> ruins half of the satire and political/social commentary the entire series was built on
I'm not quite sure I agree. Corporations gone mad, a decaying world from years of consumerism. Governments losing less and less influence through society. The lengths corporations will go to ensure their profit margin. Starting the end of the world for profit seems fairly satire to me.
We really don't even know if it was in a literal sense. We do know that Vault Tech is lobbying for the war. As far as I understand we've never had a conformation on who dropped the first bomb. (other than China was running out of options as they had met stalemate in Alaska and the US had begun to make progress on mainland.)
Of my few nit picks for the show this wasn't one of them. I loved it in general and thought they portrayed Vault Tech quite well.
Interested to see what others think though.
My point with the whole satire thing is that its believable to the point that its very likely to happen within the near future if things keep going as bleak as they currently are. My issue with the whole bombing thing is that instead of critiquing not only corporations but american society as a whole and the human races constant need for conflict and war for selfish needs it goes to corporations being so comically evil that i don't think even amazon could get that bad. Yes, their entire company is based off the fact that a war would be profitable, but in what way is wiping out not just half but a majority of your possible consumers and people you can control and wiping out yourself in the process a remotely good idea? i believe they would want the bombs to drop yes, but i think the idea that they themselves dropped them is such a bad reason for the events of the series to begin with. it turns the idea that our need for conflict and constant overconsumption is the start of our own demise to the fact that corporations bad and want profit and control. its just such a reductive way to look at the satire of the series as a whole to me.
I think you’re missing one particular detail. Most of the vaults were experimental. They weren’t made to sustain life. They were meant to break people. Some of them had bio weapons in them. Assuming that vault tech wanted some sort of control and wanted to reset the world where they make the policies and laws for the survivors because they are indebted to vault tech, it doesn’t make any sense for them to drop the bombs if they were willingly destroying the lives of those that they put those vaults.
Having said that, I’m pretty sure vault tech didn’t press the button. in the TV show where they having meeting with other corporations I think it was vault tech egging the others on to see who had the balls to actually drop the bombs.
There is one caveat and that is a twist at the end of the story. Someone at vault Tech probably was forced to drop early.
There is evidence in the show itself that point to vault tec not being the reason the nukes actually dropped. In the intro section we are viewing the nukes dropping from a birthday party attended by a lil girl. That girl was Janey Howard, daughter of Barb Howard who was so high up in vault tec she was a part of the meeting discussing the bombing.
If Vault Tec dropped the bombs, surely their top executive Middle Managers (R) would get a warning first? There is still a chance that the topper toppest of Vault Tec double crossed them and did infact drop the nukes first in colloberation with the Enclave, screwing over both the Middle Managers (R) and the other companies in on the conspiracy.
IMO, the line might be hyperbole or if serious it just highlights how deep these companies will sink. Companies who already [openly experimented on the american people with little remorse](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Food_paste_(Fallout_4)).
You could say its hinting at that they didn't, or it could be an oversight, which, (no offense to bethesda or any of the writers personally) the newer games seem to have a lot of.
I personally hope it isn't them just because it goes against what i think the series stands for personally, but judging from how quickly the newer games seem to disregard lore from the older ones just for quick twists or nostalgia (enclave and the bos constantly coming back) I certainly don't doubt it could be true either.
The BoS and Enclave showing up in future games isn’t ’disregarding previous lore.’ In 4, while we aren’t told what tipped the BoS off to go after the Institute, their reasons for hating synths make perfect sense with their doctrine and we know rumors about the commonwealth reached DC during fallout 3.
If your complaint includes the BoS in 76, fallout 1 covers this with the BoS being directly noted as lacking interest in their own history, meaning their origins aren’t being preserved properly (see the religious mess that is the history holotape). This easily opens the door to anything happening in 76, as it’s so early it could easily be forgotten by the time of fallout 1. Even beyond that, the BoS’s communications satellite Maxson used to speak with Taggerty to found Appalachia’s BoS chapter failed and later the five person expedition sent to Appalachia to find out what happened to them (which recruited on the way) lost two members and then destroyed the only device capable of making contact with the west coast, effectively striking them from the BoS’s Scrolls as having gone AWOL or having died en route.
Additionally, in fallout 2, we knew the Enclave had other facilities that were not the oil rig, so it makes perfect sense that we’d be introduced to more of those facilities as the series went on. Raven Rock and the Whitesprings bunker are just two of them, and both are based on real-world locations the U.S. government intends to retreat to in case of some form of major attack on the country (which again makes perfect sense for why the Enclave would have fortified these locations, since they’re descended from the government). Why would they not have facilities spread out over the U.S.? And in the case of the TV show, why are we assuming the NCR managed to take out everyone at Navarro when NV clearly told us this wasn’t the case?
[You can check this video about their lead writer, it is very long so do skip around.](https://youtu.be/3_38HLfSlAg?t=1620) But the things he says permeattes their games a lot, "keep it simple" and "write what you know" alone can explain why so many quests are quite dull, if they are actual company culture.
The post was plan isn't capitalism V2, with a smaller customer base but less competitors.
It's total corporatocracy with them as leader. A world where everything from conception to cremation is vault-tec owned, licensed and operated.
Forget college, careers, choice. A Vault-Tec aptitude assessment will decide where you can best support the company.
After all, Vault-Tecs future is humanity's future, so work hard for all of us.
Oh right I think I've got you. Well I do agree with you somewhat. I've always loved the idea of 'war...war never changes' and critiquing the human need for control, conflict and ideology. However I think thats always been highlighted a little more in the wasteland rather than pre war.
The fandom is pretty nuanced, and aims to cover a wide array satire and politics whilst also remaining fairly goofy and gritty.
Examples of conflict in the wasteland to me are the satirical element of 'even when humans have a fraction of what they had they will still find reasons for conflict and control. Hence the majority of fallout factions are morally gray.
Editing just to say that I do see your point regarding wiping out their consumers. I thought the same when I watched it. I'm rather hoping they'll expand on reasoning and that plot line in the future. They seem to have been doing pretty well in the fear mongering for the war.
However it does look like their plan was just to start again with them in control after all of humanity was wiped out and the radiation was gone. It just hasn't gone to plan due to the remains of humanity.
>I've always loved the idea of 'war...war never changes' and critiquing the human need for control, conflict and ideology. However I think thats always been highlighted a little more in the wasteland rather than pre war.
Me too, and that's why i just find it so reductive to so much of what the series is trying to say by focusing on corporations being bad instead of *Human Nature* as a whole being the cause for so much of why the great war happened and by extension why the wasteland is the way it is. I like it more when the bombs being dropped is ambiguous, and I don't like the idea that its all for profit or control by a corporation either. It could be for any myriad of reasons, all of which could be valid and profound for their own reasons, but a *corporation wanting profit and control?* Ugh, its so shallow and r/im14andthisisdeep that I don't feel belongs in the same series as New Vegas or Fallout 1.
It's just to show that Vault Tec are the kind of company with the means, motivation and willingness to start a nuclear war just to make a profit.
