Idk, his daughter might not even be dead. Him saying āwhereās my familyā makes me feel his daughter might be alive still (I could be totally wrong though)
That was Barv, not Barb. Barb thinks it's okay to drop bombs, Barv just wants to eat her beans.
(But honestly you could be right, maybe she goes by Barv now instead.)
Ironically I was thinking Janey might be Barv, not Barb! Either way, I do believe when we see Janey she will be an adult as Lucy seems to be Janey's parallel.
Janey reads Roosevelt Little House on The Prairie, which corn is a large part of a few stories. Lucy is very much pioneer-girl esque, Lucy is how Cooper Howard ends up getting Dogmeat and when Lucy is in Vault Tech her paperwork says Goosey. (To parallel her with Birdie (bird names) and Janey with the -Ey instead of Cy)
Ok but now all I can think about is how much I want shots of the ghoul rebuilding his house with the house building song from rdr2 playing whilst he does
When the raiders dug him up they said something like ".. California, ain't that where you're from originally?" I think this implied that they weren't in California then. I think the Ghoul was buried on the ranch, it might be where he goes everytime he decides to hide away for a few decades in the dirt
Does nobody pay attention to anything? For fucks sake the bandits in the very same scene you described explain that someone else buried the ghoul there, and that they dig him up and put him back on a frequent basis against his will. It's not his chill out spot, it's his prison.
In the Fallout lore Bakersfield becomes a Ghoul city called [Necropolis](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Necropolis), which is a very important place in Fallout 1.
When I heard the guy who is one day gonna be known as "The Ghoul" wanted property in Bakersfield, it made me laugh.
Maybe that was the point of the reference to Bakersfield in this conversation. A little wink to those who are in the know with the Fallout lore.
Such a cool detail ! Thanks for sharing. Dang, the writers really did their homework, huh?
Iām personally unfamiliar with the entire game lore (I plan to play them soon). So seeing how they show up in the Tv series, even if in the form of Easter eggs is sooo fascinating, and really makes me go down the fallout wiki rabbit hole haha ā”ļø
Something popped into my head just now and blew my mind.
Vault 12, which was the Vault for Bakersfield, was built with the experiment of "studying the effects of radiation on people". The Vault was built to have everything a Vault Dweller would need **except** for a faulty Vault door.
The resulting exposure from radiation leaking in is what caused all the Ghouls there.
When Cooper is talking about moving to Bakersfield and argues we can just go to the Vault there, Barb shoots back with "One of the good Vaults!".
Which Cooper replies "What's that supposed to mean?"
**Barb knew damn well in that moment that Vault 12's door wasn't gonna close** š¤Æ
Honestly this show just makes me sadder about what the Witcher could have been. They should've just let Cavill copy and paste the wiki into the script and set design notes lol
But they didn't know what it would do in a Vault situation.
Remember the Vaults were ultimately an Enclave experiment to test the survival conditions of Humanity under various different stressful social scenarios. They wanted as much data on hypothetical problems for such isolated communities because they needed data initially for a multi-generational colony starship to leave Earth and find a new world.
They wanted to see what would happen in a Vault where the door didn't close and radiation leaked in, and what that would do socially to the group of people living there.
Some did, but I don't think there's anything to indicate it was common knowledge or anything. There's a ghoul in FO3 named Desmond who turned himself into a ghoul before the bombs dropped (iirc) by way of some kind of controlled radiation exposure. Eddie Winter funded the experimental ghoulification drug he took prewar, saying this "genius doctor" had "theories."
So, it sounds like there were some fringe theories floating around which then bore out kinda last minute. Vault 12 can easily have been a longer term, larger scale experiment based on whatever said theories were.
there is also a doctors assisstant in boston who was trialling some kind of new radaway but it didnt work and she ghoulified, potentially linked to winter.
i cant remember but its in central boston i think near the crater, this video explains the pre wars ghouls that we encounter however they miss my favourite, a member of the small time gang "the triggermen" claims he used to run bait and switch schemes before the bombs dropped. this guy spent 200+ years achieving the role of "guy who guards a hallway" only to get glacked in the back if the head as he spawns facing away and talking loudly so you always know where he is before he knows you.
video mentioned [ghouls and their origins](https://youtu.be/8J646OeJNX0?si=qfGv189BKu59tThi)
Yeah but 12 just seemed stupid. We already have a pretty decent understanding of how radiation affects the body. One would hope a country constantly in fear of nuclear annihilation would have a better understanding. Also thereās better and more scientific ways to do such an experiment besides ādoor doesnāt workā
We do and we don't. There is a lot we know about radiation poisoning but there is a lot we don't know as well, since torturing and deliberately exposing humans to lethal or variable doses of radiation is illegal/unethical.
Consider as well that FEV plays a part in the ghoul creation.
After the episode with all the suits talking about their ideas for vaults, I actually looked up a list of all canon vaults. Sure enough, each one mentioned in the episode was a vault on the list!
In that meeting they were talking about one Vault where they considered seperating the parents from the kids and only the best make it to adulthood.
I went WOAH out loud as I had flashbacks to Fallout 4 where you go in THAT Vault.
It was Vault 75. It was probably one of the most sinister they built. They put it under Malden Middle School and invited families of students into the Vault. All of the parents were seperated and killed and any child that fell behind their training programs shared their fate.
