Vault

The Vaults are a series of massive underground fallout shelters developed by Vault-Tec in the mid-21st century. One of these is Vault 13, the starting point of Fallout. Most of the following text comes from Chris Avellone's Fallout Bible #0.

Initially it appeared that the Vaults were designed to save the population of the US; however, there were not nearly ebough Vaults for this purpose. The true, sinister reason is that these 'shelters' were in fact a series of sociological experiments conducted by the Enclave. Each Vault was set up with different conditions, and then observed to see how the dwellers within coped with the pressure of isolation.

It was initially intended that while the player was reading the Vault 8 records in Fallout 2, he could discover a classified file (opened with a successful Science skill roll) which explained that Vault 8 was a "control Vault," designed to hold 1000 people and to open on time. This file was intended to foreshadow the discovery of the true and sinister purpose of the Vaults.

The player was also intended to apply his Science skill to the central computer in Vault 13 to obtain a history of Vault 13, the Overseer's involvement in the Vault Dweller's expulsion, and even worse, the true purposes of the Vaults. The Overseer was conscious of the true purpose of the Vaults as social experiments on a grand scale, and he drove out the Vault Dweller because he was afraid that he would ruin the experiment... or uncover it. Of course, the Overseer himself caused problems not long after this, according to Martin Frobisher, the leader of Vault 13 in Fallout 2:


 * There used to be an overseer, many years ago, but he did a bad thing and many of our people left the Vault. Only to die in the Wastes, I'm sure. He was tried and sentenced to death for his crime. We haven't used the title since.

Martin did not see the Overseer executed, however... his information comes from the Vault 13 records passed down by his ancestors.

Basically, the Vaults were never intended to save the population of the United States. With a population of almost 400 million by 2077, the U.S. would need nearly 400,000 Vaults the size of Vault 13, and Vault-Tec was commissioned to build only 122 such Vaults. The real reason for these Vaults was to study pre-selected segments of the population to see how they react to the stresses of isolationism and how successfully they re-colonize after the Vault opens.

Some of the Vaults include:

Appearances in games
Vaults appear in all Fallout games and were to appear again in Van Buren. Vault 12, Vault 13, Vault 15 and the LA Vault appeared in Fallout 1. Vault 8, Vault 13 and Vault 15 appeared in Fallout 2. A Vault called Vault 0 appeared in ''Fallout Tactics, but the idea did not really fit the Vault experiment.

Behind the scenes
The vault experiment was an idea created by Tim Cain during the initial stages of Fallout 2 development.