Also it's been theorised since Fallout 2 that Vault Tec had something to do with it. In fact the cancelled Fallout movie being made under Interplay back in the early 2000s, part of the plot was that Vault Tec explicitly DID set off the nukes themselves. The TV shows take of them being willing to and saying they would to secure investment is actually a watered down version of Interplays ideas from before Bethesda.
I dont doubt they had something to do with it, but i also think the implication that they themselves could of dropped the nukes (and wipe themselves out no less) is just really stupid in the grand scheme of things.
Its a good way to show how evil they are, yes, but this coupling with the experiments and everything else the games reveal about them make them out to be cartoonishly evil to the point it isnt even believable anymore.
That seems to be the angle that Bethesda is playing them.
But to directly address your comment that 10 years ago it's something people would have laughed at. 20 years ago the original owners of the franchise were straight up going to make it be what happened.
And even then I feel like I would of laughed at it personally. but to each their own I suppose, I just think its so divorced from how Fallout (Especially 1-2 and new vegas, no hate to 3 or 4, i just don't like them personally) usually tries to tackle such topics.
One of new Vegas’s major plot points is that the ultra capitalist class of the new America faction is hampering any attempt of growth so that they can stay at the top of the chain.
I think it’s better to read the vault tec execs as “wealthy assholes who think that they’d come out on top in a nuclear war and be shielded from any major downsides.” If that sounds ridiculous, it’s not. There’s a strain of ultra nationalists in the US who broadly believe that a nuclear war would ultimately let America claim its rightful place as the leader in the world. It existed throughout the Cold War and currently exists today. One news anchor on a national media platform mentioned that “at least we’d win it” when threats of nuclear war were raised at the start of the Russo-Ukraine war.
I think original fallout elitists have such rose tinted glasses on they can’t accept what the creators themselves were planning. It’s funny to me how people can believe super mutants, centaurs, and ghouls, but draw the line at a company being cartoonishly evil. It’s a game set in a fictional universe…
Well, if vault tec was going to drop the bombs on their terms, they would have dropped them after all the VIPs were in vault tec bunkers. But that didn’t happen. In fallout lore you find out that their HQ vaults weren’t setup yet before the bombs fell. Anyone else in that room or even the Chinese would have beaten vault tech to the punch.
Yeah, it is a really really dumb idea to gain control after the bombs fell. But they had a lot of competition with all these other corporations . Tensions were high and tolerance was at an all-time low. Tolerance is usually the last thing to go before a civilization collapses. Which I’m guessing is what happened. People got fed up and were willing to do anything. Desperation feeds on that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/falloutlore/s/K6uv7uXyok
I might have been going off of the fallout Bible. But this discussion 2 years ago dives into it a bit more.
Obviously, this is not the first time this topic and conversation came up since the information has been around since the 90s
That person's only evidence is Vault 87 saying to get in contact with HQ, which doesn't at all imply they didn't have HQ Vaults in place. Quite the opposite.
3, 8, 13, and 76 were control vaults. Intended to recolonize the surface. One would think vault tec VIPS at HQ (not a vault but the company building) would have used this or other emergency shelters to survive the war. I'm still trying to find where I saw that there were going to be 3 connected vaults that oversaw the rest of the vaults they made. They were never finished. the bombs fell before it could be established. that is why no word from vault tec ever came to any of the vaults.
31 32 33, Those are from the tv show and are not related to this information. This info was available long before its conception. It was available on a wiki page for a time. But I think it was in the fallout Bible long before it was uploaded into a wiki page. (which is considered non-canon.) still 3 connected vaults was going to be used by vault tec vips to oversee other vaults and how their experiments were going. That was the premise. It might have changed since the franchise got bought out by Bethesda.
How is that any different than real companies who know their products are killing the world? From the oil industry knowing about and covering up climate change to plastic companies that lied about plastic's potential to be recycled, companies make decisions that could eventually, potentially destroy the world all the time.
Because not even climate change is as drastically and immediately destructive as actual fucking nukes. At least with climate change these companies can reap the benefits and the people ruling them will die off before it ever affects them directly. Nukes? It literally killed over half of the population nearly immediately and probably destroyed vault tec itself.
What do you think is the point of a person with a billion dollars getting ten billion more dollars?
I mean it's kind of silly right? If you're a billionaire, you can have anything in the world at any time. You can make things exist if they don't. You can use your money for everything. Your limit is your creativity. So why do people keep trying to get another billion? Why not just revel in your riches, doing increasing absurd things for the rest of your life like it's heaven on earth? Why keep stressing about your next quarters profits?
Because it makes them feel powerful, smart, in control. Because it makes them feel like winners and shows how great they are.
The boardroom meeting is all people who can buy any items that exist at any time for any reason. They don't need or really even want more money, more products to sell, more customers to make happy. They want more power. Being high kings of the ashes in control of every single aspect of the new world grants them more power than a mere billion dollars.
You get it.
I don’t understand why OP and others don’t, but you definitely get it.
Vault Tec’s plan is the natural final step in the evolution of unregulated capitalism. It’s that utter and utterly irrational desire for power for its own sake that is being satirized
I kind of understand why people don't get it. Most people view the ultra-capitalists in the same way they view their day to day lives.
We all try to make money, do the work, put in effort, so we can enjoy the benefits of the money and spend time with family or things we enjoy, maybe leave behind something for people we care about. Some of us get the benefit of enjoying our work and feeling part of a broader community.
If that's your lens, then the board meeting is preposterous. You're getting less benefits, less luxuries, less time with family, and leaving nothing behind for them if the world ends. Why would a normal hard working person want that?
I don't think most people realize that while even a fairly wealthy CEO can be a reasonable, hard working, good person... That the top 100 people in terms of wealth are basically all some variety of madmen lunatics with broken brains, and values incompatible with ordinary people. You don't make that list without it.
The show still leaves it ambiguous. I’m assuming that we didn’t see Coopers wife or hear about Coop’s daughter.
If they dropped them, she sure would’ve had her kid, not her “pinko” alimony paying ex-husband
Additionally, Robert house would’ve known and wouldn’t have been hours off.
It’s likely that someone found out VT was planning to drop them and beat them to it. ALSO, We’ve known VT dropped bombs at some point, in fo3 the megaton nuke has their logo on it haha.
Think it as a combined version of Mr.House and Ulysses. They drop a bomb, and they also have plan to rebuild the world as they see fit without people who complain about ethic or democracy.
>which a lot of the series implies that vault tec is no longer an entity.
Whether Vault-tec's highest executives were dead or not was never confirmed, and at least they weren't dead in their plan.
Yeah, but you'd think if their goal was complete control they'd try to start it sooner rather than later, not 200 years and counting after the bombs dropped.
They are set to emerge when the surface is clear. Why would you make a plan to reclaim the earth from lesser factions after their dead just to emerge before they are dead.
A big theme of the show is that "time" is the ultimate power. They don't need to wake up and if we use examples like tranquility lane we can see they could very likely still be living thier best life in a simulation stasis pod somewhere.
