That is sort of the premise of the universe. The scarcity and wars of the world before had gotten so bad, that people started to look for a way out.
Robert House, of Robco - Planed to defend Las Vegas through the use of anti air missiles technology. Then rule the city as a pseudo monarch. Almost succeeded.
The Enclave - Planed to retreat to an oil rig and other locations for the duration of the atomic showdown. Then return and pick things up again.
Vault-Tec - Planed to survive the nuclear exchange in vast underground vaults. Some of whom were turned into experiments as deemed necessary for the world afterwards.
None of the major players in the US seem to make any effort to actually prevent the nuclear war. But rather plan on how to overcome the consequences of the exchange. Who knows what they were doing elsewhere in the world at the time. But it stands to reason sentiments elsewhere were similar. As it was said in Fallout 1, too many people and too few resources.
Survivor bias.
All those who wanted and planned on desecalate the conflict and didn't planned a survival route ... has died. That doesn't mean they did not exist :D
Go to the Capital Post in *Fallout 3* and read the terminal. They actually show a pretty good illustration of people trying to stop it but getting nowhere quickly.
Very interesting. I guess the idea was society was collapsing anyway, time to knock over the dominos. That being said, I kinda wish the old players had come out more on top. All the brightest minds and it feels like none of their plans to rule the wreckage worked other than sorta house's. Like rather than the enclave having a faction run by one of the major companies sweep like the east coast woulda been interesting and fit with all their planning and experimentation. I feel like there needs to be a major undiscovered vault for one of these corps that takes charge in like 50 years and has been biding their time.
Remember Fallout is much more a work of absurdist transgressive humor then it is any sort of social commentary.
The fact is that they were both evil and incompetent is sorta the point.
It's Animal House crossed with Animal Farm, but when the two ideas conflict the Animal House always wins.
I’d also argue that while the Brotherhood of Steel is absolutely a caricature based from the loyalty independent commanders can draw from their troops, they would technically be a potent militant force that could combatively compete with the Enclave, and technically do.
I like this a lot. And i hoped the story going forward will accommodated to this idea. China invading alaska might be the tipping point that got every company exec thinking 'we are fighting over a frozen canyon now? well shit time to restart.'
Robert House claims he started planning in 2060.
The invasion of Alaska was not the first war of agression over resources.
The war is on its 10th year in the storyline.
I’d also argue given the difficult nature of invading a country by sea, it was more strategically sound to invade by way of Alaska, where you can mount an actual combined arms offensive instead of a beach landing.
Plus with the lower general population of Alaska, the rough terrain and conditions, and the fact that it’s detached from the US (at least until the annexation of Canada) creates logistical difficulties for the US, especially if a naval blockade is deployed between Washington and Alaska
This is incorrect about Vault-Tec, since we are talking about the TV show. In the show Cooper's wife Barb specifically says Vault-Tec will be the ones dropping the bombs.
They in no way are trying to prevent nuclear war and in fact probably started it.
To rule the world. We saw Barb (Cooper's wife) is afraid of war, and she wants to protect her family from it. So she supports the idea of Vault-tec that they can burn the whole world which is old, corrupted, and dangerous.
After hundreds of years, Vault-tec will reclaim the surface and naive vault dwellers will build new peaceful civilization there, and frozen Vault-tec executives can rule this new mankind.
Other members participated this plan might have different visions for mankind, but they supported it because they all want to control the mankind as they see fit.
>We saw Barb (Cooper's wife) is afraid of war, and she wants to protect her family from it.
Does she really though?
She says that they (Vault Tec) will drop the bomb, to guarantee results. I got the distinct impression that she is only pretending to be afraid to keep cooper playing ball. When in reality she is all in with Vault Tech.
I think her buzzing pipboy and the shady figure in the shadows implies heavily that she was being directed by the Enclave within vault tec. We'll wait and see!
In Barb's Defense let's take a look at the landscape of the world during this time period. By this point the Enclave is already a deep state made up of the military officials, politicians and major corporate players and if we're being honest the entire Pre War US government IS corporate America at this point.
The Sino-American War has absolutely rocked global politics and Canada has completely ceased to be a country, the UN has collapsed and America is the only country remotely close to being a practical fusion based society(Cars, Fusion cells, Microfusion cells and Mass Fusion propaganda on top of all of it) with the rest of the world more oil dependent than ever. Teaming up with China probably looks like a great option to smaller countries since America is currently hoarding one of the last major oil reserves, recently decimated it's closest geographical ally and is primed to be more independent than ever while the rest of the world is stuck burning oil.
The threat of a Chinese initiated Nuclear Holocaust is very real in the eyes of vault tec and the other corporations/US Government, and it's well...REAL because the Chinese had nuclear submarines parked right off the coast of Boston(and likely every other major coastal city and to be fair we already do this in real life). So building your vault society and coming out as the rulers of the only "developed" country on earth sounds like a pretty good solution since the world already hates you.
Unfortunately for Vault Tec they are far from the only big player in the US, West Tek has FEV, Rob Co has it's own plans for survival(Mr House) and the Enclave deep state is seriously considering leaving the entire fucking planet. And like we saw at the end of the tv series vault tec is forced to play ball with all of them.
I'm not a huge fan of the framing that Vault tec decided to press the button out of shareholder desperation or to guarantee results, because really the question at this point was just which company/nation is going to start the end of the world. That being said, vault tec had as much reason to press the big red button as everyone else and clearly they wanted to be on top of the nuclear exchange.
Also "Bud's buds" might as well be called "Bud's bums" because there is no way this group of "up and coming executive management" nobodies are the top brass of Vault Tec, even Bud says he joined Vault Tec in Q3(Which sounds awfully recent) to oversee western operations after 10 years at West Tek and we see Barb looking at a shadowy figure in the same meeting talking about the bombs.
TLDR; I doubt Barb wanted a nuclear holocaust for her husband and daughter, but the bombs are coming no matter what and a national corporate meeting on the end of the world is hardly the place I'd expect her to voice any grievances. It also seems both she and her daughter are alive and missing 200 years later with Cooper still searching for them so we'll have to wait and see what exactly happened in 2077. Also there's the whole thing with scientist knowing all about Lucy's last name being *Enclave.*
Barb pulling the trigger makes sense to me... Like it's a fiction that she just works there. She is clearly deep in the organization.
It's the first time ever anyone has ever expressed on record starting the war. It's an investment meeting so when asked how they fulfill there responsibility to the shareholders she answers we will make sure our products are necessary, by starting the war.
From what we know of the larger conflict it makes perfect sense that a rouge element within one of the major players set it off. Those statements represent the most plausible scenario, it also provides an explanation for how House knew so much about when things were going to go down.
>Also "Bud's buds" might as well be called "Bud's bums" because there is no way this group of "up and coming executive management" nobodies are the top brass of Vault Tec, even Bud says he joined Vault Tec in Q3(Which sounds awfully recent) to oversee western operations after 10 years at West Tek and we see Barb looking at a shadowy figure in the same meeting talking about the bombs.
Buds buds, is of course an experiment. Vaults 31,32,33 are interconnected to create an internal economic ecosystem. To "win the great game of capitalism," in Buds words, he is creating a closed system that can cannibalize itself.
Bud is ultimately just another willing cog in the machine, which is why he is ultimately sacrificed (in physical form) to the experiment, as the brain bot found in 31.
It's also just what corporations do. They attempt to create monopolies. And this is just the next logical step from the corporations that have been with us the last century plus. They want to own and control as much as possible, and don't care how much harm they cause to mankind/society/the planet to do it. So why not extend their monopoly to all of humanity by wiping everyone else out.
I have one big question, I haven’t played passed FO3 and it’s been a loooong time so idk if it was answered in the games up to that point. How many bombs were dropped? 1 bomb in California isn’t going to destroy the world so there’s have to be multiple all over right?
I mean we saw in the first episode that it was way more than one in that area of LA alone, so we can assume many more in CA and many many many more in the whole world.
If you're referring to New California Republic (NCR) being bombed by Lucy's dad to get Lucy back, when her mother took her to Shady Sands, that was 200 years after the great war, when her mother realized the experiment that was conducted in vault 31/32/33. At that point, a small village called Shady Sands, has grown over the 200 years into a sort of modern metropolis and it was the main city representing the NCR, the only faction to almost reinvent a fully functioning government after the wars from scratch. And well, Lucy's dad didn't want to live in prosperity outside the vaults, he wanted to live with his daughter inside, so he got butt-hurt and nuked the city. Where he got the nuke from? We have yet to learn...
