/r/falloutlore

Photograph via snooOG

A place to discuss the lore of the Fallout universe.

A place to discuss the lore of the fallout universe. No memes or other silly things here, just lore and the discussion of the game worlds.


Check out Combined the Fallout Wiki here :

Fallout Wiki


Fallout Network Discord server:

The invite link can be found here.


Click here for an expanded explanation of our rules

Rules:

  1. Threads and comments that are irrelevant to lore will be removed.

  2. Remain Civil. Personal attacks will lead to a ban. Posts or comments complaining about Fallout/developers may lead to a ban. Devs are NOT part of the discussion.

  3. Refrain from asking about the fate or state of any place that isn't explicitly mentioned in-game. If neither wiki has an entry on it, nothing is known about the area in canon as of yet.

  4. Posts that are pure speculation/opinion and cannot be backed up by lore will be removed.

  5. Use descriptive titles. Posts with vague titles will be removed.

  6. Low-effort/single-word/link-only posts or answers will be removed.

  7. Absolutely no self promotion of any kind. This includes youtube videos, discord servers, subreddits, etc.

All posts and comments, in end, come down to moderator discretion.


All top level comments shorter than 25 characters are auto-removed by the filter. Please add depth to post replies.

Comments and posts from accounts less than 24 hours old are auto-removed by the filter.


Please report irrelevant posts and comments to the Moderators.


Sources / References

We encourage all users to post sources, including and not limited to both Fallout Wikis.


Check out the other Fallout Subs:

/r/fallout

/r/classicfallout

/r/fo3

/r/fnv

/r/fo4

/r/falloutmods

/r/imaginaryfallout

/r/wasteland



And while you are at may as well give the subreddit that inspired this one some love:

/r/teslore

/r/falloutlore

192,457 Subscribers

1

How did the vaults get their first occupants in time?

Spoiler but not important enough to anger anyone… hopefully So I’ve always been a big fan of the fallout series, New Vegas was the first game I ever played. Anyways I’m watching the new Fallout show on prime and I got to the part where it basically shows us who the actual “Vault Boy” is. Here comes the spoiler. The vault boy didn’t get into the vault. I don’t know if he didn’t have a spot in the vault or just didn’t make it in time. So let’s say he didn’t make it in time, that got me thinking… how the hell did the vaults get so many people? I mean they didn’t fill them before the bombs fell correct? Not unless they were some sort of important official I would believe. My point is there is no way in hell that so many people just out ran the blast, and the vaults were closed before any radiation could get in

0 Comments
2024/05/04
00:52 UTC

9

How would you explain the rise of Mafioso-style organizations in the West Coast? As opposed to 'regular' criminals

Particularly in Fallout 2. I sort of get it in NV, it was House making tribals cosplay and they adapted quickly to the lifestyle after they saw all the benefits.

But in Fallout 2?

The way I figure it:

-America in Fallout is stuck in a 50s-ish bubble, and so is crime - the Mafia is very widespread

-As civilization returns in the form of the NCR, so does crime, and it defaults to what was most common before the Great War

-Perhaps New Reno also had a big Mafia presence pre-war, which the locals discovered and adopted?

Just trying to put the wackiness of New Reno into some sort of context within the setting. Any other ideas?

2 Comments
2024/05/03
22:59 UTC

0

Why does Caesar pronounce his name KAI-SAR instead of CEA-SER .

I’ve always wondered this since playing New Vegas, if Caesar is so educated about Roman history and war tactics shouldn’t he know how to pronounce his name in an American accent?

26 Comments
2024/05/03
22:43 UTC

20

Does radaway prevent ghoulification?

If exposed to small amounts of radiation over prolonged periods causes you to become a ghoul then does radaway or rad-x prevent or effect this in any way?

5 Comments
2024/05/03
22:17 UTC

206

How do cities like Megaton and Arefu actually survive in Fallout 3?

Okay, so first of all, I know the game world is not 1 to 1 with how the world actually is in lore.

With that out of the way, how do settlements like Megaton survive in Fallout 3? Even though we don't see it, places like Rivet City have full blown hydroponics bays to grow food, and places like the Republic of Dave probably have mutfruit farms.

