The Full Story of Vault 11 - Vault-Tec's Most Atrocious Experiment - Fallout New Vegas Lore

the Brotherhood of Steel have sent us to vault 11 to get a differential pressure controller to fix their faulty air filtration system nestled in the mountains southwest of trading post 188 we find a Shack door leading to the entrance to vault 11 inside we have to kill a few mantises but we see that the vault door is already open walking up to the entrance we find a number of skeletons on the floor four to be exact all huddled up in the same spot lying next to one is a 10 millimeter pistol let's see if we can find any information that can help explain this on a table against the nearby wall we find a terminal and inside the terminal is the vault entrance security recording ejecting this hollow tape we can load it up into our Pip Boy to hear what's on it are we really gonna do this it's open we could just leave Coonan not after that we don't deserve to leave a shining example that's what it calls us but we were we did what we were supposed to not by a long shot anybody would have done what we did yeah that's exactly the problem now let's get on with this I'll go first wait wait people should know what happened control from it if there's anyone out there at all I hope they never have to find out ready Harry yeah no no no wait oh god what happened it sounds like they committed suicide wait did voice 1 kill them it's kind of hard to tell it sounds like they were planning to commit suicide voice 1 argued against it because they were guilty about something they did something that shames them voice 1 didn't want to commit suicide who says anyone would have done the same thing in our situation and the other voices say exactly that's that's the point the shot sounded like they happened too quickly for each person to commit suicide it almost sounds like voice 1 shot them is it because they were going to kill him first let's see if we can find out more what stands most to me as we find some interesting propaganda posters on the wall that appear to be unique to this vault we don't find them anywhere else in the wasteland rumors about Haley are baseless votes stone for overseer don't vote Glover his family needs him Haley is a known adulterer and communist sympathizer elect Haley for overseer I hate Nate Glover has done nothing wrong vote for stone rumors about Haley are baseless votes stone for overseer sounds like whatever happened at this vaults to cause those four people to commit suicide happened right in the middle of a heated election cycle an election cycle where the residents are electing the next overseer of the vault going through the opening we come to a room with three doors in it and a rat after killing the rat let's first go through the door that says clinic above it inside would kill a mantis to find skeletons some of which are dismembered lying on tables in the middle of the clinic some of the tables still have blood splatter nearby and there's even blood splatter on the floor we find bodies lying on the ground I'm getting a picture that something catastrophic happened here the wounded or dead were brought to the clinic where they were treated but not before the end of the vault happened that's why these bodies were never put in caskets or cremated or otherwise disposed of there was enough time to try and tend to the sick like you would do in a normal society but then that society collapsed suddenly heading out the northern door we can explore the bathrooms on this level the one directly across from us is the men's we don't find much in here but we also don't find any skeletons lying on the toilet now if you've ever explored any of these post apocalyptic scenes we often find bodies in the bathrooms this is because when the nuclear bombs hit the radiation or the blast was sudden an instant killing people where they sat but we don't see any of that here none of these corpses are going to the bathroom and the story is the same in the women's restroom calamitous but none of these stalls have any corpses this makes me think that whatever happened here wasn't a natural disaster or some sort of mass man-made catastrophe but instead must have been the offspring of social disorder people were out into two people were actively engaged in something they weren't sitting back and death rolled over them they were actively engaged in whatever transpired here going down the hallway we see more propaganda posters interestingly the I hate Nate poster has been graffiti'd it now says I hate Kate continuing down this Hollow we find stairs leading down but we want to finish exploring this floor first so heading back we've already explored the clinic the bathrooms and we came from maintenance so we'll go through the only remaining door this brings us to a classroom on the left-hand side it's empty no corpses no writing on the walls not a whole lot of loot but we do find a public terminal and here is where we find three of the most prominent notes that are on every single terminal in this vault the first is the vault 11 election guide this guide was written by Roy Gottlieb the chairman of the coalition of the vault 11 voting blocs and the president of the Justice block so the inhabitants of this vault have been split into different blocks or political parties each of which has their own president and each of which come together to vote for a new overseer after a certain amount of time roy calls this voting guide the dwellers official guide to obtaining overseers democratically or do-good like many voting guides it summarizes each of the overseers running for office their statements key positions and interestingly most importantly it says their endorsements the people who have endorsed their nomination the first nominee for overseer is a man named Henry Glover he has been endorsed by the utilitarian block the divine will block and the Allied service workers block let's read his profile penned by Henry Glover himself he says I'm a devoted husband and father of six beautiful children my oldest Sam was on the honor roll this quarter and I couldn't be prouder of him my youngest Henry jr. just sent his first word and it was daddy we've got this bond already and he's still just a baby friends when you go to the polls this election I want you to think of your own children then I want you to think of Sam and Henry jr. pictured their face says nate stone should be overseer not me the next candidate Donna Haley has been endorsed by the human dignity block and the united vault technicians block she says i'm aware of the rumors circulating about me i want everyone to know that their vicious lies being spread by the other candidates in a desperate smear campaign i have never in my life done anything so depraved let alone for such things but even if I had that still wouldn't mean you should vote for me consider the fact that I am grossly under-qualified for the position and that both of my opponents are far more deserving I know nothing about governance you would be hard-pressed to find a worse candidate than me I can promise you my administration would be a disaster for Haley she was the one who was called an adulterer and a communist and then we see the profile of Nathan stone he's the guy referred to in - I hate neat posters his sole endorsement is the Justice Block he says this is ridiculous I shouldn't even be