Enclave

The Enclave is what remains of the United States government. It is the main villain organisation in Fallout 2.

Overview
One of the few old world organizations to survive the Great War, the Enclave was once the shadow government of the United States. Members of the Enclave were hardliners who both embraced the idea of a nuclear war and knew that the common man could not survive it. They believed that as long as the "important people" of the United States survived, they could regroup quickly and wipe out communism once and for all. Though not technically part of the Enclave, many powerful corporations benefited from the Enclave’s actions and their research facilities were protected during the firestorm of 2077.

In 2073, as the global race to exploit the handful of remaining natural resources reached its fevered peak, the United States managed to stake a claim on the world's last known supply of crude oil, buried thousands of feet beneath the Pacific Ocean. Poseidon Oil, a major U.S. energy concern, was contracted to build an oil rig and extract the oil. Before long, the oil ran dry and the oil rig was abandoned by Poseidon.

Come 2077, with total nuclear war rapidly arriving at America's doorstep, the President of the United States and a number of other United States government officials leave their posts to take refuge in a number of secret locations around the world. Among them was the Poseidon Oil Rig. Here, the President himself set up a secret base from which the U.S.A. could continue to exist and wage war on China, with the eventual goal of retaking the continental United States.

Now, the Enclave essentially represents those parts of the US government that managed to escape the Great War. The Enclave's scientists continued to do research on armor and weapons after the War and thus have even fancier toys than the Brotherhood of Steel, who only have U.S. Military standard issue from when the Great War broke out. Its president in 2241 was Dick Richardson, the son of a previous president, and his vice-president was Daniel Bird.

Shadow government notice
In parliamentary governments, the largest opposition party often refers to itself as a shadow government in which top leaders of the opposition are prepared to assume certain ministries should their party come to power in an election (eg. UK). It is also used as a somewhat pejorative term to denote a government that takes over in the event of a disaster. Also, the term "shadow government" can be used loosely to refer to a guerrilla-force that controls and administers the majority of the physical area of a country, rendering the official national government significantly less able to administer its policies (eg. Communist Party of Nepal). In nations with less apparent strife, there are several safeguards in place in the event of a disaster strong enough to disrupt the functioning of the government. The United States has Continuity of Operations Plan, Continuity of Government and the presidential line of succession plans.

So it can be said, that Enclave is the only known in Fallout world United States government and it seems - quite legal.

The Enclave's Plan


For a long time after the Great War, the Enclave sat quietly in its Oil Rig, consolidating its forces and working on gaining a technological edge over anyone on the mainland. Eventually, though, when they felt it would be safe, they decided it was time to move out and start working towards the rebirth of America. Using their rather impressive Vertibirds, the Enclave sent out scouting parties all over California, the closest state to the Oil Rig.

What they found there scared them considerably: mutancy was rampant. The Enclave scouting parties arrived in California after Fallout 1 ended, and so saw super mutants and ghouls littering the land and the destruction and ravages they caused. When this was reported to the higher ups at the Enclave, it was decided that all the mutants would have to go. It occurred to the Enclave that those who had lived out in the open on the mainland for over a hundred years since the end of the War must have been contaminated or compromised somehow by radiation... or worse (indeed, most people living in the wasteland were inoculated with an airborne mutation of FEV immunizing them to the full effects of the real serum). These mutants too, then, would have to be destroyed before true humanity, true America, could once again lay claim to the mainland.

Reconnaissance and exploration of California continued: the Enclave didn't have any means of carrying out their genocidal ambitions short of destroying the world all over again with nuclear weapons. Eventually, Enclave troops stumbled across the old abandoned Mariposa Military Base, where research on the Forced Evolutionary Virus had been done before the Great War. FEV was what created the super mutants that most threatened the Enclave, and it would eventually come to be the Enclave's solution to these same mutants.

The Enclave excavated the Military Base (ruined by the Vault Dweller in Fallout), largely using slave labor gathered from the nearby mining town of Redding, eventually finding the Vats deep inside the lower levels of the base. Though they had been buried in rock and forgotten for decades, the Vats still contained that old familiar green bubbling gunk, Forced Evolutionary Virus. The Enclave gathered samples to be sent back to the Oil Rig for further analysis. Before long, though, the slave miners, some being fully exposed to raw FEV, others likely falling into the Vats accidentally, began to mutate into a second generation of super mutants. The mutant slaves soon overthrew their guards. Seizing their weapons, hardware left behind by the first Mutant Army or anything lying around, the super mutants stormed the upper levels and quickly overran the troops in the base. Panicked and retreating, the Enclave troopers on the upper levels fled the base and used explosives to seal the entrance, trapping the second generation mutants inside the base (at least until the Chosen One comes along in Fallout 2...).

