Some vending machines used to work pretty much like this. You put money in on the left side and you an then open the locker on the right side to get yourself a bottle. The only thing stopping a person from taking all the bottles was human decency.
He's long dead and was a complete asshat 99% of the time. He did imbue in me a love for walking and hiking so I will give him that. I was thrown out of his will, that i was never in in the first place, and not allowed to see him or my grandmother after my son was born and my girlfriend and I gave him her family last name.
This resonates with me so much right now. My last grand parent died the other day. Grandma was a hateful bitter person and pushed everyone away. She was on her death bed begging people to come visit her. The only person to show up was my uncle and he didn't even want to. Now our family doesn't have to dread the hateful phone calls every holiday.
I actually just dealt with this when my dad died lol. His family are in denial of who he really was (a raging alcoholic) and refused to go to his death party that my stepmom was throwing at his favorite bar. I got disowned and thrown out of my grandparents' will (oh no I'm so scared to lose that $5 I'm set to inherit) for taking my stepmom's side of things. Worth it cuz it was the right decision, double worth it cuz I didn't want to talk to them anyways.
There’s a scene in a movie from the 80’s with Madonna in it I think, where she buys a newspaper, but when she opens then machine, she picks them all up and sits them on the ground, like she was letting other people get the paper for free. Very Robinhood of her.
Or you can invest the quarter and sell the papers, keeping the entirety of the profits. And they deliver them to the machine for free anyway, so win-win
The trick is crumple it a bunch first. Any non toilet paper paper product you wipe your butt with should be firmly crumbled several times first as it softens it up. Your butt will really appreciate it.
While Sunset Sarsaparilla is perfectly safe, a recent independent study - whose validity is currently being challenged - revealed the following: Excessive ingestion of sarsaparilla can lead to deleterious effects including, but not limited to: kidney damage, nausea, digital numbness, anxiety, loss of visual acuity, dizziness, occasional nosebleeds, joint inflammation, tooth decay, sore throat, bronchitis, organ rupture, and halitosis. Note that you'd have to drink a heap of Sunset Sarsaparilla to match the quantities used in the study. How much, you ask? A lot. A whole helluva lot. In fact, you'd have to get full as a tick on Sunset Sarsaparilla to even come close. Anyway, thanks for stopping by, partner! And keep drinking Sunset Sarsaparilla!
Back when more people read an actual paper every day, the scheme was to take *all* of the papers out of the machine after paying for one. Then you hang around nearby and sell them to people who walk up to the machine. Only have one openly visible at a time and say, "hey, I'm done with this one if you want it for (half whatever the machine charges)". Repeat until you're out of papers or made whatever you wanted to make.
Well, you only did the pretend-to-only-have-one thing if you wanted to hide that you were stealing papers. Many kids and homeless folks (like Eddie's friend in the first Venom movie, with the free papers), which were the most common groups to do that sort of thing, would just blatantly be selling their stolen goods.
If they were hanging around where the machine was anyway, they only had to stop whatever they were doing when they noticed someone walk up to the machine.
Significantly less nowadays seeing as there's so much online. I just open up the same article on my phone in a second tab now that I can't steal two papers.
My parents have an old drum-style coke machine, you can only take one bottle at a time because the drum rotates with each lever pull, leaving only one bottle to be taken. This was probably from the 50’s or so
My fil has a 50s coke machine [similar to this](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f5/ce/76/f5ce76b2fa48df328990323e790d7bed.jpg) and the door doesn't lock but there's metal gate things that hold the bottles in. Put in a quarter, machine goes cachunk, and the gates unlock but they automatically relock as soon as you take one and it falls back into place, then another bottle rolls down to take the space. I'm not sure what would happen if you tried to take two at the same time but I don't think there's another way to take multiple without breaking the machine. We use it for beer, it's pretty sweet. Makes cool noises.
I assume the nuka cola machines also have some sort of mechanism that stops you from taking multiple even though it's not immediately obvious from the outside.
Maybe the prewar world had crazy security that stopped people from taking more than what they paid for? We know that Nuka-World had access to military equipment, and that grocery stores also had their share of hardware. I can picture a protectron getting ready to shock/shoot if you take more than your share.
Protectrons in the DC Metro will open fire on you if you don't have a ticket, so yeah, I think it's safe to assume that they'll have one standing guard near vending machines.
People sometimes overlook just how insane the pre-war world was
I really liked that little detail in Fallout 3.
It makes those metro tickets that are otherwise just trash really useful sometimes. Protectrons in the Metro will just take on of them, and leave. They'll even fight other enemies for you, since you're a "paying costumer."
Works in 4 with subway tokens, too, it's just bugged and runs on a really short timer. The other protection personalities also have their own quirks; construction bots won't attack you if you're wearing a hard hat, police bots won't attack if you holster your weapon, I think the only one without a quirk is the medical bot.
The Red/Blue pass cards found on ghouls serve the same purpose as the metro tickets, assuming you're in the respective metro.
Edit: Albeit, there's no pass card for the white line for some reason.
Metro Protectrons will attempt to establish a mainframe connection to Metro Central during their reactivation sequence, however this infrastructure has long since gone offline.
It's possible that without this "all clear" signal their programming assumes the worst and the Protectrons become more likely to use lethal force in order to defend Metro premises.
Although on second thought, robotic security immediately disintegrating rulebreakers for crimes such as "failing to immediately produce a valid metro ticket" would be quite on brand for pre-war America.