a candidate and I wouldn't be a candidate if it weren't for all of the dirty backroom politics going on around here it's sickening you should all be ashamed none of these candidates want to be overseer why are they running the next note says notice of postponement this was written by Terry Hart the president of the human dignity block he says that voting for the overseer has been postponed due to the tragic events of the past few days we learned that there has been a spate of murders and that before they can do the vote for the overseer the security team here on the vault needs to do an investigation to find and apprehend the perpetrator he ends by saying if we find the killer we may have found a promising new candidate for overseer why would you make a murderer overseer the last entry is over senior order 745 this comes from Catherine stone overseer effective immediately the traditional selection process for overseer is hereby ended in lieu of a yearly election a citizen will be chosen one month prior to the start of his or her term with our mainframes random number generator ensuring complete impartiality and fairness Wow alright we just kind of learned a lot here so nobody wants to be overseer we don't know why yet because no one wants to be overseer they use very dirty tricks to get other people nominated spreading lies like you're an adulterer or you're a communist and resorting to pathetic begging to get people to not vote for you oh I have so many children do you really want to make them fatherless it looks like everyone's goal with this election is to vote for the worst of the worst that's why Kerry the president of the human dignity bloc thinks that once they find the murderer that person will have a really good chance at becoming overseer not because the murderer is any great administrator or a good leader because that murderer is the worst of the worst being appointed overseer is a punishment and then we learned that it looks like Katherine stone was eventually nominated overseer does that mean she was the murderer she's the wife of one of the other nominees remember Nathan stone is the man who in the voting pamphlet said that this entire thing was ridiculous and that he wouldn't be there if it wasn't for all of the dirty backroom politics it looks like his wife Katherine stone or Kate eventually wound up becoming overseer when she did she ended the entire voting process after she ends her tenure as overseer every overseer after her will be randomly selected from among all of the citizens of this vault instead of being voted upon to quote ensure complete impartiality and fairness this must allude to the backroom politics that Nate talked about and it looks like Katherine agrees with her husband that these dirty tricks were going on but what were these dirty tricks why did no one want to become overseer and why did Katherine go on a murdering spree we left the classroom and headed towards the cigar lounge on the way we found the corpse of an NCR soldier the cigar lounge had a few bugs had a few cigars cigarettes and beer but was otherwise unnoted all which left this four explored we then go downstairs to explore floor two continuing along the hallway to the left we see a door to the computer room inside there are more mantises and two flickering computers the first one has all of the same entries that we found on the one in the classroom the second one malfunctions backing out of this room and down the hallway we go up some steps to explore more rooms one appears to be a chemistry lab or a workshop of some sort here we find a terminal but it has all the same terminal entries heading out and down this hallway is the stairway leading back up to the entrance this is the stairway would look down to kill that one rat so we need to turn around and go back this brings us to another stairway going down and a door that leads to the vault 11 living quarters down the hallway and down some stairs we open a door to find a lounge area of sorts with a number of connected doors there's the remains of what must have been a shop at one point selling random supplies and food and then a door to the female dorm to the male dorm into the admin area let's explore the male dorm first going down the stairs we can explore the individual rooms on this level now remember to open every single chest of drawers and Locker you can because we need to collect all of the vault 11 jumpsuits this is for a quest we get from Sarah Weintraub on the strip called suits you Sarah will walk away from vault 11 with twenty-some-odd vault suits in one of the rooms we find a functional terminal but it's locked and a footlocker near the terminal we find Roy Gottlieb's Tramel password remember Roy was the president of the Justice Block one of the political parties here in the vault who is in charge of distributing the voting guide after letting the password we can open up the terminal inside the terminal we find all of the same notes that we usually find but also a security recording ejecting the holotype we can use our pip-boy to play it she can't do this it's done we're done nothing's done she's got the authority the only thing she can't do let's change her own fate that's insane can't change the selection process for future overseers I think he can't you should have toyed with her like that Roy we still have the majority we don't vote for anything anymore I'm not talking about voting what then you would ever sit in a hunger strike not exactly maybe a march into her office with torches and pitchforks yes come on I mean what start a revolution Klaus don't how last their governments Roy all we have to do is wait until someone from justice blog gets big drawers here then we haven't changed the law back there won't be any plugs after the new overseers pick tomorrow everyone's going some more horn by the time we reforms who knows the both still be in the majority we can hold the block together you don't know that besides what if the computer picks you what if it picks me and your solution is to start shooting not if we don't have to look we armed up we go to the lower floors take some strategic targets powerful water just associate our story over to us the other box won't support it they're tired of us having the power we have the majority we all need them this is enough oh boy they'll fight back they've never had the nerve hello I tested so Roy was voice 1 an unnamed associate in the justice bloc was voiced - they're talking about Kate's tone and how she has been overseer of the vault for the past year none of this has gone according to plan for the justice block that justice block has been the largest political power here in vault 11 for an extremely long time they've had the majority and they have felt like they can throw their weight around to nominate whomever they want to become overseer so that none of their members ever have to but when Kate went on a killing spree murdering people in the vault naturally all of the vault residents even those in the Justice Block who weren't high-ranking members for for Kate feeling like she needed the punishment of becoming overseer but Kate's first act as overseer was to remove the voting process making all future overseers chosen at random by the computer this effectively stripped the justice block of all of their power all of this time they have been able to use the