Fallout: A Glimpse at Humanity through its Destruction
Creating a Universe
For this paper I’m going to focus mainly on the events, characters, and universe of Fallout’s 3 and 4, but because this universe is so complex and intricately connected, there are themes and events that relate to the entire fallout universe that I need to touch on in order to talk about some of the most interesting concepts of Fallout. For a video game, I find Fallout to be extremely fulfilling, but not because of its action and violence, but because of the uniquely immense and detailed stories that the series tells through the perspective of the main character, all built upon this giant universe that spans through several installments, not unlike Game of Thrones, Star Wars, or the Mad Max series. What I love most about this series is that you as the player are actually exploring two completely new worlds. One is the pre-apocalyptic United States, whose history has diverged from our own sometime around the time of World War II. This alone would be amazing to explore, because who doesn’t like a glimpse at a futuristic utopian United States with robots and laser weapons. Instead, we experience the world almost 200 after its destruction and we are left to discover what this world was like between our own timeline and the year 2077 through the debris and destruction of the apocalypse. Thus, Fallout is introducing the new ideas and norms of two worlds unknown to us and it can be equally exciting to discover what the world was like between 1950 and 2077 as it is to discover what world is like over 200 years later in the year 2277.
Society & Economy
The creators of Fallout thought of everything when it came to the persistence of humanity through the destruction of the apocalypse. Almost as soon as the first people exited their protective vaults, a currency system was created through the use of Nuka-Cola bottlecaps based on the hard value of purified water. Bottlecaps were chosen because while they could easily be found from the tops of these old sodas, there were no existing ways to produce anymore so there was no risk of counterfeits or mass inflation. The use of water as a basis in interesting because it’s reminiscent of the gold-standard the United States had until the 1970s and because purified water is arguably the most important resource in a post-apocalyptic setting it definitely makes sense that water is the new gold. Asides from bottle caps and water, critically important items such as guns, ammos, armor, medical supplies, and technological scrap have become valuable forms of currency in their own right, especially because bartering has become the primary form of economic exchange. With that in mind most people will work just for the promise of a meal and roof over their head.
Because bartering and trade is the primary way of exchange in this new world, the act of rummaging through ruins for valuable goods has become a prominent new profession. Because looting is considered a cynical term even after the bombs have fallen, these rummagers of old buildings are called prospectors at an attempt to diverge from labels such as thieves, looters, and grave robbers. These ‘prospectors’ make up the back-bone of post-apocalyptic society because without them there is no material that which the survivors of this desolate world can use to rebuild. When playing the games of the Fallout Universe you are spurred on by a story, whether it be following your missing father played by Liam Neeson or saving the vault you grew up in, but either way you inevitably find yourself in the role of a prospector exploring the grisly and interesting ruins that the year 2077 left you, selling your scrap for some needed caps, medicine, or water.
Racism
Another interesting aspect of the fallout universe is the elimination of racism as we know it in the modern sense. Racism between people of different skin colors and nationalities has been essentially erased because all the history of all these racial prejudices has all been erased since the bombs fell. Sadly, that does not mean bigotry or prejudice has been erased from the world, because just like the slogan “war never changes” people in this new world have still designated all too familiar concepts of in-groups and out-groups. Instead of human on human racism, we now see a more complex sort of bigotry involving two major out-groups, ghouls and synths.
Ghouls are human beings who have survived in the post-apocalyptic wasteland since the bombs fell due to insane amounts of radiation that did not ultimately kill them, but instead turned them into heavily irradiated and disfigured humans. Whereas once we saw segregation in the United States based on nationalities and skin color this has been adapted to fit the ghouls of the new world with a host of new slurs and resentment, and sadly we see ghouls being forced to live in the worst conditions. These ghouls are often called zombies and ferals simply because of their looks despite the very real humanity they have been able to hold onto for hundreds of years. It’s a disturbing yet realistic concept that humans feel this need to band together against a group of ‘others’ because when bands of humans have come together they have this strange need to establish this ‘other’ in order to justify the concept of ‘us’ as a group. It’s eerily similar to concepts like nationalism, where a group is able to grow closer and feel more connected to one another by defining these out-groups and i- groups with trivial concepts like appearance and language.
The other main example of prejudice in this world would be the concern around Fallout’s synthetic humans. These ‘synths’ have been replicated as machines to be almost human, even down to the blood, guts, and emotions, but because they are the other and because their creation reflects the actions of ‘scientific boogiemen’ they become just as much of a target as minorities groups of our own world. In Fallout 4, there are even parallels to the United States Civil War and the fight against slavery, most notably because the main group fighting for the rights and freedom of these synthetic humans are known as the Railroad. It is a really interesting subplot because it explores new concepts of bigotry and prejudice that stems from the fear of the unknown and it is disturbingly interesting that after 200 years, prejudice has moved away from humans against humans and has been adapted into human against semi-human conflict and raises deep existential questions like what makes someone human.
