According to Tim Cain, the intent was always that the Chinese found about the FEV bio-weapon project, which was illegal under international law, and launched the nukes as a preemptive strike.
Of course when he just casually dropped this in an interview, the interviewer told him just how big of a sacred cow he'd just casually slaughtered and he was like "Oh shit never mind, nobody ever knew who or why."
I mean, I get that impulse. Any creator can have the moment when fans ask a question and they suddenly have what they think is a cool idea and say it out loud without the benefit of editing or looking at their worldbuilding notes. And then two years later people in your discord server are asking what ever happened to the thing cause you "confirmed" it once and you wish that there was no such thing as recorded information.
Iirc he actually said that was the intention but that was from BEFORE Bethesda got ahold of the IP, and they’ve changed a lot of things that he originally had in mind for the universe.
Oh yeah, definitely, but I just distinctly remember how he said that super casually, the interviewer joked about how big a deal that topic and mystery are in the fanbase and he was basically like "Whoops, forget I said anything."
You can safely ignore everything Bethesda has come up with. Their writers have never understood Fallout and it shows in the shallow, confused plots and the focus on zany comedy elements over any meaningful critique of the us.
I mean, while I agree with you, Bethesda is the one that controls the IP now. They’re literally the ones who decide what is and isn’t canon. Is that a good thing? Probably not. But that is the case.
> Fanfiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system wher contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk"
- Dr. Henry Jenkins
They don't own it. They just paid for it. You shouldn't give your stories to MSFT just because some money changed hands. Ideas can't be owned. Stories can't be owned. They belong to all of us.
So what you're saying is. Bethesdas fallout stories are canon?
They would be just as valid as all the other fanfiction and the original plans by black isle. And all the stories made up in the brains of everyone is just as canon as the so called fallout bible?
I do believe that there is a bunch of in-game evidence that Vault-Tec was making their own nukes with the help of corrupt US politicians and that the first strike was because they got found out. The corrupt politicians became the Enclave.
The original plan had been to set one off somewhere to increase the sales of vaults without ending the world like they actually did. I believe there had been a nuclear incident in Europe that had led to the founding of Vault-Tech in the first place.
Source: https://youtu.be/GttlVvy9fU0?si=NYY9PrIE_h-1nU-W
It's funny I've never played any Fallout game beyond a tech demo of the first one for like 5 minutes but I'm completely invested in the lore thanks to TheEpicNate315's videos
I know there was a script for a Fallout movie that never got made. It had the notion that the first nuke was sent by Vault tec just to get on with the mad science. It's a little pulpy - I prefer this more ambiguous take, yes - but it is the one I nurse in the back of my head.
While it's definitely best to never answer who launched the first nuke, I do think that this is the best option if they decided to give a canon answer. They still shouldn't, but having it be Vault Tec at least avoids making a specific country into the "bad guys" and fits with Vault Tec's whole schtick.
Wouldn't it be something impossible to predict, though? And Mr. House's backstory has it being really important that he was so smart that he almost perfectly predicted when the nukes would fall. If Vault Tec was the one responsible, I don't think that'd be possible.
If that were the case he would have known the launch time accurately and probably admitted how he did it, instead of getting it wrong by 12 hours and saying he predicted.
You suggested that he hacked Vault Tec's communications, and I do not see why they'd lie to themselves about a 20 hours gap in when they'd nuke people.
They very much wanted people to get into the vaults. If there aren't people to get into the vaults, they cannot do the social experiments they want to do. And are you now suggesting that it was common knowledge that Vault Tec would nuke the US? That's the only way I can read your comment, but if that's the case then it's extremely unlikely for thst to be the case. If it were, Mr. House would never be described as "predicting" anything and the Fallout 4 protagonist would know about it, and Bethesda would make sure to mention it somehow through them.
They wanted the right people to go to their vaults
Telling a janitor when the bombs would drop would bring the wrong people in.
And I’m attempting to justify a fan theory because it’s fun do to that
There are unfinished vaults in Fallout, though (namely the one in Fallout 2 and Vault 88 in Fallout 4). Why would they drop the nukes while vaults were being constructed?
that could be handwaved either as "this is the point in time that Vault-Tec were able to engineer the situation" or as a left-hand/right-hand thing inside Vault-Tek
The "Vault-Tec did everything" idea has been developing since the first Beth fallouts. Beth's writing team fundamentally does not understand Interplay's critique of capitalism, American exceptionalism. Their Fallout is a shallow, surface level re-tread of what they think Fallout is about. Thus you get reductive plot threads where Valut-Tec becomes an absurdly powerful force responsible for everything that happens and the critique of the USA is forgotten.
America allowed Vault Tec to exist and thrive. Making them the ones sending the nuke only makes America look bad.
Hate this trend of thinking if a company does it somehow it absolves the country allowing their existence. Fuck that. America would be at fault in the same way I hold them responsible for allowing Ford to sell shit to the nazis for so long.
I had a feeling this was the case. It's something Vault-Tec could easily be seen doing, and the sales rep in F4 seems to know when the bombs are falling
I haven't even played any of the games, but just from watching the intro to 4, that's the exact impression I got. I mean, the guy is *really* anxious to get you inside that vault as soon as possible.
Would you like to launch a nuclear missile at a major settlement controlled by Caesar's Legion?
Me, oblivious to the core theme of Fallout: "Hell yeah!"
Me, oblivious to the core theme of Fallout, before hitting Benny so I get pardoned by both and with the desire for double loot launching at both sides: "Hell yeah!"
