Fat Man (Fallout 3)

The Fat Man is a hand-held catapult for small tactical nuclear weapons (mini-nukes).

Description
The Fat Man has an estimated range of 150+ yards. The blast zone will be irradiated for a short time.

The Mini Nuke projectile is very heavy, and if simply fire straight ahead, it will travel fewer than a couple dozen feet before falling to the ground and detonating (causing you to be caught well within the very damaging mini-nuclear blast). For optimal range, the Fat Man should be fired in V.A.T.S. mode at high skill levels (which automatically compensates for the projectile's downward trajectory), or at an upward angle to catapult the mini nuke further so that it impacts at a farther, safer range.

The launched mini-nuke will fall if shot while in the air.

The Fat Man's condition can wear down surprisingly fast with frequent use (though its firepower is still devastating at any state of repair).

Variants

 * Experimental MIRV - An incredibly destructive weapon, the MIRV fires 8 Mini Nukes in a single shot. The damage done by the MIRV is equivalent to the damage done by eight shots with the Fat Man

Locations

 * GNR plaza, on a dead Brotherhood soldier (along with 8 mini-nukes), during the quest Following in His Footsteps. (The corpse of the Brotherhood soldier will not appear if the normal GNR quest is skipped and Sentinel Lyons is not encountered.)


 * Evergreen Mills, in the basement armory of Germantown Police HQ (behind an Average locked door), or at the Talon Company fort.


 * The end of the Old Olney Sewers after a battle with a number of Deathclaws.


 * Fort Constantine, along with 2 Mini Nukes. You will need all 3 of the special keys from the You Gotta Shoot 'Em in the Head Quest to access the room.


 * Ruins of the White House near a skeleton. Next to the Fat Man are three Mini Nukes. The White House can be accessed from a utility manhole south of the building on Penn Ave.


 * Flak and Shrapnel in Rivet City have been known to sell one.


 * Capitol Building, during or after the fight with the Super Mutant Behemoth. It can be found equipped by Talon Mercenaries.


 * In a random encounter, a dead scavenger is carrying a Fat Man and a Mini Nuke.


 * Operation: Anchorage. Toward the end of Operation: Anchorage (quest) four American Soldiers with T-51b Power Armor will equip Fat Mans which can be knocked out of their hands and kept using the inventory glitch, thus adding 4 new Fat Mans into the game. These four Fat Mans can be pick-pocketed from the soldiers, too.

Bugs

 * V.A.T.S. incorrectly calculates extra damage for a headshot. The Fat Man does not do extra damage with headshots.
 * If you equip the Fat Man with a Mini Nuke loaded, then drop all Mini Nukes in your inventory, the animation will still show a mini-nuke loaded into the Fat Man. There isn't actually a mini-nuke loaded, and the weapon cannot be fired.
 * If you shoot it too close and cripple your arm, while reloading the Fat Man will become invisible in third person view (can be fixed by loading an earlier save file, Xbox 360).

Behind the scenes

 * The launch mechanism of the Fat Man is pneumatic. Coupled with the heavy projectile, this accounts for the short range of the weapon. This type of launch system was first pioneered by the British PIAT anti-tank weapon of WWII, where the projectile was launched from a similar cradle-like contraption using a mechanical spring system (though in the case of the PIAT, was used to detonate a small propelling charge), which had the similar properties of short range and lack of accuracy. This system is known as a spigot mortar.
 * Fat Man was the codename for the atomic bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan by the United States on August 9, 1945, at 11:02 a.m. It was the second of just two nuclear weapons to be used in warfare and was the third man-made nuclear explosion. The name also refers more generically to the early nuclear weapon designs of U.S. weapons based on the "Fat Man" model. It was an implosion-type weapon with a plutonium core. Early artwork for the Fat Man also included a miniature version of the B-29 bomber the 'Enola Gay' attached to the top of the Mini-Nuke, the 'Enola Gay' being the plane which dropped the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima.
 * Because of its relation to the real historic event, the weapon was renamed to the Nuka Launcher in the Japanese version of Fallout 3. It is, however, still referred to as the Fat Man in dialogue.
 * The only real-world weapon remotely similar to the Fat Man is the M-388 Davy Crockett, developed by the United States during the Cold War.

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