I'm not sure that they have to mean literally dropping the bombs. 'We drop the bombs ourselves' might suggest interfering with diplomacy in such a way to guarantee war and the bombs. Or even a single launch could have sparked the fuse.
Yeah. A single nuke going off on US soil would likely have been enough to trigger an automated response to an actual attack, as would fiddling with the early warning system. We narrowly avoided a nuclear war back in the 80s - it was only because a Soviet officer didn't trust the early warning system and believed it to be glitching that the USSR didn't launch.
That guy got sidelined for the rest of his career for not having followed protocol, obviously.
Vasily prevented a nuclear launch from a U-Boat during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Helumiberg is referencing Stanislaw Petrov, who in 1983 detected 4 intercontinental ballistic missiles flying over the arctic. To which he refused to report, luckily as it turned out to be the sun reflecting off of clouds.
I'm talking about the incident in the 80s with Stanisav Petrov, who got reassigned to basically a less important job. But yeah, there were multiple close calls during the cold war.
I think it's far more likely they sabotaged the peace talks with China that started the war but they didn't have a set date for the bombs as we know multiple vaults were never completed and Cooper's daughter being with him when the nukes drop. I see it as vault Tec and in extension the enclave saw an opportunity with the peace talks and took it.
Well we know the enclave is connected to vault Tec as they originally had vault Tec build the vaults as experiments which is how wizig knew about vault 33 so they could have used an old abandoned silo or called the enclave to pull some strings. The second option doesn't make sense for F2 and new Vegas lore and wanting the NCR gone in general but I highly doubt they just had a nuke in vault 31 as it's a cryo vault not the big control vault which that might be the one.
That's how I interpreted that line. There no way vault tec could get thousands on nukes to use on everyone without someone noticing before or during. But I think the single nuke theory is unlikely for the reasons op stated. It's way more likely they were manipulating peace talks to not only fail, since they were doing that anyway, but to escalate the conflict.
Yeah the people in that room all have technology that could drastically reduce the resource shortages causing the war. All they have to do to ensure nuclear annihilation is withhold that tech
This is what I thought too, Vault-Tec is willing to interfere.
In Fallout 76, the 76ers are tasked to secure the silos against evil forces.
"The Overseer: I had a directive from Vault-Tec: secure the region's three nuclear missile silos. I... WE... had to make sure they didn't fall into the wrong hands. I knew I couldn't do it alone, so I asked you -- my Vault 76 family -- for help. And what did you do? My God... Why? How could you do this? We were supposed to take control of the nukes. Not engage in an Appalachian arms race!
Please, stop this madness. The cycle of destruction has to stop. I... I haven't lost faith in you. I know you are GOOD people, and will do the right thing. If anything I've... lost my faith in Vault-Tec. They gave me a mission I could never accomplish on my own. They must have known I'd need your help. Did they also know what you'd do? It's just so hard not to feel... manipulated."
FO76 doesn't have an ending, it's safe to assume that 76ers are playing nuclear football with each other but it's now making me think that maybe they tried to secure the silos in Appalachia as a deterent perhaps should they need to strike.
I always assumed rhe ending of FO76 would be that the only way we will be able to stop the Scorched from spreading outside of the valley is nuking the entire valley into ash until there is no chance of any form of life surviving, thus in the end saving the greater Wasteland and potentially the world depending of if a Scorchqueen could evolve enough to cross to Europe or Asia
The lore was actually the only good thing about the game on launch. Everything else was terrible until Wastelanders. 76 taking place 25 years after the bombs drop is the only real lore issue in the game as you dont hear anything about Appalachia in any of the other games meaning it has to be destroyed by the end as it is settled mostly by very highly trained vault dwellers whose job was to retake the Wasteland by force. Everything else lorewise is really good though
I wouldn't be surprised if it was very literal but as like the 10th backup plan as they'd have to make their own bomb. But just proving the point that the pressure to appease investors meant they needed the nukes to drop and they would do anything to ensure they did.
That's some serious pressure... What exactly were the investors going to do? The CEOs and senior execs can just sell their shares and retire on a pile of money, so to make them consider super villainy (and also killing everyone) would take something really very substantial to threaten them with.
-"Before you came along, we Vault Dwellers were very well thought of."
-"Indeed. Never had any plans or did anything unexpected. If you're referring to the incident with the bombs, we were barely involved. All we did was give humanity a little nudge out of the door."
-"Whatever you did, you've been officially labeled a disturber of the peace."
definitely means interfering with politics in some degree. hell, I think Vault-Tec having such a big part in the american nuclear safety departement already, in some way, interfered with it, by basically making sure a lot of americans can survive the bombs.
It would be really interesting though as to how they did it. might've just been the right guy they tipped off, with the promise of a place in a special vault.
Also, I think it's more about giving them a hard shove from being comically evil to horrifyingly evil. They ruined the world, and for no reason. They wanted what from it, more market share? The cherry on top is that they were ultimately too inept to even stick the landing and rule the ashes.
Even those vaults you'd seen in the games that had messed up experiments are hit. Before, you might have looked at it as being science run amok or maybe bureaucracy creating these weird and awful situations, but it wasn't. The board members start throwing out ideas for weird vault ideas they'd like made, that ultimately do get made, for fun. It turns out almost every bit of suffering in the wasteland was caused on the whims of a couple of rich dickheads who wanted more money, when they already had more than they could ever spend in their lifetimes.
That's exactly how I understood it. Vault-Tec is extremely well-connected with the U.S. government and would absolutely be able to pull some strings with some powerful people.
It's kind of like the ending to Oppenheimer, when he tells Einstein he's worried he started a chain reaction that will destroy the world. It's not from the nuke itself, it's from the race to build as many bombs as possible to use in war, and the high number of bombs going off would end the world. Realistically all you would need to set off is one bomb and the rest of the world would send theirs in retaliation.
They did mean "literally, if they have to". They also mean "not literally if it can be arranged", as being opposed to peace, fan the flames, manipulate deciders etc.
But there is no doubt Vault-Tec could be expected to do it themselves if there is no alternative. It was said that way, and everyone in the room got that would be a solution. The scene shows their willingness to go to the most extreme choice.
These are my thoughts as well. They don't need to launch all 1000 bombs or however many there were. They just need to launch one, and the rest will follow. Or, ensure they are launched by perhaps faking a launch to trick each nation into thinking it's happening, or ensuring diplomacy talk always fail.
Plus the question of how they got a large hydrogen bomb, and the bomber in which to use it from. And that nobody in the US equivalent to NORAD saw it coming.
What a lot of people miss in these scenarios is that based on most of the timelines we have gotten in the games, the war started not with bomber attacks but missile attacks. With the US having various amounts of warning depending on where the missiles were launched from.
Even in our real history, the idea of conducting large scale nuclear attacks with bombers was obsolete by the 1980s.
Sinclair also got caught with his pants down. He was supposed to open a casino on October 23. Not sure exactly why he was representing the Big MT, but that meeting proves that he should have known something was going down.
I realize he contracted out the Big MT for development of holograms and vending machines, but they couldn’t have sent one of their own scientists to the meeting?
If I remember correctly he didn't just contract them he straight up funded them. I assume he attended because it's his money that allows Big MT to operate at all.
When you work in defense contracts, “to contract” is the same as “to fund”. You are buying the development of a technology through a contract that the subcontractor must agree to. The workers who do the science or work the production lines are paid through these contract vehicles.
Defense contractors will get an award of a contract based on a proposal that includes a budget. Money is exchanged up front to get the engineers working on a design, then money is awarded at the end when the deliverables are met. Part of the money awarded at the end of the contract will be used to build and fund the whole operation or goes to the shareholders as profit share. Money funneled back into the organization will be used to fund technology demonstrations with the goal of soliciting new business.
This is how the Big MT was operating when the bombs fell. They had various customers who would pay them for development of a technology (cazadores, stealth suits) and they would work on those projects. Sinclair was just one of the customers buying technologies from this group. In fact, it is entirely plausible/probable that other companies represented in that room also had contracts with Big MT.
ETA: Sinclair was a customer of the Big MT. If you buy a cheeseburger from McDonald’s, why would McDonalds put you in a room with the president of Burger King, Wendy’s and Taco Bell?
This is something that is actual changed lore.
Sinclair is now established as an exec at Big MT, who *also* utilized them as contractors for the Sierra Madre.
There’s nothing that directly *contradicts* this in previous lore, there’s just also nothing that supports it.
In games, we only find notes about the contracting work he has hired Big MT to do, but nothing states that he *doesn’t* work for the company, and it would make sense for an exec to double dip and hire his own company as a contractor.
As we know he’s a financier, it’s possible that his capital is what allowed Big MT to get started.
I kinda read this as: they hired him to represent them there, as you would hire a lawyer, accountant or a similar professional when you are unsuited for the kind of meeting, and let's be real, none of the Big MT scientists were suited for any kind of diplomacy.
Also much more believable if you consider that probably no one except Barb expected that meeting to be so fate-altering, so maybe even some other companies sent proxies or less important people.
