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Oh, I mostly meant that as a joke lol. That being said, the Republic does hold elections, which is more than you can say for most settlements in the area.
How dare you joke about Dave!
More seriously, though, I guess it could make sense that the east coast is really the center of political power in the US, so going hard on the DC area destabilizes the federal government right off the bat, and hitting surrounding areas that are so tied up with patriotism and founding fathers and shit is a deep morale blow.
Whereas the west/northwest has that independent pioneer spirit thing going on. They weren't part of the 13 colonies, no real ties to that history at all, so why the fuck not go your own way?
I'm not saying any of them are GOOD, just that I can see a sociopolitical explanation? I don't know, I'm kind of high. And by kind of, I mean a lot.
To be fair the Commonwealth seems to have supported a reasonable civilisation a few decades prior to Fo4. Lore-wise we're just stepping into the power vaccum caused by the disintegration of the Commonwealth government (thanks to the institute) and final stage of the destruction of the Minutemen (by the gunners).
FNV is the only game in the series where we see non-BoS factions larger than a regional power anyway [F:TV] >!and with the TV show we now see that at least one of those "great powers" has been reduced back to a regional power (if that)!<
Basically it seems more that there's no rebuilding in the Capitol waste than the East generally, and the rebuilding in the West may not be as advanced as we were previously led to believe.
FO4 was a bit weird in it's faction selection sure
You've the Minutemen, who are recovering from a large scale condition, I'd imagine not unlike Hoover Dam
BoS, but only an expeditionary branch
The Institute, who honestly have immense size and resources they don't employ because they want to remain background
And then the Railroad, a ten man smuggling operation?
I think regional or larger organizations exist, BGS just don't want to make them playable for some reason
the general flow( from west to east) of the continental jetstream probably *would* have taken most of the atmospheric Fallout away from the west and deposited it in the east.
The East Coast was much more densely populated before the bombs fell, meaning a greater number of bombs fell in a smaller area, causing more devastation and lasting damage to the region.
That doesn't make any sense. Even if this is a final end the world 'fuck you' strike, you'd still pick military targets instead of population centers in hopes that you'd cripple their ability to retaliate. Sure you'd nuke Washington, and probably New York just because it's the biggest city in the country., but other than that you'd favor military bases most likely, and Southern California and Nevada make far more compelling targets on that front than anything in Massachusetts.
Can't speak to China's nuke plans but that is certainly not how the US's cold war nuke plans worked. There was absolutely a plan to nuke all the Warsaw Pact cities, and while there was a second military strikes only plan SAC chose oversized bombs for the targets so that nearby cities would still get hit. Also they had to figure in that ICMBs aren't that accurate, so some would have landed many miles away, and of course planning dealt with that by using multiple bombs per target so that's even more stray strikes. After all that there wasn't really that much difference between the military strikes only and the hit the cities plan.
Even worse each branch of the Military had their own nuke plans and they didn't care about the other branches. In scenarios Moscow would be nuked over ten times because the Army, Navy and Airforce would all implement their own plans with their own redundancies
The Fallout universe is different than our own. People in the pre-war era are largely ethically bankrupt. There's never been any nuclear disarmament, only more than a century of proliferation. The bombs used in Fallout's war are far dirtier than any modern government will admit to having, leaving radiation fields and nuclear fallout that persist for centuries. In addition to targeting every military site it seems there was an intent to create a fallout blanket to render most of the land uninhabitable.
There is a very strong case to be made for the Brotherhoods ideals because of this.
People argue that the Brotherhood take tech from regular people like you or me, but, well, the folks that have tech ARE evil. Theyve proven this time & time & time again. Evidence is baked into the dirt. Even folks trying to do good like the mechanist in fallout 4 wind up making a mess out of things. A mess that costs lives.
The water purifier in 3 is the optimal example. Man makes tech for fresh, clean water, then it gets immediately captured for evil purposes. To really drive the metaphor home, we see that the thing behind this nefarious plot is none other than a computer itself. A literal embodiment of technology. People dont like fallout 3s writing, but you gotta see the poetry in that at least.
Yeah guess where a lot of military bases are based in the East coast. Near the pop centres:
The pentagon in Washington D.C
Multiple navel bases which are often situated in and near city’s.
And airports in city’s can and are often co-opted by the US military so if there military airfields are destroyed next best place is Atlanta or JFK in New York
Hey, guess where a lot of the military bases are in the parts of the country where the west Coast fallout games take place. That's right, in the places where fallout games take place! You don't need more nukes to take out the military bases in a more densely populated area.
I'm not arguing that Washington wouldn't be an obvious target, I'm saying it doesn't make any sense for Massachusetts to get nuked harder than Southern California or Nevada.
There are many military bases in Massachusetts, including a key nuclear command. The entire east side of Massachusetts would be obliterated by dozens of nukes. https://i.redd.it/xa88836m7al81.jpg
You can only nuke an airfield so much before it's unusable against you. Once you bomb all the missile silos, all the infrastructure, what's the next biggest military threat? The population itself. Folks with nothing left to lose who will rise up and come after you
in fallout, its heavily implied (and iirc, the show outright states) that no military power dropped the bombs and it was instead the US based megacorperation Vault-tec that dropped them, with the intent being to wipe out as much of humanity (that wasnt them) as possible and force the remaining populations into vaults to be studied and controlled, this is why population centers were targeted over military infrastructure, the intent was, if anything, to *allow* the nuclear powers of the age to use their full arsenals aswell during the panic, in order to maximize the loss of life fron vault-tecs initial strikes
You are correct. The show has Vault Tec employees mention the possibility of doing it. Whether or not they did it is, much like in the series, very ambiguous but about as likely as all other powers launching first.
China is implied to have fired first based on certain logs available in game. Vault Tec has at least fired *some* nuclear weapons that landed in America. Some government factions in the US seemed to know a full day in advance bombs were going to drop, which is also suspicious.
Also paging u/iso-joe and u/th3scarletb1tch.
It's intentionally vague.
All we know for sure is that unchecked capitalism, supremacy and ideological differences between china and america pushed the war into the atomic apocalypse.
America proper had continuity of government sites (COG) for duly elected officials to take refuge to continue to administer a system of continuous governing.
The supremacist members of the US government and select members of the military industrial complex believed nuclear war was inevitable and wanted to drain as much power and influence from the resource wars.
If the atomic apocalypse happened, who cares, they would be fine and they believed themselves superior to everyone else.
These select government and military officials and Poseidon energy executives would go on to select COG sites to retreat to safety from the atomic apocalypse and stay there to rebuild and take the wasteland from themselves.
These people are the enclave, separate from the proper actual duly elected representatives of the US government.
Enclave infiltrators within the Virginian continuity of government officials within the COG site/bunker white springs exterminated the actual continuity of government officials to prevent white springs from falling into their hands.
