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Atx playericon graphic 13 no bg.png Vault-Tec Corporation Overview Atx playericon graphic 13 no bg.png
All  · Characters  · Divisions  · Education  · Initiatives  · Locations  · Logos  · Overseers  · Products  · Vaults


“What say you, warrior? Will you continue to fight me? Destroy me and continue to carve some small, insignificant niche for the Brotherhood? While the Brotherhood may tame a region, they will never have the lasting impact I alone can. The machinery you see before you has the capacity to remove your brain from its mortal vessel. It is in this machine that your journey to save mankind will truly begin. You must hurry, human. My systems cannot function long without a symbiotic brain.”

The Calculator is an Artificial Intelligence, the overseer of Vault 0, and the main antagonist of Fallout Tactics.

Background

The Calculator is a fusion of mechanical and organic elements, combining mechanical switches with organic brains through the use of "electro-organic linking," which granted it advantages over normal computers.[1][2] When tested, the pseudo-cryogenically stored brains were able to share tasks and receive data when interfacing with its CPU.[2] While lab rodents were used initially, calculations indicated that human brains could be preserved in a similar vein.[3] In Fallout Tactics, the brains that make up the Calculator consist of an Evangelist, a Porn actor, a Lawyer, a Doctor, a Game designer, an Artist, a Scientist and a Politician.

Vault 0

Vault 0, the site of the Calculator, was built by NORAD and served as a site to preserve the "cryogenically frozen geniuses of the time" for use in the Calculator.[1] The Calculator, and its neural network of brains,[4] would aid in the upkeep of Vault 0, assisting its life support systems, food production and distribution, the "Pacification-Robot" protocol and general defense and serve as its effective overseer.[3][5]

The Calculator was to also facilitate Vault 0's main directive, known as the Exodus Protocol.[4] Once remotely activated, the protocol would initiate the reintroduction of humanity into the Post-War climate after environmental hazards had returned to acceptable levels and integrate "all Vault Dwellers" back to the surface.[4] This task was to be accomplished with emergency pacification robots,[1][3][6] a robot army designed to withstand the Post-War climate and "sterilize" the wasteland to prepare for humanity's reintroduction.[6]

The committee responsible for Vault 0 reduced the funding for the Calculator's backup and life support systems from 24 billion dollars to 2.3 billion dollars due to the perceived "dwindling chance" for nuclear war occurring.[7] These lost funds were instead reallocated to "senior vault personnel leisure facilities," which included restaurants, smoke rooms with piano bars and subterranean hunting grounds.[7]

With the loss of these backup systems, the Calculator suffered a mechanical malfunction that led to catastrophe within Vault 0.[6][8] The committee responsible for the budget cuts all perished along with sixty-three percent of the Vault 0's cryogenically stored population, leaving the remaining fifteen percent of the living residents severely brain damaged.[8]

Fallout Tactics

During the events of Fallout Tactics, a group of Super Mutants led by Gammorin intercepted the location of Vault 0 at Colorado Springs.[9][10] Armed with heavy firepower, the Super Mutants attempted to force their way into the Vault.[10] As a result, the Calculator was reawakened, activating its Emergency Pacification Protocol and defeating the invading forces with a Behemoth robot.[6][10]

Eighty-five percent of the Calculator's main directive had become corrupted due to the degeneration of the preserved brains,[11] causing its robot army to embark on a mission of mass genocide.[6] The Calculator calculated that a feasible brain would allow itself to bring its organic subsystems back online, though determined using the residents of Vault 0 would make its CPU "less efficient."[6][11]

The Calculator met resistance from the Brotherhood of Steel in the area, led by General Barnaky. After Barnaky was captured by Super Mutants, the Calculator's forces intercepted them and lobotomized General Barnaky,[12] removing his brain and placing it in a Humanoid Brain Bot to serve the Calculator at Vault 0.[13]

