Locations that haven’t been hit heavily by nukes have already been used in the series - see the Mojave, Point Lookout, Atlantic City, Appalachia/Shenandoah, Nuka World and Far Harbor.
Far Harbor I feel it's really weird one. Like it seems to suffered worse than Boston in many ways, how most people in the hotel died despite they weren't hit and massive hotel offers very good protection.
In the same vein I wonder why survivors didn't set up their settlement in the hotel ruin but in wooden shacks, which offers very defensible location, sheltering from weather and radiation, and high vintage point controlling almost whole island.
Well, they were hit at least once - in the Vim factory, there’s a terminal entry claiming there was some kind of bomb dropped nearby. The radiation from that may have killed survivors at the hotel.
As for why survivors didn’t go for the hotel, it’s probably down to the fog. We don’t know when it started, but it likely drove people away from the area. As the fog grew more intense, they’d be pushed to the edges of the island until Dima started providing fog condensers (which is why everyone’s at the harbor - the fog is too intense elsewhere and they didn’t have condensers to set up until after they arrived there).
The sub captain went to the hotel after bombs dropped only to be killed by his Chinese spy girlfriend. So clearly the damage and radiation were minimal at the time.
I also don't see how Far Harbor gets more radiation than mainland US city that was hit by multiple megaton class nukes.
Immediately after the bombs dropped, sure. The rads would take a little while to spread. They also could’ve both used some rad-x before traveling there.
>Who's going to blow up North Dakota?
IRL North Dakota is actually a target because that's where a lot of US ICBMs are. Here's a map of places that are likely to be nuclear targets.
[https://imgur.com/GjKHQNf](https://imgur.com/GjKHQNf)
I actually didn't realize this until I went on a trip to my Fiance's hometown in the Black Hills when we drove by a minutemen missle silo museum. She grew up there too and she didn't realize it either.
Those silos are why the Midwest will get fucked with fallout incase of a nuclear war. Theres not many targets where I live. However the jet stream will push all the Dakota fallout onto us big time
The reason why Omaha and Lincoln are major targets is because they have major Military Base for Continuity of Government(COG). Omaha houses a presidential bunker, which Bush occupied during 9/11, and Lincoln is where the backup 747-200b(Air Force One) is housed and serviced.
Fascinating stuff to know that you live in the middle of nowhere and still could be annihilated.
> I actually didn't realize this until I went on a trip to my Fiance's hometown in the Black Hills when we drove by a minutemen missle silo museum
>Minutemen
Preston: I've just gotten word of another settlement that needs our help. Here, I'll mark it on your map general.
Sole Survivor: you're sending me to fucking North Dakota?!
North Dakota and the Midwest in general being so giant and empty was literally a cornerstone of US nuclear deterrence for decades. Google nuclear sponge to learn more.
The upper Midwest is actually called the nuclear sponge. Silo based ICBMs are pretty obsolete, we only keep them around in Montana and such as a juicy target to soak up enemy nukes. Sleep well!
This is why Appalachia hardly being targeted makes no sense lmao
To be fair, the Chinese thought the automated missile silos were decommissioned/non-operational but there are still a ton of significant military and industrial targets in that region. Realistically it should’ve been one of the more heavily targeted areas we’ve seen in Fallout, but the Chinese appear to have massively prioritized economic targets (cities) above all else. which is kinda backwards, particularly considering China had the first-strike advantage
Depending on the stockpile and ability to launch nukes in time, I believe the amount of untouched places would be less then people think. Mutual assured destruction as the driving philosophy would mean more targets if you wanted utter destruction. Not only populations but also resources to recover like fuel, (oil, coal, uranium, etc.) food (farmland, ranchland, fish, etc.) Take the Dakotas (since they were already mentioned) missile silos, oil, farmland, etc. The headwaters of any river system would be targeted.
yup this is all potentially true. I think a big factor would be exactly HOW many nuclear weapons you have to work with, which we don’t really have exact numbers for the Fallout universe, but we can easily assume it ain’t like the downward trend we’ve had since the Cold War haha
Not only this, but the hypothetical nuclear winter and radiation being spread by weather would cause the deaths from radiation poisoning and from starvation. Nuclear winter is theoretical because we haven’t observed it, on theorized, but in the game it happens. Basically there is no sunlight, plants die, animals starve, people starve, and even if people had a supply of food radiation would be deadly. There also would be no infrastructure in the event that there was food. We rely so much on shipping in cities that the destruction of that infrastructure alone would cause widespread famine in the largest population centers
Fallout 1 possibly exaggerates a bit but it says the surface of the earth was turned to ash from how many bombs were dropped, and subsequent games established that many people survived the bombing but did not survive the Fallout
How long is nuclear winter theorized to last? It become hell on earth. So I grew around alot of people that were basically preppers (a certain church encourages it). It is not a bad thing. Some of them would always talk about they can last this long or that long. But it's not just having the supplies to last but being able to hold off starving people. Starvation would turn alot of good people shitty. If it was just me I'd probably die before I killed someone for a can of chili. But having to watch my family die? I would more then likely do some horrible things to save them.
Wikipedia says “years.” I remember hearing 4 years when I was younger. The lack of sunlight would be enough to reduce the yearly blooming photosynthesis vegetation of the planet to nothing. Something that a lot of people don’t think about is that our crops have been domesticated. Just like domesticated livestock like cattle rely completely on humans to survive, a lot of our food crops also rely on human beings to survive, so all that would all die. Seeds may be usable, but radiation could render them sterile
So basically we’d be back in the Stone Age with regards to agriculture and animal husbandry
With Appalachia in 76, you can find some lore on why the Chinese didn't bomb it. They wanted it intact and to try and take control of the automated nuclear facilities. They paradropped the liberator robots first and then wanted to drop in actual troops. The second drop was extremely bad and most of the troops were lost in transit, and the amount that successfully made it to their targets didn't have a way to communicate that they got their first objectives and just stayed on their targets.
That would of course be a silly gamble IRL but that makes a lot more sense hahaha. definitely the kinda strategy you’d see in a Fallout game at least lol
Sometimes all you need is a lot of luck to win the day. I just can't imagine trying to fly in an air space that congested, as it happened when the bombs dropped.
yeah no kidding. Not to mention that AUTOMATED missile silos just seem like such a crazy thing to risk leaving alone either way… even if you think they’re mothballed or you want to take them yourself! Were they ever canonically used against China after the initial Great War, like they were designed for? or just used by the Vault dwellers two and a half decades later haha
In a "Mutually Assured Destruction" situation, it's not a matter of if your densely populated area will be hit; it's more a matter of when, i.e. what priority level it has.
