[[WMG:The Raiders from Evergreen Mills will eventually discover Vault 112.]]
It wasn't exactly very hard for the Lone Wanderer to get in once they knew where it was, just push a button on the wall in the garage and then pull a lever to open the Vault door.And they will be more than a match for the few Robobrains inside and will shoot up the place and put Braun out of his misery and the other Vault Dwellers too if the Lone Wanderer chose not to activate the failsafe.

[[WMG:Chairman Cheng is still alive as of 2281.]]

[[WMG: The Enclave bombed DC.]]
The Enclave, while powerful, would obviously need to try to keep the number of people fighting them to a minimum. While there's supposed to be multiple control Vaults in DC, none of them seem to have worked right. Furthemore, it's clear that DC was hit with bombs that were intended to do less damage to the infrastructure, but much more radiation damage. This is the inverse of what China would have logically done, seeing as DC was the capital of America. Furthermore, while in real life, Moscow is the only city with its own nuclear defense, it's highly likely that an important city like DC would have an equal amount of defence as Las Vegas did, if not more. While Mr. House may be brilliant, it stands to reason that the entire combined brilliance of various organizations like DARPA and the Army Corps of Engineers would do the same, especially considering that DC would be a vital city, unless you knew about the Enclave's plan, at which point, DC outlives its usefulness. DC is full of Top Secret projects, superweapons and experiments, none of which The Enclave would want to fall into enemy hands. It seems awful fortunate then that not only did the control Vaults all fail and the non-control Vaults all died, besides for the one that was never supposed to open. You can find the locations where several of the nuclear bombs hit, but that's just it. There's only several locations where nuclear bombs hit. Logically, DC should be one big crater. Furthermore, China making it all the way to DC seems rather impressive. They would have had to cross the entire nation, which means several hours of flight where their planes could be intercepted. Planes which, judging by the planes used to build Megaton and the aircraft we see throughout Fallout 3 and New Vegas, were not stealth planes. America's planes would likely be just as advanced as China's, and we see that America's planes weren't even as advances as planes in real life. Furthermore, the first American stealth bomber was built in the 1960s, after the point where Fallout and Real Life split, so it can't be assumed stealth planes were ever invented. So, let's review the facts. There's only a few bombing sites, which would not be what China would have done. [=ICBMs=] are implied to not exist thanks to Megaton. The bombs were low-damage but high in radiation, which is not what China would have done. There's numerous government projects that the Enclave would want to have covered up for safety reasons, all the control Vaults failed, and generally, DC is far less suited for human life than the west coast. Who would have been able to pull off a secret attack on the US? The Enclave. They bombed DC so that they could cover up all their projects and hopefully prevent any sort of rebuilding in the area. They bombed the control Vaults, the Vault where the FEV was being tested, they bombed the White House and several other locations. The planes were disguised as Chinese aircraft so as not to raise suspicion, and was always on standby, in order to go as soon as the war began. Their plan failed, but only due to the one experiment Vault that didn't just die, and only after 200 years.

[[WMG: The war between the NCR and the Legion is baised on the RealLife Iraq War of 2003-2011]]
New Vegas was made in 2010, one year before the war ended. The NCR represent the United States. A "western power" that in order to meet the energy needs of it's own population, invades an eastern desert territory, with the stated aim of "bringing democracy to this land" but with the real aim of "controlling the resources of this land." They quickly get bogged down in a stalemate, and the war may soon bankrupt them. The Legion on the other hand represent al-Qaeda, a fanatical reactionary group well known for their misogyny, and their disregard for human life and human rights. The people of Nevada represent the average Iraqi, who just wants both groups to get the hell out of their country and leave them alone.
* Actually, alot of other video games follow the same template, So, I doubt it's meant to be criticism of the Iraq war because you see the same story in the Elder Scrolls (Daggerfall, Skyrim) and older Fallout games (Fo3, Fo1). It's a very common plot structure used by various different medium.
* And the real-life equivalent to the techno-genius/HumanoidAbomination ruling from the shadows is... ?
** Well, he wants control of the region for his own reasons with complete independence from both sides, so I'd say a face (monitor?) to put to the people or, more likely, the local government that's been repressed by the ongoing conflicts trying to remove both forces from the territory so they can regain control and maintain a level of stability.
** I'm inclined to say Israel, for the [[UnfortunateImplications sheer anti-Semitic outrageousness]] of this if it were true. Heh heh.
*** Also because of how fitting it is, and how anti-semitic reality tends to be.
*** The whole argument falls apart because if the Legion is Al Qaeda it would have to be based on the Afghanistan campaign, not Iraq.

[[WMG: The ''Fallout'' verse divergence point from real life was Joseph [=McCarthy=] was never censured and did not die from Hepatitis]]
Due to his better public support and health than what he had in the real world timeline, he probably became president at one point and had effectively had cause US to be culturally stuck in the 50's. His witch hunts and blacklisting ruin the careers of so many politicians, including John F Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson. He had effectively shut down or marginalized the civil rights, social revolution and anti-war movements as suspected communist plots. He is likely person who sowed the seeds for what would become the Enclave
* Possibly had a longer-lasting impact, yes, but the problem is that of the two current political parties, the last time a party has been in control of the white house for more than 12 years was with FDR and Harry Truman - there's also the fact that [=McCarthy=] was a friend of the Kennedy family. While it's possible that [=McCarthy=] could've ruined LBJ's career, it's very likely that Kennedy would've still been elected.

[[WMG: The massive number of nuclear cars on the road made the devistation of the war much worse]]
Picture this scenario, a single, low yield nuclear bomb is droped on a city. The blast compromises the reactors of any nuclear car caught in the shock wave. They go up. [[DisasterDominoes The Blast then jumps from car to car, following the highways, as one after another, the nuclear cars go up in a chain reaction caused by the cars right next to them going up.]] This results in a much more damage across a much larger area then the bomb itself could've caused.

[[WMG: The explosion of new bio-diversity has as much to do with mass extinction as mutation]]
Although the FEV certainly sped the change up, radically new species would have still evolved relatively slowly, within a few million years, even with an increased mutation rate. The war caused a mass extinction event. Throughout Earth's geological history, after every mass extinction event, the creatures that survive explode in diversity, due to new selection pressures caused by the extinction event, and empty niches left behind by now extinct animals. The most famous example of this was the explosion of mammals that occured after the extinction of the dinosaurs. The ''Fallout'' universe certainly had new selection preasures in the form of radiation, and all the animals that would've gone extinct would've meant the survivors had new niches to exploit. The difference is, in ''Fallout'', thanks to th FEV speeding up the mutation rate, this happened in hundreds of years instead of millions.

[[WMG: The Pipboy (models 2000 Plus and beyond) are the reason why the player's character is better than the peoples of the wasteland.]]

The Pipboy the players use in Fallout 1, 2, and brotherhood of steel are Pip-Boy 2000 Plus models(modified in the case of BoS's Initiate) and the Pipboy 3000 are all wrist mounted, and yet the players cannot remove them. That is because the Pipboys are bonded to their hands to administer controlled mutations in the form of Perks into their users to help them adapt and survive the post-apocalyptic world. However the only way it can administer this changes to their user, the user must collect data in the form of experience and train themselves(through skill development) to prepare their bodies to received the tailored mutation. People without Pipboys who develop the same Perks are people who have mutated on their own through the airborne FEV released into the atmosphere from The West Tek Research Facility and the radiation that is pretty much unavoidable.
* In New Vegas Doc mitchell removes his Pipboy, but then he IS a doctor. Pip boys run on a nuclear battery, and old world tech is seen to reform matter in the Sierra Madre vending machines. Nanomachines or the like aren't out of the question, since you can get stat boosting implants.
* Of course, if that is true, and all Perks are controlled mutations delivered by the Pipboy, then [[NightmareFuel The cannibal perk must've been intentional]].
* How else would your body spontaneously generate cybernetic upgrades (the "Cyborg" and "Adamantium Sketeton" perks) if not nanomachines, anyways?

[[WMG: District of Columbia was bombed by low yield dirty bombs]]
There is still an enormous amount of radiation in the area, meanwhile many structures that would have been flattened on the westcoast survive with some dishevelment. While the west coast could put themselves backtogather and even form a centralized nation, the DC area remains in shambles. The US government will never be reastablished in its traditional capitol, and the eart is salted to prevent a agricultural infrastructure from growing again.

[[WMG: Washington DC had an operational missile defense system.]]
The capital wasteland has an anomalous number of standing buildings and monuments. It is unlikely that it took many hits from nuclear devices. Fallout New Vegas showed that anti-missile systems did exist. So it is highly likely that the US capital would have similar defenses (in RealLife the only city with its own missile defense is Moscow, but Fallout world isn't real world). One of the proposed missile defenses in real life was actually a Surface to Air nuclear missile. This would account for reports of nuclear explosions and the high amounts of radioactive material. Even if this were not the case Washington DC is likely to have been an extremely high priority target for the Chinese. They would likely have used both missiles and bombers. The sheer number of nuclear weapons deployed against the capital would result in severe irradiation from successfully destroyed nuclear weapons alone. A handful of nukes might have even made it past the defenses and done some relatively minor damage.

[[WMG: The ''Fallout'' games are all immersive VR history lessons.]]
All of the games are in fact sessions of a History Class (most likely College Age considering the content) about how The New World developed out of The Great Nuclear War. The narrator from the start and end of each game? ''Obviously'' the teacher.
* Schools of the New World must be very lax considering that you can change the outcome of historical events, have sex, take drugs,steal and kill practically everyone in what is basically their equivalent of the Oregon Trail game.
** so Steiner Schools then?
* What if it was a reprogrammed version of what was essentially VR VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto?
* Or its used to show how history can change.
* Taking this one step further, perhaps this is how important political decisions are made in the far future. ''Everyone'' is immersed in the situation (to get the "boots on the ground" perspective) and then their collective actions are tallied and a course of action decided on.

[[WMG: The next installment will involve water in a big way]]
Think about it. In ''Fallout'' you had to retrieve a water chip, in ''Fallout 2'' [[TheGovernment The Enclave]] was trying to poison the water, in ''Fallout 3'' you had to bring clean water to the Capital Wasteland (and The Enclave was trying to poison it again), and in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' you had to help a faction take over Hoover Dam (how that relates to water is obvious). So, the next installment of the series will involve water.
* These are very superficial interpretations of the plots.
** ''Fallout 1'': The water chip is your first objective, but its optional and much less important than the Super Mutant plot line.[[note]]Sort of. You can finish the game without ever finding the water chip if you know what to do but you're on a 150-day time limit as opposed to the quasi-limitless time limit you're given if you ''do'' find the water chip.[[/note]]
** ''Fallout 2'': The GECK was your objective and you were trying to get it before the Enclave. "Poisoning the water" is also flat out wrong. They were trying to distribute an airborne version of the forced evolutionary virus, not a water borne version.
** ''Fallout New Vegas'': Water was definitely not the only factor for the NCR defending the dam. It was a defensible location that provided huge quantities of power. Water, if anything, was probably a minor concern due to the difficulty for caravans traveling from California to New Vegas, while power can be sent through power lines. The water caravans were already a powerful group in California before the events of Fallout 1.
* '''Jossed.''' Actually, we have no idea, but it does take place in Boston.
** Possibly confirmed, a bomb is said to have dropped into one of Boston's lakes and turned it into a 'Glowing Sea' and a released game background track is titled 'The Last Mariner'.
* '''Jossed.''' But for real this time. Fallout 4's main storyline has very little to do with water, with water pumps and purifiers being a staple of every settlement.

[[WMG: The reason why atomic technology is so widespread is because the bomb was never dropped...]]
...possibly because X-day, the planned invasion of Japan went through. As a result, America didn't know what the repercussions of atomic technology, (What the hell were they thinking would happen if a car engine exploded, anyway? TooDumbToLive doesn't even ''begin'' to cover that...) such as radiation sickness, what to do with all the waste, amd mutations in offspring of people exposed to radiation.
* They believed Heisenberg's (incorrect) estimate of critical mass of U-235 being in the order of tons, rather than ~50 kg; thus making it safer for commodity use.
** That works because I, the guy that originally made the WMG, would hate to believe they'd run around with something that liable to cause a dangerous explosion if they weren't assured it was safe. Of course, the fifties people were TooDumbToLive, so who knows?
** Or perhaps Heisenberg was right in the alternate reality?
** Originally, people in the ''Fallout'' universe ''weren't'' running around with fission reactors in their cars, nor were atomic technology -- well, fission, at least -- all that widespread (for instance, the car that could be found ran on electricity supplies by energy cells or microfusion cells, and was not implied or suggested to be special in that. Another example would be the Master, a highly intelligent if also insane character, regarding nuclear weapons with great fear): it came in with ''Fallout 3''. But there is something of an in-universe explanation/handwave for people being willing to drive around with things that go boom and spread radiation if things go wrong: desperation in the wake of the oil crisis. With petrol becoming increasingly inaffordable, the car-heavy lifestyle of the Americans would become impossible to maintain for any but the richest (and towards the end, not even them)... unless cars using something else than petrol as fuel began to made. Since the microfusion cells were only made a fair bit into the oil crisis, the main alternative, given the established technologies of the pre-Great War world, would be... atomic power. They were likely being phased out of use by 2077, with the West Coast being ahead on that (it would explain why less New Vegas cars go mushroomy when shot, and why the Highwayman was not remarked on as special), but then the Great War intervened, and the cars that had been adopted out of desperation to maintain the lifestyle to which Americans had become accustomed were left to rust in the wreckage of the old world.
* Atomic energy actually isn't that widespread in anywhere, except ''Fallout 3''. In the earlier games, anything atomic based was extremely remarkable and usually dangerous, such as Gecko's power plant. ''Fallout 3'' made everything nuclear powered to get around explaining where all the abundant supplies of energy were coming from. People that played ''Fallout 3'' first, then were under the mistaken impression that the technology in the older games were identical to ''Fallout 3'', even though other sources of energy were far more common.
* Yeah I'm one of [[Tropers/HaruAxeman]] those people.
* '''Jossed''' by the intro to ''Fallout 4'' which specifically mentions the bomb being dropped on Japan.

[[WMG: James and Catherine are from the Commonwealth.]]
Pinkerton mentions that Dr. Li and her science team from the Commonwealth with the intent of working on a "Purity Project". As it's established in the game that Project Purity was Catherine's idea, it's likely that James and Catherine were both on Li's science team that came to Rivet City from the Commonwealth.
* According to a framed picture in New Vegas, James and Catherine may have been from Vault 21.

[[WMG: The NCR and the society that arises from the East Coast (Project Purity, the Eastern Brotherhood, etc.) are doomed to go to war when they meet near the middle of the country.]]
Because War, war never changes.

[[WMG: The "white flashes and voices" at the beginning of the third game are due to the events in the "Walking with Spirits" quest in Point Lookout.]]
After you have completed the [[spoiler:Punga fruit drug trip]] Nadine will ask you if you have lost your memory. She says that after her own experience, some of her memories were just "flashes of white light and voices," not unlike the flashes at the beginning of the game when the player is transitioning from baby to child to adult. This troper theorizes that the story of Fallout 3 is narrated retrospectively, where the lapses in memory in the player's past are due to [[spoiler:the removal of brain matter]].

[[WMG: The ''Fallout'' universe is a BizarroUniverse of the ''VideoGame/MetalGear'' universe.]]
* ''Fallout'' = "War never changes."
* ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriot'' = "War has changed."
Enough said.
* Giant bipedal robot and stealth suit are the constant?
** One other constant: TheGuardsMustBeCrazy.

[[WMG: Confessor Cromwell is right.]]
Confessor Cromwell, the "crazy" preacher in Megaton, claims that each atom contains an entire universe within it and when an atom is split, more universes are born. Now, where does the ''Fallout'' AlternateHistory begin? Right after World War Two! And what happened at the end of World War II? Atom bombs got dropped! So the ''Fallout'' universe is entirely inside one of the atoms split by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
* Didn't Cromwell's speech imply that the Big Bang was the Great Division? If so, it'd be a massive coincidence.
** The divine events would have been, in order: Big Bang, Hiroshima/Nagasaki, THE ENTIRE EARTH.

[[WMG: The Brotherhood of Steel were working for the Enclave at one point.]]
The Brotherhood of Steel operative at San Fransisco was lying about the contact refusal. The Enclave did try to contact the Brotherhood of Steel, and they did form an alliance. One of the Elders must have learned about the FEV saturation plan and decided to back out. For a final 'fuck you' to the Enclave, they sent the Chosen One to steal the Vertibird blueprints from Navarro.
* Alternatively, the Brotherhood are ''still'' working for the Enclave, but they're helping themselves to their technology in the process. They hired the Chosen One since the Enclave would know if the Brotherhood of Steel stole their blueprints to copy. Chances are they also stole some of the FEV vaccine for their soldiers to ensure they could survive.
** The Brotherhood of Steel was formed when a group of soldiers discovered the horrible experiments at Mariposa and announced their secession from the US, just before the bombs fell. The Brotherhood told the Enclave where to stick it before they even existed.
* Seems very far fetched. The Enclave are very vocally behind the position that all mutants should be killed and their definition of "mutant" is anyone not a pure-blooded Enclave member. The Brotherhood of Steel originated from a splinter group of the military that literally stood against everything the Enclave stood for despite not actually knowing the Enclave existed.

[[WMG:Vault-Tec was secretly subverted by the Communists]]
It's so obvious. The Vaults are clearly supposed to be the perfect Communist utopia from a Communist dictator's perspective. Everybody gets what they need, everybody gives what they can. All wear identical clothes to symbolize absolute equality, like many Communist countries have tried to get people to dress, and the absolute power belongs to the Overseer who plays the role of a benign(?) Big Brother who decides who get to be more equal than the rest, and keeps any dissent down. In fact the Vaults are so ridiculously obviously Communist communities that it's a small wonder that the paranoid pre-War US government didn't shut down the entire project as soon as they learned the details of how life in the Vaults would be run.
* Some of the abandoned vaults in the Capital Wasteland have cash registers. They also had Jet canisters inside locked rooms.
** There was cash in Soviet Russia, too...
* This is an interesting possibility, but it is negated by the fact that we already ''know'' the purpose of the Vault program. We also know that Vault-Tec ''was'' subverted - not by the Communists, but by the ''United States government'', which effectively nationalized the company long before the Great War. The Vault Program was actually a massive psychological experiment designed to test the viability of long-term space travel and colonization, which was the Enclave's original plan for surviving the apocalypse.
* Even so, it's still hard to put down the Communist theory when, after getting onto an old computer in Vault 92, you can look up that there's a new food that can be purchased for ten "work credits." Hmmm...
* In a community where there's only a few hundred people locked into 1,000 square meters it's perfectly normal for some form of regime involving austerity and strict order to exist. Think about it, free commerce and that level of isolation are mutually exclusive. For the same reason having money when there's nothing to buy with it besides food which is already strictly portioned and clothes which are freely available from the clothes extruders is completely pointless. In that respect having the option to work harder to get work credits and get the new type of food is a step towards democracy, since the main point of Communism is that everyone is equal gets equal stuff and everyone who is different acts different or even the possession of something unique, like jewelry or a freaking violin (see China and the Red Army) makes you an enemy of the State worthy of a death sentence.
* Considering how one of the Vault members in the first game is granddaughter of Soviet ambassador in US, I think US and USSR were working together on them.
* One counter-point to the OP would be that not all Overseers ''were'' possessed of absolute power, it depended on the purpose of the Vault in question (most of them were, but not all them).

[[WMG: The Enclave is the Hero Doomed to Failure of the ''Fallout'' series.]]
What is the world of ''Fallout'', when you look at it objectively? You've got immortal (and more relevantly, sterile) ghouls. Immortal, sterile, and [[AlwaysChaoticEvil inherently hostile]] super mutants. Human-wise, you've got mindless Raiders, who decorate their houses with the corpses of the dead. The rest of humanity? They've suffered from so much radiation over the course of 200 years since the Great War that they are content to sit in the ruins of the old world, eating the last bits of prepackaged food and waiting to die. Even the Brotherhood of Steel doesn't bother ''improving'' the technology they get.\\
\\
The Enclave is the only faction in ''Fallout'' that realizes that the world of ''Fallout'' is a CrapsackWorld that has to be wiped clean if humanity actually wants to survive and thrive. But their plans are consistently thwarted, and by who? Vault Dwellers, sons/daughters of Vault Dwellers, and people who were Vault Dwellers for 95% of their life. Pure (or significantly pure) humans, with initiative and drive to change the world. By "saving" the world from the Enclave, the Player Characters doom humanity.
* Vault Dwellers are actually pure specimens, but I digress; the Enclave are certainly [[WellIntentionedExtremist nice guys underneath all the genocide and DNAism]]. To be fair, there have been attempts to genuinely improve the standard of living; the New Californian Republic is an entire nation devoted to bringing back the United States under a different name, where they actually produce and are trying to turn the tide on humanity vs. radioactive nature.
* Yeah, the Brotherhood aren't' ''improving'' technology, but aren't they at least manufacturing new materials and equipment?
* If the Wild Mass Guesser had really played the first two ''Fallout''s, he would have realized that not only have people on the west coast been growing their own crops and raising their own livestock for a long time, but that by ''Fallout 2'', a veritable section of California has cleaned up nicely as NCR and brought order to the wastes without resorting to the Enclave's genocidal methods. Besides, even if you sympathize with the Enclave's goals, the fact that they've consistently been beaten despite having the best technology, arsenal, manufacturing, and at one point, the remaining source of oil in the entire world, proves that they are an utterly stupid and incompetent bunch unfit for deciding how the world should be run.
** Also, as shown by Broken Hills and Jacobstown, among others West Coast super mutants aren't inherently hostile, and can, in fact, become productive members of society. Admittedly, the point about them being sterile still applies. Even the Capital Wasteland Super Mutants aren't ''all'' inherently hostile, as Fawkes and Uncle Leo shows.
* I would like to mention to the above-the-above commenter that the Brotherhood cannot manufacture anything, they can only maintain equipment.
** You know, except for all the stuff they manufacture, like basic weapons and armor, ammunition, medical supplies, and various other things. If they were doing nothing but maintaining old gear without making any new stuff they would have died out before too long.
* The Brotherhood's goal is not to improve tech, its goal is to acquire and preserve technology and knowledge so that once society is stabilized, it can be properly studied, utilized, and improved. In a post-apocalyptic society, that's pretty damned useful and important.
* The DracoInLeatherPants view of the Enclave neglects that the Enclave pre-dated the nuclear bombing and helped instigate it. Their goal was to instigate a nuclear war to wipe out all of their opponents, who they assumed hadn't spent a good decade beforehand preparing.
* Are you seriously trying to claim that [[UnfortunateImplications murdering people just on the basis of being genetically "impure" is a good thing]]?

