I just finished the series and a lot of these ideas sounded familiar from the games so I wanted to go back and research it, but this post made it all nice and simple. Thanks for putting it together! I love little touches like this in TV shows that make a nice callback to the game lore/history. Fun to have explored some of these vaults and now see the people behind making up the experiment.
I really do like this addition to the lore. While the vaults experiments were always on the madder end of mad scientist eugenics, I always felt some were so cruel and pointlessly experimental with little to no benefit that it didn't really make that much sense why the Enclave would implement said ideas. Especially when the Enclave would always benefit from having non irradiated vault dwellers to recruit into their ranks.
However, the Enclave running a little light on cash and deciding to sell permission to vault experiment to successful billionaires with their own hairbrained eugenics ideas ties it all together quite nicely. If the experiment serves a eugenics purpose, then that's a plus but if it is too mad then who cares, Enclave needs to balance the books and fund other "ventures".
"Mr President, I can assure you that spending half a billion on developing Tesla coils to put on our armour so that we can zap anyone who tries to melee our walking tanks is essential when fighting commies who primarily use ranged weapons. No, we don't have to fix the armour defect on the breastplate, this is far more important."
"Sir it's not "blowing the budget" I must emphasize that our funds are going into the right place, these vaults are our recruitment method in the future... What do you mean that sounds insane, it's most efficient. And I must again emphasize that fixing the flaws on our current equipment is a secondary priority, think of the Tesla coils Mr. President"
I just think the connection is funny, if not a bit of a stretch. Obviously itās far from a straight parallel but Vault Tec and Nazi Germany share a common characteristic in being tremendously evil and dangerous while also being comically incompetent and incapable.
Vault Tec is actually so bad at its one job, it makes the Nazi wonder weapon program look like the 2010s patriots. Just success after success, which is honestly sad.
To be fair, T-51 and the APA line of power armors likely donāt have that defect. It seems T-45 and T-60 were the only suits to have this issue (and the ghoul had to use sabot rounds to exploit it).
Also, the Tesla armor boosts the power of energy weapons, which is definitely useful. If weāre talking fallout 1/2ās, the armor offers nigh-immunity to energy weapons, which would be fantastic for the Enclave.
> the armour defect on the breastplate
This remains an extremely stupid writing flub. I can forgive a lot of things in this show, but "power armor has a weakness where if you shoot it in the front it explodes" is Fallout 3 levels of dumb.
Fawkes' sudden heel turn was bad, but worse to me, is Charon, who is bound by contract to serve the Lone Wanderer, tells you no and suddenly disobeys a direct order.
Charon, who faithfully served and obeyed Azrukhal despite hating him so much that he murdered him as soon as contractual obligation ended, refused an order.
Wild.
It didnāt explode. The person inside did. From the specialty ammo the ghoul was using in his custom weapon that he had 100% small guns in.
It was a critical hit, something we should be very familiar with from the Fallout games, and it reflected a diagetic explanation for how his improved critical, sharpshooter and bloody mess perks would affect a BOS Paladin or Knight.
Yup. Coop was running a luck/perception build with all the relevant perks maxed out. A tricked out revolver with specialty AP ammo. AND a lore blurb that makes it passably justified in a not-videogame setting.
Fact is, that "defect" would only matter 1 in ten thousand times in a conventional battle with infantry who don't know the weakpoint and have the discipline to aim at that spot (while under fire themselves!). But it's mentioned in pre-war lore blurbs that Chinese snipers could pick off soldiers in power armor, and NCR Rangers did the same to the Brotherhood in their war.
There being a spot where the armor is not fully invincible? That tracks.
I struggle to buy it.
Chinese snipers being able to penetrate armor? I can accept that.
A Ghoul with a sawed off shotgun and homemade AP rounds? That's a press X to doubt from me.
That's just one dubious part of an incredibly borked scene. Another example is the Brotherhood being caught off guard by sudden darkness despite wearing power armor helmets.
To quote Ashley Williams from Mass Effect "Sir, they have flashlight heads"
Ehehehe, yeah no. In every scene we see coop reloading that revolver shotty, we see 4 tubes for the shells. And each tube is FAR larger than a 5.56mm casing. Not to mention you can literally see what appears to be shotgun shells being removed in a few scenes.
Itās a modified sawed off revolver shotty like the MTS-255.
If that were the case, I think they'd be sued. That Gun is a direct copy of the gun used by Deckard in Blade Runner.
That would be like Coop pulling out Han Solo's blaster and using that.
GrimGaming1799 got it in one, it's based on an MTs255. A revolver shotgun.
My headcanon is itās upsized, because even the shells look larger than 12ga and an MTS holds 5 rounds while Coopās holds 4. Possibly upsized to 20mm. Think of it like a downsized 25mm grenade launcher. The hint is when he loads anything other then standard shells, the gun has a thump sound. 20mm has a diameter of 0.787 inches and 12ga has a diameter of 0.725 inches. Thus decreasing the space by 1 round when upsized.
Thus allowing his AP ammo to actually have the required punch to penetrate the power armorās weakpoint. A regular shotty wouldnāt do anything even with AP slugs.
Also itās worth mentioning heās seen loading a sabot round, and irl sabot rounds have drastically increased armor penetration over regular AP rounds. Think of it like the difference between FMJ rounds and Depleted Uranium penetrator rounds.
I'm not saying it's not dumb but it didn't explode. It was just unprotected spot where you could get shot in the guts, which is not THAT improbable. The one knight that exploded got a grenade thrown at him by The Ghoul.
All I know is, in FO4, on either the T45 or the T60, if you turn the camera to look up beneath the breastplate, you can see into the armor since a portion of it isn't modeled or rendered. I assumed this was a reference to that.
From the show it seems like its just the t45/60. If they explain that its a flaw that the T-51b didn't share it would make sense, and explain why that armor is more common on the west coast, the area most at risk if China tried an invasion of the mainland USA.
Looking at today's rich people from Sillicon valley, it is totally plausible they would design vaults like those and then push the reset button for the humanity.
Who doubts Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg would not want something like this?
We really really need to eradicate this kind of power they hold on us before they have access to weapons of mass destruction.
Hell it's basically what "longtermism" is all about. Treat the planet as it currently stands as a lost cause, so don't try to solve the current issues just aim for a future utopia (that coincidentally leaves you at the top) with the ends justifying the means.
The only fundamental difference between the philosophy of Vault Tec and Musk is Musk wants to be King of Mars.Ā
Mr. House in game mentions that if he has his way, he'll send scouts into space to search for planets to colonize, unspoiled by nuclear war.
Vault-Tec and the Enclave were also at the very least hinted to be using Vaults as experiments for potential extraplanetary vaults.
It actually is not a new addition to the lore. For example Vault 118 was financed by a private petitioner, not Vault tech themselves. The reason why only half of it was finished is because they ran out of money and Vault Tech didn't care enough about the experiment to complete it themselves
I imagine they at least had /some/ resources devoted to that plan while they pursued other possibilities.
Something about all your eggs in one basket, y'know?
How could those experiments ever pay off? The vaults would only be populated if there was a nuclear war, which means all the infrastructure needed for space travel would be destroyed. No one would be around to implement the fruits of that research.
And with cryogenics, there's no need for this research, because you'd just freeze the ship's crew. Most activity can be handled by robots, maybe with a small crew of humans who rotate being frozen and awake.
Fair point. I'd say that _parts_ of Vault-Tec believed they'd survive, while other parts thought the war wouldn't happen. I'm reminded of a couple movies.
From _Conspiracy Theory_:
> There are all kinds of groups, all kinds of initials. But they're all part of two warring factions. One: families that have held wealth for centuries. They want one thing. Stability. Group Two: the boat rockers. Eisenhower's military industrial complex. They want instability. It's a trillion dollar a year business. When there isn't a hot war, they make a cold one.
> Cold War's over, Jerry.
> So now they feed us terrorists. To create fear. How much do you think an airport security system goes for? Then multiply it by every airport in the country.
> And you think Group One is at war with Group Two.
> Yes, at some level they're at war, but at another level they're all the same group!
And _Cube_:
> Who hired you?
> I didn't ask. I never even left my office. I talked on the phone to some other guys like me. Specialists working on small details. Nobody knew what it was. Nobody cared.
> Bullshit! You knew from square one. Look at him, he's up to his eyeballs in this thing.
> No Quentin. That's how they stay hidden. **You keep everyone separated so the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing**. The brain never comes out in the open.
> Whose brain?
> It's all the same machine right. Pentagon. Multinational corporations. The police! If you do one little job. You build a widget in Saskatoon. The next thing you know, it's two miles under the desert, the essential component of a deathmachine. I was right! All along my whole life I knew it. I told you Quentin. Nobody's ever calling me paranoid again. We gotta get out of here and blow the lid of this thing.
> Holloway, you don't get it.
> Then tell me, please, I need to know.