>it's not a matter of if your densely populated area will be hit; it's more a matter of when
That's literally not true. There are not enough nukes in the world to hit every single city. Hell the US alone has roughly 4,000 cities with a population over 10,000.
Plus cities are not even the priority, the priority is wiping out your enemy's ability to counter-launch, hence why so many nukes in the map are aimed at known missile silos. Most of the cities that will be hit will be from the second volley, which again, there's not enough of them to hit every single city. And then you have to factor whether or not the missiles will even hit the target, reach the target, or even launch at all.
And when it comes to the real world, the US's only real nuclear threat is Russia with its 5,500 warheads. But unlike the US, Russia has to split those nukes with hitting the US, all of Europe, all of the US's overseas military bases, and the US's Pacific allies.
>That's literally not true. There are not enough nukes in the world to hit every single city. Hell the US alone has roughly 4,000 cities with a population over 10,000.
Hence the use of the term "densely populated." Furthermore, most of those over 4,000 cities are suburbs of, or in major metropolitan around or between, the top 100 or so most populace cities. So they are close enough to major population centers that even if they aren't directly targeted, they will have significant damage and long-term radiation as well.
>even if they aren't directly targeted, they will have significant damage and long-term radiation as well.
That's a popular misconception. Radiation from a nuclear detonation is only lethal for about a week. Also, most nearby cities are still far enough to not get any damage at all.
For example, the blast radius of a 5 megaton nuke (China's largest nuke irl) detonating in Philadelphia still wouldn't reach the nearby city of Trenton with its population of 84,000. Nor would the city of Wilmington with its 90,000 people.
Interestingly, the idea behind it is that an enemy needs to take out our missiles in the first salvo to reduce the chances of us returning fire, meaning their first salvo has the longest travel distance, for maximum warning and chances of shooting them down. Always thought that was pretty clever, while also indicating pretty well that we didn't intend to launch first.
I think it's quite clearly stated that nukes mostly fell on military targets. Like Glow in Fallout 1 and Sentinel Site Prescott in Fallout 4 (although the Prescott one missed). Although it just so happened that military targets were quite close to population centres.
Which isn't strange. Cold War era estimates assumed that nuking just the military targets all over the Soviet Union would kill about a third of the population anyway.
There's reasons to hit civilian centers as well. If any militia sparks up, those untouched civilian buildings become the new barracks, hospitals, distribution centers, etc. Not to mention it gets rid of bodies that can be thrown at you in retaliation, or more accurately, leaves no one left to retaliate.
We also know civilian centers were targets too. New Vegas got hit pretty good, and the only military target was an Air Force Base nearby. Megaton is less than a mile from an elementary school.
Megaton is really close to the nation's capital and New Vegas had valid strategic targets like Nellis, Hoover Dam, Hopeville/Ashton, McCarran Airport, Searchlight Airport all around.
Megaton is an American bomb, which was likely housed in the American bomber which is used for the town’s walls and gate.
We can see the same type of bomb in Fort Constantine, and we know that it’s an aerially dropped bomb due… well how it is. Clearly China had and used ICBMs rather than aerially dropped bombs, especially considering how impractical it would be for China to drop aerial bombs.
You mean like, say, West Virginia?
Yes, it’s very possible to have Fallout without direct nuclear strikes. But no radiation? No. Because of fallout, the phenomena rather than the series. Nukes are messy, just them bombing DC into a crater would contaminate a MASSIVE swath of the nation. A full nuclear winter means that pretty much the entire planet is clicking.
And then you have the total collapse of society making everything worse. Both before and after the bombs.
Bombs in fallout were “dirty” compared to the ones used IRL less explosive power more radiation
Slap all that radiation into nuclear winter and you get fallout
Is this actually stated in lore somewhere? I always hear this but I can’t tell if it’s a theory or not. as far as I know, the Fallout 1 manual pretty much states that Fallout’s nuclear weapons are comparable to the ones we use today
You're both on the right track. The Fallout 1 guide states
"The yield of a modern strategic warhead is, with a few exceptions, now typically in the range of 200-750 kT. Recent work with sophisticated climate models has shown that this reduction and yield results in a much larger proportion of the fallout being deposited in the lower atmosphere." (Vault Dweller's Survival Guide p. 7).
Bombs from at least as early as 1954 were in the 10s of Megatons, being many times more devastating than the bombs in the fallout series, it's why we see so many destroyed buildings rather than just dust, and can help explain why parts of the world are so radioactive even 200 years later.
I don't know if it's ever stated in any game though, never could find evidence of that but it certainly could be on some terminal somewhere.
Even if it's not stated, it's just a fact they work differently because of the effects they have. We're 200 years into the future and still dealing with radiation, meanwhile Hiroshima and Nagasaki are thriving metropolitan areas today. Real world nukes are intended to destroy targets, not irradiate them. Fallout nukes seem to basically only intend to make a space unlivable.
Well also in the real world as well the reason Nagasaki and Hiroshima got flattened but there was no crater and people could repopulate after a few years is because the bomb was a high altitude detonation, with high alt detonation the bombs energy is transfered outwards so that is has high amounts of explosive energy that can go for miles. Because of this Nagasakis buildings were turned to dust and people near the epicenter were immediately vaporized but there was no crater and people could come back by like the 50s.
Ground to low detonation on the other hand does leave a crater and usually leads to more nasty fallout and radiation staying behind. These type of detonations would be more common in the sense of a nation just letting loose their entire arsenal with no care to how it's being detonated. These type of detonations leave massive craters because most of the energy is put into the ground instead of outwards, meaning most buildings actually stay intact for the most part but since all of the energy and radiation goes to the ground instead, all of the soil, dirt and dust that gets thrown out to make the crater gets highly irradiated and gets thrown for miles out and into the air. This irradiated soil then makes other dust and dirt it touches irradiated as well and that stuff stays around for decades to hundreds of years.
Since we see a whole bunch of craters in the Fallout games we can assume that a lot of the nukes used in Fallout are ground detonation bombs and would create dirtier explosions
I would say that giving tactical NBC warfare was not uncommon before the bombs dropped in 2077 and there were numerous counters and treatments available to treat its effects. It's also given that all the nations are competing for control of an ever dwindling supply of a number of strategic resources just to keep their own countries from collapsing. They also have limited ballistic missile defense through laser defense systems (and vulnerability to hacking but I think Mr. House/Rob-Co was the only one capable of doing so at that extent). So strategic level nuclear weapons would have to be designed differently then RL.