[[WMG: The only real person is the PC.]]
You are actually in a virtual reality made by the US government to simulate what would happen in a post nuclear US. Everything before the great war actually happened, and your character was a person who found out about the secrets of the US government, and, as punishment, gets sent to live in the horrible future that is ''Fallout''. The Sequels are different people getting sent inside, and the spin-offs are the commercial versions.
** That would explain that green tint that was everywhere in Fallout 3. It's Franchise/TheMatrix!
** This actually makes sense if you read TheManual of Fallout 1. It takes screenshots and uses them as "a simulation". Even referring to different buttons.
** Read the Xbox Live store description of the game. It says exactly what you describe.
** This also explains why the protagonist always has rotten luck. The government is just fucking with him/her.
* That makes Tranquility Lane a simulation inside a simulation.
* You know how at the end of Operation Anchorage you have a chance to persuade General Jinwei to abandon Anchorage? Isn't it odd that Jinwei is speaking Chinese, yet you understand him? You know where else this phenomenon occurs? ''When a player is playing a foreign translated copy of Fallout 3''. The subtitles are translated, but the voice acting isn't.
** Russian fully translated version would gently tap your shoulder and smile while you'll realize you're wrong.

[[WMG: Myron didn't actually ''invent'' Jet like he claims.]]
He just found a way to ''re-create'' a pre-War narcotic with on hand materials. This is why it can be found on the east coast or in abandoned Vaults.
** To be fair, the farming companies who create it originally simply tried to get cover the whole thing up and hide the narcotic(By feeding it to their livestock).

[[WMG: Post-apocalyptic Earth is being quarantined by aliens]]
Random EasterEgg-like encounters include the [[Series/DoctorWho TARDIS]] and a crashed alien spaceship (later built upon as the expansion pack ''Mothership Zeta''.) Why don't either the aliens or the the Doctor help out where they could surely do some good? Because Earth has been declared off-limits, perhaps for study, or perhaps they just don't want people willing to nuke themselves loose in the galaxy.
* [[AliensAreBastards THOSE BASTARDS!]] But, wait. Fallout is in a separate time perio -- OH MY GOD! Of course! The Doctor screwed up, and is trying to find out where the timeline split! That's why you find his TARDIS in the desert, that was his first search!
** Holy crap, that's ''[[SincerityMode brilliant!]]'' Fanfic. Write it. NOW.

[[WMG: The first nukes were launched by aliens!]]
In the DLC for ''Fallout 3'', Mothership Zeta, you can listen to audio recordings of alien prisoners. One of these recordings is an American military officer telling the aliens the troop strength of America, followed by him struggling not to tell the aliens the codes for launching [=ICBMs=]. The recording cuts off while he is screaming "Get out of my head!" I propose that the aliens got the codes, and since they are [[AliensAreBastards dicks]](vast amounts of evidence supports the dick theory), they started nuclear war for lulz.
* Or, they saw a planet where the humans were developing nukes, robots, and space travel, felt threatened, and blew up the Earth to keep humans from taking their aggression out into space. Just like ''Film/TheDayTheEarthStoodStill1951'', but with explosions.
* It is implied, at a few points, that China sent the first nukes (backed up by the Shi Emperor's logs and Rickardson's comments). Still, that doesn't mean the aliens weren't involved, and there still is room for America to have sent the first nukes.
* Richardson only mentions the Reds and the communists. It is possible that Russia and China launched.

[[WMG:''Fallout'' is a parallel universe to ''Franchise/StarTrek''.]]
It's a world where the post-atomic horror never ended!
This ties heavily into the two previous posts (i.e., alien quarantine and alien involvement in nuclear war). Representatives of the Federation, getting wind that humanity was planning to leave its ravaged planet for the stars, and knowing of their capacity for savagery, used some means to provoke Earth's superpowers into nuclear war, instead of making first contact.
* Of course, in order for this to be true, something must have happened to Zefram Cochrane, whose invention of the warp drive came a decade before ''Fallout's'' Great War. Perhaps he was unable to complete his work due to the components he needed not being invented. Or perhaps he was killed in the Resource Wars. As an alternate theory he lived [[RichardNixonTheUsedCarSalesman an entirely different life]]- perhaps he's ''still'' alive, as a ghoul or something.

[[WMG: EnsembleDarkHorse Vault Boy is a real person and is the CEO of Vault-tec.]]
Dunno, sounds like a pretty cool idea doesn't it.
* Mothership Zeta revealed that the CEO Vault-Tec was horribly tortured to death by the aliens do you want that to happen to Vault Boy?
** Considering that, if this is true, the real Vault Boy [[BrokenPedestal would have to be complicit in the unethical social experiments]] that went on in the Vaults... why not?
** Actually, It was the Vice President of Vault-Tec Commercial Operations.

[[WMG: The Enclave killed most, if not all, of the kids in Little Lamplight.]]
* Since the only way into the vault is through the underground caverns, the kids would've defended the entrance, and the enclave would end up having no choice but to cut them down.
** Beyond GameplayAndStorySegregation, why are the kids still there when you finish the mission? I just figured that they had something to negate the radiation on the surface entrance.
** Maybe the kids hid / ran away when they noticed a bunch of evil guys in power armor coming in.
** Alternatively, they went through Murder Pass to get to the Vault. They probably would have more then enough firepower to deal with the Super Mutants that are lurking around there.
* Col. Autumn had the Magic Plot Device Serum that let him survive that earlier radiation attack. What's not to say he had more of it and just used the front door?
** The fact that the door is broken shut. And is still broken shut after you return to it. The only possible way he could have gotten through would be Murder Pass. And I actually kinda wish they had the kids disappear after that event, because it would make a ''damn'' fine dark moment.
*** If we assume that the changes made to PoweredArmor in Fallout 4 represent [[TechnologyMarchesOn what it was always supposed to be capable of and just couldn't do with older games,]] I'd say it'd be quite easy to march up and fix the door.
*** While I agree that it would have made a fine dark moment, it would have been out of character for Autumn to pull that off. I believe that he told [=McCready=] that either they let the Enclave in, or the Enclave will do so by force. Since it's known that Autumn wants to rule the wasteland to build something new, having a lot of kids killed is just not a good idea.

[[WMG: The Narrator is the Vault Dweller, from ''Fallout 1''.]]
* Last we heard of him, he was wandering the Wasteland, old and cynical, but still badass. Due to the doses of radiation he received at The Glow, he's survived through the whole series, watching over events in the Wastes as a silent protector, acting only when something truly terrible, like The Master, arises.
** He actually did show up in Brotherhood of Steel. There actually was a threat like the Master arising, and the Vault Dweller showed up and helped out the main characters. Of course, the game is [[CanonDiscontinuity non-canon]].
** The Vault Dweller wanders the wasteland, only appearing when needed? You mean he's the dude with the revolver in the Mystery Man perk?!
*** The Mysterious Stranger was already around in ''Fallout 1''.
*** Maybe the Vault Dweller is a [[Series/DoctorWho Time Lord]], and the Mystery Stranger is just one of his [[TheNthDoctor future reincarnation]].

[[WMG: The world ''Fallout'' takes place isn't earth but Magrathea form ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' and the same planet that Guardian of Forever is on.]]
* That Explains the Whale why the Guardian of Forever is there the crashed shuttle Craft and heck why the doctor was there he was checking on the Guardian and besides Magrathea is a wasteland on the surface
* Or maybe the authors just read Hitchiker's Guide and are fans. In Fallout 2 especially they were specifically looking for puns to pull after the more serious Fallout 1. Like "You should have used the amputated toe on Horrigan's corpse" by Random New Reno Prostitute is a reference to old style point and click adventures like King's Quest where you get a counter of how many interactions you've figured out through the game. Like if you did use the toe on Horrigan you'd get max points.

[[WMG: The Brotherhood of Steel is on its way to a civil war.]]
Or some kind of major factional split. The seeds of this were planted by Elder Lyons when he broke away from his main mission of collecting technology to protect the Capital Wasteland. Assuming the game counts a good/neutral Lone Wanderer as canon, Lyons' Brotherhood members almost single-handedly repulsed and annihilated a considerable Enclave force, recovered valuable water reclamation technology and kept the Super Mutants from overrunning the East Coast. This is in sharp contrast to Casdin's Outcasts, who have stuck to the original mission and accomplished precisely nothing. Assuming the war with NCR makes it into official canon, the Elders at Lost Hills might face something of a crisis between those who want the Brotherhood to adapt into a force interested in improving conditions for humanity in general, and those who want to continue with their isolationism.
* While Tactics isn't completely canon, Fallout 3 confirmed that there is a contingent of the Brotherhood operating out of the Midwest that's completely ignoring Lost Hills. If the war with NCR is canon, then it wouldn't be altogether inconceivable that members of the West Coast Brotherhood, demoralized after a rather pointless and unsuccessful war, would try to head to the Midwest or the East Coast, where the Brotherhood wields considerably more influence than it does near its own HQ.
* As of New Vegas the war with the NCR is cannon and the brotherhood were pretty much wiped out
* As of Fallout 4, the Eastern Brotherhood's controversial "good fight" policies were reversed by a new jingoistic Elder who is much closer to the Western Brotherhood ideals (not an isolationist, but every bit as much a condescending imperialist). That elder is also the last descendant of the Maxon family that has the dynastic right to rule the Brotherhood, which means that Eastern Brotherhood is now the main chapter and decides on the overall policies of the Brotherhood.

[[WMG: A [[HeelFaceTurn Heel-Face Turned]] Enclave base and a Heel-Face Turned Chinese base worked together to build space ships to leave Earth when the nukes started flying.]]
The resulting group called itself [[Series/{{Firefly}} the Alliance, succeeded and colonized a new solar system]]. Over time people forgot about the nuclear war and just think that the Earth was used up. Remember the start of ''Film/{{Serenity}}''? There were explosions happening on Earth's surface as the ships left. Explosions seen from SPACE.
* I ''knew'' I wasn't the only one who had this idea. The western feel, mixed with the high-technology, it all makes sense.
* Plus, look at the Alliance's flag (best seen in The Train Job). It's the Chinese flag on top of the American flag. Most importantly, look at the crazy experiments of the Enclave (like, say, the Vaults) and then look at what the Alliance as been up to.

[[WMG: Punga fruit and cave fungus will save humanity.]]
Think about it, the Pitt could easily be saved by feeding trogs to pools of cave fungus, then making a soup from it using the Punga fruit (the only other natural radiation-free food around) to flavor it. Cultivated in large amounts they could end the dangers of radiation poisoning, mutation and many cancers.
** There is the minor issue that punga fruit is implied to be an hallucinogen...
** Punga seeds, specifically trying to take them from the mother Punga causes hallucinogenic effects, not the fruit itself.

[[WMG:''Fallout AI'' have the same AI stages as ''VideoGame/{{Halo}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'' AI.]]
That is, smart AI go from normal to rampancy and through the stages. Rampancy is made up of 4 stages:
* 1: Melancholy -- Seen as a deep sadness, as the AI is depressed that it is not human.
* 2: Anger -- The AI becomes enraged because it is not human.
* 3: Jealousy -- The AI becomes jealous of humanity.
* 4: Meta-stability -- The AI gets over not being human. This is the "Holy Grail" of AIs.
Eden was in the third stage, which explains why he works with the Enclave (He's a smart AI, programing doesn't matter). You don't talk him to death, you talk him to Meta-stability. He then, in a BigDamnHeroes type moment, makes a HeroicSacrifice. The reason he doesn't tell you to not use the FEV is because he is too busy and just forgets.
* I think that Eden's AI started out as a normal AI, but you just made it go "rampant" for all of five minutes by talking it to death. It goes into the melancholic state (or may skip over into anger because you outwitted it, or maybe even into jealousy) and commits suicide by way of destroying Raven Rock.

[[WMG: The Lone Wanderer did survive the ending.]]
When s/he activated Project Purity and passed out from radiation sickness, the "ungodly amounts of radiation" the Wanderer absorbed changed him/her into a Ghoul. The limb regeneration mutation s/he got early on demonstrated that s/he had the genes necessary to survive extreme radiation poisoning. The rumor that s/he died was just a bit of propaganda that the Brotherhood spread because they didn't want to acknowledge that the so-called "Last, Best, Hope of Humanity" had turned into a filthy ghoul.
* ...Except that you can clearly see the remains of your character in a slide are nothing more than a pile of goo.
* Um, no, s/he's not a ghoul. Broken Steel's WordofGod basically says that an "Energy Spike" of the non-radioactive kind caused Lyons and the Wanderer to be knocked out.
** Broken Steel retcons the original ending, though. The radiation was lethal before, like the zone near the entrance to Vault 87 (which would kill the Wanderer regardless of his radiation resistance).
** I don't think it was so much as a pile of goo as not knowing how your character looked. Also, radiation cannot and will not turn you into a pile of goo.
*** Then how do you explain the Plasma rifle?
*** ...Plasma?
*** I can list a number of other things radiation can't do. Guess how many appear in Fallout!
*** I don't know, you tell me, I never stuck around a radiated place long enough.
*** As far as I know, the Plasma Rifle doesn't really have anything to do with radiation, just being really, really hot.
*** Hot as in RuleOfCool, [[WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief that is]].

[[WMG: James survived his sabotage of Project Purity and rescued Colonel Autumn.]]
Building on the previous Guess: James was a brilliant scientist, and was born outside the Vaults. He probably knew that he, and therefore his offspring, had the genetic mutations that would cause them to survive the radiation and become ghouls. Recall that you don't see any bodies in the Purifier when you return. James rescued Autumn from the Purifier because he somehow knew of Eden's plan to spread FEV, which is why Autumn's behavior changes once you find out about FEV. It was all a necessary plot to destroy Eden and stop his plan to induce the plague.

[[WMG: Colonel Autumn's reasons for opposing Eden's Final Solution are largely selfish.]]
Ol' Colonel Foghorn Leghorn just took a massive dose of radiation to the face. That sort of thing has been know to cause mutation. For all he knows, he's no longer completely "pure" anymore, and might be vulnerable to Eden's FEV. That seems a pretty good reason to oppose releasing the FEV.
* He DID scream like a Feral Ghoul when he fell over...
** Seems like good sound reasoning to me.
** ...Except that if you ask him, Autumn will claim that the plans for the FEV were scrapped "months ago", no matter how much time has progressed in the game. This suggests that he was opposed to said plan long before he himself was in any personal danger.

[[WMG: The Brotherhood of Steel was founded by Communist China.]]
The dead Chinese soldiers found in the Capital Wasteland are not burnt, so they must have died ''after'' the nuclear holocaust. This troper would postulate that they may have been sent by the remnants of the Chinese government--like the Chinese equivalent to the Enclave--to fetch something or scout out the ruins of Washington.
If so, what was their mission? We know from Operation: Anchorage that the United States had some military technologies that China lacked, so the Chinese Enclave would likely want to get their hands on some, now that there would be no resistance from the United States government.
So, the Brotherhood of Steel was sent by the Chinese Enclave to scavenge and repair American military technology to help rebuild China. Roger Marxson, supposed founder, was actually an American war survivor who joined the Brotherhood when it had only just arrived in America and was still operating secretly. As Chinese Brothers died of age, battle, and radiation, and as the Brotherhood of Steel's range of operations became more widespread they recruited more and more Americans. Eventually, there were few enough Chinese members that the Brotherhood's dedication to China evaporated, and the organization took up the cause of humanity as a whole.
The reason the Chinese soldiers in ''Fallout 3'' didn't have power armor is simply because they hadn't found any at the time they died.
* That's been Jossed since Fallout 1. The Brotherhood are in fact what's left of the American Army, or at least a band of deserters. Even aside from the official story, you can get the warts and all diary of Maxon, the founder of the group, in the military base, with a couple of incidents that definitely wouldn't be in a piece of after the fact propaganda.
** Also, the reason no Chinese soldier ''would'' have Power Armor is that as of the war they hadn't developed that technology. They did have a powered combat suit that diverged in technology more toward stealth-based missions, and it's featured in a recent DLC.
*** Plus there was a reason why they lunch the nukes, the US was kicking China's ass because they didn't have power armor
*** It's worth mentioning that a fair portion as to why power armor would not have been available to the Chinese had much to do with interest in the U.S. projects. Consider the public "acknowledgment" of a massive project that was guaranteed to wipe out them darn commies probably garnered more attention from the Chinese than their backup development in Power Armor technology. Keep in mind that the curve ball the Chinese was waiting for during Anchorage was Liberty Prime, not the immediate deployment of T-45d power armor suits. In the face of retreat after the death of their general (not to mention the nearly unstoppable U.S. advance), would any have had the foresight to loot the dead for power armor? And that crap isn't easy to carry unless you're already wearing one.
*** Perhaps the biggest flaw in this theory has much to do with the Enclave. With a still-existing nuclear arsenal and an orbital nuclear platform, not to mention eyes and ears everywhere, it wouldn't have been out of their power to hunt down the Brotherhood of Steel if they'd considered them a reasonable threat, whether by foot or with nukes (and with predefined headquarters, that would have made it easier)- but even President Eden never took the opportunity to make such a claim. If it had been the truth (and the Enclave certainly had the means to confirm such a "fact"), all it would have taken to dissuade public appeal from the Brotherhood of Steel would be to tell it and provide the proof.
*** While that is a good point, for the sake of the argument how would they know that anybody alive actually CARES about that fact? Even if the Brotherhood of Steel started as a Chinese deep cover infiltration unit in the U.S., it's been I-don't-know-HOW long since the actual nuclear war, which has long fallen into the realm of mythology. Nobody save for the Enclave and a few groups with access to very deep databases really seems to know jack schiesten about the war or even prewar history. Cross-ocean travel is probably non-existent anymore and many in the Wasteland probably wouldn't even KNOW the Chinese existed. And besides, assuming this hypothesis is true and the Brotherhood of Steel was a Communist Chinese cell, the Chinese regime STILL nuked the living crap out of them along with everybody else on the Continental US and would probably serve as some proof to the Wastelanders that the Brotherhood of Steel is at least recently sufficiently divorced from the hated great war enemy to be trustworthy, which would make this revelation a very * blank look/huh?* moment as people ask if they should care. Doesn't explain why the Enclave apparently has never TRIED to do so anyway, though.
** This WMG has been explicitly Jossed multiple times. The Brotherhood of Steel weren't actually founded anywhere near DC, and they originated from a group of U.S. Army mutineers at a military research facility on the West Coast. The player can actually find the diary of the group's founder in the first game, which describes the group's creation in detail.

[[WMG: Gary Staley, of Gary's Galley, is one of the Garys from Vault 108.]]
It's hypothesized that Gary 1 may have committed suicide (having 9 rounds in a 12-shot magazine), and Gary 23 somehow came into possession of a Pip-Boy; who's to say that one of the clones didn't develop a higher degree of sentience and escape from Vault 108? The door to the Vault can be opened by clicking anywhere on it, while other Vaults are operated by the separate control-panel; perhaps Gary X (later Gary Staley) already released the Vault door while leaving years, decades, or even over a century before? The Garys in the Vault don't seem to have aged since their creation, but exposure to the irradiated Wastelands may have started the aging process in Gary X, allowing him to blend in with the regular humans, even fall in love and reproduce. As to the different physical appearances of the Gary Clones and Gary Staley? Obviously, Gary X found out about the man in the bow who performs facial reconstruction and gained a new appearance from Pinkerton, probably pawning stuff he brought from the Vault.
* Since Gary 1 is in the Vault, maybe Gary Staley is actually Gary 0, the source of the Garys!
* If he's the original, then he's not a clone, and thus not ageless like the others. If he is a clone, then it's more likely that he's Gary 2 (or one of the other early ones). The fact that Gary Staley uses the same voice actor as the Gary clones certainly lends credence to this whole theory.

[[WMG: The [[Literature/TheBooksOfEmber City of Ember]] is one of the Vaults.]]
Let's see: A giant underground city, constructed prior to a nuclear holocaust which devastates the world, housing a mixed-race population who (apparently) have American accents and believe that there is nothing in the world outside, and probably no way to get there. And, of course, the last bit is a lie. (Mostly.) Clearly Ember is one of the Vaults that was given a name rather than a numerical designation; possibly it's not one of Vault-Tec's, but a Vault sponsored by a private organization or by the government/s. This is supported by the ''Fallout''-style fliers plastering the station entrance/exit; it doesn't look like the other Vaults because, like Little Lamplight, it was built inside a pre-existing cave-system.
** The power going out wasn't an accident either. Like most vaults, it was part of a social experiment to see how the populace would react.

[[WMG: TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}} takes place in a Vault GoneHorriblyWrong.]]
Granted, a lot of Vaults were designed to Go Horribly Wrong, but still. Giant underground city, nuclear holocaust, ect. ect. ect.? All there. Plus, we know AIs and cloning tech exists in the Fallout universe. ''(Ah, Gary!)''
** Well it would have to be a ''really'' big vault since vaults only have room for 1500 people

[[WMG: The Fallout Universe is an Alternate (possible?) future of Watchmen]]
It's a reality where Veidt's plan was thwarted/failed/exposed afterwards by Rorschach's journal, and war came. Vault-Tech one of Veidt's competitors/subsidiaries, developed the Vault's as backup in case the initial plan failed. All the uber-tech is either courtesy of Veidt, or reverse-engineered by the government from Drieburg's abandoned Owl-Nest- note that he had laser weaponry and (albeit, a faulty prototype of) powered armor, both of which are ubiquitous amongst Fallout's more tech-savvy factions. The mutants, and indeed FEV, are part of a failed attempt to recreate Dr. Manhattan, the most successful, albeit still failed attempt being The Master from Fallout 1. The Mechanist and the Antagoniser are simply a small-scale repeat of the same social aberration/fad that lead to the existence of costumed heroes before the war.
* "The accumulated rads of all their dirty water and sugar bombs will foam up around their waist and all the mutants and Megaton Settlers will look up and shout 'Save us!' ... and I'll look down and whisper 'Tunnel Snakes Rule.'"
* Alternatively, Veidt's plan worked... ''technically''. In Watchmen, tensions are high between the Soviets and the U.S.A. In pre-War Fallout, the Soviets and the U.S.A. were relatively friendly, though the Soviets had slid down from superpower status - the war that brought down the world was between the USA and China. And, of course, it was in 2077, not in the late 20th century.

[[WMG: If you seduce Burke with a female character during The Power of the Atom he eventually kills himself.]]
He leaves Megaton and doesn't appear anywhere after that, so something must've happened to him. Remember the love letters he keeps sending after the mission? They start as upbeat and romantic, but over time get a darker streak as he slowly slips into depression for not being able to be with the woman he loves. Now, read the [[http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Love_letter_from_Burke fourth letter]] and don't tell me that it doesn't look like suicide note.
* The ending - "But it is a burden I shall continue to carry, because someone must. And I am a man of responsibility" - pretty much tells you he's still out there, looking for evil bosses to work for.