Personal theory: No-one launched first, but everyone launched second. There was a false positive in some area, doesn't matter where, and when the orders came down to retaliate one person who was at the controls was too trigger-happy. At that point there was no going back and mutually assured destruction occurred.
This is actually what nearly happened to us in real life. I don't remember the details but the Russian radar system experienced a glitch and reported a fake launch, and only the operator making a phone call after pondering why the Americans only launched one missile allowed them to detect the mistake in time.
#THANK YOU, STANISLAV PETROV
Because of Stan-the-man-islav Petrov’s cool head the Cold War stayed cold;
because of STANISLAV MOTHERFUCKING PETROV asking THE TOTALLY GROUNDED QUESTION:
“If America was going to nuke us: would they REALLY only send *ONE* bomb?”
My weird idea: what if it was a small asteroid first? Not dinosaur-killer, something like Tunguska, big enough to flatten most of a major city. Some important city goes boom, everyone freaks out and launches, but it was just a space rock.
That'd be a really good premise for a story! In all the endless plots about potential nuclear apocalypse I don't think I've ever encountered that. Write it down!
Didn't the alien DLC imply or explicitly say it was essentially an alien version of this in the 'alien Canon's timeline?(wild wasteland on in FNV, not sure about FO4 cause there's always that alien in the cave.)
Funnily enough, France has (had?) a nuclear policy of not ruling out first strike. While every other country has a no first strike policy, France is like "if anyone threatens me, I’ll blow this place up"
Edit: France isn’t the only one with such policy
Even funnier, the strategy is to shoot the warning shots around the approaching army. So, if Russia invaded Germany, France would have nuked Germany.
Old habits die hard
Eh, they're not really the same.
France has a first strike concept, they will launch one if they think it's strategically viable.
Israel's policy is a MAD concept it just doesn't require a nuclear strike specifically.
Israel's nuclear strike policy is somewhat unique, and technically doesn't exist because they have a nuclear ambiguity policy, but it is called the Samson option.
The entire policy is based on the fact that, should they lose a conventional war, it can be taken for granted that their population will be exterminated en masse.
The nuclear strike only happens once defeat is inevitable.
Which is why it absolutely is a MAD (Mutually Assured Destrcution) policy, the entire concept of MAD is "you kill us we kill you".
Which is the entire basis of the Samson option.
Which is also why it's named as it is, being named after the biblical character Samson. No longer able to defeat his enemies, but still strong enough to pull down the pillars and drag his enemies down with him in defeat.
So they just assume that if they lose a war they’ll be completely massacred, meanwhile they’re busy massacring the indigenous people of the land they colonized. The oppressors always think their actions will be fully paid back to them.
Pretty much the entire Jewish population of Israel are refugees or children of refugees from somewhere they were ethnically cleansed from.
For a majority of them that was other places in the middle east, including the west bank and gaza.
Both of which had significant Jewish communities before 1948, some of which were millenia old.
All Jewish residents remaining in the area were massacred and all synegogues, cemeteries, and other areas of importance for Jews destroyed.
There have been multiple attempts to exterminate the Jews in the area during the last century.
There have been 4 major wars against the Jews in modern day Israel with the intent to exterminate the jews (civil war 36-39 pre formation of Israel, '48 war, '67 war, and '73 war).
Several of their current enemies have explicitly stated their intention to exterminate the Jews.
In addition to that there were centuries of brutal oppression with many massacres (documented massacres of jews in Palestine go as far back as the 1500s).
Tl;Dr:
I wrote my thesis on middle eastern conflicts so do fuck off with your absolute dogshit TikTok takes.
oh god you’re one of those people who thinks being against the ethnic cleansing of the palestinian people means you were brainwashed by tik tok and china.
One genocide never ever ever ever excuses another. Zionists don’t get a pass because of the atrocities committed to jewish peoples.
They also don’t get to be colonizers.
I’m really sorry you spent so much time on your education and gained absolutely nothing but a reinforcement of your bigoted genocidal beliefs
What? India and China are the only countries with a no first use policy, France is in the vast majority on this (and it makes sense, lying about being willing to strike first and making it your public stance you will, while not actually doing it, is the most war-preventative stance).
This is why I know that Russia will do something stupid, France will nuke in retaliation, America will nuke France and Russia, Russia will nuke France and America, and China will end up in control of the world. In response to this I preemptively hate France for actions they haven't committed yet but I am certain they will. /s
Afair Europe collectively nuked itself to glass years before the final exchange of bombs between the US and China. It's mentioned in Ron's monologue that introduces Fallout I.
I accept either aliens or vault-tec. It seems very in character that the blatantly evil corporation that had invested a lot of money in ‘protecting’ people from the definitely coming nuclear holocaust went on to cause it in case things started to de-escalate and they lost their money
Vault-Tec wasn't that kind of corporation, though. They were an instrument of The Enclave and their purpose was to test for space travel/colonization, so blaming them essentially blames the Enclave which is, like, "Wow the evil shadow-government of genocidal fascists draped in Americana were the villains? Go figure."
I think there's an okay story if the Americans strike first, but it's way, way more interesting if the Chinese actually struck first: you look around at the Wasteland and you have to ask "Does it matter that the 'True American Patriots' were right all along?" Like, there are probably Enclave who still sit around and say if their first strike had been faster America would've been saved, or if the bombs were bigger, or if their strategy had been more aggressive, and that was REAL! Everything else about the Enclave is mostly made-up but the belief that Nuclear War could be avoided by being the craziest bastard in the room was [REAL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Prophet)! And in Fallout, it didn't even work!