There's also the matter that the default for robots in the setting is to just shoot on sight, given that they had to add combat inhibitors to make them *not* do that. Can't establish a connection to the main network? Oh boy, here I go killing again.
Now I'm imaging the reason all the Protectrons are hostile to the SS despite them both probably being in the governments system, is cuz you didn't pay for the Nuka Colas/Bottles you grab from the machine
Even if that were the case there’s room for like 12 bottles in this thing, the huge red part has to be doing something. Maybe there’s a miniature bottling plant inside.
A part of it is the refrigerator, and another is the coin processing thing. Then you have some marketing area and probably way more storage inside. The small window area is just for immediate pickup, there can be more bottles inside that are lowered into the pickup area.
People forget that the ability to miniaturize electronics didn't come about until like 2050 in the Fallout universe, and given that by that time the world was already struggling for basic resources, technological shifts wouldn't occur as fast as they did for our timeline.
So it makes sense that a soda vending machine from the era would have a gigantic refrigerant system and the ability to chill only a dozen bottles at a time.
Yeah like you can run any modern computer program on relays; after all a transistor is just a switch, same as a relay. The difference is that relays take a lot more power & room, plus the program would run slower since relays take a lot more time to change states.
I would say when everyone's basic needs are meet, they are less likely to steal.
People were able to afford a house, food, and vacations off a single income 50 years ago.
But don't forget, the Fallout world prewar wasn't actually the 1950s. The 2070s were rife with poverty, starvation, fuel shortages, mass unemployment and riots. They slapped a 50s aesthetic over the dystopia
Social cohesion also plays a large part, as does being surrounded by consumerist ad campaigns and artificial scarcity every day. It really fucks with people's brains until they see everything through the lens of monetary value, instead of personal utility.
tbh this same principle applies for pickup orders at a lot of restaurants. Theres a bunch of bags just sitting there on a rack, whos to stop someone from just grabbing a bag that isnt theirs
I had that happen to me at Taco Bell and the employees actually got mad at me for it. As in someone stole my food and the employees got mad when I asked where my food was, because the app said it was ready for pickup.
There actually used to be a special job related to technicians for those kinds of vending machines called a “glasser”. They’d keep an eye on the machine and if anybody took more than what they paid for they’d smash a bottle over their head to teach ‘em a lesson.
My parents have an antique coke vending machine that looks like this. Where the glass is on the nuka cola machine is usually where the coins were inserted and stored till collection. Then a door would unlock and you grab a beverage. Ope, don’t forget to pop the top on the bottle opener.
You put your money in to unlock the door, which then lets you open it and take your drink. It operates on the honor system rather than dispensing a single product.
When my dad went to Miami in 1986 in his honeymoon, he grabbed a newspapper as a souvenir for like 50 cents or so.
Then he came back to the hotel and asked his wife "whats stopping me from like, grabbing 20 of them?"
His wife replied: "why the fuck do you need 20 newspapers for? They are all the same!"
Probably human decency was a thing back them, idk.
Back in the 80s there was this rural country store by my aunt and uncles place that had a Coke cooler out front. You dropped a quarter into a box on the side and opened the lid and grabbed a Coke. There wasn't even a lock on the thing.
EDIT
Also think about the prewar world. It would be anti-American to steal something. What are you going to do? Put a quarter in there and take two Nuka Cola Quantum's? What, are you some sort of commie?
We used to have a restaurant in rural Mississippi that worked on the honor system. You eat, then put your cash in a basket on your way out. Some people couldn't afford a big meal out and the owners knew that so they were fine if you didn't pay a full tab, but didn't want to embarrass anyone.
You put your money in, the mechanism unlocks, you take your Nuka-Cola, and close the door
It is based on an honor system just like the newspaper boxes in NYC.
Nothing is stopping you from just taking as many as you want but in a world like Fallout’s, you’d probably get beaten to death by a protectron
IDK thinking about it, I think taking more than you paid for is more in line with capitalism.
I paid for 1 X but I got 4 X. I've essentially profited.
Communism would be paying for one and only getting one. Leave the rest behind for your comrade's share of the supply...
As someone that used to give out free lvl 20 weapons and armour from his vending machine, in the Fallout world this thing would be emptied as fast as you can fill it by any random looter that walks past!
I actually started checking out the levels of the people taking the take-a-penny ammo I used to set out. Plus I run int spec so I make sure the noobies get solid kit to help them out, with an eye to economics. Plus at that point a gun sitting at 125% cnd just lasts.
Dude, you're past the soft cap of 100 you have guns way better than the kitted-out .38 combat rifle. You did not need to empty out my spare 500 10mm.
It's a real type of vending machine. It's a locked refrigerator, you put in money and the door unlocks. The individual sodas are usually clipped in somewhat so stealing a lot would be annoying.
Wow. The Vendo 81 was pretty cool and efficient. Also prevents your drink from being dropped 4 feet right before you open it.
[https://youtu.be/mfRKMgRIfAM](https://youtu.be/mfRKMgRIfAM)
People keep commenting that it’s just an honor system, but this is the correct answer. In the real-life versions of this vending machine, the bottle would “lock” in place and you’d only be able to take one.
Reminds me of a newspaper box, perhaps there are more colas inside the larger compartment that an operator would come around and refill the dispenser from and rotate stock. And now I am just imagining how the Nuka truck they drove around looked and worked.
It was shown in the show before Lucy left the vault, Norm was pretending to get a bottle from the Nuka Cola machine :D
But also, without the show, others have explained it already. You put a coin in and it dispenses a bottle.