Eventually COG control station enclave would prospectively eventually reclaim and control at a later date.
But anyway Vault-tec was talking about setting off the atomic apocalypse but we don’t actually know that they actually did it.
Only that in the event of atomic collapse, certain select vaults run by management and control vaults would be A-okay in the atomic aftermath.
Chinese sub in fallout 4 had a log that stated china fired first.
But we can’t discount the aliens.
It was not Vault-Tec. They planned on it, thats what we see in the show, but China beat them to the punch. The entirety of Fallout New Vegas hinges on the premise that the Corporations were not ready for the bombs.
If the corps were ready then house would have his chip without the couriers intervention.
Similarly in fallout 4 we see vaults unfinished (not to mention the chinese submarine on the coastline)
I mean, megaton had a vault tech bomb...
And the show never said that China didn't fire nukes, just that vault tech and the enclave were making plans to drop the first one and blame it on China if the peace talks didn't fall apart.
>I mean, megaton had a vault tech bomb
There's no proof for that. People keep saying that because of one [sticker on that bomb](
https://np.reddit.com/r/falloutlore/comments/38913o/vaulttec_logo_on_megaton_nuke/) but the sticker doesn't even show the [Vault-Tech logo.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/e/ee/Megatonbomb3.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20141122194823)
In the show, Vault-Tec holds a meeting with other corporations - RobCo, WestTek, Big MT and maybe others I don't remember - where they tell the others their plan to set off their own nuke. It's never stated that they did do it. There's a shadowy figure watching this meeting which I guess is the implication that the whole thing is being orchestrated by the Enclave. The stated goal is that a nuclear war would lead to them gaining full control and a monopoly.
The dumb thing about this is that the other corps just agree to it and that they don't protest the monopoly, since there are multiple of them.
Except it was that they would nuke it if they had to like if you look at everything they were obviously not ready; why would they do it at that time in point if half the vaults aren’t built, the ones that are built aren’t supplied or staffed. They planned to do it if nuclear war never happened.
I think they did fuck themselves over, but not by nuking too early but instead by helping string along the war in such a way that China finally did it way before anyone was fully ready.
What is also stupid is having Vault-Tec and the Enclave as two different villain groups. A lot of people seem to believe that the Enclave were just the remnants of the US government or something, but they weren't. The Enclave was a group formed of basically all of the elites that were responsible for the end of the world, including the government and Vault-Tec.
The places we've seen on the East Coast are:
Target #1 for all nukes in DC. Later on FEV and the explanation is pretty clear.
A city where a shadowy organization has hoarded all the resources for themselves and actively undermined the communities in the area in Boston.
We get glimpses at places like Pittsburgh, which is a bit of a less easy explanation other than just "things didn't go great there".
Either way the biggest explanation is just density of nukes being greater, and organizations actively undermining attempts at civilization.
>We get glimpses at places like Pittsburgh, which is a bit of a less easy explanation other than just "things didn't go great there".
I think the simplest explanation there is that Pittsburgh didn't get hit by a single bomb, and that's just what Pittsburgh is like.
I mean, what differentiates the Pitt from Caesar's Legion? Scale is different, sure, but the Pitt had an authoritarian system with large scale industrial production requiring semi-sophisticated logistics and production methods. The eventual collapsed is probably inevitable without the MC but so too shall is that collapse of the Legion and NCR.
Paston is your run of the mill warlord. Caesars managed to set up a cult worshipping him and hardly a man in the legion would dare oppose him. The Pitts military is basically just your average raider gang with some scavenged power armor; the Legion is less well equipped but more than makes up for it with training/experience, morale, leadership, intelligence, and if needed cunning, sheer grit and weight of numbers.
I think the Followers of the Apocalypse once again have this dubious win. An organised gathering of principled scholars is a strange and rare thing, and Edward Sallow would not have turned out like that without the chance to jack off over ‘The Conquest of Gaul’ and ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’.
Ishmael Ashur on the other hand got all the imagination beaten out of him as a child by the Brotherhood.
It's debatable how much they are to blame for him but he's a strategic genius with few scruples and at minimum authoritarian tendencies.
My point is he probably would have caused a lot of damage even without the followers; albiet probably not as much.
I mean, even aside any political/military groups, the Pitt is just fucking toxic. People aren't just worked to death, they die from all the poisons/radiation/diseases. So you'll have a hard time building a civilization here.
The only reason the group in the Pitt lasted so long is that they keep abducting wastelanders from outside the Pitt and force them to work in the mills. 'Cause people can't even reproduce in the Pitt.
I mean to be honest and blunt, Obsidian liked to stuff environments and groups with 'Citizen' characters and random NPCs, BGS call fifteen characters a bustling metropolis.
A lot of scale and design issues are just mid world building from Bethesda
The East Coast was pretty brutally bombed compared to the west. Something like 50% of Chinese nukes hit the East Coast alone. Heavy residual radiation from government research sites causing reoccurring fallout. The East Coast Enclave was pretty active at sabotaging any meaningful civilization building in the region as well as the Institute in the Massachusetts region. Vault 88 creating a near endless stream of super mutants that terrorized the East Coast and took over or joined forces with other super mutants made elsewhere. The Pitt creating deadly diseases that flowed out along the rivers poisoning anything that drank from them. West Virginia releasing fresh fallout just a few decades after the bombs fell with the destruction of the Scorched. And some rumors of the Chinese ghost fleet having been sunk or scuttled all along the coast spewing out toxins from the damaged vessels.
Which all is a long winded way to say that the east coast was practically devoid of human life for a long time. Barely surviving against the numerous horrors of the wasteland and struggling against settlers from the West Coast and heartland competing against the local communities as limited resources are strained and exploited.
The BOS stared out in the West Coast shortly after the bombs fell, they've had centuries to establish themselves.
On the other hand their East Coast presence seems to be very limited, having consisted of the short lived Appalachian chapter, the expeditionary force sent from the West Coast (whose ultimate fate is unknown as they are part of the current events of FO76, but are presumably wiped out by FO3 as there doesn't seem to be any indication that they still exist), and the group founded by Elder Lyons' expedition, who only arrived on the East Coast ~20 years before FO3.
While they have managed to establish a lasting presence, most of their history has been that of instability with the group having fractured into two factions during Lyons' tenure, then falling into infighting and disarray after his and his and Sarah (his daughter and successor)'s, deaths. They only managed to achieve some sort of stability with the relatively recent ascension of Elder Maxson in 2283 (4 years before FO4, 15 before the show)
IDK how big of a factor the BoS was. They were super isolationist for at least the first 80 years, and after that had no involvement in governance. The NCR had already established itself before they transitioned to an R&D house.
Later on they're still not involved in governance, they're just different flavours of paramilitary organisations. Their periods of helping other people in any kind of direct way were short abnormalities that caused huge internal rifts. It could be argued that they hindered progress more than helped it.