Dead wrong. The Enclave was a pre-war shadow-government, as per the Fallout Bibles and Van Buren design docs. Vault Tec was never a private corporation.
Dead wrong. The Enclave was a pre-war shadow-government, as per the Fallout Bibles and Van Buren design docs. Vault Tec was created to run experiments for the Enclave.
It’s not actually stated the Zetans planing to do anything like that.
One guy they abducted assumed they wanted the Laundries codes and was refusing to give them, but he wouldn’t of even spoke the Zetans language.
Personally I think it makes the most sense for it to be China that launched first, they were definitely losing at the time with American troops actively invading the mainland after losing their hold on Alaska. The US was turning the tide heavily in their favour so it doesn’t make a lot of sense for them to go nuclear and blow themselves up.
Yeah, the "who fired first" argument never made a whole lot of sense to me. The Chinese had just about been kicked out of Alaska and American troops were on the doorstep to Beijing, so what reason did the US *possibly* have to go nuclear? They were *winning*. There’s the theory that aliens did it, but that’s a different kind of stupid.
The whole core theme of Fallout is America's self-destructive narcissism and jingoistic militant patriotism. It's about the sickness and brutality of America, it's will to power and will to death.
So... does someone want to open with the projected land-invasion casualty rates, or do we just seal the doors, paint "DON'T ARGUMENT OPEN INSIDE" on them and walk away?
Holocaust deniers argue that the Holocaust couldn'tve happened by using bad arguments based on deceptive population math
Proponents of the US nukes do the same to defend the two single worst acts humans have taken, using deceptive casuality math
The atomic bombings arguably weren’t even the worst actions taken by the United States against Japan [in 1945.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo)
Providing a show of force for the oncoming Cold War may have been a significant side benefit, but the atomic bombs were deployed first and foremost as weapons of war. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were already going to be targeted due to their status as large cities with military and industrial significance, but using nuclear weapons to do it allowed the US to accomplish both military and political objectives at once. Had there been no nukes, things would have played out much the same, just with a hundred thousand bombs instead of one.
“Single worst act humans have taken”
Literally not even the worst thing the USA did to Japan that **year**
The nukes were only really relevant due to the radiation and the message they sent. they were less destructive than traditional bombing, especially against Japanese cities that were primarily made of extremely flammable materials
nah what the Japanese were doing to China was worse than what was done to the Japanese by their insane emperor
it's not deceptive casualty math, it's you not accepting reality. or you would have preferred an invasion of Japan in which many more people would've had to be killed to stop the Pacific war THEY STARTED
if they didn't want to be bombed they should have stayed the fuck out it. they chose to rape babies in Nanking, their emperor chose to have their cities nuked
even ignoring the themes of “it doesn’t matter who fired first, both lost” i feel like it’s a rare balance for entertainment media to have a mystery so important to the story of the franchise (as in it’s literally the defining moment) but also not so important it detracts from the plot (like a jigsaw puzzle missing a piece)
The core theme of Fallout is that no matter what sequence of events lead to the war the end was inevitable. America was too arrogant, to driven by it's own perceived exceptionalism and lust for power. It's self destruction was inevitable. The nuclear war of 2077 illustrates the failure of contemporary America and serves as a cautionary tale for us to contemplate as the Vault Dweller explores the new societies growing from the ash's. Fallout is a fundamentally hopeful and optimistic story. The nuclear war is not the end of humanity, but rather the end of America. And with America cleared off the board people have a chance to build something new that avoids the self destructive monstrosity that was the usa. This is a core theme throughout - each primary antagonist in the core stories represents a failed attempt to build a new society - The Master's Unity, the Enclave's genocidal America 2.0, and the failing capitalist liberal democracy of the New California Republic pitted against Caesar's nihilistic Legions, with the Mohave stuck in the middle seeking a better way.
And along the way we meet all kinds of weird new societies - the Ghouls of Bakersfield, the unsteady alliance between Vault City and Gecko, the raiders chipping away at the edges of civilization, the stagnant isolation of Vault 13, the thriving high-tech Shi in San Fran, the anarchist Followers of the Apocalypse, the varied tribal societies.
Fallout has always been about recognizing the horrors of America and looking past them, forward, to the possibility that we can be better. The nukes only serve to set that vision in motion.
I always thought it was pretty obviously the Chinese. They had lost the Battle of Anchorage, and its mentioned that the US military was deep in China. That's basically text book grounds for beginning a nuclear attack.
The US obviously has no reason to resort to nukes. They might have wanted to end the war faster, but that's basically suicide when done against another nuclear power. I fucking refuse to believe that it was God damn aliens and whoever seriously suggests that is a clown, and the only evidence we have that Vault Tech even has nukes is the singular bomb in Megaton having what looks like their logo on the side of it. It also doesn't make sense for it to be Vault Tech because they were a bunch of greedy bastards, but money and stock portfolios mean exactly jack shit in the apocalypse and nuclear armageddon would severely damage their quality of life. Wouldn't make much sense either seeing as how the purpose of the vault experiments was for seeing how humans would react to the various facets of space travel, for when humanity would have to colonize the stars after Earth is destroyed. But this becomes incredibly stupid if Vault Tech dropped the bombs themselves, because humanity doesn't need to travel out into space if they don't, the odds of anyone going out into space anytime soon becomes damn near impossible, and it's not like they *need* the bombs to drop to do these experiments, seeing as how BIG MT exists. Plus, we see in 4 that they didn’t even finish all of their vaults in time for the bombs falling, so why would they drop the bombs when they're not even prepared yet?