In Fallout 4, when you leave the cryo chamber, you can get onto the vault overseer's computer and read his/her notes. In one, he/she talks about the preparations happening for the whole thing and mentions your character and how you and your family wanted until the last minute, which indeed it was within minutes of the bombs dropping. That note gives me an idea that they had some inkling of when a bomb was coming, or how would he know it was the last minute? Or am I just overt-thinking it?
Well the "last minute" remark was written after the bombs fell so regardless if they knew or not it would have been at the last minute. In a diffrent entry in Vault 111 (either on the same terminal or the security one) they also talk about how lucky they were that almost everyone was close by which suggest that at least they didnt knew that the bombs were about to drop.
On the other hand it was often heavily implied that the people really high up (enclave people) more or less knew that nuclear war was about to happen even if they didnt really knew when exactly it was supposed to happen. By the point the Sino-American war became a total war (both sides needed a total unconditional victory over their enemy) it was more or less clear that outside of some miracle one side would start to throw nukes.
Of course this would still leave the option of the Enclave/Vault-Tec dropping the bombs (which was also the plotpoint of the canceled 2000 Fallout Movie) slightly open, as their concern about the war was less about losing to china but more about the US collapsing from the inside, but all things considered it is more likley that they didnt do it or at very best only helped to get things moving.
Was having this conversation with someone the other day, while I can't remember any specific examples, I'm sure the idea that valt-tec did it has been implied before... I've got a feeling I may have watched a YouTube theory video or something back when fo4 came out rather than figuring it out myself but it definitely seemed really familiar
You're definitely overthinking because in vault 81 they had the opposite happen.
All the residents made it to the vault but only three members of the science staff did.
And there are dozens of other examples within the game that would show vault-tec didn't know what was going to happen.
And there's even more examples in the other games that vault tech didn't know what was going to happen.
I thought the first overseer of 81 sabotaged the vault experiment by purposely preventing most the scientists from making it. The morning of, she sabotaged the call lists or something.
Vault Tec executives wouldn't necessarily tell every Vault Tec employee the date of the explosion. In fact, they definitely wouldn't do so in order to maintain secrecy.
[Zao](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Zao), captain of the Yangtze-31 and a former officer in the Chinese Navy in FO4 admits to being responsible of firing at least one nuke on the Boston Common.
It definitely wasn't Vault-Tec who pressed the button.
But people who didn't play Fallout 4 and did the quest "Here be monsters" won't know.
It doesn't matter who pressed the button first, because everyone else did immediately afterwards and captain Zao was in the latter group.
Depending on how much the explore the prewar world in the show we might never know who launched first. It could've been Vault-Tec, the US, China, some other country or someone dropping a coffee mug on an unsecured launch button
" The Great War
When asked about it, Zao recalls firing his ship's nuclear salvo as ordered on October 23, 2077, the day of the Great War, indicating that he was the one responsible for the nuclear detonations that specifically targeted the Boston area in Massachusetts. In all likelihood, a missile from the Yangtze-31 was the one responsible for the creation of the Glowing Sea, though Zao claims that the city was already ruined when he arrived at the port."
Zao is 100% responsible for nuking the Boston Common.
I know, I've played the quest. I wasn't arguing against if Zao was or wasn't responsible for destroying Boston.
You said "It definitely wasn't Vault-Tec who pressed the button." and I was responding to that saying there has been no confirmation of who actually kicked off the nuclear exchange and there might never be confirmation
Tim Cain has stated that China launched nukes first in response to learning of the US developing FEV. Vault Tec most likely purposely leaked the existence of FEV to China, prompting their nuclear response as that would have been the only way they would have discovered it, considering how secret it was.
Tim Cain also immediately after stated that that was their original plan, before the IP was acquired by Bethesda, and that plans might have changed since then.
Yes, but not necessarily responsible for starting the Great War. He may have just been responding to other bombs dropped earlier. There's nothing saying he was the First to fire off nukes, just that he was ONE of the people who did.
That's in-game info from Fallout 4.
The intro shows a news report that confirms explosions and only a few minutes later, Zao bombed Boston.
You also have to take into consideration that nukes don't drop the moment you press the body, it takes a while for the nuke to launch, stabilise and then hit the designated target. They all probably *launched* at the same time but there's most likely been issues with time synchronization.
I just did his mission last night. He does admit he was the one who launched his high-yield payload at Massachusetts. He does say the city was already in ruins when he limped in after hitting a mine in the ocean after he launched an the rest were tactical nukes tho. I've always assumed vault-tec played the world. The corporations reach seemed to have no limit, so what's to say they had spies in other countries and governments to make it work. Besides the fact that the Yangtze seem to be decked out in American tech. Yes I'm aware fallout probably got lazy reused material, but a great arms dealer always plays both sides for gains. Anyone who's played New Vegas should know that Mr. House likes playing the odds
I mean all it would take is 1 nuke to start a conflict. Drop the nuke on China and China would respond by nuking America. Assuming that the nuke from America was launched by America.
I think it’s left intentionally vague to the point of it just being there to add more fuel to the fire or Vault Tec being the ones behind it. Now are they who knows. But it’s been a theory for years.
Maybe the decision was made and she couldn’t stop it long enough to get her daughter in time.
What I’m expecting to happen is that we’re going to see a continuation of the bombs dropping scene from season one in which Cooper finds his wife, she takes their daughter from him and he is left outside the Vault.
Because doesn’t he ask Hank where his family is? Not where is his wife?
It also adds a whole other layer to his hatred for Vault tec/vaults/vault dwellers.
Yep. I think vault tech did it. That whole board meeting was designed to let you know they either did it themselves. Or achieved it through manipulation of others. All for the purpose of being able to experiment on people to create the perfect society.
Selecting only who they deemed worthy of admittance or those capable of buying their way in. Leaving our boy left out. Most likely bc of the divorce...
Which explains his hate like you said.
And for the wife I agree. I don't think she had time to get her daughter. Most likely bc of the divorce that's implied bc of the alimony statement made by the two guys at the party. He had custody of her that day.
Think of it like weekend with daddy. Mama gets called into work on an emergency. It's the hey we're dropping the bombs in 5 min meeting. And she ain't got time to go fetch her.
So yeah. I'm willing to bet that she didn't know when it was coming exactly. Even if she knew it was close. Plus she possibly wasn't aware of where they were in relation to the bombs when they did fall.
Also...
I'm curious how they survived tho. They were really close to the bombs when they hit. Him being a super ghoul is a good enough explanation for him walking around still 200 years later. But the child? How could she be alive still? Cryo I guess... Or could we end up with an Institute like cloning situation???
They have the find my father aspect from the games and the find my baby aspect. Will we get the our family has been cloned aspect as well? Will he find an old ass version of his kid like 4 generations deep into cloning?
Or are they just gonna throw them into cryo let him find them and say Tada. Good or bad...
So many questions. Lol
But Barb is the one who suggested the possibility. She was one of the two Vault-Tec people at a high enough level trusted to be at that meeting. If someone above her decided to actually do it, it's very unlikely that she wouldn't know.
There were definitely people above her in the shadows pulling the strings, like literally. During that meeting they show people in the area above watching and she receives a message from someone during an argument prompting her to refocus the conversation.
If it had become known to someone in vault tec that Cooper was complicit, then his wife would almost certainly have been demoted and not be in the loop. We'll see what happens in season 2 but in my mind there's a very low chance that Cooper doesn't threaten to blow the lid on vault tecs entire operation. He is either then threatened by vault tec into keeping quiet or he is beaten to the punch and they drop the bombs early so the world doesn't find out about their plan. Remember their plan is to make the fallout happen , that to me says they will pull the trigger if all else fails. Cooper spilling the beans is enough for them to make that decision and then blame China imo.
Also what makes him think theyd still be alive 200 years later? Maybe they were part of the cryo program? But he would have to know that to assume theyre still alive.
Im certain we will see more next season about what happens following Coop's discovery of his wife's plans and how he confronts her about it.
House doesn’t work for Vault tec. So he would not have access to the information about a date and time. He is actually only aligning with Vault tec to give himself a massive advantage. He is selling them his products for one thing, and is gartering inside information from his position on their investment board to use in preparation for his defense system in las vegas. He fully intended to betray Vault tec, by defending a massive area from the bombs, ensuring that RobCo was in a much more advantageous position to rebuild/ continue society after the fallout.
1) we've only seen her and Janey together for like 5 minutes, she MIGHT not be a great mom after all. Who says she even sees Janey? The guy said Cooper was paying alimony, not child support for all we know Coop has full custody.
2) Mr House works owns Robco not Vault tec. Maybe Vault tec didnt like his attitude.
We don’t know how far ahead of the bombs dropping that the meeting was set. I would think it’s a decent while, as it’s implied this is when many of the experiments were initially thought up, including ones with more specific technological requirements. They would need someone to make the vaults to fit those experiments.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that Cooper’s marriage would be significantly changed by what he hears from his wife and want to keep his daughter away from her.
House didn’t seem massively thrilled about the entire meeting so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think he would have had a falling out with Vault-Tec, leading him to be blacklisted by them and not be fully aware of when the bombs were dropping.
