Rube's Gold Ribbon

 refers to an unmarked quest in Fallout 3.

Gold Ribbon Grocers is a store on Jury St, near Jury Street Metro Station, west of Megaton.

The entire store appears to have been set up as a Rube Goldberg machine, using pressure plates, a long row of boxes, several traps and explosions. Your reward for setting off the Machine is a few missiles, a mininuke, Nikola Tesla and You and Tumblers Today. For this reason we suggest not grabbing the many boxes of Sugar Bombs and Abraxo Cleaner until after the Machine has completed.

Alternately, you can gain the reward by igniting the gas cloud (for instance by shooting the generator until it explodes) in the back.


 * The loot is in the opposite corner of the generator.
 * The Machine will not complete correctly on Easy level (at least on the PS3), probably because the explosion is less powerful (?). The Machine can also fail randomly at other levels (also on the PS3, unsure about other platforms). Saving the game before activating the Machine is recommended.

Setup
Follow the arrows to a...
 * Pressure plate triggering log-with-skull
 * ...triggering a long line of boxes
 * ...triggering a Pressure Plate
 * ...triggering a Pitching Machine
 * ...that eventually pushes down a fire extinguisher on a Bear Trap
 * ...which explosion makes a Grenade Bouquet fall down and explode
 * ...setting fire to the gas cloud, which will seek its way to the second floor
 * ...shaking a kid's slider (!) to drop its contents down the hole!

Note that there should be 3 missiles available, but they won't always make it down the slide. If you don't mind sacrificing a grenade for a good cause, they should just need a little nudge to get them down. Don't get the grenade too close to your prize or they'll go flying about the second floor and you'll never get them.

Another alternative is to shoot the end of the slide with a reasonably high-impact weapon, such as a hunting rifle. This seems to work in cases where the items -almost- make it down the slide.

If all else fails, the slide can activated with a Frag Grenade.

Reward

 * Nikola Tesla and You
 * Tumblers Today
 * 3 Missiles
 * Mini-Nuke