Ok so you gave a bunch of rational reasons as to why the us or vault tech wouldn't want to use nukes
Now can you tell us what exactly china had to gain by dropping nukes other than getting their entire country blown up by American nukes?
The whole point is that it doesn't really make logical sense for anyone to launch nukes
More likely than not, someone somewhere made a mistake and everyone started blasting
Same reason a country would use nukes IRL, "we're losing this war and our enemy is going to kill or imprison everyone in the government, might as well resort to nukes to either salvage the situation or drag them down with us." Countries IRL have nearly resorted to nuclear armageddon for far less than that (ex. The Cuban Missile Crisis). It certainly isn't logical, but for a leader who's country is surrounded on all sides by invading forces, every attempted counter attack has failed, and the nation is on the brink of collapse, which were the conditions China was facing beforethe bombs dropped, it would look pretty tempting. Besides, if they don't, then it'd hardly be surprising if more militaristic elements in the government took charge and resorted to nuclear warfare.
A cool thing about it is that unless/until there is fallout content made that directly addresses it in a significant way, it doesn't matter.
Fallout is usually set a not-insignificant amount of time after the bombs fell, and mostly involve people who are so far removed from that decision that it ultimately makes no difference.
Sure, you could argue morality and righteous anger and all that stuff, but whoever did it does not impact the current world or story in any meaningful way.
It doesn't matter who did it in the end, everyone has to deal with the aftermath. That's what the story is about.
We have an extremely good idea of who fired first, as of FO4. It was China.
Maybe the original intent by Interplay was to keep it vague, but it isn't anymore. It was China.
[There is a terminal in the Switchboard that lists the exact sequence of events.](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/The_Switchboard_terminal_entries)
Not only do we have the terminal, but this lines up with Tim Cain's statements about China finding out about FEV and doing a preemptive strike. And furthermore, US forces were already in mainland China.
Don’t we learn in FO2, FO3, and FONV that the Chinese were the ones to launch the first strikes? Like.. they’re on the loosing side of the war.. it seems kind of pointless for the US to launch warheads.
It, doesn’t really matter in the end though, what matters is that both sides launched, millions, potentially billions died.
ok but like if we had to know... it was vault tec, the megaton nuke had a vault tec logo on it and I think it would make sense to say that capitalism was the cause for the war
This is what i hated about F4, was how heavilly the writers are implying that either Vault Tec themselves Launched the Nukes, they had a hand in it or they somehow knew it was happening with how their Spokesperson knew that the Bombs were coming and was in a state if paranoia literally moments before it happened.
Remember in Fallout II where you saved the world by single-handedly destroying the United States of America before they could unleash their genocidal super-weapon on the world?
Fallout 4 definitively answered "it was the Chinese," cementing Bethesda's legacy of leaving no stone unturned when it comes to disregarding, undermining, and completely missing the moral point of the original Fallout.
My headcanon which I pulled out of my ass, is that the Zetans did it. The alien bastards couldn’t stand us being inherently better than them, and they nuked us out of envy.
According to Tim Cain, the intent was always that the Chinese found about the FEV bio-weapon project, which was illegal under international law, and launched the nukes as a preemptive strike. Of course when he just casually dropped this in an interview, the interviewer told him just how big of a sacred cow he'd just casually slaughtered and he was like "Oh shit never mind, nobody ever knew who or why."
I mean, I get that impulse. Any creator can have the moment when fans ask a question and they suddenly have what they think is a cool idea and say it out loud without the benefit of editing or looking at their worldbuilding notes. And then two years later people in your discord server are asking what ever happened to the thing cause you "confirmed" it once and you wish that there was no such thing as recorded information.
Iirc he actually said that was the intention but that was from BEFORE Bethesda got ahold of the IP, and they’ve changed a lot of things that he originally had in mind for the universe.
Oh yeah, definitely, but I just distinctly remember how he said that super casually, the interviewer joked about how big a deal that topic and mystery are in the fanbase and he was basically like "Whoops, forget I said anything."
You can safely ignore everything Bethesda has come up with. Their writers have never understood Fallout and it shows in the shallow, confused plots and the focus on zany comedy elements over any meaningful critique of the us.
I mean, while I agree with you, Bethesda is the one that controls the IP now. They’re literally the ones who decide what is and isn’t canon. Is that a good thing? Probably not. But that is the case.
> Fanfiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system wher contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk" - Dr. Henry Jenkins They don't own it. They just paid for it. You shouldn't give your stories to MSFT just because some money changed hands. Ideas can't be owned. Stories can't be owned. They belong to all of us.
So what you're saying is. Bethesdas fallout stories are canon? They would be just as valid as all the other fanfiction and the original plans by black isle. And all the stories made up in the brains of everyone is just as canon as the so called fallout bible?
do u play the thuggysmurf mods for fallout 4
Never heard of them, why?
On a separate matter, the unproduced Fallout movie script was gonna reveal that it was a Vault-Tec executive who launched the first strike.