But how in the hell does a city in a crater survive? There's nowhere to grow food or raise a herd of Brahmin. Same thing with Arefu. They're a bunch of metal shacks on an overpass, there is no way they're growing food.

Should this just be taken as a case of Bethesda creating something cool without factoring in how it would actually function? Is there an actual lore reason for how they sustain themselves? Or is it just a case of we don't get to see it but they do have a way of surviving?

75 Comments
2024/05/03
18:34 UTC

0

Did The Outcasts Destroy Lyons’ Brotherhood

I’ve had this belief for a very long time and now after an argument am i only realizing that i’ve somehow deluded myself into a head cannon that Arthur Maxson recruited the outcasts post fallout 3 to march on the citadel and retake the brotherhood name by force. Seizing technology back in the aid of the brotherhood rather than the capital wasteland, killing any BOS who stood in their way including the lyons pride. I assumed that some of the BOS of the citadel would sympathize with his devotion to the core values of the west coast BOS and the outcasts would revere the descenant of Maxson a hero and the true elder of their chapter leaving Owen Lyons to either be killed or tried for treason against the other chapters. Project purity would be seized and contact would be reestablished with the other BOS chapters, leaving a dark end to the citadel. But after doing some research it seems that it’s all an unknown. We don’t know what happened to the lyons pride other than a report that they “died in combat”. We don’t know how Maxsons brotherhood got the tech from the fallen basecrawler to build the prydwyn. I always liked to believe that it may even have been danse who pulled the trigger on the lyons pride alone from the statement “Maxson never liked to do the dirty work himself” in fallout 4. But what i once thought was established lore in now realizing was a just a head cannon unfortunately. Does anyone have any theories or beliefs about the seizure of the capital wastelands brotherhood that’s any similar to what i’ve described?

21 Comments
2024/05/03
17:15 UTC

0

Shady Sands wans't moved to LA.

https://ibb.co/Cs17HHJ

The crater we see is the one from the last nuke we have in the post war flashback. The observatory is literally right there.

33 Comments
2024/05/03
16:56 UTC

162

Last Cold Fusion scene in Shady Sands

Okay so I just got done with the series on Amazon. When Hank activates the cold fusion thing, it looks like a lot of the city lights up again. Does this mean Shady Sands is bring brought back to life or something? I wasn't sure exactly what was happening?

102 Comments
2024/05/03
12:08 UTC

0

Why were there such a comparatively small amount of nuclear detonations in the United States when there were tens of thousands in real life during the cold war?

Something that always confused me about fallout was the, to a degree, lack of devastation and detonations. In real life, if something like the Cuban Missile Crisis had gone into all out nuclear war it would have been every single US city hit multiple times over. For instance Boston during the cold war had a minimum of three nuclear missiles pointing towards it, with all the salvos within them as well, as seen by the Soviet Nuclear target map. That would've been at least 9 targeting the city alone, yet only one, small yield bomb hits it in 4. Further more while I understand that the bombs in the games weren't fusion ones like we use today instead the older fission bombs I'm mainly talking about the lack of quantity, or at least not many that hit.

Now as explained by House in New Vegas, 77 targeted the Mohave Desert alone, so it shows there was scale. However, considering the fact that the ones shot down were thanks to the effort of House alone it would be reasonable to assume that the US anti-air defence against these nukes is almost non existent so what stopped these nukes? I find it difficult to think that 77 targeted the Mohave and what, 50 more was all that was left for the rest of the United States, it'd put the reasonable number into the thousands considering just what total nuclear war would entail paired with the number of nukes hitting Nevada, spreading this across the map and taking into account all the important areas that a nation like China would target in these strikes. So where are the rest of these bombs?

I don't believe the idea that China was aiming for limited and tactical strikes either, they clearly already targetted every major US city which would do nothing but warrant a full US respond as what happened anyway. The Chinese Government while rash and in a critical state weren't idiots, and I'm sure that if this idea were true, once they saw the thousands of bombs headed their way from the US response they'd fire the rest of their bombs.

So yeah, The war was clearly an all out war. Considering our timeline and just how many bombs had been stockpiled it's valid to assume there were thousands (possibly tens of thousands) of bombs. It's valid to assume the incapability of the US air defence judging by how House dealt with 77 nukes himself, so there'd be thousands of bombs that got through to everywhere else. And it's also correct to assume that the Chinese strike was it's entire arsenal, as we see through the games that the US strike was certainly that too.