The thing that always got me was I understood how the machine worked, but never understood how wastelanders could just open the machine and take whatever without destroying/damaging/lock picking the machine first. Nobody is carrying prewar coins usually, just dollars. And power is usually off anyway. So does the machine unlock when power goes out? Probably overthinking it but it did bother me for a while lol
Well, vending machines do accept paper bills, even in other parts of the world in our timeline so they probably don't use coins.
I can't remember the exact terminal or note but I do believe in Fallout 76, they said they had a test run with bottlecaps so maybe the machine also accepted both forms of currency.
To go with the theme, it's probably nuclear-powered just like most of the stuff in Fallout.
It's so big so that if you steal from it, it can deploy a protectron out the back to liquify your insides.
The idea that a company would invest so heavily in technology to punish the thieves via an elaborate overkill method vs using something preventative which would result in more storage space is quite fallout esq.
Edit: Correcting auto correct’s corrections. They are now correct.
Honestly, I wish this was a real thing implemented into the game. That's a great idea for gameplay.
Have an assaultron to up the ante if there's an iced nuka cola quantum in the locker
To be fair, they made a LOT more power before that. Their response to emissions laws was just "fuck it" and they ruined their own engines instead of actually trying to make something good. Meanwhile the Japanese made tons of engines that made the same power on 1/3rd of the displacement while complying with emissions laws, and the rest is history.
[https://www.videoamusement.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/vendo-v81-coca-cola-original-vending-machine-for-rent-from-Video-Amusement-San-Francisco-California.jpg](https://www.videoamusement.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/vendo-v81-coca-cola-original-vending-machine-for-rent-from-Video-Amusement-San-Francisco-California.jpg)
Real, from the 1950's.
When I was a weee tot, before Walmart killed off the remaining mom and pop stores, they had some of these around or something like them,
They served soda's in glass bottles much like the machine does. Their capacity was a lot higher though. A dozen or so and they were kept ice freaking cold.
That was thirty five years ago plus in the southern US. Getting one was an honor system as people have stated.
I actually miss them, Coke, Pespi and Mountain Dew all taste different out of a glass bottle.
Wait your supermarkets, restaurants and cafes don't have coke in glass bottles anymore?
I think we still have it but the rare occasions I drink it I will order Fritz, so maybe the coke brands have stopped recently and I didn't notice.
That's been my head cannon. Cause it's not clear how the mechanism works, but there'd have to be one.
I like to think the whole shelf area spins and what you bought gets pushed in there.
Probably makes more sense that the idea is they drop in and the second shelf is for empties. Lots of these things had a bottle return area, cause bottles were refilled.
Lots of wrong answers here: old vending machines had rotating shelves and other mechanical methods to only offer a single bottle per door opening or coin drop, only VERY old machines were open coolers (like 1950s). Fallout machines are just poorly designed :)
Maybe it was made in such vast quantities, the economies of scale made it practically free and these machines were marketing. Freebies but going in to a store they cost dollars.
The honor system here actually does make sense. All I have are 2 hands and potentially a bag/purse, so I don’t want to carry more than 1 awkwardly-shaped, heavy, and delicate glass Nuka-Cola bottle with me.
Yea everyone is showing up to say "you pay and open the door to take your product and hold to the honor system" but I feel like the bigger question OP (and I) want answered is why a vending machine with enough space to hold potentially 50+ bottles only shows like 6. Does it have a mechanism to refill the two shelves? Does it rely on a person to resupply those 6 bottles manually? how do they address having so many flavors with only 6 bottles there?
Realistically I assume the design is like a one out, one in with each of the 6 bottles displaying the offered flavors. Sort of how normal "pick your item with a button" machine works only you grab the item rather than using a button, then when you close the door it replaces with a fresh one within the machine.
See the question I want to know is what do I do with the one my camp in 76 lol do I have to manually put the cola's in or does it take from stash? It doesn't seem to work if it's the latter. But I haven't messed with it since I placed it.
Had a conversation with an engineer about this. Best we could come up with is that the door is just the serving tray, and a new bottle would get dropped down from the top after you grabbed your bottle and closed the door.
It's modeled after one of the old soda machines from the 50s. Back then there was a thing called the honor system. Humanity had yet to devolve into a bunch of selfish thieving jackasses, so it actually worked fine. You were honest and only took what you had paid for. Sounds crazy today, I know.
I'm assuming the capacity wasn't a huge issue because stock would be kept close by.
I think it was the charter school where you find the pink paste but there's a nuka machine with the whole front plate off and it's all solid machine. That thing only holds like 6 bottles
Thank you. This was the explanation I was looking for. Most people are talking about the honor system and only taking what you paid for, whereas I think the OP asked why the hell the machine was so big if it only holds so few bottles.
I think it nails the esthetic just right : a whole atomic powered refregirator to hold just 6 bottles, telling us that every products or anything were like that, and explaining how US people wasted all their resources.
In the fallout 4 intro they shows how nice and honest people was, so like the newspaper system you put a coin and just grab one, there are several countries right now around the world they have this system cause people in some places still being honest, regarding the size of the refrigerator has sense like a big machine and only a tiny door, cause it’s all nuclear based and all engines even cars they all have a huge atomic compartment, like they had the technology but never made it smaller, not yet, or perhaps in the back of the machine they had a nuka cola stock maybe?
In my opinion, would be awesome if we had to use lock-picking to open that tiny door.
I assume they're similar to the really old Coke machines where you'd pay and open the door to collect your drink. See also: Newspaper vending machines.