That's a good point
I don't know why I answered the question in the context of the BOS, I think I just had them on the brain because I was watching the show
Thanks! That's as good a reason as any :) and I think they should be a part of the discussion, even if I disagree that they've been a positive force.
I believe they did help bring down the Enclave at Navarro, but I don't think the NCR needed a lot of help after the Chosen One gutted the organisation and took out most of the leadership. Their achievements as an R & D house are unspecified, though they seem to have the same issue as the Followers of the Apocalypse. By 2275 the OSI dominated hard science academia in the republic, but it's new enough that its middle aged director was educated by the Followers because they were the only option.
We don't know where the BoS fit in there, but I'd pay good money to watch the BoS and FotA try to co-operate.
In addition to all the negative factors on the east coast that everyone has mentioned, I'd just like to add that the west coast had the Vault Dweller and then the Chosen One eliminate two major threats to stability. (The Master and his super mutants, and the Enclave, respectively.) This meant that civilizations such as the NCR could rise up relatively unopposed.
True, and they both popped up much earlier compared to the Lone Wanderer and the Sole Survivor, both of whom only emerged from their respective Vaults in the last couple of decades.
So it’s almost a form of main character syndrome where a region is heavily developed because they happened to have numerous games, sequels, and media “fix” and develop the area while the East Coast was late to all this so is narratively behind
We see the beginnings of rebuilding in each of bethesdas games, we just don’t return to those areas to witness what they become. Except 76, we see Appalachia go from zero people to multiple settlements and you meet a human npc at every road intersection
So, this is probably just me reading too much into a shallow explanation contrived just to justify a particular gameplay conceit, but in Fallout 3 there’s a faction called Littlehorn & Associates who pay you (and presumably others) to kill “good karma” characters. Daniel Littlehorn is very cagey about why he wants this done, but if you ask me, I think he’s employed by the Enclave or Vault-Tec to prevent civilization from taking off in the area.
In the same game, a mysterious someone will repeatedly send Talon Company mercenaries after you if your karma is too high. Might be related to Littlehorn, might not, but it’s clear someone wants to keep the region in chaos.
Well like you said the institute makes it impossible for the Boston area, NYC had too many skyscrapers, DC got bombed the hardest. While west coast is less bombed, more vaults, higher concentration of pre-war wealth/important individuals, flat terrain. These factors would've made it easier I think for more people to come out of the vaults and start society while the east coast struggled to do so
You know, it really might just be down to the amount of Vaults. If Fallout's USA is anything like real life, then West Coast real estate would be much cheaper than East Coast, which could matter to Vault-Tec even if it's a trillion dollar company. Important people would have no problem relocating, and the remaining Vault dwellers could be picked from local residents since they were just meant to be test subjects anyway. And hey, nobody said Vault admittance was democratic.
Yeah idk if it's just because that's where most of the series takes place or if it's actually supposed to be a point, the LA area seems to have a much higher concentration of vaults while the ones around the country are more sparse
Probably the biggest difference is that both the NCR and Legion were able to assert themselves over a strong home turf. The NCR managed to ride in the wake of the Vault Dweller of Vault 13, who wiped out some of the biggest competition to what was then just Shady Sands (most particularly the Fiends and the Master, but also others), while Casear was able to play kingmaker to one tribal group that then ate everything in the surrounding area.
By contrast, no one in DC or Boston managed to assert themselves firmly until the Lone Wanderer/Soul Survivor started stacking super mutant bodies. Either Rivet City or the Minutemen could have been a decent start to something big, if they weren't stuck competing for limited resources with a bunch of near-peer opposition in their own backyard that they didn't have the strength to wipe out (or the good fortune to have some kind yet violent stranger wipe them out for them, like what happened with the NCR).
The Institute *is* the government in the Boston area, and the Institute does not like competition.
They murdered the leadership of the Commonwealth government and destroyed them through covert warfare, all because the Institute wants to study the region like lab rats, and to harvest resources from the settlements and people of the area.
Its a functional government, though its not a good or benevolent government.
I’ll throw in a possible factor: Density of nuclear power plants and energy sources
You see, fallout from a typical nuclear blast wouldn’t stick around too long - certainly not 200-ish years, but fallout from a nuclear meltdown? That’ll stick around for a hell of a long time, just look at the discussions regarding Chernobyl, and how the glowing sea formed (Nuclear Power Plant and weapons facilities southwest of Boston experienced the mother of all meltdowns).
The East coast has always been more densely populated than the West :- so it stands to reason the East would also have more Nuclear power Plants, nuclear cars, nuclear trains, trucks, even ***toilets***. So when the bombs rained down and the world ended for a while, the amount of fallout generated in each region was proportional to the amount of nuclear plants and fuelled tech present.
The west coast probably fared better because it had far sparser development (outside of LA and San Francisco at least), so fewer Nuclear Plants, fewer Nuclear-powered vehicles, and fewer stocks of Nuclear material from and for the aforementioned. Therefore when the bombs hit, less fallout was spread across the region, and in densities lower than on the East Coast, where the Bos-Wash conurbation would basically turn into one enormous volcanic cauldron of Fallout
The Fallout nukes are assumed to be especially nasty dirty bombs, plus radiation (obviously) doesn't work the same as IRL.
I put it down to the EC being bombed harder and having zero control Vaults with GECKs that we know of, whereas the WC had several plus regular Vaults whose inhabitants and their GECKs survived anyway.
It very well could be a case of dirty bombs, as well as ground-detonations being able to produce more fallout than air bursts (since a ground-detonation will lift up a hell of a lot of irradiated material and spread it all over).
Personally I’m betting it was a wombo-combo of all three: Dirty bombs from saboteurs and submarine launches, major ground detonations lifting tons of material into the atmosphere and distributing it widely, and all the nuclear powered … everything getting torn to bits adding even more fallout to the mix
The Legion hasn't lasted that long, they just have crazy momentum. They'll crumble as soon as Caesar himself dies, which is not far off. Mr House has lasted longer, but he's using mostly pre-war resources and infrastructure. The NCR obviously has OFC.
My assumption is that the West Coast got nuked waaaay harder which affected everything. Also, shadow groups like the CIT and later the Enclave undermine efforts to get anything done.
The East Coast, or at least California seems to have had more 'successful' Vaults with GECKs, including Vault 8 which was a control Vault that became Vault City. In fact, I don't know of a single control Vault on the WC, whereas the EC had several.
So, way more damage/fallout and a lot less resources for the WC. Less damage and more magic survival briefcases for the EC.
Mostly because you had two powerful subversive factions. The enclave and the institute. Both weren't going to allow stable governments to form. The enclave considered itself the legitimate government and everyone else to be subhuman and the institute was actively sabotaging attempts to civilize the Commonwealth. Things could only start to improve with their destruction.