[[WMG: Megaton was built from the Chinese bomber that dropped the bomb the town is built around.]]
Due to the city's size, probably several aircraft, but the sheer amount of Mandarin spread around Megaton indicates that at least some of them were Chinese in origin.
* Talk to Manya about the town's history and she'll confirm this; in fact, the bomb was still attached to the plane when it went down. And more material was obtained from a nearby airfield that had already been looted of everything except those planes.

[[WMG: The Fallout universe is the result of ending to ''Film/DrStrangelove''.]]
And the Vaults were made to counter the Mineshaft Gap.
* Aside from superficial similarities, the two stories are quite contradictory, seeing as in ''Film/DrStrangelove'' the war was started by a rogue general against the USSR, and the mineshaft was a last minute effort to save humanity, whereas in ''Fallout'', the bombs were dropped by - presumably - the Chinese as a last ditch effort, while the Vaults were a pre-planned measure taken years in advance, and weren't actually intended to save anyone in the first place (mostly because there was no expectation of an actual nuclear war).

[[WMG: Rockopolis was a trog city.]]
Like ghouls, there are trogs in the wastelands that maintain their humanity. Rockopolis was their Underworld. There's not a whole lot of evidence, but their leader, King Crag, sounded inhuman on the Daring Dashwood radio programme. There's also a note connecting the citizens of Rockopolis with the Pitt (before the DLC was released), which also refers to them scornfully as "hole dwellers", which trog(lodyte) translates to.
** That's because it is.
*** What is what? Do you meant this was stated in game? If so, I never saw anything more than the implication.
*** Daring Dashwood calls it the Trog City of Rockopolis

[[WMG: Vault Dwellers are genetically superior to Wastelanders.]]
Somehow the Lone Wanderer, a 19-year-old marriage counceler/garbage man/whatever with no combat experience is able to single-handedly defeat dozens of Raiders, super mutants, zombies, ect. cetera single-handedly. I postulate that residual radiation in the Wasteland has decayed '''everybody's''' genes--making them weaker, stupider, and slower than non-irradiated people. The Lone Wanderer avoided this decay by being brought up in a Vault. We only ''think'' the Lone Wanderer is powerful. In fact, he is just as strong as you or me; it's everyone else in the Wasteland who have devolved into something mildly subhuman.
* That would also explain why the wasteland is still in such bad shape after 200 years. There is plenty of old technology left to scavenge yet you're the only one who does anything about it. Old power stations, fission batteries, robots and radio transmitters are in operating condition and only need a little bit of work to be brought back online, yet most Wastelanders just sit around doing nothing while the world continues to decay.
* On the other hand, both of the Lone Wanderer's parents were wastelanders, so s/he comes from that same genetic stock. Maybe it's environmental, rather than genetic factors, that made the Lone Wanderer into a superhuman.
* Then again, the Lone Wanderer also plows through the crack shocktroopers of the Enclave, who are pure-strain humans in Main/PoweredArmor. Maybe L.W. just inherited massive badassery from his/her daddy, Liam Neeson (if you follow him from Vault 112 to Rivet City and watch him fight the many hostiles in the way, you'll notice he can apparently shrug off several missile launcher shots to the face without much difficulty).
** Thus making the Lone Wanderer's daddy a BadassLongcoat ScienceHero. Apparently said badassery ''is'' genetic!
** Or maybe the energy unleashed by the nuclear war breached the fabric of reality and gave James the powers of another Liam Neeson character, Qui-Gon Jinn. This subconscious Force ability was then transferred to the Lone Wanderer!
** Your dad is an Important NPC, so he's nigh impossible to kill and will just fall unconscious anyway. Clearly, you inherited that perk. Loading a save after you die is just you waking up!
* Or possibly its a combination. Wastelanders have had to survive for generations in an irradiated resource scarce environment and in general have gotten 'tougher' genetically. However, they don't have as ready access to the clean water and nutrients they need to grow up to be as strong and smart as they could be. The Lone Wanderer however has the toughened genes of two of the wastelands best scientists and grew up in a vault where they got plenty of water and green vegetables to grow tough and strong. Thus, Lone Wanderer is tougher than most wastelanders due to having a good diet growing up and is tougher than Enclave forces due to inheriting the strength of the wasteland survivors. The Lone Wanderer in effect combines the best of both 'pure humans' and 'wastelanders' while being unable to fit in with either of them.
* You're all thinking too hard. The vault dwellers have been eating clean food and drinking clean water. Every piece of food and every drop of water the wastelanders have ever taken in has been radioactive. They all have cancer and/or radiation sickness. Radiation sickness cripples your stats, and well the cancer is obvious. After all, you're the only one who is using rad-away. If everyone was constantly using it, it wouldn't have lasted 200 years.
** Lets not forget that most people you attack do not have Pip Boys. Vault tech Assisted Targeting is the superpower our little Lone Wanderer has in his holster.
** Three Dog does mention and suggests using rad-away in one of his few speeches that aren't related to the Lone Wanderer, so the concept of using rad-away isn't unique to the Lone Wanderer.
* The protagonist can easily subdue several vault security guards in body armor and helmets using only a baseball bat, at level one. These are people trained to be tough and combat-capable, whereas the Lone Wanderer might have been working as a fry chef or tattooist for the last few years. Evidently, being Vault-raised and Vault-bred is not a strict formula for making you better than everyone else.
* Out of the four protagonists only one was a true Vault dweller, Fallout 1's The Chosen One was a tribal, The Lone Wander was only raised in a Vault and the Courier was from the NCR.
* Perhaps it's the Pipboy that makes the LW so powerful? That would explain why Dad, as well as the protagonists from previous Fallout games are always so badass.

[[WMG: The Falloutverse has been cursed by [[Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia the White Witch.]]]]
This is why the trees never have any leaves on them, and why we never see any characters celebrating holidays. She's made it always winter and never Christmas!
* NUCLEAR Winter! * ba-bump TING* I'm here all week, folks!
** Billy Knight? What are you doing here?

[[WMG: The U.K. survived, and they're just being dickheads by refusing to send any foreign aid to nuclear-devastated regions.]]
Colin Moriarty appears to be Irish, Alistair Tenpenny claims to be English and James might be English. Therefore, a few people have come from the U.K. to America since the bombs dropped. But if the U.K. was just as devastated by the war as America, then how would they have transatlantic transport available? Because they weren't. The U.K. survived, and have become isolationists.
* Of course, if the U.K. and Ireland were in a better state, why would they cross the ocean in the first place? And Fallout 2 showed that capable vessels still exist, and Tenpenny is rich enough to buy one/pay for a trip.
* James states that part of his training as a doctor was being able to tell if a kid was just acting sick in order to skip class. He may have been joking, judging by his tone. But perhaps he's telling the truth. If he is, then we know he's not from the Capital Wasteland, because there are no schools there. Obviously, this means that he is from England and England still has functioning schools. Why are there functioning schools in England? Because ''England wasn't destroyed.''
** "Training" doesn't necessarily equate to "medical school." It may have just been learning medical abilities from other people who happened to know something about medicine. Unless you think all the other first-aid givers in the game, like Red and Doc Church, also crossed the ocean after they graduated?
*** It's about the "skipping class" part, not the medical training. Kids cann't skip class if there are no schools.
*** Since when you need a school building to have classes? All you need is a teacher and something for him to write on. Kids don't show up when he tells them to = skipping class.
*** Actually, there are two schools that have been shown. One in the Republic of Dave, the other in Little Lamplight. And I'd bet a large sum of money that there are still educated adults who pass on what they know to the next generation (at least, those that will listen, anyway). Rivet City almost certainly has a sort of education system due to the presence of the science lab and that there preservation society museum-thing. And then there's everything OUTSIDE of the Capital Wasteland, like in Virgina, Delaware, and Maryland, that could have a place secure enough to have a sort of school system. Perhaps even a compulsory one, which is really the sort of education system James seems to imply to be used to. Alternately, he might just be talking about his twenty years in Vault 101. Lotta school years there...
*** There's also a school at the Nellis Air Force Base in New Vegas.
* They also could be staying out due to the Enclave. Considering these guys conquered Canada for oil, staying away from the incredibly well armed nutjobs seems a good idea. The NCR is way to far away to contact, and they're the only organized group that might make friendly contact.
*** Hell the Enclave may still be up in Canada (which would be in a lot better state than the U.S.) this explains how they can still get all those solders, and weapons after losing their oil derrick. ''they still have a few more and whole cities still intact'' they only choose DC as there main base because it's the former capital
** From a strategic point, the Enclave (I assume that's the Enclave you mean?) wouldn't do things halfway; they'd either keep themselves in a safe place until America could be taken back ''or'' they'd move all their resources to D.C. in order to keep morale up amongst their subordinates. Besides which, the predecessors of the Enclave sought refuge on an oil derrick when the bombs fell, then moved back to the mainland after it had cleared somewhat.
* According to http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Resource_wars, about 20-25 years before the USA vs. China war that [[ApocalypseHow went nuclear]], Europe was wrecked in what were called the "Resource Wars", when the European Commonwealth took military action against the Mid-East in response to raising oil prices, and everything quickly went FromBadToWorse. Of course, since it seems no nukes were used in Europe, they'd probably still be in better shape than the US and China...
** Probable, if only because it didn't seem at that point that other countries had the means to wage was as the US and China did. Given the fact that all Fallout 1, 2, and 3 all open with narration that the ''entire'' world was destroyed, 'a little better off' probably isn't that much better.
* The Troper thinks the UK probably suffered like the rest of the world, so odds are places like London and the Home Counties will be in a similar state to Washington. If it has picked itself up again, odds are it's split into nation-states, like a possible Republic of Cornwall, or the United Soviets of the West Midlands. I imagine Scotland may be better off, and Ireland has probably sealed the borders as it's a smaller island and lacks a nuclear deterrent, and isn't as much of a target.
Moriarty and Tenpenny either ended up in the States because they intended to seek their fortune because the U.K. and Ireland were in such a terrible state, or they ended up there because the wild, untamed wilds of North America provide far more options than any variety of post-apocalyptic U.K. or Irish governments.
** Seeing how the only Nation that took part of the Great War war the US and China they may be the only two nation that fired Nukes, radiation, would still effect of lot of areas. So most of the world are fine and just staying the hell away for the wastelands
*** Opening narration for all three main games state that 'humanity was destroyed' during those two hours. (Paraphrasing here.) I'm sure Ron Perlman wouldn't be saying that if all they meant was 'all humanity within the U.S.A. and China.'
*** "And by "America", I mean The World!" -'''The Amazing Screw-On Head''' Given the glimpses we've seen of the state of pre-war American democracy, we can assume that the Narrator is being a little biased.
*** All right, assuming you ''don't'' want to believe Ron Perlman: Narrator, look at the time line as presented in the games and supplementary material: Europe is already at war with the Middle East in 2052, and the European-Middle Eastern conflict's nuclear exchange spurred the creation of Vaults. Even assuming Europe/the UK/so on weren't involved with the U.S./China debate, they would have been in turmoil over the oil the U.S. was bogarting. This resource conflict outright bankrupted smaller countries and exacerbated the Europe/Middle East conflict, which only ended when their oil ran out and both were almost ruined; this would be when the European Commonwealth split into nation-states to fight over whatever's left on the Continent, presumably retaining the Commonwealth's nuclear weapons. It's only after this that China becomes desperate enough for oil to get aggressive, spurring the US/China conflict that led to World War III. Even if the rest of the world wasn't drawn into the U.S. vs. China event, there was plenty of conflict beforehand to ensure they were ruined or near-ruined before America or China launched their missiles; once that happened, we know that at least China, the US, and the U.S.S.R. launched full-scale nuclear attacks. Even assuming the other countries had no nuclear participation in that war, and taking into account the military buildup of the U.S. (from which we can extrapolate that their nuclear arsenal must have been considerable, with the other two powers maintaining similar numbers to serve as effective checks), the radioactive fallout alone from such a large-scale conflict would have been enough to poison anywhere the wind could carry airborne particles. Unless someone managed to build super-science force-fields over entire continents - which were, as stated, devastated economically and possibly sociologically from the build-up and the effects that would have on the population - it's likely that the rest of the world suffered irradiation as well, if not direct hits. Most of the damage would have come from fallout anyway as opposed to direct strikes, when the radiation deadened the soil/plant life and poisoned anyone who survived the initial blast... which would be just about everyone in not-targeted countries. So sure, maybe the U.K. and Europe (that isn't the U.S.S.R.) and Asia (that isn't China) and Africa were spared direct hits... assuming the targeting computers weren't just shooting nukes off willy-nilly like bottle-rockets... but they still get to deal with radiation poisoning, blighted landscapes, and presumably mutant animals and ghoulified survivors. The best thing that could be said was at least they'd be spared intentional experiments like the Super Mutants and FEV, and that's assuming there weren't mad scientists or paranoid governments elsewhere in the world
* This troper's personal theory is that nukes were dropped on everywhere but because Vault-Tec was a sham in the U.S. other nations had decent government and privately owned Vaults in place. Britain was nuked as hard as America but almost everyone survived. Then when they came out there was nothing in the wasteland for everyone. The population of the UK is more packed in and whilst most Americans were dead, leaving enough scavenging for all the British folk didn't have enough food to go 'round and it's a heck of a lot worse. I personally think the only country leaved unschaved was Australia. Seeing as how the universe is kinda set around 1950's ideas and all there'd be a situation like "The Beach" where the folks of Melbourne are staring out at the wasteland and wondering if anyone else's still alive.
** Vault-Tec appears to be a U.S.-based company; probably there weren't international Vault-Tec branches, and if they were it's likely that they had the same proportion of safe-to-experimental Vaults. Maybe privately-owned vaults existed, although given the lifestyle of America at the time you'd think they'd have more personal Vaults in the US. (They might have, we just don't see them.) Australia's being all right, like everywhere else, would depend on how much sway (and how many bases, ect.) China or the US would have there. Even one base or resource holding would be enough to make it a target, and in case of a nuclear war I'm assuming that seventy nukes are as good as one.
* See the succinct discussion [[http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=962726 here]].
** I like the theory that while America is horrifically torn up, most over countries are actually doing fine. Travel to America is forbidden due to the high radiation levels. Of course I'm likely overlooking many details and the effects of radiation, but this'd be funny as heck.
*** Link's broken. It's still a silly idea.
* From Fallout New Vegas opening Narration:"When atomic fire consumed the EARTH...". Every nation was affected.If there were a nuclear attack on the one nation, would a very close nation retaliate with them? Yes, and so on, ad oblivion. As for private Vaults,it is said in the game that any personal shelters in the US were terrible unless you were rich enough to contract Vault-Tec into making you a personal one, like Mr. House. While other nations would have had good shelters in place for COG, it is made clear that the US was the only nation with a Vault program. And the Vaults, while they were sadistic experiments, they were the only way humans survived at all, fitting perfectly with the Grey and Gray Morality of the Fallout series.
** Mr. Tenpenny came to the Capital Wasteland from England. How screwed up must England be if D.C. is better by comparison?
*** Not much - indeed, it can be better off, from the perspective of an outside observer. Mr. Tenpenny has his tendencies towards being a self-centered, bigotefactd jerk, so that he regards DC as better by comparison might as well mean that England is under the control of an NCR-style state (complete with de jure ghoul-smoothskin equality and a legal system that frowns on eccentric millionaires doing whatever they feel like) as it can mean a nuked wasteland harder to survive in than even the Capital Wasteland.
*** It could just mean that there are fewer people in the Wasteland and no real over-arching law, so he can do pretty much whatever he likes. If the UK population survived in any kind of number, and given how much smaller it is compared to the U.S. - even per-annexation - it's possible the Wasteland just offers more freedom due to its size and the comparatively skeletal population. Given the tech and organization needed to survive a nuclear holocaust, even one you're just a footnote to, it's just as easy to picture what's left of the U.K. as an iron-fisted fascist state, geared towards preserving what exists at the cost of innovation or anything that could be described as dissident. Does that make Tenpenny less of a bigot? Not at all. But in such a hypothetical situation, a drunken egomaniac would seize the first chance he had to give himself the life he ''thinks'' he deserves. Or, you know, maybe England is a mythical fairy realm of magic and daffodils, and King Arthur rose from his ages-long slumber just before the bombs dropped to erect a mystic shield over the land he once ruled, enveloping it in a protective mist like Brigadoon. But no, turns out King Arthur's a ghoul and the Knights of the Round are battling mutant Gauls along Hadrian's Wall.
** Regarding Australia (and as an Australian) I think it's fair to say we probably would have been wiped out one way or the other. We're a major resource exporter including natural gas, coal and uranium. I'd guess that either we'd have been conquered for our natural resources or we'd have allied with the US in exchange for letting them use us as a nuclear missile base (giving the US a better base to strike out against Asia). Either way, we'd be targeted (nuclear sites first, then cities). There would certainly be places where the bombs didn't fall but as mentioned above the nuclear fallout and climate changes would still be significant.

[[WMG: Mister Burke is an undercover Enclave agent.]]
If you refuse to detonate the bomb and wind up not killing him, ''or'' if you are female and use the Black Widow perk (resulting in his leaving Megaton)... where the hell does Burke bugger off to, anyway? It's like he just drops off the face of the Earth. He could be anywhere; why not Raven Rock or some other, similar facility?
He consistently mentions that he's 'helping to rebuild humanity' in the letters he writes, which is almost verbatim what the Enclave claims to be doing. And he never discloses anything that might help pinpoint his location. ''Furthermore'', an AlternateCharacterInterpretation of why he breaks off his 'relationship' with the Female!Lone Wanderer could be thus: he knows ''exactly'' who she is by then, and is concerned that continuing said relationship could result in either his cover being blown, or that he'll eventually be forced to kill her.
It's been shown in-game that there ''are'' Enclave operatives living covertly in the Capital Wasteland: Greyditch, for example. Granted, William Brandice was a deserter from the Navarro branch, but this troper can easily imagine the Enclave deliberately planting people in certain settlements, in order to observe them more closely. Eyebots can only do so much, after all.
Then there's Tenpenny himself: his dialogue options suggest that Burke showed up out of the blue, just like he did in Megaton. It's never mentioned where he came from before that, or what he did to impress Tenpenny- ''or'' whether it was Burke that approached his employer to begin with, not the other way around. Furthermore, he appears to be subtly phasing Tenpenny out of a position of power ("I hardly even need to think anymore"); Tenpenny Tower relies more on the machinations of Mister Burke than it does on its benefactor. I'm paraphrasing, but- myeh.
Detonating an atomic bomb in the middle of a Wasteland settlement might seem slightly counterproductive to Eden's stated goal of restoring the Wasteland to a position of stability, ''but''- remember that the Enclave are prone to drastic measures. Megaton does contain not only a ghoul, but also a crazy priest whose preaching could result in people ''mutating''. They also seem to harbor former Raiders (Jericho) and slavers (Doc Church). All of whom fall into the Enclave's list of 'undesirables'. They ''could'' pick off the aforementioned undesirables one by one, but that would raise suspicions, risk retaliation, and there is no guarantee that killing off a select few people would stop others from similar categories from coming to Megaton. Since it is a WretchedHive ''with a live atomic bomb at its center'', there's a [[NukeEm very obvious solution]] to the host of problems Megaton provides. It just happens to coincide with Tenpenny's wishes- it could also explain why Burke didn't want to evacuate the inhabitants ("The place, the people, they're one and the same.")
* However he is impressed by Roy Phillips ghouls killing everyone in Tenpenny Towers.
** Siding with Phillips gives Burke access to a small army of Ghouls and Feral Ghouls. The Enclave have shown itself to be perfectly willing to use and control muties (Deathclaws, all the creatures being experimented on in Raven Rock) for their own purposes.
** Also, Burke seems to have an intense fascination with death, which would probably cause him to be impressed with any town massacre, even one committed by muties.

[[WMG: A majority of players seem to side with Lord Ashur and consider Wernher to be Starscream/Frank Fontaine. I submit instead that Wernher is Moses.]]
A former high-ranking general of the megalomaniacal God King rebels, becomes a slave, and leads the slaves to freedom by unleashing a plague of living horrors upon the civilization of the slavers. For his trouble, he gets to rule over the new nation created by the slaves (although it takes the slaves a while to get there and set things up).
As for the rather distasteful "kidnap the baby" thing, Moses was pretty harsh towards Pharoah's first-born also. By biblical standards Wernher's actions are actually pretty tame.
* The main problem with this theory is Wernher himself: namely the fact that if you side with Ashur, Wernher more or less goes into a rage and condemns everybody. Now, unless he was having one HELL of a HeroicBSOD, this seems to indicate he wasn't nearly as well-intentioned as Moses was.
** In the Bible, when Moses came down, he saw the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. He proceeded to smash two tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, destroyed the calf, burnt it to dust and mixed it in water and forced all the Israelites to drink it. Earlier in the Bible, Moses' son hasn't been circumcised yet, so God decides to kill him until Moses' wife cuts the kid's foreskin off and throws it at Moses. In literally the second and third passages he's referred to by name in, the first and second of him as an adult, Moses kills an Egyptian for beating another Hebrew. Returning back to the golden calf, after forcing everyone to drink it, God has Moses and his allies kill everyone that was worshiping the golden calf. It's said in the Bible to be 3000 people. So, Wernher is still a far kinder person than Moses.

[[WMG: The three dead bodies found outside of Vault 101 are the remains of the scouting party sent out by the previous overseer.]]
The current overseer locked them and the previous overseer out to help prove the wasteland is dangerous and promote his isolationist agenda.
* There are a lot of flaws in that theory. One, they wouldn't just stay in front of Vault 101 until they starved to death - they'd eventually give up and do the best they could in the wasteland. Two, there's no evidence anyone inside the vault is aware of the dead bodies; this propaganda is unseen by those it is meant to influence. Three, the Overseer didn't lock them out, because canon establishes that the lock is just a password, and the password changes for the first time when Amata changes it to her name. Which leads to: four, it requires the search party to be stupid enough to leave without knowing how to get back in. Possible, I suppose. Five, where in the Fallout wasteland would they find markers and cardboard to make the signs?

[[WMG:VideoGame/EvilGenius takes place in the Fallout universe before the Great War.]]
That would explain the flat screen TV for the Staff Room, the weird science involved in the super weapon, the laser security doors and trap sensors, and ''especially'' the very small nuclear power generators. It also allows a 1950's/60's-style theme, thus hinting at a period that explains how the word Hippie exists in mainstream language in the Fallout 'verse, a world that supposedly never left the 1950's in terms of popular culture and technology. Also of note is that the EvilGenius world screen shows Canada and the United States split into three ''vertical'' regions (in Fallout 'verse, Canada was annexed shortly before the Great War), but this is a bit of an anomaly as the half-60's period would have had to occur so close to the Great War that there would certainly be signs in the D.C. Wastelands.

[[WMG: Speaking of Canada...]]
Since Canada basically became part of the US, it's possible that some of the last few Vaults were built north of the former border. However, they may not have survived... Even if nukes didn't hit the ex-country, there is mention of unimaginable seismic activity brought on by the bombs. Canada is made up mostly of land that would easily be devastated by the kind of massive changes described.
* Except that a large chunk of it is located on some of the most stable rock in the world. If anything Canada would be better off, because there are less people and would therefore not be nuked as much.