threat of nominating someone else to become overseer as a means by which to get what they want in the vault we also get another bit of information here voice to said you shouldn't have toyed with her like that Roy how did Roy toy with Kate whatever he did to her may help explain why she went on a murderous rampage knowing that by doing so if she was caught she would be nominated overseer after exploring all of the rooms here in the men's wing we'd go around a corner to find a stairway leading back up to the lounge area but the men's dorm connects to the ladies dorm so we can go back down to go down a hallway to explore the women's rooms here we can loot more of all suits from the dressers and lockers but we don't find any more terminals or a holotapes on this floor so going back up we can go through the admin door this brings us down a hallway and we can either turn left to go to security or right to go to the overseers office let's explore security first there are two doors here one is locked one is not the one that is not has a mantis inside but after it is dealt with we can loot a lot of containers and it's here where we learn that the vault was well armed we find a whole lot of ammunition half a dozen ammunition containers not to mention all of the boxes filled with hundreds of rounds of ammunition even grenades 25 millimeter grenades just sitting out here I guess this armory is in case the vault is invaded it's also here where we find the security terminal inside we find the same notes shared by the other terminals but one new one deposition this is the excerpt from the deposition of the defendant Katherine stone by vault attorney Gerard Myles Gerard is questioning Katherine is answering he says okay let's pick up where we left off Kate she responds by correcting him Katherine sorry right Katherine I keep forgetting only my husband calls me Kate she says Gerard is questioning her about a conversation she had with Roy Gosselin the president of the Justice bloc he is the voice on the last holotape we heard who talked about a rebellion sure our first two their conversation as an alleged conversation she says no this conversation actually happened he reminds her that it's his word against hers and so he asked her to repeat the conversation she sighs and says that Roy said that my husband's name came up in their meetings their meetings about who they wanted to endorse as overseer they were planning to endorse her husband Nate Roy wouldn't say why but Katherine knew that it was because her husband made at a regular poker game with some of them and he'd been on a winning streak lately they were trying to punish him for beating them at poker by nominating him to become overseer according to Kate Roy got Liam invited her into his office and said that he could prevent his block from endorsing Nate only if Kate performed sexual favors for him but not just for Roy but for the entire block leadership and all of their friends the vault attorney Gerard is shocked he says and you agreed she goes well what choice did I have they had the majority she says that this went on for about a month this was essentially gang rape she wasn't doing it willingly she was being forced to do it to prevent her husband from becoming nominated overseer and then after all of that when the vault voting guideline book came out she discovered to her horror that they had nominated her husband anyway it was then that she decided to start killing off members of the block she says I thought their majority is pretty slim if I think things out a little especially the leadership someone else might get elected the attorney says assuming you want caught but she responds by saying no no I expected to be caught that was my best chance now they'll all elect me the attorney is confused because what they're gonna elect a confessed murderer you think voters would risk putting it in your charge she responds with surprising insight into the human condition she says they have to pick somebody and live with their reasons you just wait and see we learned that she was right again at the very bottom we find overseer order 745 Catherine stone is overseer so something horrible must happen when you become overseer we learned that they have a new overseer election every single year what happens to the old overseer why do they keep having to do this vote every year for whatever reason it scares the entire vault Society Kate loved her husband 8 and wanted him to avoid becoming overseer so much that she allowed herself to be raped by the leadership of the Justice block repeatedly over an entire month it was only after they betrayed her that she went on a killing spree in the locked door right next to this security wing we find another armory lots of ammo boxes ammunition and weapons which leaves the overseer office last to explore on this level heading down the hallway and going down the stairs we can go through the door to the vault 11 lower level opening the door we can turn a corner to kill more rats and find two options a hallway to the right and then the overseers office through the door right next to us heading through the doorway we trip a tripwire it's connected to this rigged gun I managed to avoid the blast somehow and there's a whole lot to loot in this overseers office including plenty of pre-war money scrap metal and so on there is one terminal here but it says terminal locked please contact an administrator it looks like we have to find a key looking through the overseers window we see an atrium out there let's see if we can find a way in heading out the overseers office and turning right we go down the hallway to find that it's completely blocked up by some sort of cave-in so we go back and down that hallway that we initially passed to go to the overseers office continuing along we find two paths before us both of which go to utility going down the hallway we find a path to the atrium but it's blocked up by a cave-in as well so our only option is to go down stairs towards utility going down the nearest hallway you can kill some rats to turn left and go to what appears to be some sort of storage room in this room is a door to the reactor opening the door we can kill some mantises go down a long hallway to open yet another door here we find some ammunition boxes in the corner and we step right into our room partially flooded with irradiated water but the most striking thing about this room are the sandbag barricades and behind them scallop in this part of the reactor room there was a battle that's why we find so much ammunition down here ammunition boxes and even rounds stacked up on nearby consoles and the bodies there are so many bodies it sounds like what Roy said in his hollow tape actually happened the Justice block came down here to the reactor level and held it hostage they took the ammunition from security and instigated a rebellion just because for the first time potentially in the vaults history everyone was fair game anyone could become the overseer since a computer was picking it anyone from the Justice block even Roy himself could become overseer and to prevent that they staged a rebellion but like voice 2 predicted in the hollow tape this isn't about votes anymore the majority no longer matters if the justice block stages a rebellion an armed rebellion everyone else will fight them and it looks like the justice