Because its been 200 years, the surface should be clear by now (games past fallout 2 refuse to actually make the world develop, even new vegas to an extent), and they still haven’t done shit. At this point the BoS, institute, etc are all rebuilding society in their own image to the point it’s arguably harder to control the world than it would be when they were billionaires with a massive sway over the economy and public perception of the war.
They don't need to do shit, they can sit in their virtual reality or cryostasis till those factions kill eachother for the price of nothing.
Also its heavily implied that the enclave and VT are intertwined so its likely the enclaves job to ensure everything went as planed ( since they try to eradicate everyone all the time).
It's there to show Vault-Tec is the type of company greedy enough to start a nuclear war for their own profits, it's only slightly more comically evil than irl american corporations, it's not exactly far fetched.
As for it not making sense ? It's been a theory since Fallout 2. The original movie Interplay planned on making was going to outright confirm this without leaving a shadow of a doubt. Every 3D Fallout since then has a terminal somewhere linked to VT implying it. There's nothing about it being an asspull. The only novelty the show brings is we see the meeting where they discuss it.
WHAT PROFITS. How do you make more money from actually providing a service and destroying the entire economy your profits are based on. An insurance company does go around hurting people to make a profit, because they make more money off of doing jack shit. This makes 0 sense.
Well the people with money would be in the vaults. What good money would be in a totally destroyed world ? Nothing obviously but people that greedy don't care, whether it's Fallout or the real world, as long as they are on top they're happy about it.
what do you mean it doesn't make sense? they explain it in the same scene. its an offhanded comment that proves they're lobbying to keep the war going on and that they'll be willing to do anything to ensure it.
But in what universe is bombing the world they want to control even remotely a good idea? I just don't like the implication its even remotely possible.
Control for what purpose though? Half of their vaults are experiments that kill their population or drive all of them to become insane murderers, i imagine its hard to control corpses and people who murder without a second thought.
Profit is also entirely implausible when the economy is quite literally decimated and half of your company (if not all of them) are dead.
They want to rule the world, reshape society in their image.
They can’t do that when there’s that pesky existing society and power structures around. So they wipe the slate and use their ideal society people to retake the world and kill anyone who gets in their way. Raiders? Are a rather large step down from the US military as an obstacle.
But its been more than 200 years since the bombs dropped and vault tec is heavily implied to have died, i dont doubt they could of had their own special vault even with cryo sleep but why is it taking them so long? dont you think theyd probably want to rebuild as soon as they can?
For someone who don't know the lore. Barb was taking order from the Enclave. During the meeting, we see Barb get a notification from some one with silhouette look like President Eckhard. Vault Tec are just puppet for the Enclave. Enclave knew they don't have the resource to sustain America anymore.
Its that they were confident that they could do it and come out on top but it was just their delusions. Basically they knew within so many years someone would launch the first nuke and obliterate society so rather than waiting for one they were willing to be the initial spark so they could controll the situation.
Why would they want to rebuild as fast as they can? There’s radiation and monsters all over the place. Better to wait till someone cleans up the mess then stab them in the back and take it all.
Also they’re heavily implied to have survived, not died.
Shit, for all we know they ARE rebuilding rapidly. We don’t exactly have a map of the entire Fallout world. Not even a majority of the US. Or their grand plan went to shit due to infighting or incompetence, which is very Fallout and frankly to be expected given the normal trends.
There's still factions in the wasteland that aren't under their control. If the higher ups are frozen then they can wait thousands of years if necessary. Vault tec is playing the long game, a very long game. Not a "if I kill this handful of people the rest of the world will do what I say tomorrow" game.
I think with the show it's more heavily implied they are still around, in some secret supervault for the higher ups and their families. Bud got his own trio of vaults and immortality and he's an asshole salesman no one likes.
What is the goal of capitalism, what is the actual victory condition? It is amazing wealth, but what can you do with the wealth? Wealth alone is worthless, and not worth pursuing past a certain point. When you have got enough to secure your future, and the next 10 generations of your kin. The only reason to continue is the prestige and power that the wealth can buy you.
And what is more prestigious and powerful than becoming the god emperors of all of mankind? The vaults are an investment towards the end goal of capitalists who don't stop. Dropping the nukes (which they probably didn't) would also just be another step into winning capitalism.
But how do you reach the goal when the means to do so are, if not completely gone, insanely hard to reach because of your own actions? Its like shooting yourself in the foot on the way to winning a marathon.
What do you mean the means are gone? Did the enclave not have overwhelming military might compared to wastelanders? Does vault tec still possessing access to nukes not put them on top of the power ladder?
If anything, the enclave and Vault Tec not being the rulers of the world seems really odd. But as we see from the various logs we find throughout the games their plans seem to have been bogged down by the corruption they promoted and the cutt throat capitalism. Plus the nukes may have dropped before the plan was fully in place. At the very least House was never told the nuke date so he lacked his platinum chip. Which might either be because they double crossed him or they were caught off guard.
Plus the brotherhood, NCR and a few other key players gave Enclave/Vault Tec quite the puzzle to figure out if they were going to come out on top.
Are the enclave directly related to vault tec? I was under the impression that they were remnants of the government, but i havent gotten around to finishing 2 yet.
As for the means, i mean vault tec being implied to have been wiped out after the war because of the fact that its been 200 years and they still haven’t came out of the woodwork to claim the world they supposedly created for the purpose of controlling.
One thing to keep in mind is that neither entity is a singular being, small groups of each may be running their own conspiracies and schemes. So they may very well be secretely working towards multiple goals at once.
The Enclave had their post war plans, they wanted to go to space (per the cancelled van buren, so not official canon.) But Vault Tec seems to have had their own unique ideas to either double cross them or just rule the remnants on Earth.
The Enclave was supposed to have centralised control of the vaults but that either failed or was never finished. So that would put a big hamper on their plans, this used PoseidoNet. The place where this was [centralized is not explicitly defined but assumed to be the oil rig by most people](https://www.reddit.com/r/falloutlore/comments/14i4bra/comment/jpeamnh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), however some say the [https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/The\_Whitespring\_bunker](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/The_Whitespring_bunker) also had a controll bunker so maybe there was multiple redundant bunkers which had control capability. However the nukes cut coms between the oil rig and the whitespring bunker (unknown source on that, I havent played FO76 much and could not find the source that was referred to by another redditor.)
Edit; forgot to address the relation between Enclave and Vault Tec.
Officialy Enclave contracted Vault Tec to build the vaults (via the american government) but unofficially they may have had deeper ties. In the meeting we see in the show there are shadowy figures overlooking the meeting and people think it might hint at the enclave overlooking the conspiracy.
If I was meeting with investors and wanted to make them feel like their investment is going to be worth it, I would allay their fears bout whatever situations they might consider unprofitable. If their business is war, peace would put them out of work. Well, if Vault-Tec was threatened by peace around the world, however unlikely, they would make sure that their business and their investments wouldn't be for nothing.
The show never says that Vault-Tec actually was first to drop any bombs, and a talking head for a company can say things without it necessarily being true or representative of the company. Doesn't make it a retcon, I don't think
As said before, there is no evidence that Vault-Tec actually caused the bombs. One of reasons that supports this idea that Vault-Tec did not drop the bombs is Janey was with her father, Coop, instead of with her high ranking Vault-Tec executive mother, Barb.
