Nuclear Weapon



"If you don't know what an atomic bomb is, then imagine the worst thing possible. Atomic bombs were worse than that."

- Vault Dweller's memoirs

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter; a modern thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than a thousand kilograms can produce an explosion comparable to the detonation of more than a billion kilograms of conventional high explosive.

Pre divergence
Nuclear weapons were first used on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August 1945 at the end of the Second World War. These two explosions could be seen as the start of the eventual end of the world that would come 132 years later, because without them humans would never have come to possess the power to wipe out entire cities. The atomic bomb, a purely fission-based weapon, and the hydrogen bomb, a fission-fusion thermonuclear weapon, were both developed in the Fallout universe, with hydrogen bombs being considerably more dangerous because of the sheer size of their explosive yields.

Post divergence
In the Fallout world, megaton-class thermonuclear weapons had largely been retired by the major nuclear powers in favor of much smaller-yield warheads by the time of the Great War. An average strategic warhead in 2077 (with a few exceptions, such as the weapons which fell on Washington D.C.) had a yield closer to that of the nuclear bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, between 10-20 kilotons, but with a massive increase in radioactive fallout in place of thermal shock, much like a neutron bomb in our own world. However, despite the apparent reduction in raw explosive power, this arsenal was far more dangerous to the Earth's ecosystem, as it deposited far greater amounts of fallout in the atmosphere than had been assumed by pre-War models.

China, the United States, the Soviet Union, the European Commonwealth's member states and other countries around the world possessed massive nuclear stockpiles and when the Great War began on October 23, 2077, they sent them skyward, on bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Entire continents were swallowed in flames and fell under the boiling oceans, while the EMP released from the blasts destroyed electronics worldwide.

Fallout
In Fallout, the Glow is testament to the horror of nuclear war, a radioactive hellhole destroyed by a direct nuclear hit. In the same game, the Vault Dweller also discovers an unused nuke sitting in the Master's vault, to be used as last resort against an undefeatable enemy.

Fallout 2
A nuclear bomb also rests on the Enclave Oil Rig, and is, once again, used to obliterate the main enemy of the game (detonated by an explosion of the on-board nuclear reactor).

Fallout 3
Nuclear weapons feature prominently in Fallout 3, in the form of a C-23 Megaton - Megaton's nuke, the Fat Man and its unique variant, the Experimental MIRV, which are two tactical nuclear catapults, a bunker full of nuclear bombs, Vertibirds with nuclear carpet bombs, Liberty Prime's inexhaustible backpack arsenal of medium- sized bombs, various orbital weapons platforms such as Highwater-Trousers, and Bradley-Hercules - the Enclave-controlled satellite which destroys Liberty Prime in the Broken Steel add-on. Equally, near Fort Constantine, the PC has the ability to launch a Ballistic missile from a concrete silo, via a computer terminal, to an unmarked destination, most likely a pre-designated target upon the Chinese mainland. The reasons for its delayed launch are unclear, although all the systems surrounding it are still intact by 2277, thus ruling out a systematic error...

Fallout: New Vegas
The Fat Man returned in Fallout: New Vegas, and with the Wild Wasteland trait, an unexploded atomic nuke called The One can be found slightly north-west of the Devil's Throat.

Fallout Tactics
A nuclear ICBM warhead appears first (called Plutonius) in Kansas City, worshiped by a ghoul cult. It is later used to gain entrance to Cheyenne Mountain installation, the Vault 0.

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel
A nuclear device also rests on the Secret Vault, as an emergency decontamination procedures (a self-destruct system) if the Vault started to become too dangerous. A special monorail located in the first complex of the laboratories section should be used to evacuate the vault dwellers quickly to a secret exit in the mountains. The Initiate activates it to obliterate all of its researches and all of the experimental deathclaws, radbugs, super mutants, robots, and the heavily mutated Attis, destroying both the Secret Vault and the city of Los.

Van Buren
The B.O.M.B.-001 space station, the endgame location, was an orbital ballistic missile launch platform, that Victor Presper wanted to use to reshape the world as he envisioned it.

Inconsistencies
The yield of the weapons in the games is never explicitly stated. While it is stated that entire continents were scorched by nuclear weapons, their effects in the game are not even remotely similar to that description. Therefore, it may be the use of ten thousand or so nukes that decimated the land.

Additionally, the way the weapons are portrayed in the games is inconsistent - while in the "classic" Fallout games nuclear weapons are feared, respected and exceedingly rare (not to mention that arguably the most intelligent being in the Fallout world, the Master, is unwilling to unleash the power of the atom again), in Fallout 3 nuclear weapons are commonplace and devoid of their traits from previous games. You can detonate a city with a nuclear bomb in the first few hours of the game, blow up cars in nuclear explosions and have a personal tactical nuclear launcher.

It should be noted, however, that what the Fat Man fires is called a "mini" nuke, as in it is smaller. The Megaton bomb was quite destructive, and it is likely there were many more than just one bomb dropped on the U.S. so the scale of the explosion is accurate while the lack of craters however is not. This in turn could be explained by the difficulty of changing the world map significantly.

The use of the term 'nuke' is also, in the Fallout Universe, a generic term for anything that resembles a missile. When Liberty Prime is destroyed in Fallout 3, there is no radioactive fallout, nor is there a scorched radius or a mushroom cloud- the explosion is only tiny in comparison to an actual nuclear weapon. The same can be said about the Mobile Base Crawler in the Broken Steel add-on when it is destroyed by an orbital strike- again, there was just an explosion, and not the radioactive, flaming by- products of a nuclear warhead. This may actually indicate that the missiles on board B.O.M.B.-001 or any other Orbital satellite were not actually primed with warheads, but were just missiles that were awaiting to be armed.

Another inconsistency with Fallout 3's nuclear missile theory is the shape of the actual weapons themselves- Some, like the one within Megaton are 1940s 'Fat Man' Atomic bombs, which were powerful, but were quickly outdated by 1950 with the even greater 'Hydrogen' bomb, that again wasn't the iconic 'Barrel' shape, but were more streamlined in appearance. But on the other hand, there are the more 'ballistic' missiles- the converted 'Space Shuttles'- that are launched from either concrete silos, (Like the one outside Fort Constantine) or from submarines, (Like the Chinese SSN-37-1A).

It seems unlikely that the USAF would opt for both vertical- dropped and silo- launched nuclear weapons, seeing as the latter is much more secure and accurate- Which brings us to another inconsistency- the vertical- dropped bombs are not computerized and have to rely upon bomber aircraft in order to be deployed. Ballistic missiles are launched via computer terminals and follow computer coordinates. Some nations, (like Cold- War Great Britain only had the option of bomber aircraft and Submarines in order to deploy their nuclear arsenal. The United States however, had the option of silos, therefore did not require bomber aircraft. In other words, if a nation had the option of silos and ballistic missiles, they'd opt for those rather than cumbersome vertical- drop techniques.

Appearances
Nuclear weapons appear in all fallout games.