block even though they had the majority didn't have the numbers to win these corpses we find here on the reactor level must have been the corpses of the Justice Block members heading through a far door here we find a sublevel completely flooded it helps if you have the rebreather that you get by completing the quest Volare with the boomers this device allows you to breathe underwater ever since it takes up the face slot it unequipped my radiation suit so you may want to wear something like power armor that has radiation resistance swimming around down here we find more evidence of the armed rebellion more sandbag barricades more bodies lying over them swimming through the eastern door we find a storage room with a few ammo containers on other boxes to loot and swimming West opens an armored reactor door this leads us to a rather empty room turning south leads us through a doorway up some stairs out of the water this leads us back to the partially flooded room with two options here as well the right door opens up a stairway which brings us back up to the utility level however I want to finish exploring to reactor level we're going to turn back around and open the armored reactor door which brings us down a hallway to the locked door that we found in the previous room unlocking this brings us right back to where we were in that room where we first discovered the barricades so the underwater portion of this reactor level is just for those who don't have high enough lock-picking to open up this door which can expect to the Sylla t-section so going back upstairs we now see that we have access to the cafeteria and the atrium let's go explore the atrium first heading down the hallway we can open a door to the right which brings us to the ground level of the atrium and here I found a whole lot of mantises I had to resort to vets here to pick up five or six different mantises once done we can explore this lower level of the atrium it's here where they must have had assemblies lots of propaganda posters on the wall here we see that graffiti I hate Nate poster which has been turned into I hate Kate Catherine judged the vault residents correctly after they discovered she was a murderer they all voted for her why is it so bad to be overseer continuing down the hallway we go up some steps to the level above which leads us to the top floor of this atrium level here we find an atrium terminal and on the terminal is the prepared speech of Gus Olson the ombudsman for the annual overseer election this was the guy in charge of officiating the election and chronicling it so that people can read about this election much later at the beginning he muses that the reason he's there the reason he's chronicling this election is to preserve these events for future humanity to read and learn from but he's second-guessing that assumption he's starting to believe that the real reason these vault residents record all of the elections that go on here it's because they're trying to find an answer to all of this perhaps after all of the elections are over when their story the story of vault 11 is told the answer will be revealed maybe that's why they're recording every election he says we want it to make sense to understand why the vaults mainframe will kill us if we do not offer one of our own as a yearly sacrifice to fully comprehend why we continue to have these elections despite the unfettered corruption that has plagued it for what must be decades by now at last we understand why no one wants to be overseer at the end of the year the overseer is sacrificed gus continues he says elections used to be about shaking hands and kissing babies with the rise of the voting blocks and the infestation of bribery drug trafficking smuggling and God knows what else we want to know why we actually know what else they can add to bribery drug trafficking and smuggling extortion and gang rape to answer this question why the vault mainframe wants to kill the entire vault unless they offer a yearly sacrifice gus went through the archives he read the account of the first official vault overseer we learn that this overseer was the only person to enter vault 11 with a knowledge from vault Tec of what was going to happen here the only one to know that the experiment at this vault was to demand of its residents a yearly sacrifice or else the entire vault would be killed but Gus surmises that the original overseer didn't understand why this experiment was going on or foresee that the residents would vote on the next victim because if he did surely he would have guessed that the citizens would have voted for him the first overseer to be the first sacrifice when they found out that every year someone from this vault was going to be sacrificed or all of them would be killed they likely were enraged and took out their rage on the overseer the only one who knew about this going in Gus says surely he would have guessed that we've all dwellers would choose the sacrifice democratically in the way that we citizens are accustomed to washing our hands of terrible deeds and that after sacrificing the overseer the vacancy on the overseer and the martyr would forever fuse the two positions into one and of course that makes sense if every year they had to vote for a new sacrifice and if they just sacrificed their overseer and have to vote for a new one anyway it might as well combine the elections into one the vote for an overseer is a vote for the sacrifice now they were able to sacrifice the overseer because they guessed the password to the sacrificial chamber god there's a sacrificial chamber here the password was the first overseers wife's first name Betty when it was time to die the very first overseer walked down into that room crying like a child learning the history of the first overseer Gus is listless he doesn't have the answers this history didn't give him the answers he does not know and no one knows why they to sacrifice one of their members every year why did vault-tec do this to them but he still holds on to the hope that someday the residents will find an answer at the end he encourages the other vault residents to say please look into the history like I looked into the history remember that it wasn't so long ago that we were ruled by our civility and our dignity and that those were times when we didn't have to be quite so ashamed thank you leaving this terminal we now have the password to the overseers terminal the name of the first overseers wife Betty and at last it all makes sense Cate agreed to be gang-raped because she didn't want her husband nominated because she knew that he would die when he was nominated anyway she resorted to murder because she knew that the residents of this vault wanted to vote for a convenient candidate because essentially what they're doing is they're executing someone they're all voting to execute someone and who is more convenient to execute then a confessed murderer she was smart she murdered some of the leadership of the Justice Block not just for revenge but in order to save her husband's life it was the only way she could be guaranteed to do so she knew that she would be caught and that everyone would vote for her she would become overseer and she would save her husband's life and she also made an important change with the idea of saving more people's orders she used the opportunity to