Fallout Setting

The Fallout setting exists on an alternate timeline. The story elements and gameplay of the Fallout series take place within this world.

Background
The franchise's timeline stretches from pre-War years, to the "future of the fifties," to the decades following the destruction of the earth by nuclear war. With the goal of exploring ideas revolving around a futuristic, post-nuclear world, the game setting exists on a timeline that diverged after World War II. This fork led to a world where technology progressed quickly while maintaining the cultural norms of the mid-century.

Timeline
Gameplay sections of Fallout 4 begin in 2077 and 2287, the earliest and latest points on the timeline chronologically. Information is relayed via gameplay regarding years preceding, stretching back hundreds of years before the Great War event, in various locations across the former United States.

Development inspiration
The environment of the game world after the Fallout timeline diverged provided artists a blank slate to work with in terms of designing their futuristic version of modern day. For the alterative timeline's impact on environmental storytelling, many objects were created to look familiar to what exists in the real world and others are developed as those from the future.

Artists used the separate timelines as inspiration to maintain a mix of vintage, familiar, modern, and futuristic aspects throughout the game world, and developers were intentional in featuring fictional aspects and real world equivalents appearing both before and after the timeline diverges. The retro-futuristic, "golden era of science fiction" art style is predominant, but a variety of inspirations were utilized across the board to appeal to a wide audience. Urban and suburban U.S. of the 1940s and 1950s also inspired some of the artists, including vehicle design, signage, architecture, and art.

As opposed to purely "fantastical sci-fi designs," developers considered how industrial and product design would have evolved in the alternate universe. Developers intended for the setting to maintain the dark atmosphere of 1950's apocalyptic prediction, balanced with humor. Technology developed unevenly in the alternate universe, advanced in some ways and primitive in others, with advancements from real world history having never occurred or if similar, developed much differently. The variation in advancement is depicted also throughout the development of weapons, robotics, and engines. This flexibility allowed artists to depict a world with layers of history and culture on both sides of the timeline's split, spanning the generations in both directions from the Great War.

Plot
The games revolve around the occurrence of a global nuclear event known as the Great War. Worldwide shortage of resources such as petroleum and uranium resulted in the Resource Wars, a series of conflicts between the United States, Canada, China, and European powers.

These events culminated in the breakdown of the United Nations and deployment of nuclear missiles at and by the United States. Prior to this, some citizens had elected to purchase space in underground vaults, most of which shielded those within from the nuclear event. Those who survived outside of the vaults or who emerged from underground created new communities, rebuilding in what remained of the country.