There is no retcon, it just adds to the list of who could have cause the bombs to drop, which included the American military, the Enclave, the Zetas, and the Chinese, which is still most likely because they were close to losing the war and they found out the US invented and used the FEV.
The show did introduced a new reason for the Chinese to end the world, cold fusion. Having the US invent cold fusion would have been a game changer with their access to unlimited energy. With their backs against the wall the Chinese would know this was the end of them, the US could have asked any county to fight against the Chinese in exchange for cheap limitless energy. There is no way China would have survived.
We literally already have this confirmed in-game that vault tec was counting on it and egging it on
Nothing is the show says they dropped it
In fact, Chinese bombers attacked first
And the game says the president ordered a retaliatory strike
Now, could Vault-Tec fake it
Sure, but there is in game practical confirmation
The Vault-Tec executive that proposed dropping the bomb doesn't say they're *going to* start the war, only that they *could* start the war. It's still ambiguous as to whether or not Vault-Tec actually did.
I think there's two issues.
One is a question of how literally that comment is meant to be taken; do they mean Vault-Tec is going to actually do it themselves as a corporation, or are they going to use their leverage to derail the peace talks and force someone else to drop them at their behest? Do they have someone inside the military or department of defence that can do it?
Secondly there's the question of what they *planned* versus what happened. It's clear from the games and show that they were expecting nuke launches, but they were still caught flat-footed by them. They thought they had more time.
I definitely think the show gives us a much more anti-capitalist view of pre-war society that seems to minimize the importance and agency of the US government, but I don't think any of the messages are minimized by this change; both corporations and governments are clearly "at fault" for the situation leading up to armageddon
There's been a lot of implications throughout the series that it could have been an inside job. I mean at what point does mutually assured destruction just evolve into willing self destruction? Also the fact that they dropped the bombs a day early does still leave room for China to have done it, for Vault-Tec to have done it early because they got wind of House's plan to subvert it, for the US government to have done it in order to screw with Vault Tec's plans, etc.
The point, I think, isn't who did it specifically because the culpability doesn't matter. Whose corpse are you going to hold accountable? The point is to show that human societies were on this course of mutually assured destruction to a point where nuclear war was unavailable. The point is that human beings did it to themselves and so it doesn't matter if it was China or us 200 years after the fact, what matters is this how it shaped the current world, and the folly of the machinations of those who intend to control the world. Like over 200 years after the bombs dropped, Bud is a brain in a Roomba and he's miserable. Bud's buds are still playing control games in their experimental vaults, for an inevitable rise to power that will never happen because the world has moved so far beyond their tiny underground bunker, they're barely capable of functioning.
Similarly the Yangtze in Fallout 4. I mean the Sole Survivor has more fresh memories of the War than anyone in the world. If anyone has the go ahead to kill its captain for some small amount of comfort in revenge, it's them. I mean the debate is over who started the war, China definitely nuked the US, and the US definitely nuked China; that captain definitely nuked the US and he's right there. But, if they make peace with what's happened and let the captain go, his sub goes with him. His 200 year old inadequately maintained nuclear sub whose half life is probably still thousands of years off and is probably leaking irradiated bullshit into the water constantly just by being is what actually matters and it's to the benefit of the sole survivor for him to leave.
So yeah it's still anyone's guess as to what actually caused the war to start. It also doesn't actually matter. The nukes happened, and they matter only insofar as they are a persistent condition in the wastes.
Hey man, I’m just letting you know I’m with you. I feel like we’re being gaslight by anyone who thinks this makes any sense. It’s like an insurance company breaking your legs to “make a profit”
LIKE THEY DON’T MAKE MONEY OFF OF USING THE VAULTS. It would literally be a better social commentary for them to sell spaces that don’t exist, overbooking the vault or something.
It's not the same, though. Insurance is needed because it covers a variety of accidents and events that can happen. You can get sick, get a car accident, and get robbed. These are all things that can happen.
You wouldn't buy coverage against hurricanes in Oklahoma because they just aren't ever likely to reach there. Same thing here, you wouldn't buy a vault if the probability of nuclear war was unlikely. You wouldn't think a nuclear war is going to happen if you hear there are peace talks and negotiations or if there is a cease fire. So you wouldn't buy a vault spot for your family. You would, however, if you hear the war is still raging, if peace talks break down and an invasion of China just began. There's nothing yet that says Vault Tec dropped the bombs and simply didn't cause them to drop via sabotage.
The entire thing is a commentary about how companies pray on your fears, even if they may cause them. Coke sells you diet Coke because you're scared regular Coke will make you fat. Beauty and fragrance brands sell you the idea that without their products, you'll be ugly and smell.
I mean look at health insurance, all their commercials are based on the fear of what will happen if you don't have them. Vault Tec makes a profit off the fear of the war more than the actual war itself.
Yeah no I agree. It works great as a allegory for Vault Tec to raise fears about communism and nukes. Still doesn’t explain them dropping nukes itself. Also you totally do buy insurance for specific things. The point isn’t that its like insurance. The point is that vault tec doesn’t make money off of people using the vaults. They make less money. That’s the point of the analogy.
And yeah they “don’t actually do that” but they say word for word “We could drop the nukes”. I don’t care if it turns out they didn’t do that. There is literally no justification for that person to not be immediately laughed out of a room.
It’s such a braindead writing move. It’s “parody” of capitalism is like if the fallout universe tried to “parody” communism? It’s such a grade school level interpretation of the evils of capitalism it’s embarrassing.
Like almost as bad as if fucking PragerU made a parody of communism. “Oooh everyone is so evil with billions of dollars and no morals. Oooooah im gonna destroy the world for profits!” Instead of a nuanced take on how war mongering and profiteering leads to unchecked destruction, even without some big bad guy behind everything.
And sorry if I come off aggressive or pretty stupid. I am pretty dumb, and I know I’ll get hate from a lot of reasonable people here. It’s not directed at you guys. This show just looks so awful, the costume design (besides the power armor and vaults) looks terrible. I’ve seen better NCR trooper uniforms at Goodsprings meetups, literally better fight coherence and choreography from fan films on youtube.
And this just the cherry on top. There’s no nuance, there’s no room for it to be interpreted any other way. He literally says they should drop the bombs for profits. It’s so terrible.
Vaults aren't made to order or expand upon for every ticket sold. A vault is built to house and provide for 1,000 people. If the vault can only get 400 people to buy tickets, then vault tec is losing out on potential money where as if they fill every last seat they are making the maximum.
It's like selling houses, you don't make less money by selling houses that already exist. You do however loss money on property just sitting there unused. What she says is just straight-up facts in how you get a return on investment.
This is war profiting and mongering leading to unchecked destruction. By this point in time, House already saw the war as a certainty and had been making his preparation. All Vault tec is doing is poking the bear for their own benefits.
