Cheyenne Mountain

During the 20th century, the American military created a facility underneath Cheyenne Mountain, one mountain in a range of many on the western side of the United States. These ranges extended from Canada, far to the north past the United States border, down into the southeast of the country. Vault 0 is located here, housing the Calculator.

NORAD
Before the Great War, Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center was host to four commands: North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), United States Strategic Command (USSACCOM), and Air Force Space Command (AFSPC). Throughout the Cold War, Cheyenne Mountain was considered a primary target in all first-strike and second-strike scenarios. Although the mountain was designed to withstand multiple direct hits from nuclear weapons, projections were universally pessimistic as to the survival of the installation.

According to Fallout 2 NORAD computer stations were offline (at least in 2241 when checked by Chosen One from Poseidon Oil Powerplant No 12). Whether this represents a communications interruption or the wholesale destruction of NORAD is never made explicitly clear, but given the target status of NORAD it is highly likely that the facility was at inoperable status.

Vault 0


Vault 0 (Vault Zero), unlike most Vaults involved in the Vault Experiment, was not an experiment in human behavior. It was constructed by expanding and reinforcing the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado and was by far the largest of the underground Vaults (by volume). If the interiors were so designed, Vault 0 could easily support a population of well over 100,000 people. Many of the areas that comprise the massive interior layout of Vault 0 were originally designed to be the size of (and were often compared to) aircraft hangars, warehouses and factories; these zones were for the construction of various machines that were ostensibly designed to serve the Vault Dwellers and the Enclave. The massive amount of war robots and a cybernetic computer to control them (and serve as the Vault's overseer) were placed here to ensure humanity rebirth after nuclear war. However, the Calculator becomes corrupted, drives the population of the Vault to extinction, and initiates the pacification protocol, originally intended to kill all the possible enemies to the people of Vault 0. A massive army of robots emerges, producing more and more every day, and soon become the main enemy of the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel. The warrior, hero and general of the Brotherhood, led his squad to confront the Calculator, defeating the robots, which guards their main base. "Plutonius", a nuclear warhead from Kansas City, was placed on Nuke Carrier, brought closer to the Vault entrance and eventually blew up the entrance. The warrior and the squad managed to survive the explostion thanks to nearby fallout shelter (a small military bunker). Soon, the final battle begins.

Crater
By 2253, a huge section of the mountains became a great radioactive smoking crater, giving birth to a large population of glowing ghouls. Coupled with attacks on Denver and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Boulder became the center of a triangle of hellish death.

Mission walkthrough
This "mission" includes two other areas, and is quite long. This area is the "outside" section.

You must have at least one Rad-X per squad member to get by this area. You will also want a character with a decent science skill for the next area. If you've been using all of your "Big Books of Science" on one character that's plenty. For the final area, you will need a way to damage objects that you can't explicitly target. A Browning M2 or grenades work well. You can also pick up a Vindicator Minigun and ammunition from enemies. This is a long mission, and you will really only find Microfusion Cells, .50 Cal, 2mm EC, and 7.62mm ammunition in quantity, so if you are using weapons that don't use these kinds of ammo be sure to bring a healthy supply. For some of the endings, you will need Simon Barnaky's locket or letter.

There are two objectives:
 * Get the nuke carrier into position.
 * Move your part into the safe bunker marked on your map.

The first objective more or less requires you to clear the path for the carrier. Enemies in this area are mostly humanoid bots except where noted. The carrier is pretty flimsy, and if it is destroyed the mission is over, so it is best to relatively thorough when clearing the area so that you don't get surprised while driving. You can leave the carrier at the bottom of the map until ready, you don't want to trigger it early.

Notable encounters along the path:

Bottom level (road heading west)


 * Immediately above where you start on a cliff there are some humanoid bot snipers along the cliff to the west. They don't always attack.
 * The road to the west of the start point forks. The southern fork has mines, the northern fork has more enemies.
 * There is a heavy turret where the road starts sloping up, and there is a generator behind the turret which will disable it.

Road along the west side of the map-


 * There is a bunker that pops open with a few light turrets, in addition to a fair number of humanoids.

The road then winds up the map-


 * There are mines in front of one of the bridges (four, equally distributed) and hover bots firing rockets from above.
 * Be sure to clear the small farmhouse on the southeast side of the road, it is near the rear entrance to the safety bunker.
 * There are ladders leading up the cliff face which lead to a generator and another heavy turret, as well as a way to flank the hover bots.

The last bend in the road (the northeast corner of the map) has some major defenses, including a behemoth and two turrets.


 * You can attack all of these from the top of the cliff, assuming you have long range weapons, patience, and ammunition to spare.

The door itself is guarded by a humanoid bot and two hover bots, all firing rockets. You can also snipe these from the top of the cliff relatively safely.

Once you are sure the path is clear for the carrier, and before proceeding with driving the nuke carrier into position, move all but one member of your squad into the safe bunker, which has a few easy guards and some useless terminals. Take one character and use them to drive the nuke carrier into position. The character will have to get out of the carrier and run to the ladder near the farmhouse on the ledge, so make sure they aren't encumbered and you're familiar with the path to take.

Have everyone use a Rad-X, drive the carrier into position, and run the driver to the ladder for the safe bunker. You have 60 seconds to make the run, so micromanage that character. It's possible that the back door to the bunker has to close to keep the squad safe. Once the nuke is detonated, you will automatically be moved to the next area.

Cheyenne Mountain