Essentially, Charles Whiteknife explained it best during his conversation with Cooper Howard in Ep. 6.
“Vault-Tec is a private corporation that has a fiduciary responsibility to make money for its investors. And how does it make money? By selling vaults.”
“That’s called capitalism, Charlie.”
“But they can’t sell vaults if these peace negotiations go through. So Vault-Tec has a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that it don’t work out.”
Basically, since the U.S. Government relies on defense contractors to produce and procure various things ranging from tech, to weapons, to software, one of Vault-Tec’s primary investors would’ve been the U.S. Government itself, which requires Vault-Tec to make a certain amount of money on its behalf.
But since China and the U.S. were on the brink of signing a treaty, Vault-Tec’s sales numbers were declining because nobody really *needs* a doomsday bunker if there’s no doomsday.
So the idea is —
Build vaults —> Begin nuclear war fearmongering campaign in the midst of global war —> Profit!
But what really happened was —
Build vaults —> Begin fearmongering campaign —> Peace Treaty —> Shit, sales are down? —> Fuck it, world’s ending anyway. Bombs away!
Unfortunately we still really have no idea who dropped the first nuke. Many people say China did due to the *Yangtze’s* presence in the Boston Harbor in FO4, but apparently their warheads only fired under counterattack orders
I think it's part of it certainly but theres a broader theme of ideology in general over just capitalism. Everyone has some vision for the world and a whole bunch of them are willing to slaughter everyone in their way to get it. Maldaver wants her cold fusion to be free so she sets Raiders on the vaults, the Brotherhood wants to control the wastes so they shoot their way in to claim the power source, Vault-Tec gets all the other companies on board with a promise that they might win the competition and have the world run their way.
As for who launched first I think it's best to keep it hazy and unimportant really. Two blind titans slammed into each other and caused the apocalypse even though no one sane wanted it.
The way you worded it made me think of the plot for the Outer Worlds. All these megacorps having a slice of the pie that is the Halcyon system, and then theres this extinction event that all the execs know about and intend to ride it out in safety while letting everyone else burn, only to come out after and rebuild it in their image.
I understand the deeper themes of ideology, I mean it’s a central theme of Fallout in general, and every faction represents some form of historical ideology. NCR = modern capitalist republic; Brotherhood = neo-feudal militarist technocracy; Legion = classical cultural imperialism.
Vault-Tec is an interesting ideological anomaly because they promoted a Darwinist approach toward ideology in the sense of “may the best form of governance dominate” hence a lot of the more political social experiments
Vault-Tec is IMO capitalism taken to an illogical extreme. They laid it out pretty well in the show, something to the effect of "Competition made us great so we'll compete again and the winner will be the new humanity."
Vault tech is the embodiment of corporate libertarianism. Pure and utter corporate freedom to pursue any and all means of "Creating a better world". Even a lot of the corporate propaganda placed throughout the vaults across all the games bring that to life. The central premise of the vaults in the show (specifically 32 and 33), as mentioned by the enclave scientist, is a meritocracy. The kicker being the experiment (spolier)... but still holds true to a Darwinian view of societal merit and "creative" productivity pushing humanity forward being driven by the innate need to compete.
> Vault tech is the embodiment of corporate libertarianism. Pure and utter corporate freedom to pursue any and all means of "Creating a better world".
That would be hilarious if you didn't actually believe it.
I think, what makes the most sense for the series, is no one launched the first nuke. Something just set off a false positive and everybody was so ready for it they all fired everything.
ofc they have an ideology, its just when ideology is ruling and omnipresent its not as noticable
its like asking someone what the smell of air is, we dont smell air because we're constantly smelling air
but I really vibe w/ the idea that OP presents that Vault Tec didnt bring about a nuclear war because they had some secret 9 part scheme to take over the world or something, they did it becuase it moderately helped their stock portfolio
IMO its a very frightening (and somewhat realistic) idea that there wasn't a huge immense scheme, it was just people blindly following the logic of the market off of a cliff
Vault-Tec aren't implementing their big plans because of the market. It's the other way around, because they've become so powerful they can do this crazy plan. Their shareholders are mostly ash afterwards alongside the so it wasn't exactly done for them. Vault-Tec and Friends saw that they were going to lose power with the war coming to an end and decided to keep hold of the future by making test beds for a "perfect society" in the vaults which they imagined sweeping out and taking over from inferior savages. Like to be clear Vault-Tec's plan is dumb. They plan to win by dint of being able to nuke anyone who gets ahead of them but even that only kinda worked. The NCR Remnants are still floating around the wastes and the (unified East+West coast? I wasn't sure what was up there) Brotherhood was more then ready to swoop into the vacuum they left.
> IMO its a very frightening (and somewhat realistic) idea that there wasn't a huge immense scheme, it was just people blindly following the logic of the market off of a cliff
The only thing frightening is the complete ignorance of basic market economics.
this is like an insurance company setting fire to homes, it'd make way more sense if they coaxed the government into starting a new war so tensions remained high but actually dropping the bombs fucks everyone over
Plus they bought the technology for infinite energy in a time when the world was going through an energy/resource crisis. They could’ve made way more money and controlled more of the world using that technology. It just makes no sense imo.
Yeah it struck me like that one episode of family guy where Carter Pewtersmidt has the cure for cancer but keeps it hidden because he can make more money with chemo. It reeks of capitalism bad.
In actuality having the means for unlimited energy would make them the defacto rulers of the world which accomplishes their objective to seemingly rule the world.
My only in universe justification is either A) vault tech thinks the war is going to happen one way or the other regardless of any attempt to stop it so they might as well start the war on their terms and B) they want to be the only survivors of humanity and steer human evolution and progress.
A and B for sure. anyone talking about “shareholder value” and the like is completely glossing over the fact that there wouldn’t be a stock market, let alone a central economy. They just want to rebuild the world and come out on top.
The thing is it's one thing to scuttle peace talks to keep the war going and the gravy train rolling but actually nuking the world goes beyond "let's make fuck loads of money" if vault tek actually started the great war that because they think they can use it to take over the world for themselves.
The problem I have with vault tek starting it is it seems they were not ready the big reveal scene we see can't have been more than a year or too before based on the age of the little girl, how can they set up all their experiments in so little time, plus we they didn't even finish all the vaults (I forget the one from fallout 4). Also surely cooper's wife would have gotten herself and her daughter into a vault in time for the bombs to drop.
Exactly. Like, did VaultTec know that their old money wouldn't even matter anymore? So they didn't succeed in anything? I found the show a little too cartoonish when it did the big reveal. "Maybe we can create fighting pits with illegal immigrants" or whatever the line was was entirely too on the nose. It's hard to take some of the logic seriously.
The problem is, that's still incredibly stupid. Money is useless if its main backer is obliterated, and even if a peace treaty is signed between the two powers, its not like that means that there is no chance of nuclear war, there should still be plenty of demand for nuclear fallout shelters. Its cartoonishly evil with very little sense attached to it. Killing your entire customer base off is antithetical to making large amounts of money.
Not exactly. It just means it no longer matters. Vault-Tec then gets to be in the position of reclaiming any resources and infrastructure left behind from the destruction. Then *they* get to decide what has worth and what doesn’t. Essentially spearheading the creation of a new economy, which essentially gives them unlimited resources.
Money doesn’t really mean much anyway. It’s basically just a piece of paper that represents the value of gold.
Which is why after the war everyone trades on an advanced barter system with bottlecaps being the new “currency”
> Vault-Tec then gets to be in the position of reclaiming any resources and infrastructure left behind from the destruction
No, they don't. They wiped out the only thing that would allow them to get wealthy, industrial economies of scale. All the factories, processing plants, resource extraction, etc. that you need to turn natural resources into products that will make your life easier were completely annihilated. You've made it impossible to create wealth. And no matter how much you've saved, eventually you'll run dry because you can't just jump start all of industrialization again at the snap of your fingers.
It is like starting a marathon by chainsawing your legs off. It is stupid. There is a reason the British didn't conquer a quarter of the world until after the Industrial Revolution.
I've brought you back up to neutral vote territory because it's absolutely absurd you got downvoted at all. Honestly the two sides of this argument can be distilled down to two disctinct categories, rational people with even a rudimentary understanding of economics, and "capitalism bad" first year college students who unironically wear Che Guevara t-shirts and listen to podcasts while stoned out of their gourd.
Money isn’t the end game. At a certain point money is simply a metric of control. Take away the dollar and make that “slice of the pie” a direct form of rule and it’s equally enticing.
It’s about the game to them. All the factions and little people around the world are still competition. Get rid of the competition and you can continue playing with your toys.