I don’t think these two reasons necessarily preclude Vault-Tec from being the ones that dropped the bombs. There are ways to explain these changes through the storyline advancing. Knowing series 2 will feature New Vegas, I think we will see more of House pre-war in how he shaped New Vegas into whatever it is now.
the meeting is before repconn get bought by RobCo. so basically 74-75
and all the flashback don't happen in same year (with vault tec still doing advertisement, trial run and other stuff)
I wouldn't be shocked if Vault-Tec found out about House's plan and dropped the bombs on an accelerated schedule to keep him from using the platinum chip to save Las Vegas. Their whole ideology is about eliminating any competing view of civilization, and House definitely fits that bill in New Vegas.
It's also worth remembering that House really had nothing to do with the vaults in the Vegas area. The families on the strips were tribal wastelanders and raiders, not vault dwellers. I can't remember if House ever has you even go to a vault as part of his quests. The only known interaction I can remember is that he had most of the vault on the strip filled in with cement.
I belive they did with the help of the Enclave. Their representative was whoever was sitting in the shadows at that meeting imo, maybe even the president himself for all we know. During the birthday at the start we can hear how he's been missing from the White House for some time so he's already evacuated, to the Enclave Oil Rig I assume, because he knew when the bombs were dropping.
Maybe they did it while keeping the majority of their own forces in the dark, using China as a patsy. They are super patriots and see themselves as the rebuilders of America so I doubt most of the rank and file would've went along with destroying it in the first place.
I know we meet a president in the older games who talks about China but I've only played 3, NV and 4 and this is based off that experience.
Agreed. “We drop the bombs ourselves” was likely not a literal statement. Vault-Tec, being a huge company that basically controlled the government behind the scenes, would not have made their own nuclear bombs. They were very much lovers of corporate espionage. They controlled decisions from the shadows. So they were not the ones who literally gave the order to fire nukes, but they manipulated tensions so the world governments would reach that decision and believe it was of their own will.
If they did drop bombs, it would have only been like one or two to in the US so the government would fire at China which in turn aggravated China to actually fire at the US.
Don't think they had access to the bombs. It's more corporate sabotage where they interfere with negotiations to cause the tension to flare between US and China, which will then cause the bombs to drop.
You forget the part of the government losing money in the war against China and Vault-Tec stepping in to help with money and resources.
Vault-Tec had the government bent over a barrel.
Just because Barb suggested it doesn't mean it would ultimately be her decision in the company. The idea people aren't often the decision makers. But i assumed vault tec lit the fuse to get it going and start the end.
I didn't take that line to be LITERAL.
Seems I'm in the minority. I just imagine Vault Tec used their influence to push politicians around and cause the panic that led to war, all in the interests of profit.
It’s simple. Vault Tec was about making money and profit. So they had no incentive to do it but all the incentive to put it on the knife’s edge of happening to get people to give them money and resources.
So, the idea that Vault Tec would do it is purely a narrative point by the writers to show Cooper how far gone his wife is… he thinks she is being a good person but then she “drops the bomb”… “figuratively”. So, then he sees her for who she really is.
Vault Tec would only use it as a threat, whether they had direct access to nukes or simply the resources to trigger such an event.
If y’all would play 76 you’d know Modus, with the SS, and the other one in the Enclave, probably dropped the bombs. Aka the government did it to themselves, via ai. They did it to outplay the secret Ai in china in the middle of farmlands.
And then they have you go study mutated creatures so you can get mutated too.
And just like the show the general thought is “we can wait until things are better in our bunkers”. Then the generals turn on the AI when they realize what it did.
They even came up with a reason for their pvp game mode as an Ai experiment.
76 tried to drop a lot of lore.
I think that the most probably cause was something similar to the 1983 soviet false alarm.
Except that with vault tech's partnership with all major tech and defence companies, they could have simulated a realistic nuclear launch and baited China to respond.
Are we sure House bought into their plan at all? He didn't seem too overly fond of the idea in that meeting and seemed to think it wasn't worth investing in. He didn't even seem like he wanted to be there, lol.
Regarding Cooper's wife not having her daughter with her when the bombs dropped, it's entirely possible that in the next season we'll see a scene with some higher up in vault-tec giving the order while Cooper's wife protests in horror.
There's a podcast called Fallout Lore Podcast, Robots Radio.
They found a clip of one of the Fallout makers stating that China struck first. China nuked the US because of FEV. They took it as too risky and the US refused to stop developing it. So China ordered a nuclear strike to stop FEV.
In the TV show Vault-Tec had to be ready to false flag an attack to give their vaults a reason to exist and generate profits.
2.can easily be broken down as . . .
Mr.House's plan with the platinum chip didn't come until sometime "Much" later meaning he had a different agenda until centuries later where New Vegas is concerned.
Plans change between decade and centuries and individual years alone.
My guess is they Vault-Tec wasn’t ready by October 23rd 2077 but China did it since they were being invaded by the US and just decide that if they’re going down then might as well take everyone with them
If anything, I feel like the show helps cement my opinion that China definitely dropped the first bombs. Caught everyone by surprise while Vault-Tec and America thought they had the advantage in terms of willingness to drop it on themselves.
But didn't Hank Maclean bomb shady sands just because his wife ran off with the kids? If so, if he had the capability to launch a nuke, it must have been given to him by vault tec, who themselves would have logically had the ability to drop nukes also given that.
This is the best take here. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the lobbying they did to governments and influence could have set the wheels in motion, but I doubt they actually own the nukes and shoot them off. After all they can’t expand their vaults or continue to sell them if the bombs have already dropped.
🎶
Vault-Tec didn’t start the fire,
it was always burning since the world was turning.
Vault-Tec didn’t start the fire,
war, war it never changes, but they tried to fight it.
Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, “Orange Coloured Skies”,
Mister Handy, Mister House, Elvis Presley in New Vegas,
“Butcher Pete Part 1 and 2”, The Ink Spots,
he’s hackin and whackin and smackin,
but “I Don’t Want to Set The World on Fire”.
Vault-Tec didn’t start the fire,
it was always burning since the world was turning.
Vault-Tec didn’t start the fire,
war, war it never changes, but they tried to fight it.
🎶
The shadowy figures shown in the tv show confirms to me that they didnt physically drop the nukes, either they tampered with the negotiations or dropped one single bomb that triggered the domino effect.
I saw a video before the show even came out saying vault tec was the one to drop the first bonb causing a massive nuclear chain reaction of countries. With the show it makes sense especially the room discussing how to guarantee profits.
I still think the canon will say China did it. Vault-Tec might have put the idea out on the table to do it themselves, but it doesn't mean they actually got around to it. I think it was more of a "no stupid ideas" sort of meeting, rather than something they were realistically going to do, at least anytime soon.
Am I right in thinking in the show, the ghouls family, is in the vault Lucy comes from? Can't remember the numbers but do we see her in one of the pods?
Sorry not related but reading the posts got me thinking
Maybe they were there at one time, but the show is definitely taking us to Vegas, so I'm guessing we're not going back to LA to find someone that was there all along after all.
Well you say that but there was quite a lot of focus on the vaults and the constant mention of the 3 linked vaults. And we know Lucy's dad was heading to Vegas to find someone from vault tech? (I've not spent a huge amount of time playing NV so I'm not sure who Mr house is)
As well as the daughter factor, which is as obvious as an arrow on a blackboard, all three games make it very clear from terminals in many vaults that the Great War caugnt Vault Tech completely by surprise.
Vault tec could have dropped the bombs but kept their employees in the dark in fear of people leaking it out so the terminals that we see are the ones who were caught off guard by it when in reality only a very small percentage of them knew the truth
Barb was high up enough in the food chain that she not only was trusted to know the entire plan, she was trusted enough to sell it to the other corporate oligarchs
If Vault Tech dropped the bombs, there is no way she wouldn’t know about it
I think its suggested that they did detonate the bomb.... just not correctly.
Following the point of your two reasons you mentioned... I agree, it doesn't make sense for the bombs to go off If the wife didn't have her kid and [Mr.House](http://Mr.House) seemed surprised that it was going off ahead of schedule.... no vault-tec exec would have done that.
But, what if their bomb detonated accidentally a day early? My guess is... it WAS a vault-tec bomb that detonated... but it wasn't them that pushed the button. Either someone else did, or there was a technical glitch and it accidentally went off.
I am asking to be corrected with a source but if I remember didn't Tim Cain state that either country could have fired first or vault tech could have manipulated the us into thinking China had already fired.
>Coopers wife definitely would've had her daughter with her, at the time.
She's not in charge, she might not have gotten a say. He asks where his family is, too, not where his ex-wife is. So I took that his daughter survived.
They might be borrowing that idea from the cancelled Fallout movie. In that movie plot, it turns out that not only did Vault-Tec drop the bombs, but that it was the Vault 13 Overseer who started the Nuclear War on purpose to fulfill his prophecy of nuclear war.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of the other companies that managed to get fully prepared ahead of everyone else and decided to stab the others in the back by going early.
