Fat Man History - The Full Story of Fort Strong - Fallout 4 Lore

ah the fat man one of the most iconic weapons from the Fallout franchise and one of its most glorious with no other weapon can you engulf your enemies in an entire mushroom cloud of atomic fire but what is the history behind the fat man how was this monstrosity of American ingenuity created where was it created who came up with the idea the fat man we get in fallout 4 is a beautiful thing and despite how powerful this weapon is we can find a few of them all over the place the one I like the best is Big Boy which you can buy from Arturo in the diamond city marketplace this one has a two shot legendary effect which is why in some of these shots you're seeing me shoot too many nukes with one shot unlike the missile launcher it doesn't have a targeted guidance system the design was originally there if we take a look at some of the concept art which Bethesda published in the art of fallout 4 we see a rocket guidance system attached to this thing but they scrapped it in the finished version of the game I honestly don't miss it because the blast radius of each of these mini nukes is so large that even if I don't get a direct hit in vats I tend to still kill the enemy but there are some great mods out there that restore these cut features to the fat man if you're interested I link to one such mod in the description below the fat man is named after the real codename for the atomic bomb that the United States dropped over Nagasaki at the end of World War two the one we dropped over Hiroshima was called little boy clearly the big boy we can buy from Arturo is a reference to this one but I was shocked to discover that the fat man is inspired by a real-world weapon developed during the Cold War in the late 1950s the United States military developed a weapon called the Davy Crockett this was a tactical nuclear recoilless gun that fired m3 88 miniature nuclear projectiles it was a mini nuke launcher now unlike the fat man in the Fallout universe the Davy Crockett was not a shoulder-mounted weapon it had a tripod but this even more clearly shows the inspiration that Bethesda took from the Davy Crockett in some of the original concept art for Fallout 3 we see a version of the fat man that had a tripod before the system was scrapped there were two versions of the Davy Crockett the m28 with a range of one and a quarter miles and the m29 with a range of two and a half miles like the mini nuke we find in fallout 4 the Davy Crockett had poor accuracy the greatest effect of this weapon was the extreme radiation hazard when used on a bridge or a road it would make them completely inhospitable for quite some time the Davy Crockett was extensively tested during the Cold War at the Nevada Test Site one test was called Johnny boy in July of 1962 another one that same month was called small boy and then later that month there were two more tests called little feller 1 and little feller 2 we see a theme here fat man little boy little feller even though the Davy Crockett was deactivated in 1967 it still was deployed with US Army forces between 1961 and 1971 the famine and fallout has an experimental M ir v modification similar to the unique fat man of the same name from fallout 3 it's like a shotgun version of the fat man it launches six mini nukes at once instead of one greatly decreasing accuracy but enormous Lee increasing devastation potential if we equip the MIR via modification to Arturo's Big Boy which has the double shot legendary effect that's a whopping 12 mini nukes that we can shoot at once with the MIR V launcher the problem is that the MIR via launcher works a little bit differently instead of sailing all the way through the air until it reaches its target they sail through the air and then separate and head towards the earth this makes the weapon detonated a sole survivor and makes it extremely difficult to hit even slow-moving targets that are close to you as you can see in this footage the MIR via launchers but I'll stick to my Double Shot fat man thank you very much so that's the inspiration behind the fat man but what about the canonical lore behind the fat man where did this thing come from to find out we need to take a trip over to fort strong fort strong is located on a teeny tiny little island connected to the mainland by a bridge its east of the Boston Airport we can get there by walking east from nord hagen beach according to the fallout four official strategy guide the island that fort strong lies upon was originally used as a gun battery during the Revolutionary War we'll see cannons and cannonballs left over from this time period as we explore the island it was abandoned for almost a century until the 2050s when the United States military built a top-secret weapons research facility there we'll learn from the terminals that the general in charge of the facility built a mock city on the island to simulate a real urban environment while they were researching the development of The Fatman they equipped their men with the experimental versions of the fat men who then tromped around this island blowing up buildings this is why the entire town is destroyed when we arrive as we explore the tiny island we also find barrels of nuclear waste hidden in the ruins of many of these buildings this must be waste left over after developing the mini nukes now the reason we come to a fort strong to begin with is because the Brotherhood of Steel sends us here during the quest show no mercy to achieve two goals to wipe out the super mutants here from Arthur Maxon refers to as a stench that can reach even up to the prydwen and to retrieve a stockpile of mini nukes that their research says is located here there's one suit of love old power armor inside the checkpoint at the entrance to fort strong that's why in the footage I showed you earlier it was xo1 armor on this character I didn't come to fort strong until much later if we come here during the brotherhood of steel quest we'll fight a bunch of super mutants and even a super mutant behemoth but if we decide to explore this place without having the quest or after destroying the Brotherhood of Steel we don't find the behemoth we only find a few super