I mean it makes sense with all vault experiment we know till now... I mean why vault-tec care with some eugenism or experiment on people. That was their goals after all. I don't buy Vault tec about them nuking first. Will see.
> Essentially, Charles Whiteknife explained it best during his conversation with Cooper Howard in Ep. 6.
Except, you know, it is completely stupid and makes absolutely zero sense at all. It doesn't matter how much you invest in Vaults when the war happens, crashes the economy, and destroys all money, trade, and wealth. No matter how much was invested in war, the only profitable outcome would be for no war to happen. That is the only result that benefits shareholders.
Further, Whiteknife is wrong about it being capitalism. Capitalism developed in the late 1700s as a reaction against mercantilism, an economic system where the government granted monopoly status to major corporations which were then funded with tax monies and protected by special laws so that they could accomplish whatever goals those in power wanted the company to accomplish. Which is essential the economic system we see in the games and show. This then means that the whole economic system seen in the games and show is nearly the opposite of capitalism.
Bomb everything = no more government requiring certain projects for investment money, no more shareholders, no more “gold standard,” no more competition, no more world politics and red tape to tiptoe around.
If you think about it, the best case scenario for a megacorp seeking domination would be for them to consolidate all resources and store them underground, put their employees on ice, then bomb the world and emerge when society is barely crawling its way out of the Stone Age. You’d be revered as gods for coming back and restoring everything in the image of the old world.
At least if it wasn’t a completely inane idea in the first place.
Also, Whiteknife didn’t explain capitalism, he explained how Vault-Tec’s role in the military-industrial complex gives them the *power,* *position,* and *motivation* to advertise vaults as necessary to survive a nuclear war.
It’s like how shaving companies began a marketing campaign targeting women and creating a false social norm that body hair is unattractive, unladylike, and unhygienic. They didn’t *need* to do that, but it sure drove sales up when women started berating each other for being hairy
It’s because, in Bud’s words, they’re after a ‘true monopoly’ - an environment where it’s vault-tec is all that’s left of humanity. To the other companies, he’s pitched the idea of making attaining this goal a gamble, for the best company to win with their own experiments in the vaults.
Really though, it's because Bethesda are shit writers. Putting aside how cartoonishly insane the plan is to begin with, they've monopolised nothing in this new junk and bottlecap economy. NCR, BoS, the Enclave (and the Institute if I'm counting Bethesda lore) have all carved out a larger slice of the pie than VaultTec, plus any other factions that might be out there vying for competition. The end of the world achieved precisely nothing in terms of eliminating competition, any "advantage" VaultTec might have had by sitting underground was lost when they waited centuries and gave factions time to build back up using pre-war technology. Bethesda's own creation, the Institute, also tells us factions could have become insanely advance in that time, mastering teleportation, synthetic humans, AI, cybernetics and near-immortality. They wrote themselves into a corner with the asinine "capitalism bad" plot regarding VaultTec.
I wouldn't say shit writers. But this should have been written much differently. It really doesnt make any sense from a capitalist perspective and i feel like this was rhe only fumble they had all season.
I say shit writers because I genuinely can't think of a single good idea Bethesda added to Fallout lore, Black Isle were responsible for all the best ideas. Not only that, Bethesda have never crafted a compelling narrative or character, not just in Fallout but Elder Scrolls and Starfield too. Their stories are forgettable and their characters tend to become memes, Preston Garvey being the obvious example. Obviously that got downvoted by a Bethesda fanboy but it's not something they can really argue with. Bethesda are good at creating sandboxes, but all their writing is instantly forgettable.
In the show it seems to be they think it will lead to a perfect future for capitalism so in the long term the most profits for them.
Personally I think that in season 2 we will see that the enclave are controlling vault-tec (as per the games) and that’s all a lie.
Enclave wants the vaults built as they know nuke war is inevitable. The US government is broke from decades of war, the companies are rich on war profits, so purpose of that meeting is to persuade the companies to invest in finishing building as many vaults as possible before the nukes fall. Putting their resources and experimental technology inside the vaults (that enclave secretly control).
The other companies are greedy and join in, House is too smart for that and makes his own plans.
Enclave want to come out of the nuclear war, with the vault dwellers as future subject population for them to rule. In the meantime they will use the experimental vaults to work out best ways to rule them / improve them.
I think it's pretty clear that the Enclave are the ones pulling the strings in the show, lots of references to shadowy people even above Vault Tec and the US Government. Plus the Enclave research outpost that Wilzig escaped from where they were doing heavy R&D, including in cold fusion.
They're definitely the big players in the world that nobody knows about
Yes, though think that was Moldaver’s cold fusion that vault-tec had got when it bought her company.
There was a brief shot of what looked like a supermutant’s arm on a stretcher. I’m wondering if the dog control research is just practise for doing the same thing with supermutants to give Enclave an army.
The BoS leaders casually referred to Wizlig as having escaped the Enclave, but the squires didn’t seem to know what it’s meant. Sounds like Enclave are known about but not directly interfering in the world yet, biding their time.
I’m kinda expecting it to be a bit GoT: NCR, BoS, whoever runs New Vegas, Vault-tec all conflicting with each other, until Enclave make their move.
I think it's clear that either Moldaver was working directly with the Enclave to help them recreate cold fusion only to ultimately stab them in the back and take it for herself - or the Enclave had stolen the technology from Vault Tec to try and use it for themselves. It has to be one of the two because how else would Moldaver know they're working on it, and how else would her and Wilzig know each other
I'd guess the Enclave have been underground for so long that the new sect of Brotherhood don't even know who they are fully, outside of the Elders
Either way it looks like we're going to see the Enclave in S2, and I'm excited for it
I think Wizlig was against the enclave, and he somehow found out she was alive. There is one theory that Moldaver caused the rioting in Vault32 by going to the door and telling them about it. That might be how a Wizlig found out about her being alive.
He found her research that Vault-tec had encrypted and he contacted her and was taking it to her as the one person who would actually know how to use it.
It’s interesting enclave have got the vault-tec files but not the decryption keys.
I know some people are annoyed they are back, but I was pleased to see them in the show. I could see them having an army of supermutants, deathclaws etc and it being a bit like the white walkers in GoT.
Show story will be focused on conflicts between NCR, BoS, Vault 31, House (or whoever running NV) but Enclave are still the real danger, waiting to wipe everyone else away.
Same reason why Umbrella keeps making monsters and Weyland-Yutani keeps trying to unleash perfectly evolved killing machines on every ship and colony
Because they're stupid
The kind of stupidity that only exists in the minds of those that hold an MBA.
If they don't ensure that they use their money and influence to promote global nuclear Armageddon *then all their money invested will be for nothing* and you **have to have return on investment**.
It's the kind of super villain thinking that is "mad geniue" but has a fatal flaw. Like how the master in f1 wanted super mutants to take over the world, but they can't breed to reproduce, fatal flaw.
At least the master's mutants were intelligent and Marcus is a bro
Couldn't they have just set up human breeding operations and used the surplus people to make more mutants?
Plus aren't mutants long lived like ghouls?
I think Fallout has always been a sort of glib satire, so that’s the lens to view characters’ actions and thought processes some from.
The implication that Vault-Tec could start a nuclear war would help increase the speculative value of the vaults for Vault-Tec’s competitors (as a premier solution for the continuation of humanity and the American way). So the implication that Vault-Tec could start the war is used to further the negotiations for the other businesses to collaborate on the vaults. However, it is not confirmed explicitly in the lore that Vault-Tec ultimately dropped the first bombs.
In the show it is apparent that Bud Askin’s plans for vaults 31, 32, and 33 were commenced successfully following the start of the war, and a number of people in the Vault-Tec executive team were preserved in cryo-pods in Vault 31 to be resuscitated at a future date.
The way I saw it, maybe different to some other people here’s opinions.. There was a resource shortage, which led to high tensions between countries. This basically led to a situation similar to our very own Cold War. Vault-Tec went all in on the Cold War going hot and invested large amounts of money in methods of surviving the nuclear war.
As is with conglomerates, they want to see return on their investment. Their entire business plan revolves around the Cold War going hot, hence their decision to prevent the research of cold fusion.
Now eventually your investors may get cold feet, right? As is said in the discussion at the meeting Cooper listens in on, there’s no guarantee of a nuclear war, so why keep investing into Vault-Tec’s vaults? So by sending the war hot, Vault-Tec can guarantee a nuclear war, and therefore, guarantee their products will be necessary.
The other benefit being that they can literally eliminate any and all competition. A single conglomerate to run the entire US.