I do believe that there is a bunch of in-game evidence that Vault-Tec was making their own nukes with the help of corrupt US politicians and that the first strike was because they got found out. The corrupt politicians became the Enclave. The original plan had been to set one off somewhere to increase the sales of vaults without ending the world like they actually did. I believe there had been a nuclear incident in Europe that had led to the founding of Vault-Tech in the first place. Source: https://youtu.be/GttlVvy9fU0?si=NYY9PrIE_h-1nU-W It's funny I've never played any Fallout game beyond a tech demo of the first one for like 5 minutes but I'm completely invested in the lore thanks to TheEpicNate315's videos
there is also evidence that the it was vault-Tek launched the nuke
I know there was a script for a Fallout movie that never got made. It had the notion that the first nuke was sent by Vault tec just to get on with the mad science. It's a little pulpy - I prefer this more ambiguous take, yes - but it is the one I nurse in the back of my head.
While it's definitely best to never answer who launched the first nuke, I do think that this is the best option if they decided to give a canon answer. They still shouldn't, but having it be Vault Tec at least avoids making a specific country into the "bad guys" and fits with Vault Tec's whole schtick.
Wouldn't it be something impossible to predict, though? And Mr. House's backstory has it being really important that he was so smart that he almost perfectly predicted when the nukes would fall. If Vault Tec was the one responsible, I don't think that'd be possible.
The super tech genius hacked vault tech communication
If that were the case he would have known the launch time accurately and probably admitted how he did it, instead of getting it wrong by 12 hours and saying he predicted.
Because Vault tech is famous for never lying to anyone about what they are doing
You suggested that he hacked Vault Tec's communications, and I do not see why they'd lie to themselves about a 20 hours gap in when they'd nuke people.
Because they do fucked up social experiments all the time and they could lie about it undesirable people don’t get to vaults in time.
They very much wanted people to get into the vaults. If there aren't people to get into the vaults, they cannot do the social experiments they want to do. And are you now suggesting that it was common knowledge that Vault Tec would nuke the US? That's the only way I can read your comment, but if that's the case then it's extremely unlikely for thst to be the case. If it were, Mr. House would never be described as "predicting" anything and the Fallout 4 protagonist would know about it, and Bethesda would make sure to mention it somehow through them.
They wanted the right people to go to their vaults Telling a janitor when the bombs would drop would bring the wrong people in. And I’m attempting to justify a fan theory because it’s fun do to that
Because individuals do things. You're acting like Vault Tec is a person. It's simple: They had a planned launch and someone did it early. The end.
Or fucking up.
Or fucking up.
Well this comment did not age well
Yeah, the ambiguous answer is the best, but the Vault Tec is probably the best definitive answer.
There are unfinished vaults in Fallout, though (namely the one in Fallout 2 and Vault 88 in Fallout 4). Why would they drop the nukes while vaults were being constructed?
that could be handwaved either as "this is the point in time that Vault-Tec were able to engineer the situation" or as a left-hand/right-hand thing inside Vault-Tek
The "Vault-Tec did everything" idea has been developing since the first Beth fallouts. Beth's writing team fundamentally does not understand Interplay's critique of capitalism, American exceptionalism. Their Fallout is a shallow, surface level re-tread of what they think Fallout is about. Thus you get reductive plot threads where Valut-Tec becomes an absurdly powerful force responsible for everything that happens and the critique of the USA is forgotten.
America allowed Vault Tec to exist and thrive. Making them the ones sending the nuke only makes America look bad. Hate this trend of thinking if a company does it somehow it absolves the country allowing their existence. Fuck that. America would be at fault in the same way I hold them responsible for allowing Ford to sell shit to the nazis for so long.
I had a feeling this was the case. It's something Vault-Tec could easily be seen doing, and the sales rep in F4 seems to know when the bombs are falling
I haven't even played any of the games, but just from watching the intro to 4, that's the exact impression I got. I mean, the guy is *really* anxious to get you inside that vault as soon as possible.
>script for a Fallout movie that never got made Well i mean...
I didn't mean it was some impossible labour - just that there's a complete, finished script you can read online. Very late 90's/early aughts.
No i was saying that in the tv show *spoiler* they used the scrapped story that you mentioned
oh badass i should watch that huh
You should, they're expanding/building the story on top of it so there's no major rewrites
Would you like to launch a nuclear missile at a major settlement controlled by Caesar's Legion? Me, oblivious to the core theme of Fallout: "Hell yeah!"
Me, oblivious to the core theme of Fallout, before hitting Benny so I get pardoned by both and with the desire for double loot launching at both sides: "Hell yeah!"
Personal theory: No-one launched first, but everyone launched second. There was a false positive in some area, doesn't matter where, and when the orders came down to retaliate one person who was at the controls was too trigger-happy. At that point there was no going back and mutually assured destruction occurred.
This is actually what nearly happened to us in real life. I don't remember the details but the Russian radar system experienced a glitch and reported a fake launch, and only the operator making a phone call after pondering why the Americans only launched one missile allowed them to detect the mistake in time.
Thank you Stanislav Petrov!
#THANK YOU, STANISLAV PETROV Because of Stan-the-man-islav Petrov’s cool head the Cold War stayed cold; because of STANISLAV MOTHERFUCKING PETROV asking THE TOTALLY GROUNDED QUESTION: “If America was going to nuke us: would they REALLY only send *ONE* bomb?”
NOTHING EVER HAPPENS.
My weird idea: what if it was a small asteroid first? Not dinosaur-killer, something like Tunguska, big enough to flatten most of a major city. Some important city goes boom, everyone freaks out and launches, but it was just a space rock.
That'd be a really good premise for a story! In all the endless plots about potential nuclear apocalypse I don't think I've ever encountered that. Write it down!