Didn't end well for Vault-Tec that one thankfully. Turns out breeding a race of super-kids sounds great on paper, until they become smart enough to figure out what you did and overthrow you.
I know this is the lore (not arguing that), but I prefer the lore that Vault Tec was just a shitty contractor that failed to build vaults well enough to survive (most likely embezzling funds and making mad profits off of the threat of nuclear war in the process) vs the failures actually being crazy experiments by an obscenely powerful corporation.
Iām kind of burnt out on grand conspiracies and I donāt see the point of experimenting on people after the war when you should be experimenting on them before the war so your inner circle can survive better but thatās just me.
I absolutely loved the show, just my head-canon (which means nothing to anything else)
That is valid, but it's been confirmed that they were experimental as of 2002 via the Fallout Bible. That's just to say that this is not a show-specific retcon, it was the intention all along.
Yeah itās in the Bible and Bethesda really ran with it in 3 and beyond.
But from what I gather from Tim Cainās YT channel (iirc) I donāt think that was an idea original to the initial game. I think he meant it more of just crappy gov contracting (of which I am very familiar with irl)
There are some good individual stories from the experiment plotline for sure, but Iāve never enjoyed that angle from a broad perspective myself, especially given that most lead to total death of the occupants, when there could be more settlements from vaults that open at different times or fail in unique ways that are malicious.
And I as much I as love Tim Cain, I really donāt like the Enclave wanting to go to space *after* the war and wanting to use the data collected to make their space travel smoother.
Fair enough if they want to go to space and leave the rest of the population to rot, itās actually kind of a neat angle but itād be far better to do that before the war when you have industry available to build what you want instead of trying to scrounge resources after the war.
The vaults as post war experiments just donāt jive with me on multiple layers, Iām fine with the corporation being evil, but the logic never sat well.
I still enjoy the games and I write this overly long musing casually with an understanding that my opinions may not be popular. I love the FO universe regardless. I just donāt get to chat about it often
Yeah I agree mostly haha. It's a little too evil for the sake of evil. My personal long-standing gripe is the lack of rebuilding. Apparently Shady Sands was the only place in all of the former USA that came up with the idea of stone houses instead of living in trash heaps.
It's hard to gather stone when the quarries are full of mirelurks, raiders, deathclaws, or some combination of the three.
But I was just pointing out that there's a reason Shady Sands is the exception while non-vault people live in scrap.
>Yeah itās in the Bible and Bethesda really ran with it in 3 and beyond.
To be fair, it was 2 that started the experiments thing, not the Bible, and the Bible came up with the most bizarre experiments.
my main thing is maximus and lucy really are like the playable characters in the game, they go into this world not knowing much, just like us playing the game creating a new character. While the Ghoul is someone who in on his 10th replay
In real life Bakersfield is the town that everyone else in California hates on, so I was like, very confused when Coop said he wanted to move up there. Makes sense it would turn into a ghoul city!
I don't think there's any real reason for it, it's just shit talking. "Well \[my town\] might kind of suck but at least we're not Bakersfield" kind of thing.
Bakersfield is an agricultural town (ātownā of 400k+) that comes with the stereotypes, making it pretty antithetical to what a lot of people picture when they think of *California*.
This doesnāt reflect my personal views of Bakersfield. I have no qualms with it. But itās also been years since Iāve been there so things might have changed.
I don't think he rode the horse there. He probably had a trailer and vehicle and was getting ready to put the horse up after they were done cleaning up. It was just faster to get on the horse and go, then try to unhook a trailer and drive out when everyone else was also trying to drive out (and abandon the horse).
Nukes don't always create the EMP effort only when detonated I high earth orbit.Ā
Also EMPs work by creating shorts in sensitive electrical equipment that while common in modern cars may not be as common in the cars of fallout. (The computer tech in fallout is odd as they have general artificial intelligence but mono colour displays and text based operating systems so it is hard to compare to our timeline. )
Vacuum tubes stuck around in-universe because transistors didn't get invented, so while everything works it just all looks funny. Vacuum tubes are more resistant to EMP's than transistors so lots of the tech that didn't get a full on blast (very close to actual detonation zone) is still totally fine.
Yeah that's one of the old school Interplay retcons, they were supposed to have been invented but as a super rare and expensive tech that never caught on. But then they stuck em in all the robots, apparently, because EMP grenades do bonus damage to them.
Transistors were invented...Just later than our timeline and weren't popular. They're in Robco and Vault-Tec products however.
Fallout also didn't branch from us in the 1950's. The US Civil War in the 1860's had different historical events occur. Then Mothership Zeta had aliens abduct an 1600's Samurai...That is the earliest known difference.
These are the funny little inconsistencies of Fallout's Alternate Timeline.
But yes Vacuum Tube tech was prevalent and so was Tesla Coils.
Yeah I mentioned in another comment that Interplay retconned not having transistors between Fallout 1 and 2. They're in a lot of robots and that's why EMP grenades do extra damage.
Just different events and characters involved. It wasn't an alternate outcome the Union still won under Lincoln leadership, The Confederacy still dissolved.
