Why are Bottle Caps the Currency of Fallout?

bottle caps are the standard form of currency in the post-war world of Fallout being used across the whole of North America The Fallout franchise itself has many iconic themes unique to it from its mascot Vault boy to the coke knockoff Nuka Cola however bottle caps do seem to be the item that most bring up the image of Fallout to fans of the series in 2015 one fan even paid Bethesda 5 kilograms worth of bottle caps in exchange for the then newly released Fallout 4. in this video we'll be having a look into the how and why that bottle caps became the most common currency in the post-war world of Fallout as the dust settled and the fires burnt out following the devastation of the Great War the many survivors of the Wasteland sought to eke out an existence in the ruins of the world what was once the richest nation on Earth was reduced to a smoking Rubble of mutants disease and violence the US dollar came to be worth the same as the paper was printed on or maybe even less since you couldn't actually burn the paper for warmth initially the focus of the residents of the Wasteland was only on Survival to the very next day with very little thought given to the loss of wealth in the aftermath of the Great War however as the multitudes of people began to form into organized groups currency began to take shape once more at first the barter system was reintroduced across Society if a person known a brahmana they might trade their milk to another settler in exchange for some of their crops of mute fruit although a mutually beneficial system there were some drawbacks but one there was no Universal common measure of the value between goods exchanged secondly if a person was rich in Brahman milk they wouldn't be able to easily carry this with them at all times in order to exchange them for goods and also one person might be lactose intolerant or maybe they just didn't want to drink the milk of a two-headed cow Wasteland is needed to be able to trade for goods and services across the Wasteland they needed something light portable as well as accessible across the waist but not overly abundantly so in 2093 The Hub the largest trading City on the west coast standardized the bottle caps as the new currency of the Wasteland the reason for doing so was based primarily on three factors bottle caps were durable easy to carry and accessible across the Wasteland the cats were a uniquely ideal item as the paint and metal type of the bottle caps were very specific limiting the chances account fits entering the market the technology to create new bottle caps had been all but lost in the years after the Great War although some bottle cap production factories were still in existence these were few and far between the new California Republic in the subsidiary Merchant companies of the nation have laid claim to all known bottle cap factories and with it control the flow of caps into the Wasteland by limiting the amount of caps that are able to enter the markets of the Wasteland they're able to protect against inflation of the caps and lastly the Caps were able to be backed by more than just the metal themselves water merchants of the Hub were able to standardize a certain number of caps for a standard measure of water meaning they were able to have a value-based system on an even more precious Wasteland resource outside of this from a pure developer standpoint bottle caps had made the most sense as a post-apocalyptic currency when asked on the topic Scott Campbell had stated I remember my fellow Fallout designer asking how much something will cost in a shop I remember thinking cost what what was our in-game currency we went through a few ideas a pure bartering system nah that would be difficult for the player to understand the worth of anything EG two more at pelts for a cup of coffee is that good bullets is the currency gotta admit bullets are definitely useful in the Wasteland but the idea was shot down he he when we realized that people would be very hesitant to use things like machine guns since every trigger pull would directly lower their bank accounts that level of financial restraint wouldn't be enjoyable and lastly credit cards just the hard plastic cards of course but most would have probably been melted in the nuclear Firestorm so I thought what shiny token size then would you find strewn across the trash piles something common but not so common as to be everywhere bottle caps of course that and I like the idea of a Stringer caps on a cord that jingled when people pulled them out the reason above is why cats were universally found to be the currency of the Wasteland even from coast to coast although it may seem like lazy riding it does make equal sense for the capital Wasteland to settle on bottle caps as the standard currency of the East Coast although severely lacking in the Civil infrastructure and Merchant companies of the West the East Coast communities were able to use bottle caps since they were commonly available easily recognized and far more durable than the paper notes of the pre-war government canonically the East Coast had begun using bottle caps as money around the same time as the Hub had as seen by the events of Fallout 76 set in 2096. this ultimately occurred as a happy accident between the nuka-cola corporation and the white Springs Resort in their bid to promote nuka-cola Quantum the robots of white Springs were programmed to accept bottle caps as a form of currency in what was meant to be a limited time offer other money has been seen before in Universe with the NCR dollar even challenging the supremacy of the bottle cap on the west coast for a time in an effort to lessen the Reliance of Cups the NCR used their gold reserves to mint coins that were used to back their paper money similar to the US of old however once these gold reserves have been destroyed in the Brotherhood War panicked NCR citizens rushed to transfer their paper money for the remaining reserves of gold they then discovered it was worth a whole lot less than it previously had been leading to extreme Financial loss the NCR government had responded by removing the gold standard completely and establishing a fiat currency but the result of the Brotherhood raids meant that many citizens distrusted their own government's money and preferred to dealing bottle caps instead and this feeling remains even decades in the future as NCR citizens in Fallout New Vegas bemoan the fact that one bottle cap is equal to two and a half Republic dollars it had even been speculated that this was not a purely random occurrence with the Hub Merchants conspiring to reintroduce the bottle cap as a currency both out of contempt for the ncr's currency crisis but also to retain their hold of Mercantile power money has also been seen in game Legion coins or Brotherhood scripts as an example however bottle caps have still retained their dominance in purchasing power across the Wasteland and this is largely due to the fact that the cap is a neutral form of money the NCR dollar would have no value in Legion territory and very few NCR Merchants would be willing to accept Legion coin to pay for goods it's only in places like New Vegas where all currencies are accepted and this is essentially since Mr house does not care where the money comes from as long as he gets the bag legioncoin and NCR dollars are therefore used primarily within their own Nations but caps are able to be used across the entirety of the Wasteland both nations are seen to pay external contractors and caps such as the Crimson Caravan paying The Courier for services or the slave office of Kaiser's Legion paying Genie May for selling Carla Boone into slavery as such bottle caps are seen across the Wasteland not only because from a developer's standpoint it's far easier to reuse them than to introduce a new currency into every game they are finite in Supply difficult to reproduce like to carry and far more durable than most surviving pre-war currencies from the Boneyard to far Harbor bottle caps are seen as the ideal token of value for wastelanders to purchase goods and services in all corners of the former United States and while we may laugh at the silliness of a soft drink cap being the strongest currency in the known world it's important to note that approximately 92 percent of our real world money is not tangibly real the numbers in your bank account do not physically exist and if someday the world's digital banking collapses as a result of the Great War the person with a bucket full of bottle caps will begin so the next time you enjoy a beer or a soda pop maybe keep the bottle cap you never know when it might come in handy

Channel: yaboiii

Views: 1,734,772

Keywords: Fallout, Fallout Bottlecaps, Bottlecaps, Fallout 76, Fallout 4, Fallout Lore, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 3, Cappy, Nuka Cola, Nuka Cola bottlecap

Id: kNmM57ypSK4

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 23 2022