change the way this society voted for overseer to remove the vote altogether so that never again would a wife be coerced into forced sex with a group of men just to save her husband's life so that never again in the words of Gus would there be bribery drug trafficking and God knows what else if it's all up to random chance there's no chance of corruption but what she didn't factor into this is how the justice block would respond they responded after a year with rebellion and this is why we find the bodies littering the place the bodies of the Justice Block members slumped over their own barricades the bodies of the other vault residents lying on the tables on the clinic lying on the floor in the cafeteria because they fought the rebellion they refused to be aserp by the Justice block after exploring the atrium and the cafeteria we backtrack through the hallways through the sunken level and through the reactor back to the utility section and it was here where we saw another pathway down this leads to yet another sunken floor equipping our rebreather we can swim down to find a room to the left in this room we find a first-aid box but most importantly in the locker we find the differential pressure controller this is why we came here to begin with even though now we've gotten caught up with the horrible tragedy that went on here but we must loot this to bring it back to the Brotherhood of Steel swimming through this sunken floor we find a stairway at the opposite end which leads us to another utility room with more sandbag barricades and more skeletons lying on the floor amongst the ammunition and weapons they used to rebel here we find an interesting trap I managed to come upon this from the opposite side it's a trip wire with a girder rigged to strike somebody who opens and walks through this door with the utilities section fully explored we can head back up the stairs through the hallways to the overseers office now that we have the passcode Betty we can activate the terminal to open the sacrificial chamber the overseers desk lifts up revealing a chamber beneath as we get close to the door we see a trail of blood and human organs opening the door we see a bright light congratulations martyr your fantastic journey is only just beginning please proceed to the light the light is calming and puts your mind at ease go to the light the light came from these big construction lights set up in this room heading through the opposite door welcome please sit in the chair the show is about to begin maybe I don't want to sit in the chair the show requires that you sit in the chair well I'm not concerned with what the show requires me to do I really don't want to sit in this chair how about I just stand right here come on it is absolutely essential that you sit in the chair why is it absolutely essential that I sit in the chair I don't want to sit in the chair what to stand right here you have no other choice you must sit in the chair well if I have no other choice then and that's it okay I will I will comply and sit in the chair greetings martyr and welcome if you're here now it means you've been offered up as a sacrifice so that your vault can continue to thrive currently you may be feeling sad or angry perhaps you never got to have grandkids or to enjoy the pleasures of a fresh cigar but March with your chin held high soldier and remember that each of us has an important role to play for some people their role might be to heal the sick for others it might mean they will drive a racecar or fly a rocket ship and some of us are meant to forfeit our lives for the good of the people sure it might not be as fun as driving a racecar but if every bit as important let's take a moment to reflect on the moments that made your life worth living think about that time you kissed your steady girl for the first time under the bleachers at the big game or when you snuck out after curfew to catch that new flick that your parents wouldn't let you see because it was too scary boy were they right and who could forget when you met the love of your life what a looker these are just examples do you feel that feeling stirring in your chest as you think of these things good what you are feeling is peace you've led a great life living it has been its own reward but it is only the beginning close your eyes now and imagine what joins await you in the next life the afterlife can you see them good right what joys I didn't see them what the doors open up on either side I'm sorry robots attack now you'll forgive me I still had my radiation suit on so I'm going to use every single cam in my inventory yes every single thing turbo at sym packs Psycho Mentats I don't even care I'm going to consume it and then I'm going to put back on like combat armor and make sure I have the right weapon equipped make sure my status I'm highly irradiated okay I'm going to take as much radix and rad away as I possibly can get those Reds down there Oh God and now to defend myself we get attacked by Robo brains and sent rebus armed with Gatling lasers and Tesla cannons and a ceiling is lined with four ceiling mounted machine gun turrets but that's just one side the opposite end of the room has robots and machine gun turrets as well edie is down Veronica is down but with the robots dead I can hide behind this wall to take off the remaining ceiling mounted machine gun turrets oh they're back okay good to see you Eddie good to see a veronica we survived I don't know how but we survived but we're the only ones look at these corpses each of these was a vault 11 overseer one two three four five six seven eight that's eight years did this vault exist only for 8 years but no going to the other side we find more corpses 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 8 on this side as well 16 years this vault existed only 16 years after the bombs dropped which means we're coming upon this scene almost a hundred and eighty years after these events transpired it must have all come to an end after overseer Kate due to the armed rebellion everyone diet meaning no more overseers which is why we only find 18 bodies in a sliding door on the opposite end of this wall we reached the vault mainframe this was the mainframe that as we learned from Gus's speech notes was programmed to kill the entire vault unless it was given a yearly sacrifice inside the terminal we can override the lockdown and eject two holotapes the system recording vault 11 solution and the automated response vault 11 solution first we'll listen to the system recording alright I know you can hear me so listen up there's five of us left climb out of I don't know how many so it's over we've talked then it's over we're not gonna send anybody to die anymore so shut off more water or gasses to whatever it is you're programmed to do oh these were the five whose bodies we found at the entrance to vault 11 well four of the five we remember that one of them dropped the gun and walked out so after the Justice block rebelled causing vault resident to fight vault resident the only survivors were these five and instead of electing a new overseer and instead of sending one more sacrifice they decided to defy the vault they weren't going to sacrifice anyone anymore the final holotape is the automated solution response which is what those five survivors heard after made their decision congratulations