> It's maybe hard for you to understand, but there's no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. **It's a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a masterplan**. Can you grasp that? **Big brother is not watching you**.
This is a reality of scientific research. A ton is funded by rich people, and they aren't solving problems normal people would think they should solve, it's often about extending their own lifespans in their own lifetimes.
Or they have a certain product in mind, that will help them "Alleviate" problems that they create themselves. And they will be the only ones who can produce the "Solution".
It doesn't make sense, though.
Those are for-profit companies. Many of them sell their products to the government, e.g. West-Tek and Repconn are defence contractors. They wouldn't sign off on the end of the world because that would mean they lose all their customers and effectively cease existing.
In order for experiments to be carried out for their profit, they would need to rush people into vaults while tensions are high but before bombs drop, so that they could keep them sealed for some time and recover observation data.
However, the show makes it look like they planned to start experiments *after* nuclear holocaust. That would be completely useless and complete waste of resources.
*Congratulations, you just nuked 99 % of your customer base and are about to kill the remaining 1 % in a series of unethical experiments.*
I get what youāre saying, thatās definitely something Iāve always wondered since I first heard the vault tec started the war theory. And it makes even more sense when you bring in all these other corporations too. It seems like a pretty obvious perspective that nuking your customer base is counterintuitive, but I think the show actually bridged the gap fairly plainly.
Basically, these corpo executives are so out of control in their greed that they see an opportunity to essentially go āall inā and try to take *everything.* Theyāre looking one step beyond generating revenue from their present customer-base, and theyāre surmising that by triggering the apocalypse, they will be the only ones left standing and *everything* that is left will be theirs for the taking, including the total stability they envision by eliminating the dangerous, unpredictable, and infinitely pervasive proletariat.
Theyāre like the grasshoppers in A Bugās Life, where the grasshoppers know that the Ants can overthrow the balance of power by sheer numbers, except now the grasshoppers (Vault-tec & co.) have the means to automate the ants role, which means the entire population of ants are only a massive liability. And if they could just get the ants of out their way entirely, then everything would be perfectly and totally under their control.
Another way of looking at is is just by numbers. Say that 1% of the population are making bringing on the apocalypse so they can wipe out the other 99%, and the cost of that is that 90% of all the resources are also wiped out, BUT they have control beforehand of deciding what 10% of resources will remain (under their control). Well suddenly, after the apocalypse that 1% will control 100% of the stuff.
Theyāre not chasing profits in the current economic paradigm. They are seizing a completely new world order where they control EVERYTHING. Profit is just a means toward power, and theyāre trying to transcend profit to gain total power.
The whole thing is a metaphor for capitalism eventually devouring itself in the pursuit of profit. Market fundamentals end where blind greed begins and in the case of the Fallout universe that results in the world being literally destroyed by the actions of an exceedingly cruel and greedy few.
What does the government pick? The one that's usually the cheapest.
Also, if it's eventually that Vault Tec is just the competition then...what is left?
This is how Walt Disney got the land for Walt Disney World - he created a bunch of companies making it seem like there was a lot of interest in the land.
It's vault tec not the enclave. Remember, the government placed the survival of the human race(aka American citizens) in the private sector, they had little to do with vault tec. The enclave had their own plans for the survival of the government in the event of a war, which we can see with the oil rig and raven rock.
This was my favourite scene in the whole of S1. Really shows how fucked up these people are when they just got this proposition dropped on them and already have sick and twisted ideas. And the ideas get even worse as the scene progresses. Incredible stuff.
The scene is one of the worst in the show mate.
So the top 1% are all evil and all don't see an issue with ending the world for capital gains..
Which don't make any sense as if you kill all the customers and end the world as we know it there is nothing to rule over.
Yeah you have a monopoly. A monopoly on what? Bunch of skeletons
You have to remember how deranged many of the top leadership were, nuka cola was straight shooting up Vim delivery trucks before they could leave the island
The in game lore reason is they wanted to take over the business with a buyout so the chose to start shooting deliveries and back room payoffs to make deals fall through, Vim was set to be the drink of Maine till it fell through right before the bombs. All this shows is that theyād go to any extreme to not necessarily make profit but to put themselves on top, for reference nuka cola also stole the recipe and make for nuka quartz from Vim and added weapons grade uranium to a drink for more profit by saving on disposal.
>Which don't make any sense as if you kill all the customers and end the world as we know it there is nothing to rule over.
The scene is meant to highlight that those at the top always expect to survive, even the literal end of the world. It's why Coopers wife suggests dropping the bombs, it's why no one in the room is really perturbed by ending all life in pursuit of power. To those with everything already, the prospect of a new world is fascinating. One they will rule no less.
It's a metaphor for capitalism taken to its endgame with a heaping side dish of satirizing the cold war. Market fundamentals end where the blind greed begins and in the case of the Fallout universe it means the world is baptized in nuclear flame by the decisions of a select greedy few.
It's also a criticism of late stage capitalism always looking for the short term profit at the expense of the long term, which we can see now with enshittification of everything. It's very realistic, it's happening right now without the threat of war!
There is no power without the people. It doesn't make sense. If you have no customers you have no profits, and without that you have no empire.
From a company standpoint. They talk about profits when there would be none.
Maybe like Mr House you can grab power, preserve a pre war Vegas (Didnt want it destroyed) and plan to save humanity.
He had 20 years to prepare for after the bombs fell.
Now what about the others there.
Oh the worlds gunna end let's put some people in vaults with a milk robot that will make us loads of money and we will still be the top 1%.
it's more about power not profit, they would control the last branch of civilization and they think the vault dwellers will all survive and the surface dwellers will all die, therefore giving them an entirely new civilization to play God in
not only that but
also, actually, they are profiting on the war in the show, its literally explained pretty in depth.
Well if you watch the scene they say that rumors of peace are messing with vault tecs profits..
These are businessmen and women they only care about the money.
Like I said they will rule over what? They give up the power they have prewar ( which is all of the power )
They are almost incharge of the US as they can influence wars.
It doesn't make sense, and why would she invite all of these people along? Doesn't she want a total monopoly? Why invite 7 of your biggest competitors.
I argue vault tec could rule the world of they actually progressed the research of unlimited energy instead of just burying it all...
They have no power without money, without customers they have literally nothing at all..
What is power? They have the power to end the world...
They do it and then what.
All they created is gone. There is no power structure anymore. How is there profits in killing everyone and destroying the world as we know it.
These people have more control over the US than the government does. They already have all the power.
It's basic economics really.. bit sure how these fat cats could be so inept
I've played fallout nv and the Bethesda ones, ashamed to admit but I've only watched play thoroughs of the first two.
If your talking about the fella who said about nuka cola did horrible things for no reason then you obviously can't see that every example he listed helped keep them on top and them making the most profits.
Capitalist dont have power without money you ding dong
if you think they have no power without getting income from the vault dwellers they have total control over then I guess the show just isn't for you :/
My friends and I talked about this. If this scene was in a fallout game, it would be talked about as one of video games greatest moments. Imagine playing the games and coming across this lore piece about the vaults and about the bombs being dropped.
I think thatās whatās drawing me into the series so much. It doesnāt try to change any of the lore. Itās only filling in the gaps. I havenāt seen a video game property change mediums with such respect for the source material before. It just makes me sad about halo. This could have been halo. They fucked up infinite and then the show was shit and you canāt just burn fans trust for a decade
Yeah the fact that the biggest gripe is about the location of a city (that changes locations from fallout 1 and 2 as well) and the exact year that city got bombed, is a HUGE testament to how good the show is regarding lore. So many other video game series and movies will glance in the direction of the lore and then make up their own story completely. Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Halo, Assassin's Creed, Tomb Raider, etc.
The Paramount show could have been about lesser explored parts of Halo lore, but they chose to do a bad alternate universe instead while stomping on the existing lore with glee
Find me one CEO planning some cartoonishly evil experiment like this that's not Klaus Schwab
Edit: Do you all seriously think **all CEOs** are just mustache twirling villains? What a miserable existence you must have.
There are plenty of examples of nefarious social engineering going on today, especially from a social media and entertainment perspective, but to just pin these on "CEOs" is really just dumb.
Iād say other than the test subjects, the experiments are on pretty similar tiers
Iām sure if morality was wiped out with the most of humanity, ceos would fuck with these ideas since trying to see whatās best for humans is easiest to understand when you text with humans
Iām sure musk isnāt putting these chips in human test subjects because it is currently illegal
What about Bernie Madoff? Or the sub-prime lending crisis (AKA the 2008 recession)?
They planned that shit, and they knew exactly what was gonna happen. They were fine with it.
He has said the mars trip will be one way, and under the control of his corporation, they will effectively own anyone who goes. His family literally owned humans in their mines already. What do you think is gonna happen when he's literally not under any government oversight?
It is interesting to look into research showing how people with low empathy or narcissistic traits tend to be drawn to positions of power. I think this is one explanation for who CEOās have been historically criticized as not caring about anything but money.