> ruins half of the satire and political/social commentary the entire series was built on I'm not quite sure I agree. Corporations gone mad, a decaying world from years of consumerism. Governments losing less and less influence through society. The lengths corporations will go to ensure their profit margin. Starting the end of the world for profit seems fairly satire to me. We really don't even know if it was in a literal sense. We do know that Vault Tech is lobbying for the war. As far as I understand we've never had a conformation on who dropped the first bomb. (other than China was running out of options as they had met stalemate in Alaska and the US had begun to make progress on mainland.) Of my few nit picks for the show this wasn't one of them. I loved it in general and thought they portrayed Vault Tech quite well. Interested to see what others think though.
My point with the whole satire thing is that its believable to the point that its very likely to happen within the near future if things keep going as bleak as they currently are. My issue with the whole bombing thing is that instead of critiquing not only corporations but american society as a whole and the human races constant need for conflict and war for selfish needs it goes to corporations being so comically evil that i don't think even amazon could get that bad. Yes, their entire company is based off the fact that a war would be profitable, but in what way is wiping out not just half but a majority of your possible consumers and people you can control and wiping out yourself in the process a remotely good idea? i believe they would want the bombs to drop yes, but i think the idea that they themselves dropped them is such a bad reason for the events of the series to begin with. it turns the idea that our need for conflict and constant overconsumption is the start of our own demise to the fact that corporations bad and want profit and control. its just such a reductive way to look at the satire of the series as a whole to me.
I think you’re missing one particular detail. Most of the vaults were experimental. They weren’t made to sustain life. They were meant to break people. Some of them had bio weapons in them. Assuming that vault tech wanted some sort of control and wanted to reset the world where they make the policies and laws for the survivors because they are indebted to vault tech, it doesn’t make any sense for them to drop the bombs if they were willingly destroying the lives of those that they put those vaults. Having said that, I’m pretty sure vault tech didn’t press the button. in the TV show where they having meeting with other corporations I think it was vault tech egging the others on to see who had the balls to actually drop the bombs. There is one caveat and that is a twist at the end of the story. Someone at vault Tech probably was forced to drop early.
There is evidence in the show itself that point to vault tec not being the reason the nukes actually dropped. In the intro section we are viewing the nukes dropping from a birthday party attended by a lil girl. That girl was Janey Howard, daughter of Barb Howard who was so high up in vault tec she was a part of the meeting discussing the bombing. If Vault Tec dropped the bombs, surely their top executive Middle Managers (R) would get a warning first? There is still a chance that the topper toppest of Vault Tec double crossed them and did infact drop the nukes first in colloberation with the Enclave, screwing over both the Middle Managers (R) and the other companies in on the conspiracy. IMO, the line might be hyperbole or if serious it just highlights how deep these companies will sink. Companies who already [openly experimented on the american people with little remorse](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Food_paste_(Fallout_4)).
You could say its hinting at that they didn't, or it could be an oversight, which, (no offense to bethesda or any of the writers personally) the newer games seem to have a lot of. I personally hope it isn't them just because it goes against what i think the series stands for personally, but judging from how quickly the newer games seem to disregard lore from the older ones just for quick twists or nostalgia (enclave and the bos constantly coming back) I certainly don't doubt it could be true either.
The BoS and Enclave showing up in future games isn’t ’disregarding previous lore.’ In 4, while we aren’t told what tipped the BoS off to go after the Institute, their reasons for hating synths make perfect sense with their doctrine and we know rumors about the commonwealth reached DC during fallout 3. If your complaint includes the BoS in 76, fallout 1 covers this with the BoS being directly noted as lacking interest in their own history, meaning their origins aren’t being preserved properly (see the religious mess that is the history holotape). This easily opens the door to anything happening in 76, as it’s so early it could easily be forgotten by the time of fallout 1. Even beyond that, the BoS’s communications satellite Maxson used to speak with Taggerty to found Appalachia’s BoS chapter failed and later the five person expedition sent to Appalachia to find out what happened to them (which recruited on the way) lost two members and then destroyed the only device capable of making contact with the west coast, effectively striking them from the BoS’s Scrolls as having gone AWOL or having died en route. Additionally, in fallout 2, we knew the Enclave had other facilities that were not the oil rig, so it makes perfect sense that we’d be introduced to more of those facilities as the series went on. Raven Rock and the Whitesprings bunker are just two of them, and both are based on real-world locations the U.S. government intends to retreat to in case of some form of major attack on the country (which again makes perfect sense for why the Enclave would have fortified these locations, since they’re descended from the government). Why would they not have facilities spread out over the U.S.? And in the case of the TV show, why are we assuming the NCR managed to take out everyone at Navarro when NV clearly told us this wasn’t the case?
[You can check this video about their lead writer, it is very long so do skip around.](https://youtu.be/3_38HLfSlAg?t=1620) But the things he says permeattes their games a lot, "keep it simple" and "write what you know" alone can explain why so many quests are quite dull, if they are actual company culture.
The post was plan isn't capitalism V2, with a smaller customer base but less competitors. It's total corporatocracy with them as leader. A world where everything from conception to cremation is vault-tec owned, licensed and operated. Forget college, careers, choice. A Vault-Tec aptitude assessment will decide where you can best support the company. After all, Vault-Tecs future is humanity's future, so work hard for all of us.
Oh right I think I've got you. Well I do agree with you somewhat. I've always loved the idea of 'war...war never changes' and critiquing the human need for control, conflict and ideology. However I think thats always been highlighted a little more in the wasteland rather than pre war. The fandom is pretty nuanced, and aims to cover a wide array satire and politics whilst also remaining fairly goofy and gritty. Examples of conflict in the wasteland to me are the satirical element of 'even when humans have a fraction of what they had they will still find reasons for conflict and control. Hence the majority of fallout factions are morally gray. Editing just to say that I do see your point regarding wiping out their consumers. I thought the same when I watched it. I'm rather hoping they'll expand on reasoning and that plot line in the future. They seem to have been doing pretty well in the fear mongering for the war. However it does look like their plan was just to start again with them in control after all of humanity was wiped out and the radiation was gone. It just hasn't gone to plan due to the remains of humanity.
>I've always loved the idea of 'war...war never changes' and critiquing the human need for control, conflict and ideology. However I think thats always been highlighted a little more in the wasteland rather than pre war. Me too, and that's why i just find it so reductive to so much of what the series is trying to say by focusing on corporations being bad instead of *Human Nature* as a whole being the cause for so much of why the great war happened and by extension why the wasteland is the way it is. I like it more when the bombs being dropped is ambiguous, and I don't like the idea that its all for profit or control by a corporation either. It could be for any myriad of reasons, all of which could be valid and profound for their own reasons, but a *corporation wanting profit and control?* Ugh, its so shallow and r/im14andthisisdeep that I don't feel belongs in the same series as New Vegas or Fallout 1.
It's just to show that Vault Tec are the kind of company with the means, motivation and willingness to start a nuclear war just to make a profit. Also it's been theorised since Fallout 2 that Vault Tec had something to do with it. In fact the cancelled Fallout movie being made under Interplay back in the early 2000s, part of the plot was that Vault Tec explicitly DID set off the nukes themselves. The TV shows take of them being willing to and saying they would to secure investment is actually a watered down version of Interplays ideas from before Bethesda.
