war war never changes
that's a terrible tagline well not a
terrible tagline but it takes a rather
narrow view of history it's common to
see world history as a series of wars
because they're big dramatic events with
easy beginnings middles and ends and so
it's easy to craft a narrative around
them especially when you decide to set
that narrative and a time in place still
being ravaged by a 200 year old war that
continues to shape the ecological
anthropological landscape of an entire
continent and it's implied the entire
world a world still suffering from well
a fallout now in the Fallout franchise
created by interplay entertainment and
currently published by Bethesda
Softworks combat has always been a
central mechanic of each game and
conflict between factions and armies has
always been present but just as
important is the role played by the
environment how so many quests involve
finding resources managing the landscape
securing energy making the land just a
little bit more fertile even if that
means getting your guns loaded and
clearing out a vault full of glowing
radioactive philippi ocean
now the Aesthetica fallout is borrowed
from pop imagery of the Cold War a
conflict which is often framed as purely
ideological but the nuclear holocaust
and fallouts alternate timeline had very
material causes the spoils of war were
also its weapons petroleum and uranium
for these resources China would invade
Alaska the u.s. would in Ex Canada and
the European Commonwealth were dissolved
into quarreling bickering nation-states
bent on controlling the last remaining
resources on earth like Ron Perlman said
it was a war driven by resources like
all wars actually well sure they market
their wars as something other than that
blood has been spilled in the name of
everything from God to justice to simple
psychotic rage but the root is often the
same someone needed land or food or
water or fuel and someone else had it
sometimes those needs can be met and the
culture dies in his book collapse how
societies choose to fail or succeed
biologist Jared Diamond laid out a
five-point framework of contributing
factors to a civilizations collapse
environmental damage climate change
hostile neighbors a lack of viable trade
partners and the Society's responses to
all of the above
the United States as it existed in
fallout had a lack of viable trading
partners due to oil shortages around the
world and its choice to hoard the remain
supplies caused a global neighbor China
to become hostile the US response was to
launch the entire nuclear arsenal
causing global climate change and
irreparable environmental damage so the
bombs fell that's a given but what isn't
given is the fate of the survivors
whether each village you wander through
from shady sands to Megaton will survive
for another generation yes the problems
they face can be bizarre great tax of
radscorpions
are killing our herds
but societies have fallen for much
simpler reasons reasons far less
dramatic than a nuclear holocaust Easter
islands Polynesian culture collapsed
because of massive deforestation the
natives killed trees that wild great for
canoes and moving large stone heads were
also necessary for preventing erosion
and keeping the soil fertile and stable
the Maya collapse because of Yucatan
Peninsula
shaky relationship with water rain is
highly seasonal their wells are near
impossible thanks to the area's geology
and despite projects like massive canals
and reservoirs Mayan leaders were unable
to supply fresh water to the masses
after one too many droughts or take a
modern collapse like the one that
happened in Rwanda in 1994 common
knowledge tributes that atrocity to
blind ethnic hatred but even it was
exacerbated by the fact that most in
Rwanda were starving in the culture
traditionally built on local subsistence
farming the population had outpaced the
amount of available arable soil to
properly feed them a powerful incentive
for killing a neighbor and taking their
food and land of course there are many
theories and counter theories but cause
of those specific collapses sensitive
ones at that but a common thread in all
of them is simple need need for food
need for water need for life that far
more than war never changes
consider a biome like the capital
wasteland fragile definitely but it
still manages to sustain a small
population of about 2,000 or so named
characters plus an uncountable number of
nameless NPCs plus multiple large
species that suggest enough biodiversity
to support a population of multiple
large predators all this despite every
source of water being irradiated and
seemingly no fertile topsoil having been
blown away by the nuclear blast that
turned the white house into a crater
sure every human settlement seemed to
have at least one Brahman but what can
they possibly graze on this I can say is
a DC native but there's never been a
city tradition of farming so maybe like
today the area sustained entirely by
trade with more prime
for its neighbors but the pitch doesn't
look that fertile and as of writing this
I have no clue how much agriculture you
can find in the Commonwealth but let's
just assume that the capital wasteland
is barely sustainable now consider the
mirelurk they are angry but also tasty
my boy works finest made you could get
grandma sparkles right in the game
eating mirelurk meat gets you 20 hit
points while most other food only gets
you 5 if the capital wanted to grow you
can imagine them growing fat off this
nutritious yet untamed animal as a
