Pre-War Setting

An overview of the Fallout Setting before the Great War.

Background

The franchise's timeline stretches through the pre-War years, to the "future of the fifties," to the decades leading to the destruction of the earth by nuclear war.^{[Dev 1]} The games revolve around the occurrence of a global nuclear event known as the Great War.^[1] 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.^[2]^[3]

These events culminated in the breakdown of the United Nations and deployment of nuclear missiles at and by the United States.^[4]^{[Dev 2]}^[5] Prior to this, some citizens had elected to purchase space in underground vaults, most of which shielded those within from the nuclear event.^[1]^[6]

Development

The goal through development was to explore ideas revolving around a futuristic, post-nuclear world.^{[Dev 3]}^{[Dev 4]} The world included technology that progressed quickly while maintaining the cultural norms of the mid-century.^{[Pub 1]}^{[Pub 2]}^{[Pub 3]} 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.^{[Dev 5]}^{[Dev 6]}^{[Dev 7]}

The environment of the game world before the war provided artists a blank slate to work with in terms of designing their futuristic version of modern day.^{[Pub 4]}^{[Dev 8]} Artists maintained a mix of vintage, familiar, modern, and futuristic aspects throughout the game world.^{[Dev 9]}^{[Dev 10]} The variation in advancement is depicted also throughout the development of weapons, robotics, and engines.^{[Dev 11]}^{[Dev 12]}

As opposed to purely "fantastical sci-fi designs," developers considered how industrial and product design would have evolved in the alternate universe.^{[Pub 5]} Developers intended for the setting to maintain the dark atmosphere of 1950's apocalyptic prediction, balanced with humor.^{[Dev 13]} Urban and suburban U.S. of the 1940s and 1950s also inspired some of the artists, including vehicle design, signage, architecture, and art.^{[Dev 14]}^{[Dev 15]}

Events and Culture

Locations and Legislation

Media

Military

People's Liberation Army

Organizations

References

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 Fallout 76 loading screens: "On October 23, 2077, in what came to be known as the "Great War", the world was engulfed in nuclear fire. In the United States, a fortunate minority escaped to the safety of great underground Vaults."
↑ Fallout intro: "In the 21st century, war was still waged over the resources that could be acquired. Only this time, the spoils of war were also its weapons: Petroleum and Uranium. For these resources, China would invade Alaska, the US would annex Canada, and the European Commonwealth would dissolve into quarreling, bickering nation-states, bent on controlling the last remaining resources on Earth."
↑ Fallout 4 loading screens: "On the morning of Saturday, October 23, 2077 America was consumed by the flames of nuclear war. The war with China had finally reached its cataclysmic conclusion."
↑ The Switchboard terminal entries; Central terminal, DEFCON Status - 2077
↑ Capitol Post terminal entries; Capital Post Top Stories -- July 27, 2052, United Nations Disbanded!
↑ Vault-Tec University terminal entries; Vault-Tec mission statement terminal, Introduction

Publications

↑ Fallout 3 manual p. 2: "Fallout 3 presents a much grimmer reality. Imagine if, after World War II, the timeline had split. Our world forked into one branch, the Fallout universe the other. In that other branch, technology progressed at a much more impressive rate, while American society remained locked in the cultural norms of the 1950's. It was an idyllic “"world of tomorrow," filled with servant robots, beehive hairdos, and fusion-powered cars. And then in the year 2077, at the climax of a long-running war with China, it all went to hell in a globe-shattering nuclear war."
↑ Fallout 3 manual p. 2: "Nuclear war. The very words conjure images of mushroom clouds, gas masks, and bewildered children ducking and covering under their school desks. But it's the aftermath of such a conflict that truly captures our imaginations, in large part because there’s no real-world equivalent we can relate to. Mankind may have witnessed the horror of the atomic bomb, but thankfully we’ve somehow succeeded in not blowing up the entire planet. At least, not yet."
↑ Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel Manual p. 2: "In a future not far removed from our own, a world filled with marvel and wonder is shaken to its very foundations by the greed and destruction of mankind."
↑ The Art of Fallout 4, p. 22: "BOSTON: Much of modern-day Boston's skyline consists of buildings that were constructed well after Fallout's timeline diverged from our own. The taller structures that make the city recognizable are too contemporary in their designs. That gave us a blank slate to work with in terms of designing our version of a city of tomorrow. The older historical aspects of the city were retained for authenticity, but we wanted to layer them with some futuristic architecture, as this is a type of environment that hasn't been explored yet in the Fallout universe. As you can see in these early concepts, we explored some pretty far-out ideas for just how built up and evolved our version of Boston would be. We ended up with a more balanced approach—something that felt different but was still a grounded and relatable metropolis."
↑ The Art of Fallout 4, p. 283: "It's fairly easy to create fantastical sci-fi designs, but we challenged ourselves to think about how industrial and product design would have evolved in this alternate universe."