[[WMG: Mister Burke is the avatar of Atom]]
So, you have this shady character, out on a mission to blow up a live atomic bomb, and he has both the equipment and utter lack of morals to do so. So why, pray tell, does he just sit around Megaton waiting for someone to come do it for him? Really, it doesn't take much explosive know-how to rig the bomb to explode, and someone of Burke's caliber could surely pull it off no problem.
The reason is quite simple (okay, not really). The bomb, dubbed Atom, is worshiped as a god by a small cult of fanatics. And though they are few in number, relegated entirely in the Megaton community, their beliefs in the power of Atom are strong, strong enough that He has become of a lesser deity and conjured up the resolve to create an anthropomorphic personification of His will. It is none other than Burke! But Atom is no kind and loving god. He is a weapon of war, and desires to do what He was built to do: to invoke death and destruction on a wide scale, and His worshipers want nothing less of Him. Hence Burke's personality. But there is a problem; a bomb cannot just set itself off. As Burke is merely an extension of Atom, he cannot do anything directly to cause the bomb to go off, all he can do is influence others to do the deed for him. His side of the Power of Atom quest is in fact the last few steps of a long, convoluted GambitRoulette meant to eventually blow that bitch to hell.
This also explains why Burke disappears off the face of the earth if you disarm the bomb. By doing so, the Lone Wanderer has destroyed the physical anchor of Atom. Without the bomb's explosive power, Atom loses most of His power and can no longer sustain His avatar. Burke simply fades away (but not before he uses what little time he has left to put a hit out on you), and all Atom can do is exist within the minds and empty wishes of His followers. Meanwhile, if you set the bomb off, then the beliefs of the Church of Atom finally come to fruition, and countless universes are born among them, all of which Atom is the Ruler Supreme, ascending to the position of a greater deity. So by setting it off, not only has the Lone Wanderer destroyed an entire settlement for a mere pittance of bottlecaps, he has unleashed a horrible monster upon all existence!

[[WMG: Argyle was previously Brainwashed into blindly following whoever held his "Contract" (Dashwood, in this case), much like Charon]]
For those of you who have Charon as a partner, [[spoiler:(You can buy his contract at "The 9th Circle" in the Underworld for 2,000 caps)]] you might have noticed that he tends to make frequent wisecracks, much like Argyle does in the "Adventures of Herbert Daring Dashwood" program. It's one of those things where the Old Hero had a journey that paralleled the main character's. And we never DID find out where Charon came from and who brainwashed him...
Believing that Dashwood is really a RetiredBadass rather than the bumbling idiot the Radio Show makes him out to be isn't much of a stretch: The wasteland has a high fatality rate, and the fact that he somehow managed to survive into old age despite his relatively low Luck Stat ought to count for something...
Of course, he claims that he met Argyle when he accidentally stole his girlfriend, but that could just be a lie invented to keep up the appearance of the Happy-Go-Lucky adventurer Dashwood is portrayed as.

[[WMG: Little Lamplight is secretly under Super Mutant control]]
There are a lot of things about Little Lamplight that just don't add up. How can the population be sustained? Sure, they might be able to take in orphans, except that they live the farthest away from civilization, so it's doubtful many orphans could even survive the trip, not to mention it takes some convincing to have them accept Bryan Wilks. Or how have those kids been able to stay around this long when the only thing between them and the Super Mutants is a flimsy wall of junk with a gate operated by a simple pulley system? C'mon, game mechanics aside, it wouldn't take much for those hulking brutes to smash that wall down. So what gives, how can Little Lamplight even ''exist''?
Maybe because the Super Mutants ''want'' it to! Murder Pass appears to have been at one point inhabited, so maybe the mutants invaded it, capturing a few kids and driving the rest back. They tried dunking them into the FEV, but sadly, none of the kids came out as successful mutants (for all we know, they might be those failed FEV subjects you find in Vault 87, or Fallout 3's variation of centaurs). However, due to the combined power of their simplistic brains (or an unseen mastermind that has yet to be revealed), the Mutants saw a golden opportunity in Lamplight. The kids may not make good Super Mutants now, but they might when they grow up, and even better, when that happens, they won't have the ability to fight and defend themselves. So the Mutants took some surprisingly subtle motions to make the kids mistrust adults and kick them out, set up a poorly defended place for them to go (Big Town), where they can harvest them. And better yet, with Little Lamplight being the only location in the Capital Wasteland where grows a radiation-absorbing fungus (that thrives on human flesh), the Muties have ensured a "breeding ground" of sorts to produce the best kind of Super Mutants possible (the less radiation the subject has been exposed, the better results FEV will have after all). This would also explain the prevalence of mutilated human body part strewn all over their haunts; they're trying to make the fungus more widespread!
But that''s not all. Whenever going into any Super Mutant hovel, you'll find these cages made out of shopping carts, and Behemoths have them strapped to their backs. These seem too small to hold an adult human, but a child could fit in quite nicely. They most definitely cage kids in these for transport to Little Lamplight, where they abandon them.
So the Super Mutants of ''Fallout 3'' either an intelligent mastermind leading them who we never find out about, or they're an entire army that has mastered the art of ObfuscatingStupidity!
* Alternatively there's a more sinister option. Maybe Lamplight has an army of crazy kids that have been abused to the breaking point and become like raiders, attacking and killing anyone who so much as looks at a kid funny. Hurt a kid and they'll kill you and rescue the child. They are like Talon Company but in scout uniforms. Trinnie, the alcoholic junkie from Rivet City is a former member.
** A more {{Squick}}ful, yet not unrealistic option, is that they are indeed maintaining their population ''naturally''. Lamplighters don't get exiled to Bigtown until they hit 18, yet puberty -- functional puberty, at that -- hits several years before that. Sometimes as early as 11 or 12. Between the hormones, and the fact that it's extremely doubtful that they have contraception, it really isn't impossible that any female Lamplighter has already had a couple of kids by the time she's grown old enough that it's time for her to go to Bigtown. Yeah, that sort of thing is highly illegal in our world, but these are a bunch of kids living in what [=MacCready=] himself calls "fucking anarchy" and who've been in a hole in the ground for two centuries without any form of adult supervision. If nobody's going to stop them, those kids that are old enough doubtlessly have sex, and once she's had her first ovulation, she can have her first child. Something similar happens in ''Film/MadMaxBeyondThunderdome'', where it's stated that the youngest children were all born from couplings between the older ones -- there's a pregnant 16-year-old girl who already has at least one baby old enough to be a toddler, who gets pointed out to Max when he's being told about how The Tribe got started. Still doesn't explain why the Super Mutants don't try and grab all the kids they can, though.
** If they just took all the kids at once, they'd have a huge haul, but it would also be their last haul. If they leave some kids, they'll eventually reproduce, ensuring a constant supply.
** Or, y'know, kids that were conceived in Bigtown just get escorted to Little Lamplight.
*** Before the Lone Wanderer shows up, it's made pretty clear that most Lamplighters are poorly equipped to make it to Big Town, and most don't, hence the small population of Big Town even before the latest raids. It seems unlikely that they'd be able, or willing, to trek ''back'' to Little Lamplight, given how difficult it was to leave it in the first place; at the very least, the odds of it happening would fluctuate depending on the current population of Big Town, and whether or not they have any adept hunters/fighters (most inhabitants didn't seem to have a trade or specific skill-set).

[[WMG: The US and China are the only "wastelands", everywhere else is more or less fine.]]
* The great war was only between the US (and Canada) and China, while everyone else was busy with other stuff. And I don't think the two it the type to randomly fire nukes that other nations for no reason, also since radiation doesn't work the same in real life, odds are it wouldn't spread to other areas via win.
** Not compatible with the (semi?)official timeline. Europe's already in ruins by the 2077. Regardless, global nuclear war and the following winter would badly hit pretty much everything.

[[WMG: In ''Fallout 3'', if you reach the "Saint" class level, you will actually become one.]]
Listen to the preacher in Rivet City go through his whole sermon on Sundays. You have done ''at least'' as much good, if not way more, than Saint Monica if you have "Very Good" karma status (heck, the picture in the PC version is Vault Boy as ''UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}}''). So, the citizens of the Capital Wasteland, informed of your deeds by Three Dog, decided to christen you "Saint [[HelloInsertNameHere {Name}]]".
* One Problem. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonization#Roman_Catholic_procedure_since_1983 Canonization]] in the Roman Catholic Churuch is a long, complicated process. But in short, you need to be:
** A. Catholic, which there is little or no evidence for.
** B. Dead, which is a problem if you bought the "Broken Steel" add-on, negating the "Sacrifice" part of your HeroicSacrifice.
* Then a bishop has to give permission to do research, the body must be checked for heretical activity, the Pope must make a proclamation of the guy's virtue, etc. All of which are nearly impossible in the current state of the Fallout world. Also I doubt the Church of Atom would make the Lone Wanderer a saint for disarming their bomb, and I don't see any evidence of the presence any other organized religion in the Capital Wasteland.
* But who says they're Catholic? This ain't ''Literature/ACanticleForLeibowitz'', you know.
* You forgot the bit where the Vatican is probably destroyed, and even if it isn't, the church in Rivet City has no way of contacting them. They could make anyone a saint if they darn well pleased.
** Well we don't know the anything about Europe over than the EU broke out into civil war.
*** We know a hell of a lot more than that. Europe wasn't in a civil war; they were fighting with the middle east, and nuclear weapons were most definitely involved. It's strongly implied, though never outright stated, that both were involved in the Great War, and are thus just as much a radioactive ruin as North America. Considering the religious undertones of a European-Mideastern conflict, it's safe to assume the site of the Vatican is flat as a pancake.
*** So would Mecca and Israel probably. Holy sites tend to be nuke magnets during global thermonuclear war.

[[WMG: Liberty Prime is a Franchise/{{Transformer|s}}.]]
* And his Alternate Mode is...
** Chuck Norris.
** No, it's Teddy God-damn Roosevelt.

[[WMG: The Nuka-Cola Corporation secretly started the war in order to control the economy of the post-apocalyptic wasteland.]]
Even before the war, Nuka-Cola probably had catalogs full of various items like toys, chems, furniture, and robots which people could get by saving up their bottlecaps and buying stuff with them. Some people started collecting the caps and even trading them for stuff (possibly while on lunch breaks) and then somebody in the company got the idea that bottlecaps could become a viable currency. The Nuka-Cola Corporation then secretly began setting events in motion that would end with the U.S. and China getting caught in a nuclear exchange that would annialate their governments... and then secret underground Nuka-Cola factories set to work. The survivors might have found a few surviving shops that 'conveniently' accepted Nuka-Cola bottlecaps as currency and willingly bought items like tin cans or bullets with caps. These first shops were controlled by Nuka-Cola so that they could get all the armor, weapons, and loot they wanted in exchange for easily manufactured bottlecaps. Now, over 200 years later, the Nuka-Cola Corporation is still at work making bottles of Nuka-Cola and bottlecaps which it uses to both feed the survivors and to buy the ancient treasures of a destroyed civilization.
* Nuka-Cola probably did catalogs full of toys; a rabid soda fan explains that after the success of the drink, the Nuka-Cola corporation released promotional items, like the trucks with the Nuka-Cola logo on them. It's entirely possible that they kept this 'caps-for-gifts' program going on even as the bombs dropped: maybe they added 10 mm pistols to the prizes? That's why everyone wants caps! To get that neato Nuka-Cola merchandise, of course. And it explains how there is any form of economy at all; Nuka-Cola continues to be made, caps continue to be collected, and caps get exchanged for guns, either via shop or mail-order. TL;DR the Wasteland's economy is kept alive via a softdrink prize campaign.
** This whole theory goes out of the window in Fallout 2 where caps are pretty much worthless and the $NCR has taken over
*** This theory explains the economic predominance of Caps in Capital Wasteland and East Coast. An economy propped up by neo-Nuka-Cola never gained predominance in the core regions.
** The "any form of economy at all" part was disproved for the west back in Fallout 1 - the bottle caps were explained as backed by water (as a way to simplify things for the water merchants), and the why of having bottle caps as a currency were that they were hard to counterfeit and easily transportable and stored.
*** Maybe there was a different reason for adopting Caps on the East Coast?

[[WMG: Everything that happens after you first "wake up" as an adult is a Vault-Tec simulation.]]
In fact, the Vault Dweller has awakened inside a simulation pod. The entire game from that point is a simulation based on Vault-Tec projections of what a nuclear wasteland would look like, supplemented by what they can pick up as radio signals from outside. Its purpose is to serve as the next phase of testing after the G.O.A.T.
The purpose of this simulation is to determine the newly-adult candidate's suitability for reproduction, based upon how well they would do in a hypothetical post-nuclear survival situation. The test ends once the candidate is 'killed' in the simulation. Candidates who fail to make it out of the simulated Vault are chemically neutered before they even leave the simulation pod, whilst candidates who make it all the way to 30th level not only gain full breeding privileges, but are slated to have sperm/egg samples put on ice in case they're needed to supplement future generations.
In fact, Vault 101 has never been opened, and isn't slated to be so for several more generations. By that time, it is hoped, the population will have been honed into perfect survivors.
* This very premise is used in parts of the first game's manual, though it obviously isn't canon, given the sticky-notes pasted over much of it.
* Accept your perceived Reality.

[[WMG: If you enter Vault 106 you never leave.]]
* Notice that if you fully explore Vault 106 the hallucinations stop appearing (IIRC), this isn't because you've gained immunity to them, it's because they've stopped being purple.
** Alternately, you do leave but continue to experience hallucinations. For instance, not all [=NPCs=] are really there.

[[WMG: The Lone Wanderer becomes Braun's new plaything.]]
Braun doesn't have all that many protections to keep the player from getting to his control terminal. Mad genius with a sadistic side as big as all outdoors; it's not that unbelievable that he let you kill the others so that you'd think you were successful and give him the chance to play with a new toy. Making everything that happens after Tranquility Lane just a way for Braun to set you up to have everything taken away. Save the Wasteland, build a new life for yourself, then have everything you've built be destroyed, over and over.

[[WMG: Elder Lyons purposely caused the schism between the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel.]]
Lyons wanted to keep the people of the wasteland safe, while still pursuing their original quest of technology scavenging. Chances are that the two objectives would crash into each other, such as if a settlement had some technology the BoS would want, so Lyons engineered the schism and created the Outcasts as a [[GambitRoulette ludicrous plan]] to keep the original dream alive, while allowing him to concentrate on the Super Mutant menace as well.

[[WMG: Slavery will never end in the Pitt.]]
Sure, on the surface, it seems as though that in the long term, the Pitt has a bright future ahead of it. No slavery. One of the few bastions on the east that is actually producing. An immunity to radiation and with it a cure of TDC. But... in all of his ambition and vision, it seems Ashur has forgotten completely about the basic necessity of ''food''. The place is too irradiated for plants to grow and there are no visible attempts at forming any sort of agriculture. Even the normal wasteland critters, from mole rats to Yao Guai to Brahmin, are notably absent. Really, there are only two sources of food to feed the denizens of the Pitt: pre-war scavenged goods, which are reserved for Ashur, his family, and slavers, and Trog meat for the slaves. Obviously, the scavenged stuff is in limited supply, else it wouldn't have to be rationed like it is, and once it's all gone, it's gone forever! And as for the Trog meat...Trogs are really the only 'animal' the Pitt has, and they only come about when someone comes down with a severe case of TDC, mutates, and goes insane. If a cure for that is reached, and administered to the populace, the Trogs face extinction, and no Trogs, no food.
Hence, slavery can never really end. As awful as TDC and the Trogs are, they are every bit as necessary for the current system to work. If Ashur wants to keep the mill up and running, he can't give the cure away to everyone, he has to keep a portion of the population sick and on the bottom rung of the social ladder in order for Trogs to continue to be made. Either that, or remove the middleman entirely and resort to straight-up cannibalism. As it is, the Pitt is too polluted to produce any food of its own, and too isolated to be able to reliably transport it from outside, and there currently appear to few visible means to address the issue right now. And if Ashur doesn't realize the new problem that will arise in the wake of the cure...then the Pitt can only fail.
* The raider's mention in game that their main job is to raid caravans for food. Plus they have the train system to get to the Capital Wasteland where they could hunt and trade for food.
* The primary purpose of the cure is to allow residents of the Pitt to have children so they can stop having to enslave new workers. Once TDC is eradicated, the Pitt isn't a terrible place to stay. It's got shelter, space, and safety. They might begin farming the surrounding countryside. Also, remember that Werhner touted the cure as a 'cure for mutation', not just TDC. With a bargaining chip like that, they'd be able to acquire whatever resources are needed. Considering most everyone in the wasteland has at the very least a sixth toe and most probably have some form of cancer...

[[WMG: It takes place in the same alternate reality as VideoGame/BioShock.]]
Although just not at the same time.
* Indeed, Rapture may have been inspired by (or the inspiration for) the Vault Project. Maybe Ryan once knew House.

[[WMG: Megaton is doomed to become a mutant haven.]]
Think about this: The clean water system is faulty (After the Lone Wanderer's death no one is giving Walter scrap metal to fix it) and residents are gathering daily around a radioactive bomb. When you consider that this little fort is therefore receiving more radiation then any other human civilization in Fallout 3, you must assume that mutations cannot be far behind. The good news is non-violent mutants will have protected safe haven from Raiders. Not to mention outsiders will become very easy to spot.
* Well, unless poisoning Project Purity/ letting it explode is canon, (Which doesn't exactly leave much room for a continuation of the story of the Capital Wasteland) Megaton is getting Aqua Pura from Brotherhood of Steel water caravans.

[[WMG: Everything that happens during and after the Broken Steel add-on is a DyingDream]]

[[WMG: The Capital Wasteland is a recently re-settled area.]]
It was the central hub of the USA government and military. It's obvious Chinese would want it razed to the ground. The amount of destruction and radiation was so big that the whole area become uninhabitable for more than 100 years (except perhaps by ghouls and supermutants). This explain the abundance of pre-war goods, lack of agriculture (people are trading pre-war stuff and technology that drained out elsewhere for food) and relatively primitive socio-political structure (compared to the California at the end of F2 where the expansive city-states like NCR and Vault City already existed).
The way I see it, humans first entered the area around 50 years before the game start (future founders of the Rivet City, BOS scouts), but the large scale emigration fueled by the population boom in the Missisipi Valley/South/New England and a sort "pre-War stuff" rush didn't start until about 20 years ago (the time Pinkerton was ousted of the Rivet City council)

[[WMG: Vault-Tec knew the apocalypse would happen, and may still be functioning.]]
If you look at the barter bobble-head, you will see that Vault-Boy is holding a bottlecap. Now, with this piece of information alone, it might prove that they were made after the war. BUT, one of the Vault-Tec employees' terminals shows that employees could buy Vault-Tec items, one of which was a bobble-head. Of course, this might mean the barter bobble-head was made after the war, but that would mean that Vault-Tec was still functioning. Furthermore, the Vaults were actually a social experiment, and, if I'm correct, Vault 12 actually relied on the radiation resulting from the war, meaning they still need collect data.
* That they knew it was coming is almost confirmed; just look at all of the advertisements that point out that ''you will die in the coming nuclear apocalypse'' if you don't reserve a spot in the Vaults. The other half seems likely as well.
** Adding to that, if you do in fact, collect all of the bobbleheads "Vault-Tec C.E.O isn't just an achievement, but is in fact, the official way Vault-Tec planned on having a new C.E.O. They were all originally put in vaults, or left with the Enclave (There are bobbleheads in Vaults `101, 106, and 108, and one in Raven Rock) But most of them were scattered, by people who escaped the vaults, or Enclave patrols. Anybody who collected all of them would need to then go to Vault-Tec headquarters in Downtown D.C. and get into the mainframe to be officially made the C.E.O, but this information was never known to the player character.

[[WMG: ''WesternAnimation/TheIronGiant'' is the divergence point into the Fallout timeline]]
The Iron Giant was launched at the Earth from an alien race for unknown reasons, but it's clear that it was built as a weapon of war. The Aliens you meet in Fallout are the same ones, returning to collect the Giant and determine if it has accomplished its mission. For the Americans, the invasion of the mainland ''and'' a nuclear warhead detonated over US soil sent the country into its tailspin of nuclear paranoia and aggressive expansionism that led eventually to the war. At the same time, The Iron Giant showed the US military that a bi-pedal robotic war machine was viable, so they focused their research on replicating the Giant. Their most successful effort was Liberty Prime.
* Adding to this, the Giant's weapons spurred the United States to put in large amounts of funding into energy weapons research, soon proving Tesla's theories correct. From there, by records of the Giant and through examining the [[spoiler: remains of the tanks the Giant destroyed, as well as possibly recovering some pieces of the Giant in Iceland]] , the first energy weapons of the Fallout Universe were created. The plasma weapons you see are a direct attempt to mimic the weaponry of the Giant.
* Continuing this theory, House could possibly be an adult Hogarth. He might have been put into a government think thank to give input on the design of Liberty Prime. His name was changed to keep the project covert.

[[WMG: Ghouls are the allegory of Jews.]]
If you think about it, it could make sense. Lets assume that Atom is real. The Ghouls would then be Atom's Chosen People. Glowing ones would be miracle workers or prophets (heal other ghouls, even when dead). Griffon and Azrukhal's... [[GreedyJew unscrupulous]] business practices are a more negative spin. Forced into slavery in the desert(Charon and Gob), living in land that is technically theirs, but treated as second-class citizens until finding their own land (Underworld) in the mid-eastern part of the map. Hunted down in their surrounding areas. I don't know about Feral ghouls, ... maybe UsefulNotes/IsraelisWithInfraredMissiles?

[[WMG: Fallout 3 takes place in the Command and Conquer universe and the Great War was a desperate solution to the Tiberium problem.]]
There is far too much radiation around to be the mere result of an atomic war. What really happened was that Tiberium had arrived on earth and spread all over. Atomic energy is widespread because Tiberium is an atomic fuel and the fuel was plentiful. Unfortunately, it spreads on its own and destroyed a lot of the other vital resources of the Earth and drove the various nations into desperation to get those resources. The big clincher is that the scientists who discovered Tiberium realized that it spreads on its own and if left unchecked would destroy all life on Earth... but the only ways to prevent that would be to either harvest every last crystal of Tiberium on the planet or to bombard the entire planet with neutrons that would turn it into marginally less dangerous radioactive elements (still radioactive but not self-replicating). The whole war was in fact instigated by the various world factions as a desperate means to cleanse the Earth of Tiberium. Civilization was largely destroyed and the radioactive remains of the destroyed Tiberium are scattered over vast swaths of the planet... but at least the planet hasn't been systematically converted into a mass of radioactive crystal. The very existence of Tiberium was intentionally erased from all records to keep people from thinking of its benefits and trying to grow their own Tiberium farm from shards of it... and causing this whole mess all over again.
* Totally impossible. The reason the Great War stated in the first place was because of the world running out of sources of energy. If an energy source as powerful as Tiberium exist in the Fallout universe, there won't be a Resource War in the first place. Also, the radiation levels on the West Coast (as seen in Fallout 1 & 2 & New Vegas) are not where as high as the DC area. Finally, the very nature of tiberium and the way it spreads will make the vaults totally useless.