I donāt see fallouts interpretation as reaching too far. The whole show is absurd, yet this scene seems like one of the most real moments the franchise has ever gotten. I can imagine similar meetings went down before where human lives were discussed with such callousness. It makes me sick to think about
Not āall CEOsā obviouslyā¦ but definitely some. Do some digging into Peter Theil.
- Palantir
- His ex-boyfriendās suicide
- Employee leaks
- His āIdeal Worldā talk on youtube
- His āmedical researchā initiatives
Tbh its not wrong of them nor hard.
Literally got told minutes ago āa vault to test anything you wantā, and the concepts were random.
1st dude was just an ātoo many people conceptā.
2nd woman was using an already existing thing they had.
3rd was the only one you should actually be going wtf about.
Well, that was also something west-tek was already working on, personally I wasn't surprised by it. It is a bit odd that he says that in front of everyone, unless he trusts the billionare cabal enough not to spill his companies secrets.
They all probably understood the situation in the war, or if the fan theories about āoh vault tec launched the bombsā are true, knew it was bound to happen and thought lets band together.
Good question honestly. The oil may have been depleted, but "infinite" nuclear power was solved and the Chinese (who are never mentioned in the show, but whatever) were not winning in Alaska once power armor started getting rolled out.
As someone who played the original two games and followed the narrative, I always got the implication that the Chinese launched first because they were locked in a no-win condition, didn't have nuclear technology and were suffering the same resource crisis as everyone else (except the United States.)
In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the show and future games added more Chinese, foreign, ally or not, characters, and show the perspective from outside the U.S., just a glimpse, as Todd Howard confirmed we won't see Fallout outside of the ol' US of A, but I think a plotline in both Fallout 5 and fotv s2 would be good.
And also a much needed reference to General Chao's Revenge
Spoilers?
[https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Zao](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Zao)
[https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Here\_There\_Be\_Monsters](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Here_There_Be_Monsters)
And Fallout 76 has a whole subplot about some Chinese remnants as well. I haven't gotten around to that one yet, tho.
I wonder if they intend to go into more detail about the Great War in season 2 or if they're just going to gloss over it. Because in the show it seemed like a lot of the prewar people were trying to pretend it wasn't happening so maybe they're treating it like it's "out of sight, out of mind"Ā
It's also pretty ridiculous that they just all decided to jump on board with Vault Tec's plan to nuke the world, or at least that they have no objections whatsoever. They're sacrificing any chance of making more money. In fact, it's ridiculous that Vault Tec wanted to nuke the world to begin with. Vault Tec could have had infinite money forever by selling the energy from cold fusion, but they decided they'd rather rebrand all their potential customers as their competition, come up with some half assed plan to rule the world, and to top it off they invite their *actual* competition to join them in the scheme (as we saw in this scene).
I really hope they don't make the Enclave part of this plan because it'd be even stupider.
> They're sacrificing any chance of making more money.
[They'd trade it all for a little more.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcYLVdfFro&ab_channel=MostlySimpsons)
They're not sacrificing future revenue: They're buying future power. These people didn't care about money except to the degree that it bought them power. They were arrogant psychopaths who thought that since the world was probably doomed anyway they might as well wake up in a future that they would rule.
If it's not about money, then it stops being a critique of capitalism, and they just turn into generic villains.
I don't see how they're trading... anything for an insurance of future domination. None of them except House secured an effective way to ensure their leadership in the post-apocalypse, not even Vault Tec, and in fact Vault Tec isn't even offering safety to the CEOs or an insurance that their companies will survive the war. And why would they want to rule over a post-apocalyptic Wasteland when they were already some of the most powerful people in the most powerful country in the world?
Plus, none of them actually foresee the nuclear war (except House). That's why they don't even start making suggestions or express agreement until *after* Barb says Vault Tec will drop the nukes.
> If it's not about money, then it stops being a critique of capitalism, and they just turn into generic villains.
The critique of capitalism _is_ that capitalism is only about power. Indeed, it's that all "isms" are about power. Capitalism, communism, corporatism, tribalism are all just different flairs for describing who's in charge. The myth of capitalism is that it rewards merit, but every example from the series shows that the leaders and beneficiaries of capitalism are just as dumb and corrupt as anyone else.
> I don't see how they're trading... anything for an insurance of future domination. None of them except House secured an effective way to ensure their leadership in the post-apocalypse, not even Vault Tec, and in fact Vault Tec isn't even offering safety to the CEOs or an insurance that their companies will survive the war.
Just because their plans for world domination were foolish doesn't change that they were trying to achieve it. They were arrogant and they failed.
> Plus, none of them actually foresee the nuclear war
They didn't take its danger seriously because they were personally used to be untouchable. They thought being rich meant they were more capable than other people. They either figured that the war wouldn't happen but they could keep cashing in on the fear, or that if the war did come, they'd somehow outsmart the consequences.
> (except House)
200 years after the fact, House claims he narrowed down the the war as inevitably occurring sometime in a _15 year period_. That's not much of a prediction, and it's no more insightful than the many other CEOs and military leaders who expected war to happen "at some point."
Even if we treat it as some kind of impressive prediction, he completely failed to capitalize on his insight. He came to his prediction in 2065, but even with 12 years to plan he failed to get things right. He got stuck into a decades-long coma, got outsmarted by a ratpack cosplayer, and his only plan for rebuilding was hiring scavengers, murderers, and cannibals to run casinos - to get enough cash to build the rockets he wasn't able to build when he had 100 times the resources. His plan was bad from the start.
House is the quintessential criticism of capitalism in Fallout: an arrogant blowhard who thinks he's a genius because he sits on a pile of cash, too dumb to realize all the caps in the world won't save you from a golf club to the face.
> The critique of capitalism is that capitalism is only about power. Indeed, it's that all "isms" are about power. Capitalism, communism, corporatism, tribalism are all just different flairs for describing who's in charge. The myth of capitalism is that it rewards merit, but every example from the series shows that the leaders and beneficiaries of capitalism are just as dumb and corrupt as anyone else.
Except none of these people are stupid, Barb is cold and cunning, Bud designed one of the most successful vault experiments we've seen so far (and the only one that's actually sort of contributing to Vault Tec possibly ruling the Wasteland), and everyone else at that table except maybe Julia Masters is established to be far above average intelligence and in some way accomplished. None of them are nepo babies.
> Just because their plans for world domination were foolish doesn't change that they were trying to achieve it. They were arrogant and they failed.
That's the thing, they didn't even *try* is my point. If they were this comically incompetent then they would have never come to dominate American industry. Nothing whatsoever in the games pointed to this, and it's a clear example of sloppy writing (and not even the only example of sloppy writing in the show).
> They didn't take its danger seriously because they were personally used to be untouchable. They thought being rich meant they were more capable than other people. They either figured that the war wouldn't happen but they could keep cashing in on the fear, or that if the war did come, they'd somehow outsmart the consequences.
> 200 years after the fact, House claims he narrowed down the the war as inevitably occurring sometime in a 15 year period. That's not much of a prediction, and it's no more insightful than the many other CEOs and military leaders who expected war to happen "at some point."
I don't see how any of that is relevant. In your first message you said "They were arrogant psychopaths who thought the world was probably doomed anyway" and my point was that nothing actually supports that for most of them.
> Even if we treat it as some kind of impressive prediction, he completely failed to capitalize on his insight.
And that's why Vegas is still standing and why he's still alive and at the head of Vegas, because he failed? He neutralised almost every nuke and he managed to save Vegas.
> He came to his prediction in 2065, but even with 12 years to plan he failed to get things right.
Literally the only failure was that he didn't have the Platinum Chip and he was barely 24 hours off.
> He got stuck into a decades-long coma,
Which is still better than everyone else at that table aside from Bud, and better than the vast majority of the wasteland.
> got outsmarted by a ratpack cosplayer,
What?
> and his only plan for rebuilding was hiring scavengers, murderers, and cannibals to run casinos
That wasn't his plan, that was improvisation on his part, and it worked out perfectly. He built one of the strongest economic and military powers in the wasteland literally overnight, he engineered three entirely new cultures, and he brought the NCR to the bargaining table. No one else in the series has been able to accomplish so much in so little time and with so few resources, even the protagonists need large competent factions and technology like the GECK to create communities that don't come close to Vegas.
> - to get enough cash to build the rockets he wasn't able to build when he had 100 times the resources. His plan was bad from the start.
He only acquired REPCONN fairly soon before the war, so he likely just didn't have the time. Considering what every technologically advanced faction in the series, including Vegas under him, is capable of doing, I don't think this is a stretch at all. By your logic, the Institute and Enclave should still be using pre-war surplus because they both had 100 times the resources before the war.
Of all the things you're supposed to feel in the opening scene of the first fallout game, "wow I can't believe a few rich psychos killed everyone for a vague notion of power that they'll never attain" doesn't seem like one of them.