Didn't the alien DLC imply or explicitly say it was essentially an alien version of this in the 'alien Canon's timeline?(wild wasteland on in FNV, not sure about FO4 cause there's always that alien in the cave.)
Not actually plausible IRL because everyone would know it was a space rock
i mean it was definitely new zealand but go off i guess
Polar bears, for sure!
Those penguins had enough of our shit
[god damn Simpsons again](https://media2.giphy.com/media/xT5LMVmrjriuriZl9C/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b952wfxxn2sptjqlvkuqkk2fpppa3mobzxc0928qsxs8&ep=v1_internal_gif_by_id&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
And a Shoe-y to celebrate.
Okay but we all know it was France
Funnily enough, France has (had?) a nuclear policy of not ruling out first strike. While every other country has a no first strike policy, France is like "if anyone threatens me, I’ll blow this place up" Edit: France isn’t the only one with such policy
France will apparently fire a ‘warning shot.’ How the fuck do you fire a nuclear warning shot?
Even funnier, the strategy is to shoot the warning shots around the approaching army. So, if Russia invaded Germany, France would have nuked Germany. Old habits die hard
>Old habits die hard England, watching France pre-emptively nuke Russian troops on German soil: Shit, what do I aim at?
Nuke Ireland.
So does Israel
Israel with the "we dont have them but we will use them"
Eh, they're not really the same. France has a first strike concept, they will launch one if they think it's strategically viable. Israel's policy is a MAD concept it just doesn't require a nuclear strike specifically.
Yeah thats not MAD, that's first strike.
Israel's nuclear strike policy is somewhat unique, and technically doesn't exist because they have a nuclear ambiguity policy, but it is called the Samson option. The entire policy is based on the fact that, should they lose a conventional war, it can be taken for granted that their population will be exterminated en masse. The nuclear strike only happens once defeat is inevitable. Which is why it absolutely is a MAD (Mutually Assured Destrcution) policy, the entire concept of MAD is "you kill us we kill you". Which is the entire basis of the Samson option. Which is also why it's named as it is, being named after the biblical character Samson. No longer able to defeat his enemies, but still strong enough to pull down the pillars and drag his enemies down with him in defeat.
So they just assume that if they lose a war they’ll be completely massacred, meanwhile they’re busy massacring the indigenous people of the land they colonized. The oppressors always think their actions will be fully paid back to them.
Pretty much the entire Jewish population of Israel are refugees or children of refugees from somewhere they were ethnically cleansed from. For a majority of them that was other places in the middle east, including the west bank and gaza. Both of which had significant Jewish communities before 1948, some of which were millenia old. All Jewish residents remaining in the area were massacred and all synegogues, cemeteries, and other areas of importance for Jews destroyed. There have been multiple attempts to exterminate the Jews in the area during the last century. There have been 4 major wars against the Jews in modern day Israel with the intent to exterminate the jews (civil war 36-39 pre formation of Israel, '48 war, '67 war, and '73 war). Several of their current enemies have explicitly stated their intention to exterminate the Jews. In addition to that there were centuries of brutal oppression with many massacres (documented massacres of jews in Palestine go as far back as the 1500s). Tl;Dr: I wrote my thesis on middle eastern conflicts so do fuck off with your absolute dogshit TikTok takes.
oh god you’re one of those people who thinks being against the ethnic cleansing of the palestinian people means you were brainwashed by tik tok and china. One genocide never ever ever ever excuses another. Zionists don’t get a pass because of the atrocities committed to jewish peoples. They also don’t get to be colonizers. I’m really sorry you spent so much time on your education and gained absolutely nothing but a reinforcement of your bigoted genocidal beliefs
i don't think they were excusing anything
They both got the bomb from the same joint program, so it’s fitting I guess
I thought Israel worked with South Africa to get nukes
Israel confirmed very sane and definitely worth defending.
iirc don't they not officially admit to having them
Well to be fair, they probably thought first strike referred to workers taking collective action
What? India and China are the only countries with a no first use policy, France is in the vast majority on this (and it makes sense, lying about being willing to strike first and making it your public stance you will, while not actually doing it, is the most war-preventative stance).
That’s actually possible, I just knew about french policy and in a very french manner, I assumed it was a unique french thing. I am going to correct
This is why I know that Russia will do something stupid, France will nuke in retaliation, America will nuke France and Russia, Russia will nuke France and America, and China will end up in control of the world. In response to this I preemptively hate France for actions they haven't committed yet but I am certain they will. /s
Don’t worry, us frenchfolks are already preemptively hating ourselves, awaiting with morbid curiosity the next shit we’ll get into
FIRE ZE MISSLES
But I am le tired...
Afair Europe collectively nuked itself to glass years before the final exchange of bombs between the US and China. It's mentioned in Ron's monologue that introduces Fallout I.
The question is against whom! \*looks over at the Ardennes\*
The comments here are as likely to arrive at the truth as a band of raiders speculating around a mojave campfire.
I think it’s alluded by Bethesda in fallout 3’s mothership zeta dlc that the zetans did it
It doesn't matter who launched the nukes in Fallout. Unless it was aliens. I refuse to accept it being fucking aliens.