Developer Statements

↑ Leonard Boyarsky: "As Art Director, I was responsible for the look and mood of the game (as far as visuals were concerned). I came up with the idea of the “future of the fifties” setting, and had to convince everyone that that was the way to go. I also came up with the idea/design for the “Vault Boy” and the “cards” (as I called them) showing him doing all the different things in humorous ways. By the way, he’s not the Pip Boy, the Pip Boy is the little guy on your Pip Boy interface. The Vault Boy was supposed to evoke the feel of Monopoly cards, and the Pip Boy was based on the Bob’s Big Boy mascot."
(Leonard Boyarsky; Fallout Developers Profile)
↑ Scott Campbell: "The nuclear Armageddon in the back-story was between the US and China. After shipping several people asked me why China and not the old standby, the Soviet Union. I made the choice when I remembered experiences with Oleg, a Moscow developer I worked with months before when I was assistant-producing a typing game. Once, in the middle of a phone conversation, I heard some muffled bangs, and the phone went quiet. When I asked him what the noise was, he replied, 'Oh, it was just the Russian mob firing their guns in the street.' I thought he was joking - he wasn't. After that, I had a really hard time believing that the once mighty USSR would be in a position to threaten the world any time soon. So I turned to the next major communist country that typifies the East: China."
(Fallout developer statements; The Origins of Fallout - Part 7)
↑ Fallout Bible 6: "What was U.S./world history like before the timeline included in previous Fallout updates?"
"No one has asked this yet, but I thought I would cut this question off at the pass. Fallout takes place on a future earth, in an alternate timeline. I will not be including any information on how and when it diverged - it will remain one of the mysteries of the setting. Just let it be known that it diverged after WW2, and leave it at that."
↑ Tim Cain: "My idea is to explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a post-nuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun."
(Chat with Tim Cain; March 9th, 2002)
↑ Tim Cain: "Any time one of the design team came across a picture of a weapon or piece of armor from anywhere (such as Soldier of Fortune or Ladies’ Home Journal) and it was “cool enough” to include, it was fair game. Entertaining gems have been imported from just about everywhere, hence almost everyone will find something about which to reminisce. It reminds me of Mystery Science Theater. They always say, people aren’t going to get all of our jokes, but the people who will get them will really appreciate them."
(Fallout developer statements; Fallout: More fun in the post-nuclear world)
↑ Leonard Boyarsky: "I was really influenced by The Road Warrior, The City of Lost Children, and "Brazil" in terms of movies, and the comic book series Hard Boiled."
(Leonard Boyarsky; Fallout Developers Profile)
↑ Tim Cain: "Seriously, the artists just thought that 50's tech looked cool. So they set out to make a future science that looked like what the Golden Era of science fiction thought that future science would look like (if you can follow that sentence). Vacuum tubes, ray guns, mutants, the whole works. And I think they succeeded quite well."
(Fallout developer statements/Miscellaneous; Tim Cain: Fallout 50's tech, 1997 October 21)
↑ Ferret Baudoin: "What is the fall of pre-War US? What were the fault lines? What were the real problems? And I think that's something we explored with Appalachia - not necessarily the bigger thing, but we tried to look at it regionally. And we tried to say, OK, what-why was this not working? And, you know, trying to sort of expand upon, you know: This is reality, then there's the Divergence, and then we end up in Fallout, you know, pre-War times."
(Fallout for Hope - CHAD: A Fallout 76 Story Podcast Twitch stream, 12/16/2020)
↑ "Question: Sunset Sarsaparilla started production in 1918...years before the Fallout universe diverged from our own. Mistake on the part of the developers?"
Joshua Sawyer: "No. Fictional brands in the Fallout universe don't have to exist only in the branched timeline."
(Fallout: New Vegas developer statements/Miscellaneous/Joshua Sawyer/Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011)
↑ "Question: were native americans annihilated in FO's divergent timeline?"
Joshua Sawyer: "Not explicitly, no. There are a lot of NA tribes scattered all over the country -- and plenty individuals who are ethnically NA but do not live in NA communities -- so a fair number (percentage-wise) probably lived through the war in various ways."
(Fallout: New Vegas developer statements/Miscellaneous/Joshua Sawyer/Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011)
↑ Joshua Sawyer: "In the Fallout universe, I think that the military appeal of weaponry that uses a small number of more-or-less universal ammunition types would be great. Today, we have NATO standards so that allies armies can share ammunition. But what if you could use the same ammunition type for powering a sniper rifle that you'd use for a devastating close-range weapon (e.g. a Microfusion Cell powering a Laser Rifle or a Plasma Rifle)? For a military force in the field, the flexibility of that would be immense. Anyway, I considered the EWs in F:NV to have reached the point where they were starting to replace conventional weapons, but had not yet completely eclipsed them -- sort of like the early days of firearms, when they were still being used concurrently with bows."
(Fallout: New Vegas developer statements/Weapons; Joshua Sawyer: Energy weapons, 2012 February 16)
↑ Joshua Sawyer: "I like vacuum tube tech and I think it pushes some interesting ideas, but it feels secondary in the series. One of the interesting properties of vacuum tubes is that they aren’t really affected by EMPs, such as those produced by a nuclear bomb blast. Some Soviet MiG-25s used vacuum tubes dominantly or exclusively, which would theoretically allow them to fly in the wake of a blast (assuming the pilots weren’t killed by radiation). Still, the robots in the series are affected by EMP grenades and similar attacks, so the state of technology isn’t represented consistently."
(Fallout: New Vegas developer statements/Miscellaneous; Joshua Sawyer: Vacuum tubes, 2019 March 5)
↑ Tim Cain on rpgcodex.net
↑ Question: "What specifically inspired Fallout for you? What were the biggest influences?"
Tony Postma: "Urban and Sub-urban America of the 40'-50's....the cars, the signage, the art, the architecture...all of it. I already had a few books with photos and documentation of the period. Also the comic books "Big Guy and Rusty, the Boy Robot" and "Mister X" by Dean Motter help with the machinery and the mood."
(Tony Postma; Fallout Developers Profile)
↑ Tim Cain: "I don't think I can answer this, since so many people has a hand in the design and scripting, and it seems everyone put in their own little in-joke or reference. I mean, I'm surprised by some of the things in the game! But some of the movies the inspired us were Road Warrior, Brazil, City of Lost Children, Blade Runner, Batman, Ghost in the Shell, On the Beach and of course, Star Wars. A lot of adventure ideas were variations on things I've seen in MUD's about 7 years ago at the peak of my playing. As far as books, oddly enough the book "Lord of Light" by Zelazny was an inspiration."
(Fallout developer statements/Miscellaneous; Tim Cain: Fallout's influences, 1997 November 18)