mutants the island itself is not very interesting we find minor junk items but when we reach the primary armory we find two platforms that harken back to this Islands use as a battery during the Revolutionary War upon the platform's we still find some of the cannons as well as the corpses of US soldiers we even find a US Army helmet propped up on one of the fences and big stacks of cannonballs we can get 5 cannonballs from the first platform and then heading around to the back we pass a fake graveyard to find another platform with more cannons and 5 more cannonballs support strong has 10 cannonballs which is great if you use the broadside er incidentally hopping down towards the water we find a teddy bear inside a cardboard box with a bottle of rum and a teeny-tiny or looks like this guy is about ready to set sail to the great unknown when done we can go through the main doors to the armory immediately upon entry we see the remnants of American patriotic Glory defiled by super mutant savagery shopping carts filled with gore and meat bags dangling from the ceiling there are two doors out of this room a novice locked door to the right we're going to leave this alone for now the way forward is blocked by the collapsed second floor it's completely fallen down and blocked our way so instead we're going to go through the only open door and it's here where we find our first super mutants one in the hallway and then even more in the nearby rooms after clearing them we pass by an interesting display baseball 176 years of Boston tradition these Bostonians sure do love their baseball exploring the Western room first this must have been an office for some of the clerks lots of computer terminals a whole bunch of work desks and on one of the desks a holotape private after seeing the real things right in front of me we get dropped into Anchorage carry these babies that in combination with the t51 bees would indeed make the American infantry a terror in the eyes of the Red Chinese this room connects to the galley we see an Edo tronic on display here and a bunch of tables still lay it out with cafeteria trays this room leads back out to the hallway that had that baseball display going around the corner we see a big blocked off hallway we're gonna get to this in a minute but heading over to the other wing of the armory we find more super mutants after they're dead we see a big collapsed room to the left here the floor creates a little bit of a ramp that leads up this must have been the chapel I'm thinking there's a big book on the podium here and a bottle of whiskey looks like the chaplain loved himself some drink using the wrap to climb up or using our jetpack to jump on up we see one of the soldiers barracks most of the foot lockers by the beds are empty I did find one that had some ammunition in it but while on this level turning around we do see an open door that leads to another hallway here we find some lockers turning right we see a door but it's completely blocked off and we'll come back to this in a second but by the watercooler a door that leads to another barracks this one is more intact we still see Kem's laid out and a bunch of containers to loot we find a stash of caps in one of the lockers and some Radek slang out but going back to that big broken door I wanted to see what was on the other side of it we can toggle clipping to just walk right through this broken door or if we go back downstairs we can use a jetpack to jump on up to that big broken platform that we saw immediately upon entry this platform connects to that doorway that's caved in with rubble we find a few containers to loot the stairs are completely blocked up meaning that a jetpack is the only way to get up here unless we toggle clipping and we find some minor containers to loot but against the northern wall we find another completely blocked up door but taking a look through the cracks we do see something back there I wanted to know what was down here so I toggled clipping and walking through the rubble we find ourselves in a locker room with the fat man lying on a cabinet why was this blocked off there's a door to the east which leads to another barracks we can loot the foot lockers of randomized loot we find some minor Kem's and purified water then turning around and going west we find another door and this leads to the bathrooms there are urinals to the south and three stalls and strangely enough in one find out jangles the moon monkey doing his business while standing upon a teeny-tiny ladder his is the only toilet that has any liquid in it so I suppose we must assume that this poor jingles is recovering after a long night of drinking beer but this left me wondering why did Bethesda lock this portion of the building off the obvious they went to enough effort to make it and to even put up funny gags like jangles peeing in a toilet but the only way to get here is using console commands well I can think of only one of two explanations for why path has to block this the first is that maybe they didn't want us to gain access to a fat man this early in the game we likely come here when doing a quest that appears early in the Brotherhood of Steel plotline but if that were the case the simple solution would be to remove the fat man from the building instead of blocking off an entire wing of it the other explanation may be that during testing players may have gotten confused in this building during the quest show no mercy we have to find a basement where a bunch of mini nukes are stored and maybe players thought that they had achieved their goal by finding this fat man and then had a hard time completing the quest but then again the simpler solution would be to just remove the fat man so I'm not sure why this is blocked off but it's a fun little find nonetheless anyway back to where we were in that big ruined bunk room with the collapsed floor we can hop back down to finish exploring this room where we find a couple canisters of ammunition some Mentats on a cabinet and a connection to a larger room with a big red carpet on the ground this is where the Secretary must have worked her terminal is completely blasted out but right next to an American flag against the wall we find a novice