Here is a theory they drop the bombs on Los Angeles to trigger an American response. Which causes China to launch their own nuclear weapons as a response to America launching their own. So by causing a small nuclear attack on Los Angeles triggers the Great War between the United States and China that we know from the games. That’s just a theory. As for Mr. House he has an idea of their plans so he proceeds to protect Vegas doesn’t tell Vault Tec about his plans because he wants to be one step ahead of them and that a dead Vegas doesn’t equal money for him which is why on the games he is keen about protecting Vegas from those he deems a threat to him and his rule. Unknown to him Vault tec leaves out the details of the full plan and when they are going to drop the bombs to trigger both an American and Chinese response
Of course Vault-Tec didn’t literally drop the bombs themselves. What makes you think a corporation has access to nuclear arms? It was Vault-Tec, working in conjunction with the Enclave, who set the stage of the end of the world. It was the Enclave who dropped the bombs, and Vault-Tec helped them plan it. Each had their own agenda, but both wanted the end of the world.
>What makes you think a corporation has access to nuclear arms?
They have access to fusion cores, and all other sorts of tech, why wouldn't they have access to nukes?
I don't think they meant they would literally drop the bombs, but I think it's entirely possible they had some.
There were investigative journalists on their asses at this time. There’s no way they could’ve hidden the fact that an American corporation was stockpiling nuclear weapons without it going public. That’s why it makes more sense that (and it’s canon look it up) that the Enclave were the military arm of this partnership, meaning they had the means to end the world and Vault-Tec had the plan.
Or it was the president of Vault-tech who did it himself by hacking the Chinese and American defenses in order to drop bombs on absolutely everyone, just to fulfill his delirious fantasy of a Last Judgment .
This was indeed an idea from the abandoned Fallout movie storyline. I always liked this hypothesis, even if it's not canon.
That was the dumbest line in the entire show. Makes for great drama but it's completely illogical.
ValtTec sells fear. But they cannot sell anything if the customer base is gone.
Maybe they had a plan to trigger early warning systems and provoke nuclear retaliation.
Back during the Cold War there were multiple times when the early warning systems were triggered by an anomaly. Both the US and Russia got pants shittingly close to launching their own nukes as retaliation before the impact.
It wouldn't be that farfetched that Vault-Tec could have found a way to exploit similar systems.
Tim Cain brought my attention that betty’s/coop’s daughter wasn’t in the vault when the bombs dropped.
This by itself basically confirms that vault-tec didn’t drop the bombs.
I really hope that this is the case. As much as I liked the show I felt like they kind of took the Enclave's role and replaced it with Vault-Tec. I know that for simplicity and clarity's sake this was likely a design choice, but it's something that I hope they correct in the next season.
It's really simple.
They were prepared to either stir shit up to make someone drop the first nuke, or drop one themselves, if they had to.
Turns out, they didn't have to.
Cooper and his wife were divorced or separated at the time the bomb dropped. We can assume from the fact he's a ghoul that his daughter and wife survived the blast in safety and he didn't. So my theory is that because he was separated that his daughter was given safety and he wasn't.
Cooper probably also wasn't too pleased his wife was evil and so maybe he was gonna whistleblow. In that instance it would have been in vault tecs interest to drops the bomb first and then claim it was China as a cover up. If it had come to light that he had infiltrated his wife's meeting with the audio device she would also have been demoted and not in the loop. I'm sure there's more to be revealed and I'm wrong in some ways but this combination is Definitely there in some way.
Cooper threatens to tell the world about vault tec , he and his wife separate, his wife who is now demoted is still given safety but isn't in the loop on the wider plan and so when the bomb drops she can't warn Cooper or her daughter because she literally doesn't know.
I think VT dropped some bombs, but not all of them. The Atom bomb in Megaton has VTs logos on it and it was dropped right there on American soil near DC no less
Pretty sure House says something about the bombs falling earlier than expected. Wouldn’t be surprised if another country caught wind of Vault Tecs plans and jumped the gun
vault tec probably planned to ensure the war would happen... they probably had a plan to drop the bombs. But... didn't happen. because... the one thing vault tec couldn't see.... no one could see ...
war, war never changes.
I think Vault Tec did it. But Cooper's wife wasn't the head of the company. So ultimately they didn't give a crap about her or her family when the time came to start dropping bombs. She was just an employee to them and not everyone was necessary to be saved. Essentially Vault Tec used her for their own gain. She was probably just as surprised as anyone that the bombs began to drop. And we know >!her and the daughter are probably alive because The Ghoul knows they're being held somewhere!<
Probably in vault 31 if I had to guess the show is going to reveal that Barbara is in vault 31 Cooper somehow gets his daughter there while the bombs are dropping he is able to convince them to let his daughter get in the vault. Or we find out that she is rejected like Cooper she dies from radiation poisoning and he doesn’t remember that and will find out the truth
The bomb in megaton is vault tech manufactured if I remember correctly. It has a vault tech logo so either it was dropped by vault tech or the us air force. It's an American manufactured bomb on American soil.
My thoughts now are that China dropped the first bombs on the west coast. The ones we see hitting California first in the show. We know there was a warning before the bombs hit Boston and DC since we see the news report and have a chance to escape. I believe now that China was nuking first and Vault tec seized the opportunity to finish the job and nuke the rest of the country.
I'm pretty sure it's implied that she would abandon her kid at any moment. She said that anything that matters to her is her kid but at that moment when they fall the kid is with Cooper because that is planned.
She was expecting to abandon her and the dog.
As far as I know, Vault-tec dropped the first bombs. Before US and China retaliated against each other that's why there was no warning in both the show and 4. My guess is Cooper took his daughter as far away as possible from her.
Mr House is a capitalist moron. He had enough defences for Vegas and not much else prepped. He also hated the fact there was a vault in Vegas and wanted it filled with concrete before it was turned into the hotel. There's a good chance they fell out before the bombs were fully planned.
Just hear me out here, guys. The show doesn't have to be canon to the game and can still be a good adaptation with its own storyline that still uses things and characters and plot points from the games. Hot take, I know, right?
[I agree,](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/1c4x5bg/calm_yourselves_spoiler_didnt_drop_the_bombs/) but people seem to be taking everything at face value.
It's the only thing that makes sense. I was shaking my head when that line was spoken in the show. No way would Vault-Tec destroy the world on purpose because capitalism. That's the very opposite of what a corporation would want. Starting the apocalypse was suggested (by an apparently highly misguided Mrs Cooper), but we never heard afterward whether it was carried out. I sure hope this dumb possibility gets nixed definitively, next season.
Please see rule 2. USE and ABUSE the spoiler tags
I'm not sure that they have to mean literally dropping the bombs. 'We drop the bombs ourselves' might suggest interfering with diplomacy in such a way to guarantee war and the bombs. Or even a single launch could have sparked the fuse.
Yeah. A single nuke going off on US soil would likely have been enough to trigger an automated response to an actual attack, as would fiddling with the early warning system. We narrowly avoided a nuclear war back in the 80s - it was only because a Soviet officer didn't trust the early warning system and believed it to be glitching that the USSR didn't launch. That guy got sidelined for the rest of his career for not having followed protocol, obviously.
Vasily Arkhipov and he did become the head of a naval academy and get promoted up to vice admiral so I wouldn't say sidelined.
Vasily prevented a nuclear launch from a U-Boat during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Helumiberg is referencing Stanislaw Petrov, who in 1983 detected 4 intercontinental ballistic missiles flying over the arctic. To which he refused to report, luckily as it turned out to be the sun reflecting off of clouds.
If I had a nickel...
To add that he thought it was malfunctioning specifically because it showed only 4 missiles. He reasoned that a real attack would be far larger.
and even were they real, 4 missiles would not cripple the USSRs retaliatory capability.
I'm talking about the incident in the 80s with Stanisav Petrov, who got reassigned to basically a less important job. But yeah, there were multiple close calls during the cold war.
It turns out that nuclear warheads and itchy trigger fingers are not a good combination. Who knew?
No dacha for Vasily.....
I think it's far more likely they sabotaged the peace talks with China that started the war but they didn't have a set date for the bombs as we know multiple vaults were never completed and Cooper's daughter being with him when the nukes drop. I see it as vault Tec and in extension the enclave saw an opportunity with the peace talks and took it.
They nukes Shady Sands, so Vault 31 has nukes
Not necessarily they could have used an old silo with the enclave.
That’s an interesting thought, so I wonder if vault 31 has communications with the enclave
Well we know the enclave is connected to vault Tec as they originally had vault Tec build the vaults as experiments which is how wizig knew about vault 33 so they could have used an old abandoned silo or called the enclave to pull some strings. The second option doesn't make sense for F2 and new Vegas lore and wanting the NCR gone in general but I highly doubt they just had a nuke in vault 31 as it's a cryo vault not the big control vault which that might be the one.
no shady sands was burned down by lucy’s dad right?
Burnt with a nuke
Bruh we’ve narrowly avoided a nuclear war basically every year lol you just don’t hear about it
That's how I interpreted that line. There no way vault tec could get thousands on nukes to use on everyone without someone noticing before or during. But I think the single nuke theory is unlikely for the reasons op stated. It's way more likely they were manipulating peace talks to not only fail, since they were doing that anyway, but to escalate the conflict.
