The Crater

The Crater is a location in the Toxic Valley region of Appalachia in 2103. Prior to 2103, the location was known as the crashed space station.

Background
A settlement established by the raiders, Crater was built in the ruins of the Valiant-1 space station, which lost optimal orbit as time passed after the Great War and crashed into the Toxic Valley. Although the raiders had been in Appalachia previously as five different factions: the Cutthroats, Gourmands, Blackwater Bandits, Diehards, and Trappers, all of their previous camps and hideouts had been abandoned when they were forced to flee or were killed by the Scorched. Word of the region being recolonized by the Vault 76 Vault Dwellers convinced the raiders, now led by Meg, to return and set up their new home base at the crashed space station in the Toxic Valley.

Layout
The Crater is located in a large, shallow crater near the northeastern edge of the Toxic Valley. The space station appears to have fallen from orbit at a high velocity, devastating the surrounding area. The bulk of the station remains embedded upright in the center of the crater, with fragments scattered around it.

By 2103, the location has been turned into a raider settlement, adding scaffolding, amenities, and other decorations typical of raider architecture. The Crater Core is located in the center of the spaceship and has been turned into the raiders' headquarters.

Inhabitants

 * ¹Until From Russia With Lev
 * ²Before accepting and after completing Cheating Death
 * ³Until invited to a C.A.M.P.
 * ⁴After Secrets Revealed

Notable loot

 * Untitled poem - Note, in an outhouse near a raider cabin on a promontory in the hills south of the station ruins.
 * A whale of a tale - Note, on a desk in Munch's tent.
 * The Great War - Note, on a desk in Munch's tent.
 * The Nova Orbital station - Note, on a desk in Munch's tent.
 * Meg sucks - Holotape, in a footlocker.
 * The Foundation plan - Holotape, in a small room on a makeshift table.
 * Homecoming - Holotape, on the back seat of the yellow school bus.
 * Lou's goodbye note - Note, on a table in Lou's room in the Core, only during Cheating Death.
 * Raider power armor chassis - On the second floor of the raider cabin.
 * Flight data recorder - On a metal shelf in the raider cabin on a hill southeast of the fast travel point.
 * Potential recipe - On a metal shelf in the raider cabin.

Appearances
The crashed space station appeared in the Fallout 76, and was expanded in the Wastelanders update.

Behind the scenes

 * Nathan Purkeypile designed much of the Crater's layout, lighting and cluttering.
 * The real-world counterpart never got off the design and model stages created by Werhner von Braun in 1950. It used the theory proposed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky that a spinning ring could be used in a weightless environment to create artificial gravity that would be controlled not only by the size of the ring, but by how fast it would spin. NASA has toyed with the concept since 1975, but to date no one has constructed one, unless the Space Station X-1 attraction built by von Braun and Walt Disney in 1955 is counted.
 * In the real world, a space station reentering earth's atmosphere would be torn apart by friction and deceleration. Sixty to ninety percent of its mass would burn away, and whatever remained would rain down over an area of several hundred miles.


 * The design of the crashed station (a torus with external engines) resembles the Ballistic Orbital Missile Base 001 space station from the canceled Fallout 3 project by Black Isle Studios, codenamed Van Buren.