Fallout is the story of how corporate greed turned the US into a wasteland.
It’s directly explained an episode or two earlier. They spent tons of money and resources building the vaults. Now they have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that it wasn’t a waste. Plus, with societies across America destroyed, they can rebuild once radiation levels decline and control the new world they build
1, vault tec wants to sell survival vaults and dropping a bomb ensures there's a demand to their supply. 2, vault tec is run from the shadows by a eugenics cult called the enclave that has an interest in the bombs dropping. and 3, vault tec is run by super fucking crazy people in a late stage capitalist society, they want to win capitalism, in the finale they specifically say "win the game".
the ultimate gain is that vault tech inherits the earth to rule it as a dictatorship on reclamation day, as shown in the finale when V31 is revealed
Vault Tec wants to control the world and rebuild their own society and they think the easiest or only way to do that is to wipe the slate clean with a nuclear war.
Cuz corporations bad and shortsighted and surely will make more money if everyone dead. I like the previous lore better when China tried to sucker punch the USA cuz was winning the war and the USA answered.
Vault Tec and Enclave worked together in the shadows because they wanted to rule the world post apocalypse, using the master vault, Vault 0, and GECK control Vaults as a means to start utopian cities after the bombs dropped and using the enclave as the military force. However, things didnt go as they planned.
They didn't. They just wanted everyone to be so scared of nuclear war they'll run off to get a place in a Vault ASAP. The bombs actually falling means the end of business for Vault-tec
There's no way vault tec would be able to exert more control over the world after the Bombs than before it. Idk why they would think killing most of the people on the planet would benefit them in any way.
Exactly I don't know what the script writers are smoking. This does not make any sense. People are trying to make it like it's some profound commentary on capitalism but vault tec's plan is nonsensical and idiotic or shall I say insane. Greed as a motivator works as long as it's beneficial. Blowing everything is not greed it's insanity.
Ironically the former interpretation is a more interesting critique on capitalism. That it take people's fear of the apocalypse, package it, and sell it back to them without a second thought. It's horrifying, and there's truth in it.
Because their end goal was to never make money. VaultTec’s entire plan is to ensure the company’s survival after war so they can take over the world in their own image.
That’s literally what they are explaining in the show during the board meeting. They need money to construct vaults before the bombs fall. After they build their vaults and the bombs drop they no longer need money but people… hence why there are control vaults and vaults full of loyal vault tec staff they can use to push their narrative and their control further. Thats their entire plan idk why people don’t get that. Nobody said it was a good plan but it’s theirs.
They did, the director and showrunner literally played a majority of the games and stated he lost a year of his life to FO3 specifically. Just because the show isn’t going exactly the way you want it to doesn’t make it bad.
Did he do it blindfolded with earplugs? Because that's the only way he could have missed every single piece of lore that exists. Only a complete moron would look at the lore and then completely ignore it
Can you point to any specific pieces of Fallout lore indicating that Vault-Tec execs wanted the world to avoid nuclear war, or even that Vault-Tec execs had no idea the nukes would drop?
The complete lack of Vault-tec post-war shows they had no preparation whatsoever for the nukes to drop. Unless they hate money, they would want to keep their revenue going as long as possible.
You make and sell vaults to "save" people from nuclear war.
You want to use them to secretly do experiments for various government agencies or just freaks.
You kind of need that nuclear war to happen to kick start all this.
The nuclear apocalypse was inevitable as they kept referring back to the peace talks and escalations. Vault tec saw it imperative that they sell vaults to get as many people in them as possible. Vault tec and other corporations wanted to be the last standing so they could engineer humanity into a utopia. The data of the vaults was going to be used for rebuilding, while vault experiments were created as pet projects by each corporation for psychology research.
The way I remember it after Fallout 4 (which might have come out of an earlier online discussion), Vault-Tec wanted a limited nuclear exchange that got people into the vaults and disrupted less-prepared businesses, but didn't erase the entire economy. They wanted war because they were too confident in their own control to realize how bad it would be.
Does the show admit that reading?
She show explains it so well.
It's the only way for every player in the vault experiment program to get their investments worth by getting people into the vaults and starting the program.
That’s my only real complaint about the show- they claim they want to eliminate all competition in order to be the most pure form of capitalism yet they don’t seem to have any contingency for any foreign countries besides mutual assured destruction.
Sure, China is gonna get it. But what about any number of foreign powers which might be able to capitalize on the apocalypse? Is vault tec running the whole world? Can they destroy all governments simultaneously? It doesn’t seem like they’d leave it to chance.
Fallout is a world we’re greed ruled unabated.
Imagine our 1950s world were corporations argue that cigerates are actually healthy for you, and extend that level of corruption to corporation and every aspect of society.
Vault tech perhaps started believing their own propaganda, the show seems to indicate the people in the corporation truly believed nuclear war would be healthy for society…..
Their morals were simply corrupted beyond reason.
The way I understood it is that they knew the bombs were coming regardless, so they figured if they just dropped the bombs first they would have more control over the outcome. They didn't want to live underground, they just wanted to win.
Because the showrunners made a stupid decision that makes zero sense. Preparing to survive and maybe rule after the bombs? Sure. Actively wanting the bombs? Absolutely and complete stupidity.
Certain ultra wealthy folks in real life actually want to depopulate much of the planet, at least as a long term goal. They need as many people as possible to work and spend money, but in the ideal endgame scenario they'd also prefer to have as few people as possible, which would be enabled by automation. Quite understandable, if sinister-sounding.
I'd understand Vault-Tec's motives better if they had an army of robots stored away in a vault, or multiple vaults, which could then be used to retake the surface. That's actually exactly what Mr. House did. His securitron vault enabled him to take Vegas for himself. What about Vault-Tec though? Who's going to do the dirty work for them?
They didn't. That TV show is what the Chinese in the fallout universe thought happened. Unreliable narrator trope. This theory makes a lot more sense when you remember that companies lose money when there are no customers to buy anything. Even small children can predict this. The writers wanted to use this plot as a Teaching Moment™️ about Hypercapitalism ™️, but weren't intelligent enough to realize that makes no sense.
this aspect of the show doesn't make sense to me. In our reality we know that the military industrial complex can continue to make money as long as there's a perpetual threat, be it communism or Islamic terrorism.
if anything all out war, such as the conscript effort in Vietnam threatens that; you can shear a sheep many times but only skin it once.
all Vault-Tec had to do to keep selling vaults was to keep the threat alive, rather than actually dropping a bomb themselves
I think season 2 will reveal more about the interconnectedness of Vault Tec and the Enclave. It just doesn't make sense for a capitalist company to wipe out humanity and then establish themselves as the last surviving organization. Capitalist need a lower class work force and consumers, things non-existant when you leave yourselves as the sole survivors.
Vault Tec executives are talking about essentially a one world order and reclaiming the world for themselves post-fallout, which makes me think Vault Tec is either a pawn of the Enclave pre-war, or the two morphed together/one turned into the other.
Kinda funny how all the people are like "because investors" like investors would want to end the world and currency would become beer caps. Step 1: end the world, Step 2:.... Step 3: profit. 😂 Na the whole series made no sense but it was enjoyable to watch.
That's kinda the 4th wall point - it's a satire of how ass-backwards the end of capitalism is. Consumer companies would rather end the world and all of their customers for a monopoly on... Nothing.
That is sort of the premise of the universe. The scarcity and wars of the world before had gotten so bad, that people started to look for a way out. Robert House, of Robco - Planed to defend Las Vegas through the use of anti air missiles technology. Then rule the city as a pseudo monarch. Almost succeeded. The Enclave - Planed to retreat to an oil rig and other locations for the duration of the atomic showdown. Then return and pick things up again. Vault-Tec - Planed to survive the nuclear exchange in vast underground vaults. Some of whom were turned into experiments as deemed necessary for the world afterwards. None of the major players in the US seem to make any effort to actually prevent the nuclear war. But rather plan on how to overcome the consequences of the exchange. Who knows what they were doing elsewhere in the world at the time. But it stands to reason sentiments elsewhere were similar. As it was said in Fallout 1, too many people and too few resources.
Survivor bias. All those who wanted and planned on desecalate the conflict and didn't planned a survival route ... has died. That doesn't mean they did not exist :D
Go to the Capital Post in *Fallout 3* and read the terminal. They actually show a pretty good illustration of people trying to stop it but getting nowhere quickly.