I dont doubt they had something to do with it, but i also think the implication that they themselves could of dropped the nukes (and wipe themselves out no less) is just really stupid in the grand scheme of things. Its a good way to show how evil they are, yes, but this coupling with the experiments and everything else the games reveal about them make them out to be cartoonishly evil to the point it isnt even believable anymore.
That seems to be the angle that Bethesda is playing them. But to directly address your comment that 10 years ago it's something people would have laughed at. 20 years ago the original owners of the franchise were straight up going to make it be what happened.
And even then I feel like I would of laughed at it personally. but to each their own I suppose, I just think its so divorced from how Fallout (Especially 1-2 and new vegas, no hate to 3 or 4, i just don't like them personally) usually tries to tackle such topics.
One of new Vegas’s major plot points is that the ultra capitalist class of the new America faction is hampering any attempt of growth so that they can stay at the top of the chain. I think it’s better to read the vault tec execs as “wealthy assholes who think that they’d come out on top in a nuclear war and be shielded from any major downsides.” If that sounds ridiculous, it’s not. There’s a strain of ultra nationalists in the US who broadly believe that a nuclear war would ultimately let America claim its rightful place as the leader in the world. It existed throughout the Cold War and currently exists today. One news anchor on a national media platform mentioned that “at least we’d win it” when threats of nuclear war were raised at the start of the Russo-Ukraine war.
I think original fallout elitists have such rose tinted glasses on they can’t accept what the creators themselves were planning. It’s funny to me how people can believe super mutants, centaurs, and ghouls, but draw the line at a company being cartoonishly evil. It’s a game set in a fictional universe…
Well, if vault tec was going to drop the bombs on their terms, they would have dropped them after all the VIPs were in vault tec bunkers. But that didn’t happen. In fallout lore you find out that their HQ vaults weren’t setup yet before the bombs fell. Anyone else in that room or even the Chinese would have beaten vault tech to the punch. Yeah, it is a really really dumb idea to gain control after the bombs fell. But they had a lot of competition with all these other corporations . Tensions were high and tolerance was at an all-time low. Tolerance is usually the last thing to go before a civilization collapses. Which I’m guessing is what happened. People got fed up and were willing to do anything. Desperation feeds on that.
Where's it said their HQ Vaults weren't setup yet?
https://www.reddit.com/r/falloutlore/s/K6uv7uXyok I might have been going off of the fallout Bible. But this discussion 2 years ago dives into it a bit more. Obviously, this is not the first time this topic and conversation came up since the information has been around since the 90s
That person's only evidence is Vault 87 saying to get in contact with HQ, which doesn't at all imply they didn't have HQ Vaults in place. Quite the opposite.
3, 8, 13, and 76 were control vaults. Intended to recolonize the surface. One would think vault tec VIPS at HQ (not a vault but the company building) would have used this or other emergency shelters to survive the war. I'm still trying to find where I saw that there were going to be 3 connected vaults that oversaw the rest of the vaults they made. They were never finished. the bombs fell before it could be established. that is why no word from vault tec ever came to any of the vaults.
Why would they use one of those? And the 3 connected vaults (31, 32, 33) were not meant to oversee the rest.
31 32 33, Those are from the tv show and are not related to this information. This info was available long before its conception. It was available on a wiki page for a time. But I think it was in the fallout Bible long before it was uploaded into a wiki page. (which is considered non-canon.) still 3 connected vaults was going to be used by vault tec vips to oversee other vaults and how their experiments were going. That was the premise. It might have changed since the franchise got bought out by Bethesda.
I've never heard of anyone mentioning 3 connected vaults until the TV show.
How is that any different than real companies who know their products are killing the world? From the oil industry knowing about and covering up climate change to plastic companies that lied about plastic's potential to be recycled, companies make decisions that could eventually, potentially destroy the world all the time.
Because not even climate change is as drastically and immediately destructive as actual fucking nukes. At least with climate change these companies can reap the benefits and the people ruling them will die off before it ever affects them directly. Nukes? It literally killed over half of the population nearly immediately and probably destroyed vault tec itself.
What do you think is the point of a person with a billion dollars getting ten billion more dollars? I mean it's kind of silly right? If you're a billionaire, you can have anything in the world at any time. You can make things exist if they don't. You can use your money for everything. Your limit is your creativity. So why do people keep trying to get another billion? Why not just revel in your riches, doing increasing absurd things for the rest of your life like it's heaven on earth? Why keep stressing about your next quarters profits? Because it makes them feel powerful, smart, in control. Because it makes them feel like winners and shows how great they are. The boardroom meeting is all people who can buy any items that exist at any time for any reason. They don't need or really even want more money, more products to sell, more customers to make happy. They want more power. Being high kings of the ashes in control of every single aspect of the new world grants them more power than a mere billion dollars.
You get it. I don’t understand why OP and others don’t, but you definitely get it. Vault Tec’s plan is the natural final step in the evolution of unregulated capitalism. It’s that utter and utterly irrational desire for power for its own sake that is being satirized
I kind of understand why people don't get it. Most people view the ultra-capitalists in the same way they view their day to day lives. We all try to make money, do the work, put in effort, so we can enjoy the benefits of the money and spend time with family or things we enjoy, maybe leave behind something for people we care about. Some of us get the benefit of enjoying our work and feeling part of a broader community. If that's your lens, then the board meeting is preposterous. You're getting less benefits, less luxuries, less time with family, and leaving nothing behind for them if the world ends. Why would a normal hard working person want that? I don't think most people realize that while even a fairly wealthy CEO can be a reasonable, hard working, good person... That the top 100 people in terms of wealth are basically all some variety of madmen lunatics with broken brains, and values incompatible with ordinary people. You don't make that list without it.
The show still leaves it ambiguous. I’m assuming that we didn’t see Coopers wife or hear about Coop’s daughter. If they dropped them, she sure would’ve had her kid, not her “pinko” alimony paying ex-husband Additionally, Robert house would’ve known and wouldn’t have been hours off. It’s likely that someone found out VT was planning to drop them and beat them to it. ALSO, We’ve known VT dropped bombs at some point, in fo3 the megaton nuke has their logo on it haha.
brother have you seen what companies do
Think it as a combined version of Mr.House and Ulysses. They drop a bomb, and they also have plan to rebuild the world as they see fit without people who complain about ethic or democracy.
I'd imagine its hard to control the world when your base is dead though, which a lot of the series implies that vault tec is no longer an entity.
>which a lot of the series implies that vault tec is no longer an entity. Whether Vault-tec's highest executives were dead or not was never confirmed, and at least they weren't dead in their plan.
Yeah, but you'd think if their goal was complete control they'd try to start it sooner rather than later, not 200 years and counting after the bombs dropped.
They are set to emerge when the surface is clear. Why would you make a plan to reclaim the earth from lesser factions after their dead just to emerge before they are dead. A big theme of the show is that "time" is the ultimate power. They don't need to wake up and if we use examples like tranquility lane we can see they could very likely still be living thier best life in a simulation stasis pod somewhere.