Still, even though things went badly at Mariposa, the Enclave still had the samples of FEV they needed. Back at the Oil Rig, the United States Chemical Corps began work on the serum immediately. They found that it would be possible to make from FEV an incredibly potent and lethal toxin. But, in order for research to progress, they would need test subjects. They needed two test groups: one of clean, pure humans and another composed of the 'mutants' that lived all over the mainland, suffering radiation and FEV exposure for decades that, to the Enclave, made them unclean. The unclean sample was easily obtained by kidnapping the entire population of Arroyo: who would notice if one isolated Tribal village disappeared overnight? Most civilized people in the wastes hated Tribals anyways.

The clean group would be more difficult, though. The Enclave wouldn't allow the Chemical Corps to use people living on the Oil Rig (presumably because they were all too important to the Enclave's various projects). So, they had to look elsewhere. Once again, the mainland provided the needed stock.

The Vault Experiment Program
The Vaults were funded by the U.S. government and, accordingly, the government had control over them. Overtly, they were intended to allow a selection of privileged United States citizens to survive the Great War. Secretly, however, a large part of the Vault Project had a far more sinister goal. The U.S. government's real plan to survive a nuclear war was simply to find another planet to live on after blowing up this one. An interstellar spacecraft designed to ferry the human race to Alpha Centauri was either under construction or ready to go before the War. The plan was for the government to flee to the Oil Rig, wait out the War and then pack up the populations of the Vaults to go to Alpha Centauri. However, the spacecraft was likely destroyed, disabled or rendered inaccessible by the nuclear bombs, so the Enclave had to abandon that plan and focus on retaking the continental United States.

Any voyage to another star would have been very difficult and fraught with unforeseeable complications. Thus, to test the aptitude of the average American person to travel to another star, several of the Vaults were designed to have some sort of critical flaw. Vault 12, in Bakersfield (better known as the Necropolis), had a faulty Vault door that wouldn't close all the way, allowing dangerous radiation to leak in, leading to the creation of California's ghoul population. Vault 15, which is a few miles east of Vault 13, was built normally (the rockslide that buried its control centre was accidental), but it was populated with a diverse mix of races and peoples to see what sort of tensions arise when varied backgrounds are packed into a small environment. Vault 13, the home of the Vault Dweller in Fallout, was intended to stay shut for a full 200 years to test the effects of long term isolation (the troubles with the water chip forced the Overseer to improvise, potentially ruining the experiment as much of the Vault's population left to found Arroyo). The types and purposes of the experiments go on. Vault 8 (which is the Vault that Vault City was built around) was a control group, a Vault intended to exist normally to serve as a reference point for the other Vaults.

In order to monitor the populations being experimented upon, the Enclave's Oil Rig possessed a great deal of equipment that allowed them to observe and control the Vaults. For example, the Enclave sent the all clear signal to Vault 8 shortly after the War, prompting them to leave their Vault and build their City. These monitoring tools also let the Enclave see that the population of Vault 13 was largely intact. Thus, they traveled in force to Vault 13 and sent a command to the Vault's computers to open the Vault door. After taking care of some mild resistance, the Enclave troops rounded up the residents of Vault 13 and shipped them off to the Oil Rig in vertibirds to take part in the Chemical Corps' FEV experiments.

The Final Solution
Before long, the Chemical Corps developed their supertoxin. It was found to be 100% lethal to tainted humans. Just as the Enclave was preparing to launch the poison into the jet stream to kill the entire population of the mainland, the Chosen One arrived at the Oil Rig on the Poseidon Oil tanker that had sat in San Francisco for years. He freed the survivors of both the Vault 13 population as well as the Arroyo tribals and started a self destruct sequence in the Oil Rig that destroyed the entirety of the Enclave's headquarters, saving the world from horrible death at the hands of the mutant FEV.

Involvement on the Mainland
Aside from the excavation of the Mariposa Military Base, the Enclave also had a few other interests in California during the Fallout 2 period.