So I ask you, where are the other bombs? Why did so few detonations happen. While the world of fallout is well and truly a devastated landscape, it seriously isn't anywhere near what the reality of destruction would be.

23 Comments
2024/05/03
11:40 UTC

70

I find it completely reasonable that Poseidon Energy was not present at the meeting of the megacorporation leaders in episode 8 of Fallout TV.

In Fallout TV, Vault-tec has acquired or sabotaged many energy companies. The energy company Moldaver worked for was one of them. Vault-tec's purpose is to prevent humanity from finding new energy sources to replace fossil energy. Because when new energy sources are discovered, there is a high possibility that the Sino-US war will end because the US and China will no longer dispute resources.

Poseidon Energy is one of the largest corporations in America. This corporation has a close connection to the Enclave. Because Poseidon Energy is an energy corporation, it has many achievements in its efforts to research and produce new energy sources. Poseidon Energy has built many power generation plants in the US. Poseidon Energy tried to buy Mass Fusion but failed because nuclear war broke out. Mass Fusion is one of America's leading energy corporations. Although Mass Fusion is not as large as Poseidon Energy, this corporation has created many revolutionary inventions in the energy field. Beryllium agitator and Fusion Core are typical inventions that Mass Fusion has created.

Vault-tec views energy companies as potential enemies, so it makes sense for Vault-tec not to invite Poseidon Energy to the meeting. Poseidon Energy and Mass Fusion could prevent nuclear war if they sold their technology to China. If China buys energy technology from Poseidon Energy and Mass Fusion, China no longer needs oil. Therefore, the main cause of the China-US conflict will be eliminated.

2 Comments
2024/05/03
11:13 UTC

0

SPOILERS Fallout Series

So I have seen the series and I am not quite sure why Fusion was the big deal for Moldaver as well as the antagonist VaultTec. Having payed FO4 again recently and seeing that the Institute uses Fusion as well as all those small Fusion Cells ... why was this "discovery" so controversial and could've somehow stopped VaultTecs income by using the resource war as money maker if its has already been achieved? I get that the US didnt share this tech but IMO it really doesnt add up in my mind. anyone got a different insight into this?

16 Comments
2024/05/03
09:26 UTC

0

Did Lee Moldaver live in a Vault-Tec Vault?

I recently finished the Fallout TV series and after seeing that the habitants of Vault 4 Eem to have a cult, calling her "Flame Mother". My questions would be:

1: Did Vault 4 use cryogenic pods similar to the Vault 111 and 31?

2:How the inhabitants of Vault 4 know about Moldaver?

3:How did Moldaver survive for 200+ years?

All answers welcome, thank you all for your time.

4 Comments
2024/05/03
06:14 UTC

106

Why doesn’t the Brotherhood use the NATO Phonetic Alphabet over the radio?

Bit of a nitpick but during the scene (Episode 1) where the BOS Officer is being relayed the drawing/picture coordinates for Wilzig, NATO Phonetic Alphabet wasn’t used over the radio. NATO Phonetic has been confirmed to exist as the NCR Ranger Stations in FNV and the Appalachian Silos in F76 are clearly named on NATO Phonetic Letters. It irks me that the fact that one of the reason NATO Phonetic exists is to ensure there’s no miscommunication over radio. Hence, I was wondering if there’s a possible lore reason for why it’s not used.

52 Comments
2024/05/03
04:45 UTC

11

Super Mutant Subspecies

So the current understanding is that there are 4 subspecies of super mutants, right? Like the mariposa ones, capital wasteland vault ones, ones made by the institute, and the huntersville west-tek ones.

This is a truly half baked theory, but what if the institute formulated their FEV batch based on the huntersville mutants? As opposed to generating their own formula and making a truly new and fourth species, what if there is only three?

PS: is the subspecies thing even confirmed? Like is the difference in how they look canon to the games or is that just engine and model changes. I hear people talk on subspecies often but I’m not sure the level of true canon that is

7 Comments
2024/05/03
04:43 UTC

109

How many settlers could Diamond City actually have?

