willdelve4beer
Well-known member
Been on a bit a Fallout kick of late, trying to keep my mind off upcoming games. Was considering some of the implications of how Vault Tec and the Enclave must have originated and developed. The following scenario came to mind, Trying to work out what the implications would be if it occurred in-verse.
Enclave didn't go from nationalist to genocide fascist overnight, nor did Vault tec go from designing space habitats to loony experiments (1 guy and 99 puppets, da fuq?) instantly. So, for some timeframe, both groups must have been at least partially sane, and hence included some number of mostly sane people. Still both groups did end up the way they did in Fallout canon. So how would that happen? In normal organizations, culture change like that happens as people get sidelined off into dead-end roles, lower priority projects, etc. The idealists always provide cover and resources (including their own creativity/intelligence) for the more ruthless, as they are often manipulated by the later in more or less subtle fashions.
So, how would the emerging cliques of sociopaths best utilize the more idealistic/naive/etc members of their groups in a way that both maximized their value to the org as a whole, and kept them from hindering the new direction's goals?
Take Vault Tec- they started out as wanting to both safeguard the populace, and test/validate their concepts around long term extra planetary habitation (on generation ships &/or while colonizing Mars / other star systems). They were scientists and engineers (presumably) so they knew not every experiment would work. Moreover, they must have known that even a 'successful' experiment might be due to extraneous random events, so multiple iterations would be required. Hence they would need a means of resupplying and/or re-running experiments. They would also want the capacity to create and run new experiments, based on the data generated by the original experimental set. Both factors require not just the 'control vaults' as we know them from Fallout lore, but something more. A supply cache/depot, containing raw and refined materials, spare parts, and a supply of untainted replacement test subjects. In addition, any engineer would recognize that having all data collection run to just one location is a foolish approach in a potentially apocalyptic scenario. One or more backup data centers would be required. These would be 'read-only' as it were, accepting data from the various experimental vaults, but having no means of communicating back to the vaults (and thus tainting the experiments). The requirements set out above imply a much larger than normal vault, one that does not include its own experiment, and one that includes a human resource set which includes as broad a collection of phenotypes, religions, etc, as possible.
For the Enclave, they started out as nationalists & militarists, trying to safeguard their idealized America from various threats. Anyone perusing American history, especially the founding fathers, would identify the possibility of the government being subverted (by communists or others) against the populace as a possible threat. Later on, as the Enclave increasingly turned into the Nazi expy's we encounter in FO 1, 2 & 3, there would be the concern that the Enclave (as any elite) requires a suitably loyal, dutiful, plentiful (pure and American) populace over which to rule, or what would be the point? This indicates a need for more and larger control vaults than encountered in the games to date.
Then we come to the other key organiztional driver for both groups - as mentioned - management of idealists.
For Vault Tec, the idealists are scientists and engineers who still buy into the idea that they are trying to either protect Americans to save America (the public story) or determine how to make extraplanetary colonization work, so that they can save humanity (the internal story). Some of these idealists are going to be geniuses and/or have critical/useful contacts, so disappearing or firing them all is suboptimal. Some means must be taken to use them, and keep them at least somewhat convinced that working with Vault-Tec can advance their goals, while keeping them from becoming a problem. So something must be found for them to do. At the same time, Vault Tec is becoming more integrated with the Enclave, and as a result becoming more conspiratorial. The funny thing about cultural changes along such lines is that they spread. Conspiracies do no spread terribly far, for all sort of reasons, but the consipratorial mindset does spread. Our idealists, if they are smart/connected enough to be valuable and retained, are smart/connected enough to recognize that they are being at least partially sidelined and excluded. A 'counter conspiracy' of sorts is thus likely to emerge over time. Such a group would begin to seek/sound more more sympathetic ears and look for where they can have the most impact. The lowest priority areas, where they are already being steered towards, become a natural fit.
For the Enclave a similar process will likely take place, and for similar reasons - resources too valuable to waste, too smart to dupe indefinitely, and too naive/idealistic to properly adapt to the envisioned new world. Some will no doubt be steered into leading the final glorious charges into China, or holding the fort in DC and the commonwealth capitals, but those who can not be written off will be steered into projects focused away from the extra planetary colonization and instead to efforts focused on 'reclaiming and restoring America'. Here again they would be steered into lower priority efforts, like stockrooms, resupply, etc.
TL
R both the Enclave and Vault Tec will have a need for a resupply/restock depot for raw materials, spare parts, and subjects/citizens. Both groups in the pre-war years will have useful but idealistic/naive members who need to be sidelined but not disappeared. Both groups of idealists will become more conspiratorial in time, and begin to deliberately gravitate to such depot projects in a semi-encouraged effort to 'subvert them' (IE: unknowingly aid core Enclave/Vault Tec leadership efforts to create backup supply of americans/test subjects).
While such depots would need to be much larger than normal vaults, they would also need to be cheaper, as lower priority efforts. As lower priority efforts, there would also be fewer of them. One easy way of making them cheaper while still fulfilling the desired purpose will be to utilize pre-existing underground spaces. Mammoth Cave and Jewel Cave systems appear to be very good matches - Two of the three most extensive known natural cave systems in the world, both in pre-war US territory, one west of the Mississippi near the Rockies, one east of the Mississippi near the Appalachians. Both have existing park infrastructure which can be subverted, both have multiple entrances which can be utilized. The proliferation of waste dumps in the pre-war USA can be utilized as cover for both operations.