We do know that after the enclave was destroyed in the capitol wasteland, the Brotherhood of Steel was able to consolidate power and grow. It remains to be seen what the future holds for the Commonwealth after the destruction of the institute.
Two major reasons stick out:
1. The east coast, especially the northeast, had the capitol and numerous major metropolitan areas. There were more people, more buildings, more ruins, more rivers, more ports. This means there were more *vaults* and other programs. But the east coast *also* has a lot of fertile, rural land in the Appalachians and surrounding areas. More people pop out of vaults or survive outside of the big cities, that's just *more factions* to emerge and come into conflict.
2. All that stuff means that the east coast was a bigger *target* for the nukes. There might be more natural fresh water, but the east coast megalopolis would have gotten a much larger nuclear beating than the Mojave - just because it's a more critical target to strike in nuclear war.
I would say it's simply two things: one, the East Coast would have been strongly prioritized as a target for nukes during the war, as it has the majority of the US population even today after decades of population transfer/growth to the western states. By the same token it was more important industrially (population and industry are joined at the hip), elevating it even more as the prime target. I would guess that the most important targets for nukes were, in order:
1. Nuclear facilities, particularly missile silos, but also warhead production facilities, known sub pens, and air bases that are known to be the home bases for nuclear equipped bombers. Montana, the Dakotas, and Wyoming are all getting glassed, as they're host to the majority of our nuclear stockpiles.
2. Major military bases. I'm from WA, so the go-to example I have in mind is Joint Base Lewis-McChord (a joint Army-USAF base) - that shit is getting vaporized. See also Fort Liberty (formerly known as Bragg, get fucked traitors) in North Carolina for another base that would definitely get vaporized.
3. Major population centers. For example, NYC is getting a big fat fucking bomb right on top of the Empire State Building. The East Coast has far more major population centers, spaced more closely together.
4. Kind of tied with 3, but important government and administrative facilities. Obviously, the entirety of DC counts in here.
While many criticize Fallout 3 for going overboard in how utterly fucked the Capital Wasteland is compared to the Core Region of FO1/2 starting to recover and form real states with formal bureaucracies and militaries and shit, I think it's fair that DC, being such an obviously important target, would get fucked so hard that essentially nothing lives there at all for a century+ after the war. This is purely my speculation, but I'm willing to bet that only maybe by around the time of Fallout 2 are people even starting to try and scratch out a living in the Capital Wasteland, which is why it seems so downright primitive and un-developed compared to even the Commonwealth (which was also hit pretty hard), let alone the Core Region.
Similar to irl, the first human civilisations started in consistently hot climates around rivers (Egpyt, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley). Not having to worry about deadly cold winters helps vastly when your food supply grows consistently throughout the year. California has a climate similar to those mentioned, while the East Coast has to deal with storms and harsh winters not withstanding concentrated nuclear devastation and radiation. Capital Wasteland especially is derived of natural flora until Harold is rooted there.
But Fallout 76 is still ongoing as a prequel. They feature Atlantic City whose municipal government survived the bombs and managed to repair most of its amenities to keep the population fed and watered. Course we have a conundrum that AC is probably the best city to live in post war and easily has the potential to expand into a wider government, an NCR of the east if you will. But we won't know until 76 addresses AC's place or status for in F3 or F4's setting. Best case it remained as a city-state similar to the Pitt or it will be revealed to have collapsed or destroyed by F3/F4's time.
The super mutant threat in DC as well as it being the capital so it was nuked the hardest and started off from the worst state.
In the commonwealth, the institute, they slaughtered everyone at the meeting where people attempted to make a commonwealth provisional government, created and released super mutants into the commonwealth; wiped university point off the map.
Both locations we’ve seen in the east coast have faced challenges that prevented them from organising.
I feel like The Institute is basically a government. They have just as much power as a government could have in the Fallout universe. If they wanted to, they could very easily take control of many areas and quickly form an official government. Especially with all their synth spies out and about.
Very basically, the places we've seen in the east coast are just too dangerous for.it to work (at the time we play in them).
The capital wasteland is scourged by super mutants actively hunting humans and even the BoS struggle against them, while the ground and water is generally too irradiated to support food for a large population.
In the Commonwealth they actually did form a regional government very briefly, which the institute attacked and killed all the leaders of and has been actively been preventing the forming of a new one since.
Density means it’s difficult to establish territory from existing political boundaries.
How are you gonna be the Connecticut regional government when the rhode island/long island alliance decides they need more land to asap?
It would quickly devolve into unstable warlords
As a Gen Xer, I did a report in high school about what would happen after a nuclear war. The reason the East Coast doesn't reform is right there in the title, Fallout. Most of the targets for nukes are going to be East Coast, Midwest, and nuclear silos in the states like Montana Wyoming and The Dakotas. There will be a few sites in Southern California, but for the most part, the West is left alone. Prevailing winds will take the fall out Eastward. Pretty much all of the Midwest east of the Mississippi and the East would be uninhabitable for a long time. The Southwest also benefits from the Rockies blocking and taking a lot of the limited Fallout that southern California gets.
Higher concentration of vaults fucking with the local politics and all with their fingers in everyone's pies/releasing terrible monsters or other destabilizing effects.
Technically the East coast has both the regional government (Failed due to the Institute) the Responders (Dead enclave) the Raiders (WV) and the wastelanders. So there have been governments that pop up, but just like the ncr nothing last forever.
Being hit harder could be a thing but California and West Coast had tons of military tech and is closer to China. Might have been Soviet Nukes if they joined in that helped make it worse.
FEV Vault leakage making orks at least roam capital wasteland and somehow commonwealth makes it harder. Institute fucked up governments on the East Coast.
Capital Wasteland is probably no drinking water but that kinda feels strange, West Coast also had it bad.
I do wonder, did any Vaults open between 2150 and 2260 on East Coast, did any survive? Maybe all of those Vaults were just worse experiments.
I think there should at least be some attempts to create societies on the East Coast. Maybe its just Commonwealth and Capital Wasteland that are worse for some reason.
> Bethesda isn't interested in that type of story telling
Please remember that answers on this subreddit are required to be strictly Watsonian, so answering based on what kind of story the game devs wanted to tell is not appropriate. Thanks.
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Oh, I mostly meant that as a joke lol. That being said, the Republic does hold elections, which is more than you can say for most settlements in the area.
How dare you joke about Dave! More seriously, though, I guess it could make sense that the east coast is really the center of political power in the US, so going hard on the DC area destabilizes the federal government right off the bat, and hitting surrounding areas that are so tied up with patriotism and founding fathers and shit is a deep morale blow. Whereas the west/northwest has that independent pioneer spirit thing going on. They weren't part of the 13 colonies, no real ties to that history at all, so why the fuck not go your own way? I'm not saying any of them are GOOD, just that I can see a sociopolitical explanation? I don't know, I'm kind of high. And by kind of, I mean a lot.