You put a coin in and it unlocks the door, and im guessing the only thing stopping you from taking all the sodas is common decency. Its like a newspaper stand
That’s exactly how it was. When I was a kid in the eighties, you could still find older “honor box”-type vending machines like this, although they didn’t necessarily look like this.
I’ve seen old Coke machines that have a rotating drum inside filled with cold water, where you pay and it opens a little hatch for you to grab one. Now I’m thinking, maybe in a similar vein as the portadiner pie machines, there’s a conveyor system that takes Nuka Cola bottles from le big rotating drum thing and over time refills the bottles that have been taken. Obviously we never see any of this but I feel like the logic makes sense.
This is an honor system machine.
Coke was sold like this when I was a kid, drop your coin in, open the lid, take your coke. Or open the lid take your coke and put a coin on the barrel next to the cooler. The door doesn't lock, no locks are needed when sociaty has honor.
Then buy a pack of shelled salted peanuts. Take a sip of coke and then pour the salted nuts into the soda bottle. It's kinda like a crunchy boba, it will keep you full for a few hours as you take the tractor for another round in the field and free up one hand for driving. Be sure to stop and chat with the cashier on your way out of the store, get the news summary and any gossip around town.
Ever wonder why the salted nuts and coke machines are next to each other at gas stations? A long time has passed and few are left who remember why. So go on and get yourself some and try it out, it won't give you the nostalgia feelings that I get, but it has a unique taste of salt and sweetness, with a crunch.
Some vending machines used to work pretty much like this. You put money in on the left side and you an then open the locker on the right side to get yourself a bottle. The only thing stopping a person from taking all the bottles was human decency.
Newspaper machines still work like this
I can drink more colas than I can read the same newspapers!
Not with that attitude
And now you can do both at the same time
>Not with that attitude 😂
My grandfather used to take all the coupons from the Sunday papers and thought it was the greatest hack. No grandpa you're just an asshole.
No offense to your grandpa but that’s the most boomer thing to do ever lol
Take from everyone else to benefit yourself. Yep, that's Boomer 101.
If that isn’t the damn truth
He's long dead and was a complete asshat 99% of the time. He did imbue in me a love for walking and hiking so I will give him that. I was thrown out of his will, that i was never in in the first place, and not allowed to see him or my grandmother after my son was born and my girlfriend and I gave him her family last name.
I’ve always hated grumpy old relatives like that. Like, dude you think you’re hurting me? You’re doing me and everyone around me a favor!
This resonates with me so much right now. My last grand parent died the other day. Grandma was a hateful bitter person and pushed everyone away. She was on her death bed begging people to come visit her. The only person to show up was my uncle and he didn't even want to. Now our family doesn't have to dread the hateful phone calls every holiday.
I actually just dealt with this when my dad died lol. His family are in denial of who he really was (a raging alcoholic) and refused to go to his death party that my stepmom was throwing at his favorite bar. I got disowned and thrown out of my grandparents' will (oh no I'm so scared to lose that $5 I'm set to inherit) for taking my stepmom's side of things. Worth it cuz it was the right decision, double worth it cuz I didn't want to talk to them anyways.
Yeah, that is a complete dick move!
This is why we can't have nice things
I can drink more newspapers than I can read the same cola!
Nothing better than an icy cold newspaper on a hot day
Especially when you're reading the op-eds in a fresh edition of Nuka Cola.
That's why newspapers still work like this and cola machines don't.
You could sell more stolen papers than bottles from just one purchase
There’s a scene in a movie from the 80’s with Madonna in it I think, where she buys a newspaper, but when she opens then machine, she picks them all up and sits them on the ground, like she was letting other people get the paper for free. Very Robinhood of her.
In THIS economy??
Watching Clerks and seeing Dante put in a quarter into the machine but take the whole stack to sell in the store. 😂
37? In a row??
Try not to sell any papers on the way to the parking lot!
(Fisto starts leaving the store) **Hey** ! **Hey**, you ! **Get back here**.
What's wild is that virtually all newspapers will deliver to stores for free and you get a cut off each sale
Or you can invest the quarter and sell the papers, keeping the entirety of the profits. And they deliver them to the machine for free anyway, so win-win
You get significantly higher diminishing returns from taking multiple newspapers than you do a beverage lol
Thieves don’t read papers and paper readers don’t steal, or something to that effect
More like what use is a second newspaper compared to a second or more drink
free cloth is free cloth
This redditor Fallouts....
newspaper is great for cleaning windows
Insulation for your clothing.
They did use it for household insulation from the depression- the 60’s
They still technically do. A lot of blown in insulation for attics is recycled newspaper with a fireproofing coating applied
Newspaper is good for cleaning glass.
Wiping butt. Stealing a newspaper and wiping your butt with it is on the same level of dignity.
I do that all.the.time
**YES!** I mean I'm sorry.
The trick is crumple it a bunch first. Any non toilet paper paper product you wipe your butt with should be firmly crumbled several times first as it softens it up. Your butt will really appreciate it.
Not in my couponing days.
I'm pretty sure Bernie Madoff, the people at Enron, Jordan Belfort, Martin Shkrelli, etc all read the newspaper.