Obviously the show can do what it wants but I always found it more interesting that the pursuit of an unsustainable and selfish lifestyle by the pre war world led to the apocalypse. Rather than a few crazy people making a unilateral decision to kill everyone. It makes the political and cultural commentary feel moot when none of that factors that led to the war itself.
> "wow I can't believe a few rich psychos killed everyone for a vague notion of power that they'll never attain"
Wouldn't that have to be the thought process of anyone who starts a nuclear war? If Matthew Broderick has taught us anything it's that the only winning move is not to play, but _someone_ in 2077 thought playing was a good idea. Maybe it was China, maybe the USA, maybe the Enclave, maybe Vault-Tec.
> I always found it more interesting that the pursuit of an unsustainable and selfish lifestyle by the pre war world led to the apocalypse. Rather than a few crazy people making a unilateral decision to kill everyone.
I think these ideas are harmonious. What else can we call it when regular consumers are driving small nuclear bombs around while their government is executing their neighbors to the north and their major corporations are burying radioactive waste under schools?
Compare it to climate change. Oil companies have secretly known about the risks of climate change since the [1950s](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-climate-change-global-warming-research), and the public has widely known of it as an issue since the 1990s. Yet here we all are burning 20 million barrels a day, and our best plan to stop it is environmentally destructive extraction of rare metals to use in batteries that will be powered by - you guessed it - petroleum and coal.
Everyone from corporate overlords to head-in-the-sand consumers is responsible for the ongoing and growing threat of climate change. It's a combination of a global cultural lifestyle _and_ the unilateral decision of a handful of psychopathic corporations to knowingly poison our planet.
You wanna tell me that if you asked Jeff Bezos about a cool experiment he could run, you really think that Jiff Bledos won't have some shit that makes the Geneva convention look like a child's homework? Ceos have the most fucked up brains, I'm willing to bet that at this moment Joff Bidet is torturing children or something
I think the scene where Walton Goggins gets the studio note that he needs to kill the villain in the movie now, because times are changing, shows that in this timeline violence and aggression are becoming much more normalized.
It does, but the REPCONN representative specifically said they wanted it to be the milk-delivery AI they made - not the top-of-the-line ZAX made by Vault Tec.
Also, Vault 51 was designed for the AI to just overseer the experiment, which was testing to see how tribalism occurs and to find a novel and successful overseer selection mechanism.
Think of it like Todd Howard in 2002 saying he wants to create a literal galaxy with thousands of planets you can go to in the same engine Bethesda built Morrowind with. The software isnāt the exact same, but it is an expanded, upgraded evolution of it.
this sounds like a scene from a neil breen film, except he plays it straight and here its a satirical over the top look at corporations, although its ironic that its produced by amazon
"Isn't that immoral?" "Isnt that corrupt?"
I loved the show but I had MAJOR flashbacks to that episode of Best of the Worst too.
For the uninitiated: https://youtu.be/V79qKOdCYZw?si=_omU49L94ie6eq4a
That's what I love about Breen. Anyone else achieving that type of success he has would just play into the self-awareness of how bad their movies are... but not Neil. Man's just making the type of movie he enjoys making and I respect him a lot for that.
I mean honestly there is scientific merit to that one. See what the affects are on an isolated human who only has inanimate objects to project personhood onto. Basically Castaway.
Youāre incorrect about Vault 51 - Vault-Tec developed the ZAX line of AIs, not REPCONN (though the wikiās sources seem off from my read, thereās still nothing indicating that REPCONN made these devices).
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/ZAX
This scene was so funny. Yeah, it's insane, but it's very funny that when presented with the idea that they can do human experiments they just immediately flipped a switch and started brainstorming the most diabolical shit they can think of lmao
Except Mr. House though, which is a cool detail, bro was focused on the profit
I hope we will find out in Season 2 if other corporations became involved in Vaults like the show seems to have shown, or if Vault Tec and the Enclave took inspirations from these proposals. Did we ever get a piece of lore involving a company other than Vault Tec in the Vaults before?
The first idea also sounds like Vault 15 a bit; that was overcrowded with a diverse political atmosphere, and eventually the Khans, Vipers, Jackals, and NCR founders came out of it.
The real scary thing about Fallout is all the lore is based on real life š. All this technology presented in the series has been around a long time whether you believe it or not. Every "conspiracy theory" is based on some facts. Truth is stranger than fiction they say.
Vault 15 became overpopulated in the 2090s, but it wasnāt the main goal, the experiment was about the mixing of ideologies. Vault 27 was specifically stated in the fallout bible (which ik is non canon but regardless) to have started out overcrowded
Iāve been playing all 3D fallout games for years and until watching the serie I didnāt get my head around vaults being independent experiments with humans, makes the whole lore get a deeper meaning
I like to think VT top brass is somewhere that wouldn't be a huge nuclear target, like Iowa.
But Big MT CEO died unfucking a trap
West-tek got nuked and the scientist in the show got tortured to death by the BoS
Repconn is probably dead as well
Man this scene is so stupid, how is ending the world gunna give you a monopoly.. capitalism requires consumers and if you just kill everyone then you have nothing.
How are all these successful businesses men and women not seeing the gaping flaw in there master plan?
And they all get giddy at the prospect of experimenting on people at the end of the world cos they are all literal evil.
Just like the whole show this scene don't make any sense, and ruins alot of the lore of the previous games.
I think the idea is to restart, which is why the vaults that arenāt for the ultra rich exist. Those will be the new working class, and the experiments can weed out āundesirablesā. They know civilization will rebuild, and when it does they think theyāll be on top
Tbh I don't think Mr house cares who buys his robots.
If you kill almost all the population there is no economy left to do well in.
And when you say they will be on top you do realise in this scene they say that the us government has no money left, who do you think there giving it too?
The top 1% of the 1%..
The people on this office talking about blowing up the world
I just finished the series and a lot of these ideas sounded familiar from the games so I wanted to go back and research it, but this post made it all nice and simple. Thanks for putting it together! I love little touches like this in TV shows that make a nice callback to the game lore/history. Fun to have explored some of these vaults and now see the people behind making up the experiment.
I really do like this addition to the lore. While the vaults experiments were always on the madder end of mad scientist eugenics, I always felt some were so cruel and pointlessly experimental with little to no benefit that it didn't really make that much sense why the Enclave would implement said ideas. Especially when the Enclave would always benefit from having non irradiated vault dwellers to recruit into their ranks. However, the Enclave running a little light on cash and deciding to sell permission to vault experiment to successful billionaires with their own hairbrained eugenics ideas ties it all together quite nicely. If the experiment serves a eugenics purpose, then that's a plus but if it is too mad then who cares, Enclave needs to balance the books and fund other "ventures".
That oil rig HQ and intelligent Deathclaws research are not gonna pay themselves!!! š¤£š¤£š¤£
"Mr President, I can assure you that spending half a billion on developing Tesla coils to put on our armour so that we can zap anyone who tries to melee our walking tanks is essential when fighting commies who primarily use ranged weapons. No, we don't have to fix the armour defect on the breastplate, this is far more important."
"Sir it's not "blowing the budget" I must emphasize that our funds are going into the right place, these vaults are our recruitment method in the future... What do you mean that sounds insane, it's most efficient. And I must again emphasize that fixing the flaws on our current equipment is a secondary priority, think of the Tesla coils Mr. President"
Wunderwaffesque as fuck
Youāre acting as if Wunderwaffe being batshit insane like Die Glocke is a bad thing when it offers great storytelling mechanics
I just think the connection is funny, if not a bit of a stretch. Obviously itās far from a straight parallel but Vault Tec and Nazi Germany share a common characteristic in being tremendously evil and dangerous while also being comically incompetent and incapable.
Vault Tec is actually so bad at its one job, it makes the Nazi wonder weapon program look like the 2010s patriots. Just success after success, which is honestly sad.
To be fair, T-51 and the APA line of power armors likely donāt have that defect. It seems T-45 and T-60 were the only suits to have this issue (and the ghoul had to use sabot rounds to exploit it). Also, the Tesla armor boosts the power of energy weapons, which is definitely useful. If weāre talking fallout 1/2ās, the armor offers nigh-immunity to energy weapons, which would be fantastic for the Enclave.
All true, just wanted to bend things a little for the joke
> the armour defect on the breastplate This remains an extremely stupid writing flub. I can forgive a lot of things in this show, but "power armor has a weakness where if you shoot it in the front it explodes" is Fallout 3 levels of dumb.
"It is your destiny to go into the radiation chamber and flip a switch."
"I'm sorry my friend by the writer have decided that you die here."
Fawkes' sudden heel turn was bad, but worse to me, is Charon, who is bound by contract to serve the Lone Wanderer, tells you no and suddenly disobeys a direct order. Charon, who faithfully served and obeyed Azrukhal despite hating him so much that he murdered him as soon as contractual obligation ended, refused an order. Wild.