citizens of vault 11 you have made the decision not to sacrifice one of your own you can walk with your head held high knowing that your commitment to human life is a shining example to us all and to make that feeling of pride even sweeter I have some exciting news despite what you were led to believe the population of vault 11 is not going to be exterminated for its disobedience instead the mechanism to open the main vault door has now been enabled and you can come and go at your leisure but not so fast be sure to check with your overseer to find out if it's safe to leave here at vault-tec your safety is our number one priority it was all a diabolical experiment in true vault-tec fashion vault-tec was trying to see what would happen if vault residents were told to do something completely inhumane by an authority when their lives were threatened vaulteq just wanted to see what would happen they weren't really going to kill everyone in the vault but nobody knew that not even the first overseer or else he would have saved his own life by telling them the ruse the final five vault residents learned this when they decided not to nominate another overseer they heard that automated message can you imagine what must have gone through their minds after everything the decades of voting the political parties the corruption the drug abuse the scandals the armed rebellion their brothers their family dead with only five surviving after all of that to learn that it was all based on a lie had they just refused to nominate a sacrifice at the beginning none of this would have ever happened they would have all survived this explains why the people we here on the very first holotape are so guilt-ridden the first voice voice one says but we made the right decision and he is right at the very end the five survivors did make the right decisions they refused to nominate an overseer but the other four are still racked with guilt because for the past 18 years they've been making the wrong decision and everything they've experienced since then all of the depths all of their dead family is because they've been nominating a sacrifice every year that's why they're guilty and that's why they all choose to commit suicide they can't live with the guilt they don't want anyone from the outside world to learn what went on here because they're deeply ashamed how could they have done this to people how could they have done this to their own neighbors and family they're ashamed of what they've done so they choose death they choose suicide rather than letting anyone know what happened here they think it's a fitting punishment all but one voice number one on the holotape refuses to commit suicide he believes that it's better that the world learn what went on here that people can learn from this from all of their mistakes from all of the unnecessary deaths that happened here people can learn something about human nature something about how people tick to prevent something like this from ever happening again maybe if these five people walk out into the wasteland they can change humanity in a good way to keep this from ever happening again but he's overruled none of the other people want to deal with that kind of shame so they choose death leaving only voice one the sole survivor of all eleven what likely happened is when he decided not to commit suicide the other four tried to restrain him to force him to die because they didn't want anyone to learn what went on here and so he pulled out his pistol the pistol he secured for himself during the armed rebellion and defended himself killing the last four survivors making him the only one left he sighs deeply he drops the gun and he walks out into the Mojave wasteland [Applause] what can we learn from this what can we take away from this horrible story well part of this story is inspired by the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures and we know this because you know that part in the sacrificial chamber or the voice over the loudspeaker commands us to sit in a chair those Lions are nearly directly from the Milgram experiment that experiment wanted to see how far people would go when instructed to do something by an authority figure and wanted to see what kinds of things a person would do if they were told to do it by an authority this was put together by a Yale psychologist named Stanley Milgram and what he did is he connected a person to a device that gave very painful shocks and then he connected a button to that device and then he set someone down at the button and told a person to push that button when the person pushed the button the other person would get a shock Stanley Milgram wanted to see how much pain a person was willing to inflict on another person just because they were told to and so each time the person pushed the button the shock would get worse Stanley would sit there and say please continue the person is sitting here with the button he pushes the button the shock gets worse you would say the experiment requires that you continue it is absolutely essential that you continue you have no other choice you must continue the shocking thing about this experiment is they discovered that even for no other reason than that the experiment insisted that the researcher told them to they were willing to cause a great deal of electric shock pain to another human being just because an authority figure told them to it same situation is mirrored here even though we don't want to sit down we finally sit down on the chair because the authority on the loudspeaker tells us to the vault dwellers would never sacrifice one of their own under normal circumstances but because an authority tells you to with threat of their own destruction of course they do it this also mirrors a short story called the lottery written by Shirley Jackson I remember reading the story when I was in fourth grade I'm sure many of you remember this story too in that story a small town in America would have a yearly lottery where they would stop somebody to death as a way to keep the society United the thinking went if they could take all of the evils of the past year and project everything bad that went on on to one person and murder that person they can do away with the evils and if everybody's doing it the no one person is a murderer everyone shares that guilt and it brings the society closer together because they all share the knowledge that each of them is a murderer the men the women and even the children in the story a woman who protests this lottery this execution from the very beginning just so happens to be selected as the victim she gets put in the town square and one by one the entire town comes by and stones her even her husband and her children one of the reasons why this story is as powerful as it is and it kind of affects us emotionally is because it hits to something that we all understand and it's actually something that Tommy Lee Jones relates rather eloquently in the 1997 film men in black when he says a person is smart but people are dumb panicky dangerous animals this is why companies get more evil as they get bigger why governments get more bureaucratic and lose their humanity and their common sense as they become more bloated and it's because most people feel accountable for their own actions but they're also lazy and whenever they have an opportunity to give