The Crater

The Crater is a location in the Toxic Valley region of Appalachia in 2102.

Background
A settlement established by the raiders, Crater was built in the ruins of the Valiant-1 space station, which lost optimal orbit as time passed after the Great War and crashed into the Toxic Valley. Although the raiders had been in Appalachia previously as five different factions: the Cutthroats, Gourmands, Blackwater Bandits, Diehards, and Trappers, all of their previous camps and hideouts had been abandoned when they were forced to flee or were killed by the Scorched. Word of the region being recolonized by the Vault 76 residents convinced the raiders to return and set up their new home base at the crashed space station in the Toxic Valley.

Layout
The Crater is located in a large, shallow crater near the northeastern edge of the Toxic Valley. The space station appears to have fallen from orbit at a high velocity, devastating the surrounding area. The Valiant has weathered the impact remarkably well, all things considered. The bulk of the station remains embedded upright in the center of the crater, with fragments scattered around it. At the northern edge lies the separated Airlock C7, which can be accessed with the Airlock C7 inventory list and contains the location's steamer trunk and unique space suits.

By 2103, the location has been turned into a raider settlement and has had scaffolding, amenities, and other decorations typical of raider architecture added. The Crater Core is located in the center of the spaceship and has been turned into the raiders' headquarters.

Notable loot

 * Airlock C7 inventory list - Note, found next to a skeleton, slightly southwest of the torus' core, in a broken section of the station.
 * Spacesuit and helmet - Inside Airlock C7 - use the code on the airlock C7 inventory list (111418).
 * Untitled poem - Note, in an outhouse near a raider cabin on a promontory in the hills south of the station ruins.
 * Flight data recorder
 * Random armor mod - Immediately south of the middle of the station, inside a destroyed section and laying on the ground at the left, inside.
 * Random recipe - On a metal shelf in the raider cabin on the aforementioned promontory (roughly east from the crash site, on top of the mountain).
 * Raider power armor chassis - On the second floor of the raider cabin.

Appearances
The crashed space station appears only in Fallout 76.

Behind the scenes

 * The design of the crashed station (a torus with external engines) resembles the Ballistic Orbital Missile Base 001 space station from the canceled Fallout 3 project by Black Isle Studios codenamed Van Buren.
 * Nathan Purkeypile designed much of crater's layout, lighting and cluttering.
 * The real-world counterpart never got off the design and model stages created by Werhner von Braun in 1950, it used the theory proposed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky that a spinning ring could be used in a weightless environment to create artificial gravity that would be controlled not only by the size of the ring but by how fast it would spin. NASA has toyed with the concept since 1975. But to date, no one has constructed one unless the Space Station X-1 attraction built by von Braun and Walt Disney in 1955 is counted.
 * In the real world, a space station reentering earth's atmosphere would be torn apart by friction and deceleration. Sixty to ninety percent of its mass would burn away, and whatever remained would rain down over a several hundred mile area.