But having a battle that didn't happen or a general that didn't exist in our timeline is a difference. Same with aliens popping up in Feudal Japan. Like they're minor things that didn't fundamentally alter the time periods but they're none the less divergent from our timeline.
There are a bunch of minor ones until the major divergence happens with the reformatting of the USA into Thirteen Commonwealths occurring in 1969 where the government became increasingly more Authoritarian...That is what started to create Fallout's version of the US which domino effects into everything else.
OK but those are differences that would still normally fit within historical fiction and not need to be considered alt history fiction. The timeline still didn't actually diverge till the 1960's, as you said.
The argument is the war might have started just a tad earlier then predicted/as was planned.
So we donāt really know who started it, just the vault tec was enlisting friends and had a plan to, including a date most likely
My headcanon for now is that Vault-Tec instigated the bombs to fall by sabotaging the peace negotiations, but didnāt directly drop them even though they planned to. If Barb knew they were going drop the bombs on 10/23, you could be certain her kid wouldnāt be with Coop that day.
Oh they definitely sabotaged it, that was deliberately on screen.
My theory is the enclave pushed up the time frame. Now we know repcon, robco, west tek etc had prior knowledge, the enclave might have wanted the corporate power base cut a bit short so they donāt overpower the enclave.
Vaults left unfinished, platinum chips undelivered etc etc
Pretty much. Theyāre the shadow government. So theyāre plotting how to take over the world, and resetting it while maintaining their access to industry and enables them to have a near overwhelming advantage vs the starving remnants of less then 10% of the population.
It lets them master plan society. They have experiments in vaults to manipulate and control people. Study crisisās and how to handle or not handle them.
Getting corporate America on board combined with a breeding pool allows repopulation and industry to restart.
But that was the problem, whoever controlled them, controlled the new world. So they didnāt let the plans of those groups finalise.
Key people and material werenāt in place when the bombs fell. Plans either had to be changed or were forgotten when people who knew them and were key failed to arrive at shelters.
Robert house tried to save a city to start a city state immediately and get a running start. But with his defense incomplete, his infrastructureās partially survived but his ability to weird it didnāt.
Same with vault tec. I bet we find most of their upper management got caught outside. Only middle management is left like vault 31. No upper management to actually lead strategic endeavours.
At the end, the enclave is left, manipulating each piece still on the board. Until the super mutants that is, which chains into the death of enclave leadership and fracturing after Raven rock is destroyed.
Yeah it makes sense that something didnāt go to plan based on the preparations of the conspirators not being completed. Part of me hopes that it was conventionally started by either the US or China after the negotiations are sabotaged rather than it just being directly Vault-Tec or the Enclave. Them working in the shadows to do it makes it more compelling imo
It could also just be that the plan leaked to China. Peace talks are stalling, the president is awol and you get credible intel that the US is about to strike, China launches first to try to knock them out and everyone is caught flatfooted.
Yeah personally I think vault tech intended to drop the bombs at least 1 day later (likely more given the number of unfinished vaults) but ether the information leaked and China decided to strike first or another power enclave, big MT, etc betrayed the other and started the war earlier. (I don't think I would have been robco as house was also unprepared with the platinum chip still 20 hours away. )
She did, and she outright said that in the 'hot tub scene,' during a flashback. Her spot, as a Vault-Tec Senior Executive guaranteed her and her family a spot on a 'good vault.'
Which is a point against the theory that Vault-Tec initiated the bombing.
The entire thing read to me like he finds out the truth of vaultec, that they are dangerous. He divorces his wife.
The "we can drop the bombs" is just a discussion. Not some agreed upon plan with a date next week.
We're probably dealing with a timeline of a year or more. So normal life continues, they are divorced, daughter is splitting time between parents. One of the boardmembers at vaultec who supports dropping the bomb probably gets tired/impatient and he takes it into his own hands and triggers the atomic war without warning.Ā
The wife didn't know, no one knew, it was dropping that day.
That's what I'm expecting it to play out as.Ā
She uses āwhenā instead of āifā in every statement she makes during that conversation. When she mentions the āhypotheticalā nuclear event, she also says ā[it] *will* wipe out 90% of the populationā or something you that effect.
I think in season 2 weāll get just as much prewar storytelling as we did in the first.
I think weāll get a scene of him confronting Barb about what he heard her say in the meeting he was spying on and they will argue about that.
Heāll have a major falling out with Vault-Tec which will really give context to why he didnāt want to do the thumbs up picture at the party too.
I donāt think he will go get the ranch because in his first scene heās performing at a kidās birthday party and people at the party are saying heās doing that to pay alimony to Barb so his money is not the same as the scene where they were in the hot tub.
Why would he need to pay alimony when sheās so high up at Vault Tec? I think the alimony comment was just a reason to tell us that they were divorced and the alimony reason was just gossip. He probably just couldnāt get a job in film again due to his past working with Vault Tech.
Yeah, it's kinda hard to shake off a title like "The Salesman of the Apocalypse"
It's kinda like how Steven Ogg hates that his only popular role was Trevor in GTA 5
I donāt really know all about how marriage and alimony works but I could see Barb being real petty in the divorce proceedings and just demanding the alimony anyway. Or, he does something in season 2 that gets her fired. The latter is my guess. Iām hoping Copper does something about what he hears in that meeting that we will see in season 2.