[[WMG: Most or all of the nuclear bombs dropped on the Capital Wasteland were neutron bombs.]]
Neutron bombs were designed to release high amounts of radiation, but cause less destruction than normal nuclear bombs. This is the reason why so many buildings are still standing, and perhaps along with heavier, more durable construction methods used in anticipation of the war.
* The game seems to support this with most nuclear weapons that appear being similar to those dropped on Japan in world war 2.
* Surprisingly, neutron bombs are still nukes and make one hell of an explosion. The reason they were developed was less to kill people and have the infrastructure still standing, but rather to kill soldiers in armored vehicles, who aren't all that affected by heat and blast waves. Detonating a nuke over a city creates a field of rubble.

[[WMG: The Mother Punga in Point Lookout is actually a physical manifestation of an EldritchAbomination.]]
Both the Tribals and Swampfolk have a unique trait that allows them to do additional unresistable damage to you with each attack they land. For the Swampfolk, this could be justified by the fact that, given the existence of the TomeOfEldritchLore in their possession, testimony by Obediah Blackhall, and the weird goings on in the Dunwich Building in the game, that they are backed up by supernatural, and quite possibly Lovecraftian forces. The Tribals don't apparently share their beliefs but they ''do'' worship the punga plant and the Mother Punga in particular. From this it can be inferred that the Mother Punga is an entity similar to the one(s) worshiped by the Swampfolk, if not the same one altogether. The addled state of mind the Tribals are perpetually in is not merely the result of [[spoiler: Tobar lobotomizing them]] but the Mother Punga having [[MindRape broken their minds]] from prolonged exposure to her powers, but in return they gain superhuman power to protect the punga fruit they cultivate (and are secretly [[EldritchAbomination eldritch abominations]] in larval form themselves). The hallucinations the Lone Wanderer experiences were not due to being exposed to spores with hallucinogenic properties but from temporarily [[GoMadFromTheRevelation going mad from the revelation.]]
* That is the best way to justify FakeDifficulty I have ever seen.

[[WMG: The main character is fluent in Chinese.]]
How else would they be able to read all those training manuals? It's unlikely that the Chinese army would have been nice enough to print them in English for the benefit of any enemy soldiers who happened to stumble across them. Also, in Point Lookout you're able to read some email correspondence between two Chinese spies; this is rendered in English, but given the lack of any reason for it to have been written that way is probably an example of the TranslationConvention.
As for how they learned the language- it could well tie into the above theory that the vaults had secret ties to communism. Perhaps they mandated that all vault-dwellers be taught Chinese so that they could read and listen to propaganda in its original language.
* The Pip boy has translation software, occasionally it doesn't work properly. There may also be similar software in terminals he runs across.
* The stealth instruction manuals are a bit easier to explain away than the emails. It stands to reason that in the years leading up to the war, the Chinese would've begun a massive draft to try to maximize their quantity advantage. Comic-book style manuals on stealth and weapons handling, illustrated very thoroughly so that they could be used by anyone from any language background or even the completely illiterate, were distributed to resistance forces in Europe in WWII so the partisans could improve their soldiering skills quickly. It worked then, at least somewhat, so if the Chinese had a language barrier and/or illiteracy problem within their own forces, language-neutral training materials might help. Now, the ''real'' elite special forces types probably wouldn't be trained out of books, heavily illustrated or not, so I suspect the comic book fields guides would be geared more towards training sappers quickly from among the conscripts.

[[WMG: Everybody's sense of time has been distorted by radiation--the game actually takes place twenty years after the bombs fell, not 200.]]
This shift in the time frame makes areas like Tenpenny Towers much more plausible (e.g. it turns Allistair Tenpenny from a complete monster to a delusional old man pining for earlier days), explains the general state of the world much better (food not consumed by Rad-roaches, books and audio diaries in readable if damaged condition, etc.), and generally tightens up the world a fair bit.
* Jossed heavily in Fallout 3. The old woman in Vault 101 remembers the old days from her youth when there were more people, the 1000 people in the Vault have dwindled to a few dozen, your PipBoy records the time as 200 years after the war and has no reason to be wrong.
** Jossed again by the presence of Harold and Bob/Herbert. Last we saw Harold was 40 years ago in Fallout 2, and the tree in his head was quite small. The tree in Harold's head has now gotten so large that he's taken root in DC. It does take a while for trees to grow to that size... let alone take deep root.

[[WMG: The Super Mutants are the reason the Capital Wasteland is so primitive when compared to places like the NCR and New Vegas.]]
Fairly obvious, but hasn't been directly stated in canon. The West Coast had the Vault Dweller to deal with the Master's army, the main impediment to re-establishing a large-scale civilization. The East Coast had to deal with wave after wave of Super Mutants and the only check came in the form of the Lyons-led Brotherhood forces that arrived some twenty-odd years ago. Without the constant stream of Super Mutants, the East Coast probably would have had its equivalent of the NCR by now.
* Lyons and several other characters tied to the main quest do flat-out state that the Super Mutants are the main reason why there hasn't been very much development of human civilization in the Capital Wasteland area.

[[WMG: Moira is already becoming a ghoul]]
This explains why she survives the explosion if you blow up Megaton: the only thing it did to her was burn off patches of her skin. This also explains why she needs you to go out and get irradiated for her book: it wouldn't have any effect on her.

[[WMG: Feral Gob would kill Moriarty.]]
It's no secret that half of Megaton would like to put a bullet through his head, and chances are without your help, Moriarty would never lose ownership of Gob, so as a final resort he gives into his feral side and rips the bastard apart. Sure, they'd probably have to kill him for that, but at this stage its probably on his Bucket List.

[[WMG: All Raiders have a deathwish.]]
This is the only explanation as to why they keep attacking you. Either that or they are TooDumbToLive, which is equally possible.
* Raiders are doped up and have probably acquired some serious brain damage from all the drugs they're taking.

[[WMG: [=AntAgonizer=] and Mechanist would become a serious threat if not stopped.]]
[=AntAgonizer=] thinks she's a super villain, so like most, she will numerous evil plans over time, such as mutating people into ants, creating ants of kaiju size, Fire Ants and of the like, she might not KNOW how to do it, but chances are she can find out. Mechanist would escalate himself and perhaps even create a HumongousMecha. At this stage, [=AntAgonizer=] would have surely torn apart Canteberry Commons, which would obviously piss of Mechanist. The attacks would move to the next settlement until they found something she can't destroy in one attack ( e.g. Rivet City) and the city would slowly be cleared out, if not immediately evacuated.

[[WMG: [=AntAgonizer=] would make her minions wear Psycho-Tic helmets.]]
Just thinkin'.

[[WMG: [=AntAgonizer=] would become a viable threat by herself.]]
One day Machete gets sick of the superhero bullshit and puts a bullet through Mechanist's helmet. [=AntAgonizer=] declares this a victory and runs off. After fighting the Mechanist for so long, she has actually become quite good at it and eradicates Canteberry Commons within an hour. She uses the town to create a new hive and raids Mechanist's hideout to build special Ant themed weapons, and equips her ants with weapons. She moves onto the Wastes where she tears apart some Wastelanders until she reaches the next settlement. Perhaps word gets out and the Brotherhood of Steel decide to check it out, unprepared for the event and get blown apart. She keeps going until her ants are virtually tanks.

[[WMG: [=AntAgonizer=] could have been damn useful in Greyditch]]
Had the Lone Wanderer been able to talk her out of acting like a loony comic villain, her "ability" to commune with Giant Mutant Ants of the Capital Wasteland could have saved the settlers there from the Giant Mutant FIRE-BREATHING Ants created by a well intentioned but woefully unprepared scientist.
Or failing that, be a scientist's assistant. If she really speaks Ant, the potential applications are staggering.

[[WMG: Fallout takes place in the HP Lovecraft universe]]
Lets see... weird inexplicable stuff? Check. [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]]? Check. Then there's the [[NightmareFuel Dunwich building]]...

[[WMG: The East Coast Brotherhood is going to turn itself into the eastern equivalent of the NCR.]]
Or something to that effect. On the West Coast, the Brotherhood stayed out of the region's politics and the result was a steady erosion of prestige and influence. Once the Capital Wasteland starts to form an organized, collective government, it's going to be controlled by the Brotherhood in one way or another.
* Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. ''[[VideoGame/{{Fallout1}} Slowly, advanced technology is re-introduced into the wasteland. The Brotherhood wisely stays OUT of the power structure.]]''
* They don't necessarily have to control everything. Perhaps the Brotherhood, using the new water purifier and all the advanced suits of power armor they are getting from the Enclave, will turn the Capital Wasteland into a federation of sorts, with the Brotherhood forming the military wing. The Brotherhood will have no shortage of recruits aching to join them, and with the water purifier and the research done on growing vegetables in Rivet City, all settlements will have large farms outside their walls and will breed brahmin, finally giving the wasteland a steady source of food. The Brotherhood, using it's massive amounts of power armor and soldiers, will steamroller south to Point Lookout and conquer the tribals there, which shouldn't be too hard if GameplayAndStorySegregation is in play. They will turn most of Point Lookout into a massive Punga-Growing operation. They will also move north into the Pitt, where Ashur, surprised that the Brotherhood is finally making progress, will join them as well, with the Pitt becoming the main industrial zone for ammo and weapon production and for repairing power armor. This will also let him abolish slavery. Before long, they will turn the wasteland into a prosperous nation to rival the NCR. Running to low on weapons or power armor also shouldn't be a problem, as long as they make sure to maintain their equipment, since the Enclave had MASSIVE stores of the stuff.

[[WMG: New Vegas will deal with the original purpose of the Vaults; [[spoiler: space travel.]]]]
The Mojave wasteland survived the War without almost any problems, so most likely the Great Experiment was left untouched. But even so, just think for a second. ''[[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic Blue moon...]]''
* The final quest, if achievements are anything to go on, is called [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything The Legend of the Star]].
** [[Jossed]] The Legend of the Star deals with you collecting fifty special bottle caps as part of a centuries old Sunset Sasparilla contest, sort of like collecting mcdonald's monopoly pieces.
*** Not Jossed, Play through The House Always Wins quests. Robert Edwin House's plans include space travel to find a new planet for colonization, like the Vaults’ original purpose.

[[WMG: ''[[VideoGame/{{Battlefield}} Battlefield 2]]'' takes place in the Fallout verse]]
This is before the advent of power armor, which if you'll remember, was a pretty late development in the war. What you're fighting in is the Resource Wars. All the major players are there -- US, China, Europe (EU), and the Middle East (MEC).
* The Resource Wars was a civil war between the European Union. Still an interesting theory.

[[WMG: The aliens from the Mothership Zeta add-on are from Mars]]
Think about it. The aliens of the Fallout world are very similar to the cliche aliens from science fiction stories made in the 1950's:
1. They're little green men.
2. They probe and experiment on humans.
3. Their technology includes death rays, force fields, and saucer-like space craft
4. According to Sally, the Mothership bridge looks like the one from the Pre-War science fiction TV show Captain Cosmos.

So were did aliens in '50s sci fi typically come from? Mars! Keep in mind that the Fallout world not only has different history than ours, but different laws of physics. (Ex. radiation makes ants become giant)So maybe in the Fallout world, Mars is capable of supporting life, or was sometime in the past. (One of the alien captive logs was made around the 1600's)

[[WMG: The Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel, now probably the dominant division of the faction will ally with the New California Republic]]
* If a Good/Neutral character is canon, and so is Broken Steel, then the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel is in control of the Capital Wasteland. They're purifying as much water as possible, which is going to go a long LONG way if people are thinking of fixing the wastelands. All of the technology they're scouring from the ruins of the Enclave means that they've got the best toys in the area. The Outcasts, even if you give them a crapload of Tesla Armor and Plasma Rifles, have slim to no chances of keeping up with them. And adding to the fact that the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood Division will now probably be seeing better trained, not RedShirt recruits because there's no immediate crisis going on. Once contact is finally reestablished with Lost Hills, way in Californey, after some much desereved "And you probably thought we wouldn't last!" The current Brotherhood leaders in the main base will be forced to start paying more attention to Lyons and his crew. The fact that they're losing power in the West Coast is also a major factor, and if the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood and the NCR come into contact with each other, working together would be a huge plus for quite a lot of the wastes. The Brotherhood supplies the water and tech, and the NCR is the government.
** As an extension, the Brotherhood becomes a part of NCR and the original organization is restored, with the Brotherhood returning to its original role as the military under command of a civilian government, with NCR replacing the civilian leadership role that the Enclave was originally intended to fill by the prewar powers.

[[WMG: The Lone Wanderer never returned to Earth]]
Let's assume events happened in the following order. Main Quest, most side-quests with the possible exception of side-quests that can become inevitable or are triggered by events i n the Main Quest (Trouble on the Homefront, Rescue From Paradise and MAYBE part of Wasteland Survival Guide and Power of Atom) Then after waking up in the Citadel he decided to not get involved in what the Brotherhood was doing for a while. so he was wandering around the Southwest area of the Capital Wasteland and picked up a distress call. he thus decided to answer it for whatever reason. and then the events of the Operation Anchorage DLC. some time after that he was wandering around the Northern most parts of the Wasteland and picked up Werhners distress call and got sucked into The Pitt. after dealing with that he returned to the Citadel and finished dealing with the Enclave. then headed South to investigate Point Lookout. after Returning to the Wasteland he picked up a strange broadcast near Minefield and decided to investigate that. which ofcorse leads to his abduction. and finally after defeating the Aliens he, Sally, Toshiro, and Tercorian decided to stay on board the ship for good and not bother with the Wasteland anymore
* That could work...But to continue the game you HAVE to leave. Otherwise that's not really Wild Mass Guessing.
** yes you doubt that is only from a gameplay and mechanics standpoint to support the Wide Open Sandbox having no real end. but from a story standpoint and even from a player standpoint you arn't required to leave you can just abandon that profile and start over. again this is assuming a Linear progression of events as I have outlined. and ofcorse there IS the fact that if This Galaxy Aint Big Enough is the last quest that isw done chronologically the Lone Wanderer has nothing left to do baring any mods
*** Well you could say that after the events shown in the game, he/she decides to leave Earth.
*** It's how I ended my game (as noted, I had pretty much done everything by that point, and my character was a scientist...).

[[WMG: Three Dog is God.]]
He knows everything you do, God is Dog backwards, and he's black. He's obviously God.
* ...and the three could be referring to the holy trinity!

[[WMG: [=RadAway=] is imported Vodka.]]
From where? Why, [[VideoGame/{{STALKER}} The Zone]], of course! It explains its anti-radiation properties. The whole IV deal is just for show, you really just put the tube into your mouth and suck the bag dry.
** Hell it is used as part of the Caravan lunch in New Vegas. Guess it was used to mix up the instant mash
* Not really, since you don't get drunk or lose Perception from it. Besides RadAway is orange so if it was any kind of alcohol it'd be whiskey not vodka. Either that or TANG.

[[WMG: Elder Lyons was sent east to be gotten out of the way, not just to look for tech.]]
The expedition was sent in 2254, which would have been about the time the Brotherhood went to war with the NCR. It's likely that Lyons already sympathized with outsiders and opposed the war for any of a number of reasons. Though not an Elder at the time, Paladin Lyons must have had some kind of influence within the Brotherhood. Lyons then became something of a ReassignmentBackfire following the discovery of Liberty Prime, which meant he still had some sway. The acquisition to the Purifier has only increased this and Lyons is probably regarded with a strange mix of disgust and envy by the isolationist-minded Elders on the West Coast.
* Supported by the Mojave chapter doing something similar to Veronica, who was a relatively respected scribe with subversive ideas. It could be unofficial Brotherhood policy to give troublemakers out-of-the-way jobs.

[[WMG: Fallout 3 is really a video simulation in Fallout New Vegas.]]
Fallout 3 is really a video simulation in [[spoiler: Vault 11. The experiment in the vault is to see if people are wiling to sacrifice one of their own to survive. But the truth is that they can only leave the vault if they are unwilling to sacrifice themselves. This explains all the stupidity in Fallout 3's lame forced ending that it makes the notion of self sacrifice seem so incredibly lame that it makes people less likely to try it in vault 11. Unfortunately not enough people had Fawkes in their party when they were playing Fallout 3 in Vault 11.]]
** That would be a great theory, but there are events referred to by several characters in New Vegas that clearly occurred in Fallout 3. Meaning the events of Fallout 3 would ''have'' to be real.
*** Maybe the simulation was loosely based on real events?

[[WMG: The Lone Wanderer is a perfected super mutant from The Master's army.]]
Think about it. He/She's better than "puny humans" in every single way. Perhaps James just gave you FakeMemories of being his son/daughter so you wouldn't awaken to your true potential?

[[WMG: What happens when you get too irradiated?]]
* Picture this. You're trying to get into a highly irradiated area. Despite having a huge amount of rad-away and your intelligence at 10 and a medicine skill of 100, you still end up collapsing due to radiation sickness. But maybe you're character doesn't die. The game just reloads a new save file. Because if it didn't, maybe you're character would wake up in that irradiated area, still gaining rads, but radiation sickness effects are starting to lessen. As you wander, you take a look at your chacter from third-person view. There seem to be open patches where skin used to be, and other parts of your skin seem to be discolored. Congratulations, you've started the process of ghoulification.
** And think about the part of The Wasteland Survival Guide where you need to get irradiated. If you go the extra mile and get the amount of rads for the bonus, Moira says you're now suffering from a small mutation that will heal your limbs whenever you get up to at least Advanced radiation sickness. Full ghouls are healed by radiation. So, if you complete that bonus objective, you've become a partial ghoul, without any of the negative affects, such as losing skin and hair.

[[WMG: The plan to leave Earth has already worked and resulted in [[{{Series/Firefly}} The Aliance]].]]
* The Americans and The Chinese made a deal to avoid hitting the ships with the nukes so they could leave, they leave behind the experimental Vaults (control Vaults are experimental), The Mutants (Ghouls, Super Mutants, Wastelanders, etc) and the "Rejects" (the Enclave, they didn't heve room or didn't liked them for any reason... WOULD you travel god knows how many light years with a {{jerkass}}. They also got leaved behind with out their knowledge.

[[WMG:The Nuclear Holocaust was caused by bored AI, not the US/China.]]
* Skynet in 2 believes this to be possible, so why not?

[[WMG: The obligatory Time Lord theory]]
* The Vault Dweller, the Chosen One, the Lone Wanderer, and the Courier are all the same character: a Time Lord in its various incarnations.
** The player is his own grandpa?

[[WMG: There is a good in-story reason why so many doors are boarded up in Three and New Vegas.]]
A boarded up door is scavenger shorthand for "The roof has collapsed, door won't open." Obviously, if the door could have been opened, it would have been sometime in the last two and a bit centuries.

[[WMG: The reason you can offhandedly fire a death ray at Canada is because a coder at Bethseda once ate a terrible poutine.]]
However, in doing his research he got Upper Canada and Lower Canada mixed up, and had the wrong province death rayed.
* Clever, but the death ray hit a very sparsely populated area of Canada, so no Canadians were harmed.
** And anyway, the US annexed Canada back in 2075-76, so if anyone was hit they'd still be Americans.

[[WMG: after the end of the game Veronica joined Lyons Pride]]
Because damnit she deserves a happy ending and what better ending than joining up with a chapter that believes in her viewpoint.

[[WMG: The Brotherhood of Steel will soon be gone from the West Coast.]]
Over and over again, New Vegas tells us that the Brotherhood is dying. The war with the NCR pretty much gutted them to the point that hiding in a hole in the ground can be considered valid strategy. Worse, the Brotherhood is unwilling to take any step to adapt to the changing times. Plasma rifles and Power Armor were enough when humanity was reduced to tribes, but now that countries are forming, it's just not going to cut it. Reformers like Veronica have to worry about their lives being threatened if they try to change things. And even if the Mojave branch strikes a truce with the NCR, the main branch is still hostile. Even an incredibly lenient Elder like [=McNamara=] stubbornly clings to the Codex, so it's likely the other Elders would prefer to let the organization die rather than adapt and survive. By the time 2300 rolls around, it wouldn't be surprising if the only Brotherhood factions of any worth are the ones in the Midwest and East Coast.

[[WMG: Dr.Lesko intentionally engineered the firebreathing ants]]
Seriously, there's no way you can ''accidentally'' give mutated bugs the ability to shoot fire. Why did he do this you may ask? The AntAgonizer payed him to. She wanted to be taken seriously as a threat, as most of the time her ants were just curb stomped by the Mechanist's robots. Lesko succeeded in creating the firebreathing ants and sent some of them to the AntAgnonizer, who then tested the ants by burning down Lesko's hometown, Grayditch. This induced a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment from Lesko, who chased the AntAgonizer off and stopped sending her new ants, but he was left with no way to stop the fire breathing ants. That is, until the Lone Wanderer came along...

[[WMG:The Capital Wasteland is in fact purgatory.]]
Most non re-spawning characters are in fact moving on to heaven or hell. Enemies like raiders are being punished by being killed again and again, mostly by one person, the lone wanderer, who in turn is either a soul seeking redemption or one of the staff. The super mutants? demoted demons. The enclave? dead soldiers unaware they are dead.
* So... you're saying... I should kill Moira because then she can go to heaven? Because, I'm not sure I have the heart to do that.
** Moira is a staff member, a test of morality, bad people kill her and get to stay longer, good people help her and ascend quicker.

[[WMG: The fallout series takes place after ''WesternAnimation/TheJetsons'']]
Think about it.
* No, it happens at the same time. Why else would they avoid the surface?

[[WMG: The Mad Max Trilogy takes place during the first years of the Fallout Series]]
This is a concept I've been toying with for a while, actually. During the Resource Wars, Australia distanced itself from the UK in order to protect its wealth of natural resources. Unfortunately, when the war between China and America began, China invaded, with America also annexing a portion of the southern part of Australia (backed up by America's annexing of Canada for oil, Australia has one of the largest naturally occurring quantities of Uranium.) A stalemate begins between the two, resulting in a police state which is very similar to the initial Mad Max movie. This also explains why there is such a fuel shortage, as all of Australia's resources are either being used by China or America, depending on the part. After the nuclear war happens, the major cities in Australia are reduced to rubble, while the smaller towns in the Outback are left relatively normal. This results in vehicle-bound 'Raiders' of sorts, such as the Lord Humungus and his merry band. It's not that much of a stretch of the imagination, since the aesthetic of a lot of Fallout is based on the films. Also, by the third film, (probably 30 or 40 years since the War, depending on how eternally youthful Mel Gibson is) there are already evidences of mutation, being the Master/Blaster duo.