Changing History
It’s not clear exactly when the historical timeline between our universe and Fallout’s universe split. The main differences are that after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII the United States invested in nuclear technology and robotics instead of computers and the culture of the 1950s has lasted for over a hundred years. However, to me, the most haunting similarities between our universe and the fallout universe are the Cold War similarities and the similarities centering around the resource wars. Instead of getting into a cold war situation with the Soviet Union, the United States primary communist enemy are the Chinese after the events of World War II and in this universe the Cold War never really ends. Because of this never ending Cold War, what really sparks the nuclear holocaust is the resource wars over depleting fossil fuels and resources like timber and the two superpowers quest for hegemony. This is eerily similar to the current state of our world where it’s inevitable that natural resources like oil will dwindle in the next fifty years and new conflicts over the availability of these resources is inevitable. When you realize how historical events such as the resource wars transpired in Fallout and you are able to make connections with how these events ultimately led to a nuclear holocaust, it can be extremely unnerving how similar our two worlds are before the bombs fell, because who is to say that our own resource wars in our own world won’t ultimately end in something catastrophic like the dropping of a nuclear warhead.
The Unique World of Fallout
Anthropology
One thing extremely unique to the gaming experience of Fallout is the arrangement of skeletons that the Wanderer encounters while exploring the post-apocalyptic remains of the United States. The game developers of Fallout have set up these skeletons in a way that really conveys the immediacy of the apocalypse because these people died in the middle of whatever action they were occupied with, having almost no time to react to the bombs. Because of this we get a glimpse as some of the interesting, tragic, and sometimes comical activities that pre-apocalypse Americans were doing at the time the bombs. Examples are countless and some require you to use some inner anthropologist instincts to interpret exactly what scene you’re walking in on, almost 200 years after the fact. Examples include a bank robbery, a drug deal, a detective hunting a serial murderer, suicide pacts, and my personal favorite, a wheel chaired couple propped together to watch the world end together, hand in hand, accepting their fate. Fallout really is a glimpse at humanity in its last throws of normalcy and through its skeletons we get to see exactly how the denizens of the pre-war Utopia spent their last moments.
Interpreted History
For me, one of the most distressful aspects of the Fallout universe is how the citizens of the current time are so misinformed about the actual history of the United States. They range from the funny to the depressing especially for me because as a lover of history, it is a personal hurt to see someone confidently spouting the fake history of the foundation of the United States with total certainty, 200 years after the bombs took away almost all records of American history. This type of thing is seen in several cases, and examples include a baseball enthusiast who understands the sport of baseball to be a gladiatorial like sport where the teams were thought to butcher each other with baseball bats while others include ignorant raiders thinking that Henry David Thoreau was famous because when he traveled to Walden Pond he was definitely prepared and thus inspired the term “being thorough”. As a lover of history these kind of moments make you cringe and because your character is just part of this ignorant world 200 years later, there’s no way for you to convince them otherwise. However, when these serious grievances to historical memory have been committed it really makes me think about our own world and what kind of crazy misinterpretations we have about our own human history. While the world of Fallout is a much more destroyed universe, it brings to mind parallels to feudal Europe and the dark ages where the intellectual centers of the world like Rome and Baghdad were destroyed as a result of mindless warfare.
The Raiders
The most barbaric and anarchic of the groups that frequent the fallout universe, the raiders, are ruthless bands of human beings who have devolved into madness, looking like they’ve popped out of George Miller’s Mad Max series. They are interesting because they embrace whole heartedly the brutality of the new world and live in a hierarchy where the most destructive and insane individuals command the most power. They add a senseless and brutal element to the fallout universe that counteract the attempts at order and progress in the new world. It is extremely interesting because one observes these grand conflicts between big technologically advanced players like the Enclave and the Brotherhood of Steel, but more likely than not you as a survivor in this world need to be more concerned about not taking the wrong turn on a derelict street and becoming a raider’s dinner. You are more likely to be destroyed by the anarchic mess that is the raiders than you are to be affected by the ‘games’ of big players like those in Fallout 3. That being said, how does one attempt to civilize a world where the majority of your enemies are hanging cut up bodies from ropes from ceilings and poles. It’s not as if one of the major players were to come into power, that they’d then be able to convert and adapt these raider types back into society. When people have devolved to such a level that they know nothing but violence and death there is no way to attempt diplomacy and the only way to handle that situation is through a show of force, not unlike the terrible conquerors and colonizers of European history. The level of brutality and mass bloody murder really speaks to the harshness of the Fallout universe, because it’s the world they live in that makes them this way, and at times you can sympathize because if somebody is starving, dying of thirst, or going crazy with radiation poisoning its sadly understandable why a human being could become so violent, hostile, and void of emotion and humanity.