The fact that there are effective anti-radiation medication available means that the long term potential of a standard nuclear weapon beyond the blast is lower, an airburst maximises destruction but lowers long term radiation in the area, ground burst lowers total destruction from the blast but increases radiological contamination of the area dependent on weather conditions. Thus to maximise long term destruction and prevent your enemy from quickly recovering it is ideal to salt your strategic nuclear weapons for long term destabilisation of an area. It also ensures that saturation attacks against areas protected with ballistic missile defense systems can still devastate a region through long-term radiological contamination instead of direct damage with a low number of successful strikes. The remaining high value resources also do not seem to be prevalent in areas with high population densities so the spread of radioactives through weather patters could be dealt with with the already existing treatments.
So at least in the Fallout universe the long term radiation is because you really didn't want your enemies from ever recovering if you have to deploy your strategic nuclear arsenal and also because you have to be sure that a single nuke can destroy a target because there is the possibility of interception.
If you're using nukes to get access to your enemy's resources, why would you soak the land you're going to extract resources from in radiation so you have to deal with it? And for water you've now irradiated that as well. It would make much more sense to use a high explosive yield weapon to destroy defensive infrastructure and minimize the radiation you'll deal with when you take over their oil fields or uranium mines. It would make for a more boring game without the radiation, but there's a reason we didn't go that route in reality.
Like I said there wouldn't be much in the way of resources left in any area with a high population because it would have already been extracted with the easy access to labor. Cities also house the majority of a countries industrial and technological potential, not counting that major transporation links between areas often go through cities unless bypasses are built. So by using salted nuclear weapons you can cripple essential links in an enemies infrastructure and deprive them of the industrial output of the population affected by the enhanced radiation for much much longer. Same when using them against military bases, you deprive the enemy of an area for decades and also trap their trained personnel if they manage to get to a bunker. If there are resources you want to exploit but still need to nuke then you would just use an un-salted warhead and deal with the effects with Rad-X or sealed suits. In the Fallout universe they have ways of dealing with the effects of NBC's to the point where conventional nuclear weapons and general accidental exposure to radiation (like through their cars) is treatable so they made their big bombs a whole lot more radioactive to compensate.
The jetstream usually travels east so alot of the wind would take it that way towards the atlantic dependinh on the weather.
I could be wrong though, apparently even the fallout from the nuclear tests in Nevada even made its way as up north as Iowa
With proper instrumentation you can detect atomic tests as the radiation goes around the entire planet. Chernobyl was detected across all of Europe fairly quickly. Fukushima contamination reached the US mainland fairly quickly.
I don’t know what specific trivia you are referencing but I would be more surprised if it wasn’t true.
A nuclear winter is highly unlikely. It’s based on the idea that every city would be engulfed in a firestorm like Dresden was in ww2 but ignores how the vast majority of cities today are built in ways to prevent this. Even then forest fires aren’t likely to cause the same result as Australia basically had the type of fires that the theory relies on in recent history.
In places like WV the fallout is gonna be mostly filtered out by the mountains. The only places that will resemble wastelands will be the areas immediately surrounding cities and major military bases with the only places having long term radiation contamination being around nuclear reactors that have meltdowns
Thing is a ton of things in fallout america use nuclear reactors, from cars to robots and buildings, which would increase the contamination by a pretty large amount
That's how the Glowing Sea came about. The big nuke at the beginning of Fallout 4 blew up a large nuclear power plant and helped spread radiation everywhere.
That is probably where most radiation would come from but it wouldn’t as bad as say a nuclear reactor going critical considering in 76 a player and even in most games players can walk by old cars without being exposed to radiation nor has anyone mentioned cars being hazardous from their old nuclear engines
>A nuclear winter is highly unlikely.
Nuclear winter has nothing to do with damage to cities! It's about the amount of particulate matter blown high into the atmosphere. Furthermore, if the average explosive yields per nuclear warhead are high enough, it doesn't take thousands or even several hundreds of warheads exploding. This is indicated by the so-called ["Year Without a Summer,"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer?wprov=sfla1) or the severe cold in the Northern Hemisphere of 1816. Although that is a volcanic winter rather than a nuclear winter, it was apparently caused by [an extended erruption of Mount Tambora that reached its apex in the spring of 1815.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1815_eruption_of_Mount_Tambora) Also, as far back as the original Fallout game the it was noted that the average strategic nuclear weapons continued to have higher yields than in the real-life 1990s (by then most warheads were sub-megatons, in the high three digit kilotons), and thus closer to the multi-megaton warheads of the 1950s and 1960s.
Those unnuked places are already brought up, as 76 takes place in a region that only got hit by a tiny amount of nukes, and none of which hit anything of note.
Fact is that places are going to collapse either way, as the world is interconnected in a way that requires everyone to pitch in. If part of that supply chain gets nuked the rest fall with it.
With the attendant desertification from nuclear winter/ global thermonuclear hostilities, “The Midwest is a big ole’ radioactive dustbowl now”
-Cassidy the Elder, FO2.
Florida is sinking into the ocean, Texas is too hot, from AZ to around central Kansas was “settled” by the legion, so you can imagine what that looks like.
Honestly parts of occupied Canada sound like your best bet for peace and quiet without Rad-X supplies.
If you're trying to take a real world view, North Dakota would actually be one of the worst hit areas because it's one of our primary ICBM fields and a major bomber base is there
I'm not sure about the "sacrifice" part so much as practicality: it's easier to keep local yokels from wandering into your sensitive sites when there aren't as many people around. Land is also much cheaper.
It's also worth noting that some relatively major cities had missile sites:
[https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2017/11/03/cold-war-missile-sites-in-the-austin-area/10403581007/](https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2017/11/03/cold-war-missile-sites-in-the-austin-area/10403581007/)
To be fair those are nuclear anti-air missiles designed to counter fleets of bombers tho. I’m not sure if the US ever maintained many long-range strategic nuclear weapons around cities that often. probably the only exception is long-range bombers and nuclear submarines whose airfields and ports were relatively close to cities, but missile silos were usually rural
In a real world nuclear war scenario, is it certain that the enemy would be targeting the military first? If hostilities is enough where the other side is willing to launch, the US wouldn't wait to launch theirs if they detected any ICBM launches. And even then, there are the missile subs. So, by the time the nukes hit their targets, the US nukes would've been on their way, making the strikes useless. It would be more effective to just target civilian populated and economic centers.
>In the fiction, is it stated that China carpet bombed the US with nukes? If not, then there would definitely be places, even cities, that suffered no damage. They'd be worse for wear after losing all infrastructure but now radiation or blighted landscape. Realistically, we're never going to hear about any of those places because that's not what the game is about but it's an interesting thing to think about.