[vaults76-2] 1.0 ^1.1 Fallout 76 loading screens: "On October 23, 2077, in what came to be known as the "Great War", the world was engulfed in nuclear fire. In the United States, a fortunate minority escaped to the safety of great underground Vaults."

[3] Fallout intro: "In the 21st century, war was still waged over the resources that could be acquired. Only this time, the spoils of war were also its weapons: Petroleum and Uranium. For these resources, China would invade Alaska, the US would annex Canada, and the European Commonwealth would dissolve into quarreling, bickering nation-states, bent on controlling the last remaining resources on Earth."

[4] Fallout 4 loading screens: "On the morning of Saturday, October 23, 2077 America was consumed by the flames of nuclear war. The war with China had finally reached its cataclysmic conclusion."

[5] The Switchboard terminal entries; Central terminal, DEFCON Status - 2077

[7] Capitol Post terminal entries; Capital Post Top Stories -- July 27, 2052, United Nations Disbanded!

[8] Vault-Tec University terminal entries; Vault-Tec mission statement terminal, Introduction

[11] Fallout 3 manual p. 2: "Fallout 3 presents a much grimmer reality. Imagine if, after World War II, the timeline had split. Our world forked into one branch, the Fallout universe the other. In that other branch, technology progressed at a much more impressive rate, while American society remained locked in the cultural norms of the 1950's. It was an idyllic “"world of tomorrow," filled with servant robots, beehive hairdos, and fusion-powered cars. And then in the year 2077, at the climax of a long-running war with China, it all went to hell in a globe-shattering nuclear war."