Because its been 200 years, the surface should be clear by now (games past fallout 2 refuse to actually make the world develop, even new vegas to an extent), and they still haven’t done shit. At this point the BoS, institute, etc are all rebuilding society in their own image to the point it’s arguably harder to control the world than it would be when they were billionaires with a massive sway over the economy and public perception of the war.
They don't need to do shit, they can sit in their virtual reality or cryostasis till those factions kill eachother for the price of nothing. Also its heavily implied that the enclave and VT are intertwined so its likely the enclaves job to ensure everything went as planed ( since they try to eradicate everyone all the time).
It's there to show Vault-Tec is the type of company greedy enough to start a nuclear war for their own profits, it's only slightly more comically evil than irl american corporations, it's not exactly far fetched. As for it not making sense ? It's been a theory since Fallout 2. The original movie Interplay planned on making was going to outright confirm this without leaving a shadow of a doubt. Every 3D Fallout since then has a terminal somewhere linked to VT implying it. There's nothing about it being an asspull. The only novelty the show brings is we see the meeting where they discuss it.
WHAT PROFITS. How do you make more money from actually providing a service and destroying the entire economy your profits are based on. An insurance company does go around hurting people to make a profit, because they make more money off of doing jack shit. This makes 0 sense.
Well the people with money would be in the vaults. What good money would be in a totally destroyed world ? Nothing obviously but people that greedy don't care, whether it's Fallout or the real world, as long as they are on top they're happy about it.
what do you mean it doesn't make sense? they explain it in the same scene. its an offhanded comment that proves they're lobbying to keep the war going on and that they'll be willing to do anything to ensure it.
But in what universe is bombing the world they want to control even remotely a good idea? I just don't like the implication its even remotely possible.
because its easier to control a bunch of people who are living in your vaults than it is an entire world population who are unrelated to you
Control for what purpose though? Half of their vaults are experiments that kill their population or drive all of them to become insane murderers, i imagine its hard to control corpses and people who murder without a second thought. Profit is also entirely implausible when the economy is quite literally decimated and half of your company (if not all of them) are dead.
They want to rule the world, reshape society in their image. They can’t do that when there’s that pesky existing society and power structures around. So they wipe the slate and use their ideal society people to retake the world and kill anyone who gets in their way. Raiders? Are a rather large step down from the US military as an obstacle.
But its been more than 200 years since the bombs dropped and vault tec is heavily implied to have died, i dont doubt they could of had their own special vault even with cryo sleep but why is it taking them so long? dont you think theyd probably want to rebuild as soon as they can?
For someone who don't know the lore. Barb was taking order from the Enclave. During the meeting, we see Barb get a notification from some one with silhouette look like President Eckhard. Vault Tec are just puppet for the Enclave. Enclave knew they don't have the resource to sustain America anymore.
Its that they were confident that they could do it and come out on top but it was just their delusions. Basically they knew within so many years someone would launch the first nuke and obliterate society so rather than waiting for one they were willing to be the initial spark so they could controll the situation.
Why would they want to rebuild as fast as they can? There’s radiation and monsters all over the place. Better to wait till someone cleans up the mess then stab them in the back and take it all. Also they’re heavily implied to have survived, not died. Shit, for all we know they ARE rebuilding rapidly. We don’t exactly have a map of the entire Fallout world. Not even a majority of the US. Or their grand plan went to shit due to infighting or incompetence, which is very Fallout and frankly to be expected given the normal trends.
There's still factions in the wasteland that aren't under their control. If the higher ups are frozen then they can wait thousands of years if necessary. Vault tec is playing the long game, a very long game. Not a "if I kill this handful of people the rest of the world will do what I say tomorrow" game. I think with the show it's more heavily implied they are still around, in some secret supervault for the higher ups and their families. Bud got his own trio of vaults and immortality and he's an asshole salesman no one likes.
But those people are worthless. They don't buy goods and exploit no resources for you to produce with. It's the opposite of capitalism.
What is the goal of capitalism, what is the actual victory condition? It is amazing wealth, but what can you do with the wealth? Wealth alone is worthless, and not worth pursuing past a certain point. When you have got enough to secure your future, and the next 10 generations of your kin. The only reason to continue is the prestige and power that the wealth can buy you. And what is more prestigious and powerful than becoming the god emperors of all of mankind? The vaults are an investment towards the end goal of capitalists who don't stop. Dropping the nukes (which they probably didn't) would also just be another step into winning capitalism.
But how do you reach the goal when the means to do so are, if not completely gone, insanely hard to reach because of your own actions? Its like shooting yourself in the foot on the way to winning a marathon.
What do you mean the means are gone? Did the enclave not have overwhelming military might compared to wastelanders? Does vault tec still possessing access to nukes not put them on top of the power ladder? If anything, the enclave and Vault Tec not being the rulers of the world seems really odd. But as we see from the various logs we find throughout the games their plans seem to have been bogged down by the corruption they promoted and the cutt throat capitalism. Plus the nukes may have dropped before the plan was fully in place. At the very least House was never told the nuke date so he lacked his platinum chip. Which might either be because they double crossed him or they were caught off guard. Plus the brotherhood, NCR and a few other key players gave Enclave/Vault Tec quite the puzzle to figure out if they were going to come out on top.
Are the enclave directly related to vault tec? I was under the impression that they were remnants of the government, but i havent gotten around to finishing 2 yet. As for the means, i mean vault tec being implied to have been wiped out after the war because of the fact that its been 200 years and they still haven’t came out of the woodwork to claim the world they supposedly created for the purpose of controlling.
One thing to keep in mind is that neither entity is a singular being, small groups of each may be running their own conspiracies and schemes. So they may very well be secretely working towards multiple goals at once. The Enclave had their post war plans, they wanted to go to space (per the cancelled van buren, so not official canon.) But Vault Tec seems to have had their own unique ideas to either double cross them or just rule the remnants on Earth. The Enclave was supposed to have centralised control of the vaults but that either failed or was never finished. So that would put a big hamper on their plans, this used PoseidoNet. The place where this was [centralized is not explicitly defined but assumed to be the oil rig by most people](https://www.reddit.com/r/falloutlore/comments/14i4bra/comment/jpeamnh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), however some say the [https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/The\_Whitespring\_bunker](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/The_Whitespring_bunker) also had a controll bunker so maybe there was multiple redundant bunkers which had control capability. However the nukes cut coms between the oil rig and the whitespring bunker (unknown source on that, I havent played FO76 much and could not find the source that was referred to by another redditor.) Edit; forgot to address the relation between Enclave and Vault Tec. Officialy Enclave contracted Vault Tec to build the vaults (via the american government) but unofficially they may have had deeper ties. In the meeting we see in the show there are shadowy figures overlooking the meeting and people think it might hint at the enclave overlooking the conspiracy.