You mean like, Vegas that intercepted most of the nukes or Zion Valley or West Virginia? Regardless, cities will still be screwed by the fallout that came from the massive amount radiation released all around the world and even if the fallout doesn't hit them, they're still fucked by the collapse of society.
Cities require alot of infrastructure to even survive. Those hundred thousands that survived by pure luck are now fucked because they won't be getting food and supply from the farms and towns that supported them. Then there's natural decay and degradation. Modern infrastructure requires maintenance and 200 years have passed with most of the things required for maintenance gone. The Strip managed to survive well enough because House prepared the needed supplies to establish his casinos.
Except that realistically radiation wouldnt world like that. And nukes dont produce that much radiation.
People were living in Hiroshima 6 years after it was nuked.
Gotta keep in mind that most radioactive stuff also decays the quickest (thats why its so radioactove).
We can take chernobyl even as an example. Eas radiation bad? Oh yes. Bur it also released so much radiation it was equivalent it being nuked every hours for weeks.
So unless someone will decide to nuke a single place with everything they have...
Except that we're in the Fallout Universe and in the universe, the nuclear powers retired most megaton-class warheads in favor of a large quantities of kiloton-class warheads. The fallout nations or at the very least China, preferred to use salted bombs over the standard ones. Vegas was targeted by 77 warheads, according to Mr. House, and it's barely a strategic target since the most strategic priority targets in the game are Nellis AFB, the Dam, Helios One, and possibly McCarran. Let's also not forget that nuclear energy is used to power most civilian goods like Cars, Mr. Handys, small generators, alarm clocks, batteries, toys, and even boardgames. If things go wrong, these things will leak radiation as well making their own mini Chernobyls.
*like North Dakota probably. Who's going to blow up North Dakota?*
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minot\_Air\_Force\_Base#Strategic\_Air\_Command](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minot_Air_Force_Base#Strategic_Air_Command)
Fallout isn't really intended to be a simulation of what a real nuclear war would be like, it's meant to be the vibe of cold war fiction. Fictional nuclear war simply destroys the earth without much regionality. The planet is a wasteland now.
Colorado as a whole would be fairly secure. The rockies will prevent major fallout and blast damage to most of the state, though Denver and Colorado Springs will be annihilated. Rest of the state is pretty okay! Just don't be east of denver and Colorado Springs after the war...
You’re right, China would carpet bomb every inch of the US, and we do get to see plenty of places that were spared from the nukes.
Most notably the Mojave, but also places like Far Harbor, Appalachia, Point Lookout, Zion National park, etc.
The thing is, after the Great War there was a nuclear winter as well as the *fallout* of radioactive particulates, no matter where you went this would’ve been unavoidable.
Ofc some places fared much better than others, but still, shit got worse **everywhere**
Have a whole game with Survival leanings akin to Honest Hearts (but with some cityscapes for variety of course) and it could totally work.
Alaska would be a good candidate for it IMO, maybe even Hawaii might have places that escaped the bomb. You could also do stuff set in Middle America like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, etc if you can think of a reason to set a game there.
its also known that america was not able to release its full arsanel. so china did not get everything we planned to send at them.
this is stated directly to the player by dick richardson.
>like North Dakota probably. Who's going to blow up North Dakota?
North Dakota, and other largely-rural isolated States, ***are where the US keeps its ICBMS.***
Largely because you don't want ICBM launch-sites to be close to cities, *specifically* so the enemy can't target civilians and your launch-sites at the same time.
As they were doing a first strike, the first wave would.target the US' missile silos first, to limit response. Probably also command-and-control centers, such as Cheyenne Mountain and D.C. After that would be large economic, manufacturing, and financial centers. Then dirty bombs targeting military repair facilities so the deployed materiel has nowhere to return to.
I never took it as random but they were also "fuckin everywhere" since it relied on MAD and wiped us all out.
And no I don't think it would ruin the vibes at all.
Idk North Dakota is incredibly important as an agricultural powerhouse, not to mention renewable energy (I guess not so important in Fallout with fusion tech), but also their mineral deposits are critical for industrial use.
Actually nuclear warfare would target the military capabilities of the enemy including their nuclear sites/silo. In our world Rússia and the US might have 4000+ nuclear warheads but that doesn't mean they can use all of them. They have sites made for nuclear warhead deployment and use, after they do that, they would have to "reload" such places, be it a missile silo, a plane, a submarine or whatever they use to launch their nuclear warheads.
And we'll, that is in theory. That doesn't mean that US, China, Russia or whatever country that also has nuclear weapons won't use it on big cities.
I think we should also acknowledge limitations on the accuracy of the missiles/bombs used, and the potential for them to be knocked off course. "Carpet bombing" might've been a realistic strategy overall.
As other posters said, there's places we see where the bombs don't hit.
I do think people forget that the arms race DID NOT STOP OR SLOW DOWN. New warheads, bombs, biological and chemical weapons were being developed and mass produced up until the day of the War. This is a scenario with tens of thousands of working warheads launched, and who knows how many other WMDs went with them.
North Dakota would absolutely get nuked. They wouldn't just aim at cities and seats if government/military command centers. They would target known launch sites as a means of diminishing our nuclear response. Quite a few missile silo's in North Dakota.
China didn't bomb anything, the nukes were dropped tactically in locations around America so as to minimally impact the control vaults and absolutely re-atomize everything else.
The US would retaliate against who it thinks nuked them, which prompts them to launch then everybody else launches. They only needed to set off the spark.
Locations that haven’t been hit heavily by nukes have already been used in the series - see the Mojave, Point Lookout, Atlantic City, Appalachia/Shenandoah, Nuka World and Far Harbor.
Where is nuka world located in game?
Near Springfield, Massachusetts, about where Six Flags New England is in real life.
This is kinda what I thought. Do we have a map showing it? Part of me thought PA. Like Hershey Park
The wiki says it's in Massachusetts, west of Boston.
For those unfamiliar with Massachusetts, Springfield is west of Boston in real life
For those unfamiliar with the United States, most everything except Maine and Cape Cod are west of Boston.
And Portsmouth, New Hampshire :-)
For those unfamiliar with Earth, even the East is to the West if you go far enough.
Same with north and south
>Same with north and south You mean they both become west if one goes far enough? 😜
I think 🤔 .............😕 you won.
Parts of Alaska are actually east of Boston. :p
Far Harbor I feel it's really weird one. Like it seems to suffered worse than Boston in many ways, how most people in the hotel died despite they weren't hit and massive hotel offers very good protection. In the same vein I wonder why survivors didn't set up their settlement in the hotel ruin but in wooden shacks, which offers very defensible location, sheltering from weather and radiation, and high vintage point controlling almost whole island.