[[WMG:Myron was -not- killed at the end of Fallout 2. Long enough for him to create a less addictive jet aided by the Chosen One.]]
This would account for the weakened form of Jet and why it's so widespread in Fallout 3 and New Vegas despite "Jet being quickly forgotten" by Myron dying.
* Jet wasn't forgotten. Myron's epilogue states that the ''creator'' of Jet was forgotten.

[[WMG: Casear's Legion is active in The Captial Wasteland and Burke is part of the Frumentarii]]
As mentioned in the theory of him being an Enclave operative, Burke will vanish of the face of the Earth if you don't kill him when you defuse the bomb. Indeed, he seems to have a level of power beyond what Tenpenny provides, as his contract note indicates he has the power to punish the Talon Mercs for failing their contract, a threat that Gustavo's goons would hardly be able to carry out given their reluctance to drag themselves a few miles to take care of Roy Phillips. Much like the Legion Burke repeatedly states that he is trying to create a nobler future. Even is dress sense seems reminiscent of Vulpes, and his plan for the bomb bears an uncanny resemblance to the Legion tactics at Camp Searchlight. While it may seem strange that he would be operating so far away from Legion turf, bear in mind that if an eccentric shopkeeper from Megaton can shift multiple copies of her books to the Vegas area, then it's entirely possible that Caesar would dispatch operatives to the Capital, given that it was the centre of the old world's government and thus a possible seed of resistance against his ideals. In fact, it's the Legion who sends the Talon mercs after you for having good karma, as they feel your altruistic tendancies are simply sustaining the corrupt world of the wasteland rather than allowing progress. Littlehorn and associates are in fact Legion members undercover, who hope to destablise what little order the Wasteland has to make way for the Legion's eventual takeover.
* Expanding on the this, the next fallout game will feature the remnants of Caesar's Legion (having been decimated from their loss to the NCR) travelling across the mainland and invading the Capital Wasteland, now more or less rebuilt because of the large number of Brotherhood Peacekeepers than the Project Purity making agriculture possible. The central conflict of the game will be a fight for the lands a few hundred miles west of the Capital Wastes (the ruins of Cincinatti)? Between the Capital Brotherhood, the Legion Remnants, and a new resurgent Enclave force, having rode in from the North on a pair of Mobile Base Crawlers.

[[WMG: If not killed, Roy Phillips would take over the Capital Wasteland]]
Just think about it. Roy has shown the ability to control feral ghouls. That's not a big problem with normal ferals or roamers, but think about this: He can control [[BossInMookClothing Feral Ghoul Reavers]]. A single Reaver can slaughter an entire squad of Enclave Hellfire troops before going down, and there are dozens of the damn things hidden beneath the metro stations. If you don't kill him, he unleashes the Reavers on the Citadel and every major settlement, exterminating every smoothskin wastelander and paladin in the wastes. Good thing pretty much everyone who's ever played the game killed him...

[[WMG: Marcus is being set up to take Harold's place as the main recuring character]]
With poor old Harold rooted down in Washington, Obsidian/Bethesda reintroduced Marcus for this purpose, as he has the advantages of being a popular charcter plus he can be used no matter the time period on account of his Super Mutant longevity.

[[WMG: The Lone Wanderer/The Courier are both psychic]]
To some extent, they both have telepathy and telekinesis. You know everybody's names before they talk to them. Whenever you pick something up (as in to move it around), it floats in front of you, even in third person view. Both of their true backgrounds are muddled; the Wanderer was born to scientists of all things outside of Vault 101, who could have done anything to the baby. The Courier was shot in the head, therefore he/she lost any memory of their psychic life before then. Psychics aren't new to the Fallout series, there were several super mutants in the original Fallout, and in Fallout New Vegas, there's the young character known only as 'The Forecaster' who can sense happenings in the wasteland without actually experiencing them.

[[WMG: Marcus will travel East and come into opposition with the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood]]
After successfully curing of the Nightkin Marcus will go to investigate the Mutant situation in Washington, possibly with Neil and Lily in toll. After meeting Fawkes and Uncle Leo he'll decide that the Mutants there could be cured of their madness and will try to help them. However, given that they gun down even sentient Ghouls on principle, the Brotherhood won't have any of this and will oppose him at all turns. Large doses of GrayAndGrayMorality ensue, forcing the player to pick sides. Things will only be made worse when a former Lieutenant of the Master surfaces and recruits the Vault 87 Mutants to his cause, fighting against both the Brotherhood and Marcus, having discovered a cache of advanced technology and a cure for Mutant sterility, making the threat of them replacing humanity as a whole valid again.
Things will culminate when the hostile Mutants launch an attack on settlements around the Wastes, forcing the player to choose between releasing Marcus's cure and a modified version of the FEV, which has been altred to only effect Mutated life but has no effect on humans. The cure will strip the Mutants of their homicidal tendencies but takes longer to set in, leading to massive casualties across the Capital Wasteland as well as the destruction of Project Purity by the Mutant army. If you choose the FEV it will lead to an epidemic that wipes out most Ghouls and Mutants but saves the vast majority of the Wasteland. This will naturally piss of one of the two sides, leading to a final boss fight with either Marcus or Liberty Prime.

[[WMG: Fallout 4, a spin-off game, or some later game will involve Chicago, the Enclave and the Brotherhood... but not as we know them]]
From Fallout Tactics, we know that the Midwestern Brotherhood is getting fairly fascistic, and several of the endings strengthen that tendency. We know from Fallout 3 that a) one of the endings where that doesn't happen is non-canon and b) that the Midwesterners are in a relatively bad way. We know from New Vegas that the Enclave has or at least had a base in Chicago, ''after'' the events of Tactics. We also know, from the same game, that a not-insignificant portion of the Enclave's rank-and-file weren't all ''that'' bad.
So, an [[EpilepticTrees insane theory:]] One of the future Fallout games will be centered in Chicago, and will involve or at least allow working for the ''Enclave'', or, more accurately, a branch/incarnation in which the more idealistic elements have ended up on the top (remember, the leadership of the Enclave has been killed ''twice'' at this point), to stop the Midwestern Brotherhood, which has descended into something as bad as Autumn's Enclave thanks to the strains of the Tactics war and now the war with the Enclave. Basically, Fallout 3, but in reverse.
* The problem with this theory is that the only thing that is canon about Tactics is that there is a chapter of the Brotherhood somewhere in the Midwest. None of the endings for it can possibly be canon, including the "fascist" ending, because of elements, groups or technology that do not exist in the series canon.
** Actually, a bit more than that is supposed to be canon - the BroadStrokes of the overall storyline of Tactics are canon ("major events", and the war that dominates the entire later half of the game can hardly be called anything but major). The fascist thing was not a reference to a specific ending, as such - actually, we do know which ending is canon, since there is only one that leaves the Midwesterners a weak group (the Calculator has *not* been made un-canon, but it must have been destroyed) - but more to what they were doing ''across the entire game''. And desperation has a tendency to breed harsh measures...
*** We do not know which ending is canon. Keep in mind Caesar's Legion is a WeHaveReserves force and the biggest weakness of the Brotherhood of Steel has always been numbers. Even with unlimited recruits, the Brotherhood is still limited by the amount of armor and weapons they possess. Given Caesar's anti-technology stance, it is very plausible the Calculator could have survived Fallout Tactics, but been destroyed early on in any conflict between Caesar and the Midwestern Brotherhood.
*** Also never mentioned the Calculator was not canon. It is comparitively one of the more plausible elements from Tactics with similar technology being seen in the mains series.
*** Turning into a facist organization requires some CharacterDerailment. Only one ending really allows for this to occur in a plausible fashion and this ending is probably the only one that is definitely not canon. The Midwestern Brotherhood has shown no intention of rejoining the main branch and the only plausible reason behind this is if they wanted to maintain their more inclusive policies.
*** Point to point counter: it was mentioned that the Calculator was not canon. "'''Only''' thing that is canon... there is a chapter of the Brotherhood somewhere in the Midwest", if you look above. Caesar's Legion is highly unlikely as the cause of a fall: when the Capital Wastelanders-to-be reached the Pitt (IE, after they passed the Midwesterners' potential territories), Caesar had just established his first capital, and at no point before or during 2281 did Caesar's Legion reach northern Utah. Not that kind of fascist organization - more willing to accept recruits, but also inclined towards labour and concentration camps, forcibly acquiring control of towns, etc... as during the game, rather than the non-Good karma Calculator or Barnaky Calculator endings. Granted, it might be easier to get the Enclave's Better Side and the Midwestern Brotherhood to meet at the middle than to get the Enclave to be the better side of the two.
*** The counter to the Calculator is not a counter: by Word Of Fallout 3 Lead Designer, Bethesda considers "most of the major events as more or less canon, just not the details that contradict Fallout and Fallout 2". The Calculator is not a contradiction to either of those games (Vault 0 might be seen as it, but not the Calculator itself), and ''most of Tactic's plot derives from the Calculator'', IE it being made uncanon would make most of the major events uncanon. Now, it is an easy mistake, since the only thing that ''Fallout 3 establishes as'' canon is the existence of a chapter of the Brotherhood somewhere in the Midwest, but Bethesda does not consider only that as canon.

[[WMG: Other possible locations for future games]]
* '''The South''', particularly New Orleans: The bayou is infested with horribly mutated gators and just barely settled by mutfruit planter nobility, and fought over by such factions as "The Code" (trying to rebuild society, led by the Quarter-Master who lives in Napoleon House), the River Barons (raiders who use PlayingCardMotifs), and Saturday's Children (voodoo tribals).
* '''The Rocky Mountains''', likely centered on Denver. Imagine getting across swathes of radioactive snowstorms via a system of ancient ski lift gondolas.
* '''Black Hills, South Dakota''', just for the chance for us to see what's become of Mt. Rushmore. My guess is that the neighboring settlers have made the presidents into a sort of KingInTheMountain legend, destined to someday set the world aright again.

[[WMG: The Vault Dweller, Chosen One, Lone Wanderer, and Courier are all related.]]
It's canon that the Chosen One is a descendant of the Vault Dweller, and enough time passes between the games to assume that the Chosen One's progeny sowed their wild oats and had descendants on both coasts.
* Almost definitely false. Considering the implied child of the Chosen One is in New Reno, that is a huge leap considering virtually no one crosses the state, let alone the country. In addition, if you assume the Vault 21 picture is canon and not simply an Easter Egg, it is completely impossible for the Lone Wanderer to be related to any other character no matter how you try to massage it. James and Catherine only had one child (so they can't be siblings), some dialogue marks the Courier as being active before Vault 21 opened, and no one entered Vault 21 before it was opened.

[[WMG: The origin of Bob.]]
Some time before Harold's expedition to Mariposa, he ate a fruit (one of those weird knobbly ones you can use to make super stimpacks), and unknown to him one of the seeds of the fruit got stuck in his back teeth until the expedition. When Harold was mutated by FEV, so was the seed, and it started growing, first slowly, then rapidly.

[[WMG: The 'Extremely Interesting Changes' that President Dick Richardson mentions are the same changes that cause most wastelanders to become stupid mutants.]]
Title explains it all.

[[WMG: The Master in Fallout 1 is the Master from Doctor Who.]]
After his latest encounter with the Doctor--the 12th Doctor by this point--the renegade Time Lord known as the Master was forced to flee to Vault 8 under the alias Richard Moreau to escape the nuclear holocaust that devastated Earth in 2077. In 2092, he was exiled from Vault City for the murder of a strong opponent to his experiments involving genetic mutation. He changed his alias to Richard Grey and set out across the Wasteland to find a new place to continue his experiments. Eventually, the Master came upon the Hub, where he met a prominent trader named Harold. He teamed up with Harold on May 22 2102 to investigate vicious attacks on Harold's caravan by mutated creatures. Unknown to Harold, the Master only wanted the knowledge of these creatures for his own sinister experiments. On June 23 2102, Harold and the Master stumbled upon the Mariposa Military Base, where the Master discovered critical data on the Forced Evolutionary Virus created by the U.S. government. Before the party could escape with this knowledge and samples of the virus, however, they were ambushed by the mutants, who took Harold and the Master captive. Harold managed to escape--though not without partial exposure to the F.E.V.--but he was forced to leave the Master behind. Upon further examination, the mutants discovered the Master's Time Lord chemistry and immediately threw him into a vat of F.E.V. to test the virus' effects on him. During the long months he spent in the vat, the Master was forced to go through his regeneration process, but the exposure to the F.E.V. warped his body into the hideous blob you see in Fallout 1. After his defeat at the hands of the Vault Dweller, the Master went through a proper regeneration, cleansing him of the effects of the F.E.V. Where--and who--he is now is a mystery.

[[WMG: China launched the first nukes out of desperation.]]
It's not that unlikly. look what was happeing when the First nuke was launched (FNL for short. 1. they invaded Alaska to get oil. a while before FNL the force had been completly destroyed, as evdienced by the operation anchorage sim. 2. there country itself was under attack, on news paper reporting the capital was about to be taken the day before FNL. 3. this is a lesser reason, but they might have heard of liberty prime from one of there spies, and a huge nuke chucking, lazer shooting robot would scare anyone to extereme measures.
* The problem with that is the timeline. Anchorage was retaken almost a year before the first bomb dropped and the Chinese. In addition, the simulation is not an accurate assessment of what happened in Anchorage. General Chase was starting to go insane at that point and was modifying the simulation to suit his delusion of what happened there.
* Liberty Prime, which didn't exist in the original games, would have been tactically insignificant. It's a walking tank, that's it. If anything, it would have been less important than a tank because tanks move faster and have smaller target profiles.
** Liberty Prime is a walking tank that throws nukes. Libery Prime is a VideoGame/MetalGear.
* The United States tactically had the larger incentive to use nuclear bombs, just beyond the fact that every pre-War US commander was shown to be an arrogant, partially delusional, hardcore military officer bent on wiping out the Chinese completely. China could win the war through attrition due to greater numbers. They could make the same assaults over and over again until they finally overwhelmed the defenders.
** That last one was probablly wrong, because the capital of China was about to be taken. and while Prime might not be significant, the armies of powered armor were.

[[WMG: We haven't seen the last of the Gary clones]]
As noted above, the clones seem to be ageless. Besides that, only 14 of the original 54 clones can be found in the Capital Wasteland; That leaves 40 of them unaccounted for. It's likely that some of these were killed by the non-clone residents of Vault 108, but it's unlikely that all of them were; The fact that you find Gary 23 on the other side of the Capital Wasteland indicates that not all of them were against the idea of leaving the vault.

[[WMG: It's A Small World After All; the fate of the rest of the world]]
Since Fallout has been sold in many parts of the world, this can be a place for all international Fallout fans to discuss what could have happened to their specific countries. If your country isn't here, feel free to add it on.
* '''AUSTRALIA:''' Australia's fate in the lead-up to the war wasn't pretty. While other countries had the ability to wage war on others for their oil resources, Australia didn't, meaning that it had no choice but to teeter towards bankruptcy as fuel prices soared and petrol ran dry (sorry, no Mad Max here). But Australia did have one thing going for it; lots of natural resources including iron ore, rare metals, and ''uranium''. Unfortunately this just meant that Australia was another victim of the Resource Wars - the UK tried to bring its former colony under control but was too occupied with the Middle East to do much; China invaded to take over the vast mineral deposits; then the US invaded to try and wrest it away from China. Australia tried to side with the US (Australia adopted a lot of the Red Scare fever along with the already present Yellow Peril fears), but as massive mining machines tore up the land and people died in skirmishes across the country, Australia was just exhausted of being fought over like a bone between two massive war dogs. The last independent remains of Australia's army tried to take back some key areas before the bombs finally dropped and ended it all.\\
Australia had no official vault system in place - it was just too chaotic to get anything done, especially with the economy already crumbling from lack of oil. But ironically, all those mines turned out to be a godsend; they were deep and winding enough to shield people deep inside the earth while the surface was scorched with atomic fire. Most of the east coast cities were wiped out, killing a large portion of Australia's population. But in smaller remote towns, far away from any strategic areas and too small to be noticed, were spared any direct nuclear attack. The vast central deserts of Australia were mostly untouched.\\
But nuclear war and the resulting fallout was only the beginning of Australia's problems. Being one of the harshest contintents in the world, living in the sun-baked deserts was hard enough with human infrastructure; now that civilization had fallen, no more water was pumped across drought-infested farms, no more truck envoys delivered supplies, and no more people could travel the distant highways. The people who survived were now utterly at the mercy of an unforgiving country ... and an unforgiving ''wildlife'', which had changed and mutated over time. As it once had been when Australia had been colonized by the Aborigines and the British so many centuries ago, life in Australia would be a long and bitter struggle.
** Also, there's probablly insane, NightmareFuel monsters. If Death Claws and such are what come from America's wildlife, imagine what the nukes did to salt water crocs, and kangaroos!
*** I've been thinking quite a lot about that - [[BlatantLies totally not because I'm making a fanwork based on this idea]], or anything - and I'd love to utterly screw with people's expectations of what the wildlife would be like. "Oh god, [[OhCrap a giant Huntsman spider]]! Wait, it's green on my compass? It's harmless? Oh, well thank god for that. ... Oh hey, a flock of mutated sheep! Neat! ... Wait, why are they -- oh god! [[BlackSheep They're trying to eat me!]] [[KilledMidSentence Nooo--]]"
*** Anyone else hoping for koalas mutating into drop bears?
* '''USSR:''' We already know something from canon to extrapolate from, that's: USSR existed until the Great War without breakup, but it became a VestigialEmpire and not a major world power; it was still something of a Cold War-esque rival to USA, but not as major as China, and Soviet-American diplomatic relations were still going on during the War; there are still enough high-tech left for Dukov to cross the ocean; and not all of the world was frozen in the 50s, only USA. So my (aurora369's) version is the following:
** The time period it is stuck in is late 1980s - early 1990s, the time when the real USSR was a crumbling VestigialEmpire. The computers are Mikroshas, Korvets and Robotrons (roughly ZX Spectrum and Amiga in terms of advancedness), the city architecture is very similar to one in ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' except more ruined, the country architecture is all wooden log houses, all rusted cars are [[TheAllegedCar VAZ and Volgas with fusion cell-powered motors]] and even these are not nearly as plentiful as in USA (the automobile revolution only happened in UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia), the clutter found in ruins is all from [[http://savok.name/160-veshhi-sssr.html these photos]]. The local counterpart to GNR plays Music/VladimirVysotsky, Music/ViktorTsoi, Music/NautilusPompilius and Mashina Vremeni, the local counterpart to the Enclave Radio plays [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91kdwxFsthI The Union Indestructible]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OEpB0q3ef8 Slavyanka's Farewell]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtA4j7z1izg VDV March]] and so on. [[MemeticMutation Still no sex.]]
** Little or no actual nuking of the country took place, since USSR did not take a side in the Great War, only sold uranium to China. It is also so unbelievably huge that even just-in-case nuking would take no less devices than a thorough nuking of China. Most of the apocalypse and depopulation was from [[TitleDrop fallout]] and famines caused by nuclear winter. Moscow definitely wasn't blown up (it has a dedicated missile defence system in RealLife), but most of the city fares little better than Washington, D.C. Possibly some American nukes fell on the uranium mines in Siberia.
** No supermutants, because of almost no FEV ending up on Soviet turf (some minuscule amounts carried in by global wind patterns, enough for huge radcritters but not enough for supermutants). Quite a lot of ghouls, especially on the Chinese and Western borders where fallout was most severe; possibly some ghouls ''predating the war by a century'' as a result of Chernobyl/Techa/Semipalatinsk. There should be an all-ghoul kolkhoz town that finally perfected real communism. Possibly a unique local variety of mutant to replace supermutants, springing from SovietSuperscience.
** BTW, much of that superscience is a DarkerAndEdgier variation of stuff from ''Literature/AliceGirlFromTheFuture''. Clunky Werther and Rusty General lookalikes replace all those Mr.Handys and Protectrons, and the local plasma pistol is the blaster from that 'verse.
*** Alternatively, let Mr. Handies just be Mr. Handies. 1980s USSR was known for cloning Western tech without asking permission. So you can find a robot that is totally a General Atomics Mr. Handy with some superficial differences (four arms instead of three, a sassy cussing saleswoman personality instead of a polite British butler), claimed to be absolutely not a Mr. Handy but an Elekronika RB (Robot Bytovoi) 203 by Angstrom Zelenograd.
** The local Hunting Rifle, on the other hand, is an old, trusty [[UsefulNotes/RussiansWithRifles Mosin-Nagant]], complete with a bayonet.
** [[GrimUpNorth Much colder climate]] because of leftover glaciation from nuclear winter. Because of that, huge [[GoddamnedBats rad-gnats]] migrating south from the taiga to the former temperate zone.
** Scared of the Yao Guai? They are harmless, cute and cuddly compared to the Siberia Guai, after all, the former were originally just little black bears! And the latter grizzly-sized brown bears were dangerous enough before mutation; now they are the size of a rhino, ten times the ill temper of a rhino and would scare a deathclaw to death with their roar. And yes, they really do walk the streets of ruined (and possibly some surviving) Russian cities and towns where drunk Russian men [[TestosteronePoisoning come out of bathhouses to wrestle them]]. Probably that's why Dukov sits in a building in a dangerous ruined city filled with mutants and worse, drinks, parties and is not afraid of anything. What the [[OhCrap white bears have become]] is the reason no one goes to the frozen North.
** The vaults are replaced partly by [[VideoGame/{{Metro2033}} metro tunnels]], partly by simply living in the vast forests. It's TruthInTelevision that all Soviet Metro stations and tunnels were built deep underground and fitted with massive sealing doors and life support to double as Vaults.
** The political landscape is pretty much eternal [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober Civil War]] again, now with Soviet Hardliners/the local Enclave, similar in conviction and cruelty to the Bolsheviks of old, vs Disaster Democrats.
** To put it all simple, more [[GloriousMotherRussia cold snow, cool vodka and hot lead]] than ever before! And we Russians like it that way!
** What if Metro 2033 is the USSR in the fallout universe? You've got horrifying monsters, some psychic abilities, bastions of underground survivors... Maybe they only use regular firearms as opposed to energy weapons is because they were too poor to have such expensive things around before the war, and for obvious reasons there aren't any around afterwords.
*** Why, it's quite possible. The M2033 expanded universe books add details about the Russian countryside after the apocalypse, and it's an okay place to live in, much better than Moscow and quite comparable in habitability to the Fallout setting. It's even habitable enough to allow a semi-literal HiddenElfVillage of peaceful Tolkien nuts to exist and not be wiped out in a matter of months.
*** aurora369 here, author of the above WMG. I have contemplated a VideoGame/Metro2033 fanfic about a thinly veiled expy of the NCR, a faction that managed to get civilization together once again, located along the Baikalo-Amur Mainline. The only thing that stopped me from doing it is that I never travelled in the region myself to do some research and have only second-hand reports of what's going on there IRL.
*** However, there are two things in the way of considering M2033 part of the Fallout universe as is. First is obvious: the date. In that universe, nuclear war happened around 2013. Second, the pre-war civilization in that universe is very obviously [[UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia the Federal regime]], not Soviet, and the communist faction are quack politicos that haven't read their Marx, not remnants of lawful authority.
* '''SINGAPORE:''' There could be two possible fates for the island. Either the Chinese annexed it and was using it as an important port (much like Hong Kong) or the US maintained an alliance with it during the American-Chinese War, possibly using it as a base of operations to strike upwards into Southern China. Either option would make it a militarily significant target, which almost certainly means it was nuked to oblivion by either side. [[TakeAThirdOption However]] if the Chinese saved all their nukes for the American heartland and it escaped relatively unscathed I would imagine it to be a primitive pirate base of operations, complete with a thriving Slaver's market.
* '''ENGLAND:''' England has undergone a cataclysm. Nuked by various middle eastern countries, completely run out of fuel and a series of riots completely destablizing what order remains, leaving a broken husk of a country. The surviving authority figures declare England to be the last surviving section of the Commonwealth, and start Operation ANGEL. Hundreds of years pass. London is seperated by zones. There is the Pacified Zone, where everything is in a pre-war state, much like the Strip. However, there is only one (Birmingham Palace) since Operation ANGEL began and it is highly controlled. No-one gets in or out. Along with that, there are the Controlled Zones (Government soldiers in towers, vague law, similar to Freeside) and the Uncontrolled Zones (Similar to Capital Wasteland. Mutants, no law and occasionally settlements). There is also a unique zone called the Prison Zone, formerly a dock, where the massive husks of aircraft carriers are put to use as prisons. All is not stable in the London Ruins, as a civil war is going on. The Rebels have fought the Government multiple times in the Controlled Zones, and the Rebels are hidden within the Uncontrolled Zones.
** The Government is highly incompetent. This is mainly because Operation ANGEL was not very well planned. They cannot replicate their best weapons, their ammo is reused and they are running out of food, water and materials. They cannot even call for help due to the waters being dangerously radioactive, all their planes requiring fuel to get across the Channel that they do not have and all their radios being broken due to age of all the replacement parts. If they do not do anything about the resource crisis they will completely destroy what little remains of England. The Government control one of the last fuel deposits, under Birmingham Palace. However, they used a lot of it when they sent a plane across the channel (It did not come back) and they are hoarding it. They only control the London Ruins (Barely). They have three types of soldier. The Pacifier wears Riot Gear, wields riot shields with shotguns and patrol with five other Pacifiers in uniform fashion. They are deployed in Uncontrolled Zones. The Patrolsman wears Urban Camo Kevlar Armor (UCKA) and wields a [=L85A2=], and are usually in Controlled Zones. The Guard wears the British equal of Power Armor, wields a high power sniper rifle and is deployed in the Pacified Zone as [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin guards.]]
** The Rebels are a strange mix of communism and democracy. They wish to keep the "Everyone is Equal" part of communism along with the "Everyone Decides Who Is Leader" part of democracy. This would be utopian, but it's unrealistic. They are mainly based within the Uncontrolled Zones, and attack Controlled Zones regularly. Their main goal is to take control of the Pacified Zone and begin their new government. Their weapons are improvised from the environment or stolen from the Government. Molotov Cocktails, lead pipes, pistols made out of scrap metal or hastily repaired Government weapons are only just to start with their arsenal. They pride themselves on their improvisation.
** The UK could have some form of a Enclave in the scottish coast, based on [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMY_Britannia#History plans to make the royal yacht a bunker in the case of nuclear war.]]
*** Plus, wouldn't fighting a jerk final boss Charles the XXVI be awesome?
* Wales, Scotland and Ireland are all fine though.
** I shall add more at a later date. Watch this space.
* Nothing, I say NOTHING will happen to Indonesia, because nobody know the existence of Indonesia so it left mostly unharmed
** In fact, the Indonesian is unaware of what happened to the outside world, and all they can do is wondering why the satellite TV is out. They did, however, slowly regressed as they slowly learned the fact of the world and the complete lack of global trading...
* '''ISRAEL:''' They obviously got involved with the Resource Wars, and it's pretty much certain that they were targeted with nukes. There are two possibilities:
* The European Commonwealth had reacted to the rapid raising of oil prices to unacceptably high levels by the Middle East's oil-rich states in 2052 by unleashing military action in that region of the world. This intervention ultimately resulted in the destruction of the Israeli city of Tel Aviv in December 2053 by a terrorist nuclear device and a limited nuclear exchange between the conflict's participants in 2054, the world's first since 1945. This is official in universe canon. Israel did not fair well.
** Most likely, Israel suffered widespread nuclear destruction. Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa are gone. The Galilee is a republic trying to rebuild Israel the way the NCR is doing. Their main advantage is that they have plenty of food. The Negev is a more arid version of the Capital Wasteland, with a few communities along the Jordan River, not to mention the Israeli equivalent of the Enclave operating out of the Dimona nuclear facility.
* '''CONTINENTAL EUROPE''': As stated/implied in the games, Europe was badly ravaged by the Resource Wars (which included nuclear exchanges), even before the Great War came. The result is that most of the continent is an irradiated, unlivable hellhole. At most, some tribes and communities survive here and there in the less hostile pockets of land, and as far as anyone knows that’s what’s left of Europe’s population. That is incorrect. In real life, during the Cold War, Switzerland was already making plans for sheltering its entire population underground in case of a nuclear holocaust, and its numerous mountains (and associated highway tunnels, railway tunnels, mines...) provided excellent locations for fallout bunkers, most notably the 1,550-meter-long [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnenberg_Tunnel Sonnenberg Tunnel]]. In the Fallout verse, this would never have been discontinued: in fact, as the global situation deteriorated and it became increasingly obvious that the world would burn, other European nations with claims in the Alps (or eventually other suitable mountain ranges) began to do the same, digging in deep before the bombs would fall.
** Obviously, this wasn’t perfect -- resource deprivation and political and social deterioration from the scarcities and wars and all -- but it was enough for a decent fraction of Europeans to survive underground. Problem was, they couldn’t just leave after a while like (theoretically) Vault-dwellers could -- in the world above, conditions like those of the Glowing Sea would’ve been the rule, not the exception. So they stayed put, and learned to live underground. Most of these bunker complexes likely failed, their inhabitants dying out or degenerating into creatures like the Trogs or the Tunnelers, but some survived and adapted, learning to exploit hydrothermal or geothermal energy to grow food and keep their bunkers running, or finding ways to use shafts and windows to let light but not radiation into their tunnels to form simple farms, becoming increasingly adapted to their new home. By the time of the games, they’re thriving to the point of expansion, tunneling from beneath the mountains to beneath the surrounding flatlands -- and they aren’t recognizably human anymore. Generations of life underground and the occasional radiation leak have made them hunched, pale-skinned, squinty-eyed Morlock expies, like a more extreme version of the Slags from ''Fallout 2''. When, one day, radiation levels die down enough for regular humans to begin to spread through Europe once more, they may be in for a bit of a surprise...
* '''MIDDLE-EASTERN EUROPE''': Mostly unharmed from direct atomic bombing, but having lots of irradiated forests and rivers. The few survivors are in a medieval-esque time, very few guns, mutated horses (or something filling that role) and arrows used mainly for warfare, castles made from scrap rule over the fiefdoms, while smaller bands rampage around. Most are in constant fight with each other, oblivious on what happens beyond their horizons. If one of them would get an old USSR truck and fuel, they would probably start a raid never saw since Attila the Hun. Some possible examples of cultures emerging: post-apocalyptic huns, hussars with bayonet-rifles, knights in scrap-plate armour.