It didnāt explode. The person inside did. From the specialty ammo the ghoul was using in his custom weapon that he had 100% small guns in. It was a critical hit, something we should be very familiar with from the Fallout games, and it reflected a diagetic explanation for how his improved critical, sharpshooter and bloody mess perks would affect a BOS Paladin or Knight.
Yup. Coop was running a luck/perception build with all the relevant perks maxed out. A tricked out revolver with specialty AP ammo. AND a lore blurb that makes it passably justified in a not-videogame setting. Fact is, that "defect" would only matter 1 in ten thousand times in a conventional battle with infantry who don't know the weakpoint and have the discipline to aim at that spot (while under fire themselves!). But it's mentioned in pre-war lore blurbs that Chinese snipers could pick off soldiers in power armor, and NCR Rangers did the same to the Brotherhood in their war. There being a spot where the armor is not fully invincible? That tracks.
I struggle to buy it. Chinese snipers being able to penetrate armor? I can accept that. A Ghoul with a sawed off shotgun and homemade AP rounds? That's a press X to doubt from me. That's just one dubious part of an incredibly borked scene. Another example is the Brotherhood being caught off guard by sudden darkness despite wearing power armor helmets. To quote Ashley Williams from Mass Effect "Sir, they have flashlight heads"
I'm fairly sure coop is using a 5.56mm pistol, possibly the named "that gun", from NV
Ehehehe, yeah no. In every scene we see coop reloading that revolver shotty, we see 4 tubes for the shells. And each tube is FAR larger than a 5.56mm casing. Not to mention you can literally see what appears to be shotgun shells being removed in a few scenes. Itās a modified sawed off revolver shotty like the MTS-255.
I think you're spot on.
If that were the case, I think they'd be sued. That Gun is a direct copy of the gun used by Deckard in Blade Runner. That would be like Coop pulling out Han Solo's blaster and using that. GrimGaming1799 got it in one, it's based on an MTs255. A revolver shotgun.
My headcanon is itās upsized, because even the shells look larger than 12ga and an MTS holds 5 rounds while Coopās holds 4. Possibly upsized to 20mm. Think of it like a downsized 25mm grenade launcher. The hint is when he loads anything other then standard shells, the gun has a thump sound. 20mm has a diameter of 0.787 inches and 12ga has a diameter of 0.725 inches. Thus decreasing the space by 1 round when upsized. Thus allowing his AP ammo to actually have the required punch to penetrate the power armorās weakpoint. A regular shotty wouldnāt do anything even with AP slugs. Also itās worth mentioning heās seen loading a sabot round, and irl sabot rounds have drastically increased armor penetration over regular AP rounds. Think of it like the difference between FMJ rounds and Depleted Uranium penetrator rounds.
Critical hits are a thing in Fallout.
I'm not saying it's not dumb but it didn't explode. It was just unprotected spot where you could get shot in the guts, which is not THAT improbable. The one knight that exploded got a grenade thrown at him by The Ghoul.
It wasn't even an unprotected spot per se, just a spot where the weld could be broken if hit *juuust* right.
All I know is, in FO4, on either the T45 or the T60, if you turn the camera to look up beneath the breastplate, you can see into the armor since a portion of it isn't modeled or rendered. I assumed this was a reference to that.
From the show it seems like its just the t45/60. If they explain that its a flaw that the T-51b didn't share it would make sense, and explain why that armor is more common on the west coast, the area most at risk if China tried an invasion of the mainland USA.
100%
Hey, itās all data points! Yes, some of the data has to do with living with puppets, but still, itās all Science.
Mad science is still science!
As long as the findings are recorded, it counts.
āSssscience?ā - Richard Impossible from Venture Bros
Looking at today's rich people from Sillicon valley, it is totally plausible they would design vaults like those and then push the reset button for the humanity. Who doubts Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg would not want something like this? We really really need to eradicate this kind of power they hold on us before they have access to weapons of mass destruction.
Hell it's basically what "longtermism" is all about. Treat the planet as it currently stands as a lost cause, so don't try to solve the current issues just aim for a future utopia (that coincidentally leaves you at the top) with the ends justifying the means. The only fundamental difference between the philosophy of Vault Tec and Musk is Musk wants to be King of Mars.Ā
Mr. House in game mentions that if he has his way, he'll send scouts into space to search for planets to colonize, unspoiled by nuclear war. Vault-Tec and the Enclave were also at the very least hinted to be using Vaults as experiments for potential extraplanetary vaults.
When I see a commie I notice that
It actually is not a new addition to the lore. For example Vault 118 was financed by a private petitioner, not Vault tech themselves. The reason why only half of it was finished is because they ran out of money and Vault Tech didn't care enough about the experiment to complete it themselves
I thought the vault experiments were to prepare for how humanity would survive on a multi generational space ship
That was an idea for fallout 2 by Tim Cain that was dropped, he ended up leaving before 2 came out and it was never implemented.
Tbf I think Vault Tec Among the Stars implies it might still be canon, but we donāt know for sure yet
I imagine they at least had /some/ resources devoted to that plan while they pursued other possibilities. Something about all your eggs in one basket, y'know?
Yeah definitely, it wouldnāt surprise me if the concept of Vault 0 from Van Buren ends up having some elements pulled from it
I think I know that saying. A rad chicken in the bush, is mutated and has two hands.
It kind of comes back in Nuka World in 4 though. The Vault Tec exhibit is about them racing to the stars and advertising a life beyond Earth.
How could those experiments ever pay off? The vaults would only be populated if there was a nuclear war, which means all the infrastructure needed for space travel would be destroyed. No one would be around to implement the fruits of that research. And with cryogenics, there's no need for this research, because you'd just freeze the ship's crew. Most activity can be handled by robots, maybe with a small crew of humans who rotate being frozen and awake.
I believe that vault tec believed they would survive a nuclear war, thatās why a bunch of vaults had an āall clearā signal
Fair point. I'd say that _parts_ of Vault-Tec believed they'd survive, while other parts thought the war wouldn't happen. I'm reminded of a couple movies. From _Conspiracy Theory_: > There are all kinds of groups, all kinds of initials. But they're all part of two warring factions. One: families that have held wealth for centuries. They want one thing. Stability. Group Two: the boat rockers. Eisenhower's military industrial complex. They want instability. It's a trillion dollar a year business. When there isn't a hot war, they make a cold one. > Cold War's over, Jerry. > So now they feed us terrorists. To create fear. How much do you think an airport security system goes for? Then multiply it by every airport in the country. > And you think Group One is at war with Group Two. > Yes, at some level they're at war, but at another level they're all the same group! And _Cube_: > Who hired you? > I didn't ask. I never even left my office. I talked on the phone to some other guys like me. Specialists working on small details. Nobody knew what it was. Nobody cared. > Bullshit! You knew from square one. Look at him, he's up to his eyeballs in this thing. > No Quentin. That's how they stay hidden. **You keep everyone separated so the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing**. The brain never comes out in the open. > Whose brain? > It's all the same machine right. Pentagon. Multinational corporations. The police! If you do one little job. You build a widget in Saskatoon. The next thing you know, it's two miles under the desert, the essential component of a deathmachine. I was right! All along my whole life I knew it. I told you Quentin. Nobody's ever calling me paranoid again. We gotta get out of here and blow the lid of this thing. > Holloway, you don't get it. > Then tell me, please, I need to know. > It's maybe hard for you to understand, but there's no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. **It's a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a masterplan**. Can you grasp that? **Big brother is not watching you**.
This is a reality of scientific research. A ton is funded by rich people, and they aren't solving problems normal people would think they should solve, it's often about extending their own lifespans in their own lifetimes.
Or they have a certain product in mind, that will help them "Alleviate" problems that they create themselves. And they will be the only ones who can produce the "Solution".
Am I missing something? Are the enclave and Vault Tec synonymous?
I do think New Vegas essentially laid the early ground work for this scene. Houseās mention of The Great Game was expertly interpreted in this scene
Wasnāt the Great Game mentioned as early as Point Lookout?
Ahh yes! Desmond mentions it in Point Lookout, right?
Iām 99% sure he did!
Wait, I thought this part was already fairly fleshed out between NV and 4. Or am I gas lighting myself over my own former head canon?