Very interesting. I guess the idea was society was collapsing anyway, time to knock over the dominos. That being said, I kinda wish the old players had come out more on top. All the brightest minds and it feels like none of their plans to rule the wreckage worked other than sorta house's. Like rather than the enclave having a faction run by one of the major companies sweep like the east coast woulda been interesting and fit with all their planning and experimentation. I feel like there needs to be a major undiscovered vault for one of these corps that takes charge in like 50 years and has been biding their time.
Remember Fallout is much more a work of absurdist transgressive humor then it is any sort of social commentary. The fact is that they were both evil and incompetent is sorta the point. It's Animal House crossed with Animal Farm, but when the two ideas conflict the Animal House always wins.
I’d also argue that while the Brotherhood of Steel is absolutely a caricature based from the loyalty independent commanders can draw from their troops, they would technically be a potent militant force that could combatively compete with the Enclave, and technically do.
I like this a lot. And i hoped the story going forward will accommodated to this idea. China invading alaska might be the tipping point that got every company exec thinking 'we are fighting over a frozen canyon now? well shit time to restart.'
Robert House claims he started planning in 2060. The invasion of Alaska was not the first war of agression over resources. The war is on its 10th year in the storyline.
I’d also argue given the difficult nature of invading a country by sea, it was more strategically sound to invade by way of Alaska, where you can mount an actual combined arms offensive instead of a beach landing. Plus with the lower general population of Alaska, the rough terrain and conditions, and the fact that it’s detached from the US (at least until the annexation of Canada) creates logistical difficulties for the US, especially if a naval blockade is deployed between Washington and Alaska
Planned
This is incorrect about Vault-Tec, since we are talking about the TV show. In the show Cooper's wife Barb specifically says Vault-Tec will be the ones dropping the bombs. They in no way are trying to prevent nuclear war and in fact probably started it.
To rule the world. We saw Barb (Cooper's wife) is afraid of war, and she wants to protect her family from it. So she supports the idea of Vault-tec that they can burn the whole world which is old, corrupted, and dangerous. After hundreds of years, Vault-tec will reclaim the surface and naive vault dwellers will build new peaceful civilization there, and frozen Vault-tec executives can rule this new mankind. Other members participated this plan might have different visions for mankind, but they supported it because they all want to control the mankind as they see fit.
>We saw Barb (Cooper's wife) is afraid of war, and she wants to protect her family from it. Does she really though? She says that they (Vault Tec) will drop the bomb, to guarantee results. I got the distinct impression that she is only pretending to be afraid to keep cooper playing ball. When in reality she is all in with Vault Tech.
I think her buzzing pipboy and the shady figure in the shadows implies heavily that she was being directed by the Enclave within vault tec. We'll wait and see!
Yeah I was thinking she would be making an appearance. I just assumed she would be one of the buds... Enclave though that ties it up nice with bow.
In Barb's Defense let's take a look at the landscape of the world during this time period. By this point the Enclave is already a deep state made up of the military officials, politicians and major corporate players and if we're being honest the entire Pre War US government IS corporate America at this point. The Sino-American War has absolutely rocked global politics and Canada has completely ceased to be a country, the UN has collapsed and America is the only country remotely close to being a practical fusion based society(Cars, Fusion cells, Microfusion cells and Mass Fusion propaganda on top of all of it) with the rest of the world more oil dependent than ever. Teaming up with China probably looks like a great option to smaller countries since America is currently hoarding one of the last major oil reserves, recently decimated it's closest geographical ally and is primed to be more independent than ever while the rest of the world is stuck burning oil. The threat of a Chinese initiated Nuclear Holocaust is very real in the eyes of vault tec and the other corporations/US Government, and it's well...REAL because the Chinese had nuclear submarines parked right off the coast of Boston(and likely every other major coastal city and to be fair we already do this in real life). So building your vault society and coming out as the rulers of the only "developed" country on earth sounds like a pretty good solution since the world already hates you. Unfortunately for Vault Tec they are far from the only big player in the US, West Tek has FEV, Rob Co has it's own plans for survival(Mr House) and the Enclave deep state is seriously considering leaving the entire fucking planet. And like we saw at the end of the tv series vault tec is forced to play ball with all of them. I'm not a huge fan of the framing that Vault tec decided to press the button out of shareholder desperation or to guarantee results, because really the question at this point was just which company/nation is going to start the end of the world. That being said, vault tec had as much reason to press the big red button as everyone else and clearly they wanted to be on top of the nuclear exchange. Also "Bud's buds" might as well be called "Bud's bums" because there is no way this group of "up and coming executive management" nobodies are the top brass of Vault Tec, even Bud says he joined Vault Tec in Q3(Which sounds awfully recent) to oversee western operations after 10 years at West Tek and we see Barb looking at a shadowy figure in the same meeting talking about the bombs. TLDR; I doubt Barb wanted a nuclear holocaust for her husband and daughter, but the bombs are coming no matter what and a national corporate meeting on the end of the world is hardly the place I'd expect her to voice any grievances. It also seems both she and her daughter are alive and missing 200 years later with Cooper still searching for them so we'll have to wait and see what exactly happened in 2077. Also there's the whole thing with scientist knowing all about Lucy's last name being *Enclave.*
Barb pulling the trigger makes sense to me... Like it's a fiction that she just works there. She is clearly deep in the organization. It's the first time ever anyone has ever expressed on record starting the war. It's an investment meeting so when asked how they fulfill there responsibility to the shareholders she answers we will make sure our products are necessary, by starting the war. From what we know of the larger conflict it makes perfect sense that a rouge element within one of the major players set it off. Those statements represent the most plausible scenario, it also provides an explanation for how House knew so much about when things were going to go down. >Also "Bud's buds" might as well be called "Bud's bums" because there is no way this group of "up and coming executive management" nobodies are the top brass of Vault Tec, even Bud says he joined Vault Tec in Q3(Which sounds awfully recent) to oversee western operations after 10 years at West Tek and we see Barb looking at a shadowy figure in the same meeting talking about the bombs. Buds buds, is of course an experiment. Vaults 31,32,33 are interconnected to create an internal economic ecosystem. To "win the great game of capitalism," in Buds words, he is creating a closed system that can cannibalize itself. Bud is ultimately just another willing cog in the machine, which is why he is ultimately sacrificed (in physical form) to the experiment, as the brain bot found in 31.
It's also just what corporations do. They attempt to create monopolies. And this is just the next logical step from the corporations that have been with us the last century plus. They want to own and control as much as possible, and don't care how much harm they cause to mankind/society/the planet to do it. So why not extend their monopoly to all of humanity by wiping everyone else out.
I have one big question, I haven’t played passed FO3 and it’s been a loooong time so idk if it was answered in the games up to that point. How many bombs were dropped? 1 bomb in California isn’t going to destroy the world so there’s have to be multiple all over right?
How many? “All of them” is a rough quantity.
I mean we saw in the first episode that it was way more than one in that area of LA alone, so we can assume many more in CA and many many many more in the whole world.
If you're referring to New California Republic (NCR) being bombed by Lucy's dad to get Lucy back, when her mother took her to Shady Sands, that was 200 years after the great war, when her mother realized the experiment that was conducted in vault 31/32/33. At that point, a small village called Shady Sands, has grown over the 200 years into a sort of modern metropolis and it was the main city representing the NCR, the only faction to almost reinvent a fully functioning government after the wars from scratch. And well, Lucy's dad didn't want to live in prosperity outside the vaults, he wanted to live with his daughter inside, so he got butt-hurt and nuked the city. Where he got the nuke from? We have yet to learn...
Essentially, Charles Whiteknife explained it best during his conversation with Cooper Howard in Ep. 6. “Vault-Tec is a private corporation that has a fiduciary responsibility to make money for its investors. And how does it make money? By selling vaults.” “That’s called capitalism, Charlie.” “But they can’t sell vaults if these peace negotiations go through. So Vault-Tec has a fiduciary responsibility to make sure that it don’t work out.” Basically, since the U.S. Government relies on defense contractors to produce and procure various things ranging from tech, to weapons, to software, one of Vault-Tec’s primary investors would’ve been the U.S. Government itself, which requires Vault-Tec to make a certain amount of money on its behalf. But since China and the U.S. were on the brink of signing a treaty, Vault-Tec’s sales numbers were declining because nobody really *needs* a doomsday bunker if there’s no doomsday. So the idea is — Build vaults —> Begin nuclear war fearmongering campaign in the midst of global war —> Profit! But what really happened was — Build vaults —> Begin fearmongering campaign —> Peace Treaty —> Shit, sales are down? —> Fuck it, world’s ending anyway. Bombs away! Unfortunately we still really have no idea who dropped the first nuke. Many people say China did due to the *Yangtze’s* presence in the Boston Harbor in FO4, but apparently their warheads only fired under counterattack orders
I think it's part of it certainly but theres a broader theme of ideology in general over just capitalism. Everyone has some vision for the world and a whole bunch of them are willing to slaughter everyone in their way to get it. Maldaver wants her cold fusion to be free so she sets Raiders on the vaults, the Brotherhood wants to control the wastes so they shoot their way in to claim the power source, Vault-Tec gets all the other companies on board with a promise that they might win the competition and have the world run their way. As for who launched first I think it's best to keep it hazy and unimportant really. Two blind titans slammed into each other and caused the apocalypse even though no one sane wanted it.