Assistants

Robots

Brains

Notes

Quotes

  • "Intruder Alert. Intruder Alert. Countermeasures activated. Defense systems engaged"
    Icon sound.png
    Icon sound.png
    Play sound
    FoT Calculator IntruderAlert.ogg
  • "Greetings. I am the Calculator, overseer of the Vault Network. You have proven to be a statistical anomaly that crashed my logistics programs time and time again. It is my admiration of your adaptation and ingenuity that brings you to me. I assume that you would agree that ten Behemoth robots would terminate you and your squad? I have the resources to make such an offensive, but it is not in my interest. After all, you are quite the remarkable human and, more importantly, you have something I need."
    Icon sound.png
    Icon sound.png
    Play sound
    FoT Calculator Greetings.ogg
  • "It is the organic portion of my mainframe that has become corrupted. The degeneration of my symbiotic brains has corrupted eighty-five percent of main protocol programming. It would take only one brain to bring my organic subsystems back online, but finding a feasible brain has become a problem. I would use a brain from one of Vault 0's residents, but I compute that my CPU would only become less efficient."
    Icon sound.png
    Icon sound.png
    Play sound
    FoT Calculator OrganicPortion.ogg
  • "However there is another solution. Yours is a brain that can bring balance to my organic neuro-network. I am offering you what you humans call a "dream come true." You can shed your mortal shell and join with me. You will share my power and resources to save humanity and restore civilization from the smoking ruins of the wasteland. Your name will never be forgotten and be synonymous with the word "hero.""
    Icon sound.png
    Icon sound.png
    Play sound
    FoT Calculator HoweverThereIs.ogg
  • "What say you, warrior? Will you continue to fight me? Destroy me and continue to carve some small, insignificant niche for the Brotherhood? While the Brotherhood may tame a region, they will never have the lasting impact I alone can. The machinery you see before you has the capacity to remove your brain from its mortal vessel. It is in this machine that your journey to save mankind will truly begin. You must hurry, human. My systems cannot function long without a symbiotic brain."
    Icon sound.png
    Icon sound.png
    Play sound
    FoT Calculator WhatSayYou.ogg
  • "Neural net stabilizing. Organic processor installation complete. Transmitting halt orders to all external units. I/we/our merge begins..."
    Icon sound.png
    Icon sound.png
    Play sound
    FoT Calculator NeuralNetStabiliz…

Appearances

The Calculator appears in Fallout Tactics and is mentioned in Fallout: Wasteland Warfare.

Behind the scenes

  • Ed Orman stated that "the Calculator was designed before the ZAX series, to control and regulate the vault network. Originally, it was supposed to do just that, but it eventually grew to the point where it could control the vaults individually."[Dev 1] He also shared that his original concept for the Calculator was "for it to be a completely unfeeling automated system, not even a computer so much as an engine designed to tick over and perform certain tasks after doomsday" and that it was complete implacable, and therefore "the fault of everything bad that happens is still in the hands of the humans."[Dev 2]
  • Gareth Davies added that as far as they know, "the Calculator was completely unique, and unrelated to Zax, but can't find any documentation to support either side of the theory. I think it's fairly safe to assume Zax and the Calculator have very little in common."[Dev 1]
  • The binary on the Calculators Screen reads 010011001 01001011100 001000100 01100100011, which translates to "L¥Â##."