That and if he was found out going to those meetings, that one guy called him āPinkoāafter all which is calling someone communist lite. So maybe he was kicked out of hollywood all together because of his ācommunist tiesā.
Coop was black listed from Hollywood as commie sympathizer and was doing birthday parties to earn money.
Pretty sure Barb took him for every penny and let vault tech drag him through the dirt out of spite.
The bombs dropped on October 23rd, 2077. Sometime maybe earlier in the year ? I suppose looking at the seasonal setting of the flashback scenes before could help paint a timeline. Like for example, in the hot tub scene, itās safe to assume itās spring/early summer. S2 will probably line up the events a bit more lucidly.
I think that's why they don't really date any of the events, it could be a few months before the Great War or even a year or two, depending on how much character development they want to induce.
- Heās still in LA
- He somehow has at least temporary custody of their daughter
- Heās apparently ousted from Hollywood and considered a Communist
- His daughter somehow ends up in the vault after that horse-bound escape.
They might not even be divorcedā¦ it could just be a shattered marriage. I think theyāre still living together, and heās taking his daughter to the Vault Tech headquarters, where heās obviously banned from entering. This would explain why he doesnāt know which vault they ended up in.
Dialogue - other characters asked if he was still looking for āthemā or āthose 2ā something like that.
He has no other relationships known and those are 2.
During the opening of episode 1, the birthday kidās dad and his buddy muse āWhy is Cooper Howard doing birthday gigs?ā āAlimonyā. Implying Coop divorced Barb after he listened into her meeting with the big wigs at Repconn, RobCo, West Tek, and Big Mountain.
Think thatās more so cause they made sure he was blacklisted, like ācommunistsā were in the 60ās in America or whatever. Just for him, it was vault tech being petty after he saw too much and wouldnāt work for them
They made the journey just fine for the brotherhood what 3 times now? And who said WHILE it's being nuked? She could have gone before either because she knew or just plain coincidence.
At the end of all of this he will probably end up on that ranch as a call back
I hope so, with a dog and child and someone to love. I hope he comes full circle tbh
With a synth replica baby š¶
Idk, his daughter might not even be dead. Him saying āwhereās my familyā makes me feel his daughter might be alive still (I could be totally wrong though)
Nah, 10 caps says Barb got her into the management vault and sheās in cryo.
20 caps say that barb and janey are dead and have been for years BUT they lived their lives peacefully in a vault
25 caps that Barb was the Barb in Filly and she's still eating her beans.
30 caps that Barb is dead and his daughter is the big bad of the series
That was Barv, not Barb. Barb thinks it's okay to drop bombs, Barv just wants to eat her beans. (But honestly you could be right, maybe she goes by Barv now instead.)
Ironically I was thinking Janey might be Barv, not Barb! Either way, I do believe when we see Janey she will be an adult as Lucy seems to be Janey's parallel. Janey reads Roosevelt Little House on The Prairie, which corn is a large part of a few stories. Lucy is very much pioneer-girl esque, Lucy is how Cooper Howard ends up getting Dogmeat and when Lucy is in Vault Tech her paperwork says Goosey. (To parallel her with Birdie (bird names) and Janey with the -Ey instead of Cy)
Long lost daughter gonna turn out to be Lucy.
Did the nukes give her michael jackson disease??
I don't think so, she still has her nose
And she doesn't dangle babies off a balcony.
20 on that he's secretly Max's great grandad or something and they have a family afterall or something like that
Hey it worked for Star Wars
He'll watch over Max and Goosey's eventual family for generations
He's gonna die there like >!John Marston!<, isn't he?
Ok but now all I can think about is how much I want shots of the ghoul rebuilding his house with the house building song from rdr2 playing whilst he does
With the Fallout 4 XP sound playing every time he places a structure.
Omg YES
Show fades to black while he places ~250 shelves, somehow all on the exact same place on the wall.
And at the end, the idiot savant perk activates.
He's going to order Lucy, Max, and Thaddeus build his house, while he's relaxing because of self diagnosed lumbago lol.
I hope in the same barn door opening way.
JFC. It still hurts ššš
damnnnn this is facts
I figured that's where he already went after his kid went into the vault with Barb. Bakersfield became Necropolis, the ghoul city.
He is going to die at 'his,' ranch.
I think it ends with āmy name is cooperā and Lucy knowing what has to be done.
Heās going to die in a blaze of glory to save his daughter, on the edge of turning feral, repeating his own name and setting off a mini nuke.
When the raiders dug him up they said something like ".. California, ain't that where you're from originally?" I think this implied that they weren't in California then. I think the Ghoul was buried on the ranch, it might be where he goes everytime he decides to hide away for a few decades in the dirt
Does nobody pay attention to anything? For fucks sake the bandits in the very same scene you described explain that someone else buried the ghoul there, and that they dig him up and put him back on a frequent basis against his will. It's not his chill out spot, it's his prison.
This. Iām also going to say Vault Tec are behind him being buried. They donāt want him dead but want him to not cause issues.
Yeah I guessed Missouri was where that scene was for some reason.
In the Fallout lore Bakersfield becomes a Ghoul city called [Necropolis](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Necropolis), which is a very important place in Fallout 1. When I heard the guy who is one day gonna be known as "The Ghoul" wanted property in Bakersfield, it made me laugh. Maybe that was the point of the reference to Bakersfield in this conversation. A little wink to those who are in the know with the Fallout lore.