[[WMG: Mothership Zeta is the Lone Wanderer watching a pre war movie]]
The area that you enter Mothership Zeta in is actually just a rare intact pre-war drive in theater. The Lone Wander is simply watching a movie and imagining himself in it.
* Turns the entire game into UnreliableNarrator because you can visually see the area you enter Mothership Zeta without being close enough to interact with it.

[[WMG: Aliens Caused the War]]
Motherhip Zeta's Alien Captive Recorded Log 17 there is an audio recording of someone resisting the alien mind control, in the audio log he was about to give the aliens America's launch codes. . . mabe nuclear apocalypse occurred shortly thereafter?
* No other games in the series treats aliens as canon. The Great War and the nuclear escalation weren't surprises, which is why the Enclave had years of time to prepare for it.

[[WMG: The reason why the United States stayed in cultural stasis is because of the Enclave]]
In the Fallout Universe the Enclave was the secret shadow organization behind the workings of the United States Government before the Great War consumed the world in nuclear fire. Having control over the economy and the flow of information they would be able to brainwash the human populace into believing that the 1950s "Leave it to Beaver/Slice of Life" way of life was the ideal way for every American to live. You might ask why the people wouldn't begin to question their Government and create the counter-culture movements that occurred in our world. Before the Great War the United States Government brutally stopped riots that were held by American citizens showing the Enclave's totalitarian policies influencing the Government; there probably '''was''' a counter-culture movement in the Fallout series like in our world but it was shut down in a similar fashion.

[[WMG: There actually wasn't a cultural stasis in the Fallout series, the Enclave just left behind all the evidence to troll the survivors of the nuclear war]]
Furthermore all evidence that would prove that the Fallout pre-war society was like ours has long since rotted away as it realistically would. Every thing styled in a 1950s vision of the future was just placed there as one big practical joke.
* Alternately, it's Enclave social engineering, as they favor the authoritarian government-meets-1950s American Dream that makes up what we "know" of pre-War Fallout. By the time the Enclave began laying the groundwork for their plan, they'd decided that contemporary America wasn't what they wanted and made the "remnants" of the Old World an elaborate setpiece for their ideal America: An "innocent" time when obedience to the government promised baseball and apple pie, mixed with reliance on Enclave technology, that would attract those living in a post-nuclear world and make them easier to sway with promises of "the good old days."

[[WMG: Fallout 4 will take place in Alaska, or at least have DLC that takes place there, because of its energy and resource importance.]]
The Americans successfully repelled the Chinese from Alaska during World War III/The Resource Wars meaning that the oil was successfully reinstated into American hands where it belonged. Then the Great War happened preventing America from getting the chance to use it. Logically this means that Alaska is the last reserve of oil left on planet Earth and is a gold mine of energy that any post-war society would find highly beneficial, not to mention the vast wilderness of forests that span thousands of miles long and is filled with a vast diversity of animal and plant life. The only reason why it has been left untouched all this time is because the United States has been a Wasteland for so long that traveling that far, especially into a cold Alaskan environment where your troops will freeze their asses off, was too risky. I propose that Fallout 4 will take the NCR ending of Fallout New Vegas as canon and explain that with Hoover Dam under their firm control the NCR felt that they now had enough energy resources to span an expedition to the Frozen Wasteland of Alaska to further improve NCR society.
* Odds are Alaska has little to no oil left. The Enclave refer to the Oil Rig as being over the last accessible oil field. If the Alaskan oil fields were still productive, the Enclave would have fortified it. Although I will concede that a previous never-mentioned, super powerful branch of the Enclave appearing randomly would be Bethesda's style.
* Alaska also isn't a frozen wasteland.
* At this point, oil isn't that important a resource since almost no one has the manufacturing capability to make anything where oil is that important. The reason oil was so useful for the Enclave was because the Enclave had vertibirds, which used oil up until Fallout 3 randomly decided to make them nuclear powered.
* The NCR is over-stretched militarily. Unless they find a way to directly transform electricity into people, then having more energy is not going to improve their situation.
* Mounting expeditions to far away lands because there might be something there is also an egregious waste of resources. Which is part of the reason Fallout 3 is so absurd to reuse West Coast factions.
** '''Jossed,''' it's in UsefulNotes/{{Boston}}. DLC is still possible

[[WMG: The Mysterious Stranger is the immortal Chessmaster behind everything in the games.]]
The Mysterious Stranger was the first man to discover the secret to immortality and survived the nuclear holocaust. Faced with 100's of years to think about it, he roamed the earth seeking out exceptional individuals and manipulated world events slowly but surely to help with his master plan to revitalize humanity. His presence with you is explained by him ensuring that his plans come to fruition.

[[WMG: The LuckStat is minor [[RealityWarper reality warping]] affecting only probabilities and can be boosted by placebo effect/confidence.]]
If luck is the ability to calculate probabilities, how does it explains an increase in critical hits? It's simply impossible to calculate probabilities so fast to get more "lucky hits", even our modern computers couldn't do it. And calculating probabilities would be useless at roulette, yet luck nudges roulette spins in your favor. And then, how could "lucky" shades and the Naughty Nightwear be lucky? The former is a normal looking pair of glasses, the latter a normal looking piece of underwear. The probability calculator implants helps calculating probability, so if the Courier has an 80% probability of a positive event happening, then it should happen, then the courier nudges probabilities in his favor from having probabilities supporting him.

[[WMG: ''Manga/SevenSeeds'' is essentially what happened to Japan in the Fallout-verse.]]
While the titular "7 Seeds" program was supposedly agreed upon by every nation in secret (which only the Japanese seemed to have actually implemented), the other initiative pursued was inspired by Vault-Tec's example: the construction of underground shelters officially to protect their respective country's best and brightest in the event of disaster. But where as American Vaults weren't meant to save anyone [[spoiler:due to them being Enclave social experiments]], the Japanese shelters at least were designed to protect as many of their best citizens and politicians as possible. That doesn't stop the government from getting some Enclave-influenced last-ditch contingencies [[spoiler:such as "culling" the population to keep the shelters alive.]]

By the time the Seeds teams wake up from hibernation, however, most if not all of these shelters would have long been dead. [[spoiler:With Osaka's Ryugyu shelter ending up as a sort of Japanese [[VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas Vault 22]]]].
* Another example is Fugi #8: a top secret[[spoiler:and long-abandoned]] self-sustaining ship that ''may'' have been an attempt to one-up the Enclave's [[VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}} Poseidon Oil Rig]]. It was designed to contain a veritable arsenal of weapons and even its own built in missile silo [[spoiler:that's aimed at Japan as an ultimate form of national suicide]].

The fact that 7 Seeds happens on a meteor apocalypse instead of nuclear apocalypse makes it more suited to the ''Videogame/{{Rage|2011}}''verse instead.

[[WMG: Desmond's next "opponent" is funding the "Institute" that A3-21 escaped from]]
Like Professor Calvert, he's a BrainInAJar. Unlike Calvert, he's not content with this state. The reason the Institute is researching ways to build RidiculouslyHumanRobots is because he wants them to build a Ridiculously Human Body for him.

[[WMG: Every mention of 'nuclear' in the games actually refers to cellular nuclei, not atomic nuclei.]]
In the Fallout world, [[GeneticEngineeringIsTheNewNuke genetic engineering really is the new nuke.]]

[[WMG: The [[Series/DoctorWho TARDIS]] seen in Fallout 1 was not the actual TARDIS.]]
Rather, it's from [[http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/TV-town TV-town]], the location that was present in early designs of Fallout 2. For those of you who did not check the link, TV-town is a town created by an intelligent computer based on 50s and 60s TV shows and populated by androids. Doctor Who aired in 60s, and thusly would fall under its view. The TARDIS encountered in Fallout 1 was not the actual TARDIS, but a ship sent out by TV-town for whatever reason. How it replicated the technology of the time lords is anyone's guess, though.

[[WMG: China wasn't communist, as the Western propaganda claimed, but rather moderately socialist.]]
Really, they were just latching on to a few socialist policies and blowing them out of proportion into the DirtyCommunists they were claimed to be.

[[WMG: China never actually launched at the US.]]
The Enclave engineered a massive cover up so they could take power without the citizens knowing. The White House is still intact, mostly, when it should be a massive crater, it would have been one of the top targets for nuclear strike. In D.C. the only missile that can be found is an American d-7, just like in the museum, so unless China had no ICBM's there should be more missiles. And finally the Divide, how is it possible that in the two hours it took for the war none of the around 15 missiles were launched? The base was never hit by the bombs, so the only reason they would have not been launched would be to prevent starting an actual war with China. As for all the radiation and bombs dropped on the US, they were the cold war gravity-bomb types that would be useless if an actual war was declared.

[[WMG: The aliens were trying to avoid the war]]
In Mothership Zeta you can find logs of the aliens interrogating a american soldier trying to find out what nuclear launch codes are, many people took this to mean that the aliens caused the war, but the enclave had been preparing for it for decades so there is no way that the war came out of nowhere like it would if the aliens did it. i propose that the aliens wanted the nuclear launch codes so that they could dispose of the bombs by sending them into space or whatever averting the war, unfortunately they failed and the world was destroyed, however the aliens did not give up, they had access to life extending technology which allowed them to stay in orbit for as long as it took for the people of earth to become peaceful enough to join the intergalactic community, to this end they occasionally abduct people and perform tests on them to see if they are ready, unfortunately the radiation of the wastelands causes mass mutation resulting in more violent beings like supermutants and feral ghouls, the aliens are aware of this and are working towards a cure if they don't already have one. when they determine that we are ready they would send us the cures and technology needed to rebuild.

[[NiceJobBreakingItHero too bad you up and killed them,]]
* .....[[OhCrap Oh dear Atom,]] why else would they not freeze or execute Sally for her frequent escapes?

[[WMG: Fallout is a BadFuture, not an AlternateUniverse.]]
If UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror never ends, then the ongoing ultranationalist trend of military spending at the cost of domestic investment, seizure of foreign resources instead of developing alternative energy sources, dehumanization of foreigners, invasive government, and erosion of rights will ''[[https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/15091477/ result]]'' in TheThemeParkVersion of America the player sees on newsreels, followed by a nuclear war.
* Going along with this, there was no technological divergence either. Instead, there was a movement in the pre-war world to create technology that is resistant to explosions and radiation, resulting in bulkier and lower-tech but much hardier and long lasting machines. However, it's difficult to find a reason why they'd be so prevalent in the general population since it's unlikely that most people would be willing to downgrade their technological experience.

[[WMG: Ronald Reagan still became President]]
Considering that the red scare never ended in Pre-war America, and with Ronnie's Anti-communist Rhetoric It could be possible that he became President early, Possibly was elected for more than two terms in this world ala Franklin D. Roosevelt or even [[PresidentForLife President for Life]].
* Confirmed. Fallout 2 mentions "the Reagan era" in a holotape.

[[WMG: Nuka Cola tastes like Dr. Pepper (despite being a pastiche of Coca Cola)]]
Plus the metallic tang of radiation. Nuka Cola is said to be a blend of several fruit flavours; as is Dr. Pepper. (This is kind of a "let me show you my Headcanon" WMG)

[[WMG: Fallout doesn't take place on our Earth, but on [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Omega IV]].]]
Backstory involving a war between Communist Chinese and Americans? Check.

Post-apocalyptic wasteland? Check.

Non-native Americans in tribal Native American-esque setting? Check.

Some time in the future of the Fallout timeline, the Americans will become the Yangs and the Chinese will become the Kohms.

[[WMG: Mount Rushmore will appear in a Fallout game.]]
It may be used as an Enclave base. Alternately, the head are all largely destroyed, with Teddy being the only one completely intact.

[[WMG: More guesses at the state of the rest of the world]]
* '''China''' is probably even worse off than the US. Given the US campaigns mentioned, it's likely that they'd already lost quite a bit of land, meaning it might have lost part of its nuclear arsenal. The presence of large numbers of US soldiers on China's soil would make it possible that some of them survived, though probably mostly as ghouls (With the disturbing possibility of ghouls in power armor). We know that FEV was originally developed for deployment against China, and there might have been some quantities present for testing, but probably not nearly as much, meaning less horrible mutants. Given the resource wars and the mention of the chinese army in Mongolia, it's likely that China took over the surrounding countries much like the US did, and much of '''east and south-east asia''' would have likely suffered the same fate as china. Depending on whether or not '''India and Pakistan''' had nukes, they might have avoided this fate, but in that case they probably nuked each other during the Resource Wars.
* '''Oceania''' is probably doing the best out the various continents. Resource shortages would have led to civil wars, and the larger islands (Java, Sumatra, Australia, New Guinea, etc) might have seen foreign intervention to secure resources or tactical locations, which could have in turn led to being nuked during the Great War. However, there's a ''lot'' of tiny islands out there, distant enough to not suffer nuclear explosions, and small enough to not be worth conquering for resources. The biggest problem would be radiated or FEV monstrosities from the US and chinese coasts roaming the seas, but those are pretty survivable. This is really the only place (besides possibly the Soviet-Union, see below) where remnants of pre-war governments could still be in place.
* '''Africa and South America''' were probably plundered empty even before the Resource wars in europe and the middle east, because why risk nuclear war if you can still plunder people without nukes? There's several countries in South America and Africa with decent oil reserves, which would make them primary targets. However, because they were already plundered empty by the time the real heavy fighting began, they might not have seen ''too'' much nuking. Smaller-scale wars between the various nations over the last remaining scraps of resources, followed by civil wars, starvation and anarchy seem likely, making the current situation similar to Europe and the Middle-East (just slightly less radio-active)
* Speaking of, '''Europe and the Middle-East''' were likely torn apart by conventional warfare. The fact that they actually had a nuclear exchange with one another without leading to Mutual Destruction makes it likely that neither side actually had all that many nukes to begin with, so no radioactive wasteland, but there could still be a variety of mutated beasties roaming around. All the big cities would have probably still been hit, but plenty of survivors in the rest of the various countries to wage war for the remaining scraps of resources. Like with Africa and south-america, this would probably have been followed by civil wars, starvation and anarchy. New states are likely to have arisen in the remaining arable areas (which there would be more of than in the states, due to less nuclear fire), but the limited resources means that these probably remain hostile to one another.
* The '''Soviet Union''' is the big question mark. It seems to have survived the Europe/Middle-eastern conflict just fine, meaning it's unlikely to have faced much trouble during the Resource Wars afterwards. For any nation in Europe or the Middle east to attack the Union after that would have been suicide, and the Union's vast reserves of resources means it would have little reason to attack other countries. That leaves the question: Was the Soviet Union targeted during the Great War? Was the US afraid that they would join with China's attack, and shoot first? Was China afraid that the Soviets were eyeing their resources, and target them too? If neither happened, it's entirely possible that the Union survived the Great War, though it would still be troubled by fallout blowing in from the east and south. If either of the nations targeted the Soviets, its western cities, eastern sea-board and transcaucasia are likely to look much like the radiated wastelands of North America and China, though there might still be some good arable land in the relatively underdeveloped center.