[12] Fallout 3 manual p. 2: "Nuclear war. The very words conjure images of mushroom clouds, gas masks, and bewildered children ducking and covering under their school desks. But it's the aftermath of such a conflict that truly captures our imaginations, in large part because there’s no real-world equivalent we can relate to. Mankind may have witnessed the horror of the atomic bomb, but thankfully we’ve somehow succeeded in not blowing up the entire planet. At least, not yet."

[13] Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel Manual p. 2: "In a future not far removed from our own, a world filled with marvel and wonder is shaken to its very foundations by the greed and destruction of mankind."

[17] The Art of Fallout 4, p. 22: "BOSTON: Much of modern-day Boston's skyline consists of buildings that were constructed well after Fallout's timeline diverged from our own. The taller structures that make the city recognizable are too contemporary in their designs. That gave us a blank slate to work with in terms of designing our version of a city of tomorrow. The older historical aspects of the city were retained for authenticity, but we wanted to layer them with some futuristic architecture, as this is a type of environment that hasn't been explored yet in the Fallout universe. As you can see in these early concepts, we explored some pretty far-out ideas for just how built up and evolved our version of Boston would be. We ended up with a more balanced approach—something that felt different but was still a grounded and relatable metropolis."

[23] The Art of Fallout 4, p. 283: "It's fairly easy to create fantastical sci-fi designs, but we challenged ourselves to think about how industrial and product design would have evolved in this alternate universe."

[1] Leonard Boyarsky: "As Art Director, I was responsible for the look and mood of the game (as far as visuals were concerned). I came up with the idea of the “future of the fifties” setting, and had to convince everyone that that was the way to go. I also came up with the idea/design for the “Vault Boy” and the “cards” (as I called them) showing him doing all the different things in humorous ways. By the way, he’s not the Pip Boy, the Pip Boy is the little guy on your Pip Boy interface. The Vault Boy was supposed to evoke the feel of Monopoly cards, and the Pip Boy was based on the Bob’s Big Boy mascot."
(Leonard Boyarsky; Fallout Developers Profile)

[6] Scott Campbell: "The nuclear Armageddon in the back-story was between the US and China. After shipping several people asked me why China and not the old standby, the Soviet Union. I made the choice when I remembered experiences with Oleg, a Moscow developer I worked with months before when I was assistant-producing a typing game. Once, in the middle of a phone conversation, I heard some muffled bangs, and the phone went quiet. When I asked him what the noise was, he replied, 'Oh, it was just the Russian mob firing their guns in the street.' I thought he was joking - he wasn't. After that, I had a really hard time believing that the once mighty USSR would be in a position to threaten the world any time soon. So I turned to the next major communist country that typifies the East: China."
(Fallout developer statements; The Origins of Fallout - Part 7)

[bible6-9] Fallout Bible 6: "What was U.S./world history like before the timeline included in previous Fallout updates?"
"No one has asked this yet, but I thought I would cut this question off at the pass. Fallout takes place on a future earth, in an alternate timeline. I will not be including any information on how and when it diverged - it will remain one of the mysteries of the setting. Just let it be known that it diverged after WW2, and leave it at that."

[10] Tim Cain: "My idea is to explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a post-nuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun."
(Chat with Tim Cain; March 9th, 2002)

[14] Tim Cain: "Any time one of the design team came across a picture of a weapon or piece of armor from anywhere (such as Soldier of Fortune or Ladies’ Home Journal) and it was “cool enough” to include, it was fair game. Entertaining gems have been imported from just about everywhere, hence almost everyone will find something about which to reminisce. It reminds me of Mystery Science Theater. They always say, people aren’t going to get all of our jokes, but the people who will get them will really appreciate them."
(Fallout developer statements; Fallout: More fun in the post-nuclear world)

[15] Leonard Boyarsky: "I was really influenced by The Road Warrior, The City of Lost Children, and "Brazil" in terms of movies, and the comic book series Hard Boiled."
(Leonard Boyarsky; Fallout Developers Profile)

[16] Tim Cain: "Seriously, the artists just thought that 50's tech looked cool. So they set out to make a future science that looked like what the Golden Era of science fiction thought that future science would look like (if you can follow that sentence). Vacuum tubes, ray guns, mutants, the whole works. And I think they succeeded quite well."
(Fallout developer statements/Miscellaneous; Tim Cain: Fallout 50's tech, 1997 October 21)