locked door that leads to the general's office inside we find an end of dungeon steamer trunk with a bunch of loot a mini nuke in a display case which makes sense since this is where the fat man and consequently the mini nuke were created a fort strong key in the generals desk and a copy of US covert operations manual who goes there permanently more difficult to detect while sneaking the terminal on the generals desk tells us a little bit more about the research that went on here and we learned that the generals name was General Brock his entries spanned two years of military technology development before the bombs dropped in 2077 general Brock took command of this fort in June of twenty seventy five his goal is to test out some experimental weapon systems here and to do so he had the men tear down an old barracks that was on this island and to construct the simulated town that we saw upon entry his reasoning is since we'll be fighting the enemy on an urban front I think the best way to test these weapons is by seeing how well they'll punch through civilian structures three months later in September we learned something a little more startling in addition to developing the fat man general Brock and his team were testing the experimental versions of the t 51b suits of power armor now we have to pay close attention to the exact words he uses here otherwise it would be tempting to think that the entire line of T 51b was developed here remember this is September of 2075 almost a year before the T 51b suits of power armor were first deployed they were deployed in June of twenty seventy-six and were used by US troops in Alaska until January of 2017 when they completely drove Chinese forces from Alaska so this is almost a year before their first deployment and at this time he says that the Army Corps of Engineers just rolled these suits off of the assembly line so someone else developed these suits the Army Corps of Engineers and they rolled off of an assembly line somewhere else he just got his hands on them because he is responsible for testing them he's greatly impressed with the T 51b suits of power armor but his major complaint is that soldiers are still having a hard time jumping in these things he thinks because of the suits weight they often trip upon hard landings he had some of his maintenance guys take a quick look at the suits and they suggested that stability can be improved by adding shock absorbers to the legs and putting a gyroscope in the pelvis area so general Brock here is gonna talk with the brass at Washington see if he can get some funds to have his boys tinker with these things to solve the issue five months later in February of 2017 general Brock notes that things are heating up overseas because of this the government is pushing him to double down on his research they've cut his turnaround times in half in response general Brock decided to split his team into two different teams the Alpha Team and the Bravo team that way he can work on two projects at once he put the Alpha team working on the T 51b suits of power armor and the Bravo team working on the m42 fat man launchers his next entry comes four months later in June of 2017 remember that this is the month an official canonical fallout four timeline that the t 51 suits have been deployed to Alaska and sure enough general Brock tells us that the Alpha Team succeeded in improving the t 51b suits of power armor he says that they just shipped the first batch to the front lines in China due to the efforts of his team here at Fort strong the suits are performing better than expected chewing through enemy tanks and armor like they were paper he says that word has it that some of the enemy troops are even surrendering if they simply catch sight of US troops and power armor hauling around their 5 millimeter mini guns looks like Alpha Team has earned themselves a weekend pass in Boston heck I'd say that's a small reward for practically winning the war for America but despite their success with the T 51b suits of power armor they still have to figure out this whole fat man issue six months later in December of 2076 we learned that the Bravo team is struggling with the fat man he says that the fat men are not shooting far enough away from the firing position the problem he says is that the warhead is still too heavy to fire the distance required thankfully he's using simulated soldiers for these experiments because he says that these simulated soldiers are still soaking up far too many Reds and suffering blast burns kind of like how I did when using the experimental Mir V earlier however one of his technicians had a radical idea why don't we use a conventional depleting sub karge to catapult the round rapidly out of the charger of course why didn't we think of it before his calculations look sound says general Brock so I'm going to let him give it a try the final one comes almost a year later in September 2077 a month before the bombs drop after a few design setbacks and the loss of one of our testing squads we've finally perfected the m42 launchers firing mechanism Washington has been riding me to wrap this project up but with a weapon this potent I was inclined to take my time we've sent the launchers ahead to the supply yard in Mississippi and we're just waiting for the go-ahead to ship the warheads wherever they need to go hopefully we can get those nukes out of here before the month is out I don't feel comfortable sleeping 20 feet above enough nukes to reduce this island to ash so according to this terminal entry they had not perfected the fat man until September of 2077 and even at that time a month before the bombs dropped they had yet to deploy the weapon to troops after looting a floor safe in general Brock's room and grabbing a couple of bottles of whiskey we can head out to his Secretary's room and then open a novice locked door this leads us back out to the lobby so wait a minute where is that mini nuke storage facility well going back round two that hallway filled in with rubble that we passed earlier the one by the baseball display we see an elevator door just on the other side if the Brotherhood quest show no mercy is active in our quest log this rubble is not here