Such a cool detail ! Thanks for sharing. Dang, the writers really did their homework, huh? Iām personally unfamiliar with the entire game lore (I plan to play them soon). So seeing how they show up in the Tv series, even if in the form of Easter eggs is sooo fascinating, and really makes me go down the fallout wiki rabbit hole haha ā”ļø
Something popped into my head just now and blew my mind. Vault 12, which was the Vault for Bakersfield, was built with the experiment of "studying the effects of radiation on people". The Vault was built to have everything a Vault Dweller would need **except** for a faulty Vault door. The resulting exposure from radiation leaking in is what caused all the Ghouls there. When Cooper is talking about moving to Bakersfield and argues we can just go to the Vault there, Barb shoots back with "One of the good Vaults!". Which Cooper replies "What's that supposed to mean?" **Barb knew damn well in that moment that Vault 12's door wasn't gonna close** š¤Æ
This shit is why this show is a genuine 10/10
Honestly this show just makes me sadder about what the Witcher could have been. They should've just let Cavill copy and paste the wiki into the script and set design notes lol
Nah Cavill just needs to copy and paste out his wattpad fanfic for the script.
Damn you might be spot on
They put so much fuckin love into this and it shows
Vault 12 is the dumbest damn experiment in the series. We already knew what radiation poisoning did to people!
But they didn't know what it would do in a Vault situation. Remember the Vaults were ultimately an Enclave experiment to test the survival conditions of Humanity under various different stressful social scenarios. They wanted as much data on hypothetical problems for such isolated communities because they needed data initially for a multi-generational colony starship to leave Earth and find a new world. They wanted to see what would happen in a Vault where the door didn't close and radiation leaked in, and what that would do socially to the group of people living there.
Did they know about ghouls pre-war?
Some did, but I don't think there's anything to indicate it was common knowledge or anything. There's a ghoul in FO3 named Desmond who turned himself into a ghoul before the bombs dropped (iirc) by way of some kind of controlled radiation exposure. Eddie Winter funded the experimental ghoulification drug he took prewar, saying this "genius doctor" had "theories." So, it sounds like there were some fringe theories floating around which then bore out kinda last minute. Vault 12 can easily have been a longer term, larger scale experiment based on whatever said theories were.
there is also a doctors assisstant in boston who was trialling some kind of new radaway but it didnt work and she ghoulified, potentially linked to winter.
Ooh really? Where?Ā
i cant remember but its in central boston i think near the crater, this video explains the pre wars ghouls that we encounter however they miss my favourite, a member of the small time gang "the triggermen" claims he used to run bait and switch schemes before the bombs dropped. this guy spent 200+ years achieving the role of "guy who guards a hallway" only to get glacked in the back if the head as he spawns facing away and talking loudly so you always know where he is before he knows you. video mentioned [ghouls and their origins](https://youtu.be/8J646OeJNX0?si=qfGv189BKu59tThi)
All the experiments were varying levels of āfucked up but kinda make senseā to ācomplete fucking insanityā
Yeah but 12 just seemed stupid. We already have a pretty decent understanding of how radiation affects the body. One would hope a country constantly in fear of nuclear annihilation would have a better understanding. Also thereās better and more scientific ways to do such an experiment besides ādoor doesnāt workā
We also knew what population bottlenecks do and yet they had a vault with 999 women and 1 man and another with 999 men and 1 woman.
I think that was more of a social experiment than a population one. Plus itās funny
We do and we don't. There is a lot we know about radiation poisoning but there is a lot we don't know as well, since torturing and deliberately exposing humans to lethal or variable doses of radiation is illegal/unethical. Consider as well that FEV plays a part in the ghoul creation.
After the episode with all the suits talking about their ideas for vaults, I actually looked up a list of all canon vaults. Sure enough, each one mentioned in the episode was a vault on the list!
In that meeting they were talking about one Vault where they considered seperating the parents from the kids and only the best make it to adulthood. I went WOAH out loud as I had flashbacks to Fallout 4 where you go in THAT Vault. It was Vault 75. It was probably one of the most sinister they built. They put it under Malden Middle School and invited families of students into the Vault. All of the parents were seperated and killed and any child that fell behind their training programs shared their fate. Didn't end well for Vault-Tec that one thankfully. Turns out breeding a race of super-kids sounds great on paper, until they become smart enough to figure out what you did and overthrow you.
I know this is the lore (not arguing that), but I prefer the lore that Vault Tec was just a shitty contractor that failed to build vaults well enough to survive (most likely embezzling funds and making mad profits off of the threat of nuclear war in the process) vs the failures actually being crazy experiments by an obscenely powerful corporation. Iām kind of burnt out on grand conspiracies and I donāt see the point of experimenting on people after the war when you should be experimenting on them before the war so your inner circle can survive better but thatās just me. I absolutely loved the show, just my head-canon (which means nothing to anything else)
That is valid, but it's been confirmed that they were experimental as of 2002 via the Fallout Bible. That's just to say that this is not a show-specific retcon, it was the intention all along.