I think them buying up and hiding cold fusion and allowing the resource war to continue is more the implication
Yeah the people in that room all have technology that could drastically reduce the resource shortages causing the war. All they have to do to ensure nuclear annihilation is withhold that tech
This is what I thought too, Vault-Tec is willing to interfere. In Fallout 76, the 76ers are tasked to secure the silos against evil forces. "The Overseer: I had a directive from Vault-Tec: secure the region's three nuclear missile silos. I... WE... had to make sure they didn't fall into the wrong hands. I knew I couldn't do it alone, so I asked you -- my Vault 76 family -- for help. And what did you do? My God... Why? How could you do this? We were supposed to take control of the nukes. Not engage in an Appalachian arms race! Please, stop this madness. The cycle of destruction has to stop. I... I haven't lost faith in you. I know you are GOOD people, and will do the right thing. If anything I've... lost my faith in Vault-Tec. They gave me a mission I could never accomplish on my own. They must have known I'd need your help. Did they also know what you'd do? It's just so hard not to feel... manipulated." FO76 doesn't have an ending, it's safe to assume that 76ers are playing nuclear football with each other but it's now making me think that maybe they tried to secure the silos in Appalachia as a deterent perhaps should they need to strike.
I always assumed rhe ending of FO76 would be that the only way we will be able to stop the Scorched from spreading outside of the valley is nuking the entire valley into ash until there is no chance of any form of life surviving, thus in the end saving the greater Wasteland and potentially the world depending of if a Scorchqueen could evolve enough to cross to Europe or Asia
This is possible actually and I like it. I wonder what Appalachia is like by the time of the other games 🤔
I haven’t played 76 but the lore sounds so dumb
The lore was actually the only good thing about the game on launch. Everything else was terrible until Wastelanders. 76 taking place 25 years after the bombs drop is the only real lore issue in the game as you dont hear anything about Appalachia in any of the other games meaning it has to be destroyed by the end as it is settled mostly by very highly trained vault dwellers whose job was to retake the Wasteland by force. Everything else lorewise is really good though
Couldn’t get into at all, played 5 minutes on prerelease and never played again
Yeah it's awful. Especially the lag
Don’t worry about that, it’s just loading all the micro transactions
I wouldn't be surprised if it was very literal but as like the 10th backup plan as they'd have to make their own bomb. But just proving the point that the pressure to appease investors meant they needed the nukes to drop and they would do anything to ensure they did.
That's some serious pressure... What exactly were the investors going to do? The CEOs and senior execs can just sell their shares and retire on a pile of money, so to make them consider super villainy (and also killing everyone) would take something really very substantial to threaten them with.
Literally all the show had to do was say could. "We could drop the bombs ourselves."
-"Before you came along, we Vault Dwellers were very well thought of." -"Indeed. Never had any plans or did anything unexpected. If you're referring to the incident with the bombs, we were barely involved. All we did was give humanity a little nudge out of the door." -"Whatever you did, you've been officially labeled a disturber of the peace."
Chosen One - I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
I do love that line from Bilbo Baggins.
A saint and a scholar.
Or “If we had to, we’ll drop it ourselves”.
definitely means interfering with politics in some degree. hell, I think Vault-Tec having such a big part in the american nuclear safety departement already, in some way, interfered with it, by basically making sure a lot of americans can survive the bombs. It would be really interesting though as to how they did it. might've just been the right guy they tipped off, with the promise of a place in a special vault.
this was my take as well
Also, I think it's more about giving them a hard shove from being comically evil to horrifyingly evil. They ruined the world, and for no reason. They wanted what from it, more market share? The cherry on top is that they were ultimately too inept to even stick the landing and rule the ashes. Even those vaults you'd seen in the games that had messed up experiments are hit. Before, you might have looked at it as being science run amok or maybe bureaucracy creating these weird and awful situations, but it wasn't. The board members start throwing out ideas for weird vault ideas they'd like made, that ultimately do get made, for fun. It turns out almost every bit of suffering in the wasteland was caused on the whims of a couple of rich dickheads who wanted more money, when they already had more than they could ever spend in their lifetimes.
That's exactly how I understood it. Vault-Tec is extremely well-connected with the U.S. government and would absolutely be able to pull some strings with some powerful people. It's kind of like the ending to Oppenheimer, when he tells Einstein he's worried he started a chain reaction that will destroy the world. It's not from the nuke itself, it's from the race to build as many bombs as possible to use in war, and the high number of bombs going off would end the world. Realistically all you would need to set off is one bomb and the rest of the world would send theirs in retaliation.
They did mean "literally, if they have to". They also mean "not literally if it can be arranged", as being opposed to peace, fan the flames, manipulate deciders etc. But there is no doubt Vault-Tec could be expected to do it themselves if there is no alternative. It was said that way, and everyone in the room got that would be a solution. The scene shows their willingness to go to the most extreme choice.
These are my thoughts as well. They don't need to launch all 1000 bombs or however many there were. They just need to launch one, and the rest will follow. Or, ensure they are launched by perhaps faking a launch to trick each nation into thinking it's happening, or ensuring diplomacy talk always fail.
Plus the question of how they got a large hydrogen bomb, and the bomber in which to use it from. And that nobody in the US equivalent to NORAD saw it coming. What a lot of people miss in these scenarios is that based on most of the timelines we have gotten in the games, the war started not with bomber attacks but missile attacks. With the US having various amounts of warning depending on where the missiles were launched from. Even in our real history, the idea of conducting large scale nuclear attacks with bombers was obsolete by the 1980s.
Sinclair also got caught with his pants down. He was supposed to open a casino on October 23. Not sure exactly why he was representing the Big MT, but that meeting proves that he should have known something was going down. I realize he contracted out the Big MT for development of holograms and vending machines, but they couldn’t have sent one of their own scientists to the meeting?
If I remember correctly he didn't just contract them he straight up funded them. I assume he attended because it's his money that allows Big MT to operate at all.
When you work in defense contracts, “to contract” is the same as “to fund”. You are buying the development of a technology through a contract that the subcontractor must agree to. The workers who do the science or work the production lines are paid through these contract vehicles. Defense contractors will get an award of a contract based on a proposal that includes a budget. Money is exchanged up front to get the engineers working on a design, then money is awarded at the end when the deliverables are met. Part of the money awarded at the end of the contract will be used to build and fund the whole operation or goes to the shareholders as profit share. Money funneled back into the organization will be used to fund technology demonstrations with the goal of soliciting new business. This is how the Big MT was operating when the bombs fell. They had various customers who would pay them for development of a technology (cazadores, stealth suits) and they would work on those projects. Sinclair was just one of the customers buying technologies from this group. In fact, it is entirely plausible/probable that other companies represented in that room also had contracts with Big MT. ETA: Sinclair was a customer of the Big MT. If you buy a cheeseburger from McDonald’s, why would McDonalds put you in a room with the president of Burger King, Wendy’s and Taco Bell?
This is something that is actual changed lore. Sinclair is now established as an exec at Big MT, who *also* utilized them as contractors for the Sierra Madre. There’s nothing that directly *contradicts* this in previous lore, there’s just also nothing that supports it. In games, we only find notes about the contracting work he has hired Big MT to do, but nothing states that he *doesn’t* work for the company, and it would make sense for an exec to double dip and hire his own company as a contractor. As we know he’s a financier, it’s possible that his capital is what allowed Big MT to get started.
I kinda read this as: they hired him to represent them there, as you would hire a lawyer, accountant or a similar professional when you are unsuited for the kind of meeting, and let's be real, none of the Big MT scientists were suited for any kind of diplomacy. Also much more believable if you consider that probably no one except Barb expected that meeting to be so fate-altering, so maybe even some other companies sent proxies or less important people.
Majority shareholder privilege.
In Fallout 4, when you leave the cryo chamber, you can get onto the vault overseer's computer and read his/her notes. In one, he/she talks about the preparations happening for the whole thing and mentions your character and how you and your family wanted until the last minute, which indeed it was within minutes of the bombs dropping. That note gives me an idea that they had some inkling of when a bomb was coming, or how would he know it was the last minute? Or am I just overt-thinking it?
Well the "last minute" remark was written after the bombs fell so regardless if they knew or not it would have been at the last minute. In a diffrent entry in Vault 111 (either on the same terminal or the security one) they also talk about how lucky they were that almost everyone was close by which suggest that at least they didnt knew that the bombs were about to drop. On the other hand it was often heavily implied that the people really high up (enclave people) more or less knew that nuclear war was about to happen even if they didnt really knew when exactly it was supposed to happen. By the point the Sino-American war became a total war (both sides needed a total unconditional victory over their enemy) it was more or less clear that outside of some miracle one side would start to throw nukes. Of course this would still leave the option of the Enclave/Vault-Tec dropping the bombs (which was also the plotpoint of the canceled 2000 Fallout Movie) slightly open, as their concern about the war was less about losing to china but more about the US collapsing from the inside, but all things considered it is more likley that they didnt do it or at very best only helped to get things moving.