[[WMG: State of certain cities and countries]]

* ''New York:'' A giant crater.
* ''Chicago:'' Ruled by the remnants of the enclave scout base that was built there. Largely similar to the ruins of boston.
* ''Florida:'' An Overgrown Swampland, with scattered ruins of cities that have been completely enveloped by the swamplands.
** One exception; Walt Disney envisioned EPCOT (which stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) to be an actual city where people would work and live with new technology presented by the very best in industry. After Walt Disney's death, the company decided against building and managing a city, especially without Walt's guidance. In the Fallout-verse, he managed to finish it before he died, creating a self-sustaining community that weathered the bombs relatively well due to its distance from military targets. It's a bit creepy as they have a Nuka World-esque obsession with pre-war cartoons, but they have ''continuity'' with the pre-war US.
* ''Alaska:'' Unscathed by the devastation, the few vaults failed miserably and the environment is unsuited for human habitation.
* ''Mexico:'' Annexed by the winner of the Mojave war.
* ''Ontario:'' Frozen over almost entirely, with well heated and insulated settlements. The Ruling factions are a pre-war militia, which survived the great war, a large group of FEV mutants who were experimented on prior to the war which demonstrate greater intelligence than the East Coast strain and an Enclave group that has been separated from the oil rig and has evolved divergently into a less extreme governing body called "The New American Confederacy".
* ''Quebec:'' Be Careful what you wish for eh? The Independent Quebec Collapsed under pressure from the Super Mutants, Weather and the New American Confederacy.
* ''Newfoundland:" A Viking Culture has evolved, primarily raiding, fishing and trading. Despite it's savagery, there are almost no raiders and the culture has remained stable for a century.
* ''Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan:'' Frozen Wastes, that lacked any influential factions to build up a civilization. The result is scattered raider gangs and rough frontier towns.
* ''The Canadian Territories:'' COLD. COLD. COLD. COLD. COLD.
* ''British Columbia:'' Attempts to replicate the success of the NCR and Newfoundlandic Viking Fleet resulted in Mad Max with boats.
* ''Europe:'' The Glowing Sea. For Miles. And Miles. And Miles. And Miles. And Miles.
* ''Australia:'' A variety of scrubland and quagmires, full of Bunyip (Giant Wombat), Devil Rats (Tasmanian Devils), DropBears (Koala), Radsharks (Bull Sharks) Funnel Trappers (Funnelweb Spiders), Pakkieola (Giant Crocs) and the Demonslange (Tiger Snake). The Few communities live in the ruins of urban cities, as the Quagmire is relatively swarmed with deadly wildlife. It is ruled by an NCR like faction, the Australian Protectorate Militia.
* ''Africa:'' Due to immense fallout from both wars, there is little human life.
* ''South America:'' Hellish. Organized Mirelurk Hives overrun small settlements and the Stonemen Raiders, who wipe towns without leaving any survivors. What few settlements exist can vanish in a day, consumed by the jungle. Only settlements in ruined cities like Manuaus, now under a lawless dictatorship, that avoided the worst are defensible from the Stonemen and the Mirelurks.
* ''Russia:'' Caught in the crossfire of the great war, russia is akin to america and canada, except with more scattered populations
* ''China:'' The Chinese is largely irradiated, but isolated settlements have evolved in the southern ruins and the mountains, connected by the New Chinese Air Trading Corp.
** Crossover with Jade Empire? Lots of airships; savage, unstable winds that restrict travel, and that one freaky-deaky story in Tien's Landing where a ship crew dies of radiation poisoning in uncharted waters? Magic and chi-based martial arts arising from a combination of Eastern mysticism, ''Fallout's'' functional psychic powers, and lack of gunsmithing infrastructure surviving? [[SelfDeprecatingHumor Me overthinking things like a jackass?]] Yes please. '''-Woggs123'''
* ''Japan:'' The Fallout wiped out everyone who wasn't a ghoul. The lack of vaults meant the japan was stuck with just it's ghoul population.

[[WMG: Vault 0 really was the nucleus of the vaults, but its true purpose was to monitor the Vault Experiments while simultaneously experimenting with neuro-computer technology.]]
Most of the dwellers inside Vault 0 consisted of Vault-Tec personnel who were to oversee the Vault Experiments. Those who weren't (politicians, artists, etc.) had their brains extracted and hooked up to the Calculator's neuro-network. [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Unfortunately for Vault-Tec, the experiment went horribly wrong and the Calculator either killed or lobotomized everyone inside Vault 0.]]

[[WMG: Radiation in the Fallout universe is [[ArtisticLicensePhysics screwy]] because [[AWizardDidIt ghosts]]]]
No, really, I'm not just spouting EpilepticTrees. The opening cinematic for Fallout 2 describes the Great War as a tribal mystic would understand it, talking about great tribes killing each other with spears of nuclear fire, turning their spirits into part of the background radiation. At first it just sounds like the ''Film/MadMax'' homage it probably is, until you consider [[FunctionalMagic ghosts, psychics, and angry cosmic horrors]] have tangible power in the Fallout universe. And the Great War made billions of angry ghosts in the span of a few hours.

[[WMG: The Vaults were set on a regional time locks.]]
The west coast has had over a century to recreate society this is because it was were the enclave assumed it wouldn't be as heavenly hit as the east coast, and would be less rebellious then the troublesome Canadians, the rise of the NCR was totally unforeseen, thus they worked under the assumption that the could make a power base in the west and move east, thus places the length of time of each vault experiment slightly longer the further east you go, this expains why it only took 20-50 years for the west coast vaults to open compared to the hundreds of years for the east cost vaults (excusing a few changes here and there as either control groups or very specific experiments (ie where better to test gambling atics then veges))but the enclave assumed that they would win and any "Unopenable" vaults could be contacted once the elclave had total contorl over america

[[WMG: Radiation in the Fallout Universe isn't the energy emissions studied in our universe...]]
...It's the taint of the eldritch abominations lurking behind the scenes. It's clearly established that radiation there does not work like radiation here. That's because it's not the same thing. Follow my thinking. Every time we've been somewhere where the eldritch is strong (the Dunwich Building, the Dunwich Borers, etc) there's always ghouls about (or in the case of Krivbeknih, mutated swampfolk). Now you might say that's because these places are abandoned, allowing ghouls to move in, but the logs in the Dunwich suggest the people become ghouls after they get there. But these places are also always radioactive in some way, in particular, the obelisk under the Dunwich building itself emits radiation despite no evident reason it should do so. The pit at the bottom of the Borer's quarry? Despite being extremely deep groundwater, it's as radioactive as any water on the surface. All this heavily implies a relation between the elder ones and radiation. Now, while radiation causing mutations is documented extensively in the real world... but nowhere has it ever turned sea life into giant abominations with psychic-blast attacks, iguanas into slavering death beasts, or humans into ageless zombies. Across the board, the mutated creatures of the wasteland are super aggressive and far more deadly than their real life counterparts. To me, this sounds more like an eldritch taint that simple mutation. This also explains the little things like while despite (most) ghouls not actively emitting radiation, they still irradiate you on touch, again something more inline with a quasi-magical taint than a quasi-scientific one. Also at the bottom of the quarry are a pair of mininukes next to the sacrificial knife. Why are they there? Clearly no one's been down there since before the war, and back then they would be much more difficult for civilians to obtain, so it must've been important to them. They might be offerings, or symbolic representations as devices that spread their eldritch taint into the world. Or, alternatively, the eldritch ones may have put them their themselves for YOU to find and use.

[[WMG: The Sovietunion isn't an American ally, but not too interested in helping China]]
The US' foreign policy would have made it hard for them to join forces with Russia or anyone else - instead, they were the "laughing third" during the Sino-American war. The US and the USSR still had their Cold War going on, and when World War 3 came around, the Russians launched everything on the capitalists as well.
Let us say that the world was stuck in the 50s culturally. Mao's cultural reforms were tried and failed, or threw away by the more hardliners after him. No perestroika either. The USSR and China kept a friendly, but nonetheless cold connection to each other, the Chinese always carefully waiting the Soviet invasion that did not came, because WW3 came faster.
* In aurora369's headcanon, this was exactly the reason why the USSR is not the leader of the communist bloc; they deliberately rejected the Brezhnev doctrine and retrenched into their own borders to survive the coming apocalypse. Let those cocky revisionist Maoists sacrifice themselves to crush capitalism, the Soviet Union will dig into the ground, it will build secret cities, survive and inherit the world. They did not launch during the actual war, but launched everything as a coup de grace at both USA and China as the dust from the initial exchange settled, to make sure neither could rise from the ashes.

[[WMG: There has only ever been one Dogmeat - He's immortal!]]
I have no proof for this theory; I just think it would be interesting if Dogmeat was biologically immortal. It's not unreasonable that someone tinkered on making "super dogs" before 77 for use in warfare, and Dogmeat could very well be a succesful case of this. He seems like he's unreasonably smart for a dog, tough as hell and very dangerous, even for a large shaeffer. This could be chalked up to GameplayAndStorySegregation, but it's a possibility.

Now, let's add a layer... Dogmeat seems to be very, VERY fond of people in blue Vault suits, doesn't he? Could he have been low-key programmed for loyalty towards american citizens, and so is only truly loyal towards people irrevocably American? Or maybe Dogmeat is simply smart or perceptive enough to know a hero when he sees one? Mama Murphy from Fallout 4 mentions that Dogmeat has a mind of his own, and that he is fiercely independent. She also thinks that it isn't a coincidence that Dogmeat chooses to go with the player in Fallout 4; supporting the theory that Dogmeat knows more than any normal dog would about the world he inhabits!
* While this likely will never be confirmed, there is basis for it in-universe as cyberdogs are notoriously long-lived. Plus, according to Old World Blues, the New Vegas Clinic and certain doctors in Fallout 2, it's possible to create cybernetic enhancements that aren't immediately obvious. As for the theory on superdogs, that's hard canon due to Rex of New Vegas. He's a pre-war cyberdog created for a police K9 unit, and except for curable neural degradation he's in prime fighting condition 200 years later. Plus, Dogmeat in Fallout 1 canon dies after smashing into a disintegration wall only to assist his master's grandson in the next game. While it's intended as an Easter egg, I headcanon it on the basis that there's already a sh*tload of actual magic elsewhere.
* To add more fuel to this, beating Old World Blues with Roxie alive and the Cyberdog Facility operational results in the facility manufacturing packs of police dogs who begin protecting and policing towns across the wasteland. -woggs123

[[WMG: A huge percentage of the Wasteland's problems can be attributed to the origins of [[http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Jet Jet.]]]]
Myron states that he was able to make Brahmin manure into amphetamines because pre-War biotech companies fed defective protein extracts to their cattle. That makes sense from both the CorruptCorporateExecutive front, but why would there still be amphetamines in mutant cow shit almost a century after the Apocalypse? ''Because it infected them with a prion disease'' - feeding the less-valuable parts of livestock to other was rather common... until [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy Bovine spongiform encephalophy]] was discovered. The protein extract just creates amphetamines instead of eating holes in people's brains, but when people eat Brahmin, they're likely to get infected themselves, and what do you think having a steady amount of amphetamines in your system 24/7 would do to your ''temper?'' Everyone in the wasteland is rather trigger-happy, but even the worst parts of Eastern Europe aren't filled with human tanneries and people screaming about bleeders. Because they don't have prion diseases making amphetamines part of their biochemistry.

[[WMG: Felines are well alive in Fallout]]
Most domestic cats are thought to be extinct in Fallout 1 and New Vegas, showing up in 4 first canonically. However, felines are ambush predators and well capable to survival, maybe a bit more than domestic dogs. Who to say that there are no radcats in the wilderness, or more wild cats roaming the wastes? Mutated and not super predators, but near the top of most food chains where humanity or large predators aren't too common.

[[WMG: Fallout and Asimov's Foundation novels are in the same universe]]
House won in New Vegas, he built his starships, and humanity spread across the galaxy. Hundreds or thousands of years later, the radioactivity of Earth is slowly diminishing but still present, and the origins of the human race have been forgotten.

[[WMG: The protagonists of all the main games are all related.]]
It's already canon that the Chosen One's grandfather is the Vault Dweller, and that he has illegitimate son with one of the Bishop women in New Reno. Since not much is known about him after the events of Fallout 2, it's possible that he managed to settle down and have a kid sometime after the game, like his friend Cassidy. And that child of his grew up to become a courier for the Mojave Express, who ends up saving the Wasteland, like his dear old dad and great-grandpa before him.

To tie the East Coast protagonists to the West, there's the Sole Survivor and their spouse, who could have been everyone's common ancestor. Nate and/or Nora could have had relatives in California who ended up in Vault 13, whose descendant became the lucky Vault Dweller tasked to find the water chip. As for the Lone Wanderer, their ancestor could be another relative of Nate and/or Nora's, who managed to survive the bombs and kept the bloodline running for two hundred years. One of their descendants became a scientist in the Capital Wasteland, who had a child with another scientist. Said child was taken to Vault 101, left the vault at 19 to find their missing dad, and ended up earning the nickname "Lone Wanderer" during their adventures in the wastes.

[[WMG: A justification to introduce horses in future installments]]
Horses are extinct in the Fallout world so for a future game, there is a vault that houses DNA of pre-apocalypse flora and fauna and it's up to you to reintroduce them back into the world.

[[WMG: If a ''Fallout'' game taking place in the Pacific Northwest (with the map spanning from British Columbia to Northern Oregon) is ever made...]]
The area is ripe for the picking, and they're not opposed to trying out new locations (As shown with ''3'', ''New Vegas'', and ''4''), so we might as well speculate on what will be in this hypothetical game[[note]]feel free to add your own guesses here[[/note]].
* A faction devoted to The Seattle Seahawks in the same vein as The Kings from ''New Vegas'' will be prominent (possibly thinking that football players were some form of titans who did ancient battles). You will be able to learn unarmed/thrown weapon combat techniques.
* The player will have the ability to request rides from aircraft and seacraft not unlike the carriage systems in Skyrim, possibly even customizing their own vehicles.
* A major Russian pressence, possibly indicating an attempt at colonization of the former US.

[[WMG: DDT was never banned in the Fallout universe]]
The bloatflies, the rarity of birds and small mammals, the air with the toxic smog that doesn't give radiation poisoning...
* Also, with what we know about the Fallout US government, how likely is it that they would have bowed to the people after Rachel Carson published Silent Spring?
** How likely is it that they would have let her publish it at all?

[[WMG: Certain perks are mutations.]]
* ''Rad Child, Rad Resistance, Lead Belly, Atomic!,'' and ''Ghoulish'' are the results of your body adapting to radiation. ''Rad Child/Ghoulish'' and ''Atomic!'' outright allows your body to beneficially utilize radioactive compounds in the manner of extremophilic micro-organisms. ''Aquaboy/girl'' is a mutation that creates fully-functioning gills in your character's throat (and, later, chromatophores in their skin), which is why you can breathe under water (and become, aha, slippery when wet at level 2). ''Refractor'' is those same chromatophores reacting to laser beams, allowing you to somewhat harmlessly absorb the energy. ''Nuclear Anomaly'' is similar to the radiation burst Glowing Ones use, but far more powerful and subject to PowerIncontinence.

[[WMG: Nuka-Cola tastes like Dr. Pepper instead of Coke]]
* The Fallout Wiki states that its taste is actually a blend of 17 fruit flavours, plus cola nut. Likewise, Dr. Pepper.

[[WMG: The power armour worn by [[VideoGame/FalloutTactics the Midwestern Brotherhood]] was built by the Enclave.]]
It's occasionally noted that the Brotherhood of Steel contingent dispatched to the Midwest in FO Tactics ended up wearing power armour of a completely different model to the T-51bs the West Coast Brotherhood wore, despite explicitly not having the resources to manufacture such an entirely new armoury. It's possible, though, that they didn't build them themselves. Rather, they simply found them, possibly mothballed in the facilities that they would later spruce up and use as their various command bunkers over the course of the game, and were able to restore them to working order by cannibalising their T-51bs, which had been damaged in the downing of their airship.

Their good fortune is thanks to the Enclave. After the Great War, the parts of the US government that would become (or already had become) the Enclave sealed themselves away and kept up work on power armour development. Rather than continue to refine the T-series, they instead started on a new line - for the sake of argument, let's call it the V-Series. None of these models were much of an improvement on existing technology, but they were at least sufficient for duty out in the Wasteland. One such mission was to Illinois to secure Vault Zero and the Calculator, and either the troops sent out were clad in V-Series armour or the Enclave established an outpost in the area that was responsible for its development. Eventually they decided that Vault Zero wasn't worth trying to secure for whatever reason - maybe they didn't have the resources to deal with the Reavers, the Super Mutants, et al., maybe they caught wind of the BoS airship approaching and didn't fancy tangling with them - and so they pulled out of the Midwest, leaving only an armoury of V-Series PA suits that they didn't have room to take with them.

This also ties into [[VideoGame/Fallout3 Fallout 3]], where the Enclave is equipped with armour that looks nothing like the X-01 armour they were wearing in [[VideoGame/Fallout2 FO2]] - but it DOES look like the Midwestern Brotherhood's armour. It may be that the X-01 was developed on the West Coast - maybe at Navarro, maybe on the Oil Rig - and the creation of such a clear technological advantage over the Brotherhood's T-51, combined with the Brotherhood's decline since the defeat of the Unity, finally gave the Enclave the confidence to come out of the shadows and begin operating much more openly (and maybe even send some missions out to the Commonwealth, hence the presence of X-01 armour over there). Alas, not only did they get smacked back down by the Chosen One for their trouble, but the ensuing war with the NCR destroyed not only their presence in California, but also their capacity to build and maintain X-01 armour, and thus the Capital Wasteland contingent of the Enclave were forced to rely on the older V-Series armour.

[[WMG: The V.A.T.S. is an attempt at copying [[Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar Hokuto Shinken]]....[[GunFu with]] [[GunKata guns]]]]
''Fist of the North Star'' takes place in a post-apocalyptic Japan. It isn't hard to imagine tales of Kenshiro's exploits would spread overseas. American {{Action Survivor}}s would very much be interested in a quicker and easier way to kill in a world where killing is most often living, and so tried to replicate Hokuto Shinken through technological means.

[[WMG: Sword Art Online would ultimately lead to Fallout.]]
After somehow the incident involving Glowgen and RATH leaked, Japan's status as US' protectorate was revoked and Japan being hit by an embargo following the "SAO Incident" which took the lives of thousands of players, and illegal AI research, which affects foreign players as well as Japanese players. In response, Japan, which was taken over by right wing party after US military withdrawals, fired back by starting the "New Plague" in the US and also attacking neighboring countries. World War III (which happens concurrent with the European-Middle East War and before the US-Chinese Resource Wars or even The Great War) happens proper, when in retaliation, Japan is nuked to oblivion by both US (which coincidentally testing the "Fat Man" nuclear catapult) and China, not before the US forcefully seizing all the AI and VR assets of the Japanese. Society in the US were reformed to remove foreign, especially Japanese, influence. However the smartest minds of Japan being transferred to the US in secret with deals of lifetime servitude to the US as fellow researchers or lifetime servitude to the Chinese as slaves. Their research led to the idea of Vault experiments (directly inspired by Kikuoka's Underworld experiment) and virtual reality devices, such as the Vault 112 "Tranquility Lane", the Operation Anchorage simulator, the bomber plane simulator the US Air Force, and later Boomers, use, and the Memory Lounger as used by Dr. Amari. Kikuoka were then reassigned to the CIT, given the same life-extending systems as Mr. House, and later becoming the first Father of the Institute, inspiring the creation of the synth, and then, in his dying days, hire Kellogg to find a replacement Father.
** There is also the fact that most robots and AI in the Fallout-verse were personable and logical, as if they're "bottom-up" (self-learning) instead of "top-down" (pre-programmed).
** And also how the Robobrain is one of the crude attempt of General Atomics, independent to the CIT, to reproduce the creation of fluctlights through a different method, instead of "copying the soul", they simply directly use intact brains.

[[WMG: In turn, the V.A.T.S. technology is based of the [[Literature/AccelWorld Brain Burst]].]]
Only localized, doesn't cost any points other than the user's mental and physical stamina (AP), and tied to the Pip-Boy.

[[WMG: Korea become unified, and a new Chinese state.]]
While to some lesser extent they can keep their culture and language, a Chinese intelligence program successfully united both Koreas. When the Great War happened, not only that they're prepared, but they're largely untouched by the effects of the nuclear bombings. Except that it was affected by radioactive wind, and by the time the storm's over, Korea become some kind of a HiddenElfVillage.

[[WMG: Both models of G.E.C.K are canonical.]]
Doctor Stanislaus Braun created the first handful of Garden of Eden Creation Kits as essentially [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan micro-Genesis Devices]] - technological miracles of unparalleled terraforming capability - because he was a "sorcerer-scientist" genius. But before this model of G.E.C.K could be finalised for production and issued to Vaults, he decides that rebuilding the world is no fun and buggers off to Vault 112. This was a problem for Future-Tec because he didn't leave behind any notes that would allow his colleagues of more mundane scientific prowess to replicate his work. Judging it to be a lost cause, they go back to the drawing board and instad produce the lesser version that the Fallout Bible implies the G.E.C.K to be - a post-apocalypse toolkit that, while considerably less miraculous, can at least put together a decent settlement like Vault City or New Arroyo and give newly released Vault dwellers a stable settlement on the outside.

[[WMG: Ray Bradbury's ''Literature/TheVeldt'' takes place in the ''Fallout'' universe.]]
It's set in an unspecified future where 50s-era American society coexists with futuristic technology, most notably a fully automated SmartHouse where the nursery is basically a holodeck. The house is noted to be cutting-edge and expensive, so it might have been a prototype or first-run [=RobCo=]/General Atomics product, maybe an attempt to expand on their household robotics line; it's also called the "Happylife Home," a cutesy name thematic with ''Fallout''-verse consumer-grade products like Mister Handy and Miss Nanny. The house is implied to act independantly thanks to its A.I. and the holographic nursery manages to murder the parents, both of which are neatly in line with the AIIsACrapshoot and casual-to-nonexistant safety regulations of ''Fallout''; the nursery was even originally a tool to monitor and analyze child subjects, which sounds like the kind of dubious tech/experiments that proliferate in the ''Fallout''-verse. The holograms are extremely realistic, with temperature changes, smell, etc, so while not on the scale of the Operation: Anchorage sim or the Vault 112 virtual reality, it could be an early form of that tech or a downgraded variant for the general public. ''The Veldt'' could easily take place before the Great War, with the incident likely covered up by whoever was involved and the Happylife Home discontinued, possibly because of potential hazards but probably because [=RobCo=]/General Atomics didn't want lawsuits or bad press.\\
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Additionally, the nameless "mechanical genius" responsible for the holodeck nursery is almost certainly [[MadScientist Stanislaus]] [[CompleteMonster Braun]], who was amused and maybe impressed after he heard that his creation managed to kill two people. It may have inspired the "game" he plays with the unfortunate inhabitants of Vault 112.

[[WMG: Pre-War America perpetrated a genocide against Muslim-Americans before the bombs fell]]
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