staple of the wasteland diet now in
fallout lore mirelurks are descended
from modern Chesapeake Bay horseshoe
crabs in reality these crabs feed on
algae when they're young before moving
up to a diet of worms and other small
Steve at dwelling animals it's possible
that mirelurks have a similar diet they
don't eat humans
they supposedly only attack you in game
because they're very territorial and the
while the Potomac River makes your
Geiger counter go berserk it's possible
that some river life was sturdy enough
to adapt to radioactive waters enough to
support human sized fauna like the
mirelurks now if humans were to adapt
the environment with a massive project
like say turning the river from red
water to fresh water would that life
survive the transition and if they
didn't survive with the food chain break
and with the capital wasteland lose a
keystone species obviously this is fan
speculation are not really based on
anything in the world of the game but in
reality societies can and have collapsed
due to unexpected effects of human
activity regardless of how beneficial it
may have seemed at the time not that the
game is realistic in any way I mean
we're supposed to believe that two
hundred years is both long enough for
scorpions to evolve into the size of
sheep and short enough to still have
unscanned instant macaroni and cheese
also ghouls are [ __ ] you'd think
you'd never seen a ghoul up close before
did you know that radiation is magic you
know what
I think I'm turning into a ghoul you
should be turning into a corpse but of
course fallout isn't based on science
it's based on a rich tradition of
post-apocalyptic science fiction
there's HG Wells the shape of things to
come which describes the course of a
world ravaged by a war fueled by a
terrible new technology there's Ray
Bradbury there will come soft rains
about a form of automated technology
that would outlast humanity there's
Walter M Miller Jr's a canticle for
Leibowitz in which an order of monks
based in the American Southwest preserve
civilization by treating pre-war
technology like sacred artifacts not
unlike the Brotherhood of Steel Fair's
Stanley Kubrick's dr. Strangelove which
ends with a nuclear apocalypse where a
government organization preserves his
population in a series of underground
vaults developed space for several
hundred thousand to five people could
easily be provided and of course there's
that deliciously ironic soundtrack
again
those vault maven points a similar
underground program in Harlan Ellison's
a boy and his dog which features a
society modeling itself on an absurd
path simile of 1950s America and its
star was a lone scavenger who wandered
the waves with his dog companion which
was a big influence on George Miller's
Mad Max films about another lone
wanderer albeit one who chose to help
various survivors of a far different
wasteland and of course the whole thing
is saturated with his snide take on the
naivete of atomic age 1950s America
reserved your family spot in a
state-of-the-art underground vault today
a snide take but infirm that's an
inaccurate one what do you suppose to do
when you see the face however there's
one part of 1950s Americana
but the Fallout series plays relatively
straight to the town of a free Road
estranged one Sunday the Western New
Vegas shows us in points most clearly
but the Western has had its influence on
the Fallout series from the very first
game most of the main plot points follow
the structure of plastic westerns
closely a stranger arrives in an unknown
society a stranger who's strong quick on
the draw or silver-tongued someone who's
special in some way the town warily
recognized a difference between
themselves and the stranger though they
may not fully accept the stranger they
give him a special status the town is
beset by villains villains who are
stronger than society society is in
danger until the stranger fights and
defeats the villains the stranger loses
their special status and fully
integrates into society that's fallout
in a nutshell a democratic power
struggle between the individual and the
community a black hat a white hat and a
town that ain't big enough for both of
them of course as with all games the
interest lies in the choice you have
maybe the town deserves the black hat
maybe it belongs to no one at all you're
a stranger who rides into town you meet
the local sheriff I don't know why but
ooh boy but the choice as to whether
that town lives or dies you could assist
us in erasing this little accident off
the map that choice is yours take away
the combat and fallout can be seen as a
game of relationships the relationship
between individual and society between
society and the state between the state
in the environment between the
environment and the individual it
foregrounds the impact of an
individual's choice on the region
because those individual choices add up
remember Jared Diamond's fifth factor in
a collapse was humanity's response to
hardship survival is not hardship it's a
decision yes fallout has hundreds of sad
stories lying in its ruins senseless
violence lasting scars the ghosts of
happier times but I think at its heart
beyond the brown ruins and black humour
the Fallout series is inherently
optimistic despite experiencing the
worst possible tragedy there is still
life on earth and we have the agency to
keep life going no matter how strange
life may become because even if war
never changes for worse or for better
we dim so we're on the moon
and someday it maybe tomorrow you will
suddenly