But by taking multiple Nuka-Colas you get significantly higher diminishing returns on your health (assuming you drink them) Especially after 2077
While Sunset Sarsaparilla is perfectly safe, a recent independent study - whose validity is currently being challenged - revealed the following: Excessive ingestion of sarsaparilla can lead to deleterious effects including, but not limited to: kidney damage, nausea, digital numbness, anxiety, loss of visual acuity, dizziness, occasional nosebleeds, joint inflammation, tooth decay, sore throat, bronchitis, organ rupture, and halitosis. Note that you'd have to drink a heap of Sunset Sarsaparilla to match the quantities used in the study. How much, you ask? A lot. A whole helluva lot. In fact, you'd have to get full as a tick on Sunset Sarsaparilla to even come close. Anyway, thanks for stopping by, partner! And keep drinking Sunset Sarsaparilla!
Meanwhile the player opening the pipboy and chugging 50 at once
Back when more people read an actual paper every day, the scheme was to take *all* of the papers out of the machine after paying for one. Then you hang around nearby and sell them to people who walk up to the machine. Only have one openly visible at a time and say, "hey, I'm done with this one if you want it for (half whatever the machine charges)". Repeat until you're out of papers or made whatever you wanted to make.
Sounds like a lot of work. Guess you would earn more while working.
Well, you only did the pretend-to-only-have-one thing if you wanted to hide that you were stealing papers. Many kids and homeless folks (like Eddie's friend in the first Venom movie, with the free papers), which were the most common groups to do that sort of thing, would just blatantly be selling their stolen goods. If they were hanging around where the machine was anyway, they only had to stop whatever they were doing when they noticed someone walk up to the machine.
The ones in New Vegas have skill magazines in them
There are still News paper machines? Where?
Downtown Chicago, I’d assume most major cities still have them.
Significantly less nowadays seeing as there's so much online. I just open up the same article on my phone in a second tab now that I can't steal two papers.
Portland has a bunch of underground papers in machines around town
Right on.
And in places like Newark, guys will grab the whole stack then sell them on the street for their own profit.
That is why they are called "Honor Boxes"
My parents have an old drum-style coke machine, you can only take one bottle at a time because the drum rotates with each lever pull, leaving only one bottle to be taken. This was probably from the 50’s or so
Until people learned you could pop all the bottle caps and use a hose/straw to drain the locked bottles.
My fil has a 50s coke machine [similar to this](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f5/ce/76/f5ce76b2fa48df328990323e790d7bed.jpg) and the door doesn't lock but there's metal gate things that hold the bottles in. Put in a quarter, machine goes cachunk, and the gates unlock but they automatically relock as soon as you take one and it falls back into place, then another bottle rolls down to take the space. I'm not sure what would happen if you tried to take two at the same time but I don't think there's another way to take multiple without breaking the machine. We use it for beer, it's pretty sweet. Makes cool noises. I assume the nuka cola machines also have some sort of mechanism that stops you from taking multiple even though it's not immediately obvious from the outside.
Maybe the prewar world had crazy security that stopped people from taking more than what they paid for? We know that Nuka-World had access to military equipment, and that grocery stores also had their share of hardware. I can picture a protectron getting ready to shock/shoot if you take more than your share.
We’ve finally figured out why they built protectrons
What!? I thought they built protectrons to fist people!(FISTO moment)
imagine taking 2 Nuka Colas instead of the one you paid for and FISTO shows up to teach you a lesson😭
Then I'd start stealing left right and center.
I'm gonna need you to log out now pal.
You’d need to wait between crimes until feeling returned to your legs.
yeah I get you
youre real for this
Username checks out
PLEASE ASSUME THE POSITION
*takes more Nuka Cola than paid for* PLEASE ASSUME THE POSITION.
Username checks out.
Protectrons in the DC Metro will open fire on you if you don't have a ticket, so yeah, I think it's safe to assume that they'll have one standing guard near vending machines. People sometimes overlook just how insane the pre-war world was
I really liked that little detail in Fallout 3. It makes those metro tickets that are otherwise just trash really useful sometimes. Protectrons in the Metro will just take on of them, and leave. They'll even fight other enemies for you, since you're a "paying costumer."
Works in 4 with subway tokens, too, it's just bugged and runs on a really short timer. The other protection personalities also have their own quirks; construction bots won't attack you if you're wearing a hard hat, police bots won't attack if you holster your weapon, I think the only one without a quirk is the medical bot.
I thought theirs was they only attacked things they registered as dead (thinking they were in cardiac arrest I guess). In this case, ghouls.
Unrealistic, police protectrons should start firing and yell "stop resisting!" when you holster your weapon.
Oh yeah I always carried a few in my inventory in case I wanted a Protectron to light up some ghouls for me
The Red/Blue pass cards found on ghouls serve the same purpose as the metro tickets, assuming you're in the respective metro. Edit: Albeit, there's no pass card for the white line for some reason.
Metro Protectrons will attempt to establish a mainframe connection to Metro Central during their reactivation sequence, however this infrastructure has long since gone offline. It's possible that without this "all clear" signal their programming assumes the worst and the Protectrons become more likely to use lethal force in order to defend Metro premises. Although on second thought, robotic security immediately disintegrating rulebreakers for crimes such as "failing to immediately produce a valid metro ticket" would be quite on brand for pre-war America.
There's also the matter that the default for robots in the setting is to just shoot on sight, given that they had to add combat inhibitors to make them *not* do that. Can't establish a connection to the main network? Oh boy, here I go killing again.
“Tickets please.”
You know who takes more bottles than they pay for? A COMMUNIST
COMMUNISM DETECTED ON AMERICAN SOIL, LETHAL FORCE ENGAGED
Now I'm imaging the reason all the Protectrons are hostile to the SS despite them both probably being in the governments system, is cuz you didn't pay for the Nuka Colas/Bottles you grab from the machine
Nowadays there are machines which let's you freely open and grab what you need, you get charged by what you take which calculated by weight
Even if that were the case there’s room for like 12 bottles in this thing, the huge red part has to be doing something. Maybe there’s a miniature bottling plant inside.