The Secrets of the Old World
Creepy Cult
There’s a lot of eerie stuff in Fallout, no question. With raiders, mutated animals, and giant super mutants, there is an enormous amount of fear factor embedded into this apocalyptic world. However, some of the scariest stuff in the fallout universe comes from information you gain about the secrets of the world before the war, the kind of secrets that would shock the world today if they were to come out now, especially because we only realize these dark truths because there was nobody left to guard these secrets. For example, there’s a satanic cult based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft whose remnants we barely get a glimpse of in the game, but what we see paints a horrific scene of the worship of some dark power, which very possibly may have real influence on the world. Because you only seen the faintest glimpses of this dark cult, one can only speculate on how widespread and entrenched into society it is, but it does highlight the idea that there’s a ton of dark stuff that already exists in our world without adding war and nuclear holocaust into the midst. These types of terrible things are the types of material that make up of conspiracy theories and I find it thought-provoking that these dark American secrets are so well kept that they are only found out after the world as we know it has been destroyed
Super Mutants
Super Mutants are the result of one of the United States dark secrets that we ultimately uncover through our playing and exploration of Fallout. Super Mutants came into being because they were once human beings whom the American government experimented on using a weaponized virus known as FEV or the Forced Evolutionary Virus. FEV made people rapidly grow stronger with extreme consequences. Instead of making the test subjects stronger and better soldiers, the disease instead leads to rapid mutation and sterility which results in some of the most disturbing creatures of the apocalyptic wasteland. Like many of the horrific secrets of the wasteland, the FEV was created by the United States in order to gain a competitive edge over the Chinese and the primary goal was to make super soldiers, not unlike the program that Captain America was part of. However, when the United States and China have reached this level of warfare, it is very apparent that military leaders on both sides are getting nervous and using more reckless decisions and while ultimately this program gets destroyed along with everything else after the bombs fall, one can easily discern the levels of paranoia that are spreading around the globe if both sides are willing to develop crazy, harmful weaponized virus and later use the atomic bombs. After the bombs fell, however, and this terrible secret was uncovered it led to the mass creation of the giant Hulk-like super mutants in support of the “master” we see in the game. The story is that a former human discovered the facility where these tests were going down and he used this terrible technology to make an army of mutants and threatened all the existing remnants of humanity that had made it through the bombs. The Master is ultimately destroyed by the main character from the original Fallout pc game, but the damage is done and super mutants now wander the ruins of the U.S. and in the rest of the Fallout stories, all of the super mutants we see are simply the mutated monster remnants of the master’s army. However, an interesting tidbit is that not all mutants controlled by the master continued being awful after the Master was defeated. Instead there are numerous cases of ‘reformed’ super mutants regaining their mental capabilities and conforming with post-apocalyptic society, even going so far as becoming community leaders and faithful protectors of humans and ghouls alike.
Vault Tec
Apart from military secrets and hidden, yet widespread sadistic cults, the creepiest thing fallout reveals about pre-apocalyptic America is Vault Tec and their disturbing experiments on unsuspecting occupants of pre-war vaults where inhabitants were promised a life after the bombs fell. Occupants were enlisted based on different qualifications and all the staff members knew from the get go that most of the inhabitants would be manipulated and experimented on. In Fallout 3, the vault that you as the main character leave is actually one of the few control tests or at least non-awful tests that seemed only to allow for the regeneration of multiple genetic lines free from sadistic experiments. In Fallout 4, you and your family are tricked into entering cryogenic chambers just after the bombs have fallen and your family has entered into the vault. This one to me is also a bit of an acceptation, because while most of the other occupants do not make it, you survived a horrific death by nuclear bombing, so despite their evil experiments you kind of owe Vault Tec if you can call it that. Apart from these two however, the rest of Vault Tec is basically evil scientist porn.
The experiments of Vault Tec are many and awful. One involves grouping together some of the most brilliant musical minds of the United States and then testing various levels of white noise until they were driven insane and murdered one another and the Vault Tec staff. Another experiment involved filling a vault full of various types of recovering addicts, helping them with 5 years of treatment, community outreach, and programs, and then opening a secret compartment filled with a life time supply of drugs and alcohol. Everyone in the entire vault ended up overdosing or killing one another despite years of treatment and help. Yet another vault experiment involved gathering up a bunch of kids in one area, taking their parents aside and murdering them, and then they basically attempt to breed generations of super pure genetic specimens out of the original kids in order to create the most healthy and superior human beings possible. Kids that are too smart get scientist jobs and kids who perform well are forced to procreate and then killed off. The happy ending of this story however is that the children rebel and all the Vault Tec staff are killed, leaving the unknown possibility that the kids escaped. Actually it turns out that most Vault Tec situations end up with the Vault Tec staff getting murdered for some reason or another because of the horrible experiments they commit, and it is hard to say they didn’t deserve it. It’s an insane idea that such experiments could ever be devised and applied to fellow human beings, but Fallout makes us shudder and squirm when we explore and realize exactly how cruel Vault Tec was and how they used innocent and vulnerable subjects to perform some of the most sadistic experiments in the human imagination.