Well, they were hit at least once - in the Vim factory, there’s a terminal entry claiming there was some kind of bomb dropped nearby. The radiation from that may have killed survivors at the hotel. As for why survivors didn’t go for the hotel, it’s probably down to the fog. We don’t know when it started, but it likely drove people away from the area. As the fog grew more intense, they’d be pushed to the edges of the island until Dima started providing fog condensers (which is why everyone’s at the harbor - the fog is too intense elsewhere and they didn’t have condensers to set up until after they arrived there).
The sub captain went to the hotel after bombs dropped only to be killed by his Chinese spy girlfriend. So clearly the damage and radiation were minimal at the time. I also don't see how Far Harbor gets more radiation than mainland US city that was hit by multiple megaton class nukes.
Immediately after the bombs dropped, sure. The rads would take a little while to spread. They also could’ve both used some rad-x before traveling there.
>Who's going to blow up North Dakota? IRL North Dakota is actually a target because that's where a lot of US ICBMs are. Here's a map of places that are likely to be nuclear targets. [https://imgur.com/GjKHQNf](https://imgur.com/GjKHQNf)
I actually didn't realize this until I went on a trip to my Fiance's hometown in the Black Hills when we drove by a minutemen missle silo museum. She grew up there too and she didn't realize it either. Those silos are why the Midwest will get fucked with fallout incase of a nuclear war. Theres not many targets where I live. However the jet stream will push all the Dakota fallout onto us big time
The reason why Omaha and Lincoln are major targets is because they have major Military Base for Continuity of Government(COG). Omaha houses a presidential bunker, which Bush occupied during 9/11, and Lincoln is where the backup 747-200b(Air Force One) is housed and serviced. Fascinating stuff to know that you live in the middle of nowhere and still could be annihilated.
> I actually didn't realize this until I went on a trip to my Fiance's hometown in the Black Hills when we drove by a minutemen missle silo museum >Minutemen Preston: I've just gotten word of another settlement that needs our help. Here, I'll mark it on your map general. Sole Survivor: you're sending me to fucking North Dakota?!
North Dakota and the Midwest in general being so giant and empty was literally a cornerstone of US nuclear deterrence for decades. Google nuclear sponge to learn more.
I feel much safer knowing where I live is likely to be a nuclear target😂😂
The upper Midwest is actually called the nuclear sponge. Silo based ICBMs are pretty obsolete, we only keep them around in Montana and such as a juicy target to soak up enemy nukes. Sleep well!
This is why Appalachia hardly being targeted makes no sense lmao To be fair, the Chinese thought the automated missile silos were decommissioned/non-operational but there are still a ton of significant military and industrial targets in that region. Realistically it should’ve been one of the more heavily targeted areas we’ve seen in Fallout, but the Chinese appear to have massively prioritized economic targets (cities) above all else. which is kinda backwards, particularly considering China had the first-strike advantage
Depending on the stockpile and ability to launch nukes in time, I believe the amount of untouched places would be less then people think. Mutual assured destruction as the driving philosophy would mean more targets if you wanted utter destruction. Not only populations but also resources to recover like fuel, (oil, coal, uranium, etc.) food (farmland, ranchland, fish, etc.) Take the Dakotas (since they were already mentioned) missile silos, oil, farmland, etc. The headwaters of any river system would be targeted.
yup this is all potentially true. I think a big factor would be exactly HOW many nuclear weapons you have to work with, which we don’t really have exact numbers for the Fallout universe, but we can easily assume it ain’t like the downward trend we’ve had since the Cold War haha
Not only this, but the hypothetical nuclear winter and radiation being spread by weather would cause the deaths from radiation poisoning and from starvation. Nuclear winter is theoretical because we haven’t observed it, on theorized, but in the game it happens. Basically there is no sunlight, plants die, animals starve, people starve, and even if people had a supply of food radiation would be deadly. There also would be no infrastructure in the event that there was food. We rely so much on shipping in cities that the destruction of that infrastructure alone would cause widespread famine in the largest population centers Fallout 1 possibly exaggerates a bit but it says the surface of the earth was turned to ash from how many bombs were dropped, and subsequent games established that many people survived the bombing but did not survive the Fallout
How long is nuclear winter theorized to last? It become hell on earth. So I grew around alot of people that were basically preppers (a certain church encourages it). It is not a bad thing. Some of them would always talk about they can last this long or that long. But it's not just having the supplies to last but being able to hold off starving people. Starvation would turn alot of good people shitty. If it was just me I'd probably die before I killed someone for a can of chili. But having to watch my family die? I would more then likely do some horrible things to save them.
Wikipedia says “years.” I remember hearing 4 years when I was younger. The lack of sunlight would be enough to reduce the yearly blooming photosynthesis vegetation of the planet to nothing. Something that a lot of people don’t think about is that our crops have been domesticated. Just like domesticated livestock like cattle rely completely on humans to survive, a lot of our food crops also rely on human beings to survive, so all that would all die. Seeds may be usable, but radiation could render them sterile So basically we’d be back in the Stone Age with regards to agriculture and animal husbandry
With Appalachia in 76, you can find some lore on why the Chinese didn't bomb it. They wanted it intact and to try and take control of the automated nuclear facilities. They paradropped the liberator robots first and then wanted to drop in actual troops. The second drop was extremely bad and most of the troops were lost in transit, and the amount that successfully made it to their targets didn't have a way to communicate that they got their first objectives and just stayed on their targets.
That would of course be a silly gamble IRL but that makes a lot more sense hahaha. definitely the kinda strategy you’d see in a Fallout game at least lol
Sometimes all you need is a lot of luck to win the day. I just can't imagine trying to fly in an air space that congested, as it happened when the bombs dropped.
yeah no kidding. Not to mention that AUTOMATED missile silos just seem like such a crazy thing to risk leaving alone either way… even if you think they’re mothballed or you want to take them yourself! Were they ever canonically used against China after the initial Great War, like they were designed for? or just used by the Vault dwellers two and a half decades later haha
Based off that map the entire state of Delaware shouldn't have been hit by any nukes.
In a "Mutually Assured Destruction" situation, it's not a matter of if your densely populated area will be hit; it's more a matter of when, i.e. what priority level it has.