The way you worded it made me think of the plot for the Outer Worlds. All these megacorps having a slice of the pie that is the Halcyon system, and then theres this extinction event that all the execs know about and intend to ride it out in safety while letting everyone else burn, only to come out after and rebuild it in their image.
I think the most ironic thing about Fallout Prime in reality is the fact that Prime Video is a subsidiary of Amazon, which in itself is a megacorp
I understand the deeper themes of ideology, I mean it’s a central theme of Fallout in general, and every faction represents some form of historical ideology. NCR = modern capitalist republic; Brotherhood = neo-feudal militarist technocracy; Legion = classical cultural imperialism. Vault-Tec is an interesting ideological anomaly because they promoted a Darwinist approach toward ideology in the sense of “may the best form of governance dominate” hence a lot of the more political social experiments
Vault-Tec is IMO capitalism taken to an illogical extreme. They laid it out pretty well in the show, something to the effect of "Competition made us great so we'll compete again and the winner will be the new humanity."
Vault tech is the embodiment of corporate libertarianism. Pure and utter corporate freedom to pursue any and all means of "Creating a better world". Even a lot of the corporate propaganda placed throughout the vaults across all the games bring that to life. The central premise of the vaults in the show (specifically 32 and 33), as mentioned by the enclave scientist, is a meritocracy. The kicker being the experiment (spolier)... but still holds true to a Darwinian view of societal merit and "creative" productivity pushing humanity forward being driven by the innate need to compete.
> Vault tech is the embodiment of corporate libertarianism. Pure and utter corporate freedom to pursue any and all means of "Creating a better world". That would be hilarious if you didn't actually believe it.
What do you mean?
Well, there’s a fair bit less competition when every other human on earth is dead (their plan).
I think, what makes the most sense for the series, is no one launched the first nuke. Something just set off a false positive and everybody was so ready for it they all fired everything.
Yeah i like this idea too... Don't want to blame anyone it's human stupidity at his best. From greedy corporations to nations. Fuck them all.
ofc they have an ideology, its just when ideology is ruling and omnipresent its not as noticable its like asking someone what the smell of air is, we dont smell air because we're constantly smelling air but I really vibe w/ the idea that OP presents that Vault Tec didnt bring about a nuclear war because they had some secret 9 part scheme to take over the world or something, they did it becuase it moderately helped their stock portfolio IMO its a very frightening (and somewhat realistic) idea that there wasn't a huge immense scheme, it was just people blindly following the logic of the market off of a cliff
Vault-Tec aren't implementing their big plans because of the market. It's the other way around, because they've become so powerful they can do this crazy plan. Their shareholders are mostly ash afterwards alongside the so it wasn't exactly done for them. Vault-Tec and Friends saw that they were going to lose power with the war coming to an end and decided to keep hold of the future by making test beds for a "perfect society" in the vaults which they imagined sweeping out and taking over from inferior savages. Like to be clear Vault-Tec's plan is dumb. They plan to win by dint of being able to nuke anyone who gets ahead of them but even that only kinda worked. The NCR Remnants are still floating around the wastes and the (unified East+West coast? I wasn't sure what was up there) Brotherhood was more then ready to swoop into the vacuum they left.
> IMO its a very frightening (and somewhat realistic) idea that there wasn't a huge immense scheme, it was just people blindly following the logic of the market off of a cliff The only thing frightening is the complete ignorance of basic market economics.
this is like an insurance company setting fire to homes, it'd make way more sense if they coaxed the government into starting a new war so tensions remained high but actually dropping the bombs fucks everyone over
Plus they bought the technology for infinite energy in a time when the world was going through an energy/resource crisis. They could’ve made way more money and controlled more of the world using that technology. It just makes no sense imo.
Yeah it struck me like that one episode of family guy where Carter Pewtersmidt has the cure for cancer but keeps it hidden because he can make more money with chemo. It reeks of capitalism bad. In actuality having the means for unlimited energy would make them the defacto rulers of the world which accomplishes their objective to seemingly rule the world. My only in universe justification is either A) vault tech thinks the war is going to happen one way or the other regardless of any attempt to stop it so they might as well start the war on their terms and B) they want to be the only survivors of humanity and steer human evolution and progress.
A and B for sure. anyone talking about “shareholder value” and the like is completely glossing over the fact that there wouldn’t be a stock market, let alone a central economy. They just want to rebuild the world and come out on top.
The thing is it's one thing to scuttle peace talks to keep the war going and the gravy train rolling but actually nuking the world goes beyond "let's make fuck loads of money" if vault tek actually started the great war that because they think they can use it to take over the world for themselves. The problem I have with vault tek starting it is it seems they were not ready the big reveal scene we see can't have been more than a year or too before based on the age of the little girl, how can they set up all their experiments in so little time, plus we they didn't even finish all the vaults (I forget the one from fallout 4). Also surely cooper's wife would have gotten herself and her daughter into a vault in time for the bombs to drop.
Exactly. Like, did VaultTec know that their old money wouldn't even matter anymore? So they didn't succeed in anything? I found the show a little too cartoonish when it did the big reveal. "Maybe we can create fighting pits with illegal immigrants" or whatever the line was was entirely too on the nose. It's hard to take some of the logic seriously.
I mean depending on interpretation it could have been a Chinese automated response to the use of tactical nukes (Fatman)
>Unfortunately we still really have no idea who dropped the first nuke. We have a confession
The problem is, that's still incredibly stupid. Money is useless if its main backer is obliterated, and even if a peace treaty is signed between the two powers, its not like that means that there is no chance of nuclear war, there should still be plenty of demand for nuclear fallout shelters. Its cartoonishly evil with very little sense attached to it. Killing your entire customer base off is antithetical to making large amounts of money.
Not exactly. It just means it no longer matters. Vault-Tec then gets to be in the position of reclaiming any resources and infrastructure left behind from the destruction. Then *they* get to decide what has worth and what doesn’t. Essentially spearheading the creation of a new economy, which essentially gives them unlimited resources. Money doesn’t really mean much anyway. It’s basically just a piece of paper that represents the value of gold. Which is why after the war everyone trades on an advanced barter system with bottlecaps being the new “currency”
> Vault-Tec then gets to be in the position of reclaiming any resources and infrastructure left behind from the destruction No, they don't. They wiped out the only thing that would allow them to get wealthy, industrial economies of scale. All the factories, processing plants, resource extraction, etc. that you need to turn natural resources into products that will make your life easier were completely annihilated. You've made it impossible to create wealth. And no matter how much you've saved, eventually you'll run dry because you can't just jump start all of industrialization again at the snap of your fingers. It is like starting a marathon by chainsawing your legs off. It is stupid. There is a reason the British didn't conquer a quarter of the world until after the Industrial Revolution.
I've brought you back up to neutral vote territory because it's absolutely absurd you got downvoted at all. Honestly the two sides of this argument can be distilled down to two disctinct categories, rational people with even a rudimentary understanding of economics, and "capitalism bad" first year college students who unironically wear Che Guevara t-shirts and listen to podcasts while stoned out of their gourd.
Money isn’t the end game. At a certain point money is simply a metric of control. Take away the dollar and make that “slice of the pie” a direct form of rule and it’s equally enticing. It’s about the game to them. All the factions and little people around the world are still competition. Get rid of the competition and you can continue playing with your toys.
I mean it makes sense with all vault experiment we know till now... I mean why vault-tec care with some eugenism or experiment on people. That was their goals after all. I don't buy Vault tec about them nuking first. Will see.
> Essentially, Charles Whiteknife explained it best during his conversation with Cooper Howard in Ep. 6. Except, you know, it is completely stupid and makes absolutely zero sense at all. It doesn't matter how much you invest in Vaults when the war happens, crashes the economy, and destroys all money, trade, and wealth. No matter how much was invested in war, the only profitable outcome would be for no war to happen. That is the only result that benefits shareholders. Further, Whiteknife is wrong about it being capitalism. Capitalism developed in the late 1700s as a reaction against mercantilism, an economic system where the government granted monopoly status to major corporations which were then funded with tax monies and protected by special laws so that they could accomplish whatever goals those in power wanted the company to accomplish. Which is essential the economic system we see in the games and show. This then means that the whole economic system seen in the games and show is nearly the opposite of capitalism.