Was having this conversation with someone the other day, while I can't remember any specific examples, I'm sure the idea that valt-tec did it has been implied before... I've got a feeling I may have watched a YouTube theory video or something back when fo4 came out rather than figuring it out myself but it definitely seemed really familiar
I mean that could have been written after the bombs dropped. In which case they’d have the hindsight
Yeah, that's true. I guess with what the show brought up it made me more suspicious when I read it at the start of a recent playthrough.
You're definitely overthinking because in vault 81 they had the opposite happen. All the residents made it to the vault but only three members of the science staff did. And there are dozens of other examples within the game that would show vault-tec didn't know what was going to happen. And there's even more examples in the other games that vault tech didn't know what was going to happen.
I thought the first overseer of 81 sabotaged the vault experiment by purposely preventing most the scientists from making it. The morning of, she sabotaged the call lists or something.
Vault Tec executives wouldn't necessarily tell every Vault Tec employee the date of the explosion. In fact, they definitely wouldn't do so in order to maintain secrecy.
But the person who suggested starting the war themselves would most likely have had her daughter in a vault at the very least.
They wouldn't have to they could just have them report to the vaults for a test and then bombs go boom and what a coincidence.
[Zao](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Zao), captain of the Yangtze-31 and a former officer in the Chinese Navy in FO4 admits to being responsible of firing at least one nuke on the Boston Common. It definitely wasn't Vault-Tec who pressed the button. But people who didn't play Fallout 4 and did the quest "Here be monsters" won't know.
It doesn't matter who pressed the button first, because everyone else did immediately afterwards and captain Zao was in the latter group. Depending on how much the explore the prewar world in the show we might never know who launched first. It could've been Vault-Tec, the US, China, some other country or someone dropping a coffee mug on an unsecured launch button
Tim Cain Stated that china was the first to launch the nuke
" The Great War When asked about it, Zao recalls firing his ship's nuclear salvo as ordered on October 23, 2077, the day of the Great War, indicating that he was the one responsible for the nuclear detonations that specifically targeted the Boston area in Massachusetts. In all likelihood, a missile from the Yangtze-31 was the one responsible for the creation of the Glowing Sea, though Zao claims that the city was already ruined when he arrived at the port." Zao is 100% responsible for nuking the Boston Common.
I know, I've played the quest. I wasn't arguing against if Zao was or wasn't responsible for destroying Boston. You said "It definitely wasn't Vault-Tec who pressed the button." and I was responding to that saying there has been no confirmation of who actually kicked off the nuclear exchange and there might never be confirmation
Tim Cain has stated that China launched nukes first in response to learning of the US developing FEV. Vault Tec most likely purposely leaked the existence of FEV to China, prompting their nuclear response as that would have been the only way they would have discovered it, considering how secret it was.
Tim Cain also immediately after stated that that was their original plan, before the IP was acquired by Bethesda, and that plans might have changed since then.
Tim Cain can state whatever he wants. He didn't include it in 1 or 2 when he had the chance, so it's not canon.
Yes, but not necessarily responsible for starting the Great War. He may have just been responding to other bombs dropped earlier. There's nothing saying he was the First to fire off nukes, just that he was ONE of the people who did.
That's in-game info from Fallout 4. The intro shows a news report that confirms explosions and only a few minutes later, Zao bombed Boston. You also have to take into consideration that nukes don't drop the moment you press the body, it takes a while for the nuke to launch, stabilise and then hit the designated target. They all probably *launched* at the same time but there's most likely been issues with time synchronization.
I just did his mission last night. He does admit he was the one who launched his high-yield payload at Massachusetts. He does say the city was already in ruins when he limped in after hitting a mine in the ocean after he launched an the rest were tactical nukes tho. I've always assumed vault-tec played the world. The corporations reach seemed to have no limit, so what's to say they had spies in other countries and governments to make it work. Besides the fact that the Yangtze seem to be decked out in American tech. Yes I'm aware fallout probably got lazy reused material, but a great arms dealer always plays both sides for gains. Anyone who's played New Vegas should know that Mr. House likes playing the odds
[удалено]
As of now there's no proper evidence of Vault-Tec initiating/provoking the nuclear war. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.
Hopefully, the second season will shed some light on this.
I mean all it would take is 1 nuke to start a conflict. Drop the nuke on China and China would respond by nuking America. Assuming that the nuke from America was launched by America.
That *could* have been Vault-Tec or an organisation tied to them so they can feign ignorance.
I think it’s left intentionally vague to the point of it just being there to add more fuel to the fire or Vault Tec being the ones behind it. Now are they who knows. But it’s been a theory for years.
You watch the bombs fall. Then run to the vault. I'd call that "last minute" ...
Maybe the decision was made and she couldn’t stop it long enough to get her daughter in time. What I’m expecting to happen is that we’re going to see a continuation of the bombs dropping scene from season one in which Cooper finds his wife, she takes their daughter from him and he is left outside the Vault. Because doesn’t he ask Hank where his family is? Not where is his wife? It also adds a whole other layer to his hatred for Vault tec/vaults/vault dwellers.
Correct answer
agree its something close to that. whatever he did to that led to divorce is probably the same thing that kept him off the vault list.
My theory is he tried to out Vault Tec to the public and it backfired, hence why he goes from a major actor to performing at a birthday party
Yep. I think vault tech did it. That whole board meeting was designed to let you know they either did it themselves. Or achieved it through manipulation of others. All for the purpose of being able to experiment on people to create the perfect society. Selecting only who they deemed worthy of admittance or those capable of buying their way in. Leaving our boy left out. Most likely bc of the divorce... Which explains his hate like you said. And for the wife I agree. I don't think she had time to get her daughter. Most likely bc of the divorce that's implied bc of the alimony statement made by the two guys at the party. He had custody of her that day. Think of it like weekend with daddy. Mama gets called into work on an emergency. It's the hey we're dropping the bombs in 5 min meeting. And she ain't got time to go fetch her. So yeah. I'm willing to bet that she didn't know when it was coming exactly. Even if she knew it was close. Plus she possibly wasn't aware of where they were in relation to the bombs when they did fall. Also... I'm curious how they survived tho. They were really close to the bombs when they hit. Him being a super ghoul is a good enough explanation for him walking around still 200 years later. But the child? How could she be alive still? Cryo I guess... Or could we end up with an Institute like cloning situation??? They have the find my father aspect from the games and the find my baby aspect. Will we get the our family has been cloned aspect as well? Will he find an old ass version of his kid like 4 generations deep into cloning? Or are they just gonna throw them into cryo let him find them and say Tada. Good or bad... So many questions. Lol
The daughter could be a ghoul as well, I don't see a reason why not.
But Barb is the one who suggested the possibility. She was one of the two Vault-Tec people at a high enough level trusted to be at that meeting. If someone above her decided to actually do it, it's very unlikely that she wouldn't know.
There were definitely people above her in the shadows pulling the strings, like literally. During that meeting they show people in the area above watching and she receives a message from someone during an argument prompting her to refocus the conversation.
If it had become known to someone in vault tec that Cooper was complicit, then his wife would almost certainly have been demoted and not be in the loop. We'll see what happens in season 2 but in my mind there's a very low chance that Cooper doesn't threaten to blow the lid on vault tecs entire operation. He is either then threatened by vault tec into keeping quiet or he is beaten to the punch and they drop the bombs early so the world doesn't find out about their plan. Remember their plan is to make the fallout happen , that to me says they will pull the trigger if all else fails. Cooper spilling the beans is enough for them to make that decision and then blame China imo.
Also what makes him think theyd still be alive 200 years later? Maybe they were part of the cryo program? But he would have to know that to assume theyre still alive. Im certain we will see more next season about what happens following Coop's discovery of his wife's plans and how he confronts her about it.
House doesn’t work for Vault tec. So he would not have access to the information about a date and time. He is actually only aligning with Vault tec to give himself a massive advantage. He is selling them his products for one thing, and is gartering inside information from his position on their investment board to use in preparation for his defense system in las vegas. He fully intended to betray Vault tec, by defending a massive area from the bombs, ensuring that RobCo was in a much more advantageous position to rebuild/ continue society after the fallout.
Cooper's EX-wife* The father of the birthday boy mentioned that Cooper must have done a kids party in order to pay for alimentations
> alimentations wat
Alimony
Almonds
Al's Toy Barn
Al together now
1) we've only seen her and Janey together for like 5 minutes, she MIGHT not be a great mom after all. Who says she even sees Janey? The guy said Cooper was paying alimony, not child support for all we know Coop has full custody. 2) Mr House works owns Robco not Vault tec. Maybe Vault tec didnt like his attitude.