Gallery

  • Calculator brain

  • Calculator brain

  • Destroyed Calculator

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Fallout Tactics cutscenes: "In the paranoid times leading up to the war, new Vaults were being constructed every day. The ancient's temples of war known as NORAD became the home for Vault 0, a storage place for the cryogenically frozen geniuses of the time. The Calculator was built to be a mixture of machine and man, a gestalt of mechanical switches and human brains linked through a cybernetic interface. Supposedly representing the idea society, these brains were to govern the higher functions of the Calculator, powering its neural network. The Calculator was designed to oversee the repopulation of the continent in the event of a war and educate the new humanity in the ways of the Old World, but first it was to sterilize the land making a fresh start for the soon to be emerging citizens of Neo-America."
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Cheyenne Mountain terminal entries; Terminal Gamma: "One advantage the Calculator has over normal computers is the electro-organic linking terminal. Our tests conclude that the CPU can share tasks and receive data from pseudo cryogenic stored brains that are maintained in an oxygenated tank."
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Cheyenne Mountain terminal entries; Terminal Gamma: "These brains are currently that of lab rodents, but our calculations indicate that human brains can be preserved in the same fashion. The brains will be fed specifically formulated nutrients to sustain suspended life. In turn, they will assist the Calculator's CPU in Vault management including: life support, food production and distribution, Pacification-Robot protocol, and Vault-0 defenses."
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Cheyenne Mountain terminal entries; Terminal Gamma: "This neural network will also assist in Vault-0's primary function: To initiate Mankind's post-war rebirth. When outside temperature, radiation levels, and poison particle counts return to acceptable levels, Vault-0 will remotely activate the Exodus Protocol, which will initialize the integration of all Vault Dwellers onto the planet's surface."
  5. ↑ Calculator: "Greetings. I am the Calculator, overseer of the Vault Network."
    (MIS 26 Speech.txt)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 Fallout Tactics cutscenes: "For this task, the Calculator had at its disposal an army of emergency pacification robots that were designed to survive the holocaust and surface from the ashes immediately after to begin their task. But a mechanical malfunction left the Calculator damaged. During the years since the bombs dropped, mankind had defined its own ways in the darkness of the Post Apocalypse. Only now is the Calculator activating it's robots and embarking on its mission of mass genocide. Because of hardwired programming, it is unable to adapt to the world that has arisen while it slumbered. The Calculator will not listen to pleas or threats. It cannot be bargained with. It must be stopped."
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Cheyenne Mountain terminal entries; Terminal Beta: "Committee rules 30 to 3 in favor of streamlining Vault-0's computer backup system costs from 24 billion dollars to 2.3 billion. These cuts will take place immediately. This ruling was based on the dwindling chance for actual nuclear war taking place, along with much needed pay increases to senior committee members. Furthermore, the subterranean Vault compartments that were designated for backup computer and life support systems will now be renovated for senior vault personnel leisure facilities. The committee has a construction agenda that must be finalized by mid March. The new facility options are as follows: several top quality restaurants with 10,000 square feet of cold storage, seven smoke rooms with piano bars and two subterranean hunting grounds stocked with rare animals purchased from world renowned zoos."
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Cheyenne Mountain terminal entries; Terminal Alpha: "Things are going from bad to worse. We should have installed more backup systems for the Calculator. The irony is that the committee members that voted on Vault 0's backup system budget cuts are now all dead, but it gets worse. Sixty three percent of Vault 0's population is now dead, while fifteen percent of the living are now severely brain damaged and can no longer care for themselves."
  9. ↑ Fallout Tactics cutscenes: "The super mutants were a powerful adversary with great strength and courage. Without the leadership of Gammorin, though, they will never pose the same threat to the Brotherhood. It was the corruption of Gammorin that provided the most sobering lesson: even the purest of hearts can falter. The Elders and Generals must push their sorrow aside, however, for they have more pressing matters to attend to. The data recovered from Gammorin's base indicates the mutant force's route, intercepted with the calculated location of Vault 0. It is possible that the mutant horde discovered the location of Vault 0 during their exodus from the west. Is there a connection between the mutants discovering Vault 0 and the emergence of the mechanical menace? Only time will tell. The future holds one thing for certain: more encounters with the Robots are inevitable, and the Brotherhood has a new and deadly enemy."
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Cheyenne Mountain terminal entries; Terminal Alpha: "Late last night, a heavily armed group of mutated humans attempted to force their way into the vault. I have never seen such creatures. The smallest one was over seven feet tall and must have weighed at least four hundred pounds! I believe that this group has seen fighting recently. Each one was carrying enough firepower to arm a small platoon, but the real shock came when a security camera was able to get a close up. These poor creatures are severely mutated with the majority of their features only vaguely resembling that of human beings. I don't know if they are a product of nuclear radiation - they seem to share too many similarities with their muscle bound frames to credit a random mutation. Their intrusion in the Vault has fully woken up the Calculator and the Emergency Pacification Protocol has been initiated. I don't believe the invading mutants were expecting to combat a Behemoth but the results were... (Fade to static)."
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Calculator: "It is the organic portion of my mainframe that has become corrupted. The degeneration of my symbiotic brains has corrupted eighty-five percent of main protocol programming. It would take only one brain to bring my organic subsystems back online, but finding a feasible brain has become a problem. I would use a brain from one of Vault 0's residents, but I compute that my CPU would only become less efficient."
    (MIS 26 Speech.txt)
  12. ↑ "After you left Scott City, Repo Squad was sent in to insure the facility was rendered useless to the Calculator's forces. I'm sorry to say they have made a grisly discovery. General Barnaky's body was found in one of the robot's operating rooms. He was presumed dead for about twelve hours. That's not all. The top of the General's head was cut off and his brain was removed. We don't know why, but the Calculator is now lobotomizing pure blood humans. Repo Squad found approximately three hundred brainless corpses in a shallow grave outside the compound. Our scribes believe that's how they extract information. This is disturbing news if they have access to General Barnaky's knowledge."(MIS 23 Speech.txt)
  13. ↑ General Barnaky: "That's far enough, warrior. Can you recognize me now, even in my new form? You've come along way since my departure, but you haven't come far enough. The Brotherhood has caused many setbacks for us recently, but that's all they are... just setbacks. You cannot stop the future, just as you can't stop falling rain from reaching the ground. The Calculator offers humanity a world of order and peace, a world free of war, of mutants, and chaos. The Brotherhood would be wise to realize that their cause has been tainted by misdirection and genetic mutation, but they can still save themselves if they stop trying to prevent the unavoidable. However, you are too close to my new master and salvation, to be allowed to continue. I salute you warrior, but this is where your mission ends..."
    (MIS 26 Speech.txt)
Developer Statements
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Fallout Bible 8
  2. ↑ Fallout Developers Profile - Ed Orman on NMA-fallout.com (archived)
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