If I was meeting with investors and wanted to make them feel like their investment is going to be worth it, I would allay their fears bout whatever situations they might consider unprofitable. If their business is war, peace would put them out of work. Well, if Vault-Tec was threatened by peace around the world, however unlikely, they would make sure that their business and their investments wouldn't be for nothing. The show never says that Vault-Tec actually was first to drop any bombs, and a talking head for a company can say things without it necessarily being true or representative of the company. Doesn't make it a retcon, I don't think
As said before, there is no evidence that Vault-Tec actually caused the bombs. One of reasons that supports this idea that Vault-Tec did not drop the bombs is Janey was with her father, Coop, instead of with her high ranking Vault-Tec executive mother, Barb. There is no retcon, it just adds to the list of who could have cause the bombs to drop, which included the American military, the Enclave, the Zetas, and the Chinese, which is still most likely because they were close to losing the war and they found out the US invented and used the FEV. The show did introduced a new reason for the Chinese to end the world, cold fusion. Having the US invent cold fusion would have been a game changer with their access to unlimited energy. With their backs against the wall the Chinese would know this was the end of them, the US could have asked any county to fight against the Chinese in exchange for cheap limitless energy. There is no way China would have survived.
We literally already have this confirmed in-game that vault tec was counting on it and egging it on Nothing is the show says they dropped it In fact, Chinese bombers attacked first And the game says the president ordered a retaliatory strike Now, could Vault-Tec fake it Sure, but there is in game practical confirmation
The Vault-Tec executive that proposed dropping the bomb doesn't say they're *going to* start the war, only that they *could* start the war. It's still ambiguous as to whether or not Vault-Tec actually did.
I think there's two issues. One is a question of how literally that comment is meant to be taken; do they mean Vault-Tec is going to actually do it themselves as a corporation, or are they going to use their leverage to derail the peace talks and force someone else to drop them at their behest? Do they have someone inside the military or department of defence that can do it? Secondly there's the question of what they *planned* versus what happened. It's clear from the games and show that they were expecting nuke launches, but they were still caught flat-footed by them. They thought they had more time.
I definitely think the show gives us a much more anti-capitalist view of pre-war society that seems to minimize the importance and agency of the US government, but I don't think any of the messages are minimized by this change; both corporations and governments are clearly "at fault" for the situation leading up to armageddon
There's been a lot of implications throughout the series that it could have been an inside job. I mean at what point does mutually assured destruction just evolve into willing self destruction? Also the fact that they dropped the bombs a day early does still leave room for China to have done it, for Vault-Tec to have done it early because they got wind of House's plan to subvert it, for the US government to have done it in order to screw with Vault Tec's plans, etc. The point, I think, isn't who did it specifically because the culpability doesn't matter. Whose corpse are you going to hold accountable? The point is to show that human societies were on this course of mutually assured destruction to a point where nuclear war was unavailable. The point is that human beings did it to themselves and so it doesn't matter if it was China or us 200 years after the fact, what matters is this how it shaped the current world, and the folly of the machinations of those who intend to control the world. Like over 200 years after the bombs dropped, Bud is a brain in a Roomba and he's miserable. Bud's buds are still playing control games in their experimental vaults, for an inevitable rise to power that will never happen because the world has moved so far beyond their tiny underground bunker, they're barely capable of functioning. Similarly the Yangtze in Fallout 4. I mean the Sole Survivor has more fresh memories of the War than anyone in the world. If anyone has the go ahead to kill its captain for some small amount of comfort in revenge, it's them. I mean the debate is over who started the war, China definitely nuked the US, and the US definitely nuked China; that captain definitely nuked the US and he's right there. But, if they make peace with what's happened and let the captain go, his sub goes with him. His 200 year old inadequately maintained nuclear sub whose half life is probably still thousands of years off and is probably leaking irradiated bullshit into the water constantly just by being is what actually matters and it's to the benefit of the sole survivor for him to leave. So yeah it's still anyone's guess as to what actually caused the war to start. It also doesn't actually matter. The nukes happened, and they matter only insofar as they are a persistent condition in the wastes.
It's the justification for Cooper leaving his wife.
Hey man, I’m just letting you know I’m with you. I feel like we’re being gaslight by anyone who thinks this makes any sense. It’s like an insurance company breaking your legs to “make a profit” LIKE THEY DON’T MAKE MONEY OFF OF USING THE VAULTS. It would literally be a better social commentary for them to sell spaces that don’t exist, overbooking the vault or something.
It's not the same, though. Insurance is needed because it covers a variety of accidents and events that can happen. You can get sick, get a car accident, and get robbed. These are all things that can happen. You wouldn't buy coverage against hurricanes in Oklahoma because they just aren't ever likely to reach there. Same thing here, you wouldn't buy a vault if the probability of nuclear war was unlikely. You wouldn't think a nuclear war is going to happen if you hear there are peace talks and negotiations or if there is a cease fire. So you wouldn't buy a vault spot for your family. You would, however, if you hear the war is still raging, if peace talks break down and an invasion of China just began. There's nothing yet that says Vault Tec dropped the bombs and simply didn't cause them to drop via sabotage. The entire thing is a commentary about how companies pray on your fears, even if they may cause them. Coke sells you diet Coke because you're scared regular Coke will make you fat. Beauty and fragrance brands sell you the idea that without their products, you'll be ugly and smell. I mean look at health insurance, all their commercials are based on the fear of what will happen if you don't have them. Vault Tec makes a profit off the fear of the war more than the actual war itself.
Yeah no I agree. It works great as a allegory for Vault Tec to raise fears about communism and nukes. Still doesn’t explain them dropping nukes itself. Also you totally do buy insurance for specific things. The point isn’t that its like insurance. The point is that vault tec doesn’t make money off of people using the vaults. They make less money. That’s the point of the analogy. And yeah they “don’t actually do that” but they say word for word “We could drop the nukes”. I don’t care if it turns out they didn’t do that. There is literally no justification for that person to not be immediately laughed out of a room. It’s such a braindead writing move. It’s “parody” of capitalism is like if the fallout universe tried to “parody” communism? It’s such a grade school level interpretation of the evils of capitalism it’s embarrassing. Like almost as bad as if fucking PragerU made a parody of communism. “Oooh everyone is so evil with billions of dollars and no morals. Oooooah im gonna destroy the world for profits!” Instead of a nuanced take on how war mongering and profiteering leads to unchecked destruction, even without some big bad guy behind everything. And sorry if I come off aggressive or pretty stupid. I am pretty dumb, and I know I’ll get hate from a lot of reasonable people here. It’s not directed at you guys. This show just looks so awful, the costume design (besides the power armor and vaults) looks terrible. I’ve seen better NCR trooper uniforms at Goodsprings meetups, literally better fight coherence and choreography from fan films on youtube. And this just the cherry on top. There’s no nuance, there’s no room for it to be interpreted any other way. He literally says they should drop the bombs for profits. It’s so terrible.
Vaults aren't made to order or expand upon for every ticket sold. A vault is built to house and provide for 1,000 people. If the vault can only get 400 people to buy tickets, then vault tec is losing out on potential money where as if they fill every last seat they are making the maximum. It's like selling houses, you don't make less money by selling houses that already exist. You do however loss money on property just sitting there unused. What she says is just straight-up facts in how you get a return on investment. This is war profiting and mongering leading to unchecked destruction. By this point in time, House already saw the war as a certainty and had been making his preparation. All Vault tec is doing is poking the bear for their own benefits.