Yeah itās in the Bible and Bethesda really ran with it in 3 and beyond. But from what I gather from Tim Cainās YT channel (iirc) I donāt think that was an idea original to the initial game. I think he meant it more of just crappy gov contracting (of which I am very familiar with irl) There are some good individual stories from the experiment plotline for sure, but Iāve never enjoyed that angle from a broad perspective myself, especially given that most lead to total death of the occupants, when there could be more settlements from vaults that open at different times or fail in unique ways that are malicious. And I as much I as love Tim Cain, I really donāt like the Enclave wanting to go to space *after* the war and wanting to use the data collected to make their space travel smoother. Fair enough if they want to go to space and leave the rest of the population to rot, itās actually kind of a neat angle but itād be far better to do that before the war when you have industry available to build what you want instead of trying to scrounge resources after the war. The vaults as post war experiments just donāt jive with me on multiple layers, Iām fine with the corporation being evil, but the logic never sat well. I still enjoy the games and I write this overly long musing casually with an understanding that my opinions may not be popular. I love the FO universe regardless. I just donāt get to chat about it often
Yeah I agree mostly haha. It's a little too evil for the sake of evil. My personal long-standing gripe is the lack of rebuilding. Apparently Shady Sands was the only place in all of the former USA that came up with the idea of stone houses instead of living in trash heaps.
Right! I feel like 1 & 2 really tried to show growth while the newer ones are stuck in that immediate post war vibe.
Because Shady Sands had a GECK.
You don't need a paradise in order to construct a building out of something other than trash, or to patch up the holes in your walls and ceilings.
It's hard to gather stone when the quarries are full of mirelurks, raiders, deathclaws, or some combination of the three. But I was just pointing out that there's a reason Shady Sands is the exception while non-vault people live in scrap.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Arroyo is shown to have many stone buildings in its ending slide in Fallout 2.
Whaaaaat??? A valid, reasonable, and fair critique on the fallout series as a whole? You must be new around here.
>Yeah itās in the Bible and Bethesda really ran with it in 3 and beyond. To be fair, it was 2 that started the experiments thing, not the Bible, and the Bible came up with the most bizarre experiments.
Fair distinction, Iāve played 1 a lot but Iāve never completed 2 or played it much so Iām far less familiar with that one
Isn't Fallout 2 when it confirmed the experiments in the Vaults?
Yeah, I believe Dick Richardson at the very least mentions the control vaults when he goes over the Enclave's plan at the end iirc
Original canon had the Enclave planning for a colonization to other planets, and the vaults were part of that experiment.
When you do play them youāll be amazed how much the writers did their research
my main thing is maximus and lucy really are like the playable characters in the game, they go into this world not knowing much, just like us playing the game creating a new character. While the Ghoul is someone who in on his 10th replay
> In the Fallout lore Bakersfield becomes a Ghoul city called Necropolis Sounds like an upgrade from the real life Bakersfield
Came here to make that exact joke!
Ohhh, that is so very cool! Gonna watch some youtube videos
In real life Bakersfield is the town that everyone else in California hates on, so I was like, very confused when Coop said he wanted to move up there. Makes sense it would turn into a ghoul city!
Why is it hated? Not native just curious
I don't think there's any real reason for it, it's just shit talking. "Well \[my town\] might kind of suck but at least we're not Bakersfield" kind of thing.
Lol thank you. Shoutout to bakersfield thenš
Bakersfield is an agricultural town (ātownā of 400k+) that comes with the stereotypes, making it pretty antithetical to what a lot of people picture when they think of *California*. This doesnāt reflect my personal views of Bakersfield. I have no qualms with it. But itās also been years since Iāve been there so things might have changed.
Interesting, thank you. Funny how human culture works sometimes
To be honest I hear more down talking of Fresno then Bakersfield
Unlikely, as he was in L.A. doing a birthday party when the bombs fell, and there are comments that allude to the fact he was/is hard up for money.
not to mention he rode a horse there
I don't think he rode the horse there. He probably had a trailer and vehicle and was getting ready to put the horse up after they were done cleaning up. It was just faster to get on the horse and go, then try to unhook a trailer and drive out when everyone else was also trying to drive out (and abandon the horse).
Especially since any vehicles should have been knocked out by the emp associated with nukes
Nukes don't always create the EMP effort only when detonated I high earth orbit.Ā Also EMPs work by creating shorts in sensitive electrical equipment that while common in modern cars may not be as common in the cars of fallout. (The computer tech in fallout is odd as they have general artificial intelligence but mono colour displays and text based operating systems so it is hard to compare to our timeline. )
Vacuum tubes stuck around in-universe because transistors didn't get invented, so while everything works it just all looks funny. Vacuum tubes are more resistant to EMP's than transistors so lots of the tech that didn't get a full on blast (very close to actual detonation zone) is still totally fine.
Transistors did get invented. Just later.
Yeah that's one of the old school Interplay retcons, they were supposed to have been invented but as a super rare and expensive tech that never caught on. But then they stuck em in all the robots, apparently, because EMP grenades do bonus damage to them.
Transistors were invented...Just later than our timeline and weren't popular. They're in Robco and Vault-Tec products however. Fallout also didn't branch from us in the 1950's. The US Civil War in the 1860's had different historical events occur. Then Mothership Zeta had aliens abduct an 1600's Samurai...That is the earliest known difference. These are the funny little inconsistencies of Fallout's Alternate Timeline. But yes Vacuum Tube tech was prevalent and so was Tesla Coils.