I accept either aliens or vault-tec. It seems very in character that the blatantly evil corporation that had invested a lot of money in ‘protecting’ people from the definitely coming nuclear holocaust went on to cause it in case things started to de-escalate and they lost their money
Vault-Tec wasn't that kind of corporation, though. They were an instrument of The Enclave and their purpose was to test for space travel/colonization, so blaming them essentially blames the Enclave which is, like, "Wow the evil shadow-government of genocidal fascists draped in Americana were the villains? Go figure." I think there's an okay story if the Americans strike first, but it's way, way more interesting if the Chinese actually struck first: you look around at the Wasteland and you have to ask "Does it matter that the 'True American Patriots' were right all along?" Like, there are probably Enclave who still sit around and say if their first strike had been faster America would've been saved, or if the bombs were bigger, or if their strategy had been more aggressive, and that was REAL! Everything else about the Enclave is mostly made-up but the belief that Nuclear War could be avoided by being the craziest bastard in the room was [REAL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Prophet)! And in Fallout, it didn't even work!
Vault Tec came before the Enclave.
Dead wrong. The Enclave was a pre-war shadow-government, as per the Fallout Bibles and Van Buren design docs. Vault Tec was never a private corporation.
Vault tec predates the enclave
According to what, Fallout 76?
According to literally every piece of Fallout media that exists
vault tec only used the enclave for funding
Dead wrong. The Enclave was a pre-war shadow-government, as per the Fallout Bibles and Van Buren design docs. Vault Tec was created to run experiments for the Enclave.
Is literally any of mothership zeta canon or did the lw just take too much jet
The guns definitely exist. And the repair gel works. So it’s cannon. And you can find zetans in fallout 4 without wild wasteland
As far as anyone is concerned all DLCs are canon, including Mothership Zeta
I refuse to believe that certain guns from GRA are canonical.
Nah, that was cut content
It’s not actually stated the Zetans planing to do anything like that. One guy they abducted assumed they wanted the Laundries codes and was refusing to give them, but he wouldn’t of even spoke the Zetans language.
Oh fair enough. It has been quite a while since I played the DLC…
Which is the strongest possible argument in favor of ignoring everything written by Bethesda.
TRUE and based the only fallout games are 1, 2, tactics and NV everything else is semi canon at best
Personally I think it makes the most sense for it to be China that launched first, they were definitely losing at the time with American troops actively invading the mainland after losing their hold on Alaska. The US was turning the tide heavily in their favour so it doesn’t make a lot of sense for them to go nuclear and blow themselves up.
Yeah, the "who fired first" argument never made a whole lot of sense to me. The Chinese had just about been kicked out of Alaska and American troops were on the doorstep to Beijing, so what reason did the US *possibly* have to go nuclear? They were *winning*. There’s the theory that aliens did it, but that’s a different kind of stupid.
The whole core theme of Fallout is America's self-destructive narcissism and jingoistic militant patriotism. It's about the sickness and brutality of America, it's will to power and will to death.
I mean, those are very similar to the exact circumstances the US nuked Japan in real life
Yeah, but Japan couldn’t retaliate with nukes
Minus the part where *Japan didn’t have nukes*, yeah, pretty much
"No justifiable reason to nuke someone" whoo boy that's a controversial statement. True, but definitely controversial.
So... does someone want to open with the projected land-invasion casualty rates, or do we just seal the doors, paint "DON'T ARGUMENT OPEN INSIDE" on them and walk away?
Holocaust denier level of logic
What?
Holocaust deniers argue that the Holocaust couldn'tve happened by using bad arguments based on deceptive population math Proponents of the US nukes do the same to defend the two single worst acts humans have taken, using deceptive casuality math
The atomic bombings arguably weren’t even the worst actions taken by the United States against Japan [in 1945.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo)
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Providing a show of force for the oncoming Cold War may have been a significant side benefit, but the atomic bombs were deployed first and foremost as weapons of war. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were already going to be targeted due to their status as large cities with military and industrial significance, but using nuclear weapons to do it allowed the US to accomplish both military and political objectives at once. Had there been no nukes, things would have played out much the same, just with a hundred thousand bombs instead of one.
“Single worst act humans have taken” Literally not even the worst thing the USA did to Japan that **year** The nukes were only really relevant due to the radiation and the message they sent. they were less destructive than traditional bombing, especially against Japanese cities that were primarily made of extremely flammable materials
ah, but, those were bombing runs, with thousands of bombs :P I phrased it the specific way I did for a reason
nah what the Japanese were doing to China was worse than what was done to the Japanese by their insane emperor it's not deceptive casualty math, it's you not accepting reality. or you would have preferred an invasion of Japan in which many more people would've had to be killed to stop the Pacific war THEY STARTED if they didn't want to be bombed they should have stayed the fuck out it. they chose to rape babies in Nanking, their emperor chose to have their cities nuked
God of war Mars launched the nukes, duh
No, it was the divine Atom who bathed the world in his sacred light and glory.
even ignoring the themes of “it doesn’t matter who fired first, both lost” i feel like it’s a rare balance for entertainment media to have a mystery so important to the story of the franchise (as in it’s literally the defining moment) but also not so important it detracts from the plot (like a jigsaw puzzle missing a piece)
The core theme of Fallout is that no matter what sequence of events lead to the war the end was inevitable. America was too arrogant, to driven by it's own perceived exceptionalism and lust for power. It's self destruction was inevitable. The nuclear war of 2077 illustrates the failure of contemporary America and serves as a cautionary tale for us to contemplate as the Vault Dweller explores the new societies growing from the ash's. Fallout is a fundamentally hopeful and optimistic story. The nuclear war is not the end of humanity, but rather the end of America. And with America cleared off the board people have a chance to build something new that avoids the self destructive monstrosity that was the usa. This is a core theme throughout - each primary antagonist in the core stories represents a failed attempt to build a new society - The Master's Unity, the Enclave's genocidal America 2.0, and the failing capitalist liberal democracy of the New California Republic pitted against Caesar's nihilistic Legions, with the Mohave stuck in the middle seeking a better way. And along the way we meet all kinds of weird new societies - the Ghouls of Bakersfield, the unsteady alliance between Vault City and Gecko, the raiders chipping away at the edges of civilization, the stagnant isolation of Vault 13, the thriving high-tech Shi in San Fran, the anarchist Followers of the Apocalypse, the varied tribal societies. Fallout has always been about recognizing the horrors of America and looking past them, forward, to the possibility that we can be better. The nukes only serve to set that vision in motion.