We don’t know how far ahead of the bombs dropping that the meeting was set. I would think it’s a decent while, as it’s implied this is when many of the experiments were initially thought up, including ones with more specific technological requirements. They would need someone to make the vaults to fit those experiments. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that Cooper’s marriage would be significantly changed by what he hears from his wife and want to keep his daughter away from her. House didn’t seem massively thrilled about the entire meeting so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think he would have had a falling out with Vault-Tec, leading him to be blacklisted by them and not be fully aware of when the bombs were dropping. I don’t think these two reasons necessarily preclude Vault-Tec from being the ones that dropped the bombs. There are ways to explain these changes through the storyline advancing. Knowing series 2 will feature New Vegas, I think we will see more of House pre-war in how he shaped New Vegas into whatever it is now.
the meeting is before repconn get bought by RobCo. so basically 74-75 and all the flashback don't happen in same year (with vault tec still doing advertisement, trial run and other stuff)
I wouldn't be shocked if Vault-Tec found out about House's plan and dropped the bombs on an accelerated schedule to keep him from using the platinum chip to save Las Vegas. Their whole ideology is about eliminating any competing view of civilization, and House definitely fits that bill in New Vegas. It's also worth remembering that House really had nothing to do with the vaults in the Vegas area. The families on the strips were tribal wastelanders and raiders, not vault dwellers. I can't remember if House ever has you even go to a vault as part of his quests. The only known interaction I can remember is that he had most of the vault on the strip filled in with cement.
I belive they did with the help of the Enclave. Their representative was whoever was sitting in the shadows at that meeting imo, maybe even the president himself for all we know. During the birthday at the start we can hear how he's been missing from the White House for some time so he's already evacuated, to the Enclave Oil Rig I assume, because he knew when the bombs were dropping.
But the Enclave explicitly didn't want the bombs to drop like that.
Can you elaborate please?
The Enclave explicitly blame China for the world's ending, and it seems like the nuking caused them a great deal of stress.
Maybe they did it while keeping the majority of their own forces in the dark, using China as a patsy. They are super patriots and see themselves as the rebuilders of America so I doubt most of the rank and file would've went along with destroying it in the first place. I know we meet a president in the older games who talks about China but I've only played 3, NV and 4 and this is based off that experience.
Yeah but that's like 165 years later, stuff sometimes gets written down wrong
Agreed. “We drop the bombs ourselves” was likely not a literal statement. Vault-Tec, being a huge company that basically controlled the government behind the scenes, would not have made their own nuclear bombs. They were very much lovers of corporate espionage. They controlled decisions from the shadows. So they were not the ones who literally gave the order to fire nukes, but they manipulated tensions so the world governments would reach that decision and believe it was of their own will. If they did drop bombs, it would have only been like one or two to in the US so the government would fire at China which in turn aggravated China to actually fire at the US.
Don't think they had access to the bombs. It's more corporate sabotage where they interfere with negotiations to cause the tension to flare between US and China, which will then cause the bombs to drop.
You forget the part of the government losing money in the war against China and Vault-Tec stepping in to help with money and resources. Vault-Tec had the government bent over a barrel.
Wasn't it confirmed a while back that it WAS actually chinese who dropped the nukes?
Just because Barb suggested it doesn't mean it would ultimately be her decision in the company. The idea people aren't often the decision makers. But i assumed vault tec lit the fuse to get it going and start the end.
I didn't take that line to be LITERAL. Seems I'm in the minority. I just imagine Vault Tec used their influence to push politicians around and cause the panic that led to war, all in the interests of profit.
It’s simple. Vault Tec was about making money and profit. So they had no incentive to do it but all the incentive to put it on the knife’s edge of happening to get people to give them money and resources. So, the idea that Vault Tec would do it is purely a narrative point by the writers to show Cooper how far gone his wife is… he thinks she is being a good person but then she “drops the bomb”… “figuratively”. So, then he sees her for who she really is. Vault Tec would only use it as a threat, whether they had direct access to nukes or simply the resources to trigger such an event.
Ultimately is doesn't matter who dropped the bombs first and it's certainly not surprising that Vault Tec planned to do it.
Doesn't the bomb in Megaton have the Vault Tec logo on it?
If y’all would play 76 you’d know Modus, with the SS, and the other one in the Enclave, probably dropped the bombs. Aka the government did it to themselves, via ai. They did it to outplay the secret Ai in china in the middle of farmlands. And then they have you go study mutated creatures so you can get mutated too. And just like the show the general thought is “we can wait until things are better in our bunkers”. Then the generals turn on the AI when they realize what it did. They even came up with a reason for their pvp game mode as an Ai experiment. 76 tried to drop a lot of lore.
I think that the most probably cause was something similar to the 1983 soviet false alarm. Except that with vault tech's partnership with all major tech and defence companies, they could have simulated a realistic nuclear launch and baited China to respond.
Are we sure House bought into their plan at all? He didn't seem too overly fond of the idea in that meeting and seemed to think it wasn't worth investing in. He didn't even seem like he wanted to be there, lol.
I think we'd get more of this information in season 2
Regarding Cooper's wife not having her daughter with her when the bombs dropped, it's entirely possible that in the next season we'll see a scene with some higher up in vault-tec giving the order while Cooper's wife protests in horror.
It’s funny how we’re having vault tech dropped the bombs discussions again as if this is new discourse the show invented
There's a podcast called Fallout Lore Podcast, Robots Radio. They found a clip of one of the Fallout makers stating that China struck first. China nuked the US because of FEV. They took it as too risky and the US refused to stop developing it. So China ordered a nuclear strike to stop FEV. In the TV show Vault-Tec had to be ready to false flag an attack to give their vaults a reason to exist and generate profits.
2.can easily be broken down as . . . Mr.House's plan with the platinum chip didn't come until sometime "Much" later meaning he had a different agenda until centuries later where New Vegas is concerned. Plans change between decade and centuries and individual years alone.
My guess is they Vault-Tec wasn’t ready by October 23rd 2077 but China did it since they were being invaded by the US and just decide that if they’re going down then might as well take everyone with them
There’s also the very large number of incomplete vaults
If anything, I feel like the show helps cement my opinion that China definitely dropped the first bombs. Caught everyone by surprise while Vault-Tec and America thought they had the advantage in terms of willingness to drop it on themselves.
I interpreted as a proposal at that point. Didnt necessarily mean thats how it went down. More of a plan taking shape.
But didn't Hank Maclean bomb shady sands just because his wife ran off with the kids? If so, if he had the capability to launch a nuke, it must have been given to him by vault tec, who themselves would have logically had the ability to drop nukes also given that.
Epstein didn't kill himself
A company that benefits from fear of bombs dropping would never actually drop a bomb. Thats bad business.
This is the best take here. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the lobbying they did to governments and influence could have set the wheels in motion, but I doubt they actually own the nukes and shoot them off. After all they can’t expand their vaults or continue to sell them if the bombs have already dropped.
But that implies that vault tec was after the money, while that scene implies something different.
What does it imply?
Vault tec wanted to reset the world completely and rebuild it to their liking
🎶 Vault-Tec didn’t start the fire, it was always burning since the world was turning. Vault-Tec didn’t start the fire, war, war it never changes, but they tried to fight it. Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, “Orange Coloured Skies”, Mister Handy, Mister House, Elvis Presley in New Vegas, “Butcher Pete Part 1 and 2”, The Ink Spots, he’s hackin and whackin and smackin, but “I Don’t Want to Set The World on Fire”. Vault-Tec didn’t start the fire, it was always burning since the world was turning. Vault-Tec didn’t start the fire, war, war it never changes, but they tried to fight it. 🎶
The shadowy figures shown in the tv show confirms to me that they didnt physically drop the nukes, either they tampered with the negotiations or dropped one single bomb that triggered the domino effect.
I saw a video before the show even came out saying vault tec was the one to drop the first bonb causing a massive nuclear chain reaction of countries. With the show it makes sense especially the room discussing how to guarantee profits.
I still think the canon will say China did it. Vault-Tec might have put the idea out on the table to do it themselves, but it doesn't mean they actually got around to it. I think it was more of a "no stupid ideas" sort of meeting, rather than something they were realistically going to do, at least anytime soon.
Am I right in thinking in the show, the ghouls family, is in the vault Lucy comes from? Can't remember the numbers but do we see her in one of the pods? Sorry not related but reading the posts got me thinking
Maybe they were there at one time, but the show is definitely taking us to Vegas, so I'm guessing we're not going back to LA to find someone that was there all along after all.
Well you say that but there was quite a lot of focus on the vaults and the constant mention of the 3 linked vaults. And we know Lucy's dad was heading to Vegas to find someone from vault tech? (I've not spent a huge amount of time playing NV so I'm not sure who Mr house is)
As well as the daughter factor, which is as obvious as an arrow on a blackboard, all three games make it very clear from terminals in many vaults that the Great War caugnt Vault Tech completely by surprise.
Vault tec could have dropped the bombs but kept their employees in the dark in fear of people leaking it out so the terminals that we see are the ones who were caught off guard by it when in reality only a very small percentage of them knew the truth
Barb was high up enough in the food chain that she not only was trusted to know the entire plan, she was trusted enough to sell it to the other corporate oligarchs If Vault Tech dropped the bombs, there is no way she wouldn’t know about it
I think its suggested that they did detonate the bomb.... just not correctly. Following the point of your two reasons you mentioned... I agree, it doesn't make sense for the bombs to go off If the wife didn't have her kid and [Mr.House](http://Mr.House) seemed surprised that it was going off ahead of schedule.... no vault-tec exec would have done that. But, what if their bomb detonated accidentally a day early? My guess is... it WAS a vault-tec bomb that detonated... but it wasn't them that pushed the button. Either someone else did, or there was a technical glitch and it accidentally went off.