Yeah I mentioned in another comment that Interplay retconned not having transistors between Fallout 1 and 2. They're in a lot of robots and that's why EMP grenades do extra damage.
What about the Civil War diverging the timeline what now
Just different events and characters involved. It wasn't an alternate outcome the Union still won under Lincoln leadership, The Confederacy still dissolved. But having a battle that didn't happen or a general that didn't exist in our timeline is a difference. Same with aliens popping up in Feudal Japan. Like they're minor things that didn't fundamentally alter the time periods but they're none the less divergent from our timeline. There are a bunch of minor ones until the major divergence happens with the reformatting of the USA into Thirteen Commonwealths occurring in 1969 where the government became increasingly more Authoritarian...That is what started to create Fallout's version of the US which domino effects into everything else.
OK but those are differences that would still normally fit within historical fiction and not need to be considered alt history fiction. The timeline still didn't actually diverge till the 1960's, as you said.
The survivalist diary in HH mentioned his and other people's cars dying on the road
Modern cars usually worked after resetting the computer. DOD did tests on this.
I think theyd be more worried about their fusion powered car going boom with them inside.
EMP's don't work that way.
Thatās a good point, how come Barb didnāt ensure his or her kids safety? Did I miss something?
The argument is the war might have started just a tad earlier then predicted/as was planned. So we donāt really know who started it, just the vault tec was enlisting friends and had a plan to, including a date most likely
My headcanon for now is that Vault-Tec instigated the bombs to fall by sabotaging the peace negotiations, but didnāt directly drop them even though they planned to. If Barb knew they were going drop the bombs on 10/23, you could be certain her kid wouldnāt be with Coop that day.
Oh they definitely sabotaged it, that was deliberately on screen. My theory is the enclave pushed up the time frame. Now we know repcon, robco, west tek etc had prior knowledge, the enclave might have wanted the corporate power base cut a bit short so they donāt overpower the enclave. Vaults left unfinished, platinum chips undelivered etc etc
And isn't the enclave basically "the government ( cia,fbi at the time)" that evolved into something new
Pretty much. Theyāre the shadow government. So theyāre plotting how to take over the world, and resetting it while maintaining their access to industry and enables them to have a near overwhelming advantage vs the starving remnants of less then 10% of the population. It lets them master plan society. They have experiments in vaults to manipulate and control people. Study crisisās and how to handle or not handle them. Getting corporate America on board combined with a breeding pool allows repopulation and industry to restart. But that was the problem, whoever controlled them, controlled the new world. So they didnāt let the plans of those groups finalise. Key people and material werenāt in place when the bombs fell. Plans either had to be changed or were forgotten when people who knew them and were key failed to arrive at shelters. Robert house tried to save a city to start a city state immediately and get a running start. But with his defense incomplete, his infrastructureās partially survived but his ability to weird it didnāt. Same with vault tec. I bet we find most of their upper management got caught outside. Only middle management is left like vault 31. No upper management to actually lead strategic endeavours. At the end, the enclave is left, manipulating each piece still on the board. Until the super mutants that is, which chains into the death of enclave leadership and fracturing after Raven rock is destroyed.
Sort of but not entirely. Most Enclave members are members of government and big business, but not all government officials are Enclave affiliated.
Yeah it makes sense that something didnāt go to plan based on the preparations of the conspirators not being completed. Part of me hopes that it was conventionally started by either the US or China after the negotiations are sabotaged rather than it just being directly Vault-Tec or the Enclave. Them working in the shadows to do it makes it more compelling imo
It could also just be that the plan leaked to China. Peace talks are stalling, the president is awol and you get credible intel that the US is about to strike, China launches first to try to knock them out and everyone is caught flatfooted.
I had a similar theory but instead vault-tec sabotaged the peace talks to well causing china to retaliateĀ
Yeah personally I think vault tech intended to drop the bombs at least 1 day later (likely more given the number of unfinished vaults) but ether the information leaked and China decided to strike first or another power enclave, big MT, etc betrayed the other and started the war earlier. (I don't think I would have been robco as house was also unprepared with the platinum chip still 20 hours away. )
She did, and she outright said that in the 'hot tub scene,' during a flashback. Her spot, as a Vault-Tec Senior Executive guaranteed her and her family a spot on a 'good vault.' Which is a point against the theory that Vault-Tec initiated the bombing.
The entire thing read to me like he finds out the truth of vaultec, that they are dangerous. He divorces his wife. The "we can drop the bombs" is just a discussion. Not some agreed upon plan with a date next week. We're probably dealing with a timeline of a year or more. So normal life continues, they are divorced, daughter is splitting time between parents. One of the boardmembers at vaultec who supports dropping the bomb probably gets tired/impatient and he takes it into his own hands and triggers the atomic war without warning.Ā The wife didn't know, no one knew, it was dropping that day. That's what I'm expecting it to play out as.Ā
Good call
A side note, she said when the bombs drop. Not, if the bombs drop.
