United States

The United States of America also known as the United States, U.S., or America, was a pre-War country and nuclear superpower. The location serves as the setting for the Fallout game series, depicted both before and after the Great War.

Revolutionary War
The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic coast of North America. Disagreements between colonists and King George the Third's policies on issues such as taxation led to the armed occupation of the colonies. The colonists pushed back, culminating in events such as the Boston Tea Party and Boston Massacre, where in 1770, five colonists died inciting rage against the British occupation.

In 1775, British soldiers marched on the cities of Lexington and Concord to disarm the colonists and arrest members of their leadership. The two forces opened fire near the Old North Bridge, beginning the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the Revolutionary War.

Proclaiming themselves "states," they issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The rebellious states defeated Britain in the American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence. A federal convention adopted the current United States Constitution on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments, was ratified in 1791.

Civil War
With the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, 11 states seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America, or Confederacy, in open rebellion against Lincoln's election, with Jefferson Davis as the first Confederate President. Despite the Confederacy making several victories against the Union in the first two years of the war under General Robert E. Lee, a blockade of Confederate ports by the Union Navy and a huge victory at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 by Federal troops sealed the fate of the Confederacy, and in 1865, the Confederate capital of Richmond fell to General Ulysses S. Grant following the Siege of Petersburg to the south of the city. General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant and the Army of the Potomac at Appomattox Court House, and with Lee's surrender, the Confederacy was dissolved and the rebel states readmitted to the United States.

Space exploration
Intense research into space technologies and funding of the United States Space Agency, resulted in the pioneering flight of Defiance 7 on May 5, 1961, when Captain Carl Bell became the first known human in space. However, the claim was widely disputed by the Soviet Union and China. By the end of the decade, the United States had achieved victory in the space race, as the Virgo II lunar lander touched down on the surface of Earth's Moon on July 16, 1969. Valiant 11 mission members, Captain Richard Wade, Captain Mark Garris, and Captain Michael Hagen, became the first humans known to have walked on the surface of another celestial body. The space exploration program ended when the last known manned mission to the Moon occurred, and remaining crewed rockets, such as the Delta IX, were converted into military use.

Resource Wars
The United States was involved in the Resource Wars, a series of conflicts beginning in 2052, brought on by an unsustainable global economy that heavily relied on finite resources such as petroleum and uranium. Disagreement on the world's last remaining resources caused the dissolution of the United Nations in July 2052. Wartime censorship enabled the government to confiscate and destroy any material deemed seditious. Defense contractors and industrial complexes were put under military command.

Under Executive Order 99066, Chinese and Chinese-American citizens and residents were interned and placed in concentration camps without trial, sometimes by private security contractors hired by the military to conduct what were essentially abductions. The Turtledove Detention Camp in Maryland was one such camp. Many ended up disappearing in the various research facilities across the United States.

Organized labor and unions pushed back against the government and corporations, struggling for wages, benefits, and safe working conditions. In Appalachia, Hornwright Industrial, Atomic Mining Services, and RobCo Industries, supported by Governor Evans, pushed for replacing human labor with robotics and leaving workers unemployed. The unrest culminated in automation riots.

Great War
As the Sino-American War continued to rage between 2066 and 2076, despite the People's Liberation Army having had the advantage initially with capturing Alaska's oil fields and Anchorage, the introduction of Power Armor to the United States military soon turned the tables on the Chinese. Faced with T-45, T-51, and T-60 power armored soldiers, the PLA began to lose ground, and the United States took advantage to split the PLA's forces with landing American troops on Chinese home soil, forcing the Communist Party of China to have to divert troops to defend the Motherland instead of protecting their captured U.S. territory. By 2076, the tricentennial birthday of the United States declaring independence from Great Britian, the United States had successfully evicted the Chinese from Alaska, liberating Anchorage, and reclaiming their oil fields, with the Stars and Stripes once more flying in every Commonwealth in the Union. With the oil fields back in their possession, the United States transferred more men to the frontlines in China to prevent the Chinese from rebuilding their forces and trying again to lay claim to the Alaskan oil fields. However, as the United States stormed across the Chinese mainland towards Beijing, the Chinese government and PLA had one last card to play, so if they were going down, they would take the capitalist dogs with them as well.

On the morning of October 23, 2077, NORAD radar detected Chinese bombers in the air, submarines approaching the Eastern and Western Seaboards, and the launch of at least four Intercontinental ballistic missiles from mainland China. The U.S. President, left with no choice, activated Protocol MX-CN91 with the nuclear football, ordering the launch of the United States' entire nuclear arsenal in retaliation. At 9:42 AM Eastern Standard Time, the first Chinese nukes struck New York and Pennslyvania, giving over a few minutes of warning to those cities not hit to sound the Civil Defense sirens and get people into Vault-Tec's Vaults before it was too late. At 9:47 AM Eastern Standard Time, the end of modern civilization occurred as a two-hour nuclear exchange took place between the Chinese and American nuclear arsenals. When it finally ended, the world was forever and permanently changed as the radioactive fallout transformed the United States into a radiation-infested Wasteland. Anyone who survived out in the open when the nukes hit would have either been turned into ghouls by the radiation they absorbed, died, or been in an area not severely affected by the fallout, forcing them to have to adapt to their new surroundings and attempt to rebuild in a world that would never be the same ever again. The Vaults were sealed to protect their residents who got to them in time, and those not assigned as Control Vaults to have their residents repopulate the Wasteland when the all-clear was given got to work with their experiments on their Vault Dwellers. The earliest any Control Vault would have opened to allow its residents to begin rebuilding the United States would be Vault 76 in 2102, 25 years to the day the country was wracked with nuclear annihilation.

Civics and geography
Both state and commonwealths were used to distinguish regions within the United States. In Appalachia, documents used the distinction "Territory of Appalachia" and "Appalachian Territory." The country utilized several varieties of national flag. The country shared borders with Mexico to the south, Canada to the north, and Russia across the Bering Strait from Alaska.

Government
The United States government consisted of several agencies. The Defense Intelligence Agency was one of the most technologically advanced.


 * Department of Agriculture
 * United States Space Administration
 * Department of Antiquities
 * Department of Defense

Political structure
The structure of the United States government included the Executive Branch. Governmental positions were determined by vote, such as senators who could run for re-election to the United States Senate. A governmental advisory board was known as the Joint Chiefs. Legislation invoked by the Census Bureau include a section of the "Patriotic Patriots of America True Patriotism Act."

Appearances
All games in the Fallout series are set within the United States.