[18] Ferret Baudoin: "What is the fall of pre-War US? What were the fault lines? What were the real problems? And I think that's something we explored with Appalachia - not necessarily the bigger thing, but we tried to look at it regionally. And we tried to say, OK, what-why was this not working? And, you know, trying to sort of expand upon, you know: This is reality, then there's the Divergence, and then we end up in Fallout, you know, pre-War times."
(Fallout for Hope - CHAD: A Fallout 76 Story Podcast Twitch stream, 12/16/2020)

[19] "Question: Sunset Sarsaparilla started production in 1918...years before the Fallout universe diverged from our own. Mistake on the part of the developers?"
Joshua Sawyer: "No. Fictional brands in the Fallout universe don't have to exist only in the branched timeline."
(Fallout: New Vegas developer statements/Miscellaneous/Joshua Sawyer/Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011)

[20] "Question: were native americans annihilated in FO's divergent timeline?"
Joshua Sawyer: "Not explicitly, no. There are a lot of NA tribes scattered all over the country -- and plenty individuals who are ethnically NA but do not live in NA communities -- so a fair number (percentage-wise) probably lived through the war in various ways."
(Fallout: New Vegas developer statements/Miscellaneous/Joshua Sawyer/Joshua Sawyer Formspring posts/2011)

[21] Joshua Sawyer: "In the Fallout universe, I think that the military appeal of weaponry that uses a small number of more-or-less universal ammunition types would be great. Today, we have NATO standards so that allies armies can share ammunition. But what if you could use the same ammunition type for powering a sniper rifle that you'd use for a devastating close-range weapon (e.g. a Microfusion Cell powering a Laser Rifle or a Plasma Rifle)? For a military force in the field, the flexibility of that would be immense. Anyway, I considered the EWs in F:NV to have reached the point where they were starting to replace conventional weapons, but had not yet completely eclipsed them -- sort of like the early days of firearms, when they were still being used concurrently with bows."
(Fallout: New Vegas developer statements/Weapons; Joshua Sawyer: Energy weapons, 2012 February 16)

[22] Joshua Sawyer: "I like vacuum tube tech and I think it pushes some interesting ideas, but it feels secondary in the series. One of the interesting properties of vacuum tubes is that they aren’t really affected by EMPs, such as those produced by a nuclear bomb blast. Some Soviet MiG-25s used vacuum tubes dominantly or exclusively, which would theoretically allow them to fly in the wake of a blast (assuming the pilots weren’t killed by radiation). Still, the robots in the series are affected by EMP grenades and similar attacks, so the state of technology isn’t represented consistently."
(Fallout: New Vegas developer statements/Miscellaneous; Joshua Sawyer: Vacuum tubes, 2019 March 5)

[24] Tim Cain on rpgcodex.net

[25] Question: "What specifically inspired Fallout for you? What were the biggest influences?"
Tony Postma: "Urban and Sub-urban America of the 40'-50's....the cars, the signage, the art, the architecture...all of it. I already had a few books with photos and documentation of the period. Also the comic books "Big Guy and Rusty, the Boy Robot" and "Mister X" by Dean Motter help with the machinery and the mood."
(Tony Postma; Fallout Developers Profile)

[26] Tim Cain: "I don't think I can answer this, since so many people has a hand in the design and scripting, and it seems everyone put in their own little in-joke or reference. I mean, I'm surprised by some of the things in the game! But some of the movies the inspired us were Road Warrior, Brazil, City of Lost Children, Blade Runner, Batman, Ghost in the Shell, On the Beach and of course, Star Wars. A lot of adventure ideas were variations on things I've seen in MUD's about 7 years ago at the peak of my playing. As far as books, oddly enough the book "Lord of Light" by Zelazny was an inspiration."
(Fallout developer statements/Miscellaneous; Tim Cain: Fallout's influences, 1997 November 18)

[Dev 1]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[Dev 2]

[5]

[6]

[Dev 3]

[Dev 4]

[Pub 1]

[Pub 2]

[Pub 3]

[Dev 5]

[Dev 6]

[Dev 7]

[Pub 4]

[Dev 8]

[Dev 9]

[Dev 10]

[Dev 11]

[Dev 12]

[Pub 5]

[Dev 13]

[Dev 14]

[Dev 15]