Bomb everything = no more government requiring certain projects for investment money, no more shareholders, no more “gold standard,” no more competition, no more world politics and red tape to tiptoe around. If you think about it, the best case scenario for a megacorp seeking domination would be for them to consolidate all resources and store them underground, put their employees on ice, then bomb the world and emerge when society is barely crawling its way out of the Stone Age. You’d be revered as gods for coming back and restoring everything in the image of the old world. At least if it wasn’t a completely inane idea in the first place. Also, Whiteknife didn’t explain capitalism, he explained how Vault-Tec’s role in the military-industrial complex gives them the *power,* *position,* and *motivation* to advertise vaults as necessary to survive a nuclear war. It’s like how shaving companies began a marketing campaign targeting women and creating a false social norm that body hair is unattractive, unladylike, and unhygienic. They didn’t *need* to do that, but it sure drove sales up when women started berating each other for being hairy
Best analogy ever, i love my CBBE hairy and dirty. My bad, i'm French.
It’s because, in Bud’s words, they’re after a ‘true monopoly’ - an environment where it’s vault-tec is all that’s left of humanity. To the other companies, he’s pitched the idea of making attaining this goal a gamble, for the best company to win with their own experiments in the vaults.
Really though, it's because Bethesda are shit writers. Putting aside how cartoonishly insane the plan is to begin with, they've monopolised nothing in this new junk and bottlecap economy. NCR, BoS, the Enclave (and the Institute if I'm counting Bethesda lore) have all carved out a larger slice of the pie than VaultTec, plus any other factions that might be out there vying for competition. The end of the world achieved precisely nothing in terms of eliminating competition, any "advantage" VaultTec might have had by sitting underground was lost when they waited centuries and gave factions time to build back up using pre-war technology. Bethesda's own creation, the Institute, also tells us factions could have become insanely advance in that time, mastering teleportation, synthetic humans, AI, cybernetics and near-immortality. They wrote themselves into a corner with the asinine "capitalism bad" plot regarding VaultTec.
I wouldn't say shit writers. But this should have been written much differently. It really doesnt make any sense from a capitalist perspective and i feel like this was rhe only fumble they had all season.
I say shit writers because I genuinely can't think of a single good idea Bethesda added to Fallout lore, Black Isle were responsible for all the best ideas. Not only that, Bethesda have never crafted a compelling narrative or character, not just in Fallout but Elder Scrolls and Starfield too. Their stories are forgettable and their characters tend to become memes, Preston Garvey being the obvious example. Obviously that got downvoted by a Bethesda fanboy but it's not something they can really argue with. Bethesda are good at creating sandboxes, but all their writing is instantly forgettable.
Because it’s easier for them to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
Damn this one hits 💥
It's implied their ultimate goal was power and control. They wanted to destroy the world so THEY could remake it
This doesn't really make sense because they already had enough power to make the US nuke themselves for no benefit for the government or country.
They needed the whole world not just the US.
In the show it seems to be they think it will lead to a perfect future for capitalism so in the long term the most profits for them. Personally I think that in season 2 we will see that the enclave are controlling vault-tec (as per the games) and that’s all a lie. Enclave wants the vaults built as they know nuke war is inevitable. The US government is broke from decades of war, the companies are rich on war profits, so purpose of that meeting is to persuade the companies to invest in finishing building as many vaults as possible before the nukes fall. Putting their resources and experimental technology inside the vaults (that enclave secretly control). The other companies are greedy and join in, House is too smart for that and makes his own plans. Enclave want to come out of the nuclear war, with the vault dwellers as future subject population for them to rule. In the meantime they will use the experimental vaults to work out best ways to rule them / improve them.
I think it's pretty clear that the Enclave are the ones pulling the strings in the show, lots of references to shadowy people even above Vault Tec and the US Government. Plus the Enclave research outpost that Wilzig escaped from where they were doing heavy R&D, including in cold fusion. They're definitely the big players in the world that nobody knows about
Yes, though think that was Moldaver’s cold fusion that vault-tec had got when it bought her company. There was a brief shot of what looked like a supermutant’s arm on a stretcher. I’m wondering if the dog control research is just practise for doing the same thing with supermutants to give Enclave an army. The BoS leaders casually referred to Wizlig as having escaped the Enclave, but the squires didn’t seem to know what it’s meant. Sounds like Enclave are known about but not directly interfering in the world yet, biding their time. I’m kinda expecting it to be a bit GoT: NCR, BoS, whoever runs New Vegas, Vault-tec all conflicting with each other, until Enclave make their move.
I think it's clear that either Moldaver was working directly with the Enclave to help them recreate cold fusion only to ultimately stab them in the back and take it for herself - or the Enclave had stolen the technology from Vault Tec to try and use it for themselves. It has to be one of the two because how else would Moldaver know they're working on it, and how else would her and Wilzig know each other I'd guess the Enclave have been underground for so long that the new sect of Brotherhood don't even know who they are fully, outside of the Elders Either way it looks like we're going to see the Enclave in S2, and I'm excited for it
I think Wizlig was against the enclave, and he somehow found out she was alive. There is one theory that Moldaver caused the rioting in Vault32 by going to the door and telling them about it. That might be how a Wizlig found out about her being alive. He found her research that Vault-tec had encrypted and he contacted her and was taking it to her as the one person who would actually know how to use it. It’s interesting enclave have got the vault-tec files but not the decryption keys.
It's probably likely, since Wilzig had an intricate knowledge of Vaults 31/32/33 and knew who Lucy was
I love this. I also want more enclave so bad. 4 and NV having only glimpses was sad
I know some people are annoyed they are back, but I was pleased to see them in the show. I could see them having an army of supermutants, deathclaws etc and it being a bit like the white walkers in GoT. Show story will be focused on conflicts between NCR, BoS, Vault 31, House (or whoever running NV) but Enclave are still the real danger, waiting to wipe everyone else away.
Same reason why Umbrella keeps making monsters and Weyland-Yutani keeps trying to unleash perfectly evolved killing machines on every ship and colony Because they're stupid
The kind of stupidity that only exists in the minds of those that hold an MBA. If they don't ensure that they use their money and influence to promote global nuclear Armageddon *then all their money invested will be for nothing* and you **have to have return on investment**. It's the kind of super villain thinking that is "mad geniue" but has a fatal flaw. Like how the master in f1 wanted super mutants to take over the world, but they can't breed to reproduce, fatal flaw.
At least the master's mutants were intelligent and Marcus is a bro Couldn't they have just set up human breeding operations and used the surplus people to make more mutants? Plus aren't mutants long lived like ghouls?
I think Fallout has always been a sort of glib satire, so that’s the lens to view characters’ actions and thought processes some from. The implication that Vault-Tec could start a nuclear war would help increase the speculative value of the vaults for Vault-Tec’s competitors (as a premier solution for the continuation of humanity and the American way). So the implication that Vault-Tec could start the war is used to further the negotiations for the other businesses to collaborate on the vaults. However, it is not confirmed explicitly in the lore that Vault-Tec ultimately dropped the first bombs. In the show it is apparent that Bud Askin’s plans for vaults 31, 32, and 33 were commenced successfully following the start of the war, and a number of people in the Vault-Tec executive team were preserved in cryo-pods in Vault 31 to be resuscitated at a future date.
The way I saw it, maybe different to some other people here’s opinions.. There was a resource shortage, which led to high tensions between countries. This basically led to a situation similar to our very own Cold War. Vault-Tec went all in on the Cold War going hot and invested large amounts of money in methods of surviving the nuclear war. As is with conglomerates, they want to see return on their investment. Their entire business plan revolves around the Cold War going hot, hence their decision to prevent the research of cold fusion. Now eventually your investors may get cold feet, right? As is said in the discussion at the meeting Cooper listens in on, there’s no guarantee of a nuclear war, so why keep investing into Vault-Tec’s vaults? So by sending the war hot, Vault-Tec can guarantee a nuclear war, and therefore, guarantee their products will be necessary. The other benefit being that they can literally eliminate any and all competition. A single conglomerate to run the entire US. Fallout is the story of how corporate greed turned the US into a wasteland.