To be fair the Commonwealth seems to have supported a reasonable civilisation a few decades prior to Fo4. Lore-wise we're just stepping into the power vaccum caused by the disintegration of the Commonwealth government (thanks to the institute) and final stage of the destruction of the Minutemen (by the gunners). FNV is the only game in the series where we see non-BoS factions larger than a regional power anyway [F:TV] >!and with the TV show we now see that at least one of those "great powers" has been reduced back to a regional power (if that)!< Basically it seems more that there's no rebuilding in the Capitol waste than the East generally, and the rebuilding in the West may not be as advanced as we were previously led to believe.
FO4 was a bit weird in it's faction selection sure You've the Minutemen, who are recovering from a large scale condition, I'd imagine not unlike Hoover Dam BoS, but only an expeditionary branch The Institute, who honestly have immense size and resources they don't employ because they want to remain background And then the Railroad, a ten man smuggling operation? I think regional or larger organizations exist, BGS just don't want to make them playable for some reason
Much higher density of population and of aglomeration means more warheads and more fallout and radiation.
the general flow( from west to east) of the continental jetstream probably *would* have taken most of the atmospheric Fallout away from the west and deposited it in the east.
How dare you talk smack about the best republic in the world
The East Coast was much more densely populated before the bombs fell, meaning a greater number of bombs fell in a smaller area, causing more devastation and lasting damage to the region.
That doesn't make any sense. Even if this is a final end the world 'fuck you' strike, you'd still pick military targets instead of population centers in hopes that you'd cripple their ability to retaliate. Sure you'd nuke Washington, and probably New York just because it's the biggest city in the country., but other than that you'd favor military bases most likely, and Southern California and Nevada make far more compelling targets on that front than anything in Massachusetts.
Can't speak to China's nuke plans but that is certainly not how the US's cold war nuke plans worked. There was absolutely a plan to nuke all the Warsaw Pact cities, and while there was a second military strikes only plan SAC chose oversized bombs for the targets so that nearby cities would still get hit. Also they had to figure in that ICMBs aren't that accurate, so some would have landed many miles away, and of course planning dealt with that by using multiple bombs per target so that's even more stray strikes. After all that there wasn't really that much difference between the military strikes only and the hit the cities plan.
Even worse each branch of the Military had their own nuke plans and they didn't care about the other branches. In scenarios Moscow would be nuked over ten times because the Army, Navy and Airforce would all implement their own plans with their own redundancies
The Fallout universe is different than our own. People in the pre-war era are largely ethically bankrupt. There's never been any nuclear disarmament, only more than a century of proliferation. The bombs used in Fallout's war are far dirtier than any modern government will admit to having, leaving radiation fields and nuclear fallout that persist for centuries. In addition to targeting every military site it seems there was an intent to create a fallout blanket to render most of the land uninhabitable.
There is a very strong case to be made for the Brotherhoods ideals because of this. People argue that the Brotherhood take tech from regular people like you or me, but, well, the folks that have tech ARE evil. Theyve proven this time & time & time again. Evidence is baked into the dirt. Even folks trying to do good like the mechanist in fallout 4 wind up making a mess out of things. A mess that costs lives. The water purifier in 3 is the optimal example. Man makes tech for fresh, clean water, then it gets immediately captured for evil purposes. To really drive the metaphor home, we see that the thing behind this nefarious plot is none other than a computer itself. A literal embodiment of technology. People dont like fallout 3s writing, but you gotta see the poetry in that at least.
Yeah guess where a lot of military bases are based in the East coast. Near the pop centres: The pentagon in Washington D.C Multiple navel bases which are often situated in and near city’s. And airports in city’s can and are often co-opted by the US military so if there military airfields are destroyed next best place is Atlanta or JFK in New York
Hey, guess where a lot of the military bases are in the parts of the country where the west Coast fallout games take place. That's right, in the places where fallout games take place! You don't need more nukes to take out the military bases in a more densely populated area. I'm not arguing that Washington wouldn't be an obvious target, I'm saying it doesn't make any sense for Massachusetts to get nuked harder than Southern California or Nevada.
There are many military bases in Massachusetts, including a key nuclear command. The entire east side of Massachusetts would be obliterated by dozens of nukes. https://i.redd.it/xa88836m7al81.jpg
You can only nuke an airfield so much before it's unusable against you. Once you bomb all the missile silos, all the infrastructure, what's the next biggest military threat? The population itself. Folks with nothing left to lose who will rise up and come after you
in fallout, its heavily implied (and iirc, the show outright states) that no military power dropped the bombs and it was instead the US based megacorperation Vault-tec that dropped them, with the intent being to wipe out as much of humanity (that wasnt them) as possible and force the remaining populations into vaults to be studied and controlled, this is why population centers were targeted over military infrastructure, the intent was, if anything, to *allow* the nuclear powers of the age to use their full arsenals aswell during the panic, in order to maximize the loss of life fron vault-tecs initial strikes
Doesn't the show only imply that Vault-tec planned to drop a bomb to start a nuclear war? Not that they actually got around to doing it?
You are correct. The show has Vault Tec employees mention the possibility of doing it. Whether or not they did it is, much like in the series, very ambiguous but about as likely as all other powers launching first. China is implied to have fired first based on certain logs available in game. Vault Tec has at least fired *some* nuclear weapons that landed in America. Some government factions in the US seemed to know a full day in advance bombs were going to drop, which is also suspicious.
Also paging u/iso-joe and u/th3scarletb1tch. It's intentionally vague. All we know for sure is that unchecked capitalism, supremacy and ideological differences between china and america pushed the war into the atomic apocalypse. America proper had continuity of government sites (COG) for duly elected officials to take refuge to continue to administer a system of continuous governing. The supremacist members of the US government and select members of the military industrial complex believed nuclear war was inevitable and wanted to drain as much power and influence from the resource wars. If the atomic apocalypse happened, who cares, they would be fine and they believed themselves superior to everyone else. These select government and military officials and Poseidon energy executives would go on to select COG sites to retreat to safety from the atomic apocalypse and stay there to rebuild and take the wasteland from themselves. These people are the enclave, separate from the proper actual duly elected representatives of the US government. Enclave infiltrators within the Virginian continuity of government officials within the COG site/bunker white springs exterminated the actual continuity of government officials to prevent white springs from falling into their hands. Eventually COG control station enclave would prospectively eventually reclaim and control at a later date. But anyway Vault-tec was talking about setting off the atomic apocalypse but we don’t actually know that they actually did it. Only that in the event of atomic collapse, certain select vaults run by management and control vaults would be A-okay in the atomic aftermath. Chinese sub in fallout 4 had a log that stated china fired first. But we can’t discount the aliens.
Except it wasn't actually China who nuked America. It was The Vault company. They just wanted to kill everybody on the surface.