Like, baseball stadiums aren’t that big right? Isn’t the in-game size 1:1 with an actual baseball stadium? or is my ignorance of sports making me look like a fool. I just feel like it couldn’t really be a city yk? It feels too small

49 Comments
2024/05/03
04:26 UTC

0

CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN A DETAILED LORE FOR VAULTS 31,32,33 ? Thanks in advance

Hi fellow vault dwellers! Its another glorious day in our vault and ive had plenty of time for thinking… well in between trying to keep my residential mr handy functioning properly!!

I want to have us all give input, lore, theories, and ideas about the “3 interconnected vaults - 31,32,33”

HERES SOME OF MY QUESTIONS I HAVE….

SO WAS IT 3 FULL SIZE CONTROL VAULTS THAT WERE ALL INTERCONNECTED WITH GIANT ROLLING GEAR DOORS SEPARATING THEM IN BETWEEN? OR WAS IT JUST ONE GIANT VAULT WITH 3 INTERCONNECTED SECTIONS??

WHAT EXACTLY WERE IN EACH VAULT 31,32,33 THAT WAS PROVIDED BY VAULT TECH?

I know they had mentioned something about projectors that showed the plains for Nebraska and corn fields. And vault 33 looked IDENTICAL to how fallout 76 starts by having vault apartments with mailboxes outside each one. And the one commercial said something about having the hallways named with street names like “park street” or whatever.

WERE THE 3 VAULTS SEALED OFF FROM EACH OTHER? LIKE WITH ONE GIANT ROLLING GEAR DOOR TO THE OUTSIDE LIKE NORMAL, BUT ALSO 2 VAULTS HAD ANOTHER GIANT ROLLING GEAR DOOR BETWEEN THE VAULT NEXT TO IT AND WITH ONE VAULT THAT WAS IN THE MIDDLE WITH 2 GIANT ROLLING GEAR DOORS ON EACH SIDE OF IT AND 1 GIANT ROLLING GEAR DOOR TO THE OUTSIDE LIKE NORMAL??

WAS THE 3 VAULTS OF 31,32,33 SUPPOSED TO BE OPENED WITH THEIR CONNECTING VAULT ROLLING GEAR DOORS OPEN TO MAKE ONE SUPER SIZED GIANT VAULT TO MAKE A VAULT TECH HEADQUARTERS WHERE THEY WOULD CONTROL ALL THE OTHER VAULTS FROM THEIR GIANT SUPER SIZED 3 INTERCONNECTED VAULTS FROM?

WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED TO EACH OF THE VAULTS INDIVIDUALLY? THE LORE OF EACH VAULT, PURPOSE, AMENITIES, GOAL, AND STUFF LIKE THAT.

ANY OTHER DETAILS, IDEAS, AND QUESTIONS WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!! You rock!!

And remember guys, VAULT TEC - A BRIGHTER FUTURE UNDERGROUND!

3 Comments
2024/05/03
04:09 UTC

112

How is little lamplight still around?

I saw a post mentioning little lamplight in it earlier and that brought me to my next thought. How are they still populated? I have 3 chains of thought but I'm sure there is a in universe explanation.

1: Girls who are of age have children with the boys of age (worst thought)

2: Children are abandoned there or run off and go there

3:Older kids kidnap wastelanders and I'm sure you can guess where I'm going with this

Tdlr: Am I correct with my thoughts that I made in 3 seconds or is there a better in universe explanation?

40 Comments
2024/05/02
21:59 UTC

317

How do slavers in the capital wasteland have a large number of slaves to supply the Pitt and other buyers when there’s very few populated towns in D.C.?

I mean most towns have less than 10 people in game so where are they coming from?

56 Comments
2024/05/02
20:07 UTC

103

Who is Homer Saperstein, and how does he know so much about the Zetan Invasion?

We never meet Saperstein in game, yet we follow his exact orders and defeat the Zetan Attack. How does he know this much about the Zetans and how to defeat them?

14 Comments
2024/05/02
19:16 UTC

14

Question: children of atom

Are there any hints that explain the source of immunity to radiation some of the atomites seem to possess? Is it a happy accident of radiation exposure, a random effect from mutated FEV exposure, or the descendents of a group of survivors exposed to an experimental "perfected" FEV prewar as a way to test its actual success under real world conditions?

