023 mentions performing some experiments with some of the new transistors noting that it looks possible to make a portable version of the abremolin field generator for whenever Cabot senior needs to be moved and while this example makes an explicit reference to transistors the implied use of them can be found in just about every other game in Fallout 76 Cryptid Hunter Scott Conroy bought an old General atomics bs7 transistor radio in hopes of being able to contact the spirit world using it in Fallout 4 the enhanced targeting card is a circuit board that would not have been able to function without the use of transistors in fact any small circuit board wouldn't be able to properly function without transistors knowing this we can assume that many small electronics must have used transistors in New Vegas the Platinum chip was printed and acts as both a key and storage device containing the upgrade data for houses securatron Army this would only be possible with the use of transistors in Fallout 3 when the lone Wanderer attempts to disarm a slave collar as part of a random encounter the dialogue choice is okay I see how this thing works I just need to tweak this transistor here and in both Fallout 1 and 2 the pulse grenade is extremely powerful against anything considered a robot this implies that these robots were constructed with transistors you see one of the few limitations of the transistor when compared to vacuum tube is that transistors are more susceptible to damage from electrical events like the effects of an electromagnetic pulse for example vacuum tube electronics are much more resilient to these sudden disturbances therefore anything that is severely affected by a pulse grenade would have to have been made with transistor technology but this debate about transistors versus vacuum tubes is one that has been commented on before by a couple of Developers this idea of the transistor never existing came when lettered boyarsky pitched the idea to Tim Kaine during the development of the first Fallout boyerski proposed that the Fallout Universe would look a lot cooler with a bunch of vacuum tubes a sentiment that I share as well and Tim Kaine agreed noting the bit about vacuum tubes being resistant to EMP blasts but as we just discussed this idea of having vacuum tubes being the dominant Electronic Component was never consistently implemented throughout the franchise on the 2003 no mutants allowed Forum in response to someone claiming that a Fallout Dev mentioned that the game is set in a universe with no transistors Josh Sawyer responded citing the effectiveness of the pulse grenades in Fallout 1 and 2 as proof transistors do exist Josh would later double down on his stance 16 years later in 2019 saying that although the implications of vacuum technology being able to be immune to EMP blasts is cool the state of technology in the universe isn't represented consistently so there you have it while the Fallout world was initially pitched as a vacuum tubed dominated one the implementation of Technology throughout just about every game has resulted in the inevitable invention and use of transistors in many electronics and robots the transistor does exist and that is five more common misconceptions about Fallout lore the vaults have a fraction of a fraction of the population the world was doomed nearly 30 years in advance some super mutants are probably smarter than some people you know gene splicing done before the war butterfly effected into a scholarly beast and microelectronics use micro components thank you for listening if you liked the video be sure to share and subscribe have a good rest of your day cheers in the 21st century war was still waged over the resources that could be acquired only this time The Spoils of War were also its weapons petroleum and uranium for these resources China would invade Alaska the U.S would Annex Canada and the European Commonwealth would dissolve into quarreling bickering nation states bent on controlling the last remaining resources on Earth

Channel: N_orte

Views: 346,350

Keywords: fallout, fallout lore, norte, n_orte, gaming, gaming lore, fallout misconceptions, fallout misconception, fallout retcons, retcons, common misconception, more fallout misconceptions, fallout facts

Id: C3FVBcBiKiY

Length: 23min 39sec (1419 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 11 2023