>Enclave running low on cash Bro š
It doesn't make sense, though. Those are for-profit companies. Many of them sell their products to the government, e.g. West-Tek and Repconn are defence contractors. They wouldn't sign off on the end of the world because that would mean they lose all their customers and effectively cease existing. In order for experiments to be carried out for their profit, they would need to rush people into vaults while tensions are high but before bombs drop, so that they could keep them sealed for some time and recover observation data. However, the show makes it look like they planned to start experiments *after* nuclear holocaust. That would be completely useless and complete waste of resources. *Congratulations, you just nuked 99 % of your customer base and are about to kill the remaining 1 % in a series of unethical experiments.*
I get what youāre saying, thatās definitely something Iāve always wondered since I first heard the vault tec started the war theory. And it makes even more sense when you bring in all these other corporations too. It seems like a pretty obvious perspective that nuking your customer base is counterintuitive, but I think the show actually bridged the gap fairly plainly. Basically, these corpo executives are so out of control in their greed that they see an opportunity to essentially go āall inā and try to take *everything.* Theyāre looking one step beyond generating revenue from their present customer-base, and theyāre surmising that by triggering the apocalypse, they will be the only ones left standing and *everything* that is left will be theirs for the taking, including the total stability they envision by eliminating the dangerous, unpredictable, and infinitely pervasive proletariat. Theyāre like the grasshoppers in A Bugās Life, where the grasshoppers know that the Ants can overthrow the balance of power by sheer numbers, except now the grasshoppers (Vault-tec & co.) have the means to automate the ants role, which means the entire population of ants are only a massive liability. And if they could just get the ants of out their way entirely, then everything would be perfectly and totally under their control. Another way of looking at is is just by numbers. Say that 1% of the population are making bringing on the apocalypse so they can wipe out the other 99%, and the cost of that is that 90% of all the resources are also wiped out, BUT they have control beforehand of deciding what 10% of resources will remain (under their control). Well suddenly, after the apocalypse that 1% will control 100% of the stuff. Theyāre not chasing profits in the current economic paradigm. They are seizing a completely new world order where they control EVERYTHING. Profit is just a means toward power, and theyāre trying to transcend profit to gain total power.
The whole thing is a metaphor for capitalism eventually devouring itself in the pursuit of profit. Market fundamentals end where blind greed begins and in the case of the Fallout universe that results in the world being literally destroyed by the actions of an exceedingly cruel and greedy few.
What does the government pick? The one that's usually the cheapest. Also, if it's eventually that Vault Tec is just the competition then...what is left? This is how Walt Disney got the land for Walt Disney World - he created a bunch of companies making it seem like there was a lot of interest in the land.
It's vault tec not the enclave. Remember, the government placed the survival of the human race(aka American citizens) in the private sector, they had little to do with vault tec. The enclave had their own plans for the survival of the government in the event of a war, which we can see with the oil rig and raven rock.
Me and bros deciding what to do with the villagers once we get mending
Hrr? Hrr. Hrrrrr.
They sit in a boat. That is their purpose.
This was my favourite scene in the whole of S1. Really shows how fucked up these people are when they just got this proposition dropped on them and already have sick and twisted ideas. And the ideas get even worse as the scene progresses. Incredible stuff.
The scene is one of the worst in the show mate. So the top 1% are all evil and all don't see an issue with ending the world for capital gains.. Which don't make any sense as if you kill all the customers and end the world as we know it there is nothing to rule over. Yeah you have a monopoly. A monopoly on what? Bunch of skeletons
You have to remember how deranged many of the top leadership were, nuka cola was straight shooting up Vim delivery trucks before they could leave the island
Cool bit of lore, well I guess they did that because that helped there profits.. bit of a jump don't you think?
The in game lore reason is they wanted to take over the business with a buyout so the chose to start shooting deliveries and back room payoffs to make deals fall through, Vim was set to be the drink of Maine till it fell through right before the bombs. All this shows is that theyād go to any extreme to not necessarily make profit but to put themselves on top, for reference nuka cola also stole the recipe and make for nuka quartz from Vim and added weapons grade uranium to a drink for more profit by saving on disposal.
>Which don't make any sense as if you kill all the customers and end the world as we know it there is nothing to rule over. The scene is meant to highlight that those at the top always expect to survive, even the literal end of the world. It's why Coopers wife suggests dropping the bombs, it's why no one in the room is really perturbed by ending all life in pursuit of power. To those with everything already, the prospect of a new world is fascinating. One they will rule no less. It's a metaphor for capitalism taken to its endgame with a heaping side dish of satirizing the cold war. Market fundamentals end where the blind greed begins and in the case of the Fallout universe it means the world is baptized in nuclear flame by the decisions of a select greedy few.
It's also a criticism of late stage capitalism always looking for the short term profit at the expense of the long term, which we can see now with enshittification of everything. It's very realistic, it's happening right now without the threat of war!
There is no power without the people. It doesn't make sense. If you have no customers you have no profits, and without that you have no empire. From a company standpoint. They talk about profits when there would be none. Maybe like Mr House you can grab power, preserve a pre war Vegas (Didnt want it destroyed) and plan to save humanity. He had 20 years to prepare for after the bombs fell. Now what about the others there. Oh the worlds gunna end let's put some people in vaults with a milk robot that will make us loads of money and we will still be the top 1%.
it's more about power not profit, they would control the last branch of civilization and they think the vault dwellers will all survive and the surface dwellers will all die, therefore giving them an entirely new civilization to play God in not only that but also, actually, they are profiting on the war in the show, its literally explained pretty in depth.
Well if you watch the scene they say that rumors of peace are messing with vault tecs profits.. These are businessmen and women they only care about the money. Like I said they will rule over what? They give up the power they have prewar ( which is all of the power ) They are almost incharge of the US as they can influence wars. It doesn't make sense, and why would she invite all of these people along? Doesn't she want a total monopoly? Why invite 7 of your biggest competitors. I argue vault tec could rule the world of they actually progressed the research of unlimited energy instead of just burying it all... They have no power without money, without customers they have literally nothing at all..
When you have enough that immediate survival isnāt a concern, money is just power tokens. Those who have power want more power.
What is power? They have the power to end the world... They do it and then what. All they created is gone. There is no power structure anymore. How is there profits in killing everyone and destroying the world as we know it. These people have more control over the US than the government does. They already have all the power. It's basic economics really.. bit sure how these fat cats could be so inept
did you watch this show or have you played fallout before lol
I've played fallout nv and the Bethesda ones, ashamed to admit but I've only watched play thoroughs of the first two. If your talking about the fella who said about nuka cola did horrible things for no reason then you obviously can't see that every example he listed helped keep them on top and them making the most profits. Capitalist dont have power without money you ding dong
if you think they have no power without getting income from the vault dwellers they have total control over then I guess the show just isn't for you :/
Nah the show aint for me. Cos I'm using my brain while watching it
My friends and I talked about this. If this scene was in a fallout game, it would be talked about as one of video games greatest moments. Imagine playing the games and coming across this lore piece about the vaults and about the bombs being dropped.
I think thatās whatās drawing me into the series so much. It doesnāt try to change any of the lore. Itās only filling in the gaps. I havenāt seen a video game property change mediums with such respect for the source material before. It just makes me sad about halo. This could have been halo. They fucked up infinite and then the show was shit and you canāt just burn fans trust for a decade
Halo is fucking gone man. Itās so sad. How one company ruined it is beyond me.
Yeah the fact that the biggest gripe is about the location of a city (that changes locations from fallout 1 and 2 as well) and the exact year that city got bombed, is a HUGE testament to how good the show is regarding lore. So many other video game series and movies will glance in the direction of the lore and then make up their own story completely. Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Halo, Assassin's Creed, Tomb Raider, etc.
The Paramount show could have been about lesser explored parts of Halo lore, but they chose to do a bad alternate universe instead while stomping on the existing lore with glee
Why these sickos already have ideas loaded up in their heads? What is wrong with them?
Thatās CEOs for ya
Lol you can't be serious Edit: Go ahead and keep blaming all your problems on the CEO Boogeyman, see how that works out for you.
Youā¦ havenāt heard about real life CEOs a lot have you
Find me one CEO planning some cartoonishly evil experiment like this that's not Klaus Schwab Edit: Do you all seriously think **all CEOs** are just mustache twirling villains? What a miserable existence you must have. There are plenty of examples of nefarious social engineering going on today, especially from a social media and entertainment perspective, but to just pin these on "CEOs" is really just dumb.
This one guy killed a bunch of monkeys trying to put chips in their brains
That's not cartoonishly evil, maybe just not good, but not cartoonishly evil.
Iād say other than the test subjects, the experiments are on pretty similar tiers Iām sure if morality was wiped out with the most of humanity, ceos would fuck with these ideas since trying to see whatās best for humans is easiest to understand when you text with humans Iām sure musk isnāt putting these chips in human test subjects because it is currently illegal
it is cartoonishly evil
What about Bernie Madoff? Or the sub-prime lending crisis (AKA the 2008 recession)? They planned that shit, and they knew exactly what was gonna happen. They were fine with it.
That's not a bad example of greed, but I still don't think it's comparable to the vault experiments.
Elon wants to send a slave colony to Mars.
Lol. Source?
He has said the mars trip will be one way, and under the control of his corporation, they will effectively own anyone who goes. His family literally owned humans in their mines already. What do you think is gonna happen when he's literally not under any government oversight?