12 Comments
2024/05/02
18:22 UTC

0

Can someone explain why and when Hank nuked shady sands

I know it must have been a decade or 2 before 2296. But why did he do it, just because his wife took the kids there?

20 Comments
2024/05/02
16:41 UTC

0

What’s the lifespan of these creatures?

6 Comments
2024/05/02
15:08 UTC

175

What did Vault-Tec do exactly before Project Safehouse?

I had always assumed Vault-Tec was created in the 2050s specifically to carry out Project Safehouse, but Fallout 76 has them existing as early as the 2030s and already having the capital to buy a university. That prompts several questions:

Why would they be called Vault-Tec before the concept of Vaults was a thing (at least publicly)? Wouldn’t the public find that strange?

And what would they have even taught before Project Safehouse?

How did they make their money before being able to sell applications to Vaults and associated technology?

41 Comments
2024/05/02
14:42 UTC

4

Military equipment evolution and point of divergence

When do you think the military equipment (uniforms, camo patterns, etc) started to diverge from real world to what Fallout has? There are canonically weapons and attachments from the 90s and early 2000s, and Fallout show introduced FAST helmets. This begs the question of when did the real world equipment start to give way for whatever Fallout has to offer. I saw someone suggest it to be the 90s, but with the helmets, this gives more food for thought. Would the military gear develop like the real world one (except, maybe, digital patterns?) until 90s-2000s, or is the cutoff point somewhere earlier before the Fallout stuff is in?

14 Comments
2024/05/02
12:48 UTC

4

How and when did the Brotherhood’s culture develop?

We know the BoS was founded by former members of the US military who mutinied right before the Great War, we more or less know what happened right around that time up until they settled at Lost Hills.

However afterwards the story is a bit hazy, at some point between that and we we first get to see them, only a few decades afterwards, they’ve seem to have developed a very characteristic culture, focused on collecting and salvaging all the pre-war tech they can find, infusing certain pseudo-religious elements, organizing themselves by groups such as “Scribes” “Knights” or “Esquires” while following a set of rules and tenets dictated by a codex, seemingly influenced by pop culture interpretations of medieval knighthood.

When did this came to be? how did regular pre-war military members develop this kind of cultural practices? and for what motive?

Seems like a very rapid shift in attitudes and culture.

10 Comments
2024/05/02
12:44 UTC

367

Is Vault 76 Technically Responsible for What happened to Shady Sands?

In Fallout 76 besides rebuilding America we are tasked with Securing the nuke silos for vault tec. Are we possibly the reason Hank MacLean has access to Nukes to destroy Shady Sands

138 Comments
2024/05/02
12:42 UTC

1

How are videos produced by The Golden Globes actually distributed and watched?

It's also a sort of broader question about visual media in the pre and post war. Are holotapes capable of producing visual media beyond the pixel graphics of Red Menace? Did people just have functioning TVs with the holotape equivalent of a VCR? Or are the videos actually broadcast?

4 Comments
2024/05/02
12:32 UTC

106

Did protectrons fight in war?

I was wondering if they were ever deployed into battle, considering that they have lasers and seem pretty armoured

50 Comments
2024/05/02
11:24 UTC

6

Where did the Children of Atom come from/originate?

Where did the Children of Atom originate? I completed Far Harbor today and I’m not very good at understanding stories in game but does the Children of Atom come from Far Harbor? If you talk to Mother Isolde at the crater of atom you can actually tell her that you came from far harbor (assuming you completed har harbor prior) and she gives you a confused but welcoming expression. But it peaked my interest because does that mean that there are other places the Children of Atom reside and worship? Like at the beginning of fallout 4 the tv announcer says there were nuclear detonations in Pennsylvania and New York; I genuinely wonder where the originated and Their way of life.

2 Comments
2024/05/02
06:35 UTC

4

When where the songs we hear on the radios made?

So in our real world most of the songs we hear were made in the 50s. Is that the same for the fallout universe? Would the songs on the radio be what was popular and put out in the 2070s? Or are the songs in the universe ~120 years old when the bombs dropped?

27 Comments
2024/05/02
05:28 UTC

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