giving us free access to the elevator but if we destroyed the Brotherhood without ever completing this quest we lose access to a major part of this fort so to solve this problem we toggle clipping to walk right through the barrier where we find the elevator taking the elevator down leads us to the research lab this is where Brock's alpha and Bravo teams conducted their research we'll see an ito tronic against the wall and the super mutants have moved on in heading to the western end we see a teeny tiny office with only a few containers we can loot and then heading down the hallway we see three doors one on either side and one directly in front of us turning left first we find a small workshop there's an armored workbench in here a couple of containers to loot and some minor Kem's laying about but this leads to a balcony that overlooks what must have been generator powering this facility we here super mutants talking but before we go down I wanted to explore that other room but this simply led to the bathroom X 688 went ahead and got in trouble in the other room but I'm exploring this bathroom not much in here except in one of the stalls we find a toilet filled with purified water and if seeing the purified water with your own eyes wasn't enough someone has scribbled the words purified water in white paint against the wall what's in the stall next to it we find a dirty water I don't understand the only ones who have been here are super mutants can they read and write can they spell load they put purified water in a toilet and then write purified water on the wall a way to assume that before the super mutants moved in maybe Raiders had been here who could read and write but again why would they put purified water in a toilet I don't get it by this time X 688 was in trouble so running outside we can kill the super mutant hound and then take care of the super mutants that have rushed into the generator room holy cow remind me to get a 2-shot laser or something that guy was tough heading through the eastern door we see another workshop where we find some minor Kim's and containers to loot this connects to the south to another research room this room has a bunch of computer terminals in it with again a few containers and minor Kim's to loot and this room leads back out to the generator room so heading north down the hallway where we killed that legendary super mutant we can kill another hound that shows up and then going into the southern room we find the Bravo team testing terminal inside we find five reports things are getting tough around here Barack has decided to split our man into two teams I drew one of the short straws so I ended up on the m42 fat man launcher team while most of my buddies are sitting pretty upstairs with the t51 B suits I can't even begin to describe what a ridiculous idea the m42 is a man portable mini nuke thrower that a trooper in the field is supposed to deploy at close range I've been poring over the schematics and I have no idea how we're going to get this thing to throw a warhead far enough not to kill the soldier unlucky enough to be stuck with these death traps in the next one we've stripped the warhead weight down as much as possible but I think we're looking at this the wrong way instead of trying to reduce the warhead weight we should try to amp the power on the thrower itself I know that means adding weight to and already have a piece of ordnance whoops they misspelled ordnance again looks like it's an easy word to get wrong but I don't think we have a choice one of the guys suggested we try magnetics to push the warhead through like a railgun but the power pack would need to be the size of a suitcase I'll keep picking away at this problem and see what I can turn up in the next one we lost two good soldiers this morning they were on the surface testing the mir v variant of the launcher when one of the warheads misfired and hit the ground right where they were standing yeah this is why I don't use it I'm glad it's not just me well I'm not glad this guy died but you know what I'm saying poor bastard didn't even stand a chance we couldn't even find any remains to send home to their folks so Brock told us to just for some cans with sand I'll tell you that guy doesn't give a crap about us he's just worried about the brass back of Washington giving him a hard time oh so they shipped sand back to the families of these poor guys horrible in the next one I was in bed last night when I had one of those Eureka moments I ran over to the night shift guys in the lab swept all their drawings on the floor and started sketching my idea they must have thought I'd lost my mind 6 hours and about 14 cups of coffee later and I had it all mapped out we'd use a small sub charts as a launching catalyst to catapult the warhead from the launcher we'd have plenty of range and the sub charge would be built into the warhead itself Brock seemed to like the plan and gave us the go-ahead to prototype the device I can't wait to try it out so a tiny explosion on the mini nuke itself that helps propel the thing before it ultimately detonates on the enemy interesting in the final one it took the better part of a year and over a hundred test firings but the m42 is ready to be shipped out to the field I can't believe I spent over a year on this single project I feel pretty good no one we're delivering a well tested weapon to our own guys fighting overseas now that it's over I suppose Brock will have us work on something else but for now I'm gonna spend the rest of the month packing up these warheads to ship off base it's amazing how much the ingenuity of a single person can change the direction of a movement a country and even a war after looting the rooms containers we head east where we find our first big box of mini nukes heading out the door and stepping onto the balcony we see the primary storage room of fort strong each of these containers holds dozens of mini nukes and it looks like they were in the process of being moved out when the bombs dropped we should take these shells better to have them in our hands than someone else's funny that X 688 would say that here is he programmed to say that as part of the brotherhood quest in which case why