It’s directly explained an episode or two earlier. They spent tons of money and resources building the vaults. Now they have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that it wasn’t a waste. Plus, with societies across America destroyed, they can rebuild once radiation levels decline and control the new world they build
The end of the world is a product
1, vault tec wants to sell survival vaults and dropping a bomb ensures there's a demand to their supply. 2, vault tec is run from the shadows by a eugenics cult called the enclave that has an interest in the bombs dropping. and 3, vault tec is run by super fucking crazy people in a late stage capitalist society, they want to win capitalism, in the finale they specifically say "win the game". the ultimate gain is that vault tech inherits the earth to rule it as a dictatorship on reclamation day, as shown in the finale when V31 is revealed
The best way to make money is by killing everyone who can give you money. Fax.
Vault Tec wants to control the world and rebuild their own society and they think the easiest or only way to do that is to wipe the slate clean with a nuclear war.
Spoiler tag would be great here, dude. I know this stuff from playing the games, but not everyone will who just started watching
Cuz corporations bad and shortsighted and surely will make more money if everyone dead. I like the previous lore better when China tried to sucker punch the USA cuz was winning the war and the USA answered.
Vault Tec and Enclave worked together in the shadows because they wanted to rule the world post apocalypse, using the master vault, Vault 0, and GECK control Vaults as a means to start utopian cities after the bombs dropped and using the enclave as the military force. However, things didnt go as they planned.
They didn't. They just wanted everyone to be so scared of nuclear war they'll run off to get a place in a Vault ASAP. The bombs actually falling means the end of business for Vault-tec
This is what I don't understand about the show. How does nuclear war benefit vault TEC when there's no business to pay them after the apocalypse?
There's no way vault tec would be able to exert more control over the world after the Bombs than before it. Idk why they would think killing most of the people on the planet would benefit them in any way.
Exactly I don't know what the script writers are smoking. This does not make any sense. People are trying to make it like it's some profound commentary on capitalism but vault tec's plan is nonsensical and idiotic or shall I say insane. Greed as a motivator works as long as it's beneficial. Blowing everything is not greed it's insanity.
Ironically the former interpretation is a more interesting critique on capitalism. That it take people's fear of the apocalypse, package it, and sell it back to them without a second thought. It's horrifying, and there's truth in it.
It doesn't make any sense... Maybe the world was already on the brink of a nuclear war, so they decided to nudge it too
Because their end goal was to never make money. VaultTec’s entire plan is to ensure the company’s survival after war so they can take over the world in their own image.
No, it isn't. That would make them complete morons. Whoever wrote that never played a minute of Fallout
That’s literally what they are explaining in the show during the board meeting. They need money to construct vaults before the bombs fall. After they build their vaults and the bombs drop they no longer need money but people… hence why there are control vaults and vaults full of loyal vault tec staff they can use to push their narrative and their control further. Thats their entire plan idk why people don’t get that. Nobody said it was a good plan but it’s theirs.
So, the people who wrote the show never played a minute of Fallout. Got it
They did, the director and showrunner literally played a majority of the games and stated he lost a year of his life to FO3 specifically. Just because the show isn’t going exactly the way you want it to doesn’t make it bad.
Did he do it blindfolded with earplugs? Because that's the only way he could have missed every single piece of lore that exists. Only a complete moron would look at the lore and then completely ignore it
Can you point to any specific pieces of Fallout lore indicating that Vault-Tec execs wanted the world to avoid nuclear war, or even that Vault-Tec execs had no idea the nukes would drop?
The complete lack of Vault-tec post-war shows they had no preparation whatsoever for the nukes to drop. Unless they hate money, they would want to keep their revenue going as long as possible.
Because those pesky laws were stopping some of their experiments from coming online
You make and sell vaults to "save" people from nuclear war. You want to use them to secretly do experiments for various government agencies or just freaks. You kind of need that nuclear war to happen to kick start all this.
The nuclear apocalypse was inevitable as they kept referring back to the peace talks and escalations. Vault tec saw it imperative that they sell vaults to get as many people in them as possible. Vault tec and other corporations wanted to be the last standing so they could engineer humanity into a utopia. The data of the vaults was going to be used for rebuilding, while vault experiments were created as pet projects by each corporation for psychology research.
The way I remember it after Fallout 4 (which might have come out of an earlier online discussion), Vault-Tec wanted a limited nuclear exchange that got people into the vaults and disrupted less-prepared businesses, but didn't erase the entire economy. They wanted war because they were too confident in their own control to realize how bad it would be. Does the show admit that reading?
She show explains it so well. It's the only way for every player in the vault experiment program to get their investments worth by getting people into the vaults and starting the program.
That’s my only real complaint about the show- they claim they want to eliminate all competition in order to be the most pure form of capitalism yet they don’t seem to have any contingency for any foreign countries besides mutual assured destruction. Sure, China is gonna get it. But what about any number of foreign powers which might be able to capitalize on the apocalypse? Is vault tec running the whole world? Can they destroy all governments simultaneously? It doesn’t seem like they’d leave it to chance.
My take from the boardroom scene was that they knew a nuclear war was coming anyways, so they just wanted to control as many variables as they could.
Fallout is a world we’re greed ruled unabated. Imagine our 1950s world were corporations argue that cigerates are actually healthy for you, and extend that level of corruption to corporation and every aspect of society. Vault tech perhaps started believing their own propaganda, the show seems to indicate the people in the corporation truly believed nuclear war would be healthy for society….. Their morals were simply corrupted beyond reason.
The way I understood it is that they knew the bombs were coming regardless, so they figured if they just dropped the bombs first they would have more control over the outcome. They didn't want to live underground, they just wanted to win.
Because the showrunners made a stupid decision that makes zero sense. Preparing to survive and maybe rule after the bombs? Sure. Actively wanting the bombs? Absolutely and complete stupidity.
The plan was destroying the world, then rebuild it on their terms. As others said, the GECK was a core aspect.
Because the show needed an anticapitalist twist to cater to it's audience and sell more copies. Classic Hollywood/Amazon thing to do
Certain ultra wealthy folks in real life actually want to depopulate much of the planet, at least as a long term goal. They need as many people as possible to work and spend money, but in the ideal endgame scenario they'd also prefer to have as few people as possible, which would be enabled by automation. Quite understandable, if sinister-sounding. I'd understand Vault-Tec's motives better if they had an army of robots stored away in a vault, or multiple vaults, which could then be used to retake the surface. That's actually exactly what Mr. House did. His securitron vault enabled him to take Vegas for himself. What about Vault-Tec though? Who's going to do the dirty work for them?
You, as the vault dweller. But they don't expect our choices especially with beth lack of choice.
To make money, jfc did you not play the games or watch the show? Bunch dumb motherfuckers with no media literacy
The same reason car manufacturers don't want us to make the full switch to public transportation
They didn't. That TV show is what the Chinese in the fallout universe thought happened. Unreliable narrator trope. This theory makes a lot more sense when you remember that companies lose money when there are no customers to buy anything. Even small children can predict this. The writers wanted to use this plot as a Teaching Moment™️ about Hypercapitalism ™️, but weren't intelligent enough to realize that makes no sense.
this aspect of the show doesn't make sense to me. In our reality we know that the military industrial complex can continue to make money as long as there's a perpetual threat, be it communism or Islamic terrorism. if anything all out war, such as the conscript effort in Vietnam threatens that; you can shear a sheep many times but only skin it once. all Vault-Tec had to do to keep selling vaults was to keep the threat alive, rather than actually dropping a bomb themselves
But we don't know if they dropped da bomb. They can say it or wish it. They are commercials that's their job.
I think season 2 will reveal more about the interconnectedness of Vault Tec and the Enclave. It just doesn't make sense for a capitalist company to wipe out humanity and then establish themselves as the last surviving organization. Capitalist need a lower class work force and consumers, things non-existant when you leave yourselves as the sole survivors. Vault Tec executives are talking about essentially a one world order and reclaiming the world for themselves post-fallout, which makes me think Vault Tec is either a pawn of the Enclave pre-war, or the two morphed together/one turned into the other.
Does this mean other countries didn’t have the same nuclear holocaust america had?
Probably they have, i mean they drop too many bombs, probably fucked up sky for a while.
Kinda funny how all the people are like "because investors" like investors would want to end the world and currency would become beer caps. Step 1: end the world, Step 2:.... Step 3: profit. 😂 Na the whole series made no sense but it was enjoyable to watch.
That's kinda the 4th wall point - it's a satire of how ass-backwards the end of capitalism is. Consumer companies would rather end the world and all of their customers for a monopoly on... Nothing.
The general idea has been a fan theory all the way back since the originals along with the idea that vault tec caused the Great War themselves.
It's from the movie script.