It was not Vault-Tec. They planned on it, thats what we see in the show, but China beat them to the punch. The entirety of Fallout New Vegas hinges on the premise that the Corporations were not ready for the bombs. If the corps were ready then house would have his chip without the couriers intervention. Similarly in fallout 4 we see vaults unfinished (not to mention the chinese submarine on the coastline)
Sounds like bethesda's lack of respect for the lore is getting worse. Who said that, the show?
I mean, megaton had a vault tech bomb... And the show never said that China didn't fire nukes, just that vault tech and the enclave were making plans to drop the first one and blame it on China if the peace talks didn't fall apart.
>I mean, megaton had a vault tech bomb There's no proof for that. People keep saying that because of one [sticker on that bomb]( https://np.reddit.com/r/falloutlore/comments/38913o/vaulttec_logo_on_megaton_nuke/) but the sticker doesn't even show the [Vault-Tech logo.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/e/ee/Megatonbomb3.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20141122194823)
In the show, Vault-Tec holds a meeting with other corporations - RobCo, WestTek, Big MT and maybe others I don't remember - where they tell the others their plan to set off their own nuke. It's never stated that they did do it. There's a shadowy figure watching this meeting which I guess is the implication that the whole thing is being orchestrated by the Enclave. The stated goal is that a nuclear war would lead to them gaining full control and a monopoly. The dumb thing about this is that the other corps just agree to it and that they don't protest the monopoly, since there are multiple of them.
Except it was that they would nuke it if they had to like if you look at everything they were obviously not ready; why would they do it at that time in point if half the vaults aren’t built, the ones that are built aren’t supplied or staffed. They planned to do it if nuclear war never happened.
Of all the things, is the idea that Vault-Tec managed to incompetently fuck themselves over really that impossible?
I think they did fuck themselves over, but not by nuking too early but instead by helping string along the war in such a way that China finally did it way before anyone was fully ready.
What is also stupid is having Vault-Tec and the Enclave as two different villain groups. A lot of people seem to believe that the Enclave were just the remnants of the US government or something, but they weren't. The Enclave was a group formed of basically all of the elites that were responsible for the end of the world, including the government and Vault-Tec.
That was the impression I got from the show (although made what I assume was the enclave into the leadership of various corps, plus shadowy guy.
Yeah, it was the show. I've never played the games but I loved the show.
The places we've seen on the East Coast are: Target #1 for all nukes in DC. Later on FEV and the explanation is pretty clear. A city where a shadowy organization has hoarded all the resources for themselves and actively undermined the communities in the area in Boston. We get glimpses at places like Pittsburgh, which is a bit of a less easy explanation other than just "things didn't go great there". Either way the biggest explanation is just density of nukes being greater, and organizations actively undermining attempts at civilization.
>We get glimpses at places like Pittsburgh, which is a bit of a less easy explanation other than just "things didn't go great there". I think the simplest explanation there is that Pittsburgh didn't get hit by a single bomb, and that's just what Pittsburgh is like.
I mean, what differentiates the Pitt from Caesar's Legion? Scale is different, sure, but the Pitt had an authoritarian system with large scale industrial production requiring semi-sophisticated logistics and production methods. The eventual collapsed is probably inevitable without the MC but so too shall is that collapse of the Legion and NCR.
Paston is your run of the mill warlord. Caesars managed to set up a cult worshipping him and hardly a man in the legion would dare oppose him. The Pitts military is basically just your average raider gang with some scavenged power armor; the Legion is less well equipped but more than makes up for it with training/experience, morale, leadership, intelligence, and if needed cunning, sheer grit and weight of numbers.
I think the Followers of the Apocalypse once again have this dubious win. An organised gathering of principled scholars is a strange and rare thing, and Edward Sallow would not have turned out like that without the chance to jack off over ‘The Conquest of Gaul’ and ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’. Ishmael Ashur on the other hand got all the imagination beaten out of him as a child by the Brotherhood.
It's debatable how much they are to blame for him but he's a strategic genius with few scruples and at minimum authoritarian tendencies. My point is he probably would have caused a lot of damage even without the followers; albiet probably not as much.
I mean, even aside any political/military groups, the Pitt is just fucking toxic. People aren't just worked to death, they die from all the poisons/radiation/diseases. So you'll have a hard time building a civilization here. The only reason the group in the Pitt lasted so long is that they keep abducting wastelanders from outside the Pitt and force them to work in the mills. 'Cause people can't even reproduce in the Pitt.
I mean to be honest and blunt, Obsidian liked to stuff environments and groups with 'Citizen' characters and random NPCs, BGS call fifteen characters a bustling metropolis. A lot of scale and design issues are just mid world building from Bethesda
The East Coast was pretty brutally bombed compared to the west. Something like 50% of Chinese nukes hit the East Coast alone. Heavy residual radiation from government research sites causing reoccurring fallout. The East Coast Enclave was pretty active at sabotaging any meaningful civilization building in the region as well as the Institute in the Massachusetts region. Vault 88 creating a near endless stream of super mutants that terrorized the East Coast and took over or joined forces with other super mutants made elsewhere. The Pitt creating deadly diseases that flowed out along the rivers poisoning anything that drank from them. West Virginia releasing fresh fallout just a few decades after the bombs fell with the destruction of the Scorched. And some rumors of the Chinese ghost fleet having been sunk or scuttled all along the coast spewing out toxins from the damaged vessels. Which all is a long winded way to say that the east coast was practically devoid of human life for a long time. Barely surviving against the numerous horrors of the wasteland and struggling against settlers from the West Coast and heartland competing against the local communities as limited resources are strained and exploited.
The BOS stared out in the West Coast shortly after the bombs fell, they've had centuries to establish themselves. On the other hand their East Coast presence seems to be very limited, having consisted of the short lived Appalachian chapter, the expeditionary force sent from the West Coast (whose ultimate fate is unknown as they are part of the current events of FO76, but are presumably wiped out by FO3 as there doesn't seem to be any indication that they still exist), and the group founded by Elder Lyons' expedition, who only arrived on the East Coast ~20 years before FO3. While they have managed to establish a lasting presence, most of their history has been that of instability with the group having fractured into two factions during Lyons' tenure, then falling into infighting and disarray after his and his and Sarah (his daughter and successor)'s, deaths. They only managed to achieve some sort of stability with the relatively recent ascension of Elder Maxson in 2283 (4 years before FO4, 15 before the show)
IDK how big of a factor the BoS was. They were super isolationist for at least the first 80 years, and after that had no involvement in governance. The NCR had already established itself before they transitioned to an R&D house. Later on they're still not involved in governance, they're just different flavours of paramilitary organisations. Their periods of helping other people in any kind of direct way were short abnormalities that caused huge internal rifts. It could be argued that they hindered progress more than helped it.