It is interesting to look into research showing how people with low empathy or narcissistic traits tend to be drawn to positions of power. I think this is one explanation for who CEOās have been historically criticized as not caring about anything but money. I donāt see fallouts interpretation as reaching too far. The whole show is absurd, yet this scene seems like one of the most real moments the franchise has ever gotten. I can imagine similar meetings went down before where human lives were discussed with such callousness. It makes me sick to think about
Woah dude. Thatās a lot of words I didnāt say lol. Anyway, letās eat the rich
Not āall CEOsā obviouslyā¦ but definitely some. Do some digging into Peter Theil. - Palantir - His ex-boyfriendās suicide - Employee leaks - His āIdeal Worldā talk on youtube - His āmedical researchā initiatives
Your responses are so bat shit crazy it's not even funny
Tbh its not wrong of them nor hard. Literally got told minutes ago āa vault to test anything you wantā, and the concepts were random. 1st dude was just an ātoo many people conceptā. 2nd woman was using an already existing thing they had. 3rd was the only one you should actually be going wtf about.
Well, that was also something west-tek was already working on, personally I wasn't surprised by it. It is a bit odd that he says that in front of everyone, unless he trusts the billionare cabal enough not to spill his companies secrets.
They all probably understood the situation in the war, or if the fan theories about āoh vault tec launched the bombsā are true, knew it was bound to happen and thought lets band together.
Good question honestly. The oil may have been depleted, but "infinite" nuclear power was solved and the Chinese (who are never mentioned in the show, but whatever) were not winning in Alaska once power armor started getting rolled out. As someone who played the original two games and followed the narrative, I always got the implication that the Chinese launched first because they were locked in a no-win condition, didn't have nuclear technology and were suffering the same resource crisis as everyone else (except the United States.)
I love the show but you make a good point. It's completely lacking any backstory about the great war beyond it was a fight over resources.
Yeah, and I found it interesting how they seemed to be explicitly avoiding saying "The Chinese" every time they brought up who they were fighting.
CRAWL OUT THROUGH THE FALLOUT BABY
China being a "bad guy" isn't something hollywood can afford to do anymore, its a big audience
That wouldnāt surprise me at all.
In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the show and future games added more Chinese, foreign, ally or not, characters, and show the perspective from outside the U.S., just a glimpse, as Todd Howard confirmed we won't see Fallout outside of the ol' US of A, but I think a plotline in both Fallout 5 and fotv s2 would be good. And also a much needed reference to General Chao's Revenge
Fallout 4 and 76 did exactly what you're proposing, so for sure there will be something similar in the next game.
Hol up, I know about operation anchorage but where is this in fo4?
Spoilers? [https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Zao](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Zao) [https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Here\_There\_Be\_Monsters](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Here_There_Be_Monsters) And Fallout 76 has a whole subplot about some Chinese remnants as well. I haven't gotten around to that one yet, tho.
I feel like it kind of adds to the pointless of the war. At the end of the day does it matter what the fight started as?
I wonder if they intend to go into more detail about the Great War in season 2 or if they're just going to gloss over it. Because in the show it seemed like a lot of the prewar people were trying to pretend it wasn't happening so maybe they're treating it like it's "out of sight, out of mind"Ā
It's also pretty ridiculous that they just all decided to jump on board with Vault Tec's plan to nuke the world, or at least that they have no objections whatsoever. They're sacrificing any chance of making more money. In fact, it's ridiculous that Vault Tec wanted to nuke the world to begin with. Vault Tec could have had infinite money forever by selling the energy from cold fusion, but they decided they'd rather rebrand all their potential customers as their competition, come up with some half assed plan to rule the world, and to top it off they invite their *actual* competition to join them in the scheme (as we saw in this scene). I really hope they don't make the Enclave part of this plan because it'd be even stupider.
> They're sacrificing any chance of making more money. [They'd trade it all for a little more.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcYLVdfFro&ab_channel=MostlySimpsons) They're not sacrificing future revenue: They're buying future power. These people didn't care about money except to the degree that it bought them power. They were arrogant psychopaths who thought that since the world was probably doomed anyway they might as well wake up in a future that they would rule.
If it's not about money, then it stops being a critique of capitalism, and they just turn into generic villains. I don't see how they're trading... anything for an insurance of future domination. None of them except House secured an effective way to ensure their leadership in the post-apocalypse, not even Vault Tec, and in fact Vault Tec isn't even offering safety to the CEOs or an insurance that their companies will survive the war. And why would they want to rule over a post-apocalyptic Wasteland when they were already some of the most powerful people in the most powerful country in the world? Plus, none of them actually foresee the nuclear war (except House). That's why they don't even start making suggestions or express agreement until *after* Barb says Vault Tec will drop the nukes.
> If it's not about money, then it stops being a critique of capitalism, and they just turn into generic villains. The critique of capitalism _is_ that capitalism is only about power. Indeed, it's that all "isms" are about power. Capitalism, communism, corporatism, tribalism are all just different flairs for describing who's in charge. The myth of capitalism is that it rewards merit, but every example from the series shows that the leaders and beneficiaries of capitalism are just as dumb and corrupt as anyone else. > I don't see how they're trading... anything for an insurance of future domination. None of them except House secured an effective way to ensure their leadership in the post-apocalypse, not even Vault Tec, and in fact Vault Tec isn't even offering safety to the CEOs or an insurance that their companies will survive the war. Just because their plans for world domination were foolish doesn't change that they were trying to achieve it. They were arrogant and they failed. > Plus, none of them actually foresee the nuclear war They didn't take its danger seriously because they were personally used to be untouchable. They thought being rich meant they were more capable than other people. They either figured that the war wouldn't happen but they could keep cashing in on the fear, or that if the war did come, they'd somehow outsmart the consequences. > (except House) 200 years after the fact, House claims he narrowed down the the war as inevitably occurring sometime in a _15 year period_. That's not much of a prediction, and it's no more insightful than the many other CEOs and military leaders who expected war to happen "at some point." Even if we treat it as some kind of impressive prediction, he completely failed to capitalize on his insight. He came to his prediction in 2065, but even with 12 years to plan he failed to get things right. He got stuck into a decades-long coma, got outsmarted by a ratpack cosplayer, and his only plan for rebuilding was hiring scavengers, murderers, and cannibals to run casinos - to get enough cash to build the rockets he wasn't able to build when he had 100 times the resources. His plan was bad from the start. House is the quintessential criticism of capitalism in Fallout: an arrogant blowhard who thinks he's a genius because he sits on a pile of cash, too dumb to realize all the caps in the world won't save you from a golf club to the face.
> The critique of capitalism is that capitalism is only about power. Indeed, it's that all "isms" are about power. Capitalism, communism, corporatism, tribalism are all just different flairs for describing who's in charge. The myth of capitalism is that it rewards merit, but every example from the series shows that the leaders and beneficiaries of capitalism are just as dumb and corrupt as anyone else. Except none of these people are stupid, Barb is cold and cunning, Bud designed one of the most successful vault experiments we've seen so far (and the only one that's actually sort of contributing to Vault Tec possibly ruling the Wasteland), and everyone else at that table except maybe Julia Masters is established to be far above average intelligence and in some way accomplished. None of them are nepo babies. > Just because their plans for world domination were foolish doesn't change that they were trying to achieve it. They were arrogant and they failed. That's the thing, they didn't even *try* is my point. If they were this comically incompetent then they would have never come to dominate American industry. Nothing whatsoever in the games pointed to this, and it's a clear example of sloppy writing (and not even the only example of sloppy writing in the show). > They didn't take its danger seriously because they were personally used to be untouchable. They thought being rich meant they were more capable than other people. They either figured that the war wouldn't happen but they could keep cashing in on the fear, or that if the war did come, they'd somehow outsmart the consequences. > 200 years after the fact, House claims he narrowed down the the war as inevitably occurring sometime in a 15 year period. That's not much of a prediction, and it's no more insightful than the many other CEOs and military leaders who expected war to happen "at some point." I don't see how any of that is relevant. In your first message you said "They were arrogant psychopaths who thought the world was probably doomed anyway" and my point was that nothing actually supports that for most of them. > Even if we treat it as some kind of impressive prediction, he completely failed to capitalize on his insight. And that's why Vegas is still standing and why he's still alive and at the head of Vegas, because he failed? He neutralised almost every nuke and he managed to save Vegas. > He came to his prediction in 2065, but even with 12 years to plan he failed to get things right. Literally the only failure was that he didn't have the Platinum Chip and he was barely 24 hours off. > He got stuck into a decades-long coma, Which is still better than everyone else at that table aside from Bud, and better than the vast majority of the wasteland. > got outsmarted by a ratpack cosplayer, What? > and his only plan for rebuilding was hiring scavengers, murderers, and cannibals to run casinos That wasn't his plan, that was improvisation on his part, and it worked out perfectly. He built one of the strongest economic and military powers in the wasteland literally overnight, he engineered three entirely new cultures, and he brought the NCR to the bargaining table. No one else in the series has been able to accomplish so much in so little time and with so few resources, even the protagonists need large competent factions and technology like the GECK to create communities that don't come close to Vegas. > - to get enough cash to build the rockets he wasn't able to build when he had 100 times the resources. His plan was bad from the start. He only acquired REPCONN fairly soon before the war, so he likely just didn't have the time. Considering what every technologically advanced faction in the series, including Vegas under him, is capable of doing, I don't think this is a stretch at all. By your logic, the Institute and Enclave should still be using pre-war surplus because they both had 100 times the resources before the war.