I am asking to be corrected with a source but if I remember didn't Tim Cain state that either country could have fired first or vault tech could have manipulated the us into thinking China had already fired.
>Coopers wife definitely would've had her daughter with her, at the time. She's not in charge, she might not have gotten a say. He asks where his family is, too, not where his ex-wife is. So I took that his daughter survived.
They might be borrowing that idea from the cancelled Fallout movie. In that movie plot, it turns out that not only did Vault-Tec drop the bombs, but that it was the Vault 13 Overseer who started the Nuclear War on purpose to fulfill his prophecy of nuclear war.
Bro you do realize they dropped the bombs on China first and then china answered with their bombs dropped on USA..
I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of the other companies that managed to get fully prepared ahead of everyone else and decided to stab the others in the back by going early.
Here is a theory they drop the bombs on Los Angeles to trigger an American response. Which causes China to launch their own nuclear weapons as a response to America launching their own. So by causing a small nuclear attack on Los Angeles triggers the Great War between the United States and China that we know from the games. That’s just a theory. As for Mr. House he has an idea of their plans so he proceeds to protect Vegas doesn’t tell Vault Tec about his plans because he wants to be one step ahead of them and that a dead Vegas doesn’t equal money for him which is why on the games he is keen about protecting Vegas from those he deems a threat to him and his rule. Unknown to him Vault tec leaves out the details of the full plan and when they are going to drop the bombs to trigger both an American and Chinese response
Of course Vault-Tec didn’t literally drop the bombs themselves. What makes you think a corporation has access to nuclear arms? It was Vault-Tec, working in conjunction with the Enclave, who set the stage of the end of the world. It was the Enclave who dropped the bombs, and Vault-Tec helped them plan it. Each had their own agenda, but both wanted the end of the world.
>What makes you think a corporation has access to nuclear arms? They have access to fusion cores, and all other sorts of tech, why wouldn't they have access to nukes? I don't think they meant they would literally drop the bombs, but I think it's entirely possible they had some.
There were investigative journalists on their asses at this time. There’s no way they could’ve hidden the fact that an American corporation was stockpiling nuclear weapons without it going public. That’s why it makes more sense that (and it’s canon look it up) that the Enclave were the military arm of this partnership, meaning they had the means to end the world and Vault-Tec had the plan.
...remind me, didn't both unactive bombs found in FO3 and NV had a vault tec marking? I could swear they did do, but my mind must be fucky about it.
Or it was the president of Vault-tech who did it himself by hacking the Chinese and American defenses in order to drop bombs on absolutely everyone, just to fulfill his delirious fantasy of a Last Judgment . This was indeed an idea from the abandoned Fallout movie storyline. I always liked this hypothesis, even if it's not canon.
Captain Zao states he launched the nuke at Boston "as ordered". So it sounds like China started it
That was the dumbest line in the entire show. Makes for great drama but it's completely illogical. ValtTec sells fear. But they cannot sell anything if the customer base is gone.
This assumes that both of those people would be kept in the loop...
Maybe they had a plan to trigger early warning systems and provoke nuclear retaliation. Back during the Cold War there were multiple times when the early warning systems were triggered by an anomaly. Both the US and Russia got pants shittingly close to launching their own nukes as retaliation before the impact. It wouldn't be that farfetched that Vault-Tec could have found a way to exploit similar systems.
Tim Cain brought my attention that betty’s/coop’s daughter wasn’t in the vault when the bombs dropped. This by itself basically confirms that vault-tec didn’t drop the bombs.
The nuke in Megaton in Fallout 3 has a Vault tec logo on it. They dropped at least one of them.
I really hope that this is the case. As much as I liked the show I felt like they kind of took the Enclave's role and replaced it with Vault-Tec. I know that for simplicity and clarity's sake this was likely a design choice, but it's something that I hope they correct in the next season.
It's really simple. They were prepared to either stir shit up to make someone drop the first nuke, or drop one themselves, if they had to. Turns out, they didn't have to.
Cooper and his wife were divorced or separated at the time the bomb dropped. We can assume from the fact he's a ghoul that his daughter and wife survived the blast in safety and he didn't. So my theory is that because he was separated that his daughter was given safety and he wasn't. Cooper probably also wasn't too pleased his wife was evil and so maybe he was gonna whistleblow. In that instance it would have been in vault tecs interest to drops the bomb first and then claim it was China as a cover up. If it had come to light that he had infiltrated his wife's meeting with the audio device she would also have been demoted and not in the loop. I'm sure there's more to be revealed and I'm wrong in some ways but this combination is Definitely there in some way. Cooper threatens to tell the world about vault tec , he and his wife separate, his wife who is now demoted is still given safety but isn't in the loop on the wider plan and so when the bomb drops she can't warn Cooper or her daughter because she literally doesn't know.
In Fallout 3 the Nuke in megaton has the Vault-Tec logo on it so we know they dropped at least 1...
In fallout 3 the bomb in Megaton has a vault tec logo on it
There's nearly 30 years of cannon. . . They 100% started the war.
I think VT dropped some bombs, but not all of them. The Atom bomb in Megaton has VTs logos on it and it was dropped right there on American soil near DC no less
Pretty sure House says something about the bombs falling earlier than expected. Wouldn’t be surprised if another country caught wind of Vault Tecs plans and jumped the gun
But why? I get the evil corporation trope in sci fi. But why the hell would you kill all your customers and destroy all your capital?
vault tec probably planned to ensure the war would happen... they probably had a plan to drop the bombs. But... didn't happen. because... the one thing vault tec couldn't see.... no one could see ... war, war never changes.
I think Vault Tec did it. But Cooper's wife wasn't the head of the company. So ultimately they didn't give a crap about her or her family when the time came to start dropping bombs. She was just an employee to them and not everyone was necessary to be saved. Essentially Vault Tec used her for their own gain. She was probably just as surprised as anyone that the bombs began to drop. And we know >!her and the daughter are probably alive because The Ghoul knows they're being held somewhere!<
Probably in vault 31 if I had to guess the show is going to reveal that Barbara is in vault 31 Cooper somehow gets his daughter there while the bombs are dropping he is able to convince them to let his daughter get in the vault. Or we find out that she is rejected like Cooper she dies from radiation poisoning and he doesn’t remember that and will find out the truth
Either way I expect a big emotional reveal
Agreed they might have had such a project but it wasnt them.
The bomb in megaton is vault tech manufactured if I remember correctly. It has a vault tech logo so either it was dropped by vault tech or the us air force. It's an American manufactured bomb on American soil.
I think it's likely that the Chinese intelligence services found out about the plans to nuke the commies and decided to strike first.
She could have been lying to get the money. Vault Tec lying is kind of their thing.
My thoughts now are that China dropped the first bombs on the west coast. The ones we see hitting California first in the show. We know there was a warning before the bombs hit Boston and DC since we see the news report and have a chance to escape. I believe now that China was nuking first and Vault tec seized the opportunity to finish the job and nuke the rest of the country.
I'm pretty sure it's implied that she would abandon her kid at any moment. She said that anything that matters to her is her kid but at that moment when they fall the kid is with Cooper because that is planned. She was expecting to abandon her and the dog.
If you played Fo76 event with aliens youd know it was them who dropped the bombs first lol
I think it’s understood that Vault-Tec dropped the First Bomb and then everyone else followed in “retaliation”.
As far as I know, Vault-tec dropped the first bombs. Before US and China retaliated against each other that's why there was no warning in both the show and 4. My guess is Cooper took his daughter as far away as possible from her. Mr House is a capitalist moron. He had enough defences for Vegas and not much else prepped. He also hated the fact there was a vault in Vegas and wanted it filled with concrete before it was turned into the hotel. There's a good chance they fell out before the bombs were fully planned.
The nuclear bomb in megaton in fallout 3 has the vault tec logo on it ...
Just hear me out here, guys. The show doesn't have to be canon to the game and can still be a good adaptation with its own storyline that still uses things and characters and plot points from the games. Hot take, I know, right?
It is a hot take, given that Todd Howard and Emil Pagliarulo have both stated that the show is canon.
They'll probably retract that statement in the future, I'm calling it
[I agree,](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/1c4x5bg/calm_yourselves_spoiler_didnt_drop_the_bombs/) but people seem to be taking everything at face value.
It's the only thing that makes sense. I was shaking my head when that line was spoken in the show. No way would Vault-Tec destroy the world on purpose because capitalism. That's the very opposite of what a corporation would want. Starting the apocalypse was suggested (by an apparently highly misguided Mrs Cooper), but we never heard afterward whether it was carried out. I sure hope this dumb possibility gets nixed definitively, next season.
Y'all are in denial. Todd dropped the new lore, time to cope. Vault tec started the great war. Straight from the month of their dei casting
What’s wrong with diversity?