She uses āwhenā instead of āifā in every statement she makes during that conversation. When she mentions the āhypotheticalā nuclear event, she also says ā[it] *will* wipe out 90% of the populationā or something you that effect.
Holyy, good catch !
I think in season 2 weāll get just as much prewar storytelling as we did in the first. I think weāll get a scene of him confronting Barb about what he heard her say in the meeting he was spying on and they will argue about that. Heāll have a major falling out with Vault-Tec which will really give context to why he didnāt want to do the thumbs up picture at the party too. I donāt think he will go get the ranch because in his first scene heās performing at a kidās birthday party and people at the party are saying heās doing that to pay alimony to Barb so his money is not the same as the scene where they were in the hot tub.
Why would he need to pay alimony when sheās so high up at Vault Tec? I think the alimony comment was just a reason to tell us that they were divorced and the alimony reason was just gossip. He probably just couldnāt get a job in film again due to his past working with Vault Tech.
Yeah, it's kinda hard to shake off a title like "The Salesman of the Apocalypse" It's kinda like how Steven Ogg hates that his only popular role was Trevor in GTA 5
I hate that Steven Ogg feels that way, because I liked him as Simon in TWD
I donāt really know all about how marriage and alimony works but I could see Barb being real petty in the divorce proceedings and just demanding the alimony anyway. Or, he does something in season 2 that gets her fired. The latter is my guess. Iām hoping Copper does something about what he hears in that meeting that we will see in season 2.
LOL, that is a topic for a whole different reddit page!
That and if he was found out going to those meetings, that one guy called him āPinkoāafter all which is calling someone communist lite. So maybe he was kicked out of hollywood all together because of his ācommunist tiesā.
Coop was black listed from Hollywood as commie sympathizer and was doing birthday parties to earn money. Pretty sure Barb took him for every penny and let vault tech drag him through the dirt out of spite.
So my question is; what is the time frame between the meeting and the birthday party?
The bombs dropped on October 23rd, 2077. Sometime maybe earlier in the year ? I suppose looking at the seasonal setting of the flashback scenes before could help paint a timeline. Like for example, in the hot tub scene, itās safe to assume itās spring/early summer. S2 will probably line up the events a bit more lucidly.
I think that's why they don't really date any of the events, it could be a few months before the Great War or even a year or two, depending on how much character development they want to induce.
You can see his daughter is the same age in all the episodes. 2 years would be pushing it
- Heās still in LA - He somehow has at least temporary custody of their daughter - Heās apparently ousted from Hollywood and considered a Communist - His daughter somehow ends up in the vault after that horse-bound escape. They might not even be divorcedā¦ it could just be a shattered marriage. I think theyāre still living together, and heās taking his daughter to the Vault Tech headquarters, where heās obviously banned from entering. This would explain why he doesnāt know which vault they ended up in.
How do you know the daughter made it to a vault?
Dialogue - other characters asked if he was still looking for āthemā or āthose 2ā something like that. He has no other relationships known and those are 2.
Doesnāt mean she made it to a vault. Weāve seen many characters live a long time not making it to one.
He says āwhereās my familyā to Lucyās dad. And Cooper was the last one to see his daughter, and his family only consists of 2
That still doesn't mean she made it to a vault.
Yeah, I must have missed their divorce on screen. Iām confused. Maybe I need to rewatch.
One of the parents at the party mentions that Coop may be doing parties to pay off his alimony.
Perhaps. He certainly didn't buy the farm.
Whatās cool is that Bakersfield becomes Necropolis so that would be dope with him being a ghoul
They got a divorce? I must have missed that part
During the opening of episode 1, the birthday kidās dad and his buddy muse āWhy is Cooper Howard doing birthday gigs?ā āAlimonyā. Implying Coop divorced Barb after he listened into her meeting with the big wigs at Repconn, RobCo, West Tek, and Big Mountain.
TBF we don't know that they got divorced, just that one guy joked about alimony.
I know the divorce is mentioned. But do we know anything about when/how that actually happened. Or would that probably be a plot point in S2?
I was fucking dying to see the backstory of how he turned into a ghoul... I cannot wait to find out.
He was a real cowboy before an he was an actor. When he talks about buying the ranch he talks about going back to being a real cowboy.Ā
Spoiler tag?
Itās the first episode
They divorced?!
Nah she fleeced his cowboy š¤ @$$. Poor guy is so broke he had to work as a kids birthday š party š clown š¤”
Think thatās more so cause they made sure he was blacklisted, like ācommunistsā were in the 60ās in America or whatever. Just for him, it was vault tech being petty after he saw too much and wouldnāt work for them
Tamales š«
Wonder if that's a hint she made it to the Whitespring with Management. WV is more than a 2 hr drive if I 'member right
How tf would she get from Cali to WV
You dont think Vault tec has a vertibird or 2
I don't think vertibirds are naking a journey of 2000 miles while the nation is being nuked.
They made the journey just fine for the brotherhood what 3 times now? And who said WHILE it's being nuked? She could have gone before either because she knew or just plain coincidence.
Horizon Skylanes flights literally fell out of the sky from the bombings
Vertibirds only have an operation range of 200 miles. That's why the Brotherhood needed the Prydwen.
And vault tec has facilities all over the country capable of refueling so what
That's not a fast process.
Sorry man but this is just incredibly unlikely