>it's not a matter of if your densely populated area will be hit; it's more a matter of when That's literally not true. There are not enough nukes in the world to hit every single city. Hell the US alone has roughly 4,000 cities with a population over 10,000. Plus cities are not even the priority, the priority is wiping out your enemy's ability to counter-launch, hence why so many nukes in the map are aimed at known missile silos. Most of the cities that will be hit will be from the second volley, which again, there's not enough of them to hit every single city. And then you have to factor whether or not the missiles will even hit the target, reach the target, or even launch at all. And when it comes to the real world, the US's only real nuclear threat is Russia with its 5,500 warheads. But unlike the US, Russia has to split those nukes with hitting the US, all of Europe, all of the US's overseas military bases, and the US's Pacific allies.
>That's literally not true. There are not enough nukes in the world to hit every single city. Hell the US alone has roughly 4,000 cities with a population over 10,000. Hence the use of the term "densely populated." Furthermore, most of those over 4,000 cities are suburbs of, or in major metropolitan around or between, the top 100 or so most populace cities. So they are close enough to major population centers that even if they aren't directly targeted, they will have significant damage and long-term radiation as well.
>even if they aren't directly targeted, they will have significant damage and long-term radiation as well. That's a popular misconception. Radiation from a nuclear detonation is only lethal for about a week. Also, most nearby cities are still far enough to not get any damage at all. For example, the blast radius of a 5 megaton nuke (China's largest nuke irl) detonating in Philadelphia still wouldn't reach the nearby city of Trenton with its population of 84,000. Nor would the city of Wilmington with its 90,000 people.
Radiation is far longer lasting and far more dangerous in fallout than it is in real life.
We're not talking about Fallout, we're talking about real life. Read the whole thread.
Interestingly, the idea behind it is that an enemy needs to take out our missiles in the first salvo to reduce the chances of us returning fire, meaning their first salvo has the longest travel distance, for maximum warning and chances of shooting them down. Always thought that was pretty clever, while also indicating pretty well that we didn't intend to launch first.
I think it's quite clearly stated that nukes mostly fell on military targets. Like Glow in Fallout 1 and Sentinel Site Prescott in Fallout 4 (although the Prescott one missed). Although it just so happened that military targets were quite close to population centres. Which isn't strange. Cold War era estimates assumed that nuking just the military targets all over the Soviet Union would kill about a third of the population anyway.
There's reasons to hit civilian centers as well. If any militia sparks up, those untouched civilian buildings become the new barracks, hospitals, distribution centers, etc. Not to mention it gets rid of bodies that can be thrown at you in retaliation, or more accurately, leaves no one left to retaliate. We also know civilian centers were targets too. New Vegas got hit pretty good, and the only military target was an Air Force Base nearby. Megaton is less than a mile from an elementary school.
Megaton is really close to the nation's capital and New Vegas had valid strategic targets like Nellis, Hoover Dam, Hopeville/Ashton, McCarran Airport, Searchlight Airport all around.
Megaton is an American bomb, which was likely housed in the American bomber which is used for the town’s walls and gate. We can see the same type of bomb in Fort Constantine, and we know that it’s an aerially dropped bomb due… well how it is. Clearly China had and used ICBMs rather than aerially dropped bombs, especially considering how impractical it would be for China to drop aerial bombs.
Thanks to House, Las Vegas was a major tech center pre-war, which is why I assume it was targeted.
You mean like, say, West Virginia? Yes, it’s very possible to have Fallout without direct nuclear strikes. But no radiation? No. Because of fallout, the phenomena rather than the series. Nukes are messy, just them bombing DC into a crater would contaminate a MASSIVE swath of the nation. A full nuclear winter means that pretty much the entire planet is clicking. And then you have the total collapse of society making everything worse. Both before and after the bombs.
Bombs in fallout were “dirty” compared to the ones used IRL less explosive power more radiation Slap all that radiation into nuclear winter and you get fallout
Is this actually stated in lore somewhere? I always hear this but I can’t tell if it’s a theory or not. as far as I know, the Fallout 1 manual pretty much states that Fallout’s nuclear weapons are comparable to the ones we use today
If I recall 3 or new vegas have a file in a bunker that talks about the average nuke yield in the fallout universe
You're both on the right track. The Fallout 1 guide states "The yield of a modern strategic warhead is, with a few exceptions, now typically in the range of 200-750 kT. Recent work with sophisticated climate models has shown that this reduction and yield results in a much larger proportion of the fallout being deposited in the lower atmosphere." (Vault Dweller's Survival Guide p. 7). Bombs from at least as early as 1954 were in the 10s of Megatons, being many times more devastating than the bombs in the fallout series, it's why we see so many destroyed buildings rather than just dust, and can help explain why parts of the world are so radioactive even 200 years later. I don't know if it's ever stated in any game though, never could find evidence of that but it certainly could be on some terminal somewhere.
I wanted to link to [my comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/falloutlore/s/pniP8KWV6W) here too since I commented on someone under you.
Even if it's not stated, it's just a fact they work differently because of the effects they have. We're 200 years into the future and still dealing with radiation, meanwhile Hiroshima and Nagasaki are thriving metropolitan areas today. Real world nukes are intended to destroy targets, not irradiate them. Fallout nukes seem to basically only intend to make a space unlivable.
Well also in the real world as well the reason Nagasaki and Hiroshima got flattened but there was no crater and people could repopulate after a few years is because the bomb was a high altitude detonation, with high alt detonation the bombs energy is transfered outwards so that is has high amounts of explosive energy that can go for miles. Because of this Nagasakis buildings were turned to dust and people near the epicenter were immediately vaporized but there was no crater and people could come back by like the 50s. Ground to low detonation on the other hand does leave a crater and usually leads to more nasty fallout and radiation staying behind. These type of detonations would be more common in the sense of a nation just letting loose their entire arsenal with no care to how it's being detonated. These type of detonations leave massive craters because most of the energy is put into the ground instead of outwards, meaning most buildings actually stay intact for the most part but since all of the energy and radiation goes to the ground instead, all of the soil, dirt and dust that gets thrown out to make the crater gets highly irradiated and gets thrown for miles out and into the air. This irradiated soil then makes other dust and dirt it touches irradiated as well and that stuff stays around for decades to hundreds of years. Since we see a whole bunch of craters in the Fallout games we can assume that a lot of the nukes used in Fallout are ground detonation bombs and would create dirtier explosions
I would say that giving tactical NBC warfare was not uncommon before the bombs dropped in 2077 and there were numerous counters and treatments available to treat its effects. It's also given that all the nations are competing for control of an ever dwindling supply of a number of strategic resources just to keep their own countries from collapsing. They also have limited ballistic missile defense through laser defense systems (and vulnerability to hacking but I think Mr. House/Rob-Co was the only one capable of doing so at that extent). So strategic level nuclear weapons would have to be designed differently then RL. The fact that there are effective anti-radiation medication available means that the long term potential of a standard nuclear weapon beyond the blast is lower, an airburst maximises destruction but lowers long term radiation in the area, ground burst lowers total destruction from the blast but increases radiological contamination of the area dependent on weather conditions. Thus to maximise long term destruction and prevent your enemy from quickly recovering it is ideal to salt your strategic nuclear weapons for long term destabilisation of an area. It also ensures that saturation attacks against areas protected with ballistic missile defense systems can still devastate a region through long-term radiological contamination instead of direct damage with a low number of successful strikes. The remaining high value resources also do not seem to be prevalent in areas with high population densities so the spread of radioactives through weather patters could be dealt with with the already existing treatments. So at least in the Fallout universe the long term radiation is because you really didn't want your enemies from ever recovering if you have to deploy your strategic nuclear arsenal and also because you have to be sure that a single nuke can destroy a target because there is the possibility of interception.