Cultural Influences
One of the concepts most unique to the fallout universe is the permeation of the culture of the 1950’s as well as some of the obvious influence from film and literature that one can observe in the game. When playing one can see that the styles of music, cars, art, houses, and technology all look distinctively like the styles of the 1950’s. Even the technological advances unknown to our real universe look like they have come out of concept designs of what advanced technology would look like from the perspective of the people living in the 1950s, similar to what you’d find in a world’s science fair. It’s incredibly interesting to explore the remains of the United States because it explores the idea that a culture relevant to a certain time period could persist for over a hundred years while advances in technology, energy, medicine, and civil rights are still ongoing. It makes me think of places such as Cuba or North Korea which are stereotyped as being frozen in time because while many things have changed, there are still obvious throwbacks to earlier times that is apparent through cultural aspects such as music, clothing, and artistic style.
Some real life cultural influences that have inspired the world of Fallout include works such as the short stories of H.P. Lovecraft, the Mad Max franchise, and the book/film that inspired the lovable companion, Dogmeat, A Boy and His Dog. The fallout creators had a lot of material concerning dystopian post-apocalyptic settings and I think they took a lot of the concepts of desolate survival from these works, but I think they went above and beyond from their predecessors by having their reality split from ours as early as the 1950’s so that not only could they explore the ramifications of an alternative history, but because they used this alternative history to create a completely new future resulting from the unique changes in history they adapted to their own universe in combination with the dangerous realities of what our own future might entail.
Common Themes
War Never Changes
One of the biggest themes in the Fallout Universe is the idea that “war never changes” as spouted by Ron Pearlman before every Fallout game. Until I wrote this paper, I never really thought deeply about that message, because war in the traditional sense is not how I would categorize the conflicts of the post-apocalyptic United States, but after more thoughtful consideration it makes a lot of sense. In Fallout 3, the idea that war never changes is represented in the conflict between the supposed remnants of the United States government, the Enclave, and the neo-knight organization known as the Brotherhood of Steel. Instead of banding together as humans against common problems like the need for purified water sources or eliminating hostile mutants, the fight is about control over the new world. While we ultimately view the Brotherhood as protagonists, their goals are not all that dissimilar with those of the Enclave, especially when you consider that the branch of the Brotherhood based in Washington D.C. is not respected by the organization as a whole because they strive too hard to help human beings instead of focusing on the acquisition of technology and the exploration for ways to advance humanity on a large scale. The conflict between the Enclave and the Brotherhood of Steel definitely embodies the idea that war never changes because just like the nuclear holocaust shows, mankind is its own worst enemy. This theme is seen in other renditions of Fallout as well. In Fallout New Vegas set in post war Nevada, the story shows us a conflict between the democratic society of the New California Republic against an encroaching force of neo Romans led by a man who deems himself Caesar. In Fallout 4 we see the same thing, just on a grander scale with more factions vying for control over the new world with a focus on domination rather than collaboration. In all of these games there is conflict at a grand scale with each group vying for dominance based on rationality they deem to be correct. The leaders of all these groups feel that they are in the right and that they have a realistic and credible authority to create war and fight for their cause. Because of this and what we know about where war got the world when the bombs fell in the first place, the basics of war do not change and humans continue to fight and die over ideals that are not all that different in the midst of a post-apocalyptic world where just like in the real world we live in, too much effort is put into destruction and conquering rather than diplomacy and creation.
Conclusion
The Fallout Universe is enormous. There are probably a thousand concepts and plot lines I haven’t touched on, but my main purpose is to express how complex, immense, and hauntingly realistic Fallout is. The creators of Fallout have created an entirely new world to be explored and have filled it with new struggles that explore the deepest corners of our humanity. Fallout as a universe is fantastic because it is impossible to explore everything and to know every story and so much information we get is based on intuition and subtle hints. Fallout really allows us to explore two completely different worlds from our own, the one from the 1950’s to 2077 and the apocalyptic wasteland after 2277. By allowing us this view of a unique historical divergence from the frame of a world destroyed, Fallout is deep, complex, and disturbingly realistic answer to several what if questions about our own mysterious future.