that accountability to someone else they will if a company is really small than the only one accountable for the choices that company does is the president the CEO the people working in that company it's so small no one else is responsible for it but when the company becomes huge thousands of employees when an employee makes a decision even if that decision impacts a lot of people he can always say well someone else in the company is responsible I may have pulled the switch I may have sent the tweet I may have approved that product but I only did so because X it's a way of pushing aside responsibility it's the same thing with large bureaucratic governments yes of course vets should receive amazing health care but they don't because it's my fault not because I did anything but because of bureaucratic reason 895 in this story everyone in the fault knew that murdering one of their own was wrong but they didn't refuse to do so partially because they were instructed to do so by an authority partially because they were threatened with their own lives but also partially because everyone else was doing it they didn't want to stand out and it gave them an easy excuse for shuffling blame yes I did vote to kill this one person but so did everyone else so I'm not really responsible but the guilt is still there which is why all of the election season propaganda was about trying to make sure that the person who's elected deserved it well Haley deserves to be overseer because she's an adulteress and a communist oh she did these evils therefore she deserves to die and it's why Kate ultimately got the nomination sure they may all understand why she became a murderer but at the end of the day she's the only murderer who has been nominated so it made their choice easier it's easier for them to kill a murderer than any of the other nominees or what if we really wanted to distill this down into something actionable what can we learn from the story that we can take and use immediately in our gameplay if that's going to be different for every person but I'll tell you what it does for me this story made me question what kind of atrocity I'm willing to be a part of and when playing fallout aside with factions and when siding with factions you have to come to terms with the atrocities that they commit as a member you're part of those atrocities and sometimes you are the direct agent of those atrocities depending upon the faction you siphon and every single faction is going to commit atrocities whether it's the NCR attacking Helius one to kill brotherhood of steel soldiers just because they need technology or the Brotherhood killing energy weapon vendors and strapping slave colours onto the necks of people just because if they're afraid of their own safety or the legion killing everyone and enslaving everyone because they value order or the institute's kidnapping people and turning them into super mutants or replacing them with cents for the sake of research or maxims brotherhood and fallout for stealing crops from settlers because the Brotherhood needs it or going to Acadia and wiping on an entire town of peaceful sense just because there's sin or even the Minutemen destroying the Institute filled with scientists because they deserve it what atrocities are we willing to be a part of you know when I published my videos on cook cook and the fiends it's nearly universal almost everyone says that the seams are horrible they're disgusting they murder they rape they need to be destroyed almost everyone who leaves a comment on those videos says that they need to be wiped off the map the fiends are evil but you can't side with the fiends in Fallout New Vegas in Fallout 4 Nuka world you can side with the Raiders those Raiders are no better than the seams they take what they want they murder whom they want they do what they want but when I published my videos criticizing the Raiders in Nuka world from fallout 4 I got a lot of people trying to justify their behavior but they might not have if they weren't allowed to side with them which factions are we defending just because we chose to side with them early in the game what type of behavior are we allowing or are we turning a blind eye to just because our faction defection we like did it some will excuse what the Raiders in Nuka world do by saying things like well this is the post apocalypse we can't judge people by today its morals you have to put your mind in the mind of a wasteland err in a post-apocalyptic setting that has post apocalyptic morals and yet how can we not judge Raiders for raping pillaging murdering but then judge vault-tec for performing this kind of experiment or judge cook cook for kidnapping and raping what happened in these vaults is in a post-apocalyptic setting what happens in the Mojave wasteland with scenes is just as post-apocalyptic as what happens in Nuka world with the pack and the disciples and the operators how can we say that we can't judge Raiders or we can't judge Porter gage because they're just living for themselves and doing what they need to to survive and they're just operating in their own post-apocalyptic morals we can't put pre-apocalyptic morals on them but then turn right around and criticize vault-tec for evil horrible inhumane experiments like this of course at the end of the day it doesn't matter this is just a video game but I've always believed and one of the reasons I make these videos because video games are a new type of art that tell really important stories just like books and movies do and I think it's important that we reflect on these kind of things not only just to grow as people but it's entertaining I personally enjoy thinking about these kinds of things even though they don't really matter they're fictional these events never occurred it is just a video game but I think we can learn a lot about the human condition by taking a look at stories like vault 11 and if role-playing matters to us and if being either a good guy or a bad guy matters to us in our gameplay then thinking about these things really thinking about them to understand what decision is the best one will help us better roleplay anyway that is the great tragedy of vault 11 and it's one more reason to absolutely despise vault-tec I've shared with you my thoughts but what are your thoughts what were you thinking when you walked away from doing this quest in your game please let me know in the comment section below I read all of your comments and I use your comments as inspiration for my future videos I'm working my way through all of these wonderful Brotherhood of Steel locations in preparation for a video on the Hidden Valley and the Brotherhood of Steel and Veronica so if you want to make sure that you don't miss those videos be sure to subscribe and click that Bell notification button and I've got a t-shirt shop folks we just released a new t-shirt on takahashi everyone's favorite noodle slinging robot from diamond city if you're interested in my shirts you can find a link in the description below and if you like what I do and you want to support me in a more personal way instead of becoming one of my patrons on patreon patreon subscribers can access to a private channel on my discord server as well as a bunch of other cool oxhorn perks but more than anything ladies and gents 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

