Vault-Tec Corporation

Vault-Tec Industries is the corporation that was contracted by the United States Government before The Great War to design and produce the Vault system, dubbed Project Safehouse. Its corporate headquarters were located in downtown Washington, DC. The first demonstration Vault was constructed beneath Los Angeles, and soon many others were build all around the country. The Vaults are all very similar, but sometimes have different designs, like West Coast and DC area Vaults.

Societal Preservation Program
However, the Vaults weren't intended for saving the citizens of the United States. With a population of almost 400 million by 2077, the U.S. would need over 400,000 Vaults, and Vault-Tec was commissioned to build only 122 such Vaults. The real reason for these Vaults was to study pre-selected segments of the population to see how they react to the stresses of isolationism and how successfully they re-colonize after the Vault opened. It was the Enclave that used the company to set up this sinister experiment.

Other divisions
The nuclear war shelters weren't its only area of work, as Vault-Tec released several other handbooks (such as "Coping with Mr. Virus" or "How to Cook a Rat") concerning survival during and after other disasters, with the Vault Dweller's Survival Guide being only one of many. Future-Tec, a division of Vault-Tec, developed the G.E.C.K., the Garden of Eden Creation Kit for use by vault residents.

History
Like many major military contractors, as Vault-Tec grew in finances and responsibility, it began to develop highly experimental and secure technologies. In time, Vault-Tec was so thoroughly integrated with top-secret military research, it was practically a division of the U.S. government … almost. The company still retained some elements of privatization. So the principals of Vault-Tec - executives, scientists, and so on - had to be aware of the true function of the Vaults, and they had access to the technology. They were the developers. Regardless of the U.S. government's directives, Vault-Tec was not going to submit to a lottery and live underground with a bunch of human cattle in facilities that were intentionally defective. Thus Vault-Tec created their own facility, removed from the larger Vault network - and kept secret from the U.S. government. This facility is now known as the Secret Vault.

Vault-Tec didn't stop there. This secret, private installation was used to research the latest technologies that would benefit mankind in a post-nuclear environment. This included some extensive research with a "forced evolution virus" (FEV) which, unlike the government-controlled research at Vault 87, was kept secret from the government. It is known that the FEV in Secret Vault was highly modified to achieve its original goals and avoid sterility, however, unsuccesful.

Other Vault-Tec projects that they intended to use for themselves were their own robotic systems, special biological weapons program (the results are probably a unique race of radroaches and a variation of Deathclaw), medical researches on cell regeneration, and an attempt to create their own Power Armor model.

Inconsistencies

 * The company is sometimes referenced as Vault-Tek or even Vaultex.

Appearances in games
Vault-Tec Vaults and other technology appear in all Fallout games.

Vault-Tec Vault-Tec