 * Navarro is a quite large outpost recently constructed by the Enclave on the coast of the mainland. It served mainly as a refueling stop for vertibirds carrying out missions in California as well as a general base of operations outside the Oil Rig. Navarro figures prominently in Fallout 2, with many plot critical elements being found here.
 * Navarro perimeter is patrolled by Enclave Control Company light teams, that are independent from Navarro Base Commander.
 * In New Reno, the Enclave was involved in a lucrative and confidential trading agreement with the Salvatore family. The terms of the agreement were that the Enclave would provide the Salvatores with powerful energy weapons (laser pistols in fact), giving them an intimidating edge over the other Reno families, in exchange for which the Salvatores gave the Enclave drugs and slaves, because the Enclave are naughty people who perform experiments on thier slaves and whatnot (notice: Salvatores have 13 loaded laser pistols and 240 small energy cells; slave trade is not confirmed, during desert transaction they deliver drugs only; Metzger were overhearing some radio transmissions concerning this transations)
 * After emptying Vault 13 of its inhabitants, the Enclave left behind a pack of intelligent, talking deathclaws to guard the Vault and keep any nosey explorers from finding out what had happened to the vault dwellers and tracing it back to the Enclave. Unfortunately, the deathclaws weren't loyal to the Enclave and helped the Chosen One quite a bit.
 * In a canyon not far outside of Klamath, a small town in Northern California not far from Arroyo, an Enclave vertibird crashed, killing its crew (Jul 2241). A single Mr. Handy model robot survived the accident but it malfunctioned, leading the simple residents of Klamath to assume the canyon was haunted. Aside from the robot, two unarmed guards corpses and the crashed vertibird itself, a single yellow keycard was found at the crash site (at least one of dead guards equipped with Advanced Power Armor changing into blood strain, second one burned). Its purpose was unknown, but likely excessively sinister (aircraft crew are similar to one present during secret transaction with Salvadores, however dead guards were unarmed).
 * Frank Horrigan, a large, angry, mutant supersoldier working for the Enclave, was responsible for several assassinations in California during the Fallout 2 period. There were at least 3 assasination events:
 * on unidentified scientist and his family, because of refusal to reveal some important information to the Enclave (Aug 30 2241),
 * extermination of Vault 13 deathclaws-human community, because deathclaws unsubordination (deathclaw experiment failed, particullary it could be reaction for helping the Chosen One),
 * on Matt, the Brotherhood agent staffing the San Francisco outpost of "the Metallic Monks" (Brotherhood of Steel encountered Enclave activites many months before 2241 year and it was reason to establish three hearing outposts known from Fallout 2).
 * The Enclave use Poseidon net, which is still patched into Poseidon Energy Gecko' reactor systems, allowing them to communicate with users logged onto the nuclear power plant's computer (there are 4 computer stations: two on the oil rig, one in Navarro, one in Gecko).
 * Tanker in San Francisco was disabled and controlled with FOB by Navarro Base Commander.
 * there are some Fallout 2 NPC, who are Enclave deserters, like dr. Henry in Shady Sands and Captain A. Ron Meyers, in charge on the PMV Valdez in San Francisco (former Enclave technician).
 * Miners from Redding saw flying vertibird.

Aftermath
While the main base was destroyed, remnants of the Enclave forces might have survived in the Navarro base. The base may not have been able to maintain itself for more than a few months before needing to move on or change its operations.

Mainland Awareness
Though the Enclave remained enigmatic and elusive, their isolationist policies where also characterized by heavy tech scavenging, research and other mainland interactions fuelling their sinister ambitions. Their presence was known by Vic who promised Metzger a radio that could intercept transmissions from the Enclave and New Reno. Financial interactions where frequent, the Enclave traded weapons for chemicals from the Salvatore’s in New Reno, in addition to purchasing slave labor for the excavation of Mariposa from a source in Redding. A crashed vertibird in Klamath also is a sign of Enclave activity in northern California. A great number of San Francisco factions know of the Enclaves presence. AHS-9 reveals comprehensive knowledge about the Enclave and their base of operations. The captain of the tanker is a A.W.O.L. Navarro technician and so has intimate knowledge of the Enclave. The Shi can see the vertebrirds flying overhead and are seeking to replicate the technology along with the Brotherhood of Steel. Both groups are aware of some semblance of the Enclave as a major military presence.

Appearances in games
The Enclave appears in Fallout 2. It might have appeared in Van Buren, Black Isle's cancelled Fallout 3 project, and it certainly played an important part in the game's backstory.

There is unapproved information about the Enclave, which says that it is staring in the resumed Fallout 3, now developed by Bethesda Softworks. One of the radio stations mentioned by in game dialogue is apparently run by The Enclave. The circumstances of how the survivors of this Faction made their way from southern California to the D.C. Area are still unknown.

Related Holodisks

 * Military Base Level 1
 * Military Base Level 2
 * Military Base Level 3
 * Military Base Level 4
 * Military Base Outside
 * State of the Nation
 * The Project
 * Power Plant Operations
 * Word List