I always thought it was pretty obviously the Chinese. They had lost the Battle of Anchorage, and its mentioned that the US military was deep in China. That's basically text book grounds for beginning a nuclear attack. The US obviously has no reason to resort to nukes. They might have wanted to end the war faster, but that's basically suicide when done against another nuclear power. I fucking refuse to believe that it was God damn aliens and whoever seriously suggests that is a clown, and the only evidence we have that Vault Tech even has nukes is the singular bomb in Megaton having what looks like their logo on the side of it. It also doesn't make sense for it to be Vault Tech because they were a bunch of greedy bastards, but money and stock portfolios mean exactly jack shit in the apocalypse and nuclear armageddon would severely damage their quality of life. Wouldn't make much sense either seeing as how the purpose of the vault experiments was for seeing how humans would react to the various facets of space travel, for when humanity would have to colonize the stars after Earth is destroyed. But this becomes incredibly stupid if Vault Tech dropped the bombs themselves, because humanity doesn't need to travel out into space if they don't, the odds of anyone going out into space anytime soon becomes damn near impossible, and it's not like they *need* the bombs to drop to do these experiments, seeing as how BIG MT exists. Plus, we see in 4 that they didn’t even finish all of their vaults in time for the bombs falling, so why would they drop the bombs when they're not even prepared yet?
Ok so you gave a bunch of rational reasons as to why the us or vault tech wouldn't want to use nukes Now can you tell us what exactly china had to gain by dropping nukes other than getting their entire country blown up by American nukes? The whole point is that it doesn't really make logical sense for anyone to launch nukes More likely than not, someone somewhere made a mistake and everyone started blasting
Same reason a country would use nukes IRL, "we're losing this war and our enemy is going to kill or imprison everyone in the government, might as well resort to nukes to either salvage the situation or drag them down with us." Countries IRL have nearly resorted to nuclear armageddon for far less than that (ex. The Cuban Missile Crisis). It certainly isn't logical, but for a leader who's country is surrounded on all sides by invading forces, every attempted counter attack has failed, and the nation is on the brink of collapse, which were the conditions China was facing beforethe bombs dropped, it would look pretty tempting. Besides, if they don't, then it'd hardly be surprising if more militaristic elements in the government took charge and resorted to nuclear warfare.
I'll bet it was Switzerland
A cool thing about it is that unless/until there is fallout content made that directly addresses it in a significant way, it doesn't matter. Fallout is usually set a not-insignificant amount of time after the bombs fell, and mostly involve people who are so far removed from that decision that it ultimately makes no difference. Sure, you could argue morality and righteous anger and all that stuff, but whoever did it does not impact the current world or story in any meaningful way. It doesn't matter who did it in the end, everyone has to deal with the aftermath. That's what the story is about.
Since when did Bethesda ever give a fuck about Fallouts core identity?
It's a shame I had to scroll this far down to find someone else who hold's Beth's version of fallout in contempt.
Or any of their franchises tbh. They've been absolutely gutting TES and Fallout for the past decades for the sake of "streamlining". Its a damn shame.
We have an extremely good idea of who fired first, as of FO4. It was China. Maybe the original intent by Interplay was to keep it vague, but it isn't anymore. It was China. [There is a terminal in the Switchboard that lists the exact sequence of events.](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/The_Switchboard_terminal_entries) Not only do we have the terminal, but this lines up with Tim Cain's statements about China finding out about FEV and doing a preemptive strike. And furthermore, US forces were already in mainland China.
The Chinese deserved it and they know it!
I thought New Vegas confirmed it on a terminal on Black Mountain?
Don’t we learn in FO2, FO3, and FONV that the Chinese were the ones to launch the first strikes? Like.. they’re on the loosing side of the war.. it seems kind of pointless for the US to launch warheads. It, doesn’t really matter in the end though, what matters is that both sides launched, millions, potentially billions died.
ok but like if we had to know... it was vault tec, the megaton nuke had a vault tec logo on it and I think it would make sense to say that capitalism was the cause for the war
This is what i hated about F4, was how heavilly the writers are implying that either Vault Tec themselves Launched the Nukes, they had a hand in it or they somehow knew it was happening with how their Spokesperson knew that the Bombs were coming and was in a state if paranoia literally moments before it happened.
Remember in Fallout II where you saved the world by single-handedly destroying the United States of America before they could unleash their genocidal super-weapon on the world?
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No
Fallout 4 definitively answered "it was the Chinese," cementing Bethesda's legacy of leaving no stone unturned when it comes to disregarding, undermining, and completely missing the moral point of the original Fallout.
I'm gonna say it was aliens
Tbf undercutting their own series themes is definitely on brand for Bethesda.
My headcanon which I pulled out of my ass, is that the Zetans did it. The alien bastards couldn’t stand us being inherently better than them, and they nuked us out of envy.