would he want the brotherhood to have these or is he speaking on behalf of the Institute sadly there's no option to collect these for the Institute the only way to collect them is if we're here with the Brotherhood we see the many nooks deconstructed in these little containers it's interesting to see them broken down to their base bits and pieces but seeing it broken down like this makes it that much more likely that Raiders and the pit would be able to break down a mini-nuke to create the ordinance armor on a cabinet nearby we find two mini nukes on display to add to our collection and a small little gated area on the other side with some ammunition and Kem's we can then head down the stairs to fully take in the awe-inspiring sight of such munitions left untouched for 200 years we don't find any singular mini nukes lying about this room and we can't crack any of these cases open and loot them so we learned that The Fatman a miracle of engineering was created by the United States military but only a month before the bombs dropped meaning that few US soldiers had the opportunity to use it in combat and since at this time most US soldiers were deployed domestically to maintain the peace it means that many US citizens were spared the horror of dying to a mini-nuke blast the soldiers here were in the process of shipping out these mini nukes which brings us a little difficulty we've found mini nukes all across the United States and fallout 3 New Vegas and for that if the scientists here at fort strong had to modify a miniature nuclear device with a charge in order to get it to work with a fat man and if we find all of those mini nukes here in fort strong then how did mini nukes get all over the place perhaps they are mini nukes that were created before the improvements made by the researchers here at fort strong but if that's the case then they shouldn't work with the fat man because they don't have the charge on them needed in order to work we also learned from the terminal here that the fat men themselves the launchers were shipped to a big storage facility in Mississippi we have the problem of finding them also all over the world but the biggest problem I've found so far is this [Music] hey Jimmy are you tired of bullies pushing you around what yeah what if you could get rid of them forever you see Jimmy our government has bullies too Wow that's right which is why we've developed some whiz-bang new weapons so bullies around the world never bother us again well Jimmy maybe you should just see for yourself careful there sport the Batman tactical nuclear catapult enlist now and demo one today this is the very first thing we see on the TV in the sole survivors house when we first start the game the government is trying to get men to enlist in the military just so that they can play with a fat man a problem is that if the fat man hadn't been deployed yet how could servicemembers demo it like they say you can in this commercial I suppose it might have gone like this general Brock says hey the fat man is done you guys might want to get some propaganda going to get people excited about this the propaganda team in the United States government puts together this quick little commercial saying hey everybody we've got this brand-new weapon you can try it out but only if you enlist in the military meanwhile general Brock is shipping all of the fat men to Mississippi and preparation of disseminating them to the Troops and is in the process of loading up all of the mini nukes which no one in the military can actually use yet when the bombs drop and stop everything so I suppose we can explain away this commercial as a pre-emptive advertisement for what soldiers will be able to play with six to eight months from now after the fat man is deployed as for power armor thankfully I don't think fort strong presents us with any lower issue despite having the Alpha team working on t 51b suits of power armor here I don't think this conflicts with lore in any way because the terminals clearly tell us that the t 51 b suits of power armor initially designed and even manufactured elsewhere before being sent here to General Brock for tweaking from this story I believe we walk away with the knowledge that general Brock and his team put the finishing touches on the T 51b suits of power armor just in time for their deployment to troops in Alaska not that they invented them and completely manufactured them here in this small fort the fact that we don't find the Alpha Team terminal or any trace of power armor here aside from that one suit in the check point on the island is explained by the fact that Alpha Team found success a year before the bombs dropped they had likely moved the entire team and everything they were working on long ago but what are your thoughts on the fat man and how do you interpret the pre-war history that we read here at fort strong I would love to read your thoughts so share a comment with me in the comment section below I published a new fallout video six days a week on a wide range of fallout topics spanning all of the games so if you want to make sure that you don't miss my next video be sure to subscribe and to click that fel notification button and I'm happy to announce that I've got a brand new shirt for you all perfect spot from mirelurk den you know I had to do it this has been the only meme my channel has spawned thanks to all of you so I had to make the shirt on the front we've got good old X 688 saying perfect spot for a mirelurk tin and on the back we've got a den of mirelurks it's available now on the shop so if you're interested head on over i've got a link to the shop in the description of this video or you can click here if you like what I do here on my channel and you want to support me in a more personal way consider becoming one of my patrons on patreon but more than anything I'm just so glad you're here watching this video with me today thank you so much for watching and I'll see you tomorrow morning bright and early with a brand new video [Music]

Channel: Oxhorn

Views: 3,692,973

Keywords: oxhorn, fallout 4, far man, fort strong

Id: d5CgACe2arg

Length: 33min 26sec (2006 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 03 2017