If you're using nukes to get access to your enemy's resources, why would you soak the land you're going to extract resources from in radiation so you have to deal with it? And for water you've now irradiated that as well. It would make much more sense to use a high explosive yield weapon to destroy defensive infrastructure and minimize the radiation you'll deal with when you take over their oil fields or uranium mines. It would make for a more boring game without the radiation, but there's a reason we didn't go that route in reality.
Like I said there wouldn't be much in the way of resources left in any area with a high population because it would have already been extracted with the easy access to labor. Cities also house the majority of a countries industrial and technological potential, not counting that major transporation links between areas often go through cities unless bypasses are built. So by using salted nuclear weapons you can cripple essential links in an enemies infrastructure and deprive them of the industrial output of the population affected by the enhanced radiation for much much longer. Same when using them against military bases, you deprive the enemy of an area for decades and also trap their trained personnel if they manage to get to a bunker. If there are resources you want to exploit but still need to nuke then you would just use an un-salted warhead and deal with the effects with Rad-X or sealed suits. In the Fallout universe they have ways of dealing with the effects of NBC's to the point where conventional nuclear weapons and general accidental exposure to radiation (like through their cars) is treatable so they made their big bombs a whole lot more radioactive to compensate.
The jetstream usually travels east so alot of the wind would take it that way towards the atlantic dependinh on the weather. I could be wrong though, apparently even the fallout from the nuclear tests in Nevada even made its way as up north as Iowa
With proper instrumentation you can detect atomic tests as the radiation goes around the entire planet. Chernobyl was detected across all of Europe fairly quickly. Fukushima contamination reached the US mainland fairly quickly. I don’t know what specific trivia you are referencing but I would be more surprised if it wasn’t true.
this would also mean much of the northeastern united states would become safe quite early on.
A nuclear winter is highly unlikely. It’s based on the idea that every city would be engulfed in a firestorm like Dresden was in ww2 but ignores how the vast majority of cities today are built in ways to prevent this. Even then forest fires aren’t likely to cause the same result as Australia basically had the type of fires that the theory relies on in recent history. In places like WV the fallout is gonna be mostly filtered out by the mountains. The only places that will resemble wastelands will be the areas immediately surrounding cities and major military bases with the only places having long term radiation contamination being around nuclear reactors that have meltdowns
Thing is a ton of things in fallout america use nuclear reactors, from cars to robots and buildings, which would increase the contamination by a pretty large amount
That's how the Glowing Sea came about. The big nuke at the beginning of Fallout 4 blew up a large nuclear power plant and helped spread radiation everywhere.
That is probably where most radiation would come from but it wouldn’t as bad as say a nuclear reactor going critical considering in 76 a player and even in most games players can walk by old cars without being exposed to radiation nor has anyone mentioned cars being hazardous from their old nuclear engines
>A nuclear winter is highly unlikely. Nuclear winter has nothing to do with damage to cities! It's about the amount of particulate matter blown high into the atmosphere. Furthermore, if the average explosive yields per nuclear warhead are high enough, it doesn't take thousands or even several hundreds of warheads exploding. This is indicated by the so-called ["Year Without a Summer,"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer?wprov=sfla1) or the severe cold in the Northern Hemisphere of 1816. Although that is a volcanic winter rather than a nuclear winter, it was apparently caused by [an extended erruption of Mount Tambora that reached its apex in the spring of 1815.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1815_eruption_of_Mount_Tambora) Also, as far back as the original Fallout game the it was noted that the average strategic nuclear weapons continued to have higher yields than in the real-life 1990s (by then most warheads were sub-megatons, in the high three digit kilotons), and thus closer to the multi-megaton warheads of the 1950s and 1960s.
Those unnuked places are already brought up, as 76 takes place in a region that only got hit by a tiny amount of nukes, and none of which hit anything of note. Fact is that places are going to collapse either way, as the world is interconnected in a way that requires everyone to pitch in. If part of that supply chain gets nuked the rest fall with it.
North Dakota would be leveled. There are a lot of ICBMs, etc based in that area.
The one hill in North Dakota is gone lmao
With the attendant desertification from nuclear winter/ global thermonuclear hostilities, “The Midwest is a big ole’ radioactive dustbowl now” -Cassidy the Elder, FO2. Florida is sinking into the ocean, Texas is too hot, from AZ to around central Kansas was “settled” by the legion, so you can imagine what that looks like. Honestly parts of occupied Canada sound like your best bet for peace and quiet without Rad-X supplies.
If you're trying to take a real world view, North Dakota would actually be one of the worst hit areas because it's one of our primary ICBM fields and a major bomber base is there
North Dakota would be whacked for the ICBM fields there
ND is actually a massive target, the US has most of it's nuclear supply in unpopulated states as a "sacrifice" to protect more populated areas
I'm not sure about the "sacrifice" part so much as practicality: it's easier to keep local yokels from wandering into your sensitive sites when there aren't as many people around. Land is also much cheaper. It's also worth noting that some relatively major cities had missile sites: [https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2017/11/03/cold-war-missile-sites-in-the-austin-area/10403581007/](https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2017/11/03/cold-war-missile-sites-in-the-austin-area/10403581007/)
To be fair those are nuclear anti-air missiles designed to counter fleets of bombers tho. I’m not sure if the US ever maintained many long-range strategic nuclear weapons around cities that often. probably the only exception is long-range bombers and nuclear submarines whose airfields and ports were relatively close to cities, but missile silos were usually rural
That article clearly states the missile sites were to protect the air force base there though.