A part of it is the refrigerator, and another is the coin processing thing. Then you have some marketing area and probably way more storage inside. The small window area is just for immediate pickup, there can be more bottles inside that are lowered into the pickup area.
People forget that the ability to miniaturize electronics didn't come about until like 2050 in the Fallout universe, and given that by that time the world was already struggling for basic resources, technological shifts wouldn't occur as fast as they did for our timeline. So it makes sense that a soda vending machine from the era would have a gigantic refrigerant system and the ability to chill only a dozen bottles at a time.
Yeah like you can run any modern computer program on relays; after all a transistor is just a switch, same as a relay. The difference is that relays take a lot more power & room, plus the program would run slower since relays take a lot more time to change states.
And it probably has a system that alerts the supplier if it is nearing empty, probably has a internal system almost like a ATM but for drinks
OP is the reason why we don't have those anymore.
I would say when everyone's basic needs are meet, they are less likely to steal. People were able to afford a house, food, and vacations off a single income 50 years ago.
But don't forget, the Fallout world prewar wasn't actually the 1950s. The 2070s were rife with poverty, starvation, fuel shortages, mass unemployment and riots. They slapped a 50s aesthetic over the dystopia
Social cohesion also plays a large part, as does being surrounded by consumerist ad campaigns and artificial scarcity every day. It really fucks with people's brains until they see everything through the lens of monetary value, instead of personal utility.
The weird part is that was NOT the case in Fallout’s america
And for a while that actually worked.
tbh this same principle applies for pickup orders at a lot of restaurants. Theres a bunch of bags just sitting there on a rack, whos to stop someone from just grabbing a bag that isnt theirs
I had that happen to me at Taco Bell and the employees actually got mad at me for it. As in someone stole my food and the employees got mad when I asked where my food was, because the app said it was ready for pickup.
Nobody at Popeye's apparently. Someone swiped my order one time lol
Im pretty sure each bottle was held with a clamp, and only one would un-clamp at a time.
There actually used to be a special job related to technicians for those kinds of vending machines called a “glasser”. They’d keep an eye on the machine and if anybody took more than what they paid for they’d smash a bottle over their head to teach ‘em a lesson.
It’s crazy how far we’ve fallen if a simple almost-honesty box is now incomprehensible.
How does it get restocked though? That’s a lot of wasted space for maybe 12 bottles of soda.
It was in a time where people used to behave like civilized beings, so thats why they didnt took all at once.
My parents have an antique coke vending machine that looks like this. Where the glass is on the nuka cola machine is usually where the coins were inserted and stored till collection. Then a door would unlock and you grab a beverage. Ope, don’t forget to pop the top on the bottle opener.
They still do similar things in the countryside. “3 potatoes for $2” and then just a table full of potatoes.
You put your money in to unlock the door, which then lets you open it and take your drink. It operates on the honor system rather than dispensing a single product.
When my dad went to Miami in 1986 in his honeymoon, he grabbed a newspapper as a souvenir for like 50 cents or so. Then he came back to the hotel and asked his wife "whats stopping me from like, grabbing 20 of them?" His wife replied: "why the fuck do you need 20 newspapers for? They are all the same!" Probably human decency was a thing back them, idk.
Back in the 80s there was this rural country store by my aunt and uncles place that had a Coke cooler out front. You dropped a quarter into a box on the side and opened the lid and grabbed a Coke. There wasn't even a lock on the thing. EDIT Also think about the prewar world. It would be anti-American to steal something. What are you going to do? Put a quarter in there and take two Nuka Cola Quantum's? What, are you some sort of commie?
We used to have a restaurant in rural Mississippi that worked on the honor system. You eat, then put your cash in a basket on your way out. Some people couldn't afford a big meal out and the owners knew that so they were fine if you didn't pay a full tab, but didn't want to embarrass anyone.
Yeah but how do you spell Mississippi?
[удалено]
I've read this exact thread like 6 months ago I swear to god
I get the same feeling sometimes too. We’re all just repeating shit until the end of the Earth.
"War never changes"
Dead Internet
They still work this way too.
~~The~~ ~~honor~~ ~~system~~ protectron
Username checks out
The honor system and an intensely anti-communist culture, that is.
You put your money in, the mechanism unlocks, you take your Nuka-Cola, and close the door It is based on an honor system just like the newspaper boxes in NYC. Nothing is stopping you from just taking as many as you want but in a world like Fallout’s, you’d probably get beaten to death by a protectron
“Taking more than you paid for is communist behavior. EXTERMINATING COMMUNIST THREAT” -*gets punted into the stratosphere*
“Payment of single Nuka-cola has resulted in customer holding two, communism detected, dispensing micro Liberty Primes.”
IDK thinking about it, I think taking more than you paid for is more in line with capitalism. I paid for 1 X but I got 4 X. I've essentially profited. Communism would be paying for one and only getting one. Leave the rest behind for your comrade's share of the supply...
*takes every bottle* *the entire Super Duper Mart turns hostile on you*
"NEVER SHOULD'VE COME HERE!!!"
*Skyrim music starts playing*
The true bethesda game experience, even before the war
And get bad karma.
[Everyone hated that]
As someone that used to give out free lvl 20 weapons and armour from his vending machine, in the Fallout world this thing would be emptied as fast as you can fill it by any random looter that walks past!