Channel: Oxhorn

Views: 4,712,453

Rating: 4.8681912 out of 5

Keywords: oxhorn, vault 11, fallout new vegas, happy trails

Id: Z6JoyTIhyl8

Length: 53min 36sec (3216 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 17 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/ShadowRaptor675]

Before video: This can't be worse than the white noise music vault

After video: Jesus fuck vault tec

[u/wingchild]

"The show requires that you sit in the chair."

"It is absolutely essential that you sit in the chair."

"You have no other choice. You must sit in the chair."

For people not familiar, that's language straight out of the Milgram Experiment, where doctors ordered volunteers to (supposedly) deliver electric shocks of ever-increasing voltage to other test subjects. This was a study done to determine how far humans would go in the interest of "following orders" (the experiment was called "Obedience"), and the people involved were not told of the experiment's nature (no consent).

I'm glad the video author made that connection, because the experiment, while intended to investigate why the "just following orders" response might have helped lead to the Holocaust, was ultimately a fairly horrible bit of psychology. There were sharp ethical issues, which may have helped kickstart the ethics revisions in psychology as a field throughout the late 60s and 70s. The effect Milgram found, which showed a large percentage of men would follow orders even if they disagreed with them, may have been drastically overstated to make for a better paper. And there was precious little care or concern given at the time to what the experiment may have done to the participants.

I also think a few of the video author's details are incorrect; Milgram probably didn't handle much of the "experimenter" role, for example. I think he hired actors. Take a look at this video of the Milgram Experiment from 1962 - you can hear that Milgram's voice and the Experimenter's voice aren't a match in the example. (This video's also pretty good for giving you an idea of how the experiment was structured and what a subject would experience as they were "delivering electric shocks" to someone else.)

[u/davidartrip85]

I just watched this the other day. This guy is awesome. He has some great lore videos.

[u/Lucky_Yolo]

Can I get a TLDR? Im having trouble keeping up and lose focus every now and then. This is a grate vid though.

What exactly was the experiment for this vault?