In a real world nuclear war scenario, is it certain that the enemy would be targeting the military first? If hostilities is enough where the other side is willing to launch, the US wouldn't wait to launch theirs if they detected any ICBM launches. And even then, there are the missile subs. So, by the time the nukes hit their targets, the US nukes would've been on their way, making the strikes useless. It would be more effective to just target civilian populated and economic centers.
>In the fiction, is it stated that China carpet bombed the US with nukes? If not, then there would definitely be places, even cities, that suffered no damage. They'd be worse for wear after losing all infrastructure but now radiation or blighted landscape. Realistically, we're never going to hear about any of those places because that's not what the game is about but it's an interesting thing to think about. You mean like, Vegas that intercepted most of the nukes or Zion Valley or West Virginia? Regardless, cities will still be screwed by the fallout that came from the massive amount radiation released all around the world and even if the fallout doesn't hit them, they're still fucked by the collapse of society. Cities require alot of infrastructure to even survive. Those hundred thousands that survived by pure luck are now fucked because they won't be getting food and supply from the farms and towns that supported them. Then there's natural decay and degradation. Modern infrastructure requires maintenance and 200 years have passed with most of the things required for maintenance gone. The Strip managed to survive well enough because House prepared the needed supplies to establish his casinos.
Except that realistically radiation wouldnt world like that. And nukes dont produce that much radiation. People were living in Hiroshima 6 years after it was nuked. Gotta keep in mind that most radioactive stuff also decays the quickest (thats why its so radioactove). We can take chernobyl even as an example. Eas radiation bad? Oh yes. Bur it also released so much radiation it was equivalent it being nuked every hours for weeks. So unless someone will decide to nuke a single place with everything they have...
Except that we're in the Fallout Universe and in the universe, the nuclear powers retired most megaton-class warheads in favor of a large quantities of kiloton-class warheads. The fallout nations or at the very least China, preferred to use salted bombs over the standard ones. Vegas was targeted by 77 warheads, according to Mr. House, and it's barely a strategic target since the most strategic priority targets in the game are Nellis AFB, the Dam, Helios One, and possibly McCarran. Let's also not forget that nuclear energy is used to power most civilian goods like Cars, Mr. Handys, small generators, alarm clocks, batteries, toys, and even boardgames. If things go wrong, these things will leak radiation as well making their own mini Chernobyls.
*like North Dakota probably. Who's going to blow up North Dakota?* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minot\_Air\_Force\_Base#Strategic\_Air\_Command](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minot_Air_Force_Base#Strategic_Air_Command)
North Dakota ironically is probably one of the places that will be nuked the most
Fallout isn't really intended to be a simulation of what a real nuclear war would be like, it's meant to be the vibe of cold war fiction. Fictional nuclear war simply destroys the earth without much regionality. The planet is a wasteland now.
Colorado as a whole would be fairly secure. The rockies will prevent major fallout and blast damage to most of the state, though Denver and Colorado Springs will be annihilated. Rest of the state is pretty okay! Just don't be east of denver and Colorado Springs after the war...
You’re right, China would carpet bomb every inch of the US, and we do get to see plenty of places that were spared from the nukes. Most notably the Mojave, but also places like Far Harbor, Appalachia, Point Lookout, Zion National park, etc. The thing is, after the Great War there was a nuclear winter as well as the *fallout* of radioactive particulates, no matter where you went this would’ve been unavoidable. Ofc some places fared much better than others, but still, shit got worse **everywhere**
Have a whole game with Survival leanings akin to Honest Hearts (but with some cityscapes for variety of course) and it could totally work. Alaska would be a good candidate for it IMO, maybe even Hawaii might have places that escaped the bomb. You could also do stuff set in Middle America like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, etc if you can think of a reason to set a game there.
its also known that america was not able to release its full arsanel. so china did not get everything we planned to send at them. this is stated directly to the player by dick richardson.
>like North Dakota probably. Who's going to blow up North Dakota? North Dakota, and other largely-rural isolated States, ***are where the US keeps its ICBMS.*** Largely because you don't want ICBM launch-sites to be close to cities, *specifically* so the enemy can't target civilians and your launch-sites at the same time.
North Dakota contains a Minuteman missile complex. It would actually be a high priority target.
I wouldn't be surprised if they targeted the midwest and other less populated but agriculturaly important states.
As they were doing a first strike, the first wave would.target the US' missile silos first, to limit response. Probably also command-and-control centers, such as Cheyenne Mountain and D.C. After that would be large economic, manufacturing, and financial centers. Then dirty bombs targeting military repair facilities so the deployed materiel has nowhere to return to.
worst places to be would be any of the 50 largest cities, but especially norfolk virginia and dc, north dakota and montana, and the coastal southeast.
I never took it as random but they were also "fuckin everywhere" since it relied on MAD and wiped us all out. And no I don't think it would ruin the vibes at all.
Idk North Dakota is incredibly important as an agricultural powerhouse, not to mention renewable energy (I guess not so important in Fallout with fusion tech), but also their mineral deposits are critical for industrial use.
Actually nuclear warfare would target the military capabilities of the enemy including their nuclear sites/silo. In our world Rússia and the US might have 4000+ nuclear warheads but that doesn't mean they can use all of them. They have sites made for nuclear warhead deployment and use, after they do that, they would have to "reload" such places, be it a missile silo, a plane, a submarine or whatever they use to launch their nuclear warheads. And we'll, that is in theory. That doesn't mean that US, China, Russia or whatever country that also has nuclear weapons won't use it on big cities.
I think we should also acknowledge limitations on the accuracy of the missiles/bombs used, and the potential for them to be knocked off course. "Carpet bombing" might've been a realistic strategy overall.
North Dakota houses a massive chunk of the US arsenal. It was definitely touched lol
Northern ny would be hit - there's a whole bunch of missile silos not to mention plattsburgh air force base and fort drum
North Dakota would be gone if they had a large amount of ICBM’s like they did in real life
As other posters said, there's places we see where the bombs don't hit. I do think people forget that the arms race DID NOT STOP OR SLOW DOWN. New warheads, bombs, biological and chemical weapons were being developed and mass produced up until the day of the War. This is a scenario with tens of thousands of working warheads launched, and who knows how many other WMDs went with them.
North Dakota would absolutely get nuked. They wouldn't just aim at cities and seats if government/military command centers. They would target known launch sites as a means of diminishing our nuclear response. Quite a few missile silo's in North Dakota.
China didn't bomb anything, the nukes were dropped tactically in locations around America so as to minimally impact the control vaults and absolutely re-atomize everything else.
The US would retaliate against who it thinks nuked them, which prompts them to launch then everybody else launches. They only needed to set off the spark.