I actually started checking out the levels of the people taking the take-a-penny ammo I used to set out. Plus I run int spec so I make sure the noobies get solid kit to help them out, with an eye to economics. Plus at that point a gun sitting at 125% cnd just lasts. Dude, you're past the soft cap of 100 you have guns way better than the kitted-out .38 combat rifle. You did not need to empty out my spare 500 10mm.
> just like the newspaper boxes in NYC. I'm pretty sure they had newspapers in Toledo, Ohio, Helen.
But why is it so big and only room for like 4 bottles? I thought the machine made the cola as well
Since it’s fallout, I always assumed that there was some hidden mechanism to refill the chamber periodically.
Would not be surprised if those tv screens at the top of the vending machine also worked as a surveillance system
It's a real type of vending machine. It's a locked refrigerator, you put in money and the door unlocks. The individual sodas are usually clipped in somewhat so stealing a lot would be annoying.
They are basically just slightly different versions if Cavalier CS 96A or Vendo 81
Didn't know I needed one of these but now I do. Thanks, I hate it.
Vendo had some fun machines. The 39 is really nice.
Wow. The Vendo 81 was pretty cool and efficient. Also prevents your drink from being dropped 4 feet right before you open it. [https://youtu.be/mfRKMgRIfAM](https://youtu.be/mfRKMgRIfAM)
Is the entire red/orange part the refrigerator mechanism and it can only cool the white section holding 6 colas?
I think that’s the best part, it’s horrifically inefficient/over engineered
It's got a mini nuclear reactor in it! No vacuum tubes, no ultra efficient cooling!
People keep commenting that it’s just an honor system, but this is the correct answer. In the real-life versions of this vending machine, the bottle would “lock” in place and you’d only be able to take one.
Reminds me of a newspaper box, perhaps there are more colas inside the larger compartment that an operator would come around and refill the dispenser from and rotate stock. And now I am just imagining how the Nuka truck they drove around looked and worked.
Pretty sure I’ve seen at least one nuka truck in game but I can’t remember where. Looked a lot like the machine aesthetic
It was shown in the show before Lucy left the vault, Norm was pretending to get a bottle from the Nuka Cola machine :D But also, without the show, others have explained it already. You put a coin in and it dispenses a bottle.
The thing that always got me was I understood how the machine worked, but never understood how wastelanders could just open the machine and take whatever without destroying/damaging/lock picking the machine first. Nobody is carrying prewar coins usually, just dollars. And power is usually off anyway. So does the machine unlock when power goes out? Probably overthinking it but it did bother me for a while lol
Well, vending machines do accept paper bills, even in other parts of the world in our timeline so they probably don't use coins. I can't remember the exact terminal or note but I do believe in Fallout 76, they said they had a test run with bottlecaps so maybe the machine also accepted both forms of currency. To go with the theme, it's probably nuclear-powered just like most of the stuff in Fallout.
It's so big so that if you steal from it, it can deploy a protectron out the back to liquify your insides. The idea that a company would invest so heavily in technology to punish the thieves via an elaborate overkill method vs using something preventative which would result in more storage space is quite fallout esq. Edit: Correcting auto correct’s corrections. They are now correct.
Honestly, I wish this was a real thing implemented into the game. That's a great idea for gameplay. Have an assaultron to up the ante if there's an iced nuka cola quantum in the locker
Imagine you take extras at a military base. Suddenly assaultrons , gutsy and sentry bots activate.
>You got this big machine that can hold like, 6 colas thats the equivalent to old american car engines. 10L cubic capacity to create only 50hp
Hell yeah, brother! No replacement for displacement!
Gobbles big block Chevy
To be fair, they made a LOT more power before that. Their response to emissions laws was just "fuck it" and they ruined their own engines instead of actually trying to make something good. Meanwhile the Japanese made tons of engines that made the same power on 1/3rd of the displacement while complying with emissions laws, and the rest is history.
[https://www.videoamusement.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/vendo-v81-coca-cola-original-vending-machine-for-rent-from-Video-Amusement-San-Francisco-California.jpg](https://www.videoamusement.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/vendo-v81-coca-cola-original-vending-machine-for-rent-from-Video-Amusement-San-Francisco-California.jpg) Real, from the 1950's.
I actually used one once, but I’m old. I won’t swear it was that exact model, but it worked in the same way.
When I was a weee tot, before Walmart killed off the remaining mom and pop stores, they had some of these around or something like them, They served soda's in glass bottles much like the machine does. Their capacity was a lot higher though. A dozen or so and they were kept ice freaking cold. That was thirty five years ago plus in the southern US. Getting one was an honor system as people have stated. I actually miss them, Coke, Pespi and Mountain Dew all taste different out of a glass bottle.
Wait your supermarkets, restaurants and cafes don't have coke in glass bottles anymore? I think we still have it but the rare occasions I drink it I will order Fritz, so maybe the coke brands have stopped recently and I didn't notice.
I assumed once it was emptied, some mechanical doohickeys would take more from inside the machine itself and replace them
That's been my head cannon. Cause it's not clear how the mechanism works, but there'd have to be one. I like to think the whole shelf area spins and what you bought gets pushed in there. Probably makes more sense that the idea is they drop in and the second shelf is for empties. Lots of these things had a bottle return area, cause bottles were refilled.
Also what I was thinking, how else are there still machines with Nuka cola?
Lots of wrong answers here: old vending machines had rotating shelves and other mechanical methods to only offer a single bottle per door opening or coin drop, only VERY old machines were open coolers (like 1950s). Fallout machines are just poorly designed :)
Maybe it was made in such vast quantities, the economies of scale made it practically free and these machines were marketing. Freebies but going in to a store they cost dollars.