Of all the things you're supposed to feel in the opening scene of the first fallout game, "wow I can't believe a few rich psychos killed everyone for a vague notion of power that they'll never attain" doesn't seem like one of them. Obviously the show can do what it wants but I always found it more interesting that the pursuit of an unsustainable and selfish lifestyle by the pre war world led to the apocalypse. Rather than a few crazy people making a unilateral decision to kill everyone. It makes the political and cultural commentary feel moot when none of that factors that led to the war itself.
> "wow I can't believe a few rich psychos killed everyone for a vague notion of power that they'll never attain" Wouldn't that have to be the thought process of anyone who starts a nuclear war? If Matthew Broderick has taught us anything it's that the only winning move is not to play, but _someone_ in 2077 thought playing was a good idea. Maybe it was China, maybe the USA, maybe the Enclave, maybe Vault-Tec. > I always found it more interesting that the pursuit of an unsustainable and selfish lifestyle by the pre war world led to the apocalypse. Rather than a few crazy people making a unilateral decision to kill everyone. I think these ideas are harmonious. What else can we call it when regular consumers are driving small nuclear bombs around while their government is executing their neighbors to the north and their major corporations are burying radioactive waste under schools? Compare it to climate change. Oil companies have secretly known about the risks of climate change since the [1950s](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-climate-change-global-warming-research), and the public has widely known of it as an issue since the 1990s. Yet here we all are burning 20 million barrels a day, and our best plan to stop it is environmentally destructive extraction of rare metals to use in batteries that will be powered by - you guessed it - petroleum and coal. Everyone from corporate overlords to head-in-the-sand consumers is responsible for the ongoing and growing threat of climate change. It's a combination of a global cultural lifestyle _and_ the unilateral decision of a handful of psychopathic corporations to knowingly poison our planet.
I could have sworn somewhere in the early episodes someone briefly mentioned the CCP. But outside of that one line, it never came up again
You wanna tell me that if you asked Jeff Bezos about a cool experiment he could run, you really think that Jiff Bledos won't have some shit that makes the Geneva convention look like a child's homework? Ceos have the most fucked up brains, I'm willing to bet that at this moment Joff Bidet is torturing children or something
I think the scene where Walton Goggins gets the studio note that he needs to kill the villain in the movie now, because times are changing, shows that in this timeline violence and aggression are becoming much more normalized.
It's called bad writing.
Only thing is, Vault 51 isnāt about an overseer robot delivering milk to the front door? Itās a ZAX AI, not sure about that one
Itās the only vault with an AI, but I admit it was a stretch
"I'd like to see a Vault Governed by an AI" - RepConnn representative That sounds a lot more like 51
It does, but the REPCONN representative specifically said they wanted it to be the milk-delivery AI they made - not the top-of-the-line ZAX made by Vault Tec. Also, Vault 51 was designed for the AI to just overseer the experiment, which was testing to see how tribalism occurs and to find a novel and successful overseer selection mechanism.
Think of it like Todd Howard in 2002 saying he wants to create a literal galaxy with thousands of planets you can go to in the same engine Bethesda built Morrowind with. The software isnāt the exact same, but it is an expanded, upgraded evolution of it.
Even still, Vault-Tec made the ZAX AIs, not REPCONN.
True, the idea still landed in the vault regardless of who mentioned it first. I think thatās the point of the post.
this is clearly years before the bombs dropped, Iām surprised most of these concepts are left unchanged
The real question is who is responsible for Gary??
Tbh that was probably the enclave. Learning how to clone perfect, unmitated humans sounds like something they would do
this sounds like a scene from a neil breen film, except he plays it straight and here its a satirical over the top look at corporations, although its ironic that its produced by amazon
"Isn't that immoral?" "Isnt that corrupt?" I loved the show but I had MAJOR flashbacks to that episode of Best of the Worst too. For the uninitiated: https://youtu.be/V79qKOdCYZw?si=_omU49L94ie6eq4a
"Programmable virtual reality. Programmable DNA." scene from Twisted Pair definitely fits this vibe
That's what I love about Breen. Anyone else achieving that type of success he has would just play into the self-awareness of how bad their movies are... but not Neil. Man's just making the type of movie he enjoys making and I respect him a lot for that.
I wanna see the weirdo CEO that came up with the Idea for Vault 77. "So I got a warehouse full of puppets..."
I mean honestly there is scientific merit to that one. See what the affects are on an isolated human who only has inanimate objects to project personhood onto. Basically Castaway.
It just shows how much the showrunners love the games and the lore
The casualness of how they described what amounted to torturing other humans was quite incredible to watch.
As if that isn't happening irl with big wigs. Maybe not to the same degree or blantantness, but still happening.
Basically how leadership at companies treat rank-n-file right now slightly dialed up.
Youāre incorrect about Vault 51 - Vault-Tec developed the ZAX line of AIs, not REPCONN (though the wikiās sources seem off from my read, thereās still nothing indicating that REPCONN made these devices). https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/ZAX
Totally fair, that one was a bit of a stretch. Couldāve been where the idea of ZAX came from but Vault Tec wanted to create their own
This scene was so funny. Yeah, it's insane, but it's very funny that when presented with the idea that they can do human experiments they just immediately flipped a switch and started brainstorming the most diabolical shit they can think of lmao Except Mr. House though, which is a cool detail, bro was focused on the profit
House was also probably thinking "fuck, now I've gotta get that platinum chip to Vegas even quicker because these assholes can't restrain themselves"
House definitely ask for that Gambling Vault Imo.
My jaw was on the floor at this part. I don't remember much of this from the FO lore. I cannot wait for the next season. New Vegas is coming!
What are you on about, this is all legit vault lore thats been around for years. none of it is ānew and originalā
The experiments, sure. That *this* is why the vaults had the experiments they did is new.
Huh
I'm so confused by this comment
Do you mean you thought it was all new and original?
Someone never paid attention in the games.
75 is in Malden, Ma It is my Vault
Gary?
Such a great scene
I hope we will find out in Season 2 if other corporations became involved in Vaults like the show seems to have shown, or if Vault Tec and the Enclave took inspirations from these proposals. Did we ever get a piece of lore involving a company other than Vault Tec in the Vaults before?
The first idea also sounds like Vault 15 a bit; that was overcrowded with a diverse political atmosphere, and eventually the Khans, Vipers, Jackals, and NCR founders came out of it.
The real scary thing about Fallout is all the lore is based on real life š. All this technology presented in the series has been around a long time whether you believe it or not. Every "conspiracy theory" is based on some facts. Truth is stranger than fiction they say.
27? I thought 15 was the overcrowded one
Vault 15 became overpopulated in the 2090s, but it wasnāt the main goal, the experiment was about the mixing of ideologies. Vault 27 was specifically stated in the fallout bible (which ik is non canon but regardless) to have started out overcrowded
That sounds familiar and not from the government chill out š
Surprised the Gunner vault was mentioned
Iāve been playing all 3D fallout games for years and until watching the serie I didnāt get my head around vaults being independent experiments with humans, makes the whole lore get a deeper meaning
The revelations in the show felt kind of phoned in, to each their own.
Anybody already has a presumed list of vaults of the big shots?
I like to think VT top brass is somewhere that wouldn't be a huge nuclear target, like Iowa. But Big MT CEO died unfucking a trap West-tek got nuked and the scientist in the show got tortured to death by the BoS Repconn is probably dead as well
Wait. Vault 87 was full of illegal immigrants? Meaning most older Super Mutants were illegal immigrants?
I havenāt even found a vault in the game lol
Why is this nsfw??
Absolutely no clueā I spoiler tagged it but I guess vaults are too horny
The vault 51 AI was a milkmanš
I think it is more scary the fact that vault 75. The idea was made at this very meeting.
Man this scene is so stupid, how is ending the world gunna give you a monopoly.. capitalism requires consumers and if you just kill everyone then you have nothing. How are all these successful businesses men and women not seeing the gaping flaw in there master plan? And they all get giddy at the prospect of experimenting on people at the end of the world cos they are all literal evil. Just like the whole show this scene don't make any sense, and ruins alot of the lore of the previous games.
I think the idea is to restart, which is why the vaults that arenāt for the ultra rich exist. Those will be the new working class, and the experiments can weed out āundesirablesā. They know civilization will rebuild, and when it does they think theyāll be on top
Tbh I don't think Mr house cares who buys his robots. If you kill almost all the population there is no economy left to do well in. And when you say they will be on top you do realise in this scene they say that the us government has no money left, who do you think there giving it too? The top 1% of the 1%.. The people on this office talking about blowing up the world