Fairfax Ruins

 is the bombed out ruins of a town in the Capital Wasteland, located southwest of Vault 101, just east of Fort Independence. Coming from Megaton, you may be likely to find the house with the turret or the gas trap - see below.

Inhabitants
The place is now full of Raiders, the whose numbers depend on the level of difficulty. To the north of the ruins the Enclave have set up a base with a Deathclaw cage. When the Enclave are encountered there are often 3 soldiers and 2 officers, depending on difficulty. The soldiers are sometimes armed with Flamers and will be busy executing several Wastelanders enclosed in a cage, which may explain the bodies. This observation suggests that the Deathclaw cage was being used as a makeshift execution chamber.

Utility Tunnels
The main entrance to the Utility Tunnels is a grating in the floor that collapses in the center of Fairfax Ruins surrounded by most of the raiders in the area. An easier and far less defended entrance to the tunnels is a manhole located to the northwest of the ruins to the east of the Brotherhood Outcast base.

Another entrance is through a metal door in a rectangular hole in the pavement near the tunnel entrance described below. It opens into a room with many ammo boxes. The hole may be covered with a grate which comes out if you touch it.

There is also a separate subway tunnel in the center of Fairfax Ruins guarded by two raiders. This subway has no links to any other areas but is a very easy way to get some easy ammo from the ammo crates in there. Be careful when entering the tunnel because there are some mines as well as a shotgun trap close to the entrance.

The tunnel is, like the rest of Fairfax Ruins, only inhabited by raiders.

Points of Interest

 * In the center north part of Fairfax Ruins is a broken down house with a turret on the second floor, also inhabited by a Raider with a Missile Launcher. You can use the terminal above the stairs to turn the turret against the Raider. The turret doesn't last very long against the Missile Launcher, but the Raider is very prone to launching a missile point-blank into a wall, and injuring himself/herself in the blast. Since Raiders don't carry an abundance of missiles, and their weapon is usually in poor condition, the Raider may also drop the broken weapon and retreat into the ruins after failing to destroy the frenzied turret.
 * A little bit southeast of the house with the turret are two dumpsters behind a fence; next to them is a gas valve which you can repair to fill the next house with gas. It might help you to take out the Raiders in that house.
 * The entrance to Fairfax Metro Station is more or less in the center.

Notable loot

 * U.S. Army: 30 Handy Flamethrower Recipes in the Car Dealership northeast of Fairfax Ruins.
 * Chinese Army: Special Ops Training Manual in the Fairfax Metro Station on the rubble below the mezzanine next to the east escalator.
 * Nuka-Cola Quantum in an overturned truck under the highway south of the ruins (towards Andale).
 * Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor, in the Concrete Treehouse south of the ruins.
 * A short distance SSW of that (ENE of Andale) is another truck trailer with a Dean's Electronics at the back of a bunch of empty Metal Boxes.

Trivia

 * Fairfax Ruins is obviously a futuristic post-Great War version of the real-world city of Fairfax, VA.