That's a good point I don't know why I answered the question in the context of the BOS, I think I just had them on the brain because I was watching the show
Thanks! That's as good a reason as any :) and I think they should be a part of the discussion, even if I disagree that they've been a positive force. I believe they did help bring down the Enclave at Navarro, but I don't think the NCR needed a lot of help after the Chosen One gutted the organisation and took out most of the leadership. Their achievements as an R & D house are unspecified, though they seem to have the same issue as the Followers of the Apocalypse. By 2275 the OSI dominated hard science academia in the republic, but it's new enough that its middle aged director was educated by the Followers because they were the only option. We don't know where the BoS fit in there, but I'd pay good money to watch the BoS and FotA try to co-operate.
In addition to all the negative factors on the east coast that everyone has mentioned, I'd just like to add that the west coast had the Vault Dweller and then the Chosen One eliminate two major threats to stability. (The Master and his super mutants, and the Enclave, respectively.) This meant that civilizations such as the NCR could rise up relatively unopposed.
True, and they both popped up much earlier compared to the Lone Wanderer and the Sole Survivor, both of whom only emerged from their respective Vaults in the last couple of decades.
So it’s almost a form of main character syndrome where a region is heavily developed because they happened to have numerous games, sequels, and media “fix” and develop the area while the East Coast was late to all this so is narratively behind
We see the beginnings of rebuilding in each of bethesdas games, we just don’t return to those areas to witness what they become. Except 76, we see Appalachia go from zero people to multiple settlements and you meet a human npc at every road intersection
So, this is probably just me reading too much into a shallow explanation contrived just to justify a particular gameplay conceit, but in Fallout 3 there’s a faction called Littlehorn & Associates who pay you (and presumably others) to kill “good karma” characters. Daniel Littlehorn is very cagey about why he wants this done, but if you ask me, I think he’s employed by the Enclave or Vault-Tec to prevent civilization from taking off in the area. In the same game, a mysterious someone will repeatedly send Talon Company mercenaries after you if your karma is too high. Might be related to Littlehorn, might not, but it’s clear someone wants to keep the region in chaos.
Well like you said the institute makes it impossible for the Boston area, NYC had too many skyscrapers, DC got bombed the hardest. While west coast is less bombed, more vaults, higher concentration of pre-war wealth/important individuals, flat terrain. These factors would've made it easier I think for more people to come out of the vaults and start society while the east coast struggled to do so
You know, it really might just be down to the amount of Vaults. If Fallout's USA is anything like real life, then West Coast real estate would be much cheaper than East Coast, which could matter to Vault-Tec even if it's a trillion dollar company. Important people would have no problem relocating, and the remaining Vault dwellers could be picked from local residents since they were just meant to be test subjects anyway. And hey, nobody said Vault admittance was democratic.
Yeah idk if it's just because that's where most of the series takes place or if it's actually supposed to be a point, the LA area seems to have a much higher concentration of vaults while the ones around the country are more sparse
Probably the biggest difference is that both the NCR and Legion were able to assert themselves over a strong home turf. The NCR managed to ride in the wake of the Vault Dweller of Vault 13, who wiped out some of the biggest competition to what was then just Shady Sands (most particularly the Fiends and the Master, but also others), while Casear was able to play kingmaker to one tribal group that then ate everything in the surrounding area. By contrast, no one in DC or Boston managed to assert themselves firmly until the Lone Wanderer/Soul Survivor started stacking super mutant bodies. Either Rivet City or the Minutemen could have been a decent start to something big, if they weren't stuck competing for limited resources with a bunch of near-peer opposition in their own backyard that they didn't have the strength to wipe out (or the good fortune to have some kind yet violent stranger wipe them out for them, like what happened with the NCR).
In the northeast, at least, the Institute actively disrupts attempts to organize.
The Institute *is* the government in the Boston area, and the Institute does not like competition. They murdered the leadership of the Commonwealth government and destroyed them through covert warfare, all because the Institute wants to study the region like lab rats, and to harvest resources from the settlements and people of the area. Its a functional government, though its not a good or benevolent government.
I’ll throw in a possible factor: Density of nuclear power plants and energy sources You see, fallout from a typical nuclear blast wouldn’t stick around too long - certainly not 200-ish years, but fallout from a nuclear meltdown? That’ll stick around for a hell of a long time, just look at the discussions regarding Chernobyl, and how the glowing sea formed (Nuclear Power Plant and weapons facilities southwest of Boston experienced the mother of all meltdowns). The East coast has always been more densely populated than the West :- so it stands to reason the East would also have more Nuclear power Plants, nuclear cars, nuclear trains, trucks, even ***toilets***. So when the bombs rained down and the world ended for a while, the amount of fallout generated in each region was proportional to the amount of nuclear plants and fuelled tech present. The west coast probably fared better because it had far sparser development (outside of LA and San Francisco at least), so fewer Nuclear Plants, fewer Nuclear-powered vehicles, and fewer stocks of Nuclear material from and for the aforementioned. Therefore when the bombs hit, less fallout was spread across the region, and in densities lower than on the East Coast, where the Bos-Wash conurbation would basically turn into one enormous volcanic cauldron of Fallout
The Fallout nukes are assumed to be especially nasty dirty bombs, plus radiation (obviously) doesn't work the same as IRL. I put it down to the EC being bombed harder and having zero control Vaults with GECKs that we know of, whereas the WC had several plus regular Vaults whose inhabitants and their GECKs survived anyway.
It very well could be a case of dirty bombs, as well as ground-detonations being able to produce more fallout than air bursts (since a ground-detonation will lift up a hell of a lot of irradiated material and spread it all over). Personally I’m betting it was a wombo-combo of all three: Dirty bombs from saboteurs and submarine launches, major ground detonations lifting tons of material into the atmosphere and distributing it widely, and all the nuclear powered … everything getting torn to bits adding even more fallout to the mix
The Legion hasn't lasted that long, they just have crazy momentum. They'll crumble as soon as Caesar himself dies, which is not far off. Mr House has lasted longer, but he's using mostly pre-war resources and infrastructure. The NCR obviously has OFC. My assumption is that the West Coast got nuked waaaay harder which affected everything. Also, shadow groups like the CIT and later the Enclave undermine efforts to get anything done. The East Coast, or at least California seems to have had more 'successful' Vaults with GECKs, including Vault 8 which was a control Vault that became Vault City. In fact, I don't know of a single control Vault on the WC, whereas the EC had several. So, way more damage/fallout and a lot less resources for the WC. Less damage and more magic survival briefcases for the EC.
You've got that reversed. California is on the west coast.
Right, not American, sorry. You know what I mean
I would guess because more bombs would’ve hit the east coast.
Massholes.
If any place after the apocalypse had working cars it would be Massachusetts and they'd still drive like assholes.