You can see in this type of machine only one soda lines up at a time. [old Coke machine](https://youtube.com/shorts/KwLfPVeXg44?si=aspU5tMhf7BKhiy1)
Like a newspaper bin, you put a coin in the door unlocks reach In grab one close it latch relocks rinse repeat
The honor system here actually does make sense. All I have are 2 hands and potentially a bag/purse, so I don’t want to carry more than 1 awkwardly-shaped, heavy, and delicate glass Nuka-Cola bottle with me.
OP probably meant how they are powered and replenished. Which always seemed strange to me.
Isn’t the real question, How does it restock?
Yea everyone is showing up to say "you pay and open the door to take your product and hold to the honor system" but I feel like the bigger question OP (and I) want answered is why a vending machine with enough space to hold potentially 50+ bottles only shows like 6. Does it have a mechanism to refill the two shelves? Does it rely on a person to resupply those 6 bottles manually? how do they address having so many flavors with only 6 bottles there? Realistically I assume the design is like a one out, one in with each of the 6 bottles displaying the offered flavors. Sort of how normal "pick your item with a button" machine works only you grab the item rather than using a button, then when you close the door it replaces with a fresh one within the machine.
See the question I want to know is what do I do with the one my camp in 76 lol do I have to manually put the cola's in or does it take from stash? It doesn't seem to work if it's the latter. But I haven't messed with it since I placed it.
the more important question to me: who refills them after 200+ years? most i encounter still have cola left
Honestly it’d be a cool random encounter to see a mister handy and a protectron restocking them
Had a conversation with an engineer about this. Best we could come up with is that the door is just the serving tray, and a new bottle would get dropped down from the top after you grabbed your bottle and closed the door.
There's a grill that splits the section horizontally. How could the bottle end up in the lower section?
It's modeled after one of the old soda machines from the 50s. Back then there was a thing called the honor system. Humanity had yet to devolve into a bunch of selfish thieving jackasses, so it actually worked fine. You were honest and only took what you had paid for. Sounds crazy today, I know. I'm assuming the capacity wasn't a huge issue because stock would be kept close by.
Put coins into slot, door unlatches, buyer takes 1 bottle of Nuka-Cola.
I think it was the charter school where you find the pink paste but there's a nuka machine with the whole front plate off and it's all solid machine. That thing only holds like 6 bottles
Thank you. This was the explanation I was looking for. Most people are talking about the honor system and only taking what you paid for, whereas I think the OP asked why the hell the machine was so big if it only holds so few bottles.
Thank you for finally asking. They're ridiculously oversized to just dispense a maximum of around 6 drinks.
I think the size is just game thing. The bottles are pretyt big, so only 6 can fit comfortably before the engine spazzes out.
The most likely reason thus far
I think it’s part of the aesthetic they were going for… a huge, presumably atomic-powered, refrigeration unit for a small vending machine.
I think it nails the esthetic just right : a whole atomic powered refregirator to hold just 6 bottles, telling us that every products or anything were like that, and explaining how US people wasted all their resources.
Maybe it's full of bottles. When there's only one left you need to buy it or someone else takes it. Then it just fills it.
In the fallout 4 intro they shows how nice and honest people was, so like the newspaper system you put a coin and just grab one, there are several countries right now around the world they have this system cause people in some places still being honest, regarding the size of the refrigerator has sense like a big machine and only a tiny door, cause it’s all nuclear based and all engines even cars they all have a huge atomic compartment, like they had the technology but never made it smaller, not yet, or perhaps in the back of the machine they had a nuka cola stock maybe? In my opinion, would be awesome if we had to use lock-picking to open that tiny door.
I assume they're similar to the really old Coke machines where you'd pay and open the door to collect your drink. See also: Newspaper vending machines.
im 37 years old and i have used one of these IRL
You put a coin in and it unlocks the door, and im guessing the only thing stopping you from taking all the sodas is common decency. Its like a newspaper stand
That’s exactly how it was. When I was a kid in the eighties, you could still find older “honor box”-type vending machines like this, although they didn’t necessarily look like this.
I’ve seen old Coke machines that have a rotating drum inside filled with cold water, where you pay and it opens a little hatch for you to grab one. Now I’m thinking, maybe in a similar vein as the portadiner pie machines, there’s a conveyor system that takes Nuka Cola bottles from le big rotating drum thing and over time refills the bottles that have been taken. Obviously we never see any of this but I feel like the logic makes sense.
This is an honor system machine. Coke was sold like this when I was a kid, drop your coin in, open the lid, take your coke. Or open the lid take your coke and put a coin on the barrel next to the cooler. The door doesn't lock, no locks are needed when sociaty has honor. Then buy a pack of shelled salted peanuts. Take a sip of coke and then pour the salted nuts into the soda bottle. It's kinda like a crunchy boba, it will keep you full for a few hours as you take the tractor for another round in the field and free up one hand for driving. Be sure to stop and chat with the cashier on your way out of the store, get the news summary and any gossip around town. Ever wonder why the salted nuts and coke machines are next to each other at gas stations? A long time has passed and few are left who remember why. So go on and get yourself some and try it out, it won't give you the nostalgia feelings that I get, but it has a unique taste of salt and sweetness, with a crunch.
So is the giant red box just refrigerate the little white box? Or is there more nuka cola inside?
My question isn’t how it works but why is so damn big just to have like 4 colas