5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
A few people cried.
Most people were silent.
I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita.
"Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
The story of the atomic age is an old story.
A story about genies and bottles.
Of doctors and their ill-fated monsters.
A tale of how creator can grow to hate the created.
This, is one of those stories, only this time, the doctors won’t live to tell the tale.
And the monsters they unleash, will plague their descendants and impede mankind’s progress
for centuries.
The Fallout series gives us a look into a future where human civilization not only blows
itself to hell, but it stays there.
Not for a mere decade or two, but for centuries mankind is a shadow of its former self- a
twisted parody of the old world.
200 years is a long time, and in most places in Fallout’s wasteland, man has done seemingly
little to make things look as they once were.
People like to point out that brooms have survived the apocalypse, but not our desire
to use them it would seem.
Corpses still sit in Diners as if the bombs dropped yesterday, and much of America feels
frozen in time.
Unrealistically frozen in time, some would say.
But what if this version of the post-apocalypse wasn’t so farfetched?
To understand why Fallout might look like Fallout, it would help to understand its lore
and it would help to understand the psychology of people.
Let’s start with people.
In 2287 America is fragmented.
If you were descended from a survivor of the Great War, chances are you either live in
a Vault, a burnt out home, a small backwards tribe, or if you’re one of the lucky ones,
maybe you live in one of the larger settlements- under the heel of local government.
While each has its distinct advantages, the threats are more or less the same.
When the bombs fell, civilization hit the reset button, and that means a certain degree
of lawlessness.
We’re never explicitly told how many Raider tribes exist in the Wasteland, but each installment
of the franchise introduces us to about a half-dozen more of them, so they must be everywhere.
A constant threat in most places in the wasteland.
And yes, that includes NCR territory.
This is the first point we really should highlight when talking about Fallout’s setting, because
I think it’s hard for many of us to imagine just how much daily life would change if our
next door neighbor could raid and pillage us at any moment.
It’s just one of the reasons why Fallout’s world might look like an unmade bed generations
after the bombs fell, because if mom and dad did survive the bloody days directly following
the apocalypse it’s likely because they put their needs for survival above everything
else, and taught their kids to do the same.
Remember, cleanliness might be next to godliness, but a clean home won’t necessarily discourage
your neighbor from bashing in your brains if it means he gets his next meal.
Why should your family waste their energy upholding social norms that
no longer exist when food is scarce and clean drinking water is a luxury.
As a matter fact, if you really think about it, a dirty shack might be a rather smart
place to raise your nuclear family.
Which home do you think a traveling raider gang is more likely to target?
Keep in mind that the people of the middle ages literally threw their own shit in the
streets, and suddenly it’s not so hard to image post-apocalyptic societies that might
have a different definition for what constitutes a clean neighborhood.
Let’s not get too carried away though.
Good sanitation is certainly a survival trait, and it’s something that post-apocalyptic
moms and dads would want to pass down to their children.
But we’re not talking about disinfecting wounds here, we’re talking about the more
menial tasks.
Not everything we do to keep our environment clean is necessary for our survival, and if
you don’t think that’s true, I’d invite you to visit a college dorm someday.
So yes, with all that said, it’s important to point out that not every survivor in Fallout’s
wasteland is a dirty, disorganized savage.
During our travels we sometimes encounter entire communities that are just the opposite.
They organize, engineer, build new structures, and exploit the natural resources around them
like their pre-war ancestors did.
They aren’t barbarians, they’re civilized.
Why the differences?
Why do some wastelanders appear more refined, while others don’t seem to mind sharing
their neighborhood with a bunch of pre-war skeletons?
For some, the answer is simple.
You see, when a segment of America’s population is spared the daily struggle immediately following
the Great War, they have time for other things.
Remember those social norms we mentioned earlier.
Well, they still exist in the wasteland.
Shady Sands, Vault City, Arroyo, New Vegas, and Nellis Air Force Base.
All of them relatively more developed, and all of them have ties to the Vaults in some
way.
So yes, some parts of the wasteland have certainly progressed more than others, but there’s
still something we’re missing.
Human nature and basic psychology helps shed a light, sure, but it’s probably not enough
to explain two entire centuries of stunted growth.
To help us fill in more of the picture, we should probably turn to an important aspect
of Fallout’s lore, and for that, we’ll bring in the expert.
America's scars might heal and perhaps the wasteland won't be a wasteland forever.
But to understand the stagnation that exists in this world, you have to understand that
the genetic deck of cards have been reshuffled permanently.
Imagine for second, a world where humanity is effectively reinserted back into the food
chain.
You are now just as likely to die being eaten alive as you from old age.
The Forced Evolutionary Virus.
This is the genie that sadly won’t go back into the bottle so easily.
Deathclaws, Super Mutants, the Nightkin.
All of them deadly, and some of them smarter than humans, and able to reproduce.
The atomic bomb might have been the worst thing to happen to America, but the FEV was
perhaps the worst thing to happen to man.
It’s easy to forget that there was once a time when our ancestors were hunted and
devoured by prehistoric cats, but hunted and devoured we were.
Back then, we developed technologies that would eventually save us, but in a world where
Deathclaws can rip through power armor, and Nightkin can tear out your spleen without
being seen?
Well, let’s just say mankind has serious competition again.
If you’re just assuming that our species will be the ones to rebuild and ultimately
come out on top in Fallout’s world, I’d invite you to think again.
The very first game in the franchise actually questioned this, and those who played Fallout
1 will tell you that the mutants came pretty damn close to winning that game.
Sure, humanity is still the meanest kid on the block in the post-apocalypse; however,
the people of the wasteland should remember that Darwin doesn’t take sides, and in a
world where science is doing everything it can to make you obsolete, well, let’s just
say it wouldn’t be so crazy to imagine a future in Fallout’s timeline where humanity
never fully recovers.
After all, in Fallout’s world, it’s not just the pre-war scientist who is trying to
make us obsolete, but the post-war scientist as well.
In fact, if Stephen Hawking were here, he’d tell us to just forget about the FEV- human
civilization is doomed in Fallout’s world because of AI.
But I digress, that’s a whole different video.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to me rabble on about the decline of America
in the 23rd century.
If you’d like to learn more I’d highly recommend downloading the Wasteland Codex
on your next playthrough of Fallout 4, which I’m sure you’ve already done, right?
The Codex adds a fully voiced lore database to your pip-boy, and the Storyteller is updating
it this weekend with 16 NEW unlockable entries, including a couple entries about synths.
Links in the description.
ALSO, for our viewers residing in NCR controlled territory, the Storyteller will be co-hosting
a panel at the SAC Gamer Expo on December 10th.
So yeah, go meet the Storyteller in the flesh and have him record a voice mailbox greeting
for you or something.
That is it Bethesda fans.
I’ve been Josh, and for our next video, I'm thinking the metaphysics of Morrowind.
We’ll catch you later.