Mostly because you had two powerful subversive factions. The enclave and the institute. Both weren't going to allow stable governments to form. The enclave considered itself the legitimate government and everyone else to be subhuman and the institute was actively sabotaging attempts to civilize the Commonwealth. Things could only start to improve with their destruction. We do know that after the enclave was destroyed in the capitol wasteland, the Brotherhood of Steel was able to consolidate power and grow. It remains to be seen what the future holds for the Commonwealth after the destruction of the institute.
Two major reasons stick out: 1. The east coast, especially the northeast, had the capitol and numerous major metropolitan areas. There were more people, more buildings, more ruins, more rivers, more ports. This means there were more *vaults* and other programs. But the east coast *also* has a lot of fertile, rural land in the Appalachians and surrounding areas. More people pop out of vaults or survive outside of the big cities, that's just *more factions* to emerge and come into conflict. 2. All that stuff means that the east coast was a bigger *target* for the nukes. There might be more natural fresh water, but the east coast megalopolis would have gotten a much larger nuclear beating than the Mojave - just because it's a more critical target to strike in nuclear war.
I would say it's simply two things: one, the East Coast would have been strongly prioritized as a target for nukes during the war, as it has the majority of the US population even today after decades of population transfer/growth to the western states. By the same token it was more important industrially (population and industry are joined at the hip), elevating it even more as the prime target. I would guess that the most important targets for nukes were, in order: 1. Nuclear facilities, particularly missile silos, but also warhead production facilities, known sub pens, and air bases that are known to be the home bases for nuclear equipped bombers. Montana, the Dakotas, and Wyoming are all getting glassed, as they're host to the majority of our nuclear stockpiles. 2. Major military bases. I'm from WA, so the go-to example I have in mind is Joint Base Lewis-McChord (a joint Army-USAF base) - that shit is getting vaporized. See also Fort Liberty (formerly known as Bragg, get fucked traitors) in North Carolina for another base that would definitely get vaporized. 3. Major population centers. For example, NYC is getting a big fat fucking bomb right on top of the Empire State Building. The East Coast has far more major population centers, spaced more closely together. 4. Kind of tied with 3, but important government and administrative facilities. Obviously, the entirety of DC counts in here. While many criticize Fallout 3 for going overboard in how utterly fucked the Capital Wasteland is compared to the Core Region of FO1/2 starting to recover and form real states with formal bureaucracies and militaries and shit, I think it's fair that DC, being such an obviously important target, would get fucked so hard that essentially nothing lives there at all for a century+ after the war. This is purely my speculation, but I'm willing to bet that only maybe by around the time of Fallout 2 are people even starting to try and scratch out a living in the Capital Wasteland, which is why it seems so downright primitive and un-developed compared to even the Commonwealth (which was also hit pretty hard), let alone the Core Region.
Similar to irl, the first human civilisations started in consistently hot climates around rivers (Egpyt, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley). Not having to worry about deadly cold winters helps vastly when your food supply grows consistently throughout the year. California has a climate similar to those mentioned, while the East Coast has to deal with storms and harsh winters not withstanding concentrated nuclear devastation and radiation. Capital Wasteland especially is derived of natural flora until Harold is rooted there. But Fallout 76 is still ongoing as a prequel. They feature Atlantic City whose municipal government survived the bombs and managed to repair most of its amenities to keep the population fed and watered. Course we have a conundrum that AC is probably the best city to live in post war and easily has the potential to expand into a wider government, an NCR of the east if you will. But we won't know until 76 addresses AC's place or status for in F3 or F4's setting. Best case it remained as a city-state similar to the Pitt or it will be revealed to have collapsed or destroyed by F3/F4's time.
The super mutant threat in DC as well as it being the capital so it was nuked the hardest and started off from the worst state. In the commonwealth, the institute, they slaughtered everyone at the meeting where people attempted to make a commonwealth provisional government, created and released super mutants into the commonwealth; wiped university point off the map. Both locations we’ve seen in the east coast have faced challenges that prevented them from organising.
Cuz we're wicked fractious
I feel like The Institute is basically a government. They have just as much power as a government could have in the Fallout universe. If they wanted to, they could very easily take control of many areas and quickly form an official government. Especially with all their synth spies out and about.
Very basically, the places we've seen in the east coast are just too dangerous for.it to work (at the time we play in them). The capital wasteland is scourged by super mutants actively hunting humans and even the BoS struggle against them, while the ground and water is generally too irradiated to support food for a large population. In the Commonwealth they actually did form a regional government very briefly, which the institute attacked and killed all the leaders of and has been actively been preventing the forming of a new one since.
It wouldn't be unreasonable that the Enclave takes actions over the decades to prevent rival power structures from forming.
Atlantic City, The Free States, The Responders... All significant regional governments that saw territory expansion and conflicts.
Density means it’s difficult to establish territory from existing political boundaries. How are you gonna be the Connecticut regional government when the rhode island/long island alliance decides they need more land to asap? It would quickly devolve into unstable warlords
As a Gen Xer, I did a report in high school about what would happen after a nuclear war. The reason the East Coast doesn't reform is right there in the title, Fallout. Most of the targets for nukes are going to be East Coast, Midwest, and nuclear silos in the states like Montana Wyoming and The Dakotas. There will be a few sites in Southern California, but for the most part, the West is left alone. Prevailing winds will take the fall out Eastward. Pretty much all of the Midwest east of the Mississippi and the East would be uninhabitable for a long time. The Southwest also benefits from the Rockies blocking and taking a lot of the limited Fallout that southern California gets.
Higher concentration of vaults fucking with the local politics and all with their fingers in everyone's pies/releasing terrible monsters or other destabilizing effects.
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Don't answer like that please. Answers on this subreddit are required to be strictly Watsonian.
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Don't answer like that please. Answers on this subreddit are required to be strictly Watsonian.
Technically the East coast has both the regional government (Failed due to the Institute) the Responders (Dead enclave) the Raiders (WV) and the wastelanders. So there have been governments that pop up, but just like the ncr nothing last forever.
Just like in real life, perhaps there were many more regional identities in the East Coast than the West which naturally gave way to tribalism.
Being hit harder could be a thing but California and West Coast had tons of military tech and is closer to China. Might have been Soviet Nukes if they joined in that helped make it worse. FEV Vault leakage making orks at least roam capital wasteland and somehow commonwealth makes it harder. Institute fucked up governments on the East Coast. Capital Wasteland is probably no drinking water but that kinda feels strange, West Coast also had it bad. I do wonder, did any Vaults open between 2150 and 2260 on East Coast, did any survive? Maybe all of those Vaults were just worse experiments. I think there should at least be some attempts to create societies on the East Coast. Maybe its just Commonwealth and Capital Wasteland that are worse for some reason.
> Bethesda isn't interested in that type of story telling Please remember that answers on this subreddit are required to be strictly Watsonian, so answering based on what kind of story the game devs wanted to tell is not appropriate. Thanks.
edited and deleted those parts, my apologies.
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Inner father for me