The end result, two /true/ control vaults, each receiving data from all the other vault experiments, each overstocked with raw materials, parts (including robot and vault construction/repair materials), both designed to be self sufficient for multiple centuries (to enable the Vault Tec reruns) and both containing space to support much larger populations than normal Vaults. Both are created and initially run by more idealistic elements of Vault Tec & Enclave.
The balloon goes up, the doors close. Fallout 76 happens. Modus gets back online. Raven Rock Zax apparently remains quiescent until fall of the Rig based Enclave. Theoretical Chicago Zax takes no known external action (at least prior to end of Fallout 4 sometime after 2287. The Rig has no access to/interest in the vaults prior to the events of Fallout 2. So there is a stretch from approximately 2102, when the Vault 76 reclaimer(s) reconnect MODUS to satellites and 2241, when Fallout 2 starts to work with. The hard constraints are that the inhabitants of the Jewel Cave depot do not expand west of the continental divide, south of the northern Denver suburbs or east of the Mississippi river. Likewise, the inhabitants of the Mammoth Cave depot can not expand west of the Mississippi river, north of the Ohio river, or north of the James River. Actual expansion will probably be much smaller, given the challenges of post-war Fallout North America. The soft constraints are the hazards of FO NA, the limitations of population growth (they have access to Vault 108 data on cloning, which includes data on how poorly that went, after all).
So we have two sizable populaces of hyper patriotic self-identified Americans, who idealize pre-war America, and are looking to rebuild it asap. They've got access to something close to the full story on most of the other vaults. They have got supplies to rebuild vaults, or expand their own. They have access to the entire technical and knowledge base of the US govt, Vault Tec, and the Enclave as of the evening of October 22nd, 2077.
So, whomever has bothered reading this far, what do you think happens next?
Enclave didn't go from nationalist to genocide fascist overnight, nor did Vault tec go from designing space habitats to loony experiments (1 guy and 99 puppets, da fuq?) instantly. So, for some timeframe, both groups must have been at least partially sane, and hence included some number of mostly sane people. Still both groups did end up the way they did in Fallout canon. So how would that happen? In normal organizations, culture change like that happens as people get sidelined off into dead-end roles, lower priority projects, etc. The idealists always provide cover and resources (including their own creativity/intelligence) for the more ruthless, as they are often manipulated by the later in more or less subtle fashions.
So, how would the emerging cliques of sociopaths best utilize the more idealistic/naive/etc members of their groups in a way that both maximized their value to the org as a whole, and kept them from hindering the new direction's goals?
Take Vault Tec- they started out as wanting to both safeguard the populace, and test/validate their concepts around long term extra planetary habitation (on generation ships &/or while colonizing Mars / other star systems). They were scientists and engineers (presumably) so they knew not every experiment would work. Moreover, they must have known that even a 'successful' experiment might be due to extraneous random events, so multiple iterations would be required. Hence they would need a means of resupplying and/or re-running experiments. They would also want the capacity to create and run new experiments, based on the data generated by the original experimental set. Both factors require not just the 'control vaults' as we know them from Fallout lore, but something more. A supply cache/depot, containing raw and refined materials, spare parts, and a supply of untainted replacement test subjects. In addition, any engineer would recognize that having all data collection run to just one location is a foolish approach in a potentially apocalyptic scenario. One or more backup data centers would be required. These would be 'read-only' as it were, accepting data from the various experimental vaults, but having no means of communicating back to the vaults (and thus tainting the experiments). The requirements set out above imply a much larger than normal vault, one that does not include its own experiment, and one that includes a human resource set which includes as broad a collection of phenotypes, religions, etc, as possible.
For the Enclave, they started out as nationalists & militarists, trying to safeguard their idealized America from various threats. Anyone perusing American history, especially the founding fathers, would identify the possibility of the government being subverted (by communists or others) against the populace as a possible threat. Later on, as the Enclave increasingly turned into the Nazi expy's we encounter in FO 1, 2 & 3, there would be the concern that the Enclave (as any elite) requires a suitably loyal, dutiful, plentiful (pure and American) populace over which to rule, or what would be the point? This indicates a need for more and larger control vaults than encountered in the games to date.
Then we come to the other key organiztional driver for both groups - as mentioned - management of idealists.
For Vault Tec, the idealists are scientists and engineers who still buy into the idea that they are trying to either protect Americans to save America (the public story) or determine how to make extraplanetary colonization work, so that they can save humanity (the internal story). Some of these idealists are going to be geniuses and/or have critical/useful contacts, so disappearing or firing them all is suboptimal. Some means must be taken to use them, and keep them at least somewhat convinced that working with Vault-Tec can advance their goals, while keeping them from becoming a problem. So something must be found for them to do. At the same time, Vault Tec is becoming more integrated with the Enclave, and as a result becoming more conspiratorial. The funny thing about cultural changes along such lines is that they spread. Conspiracies do no spread terribly far, for all sort of reasons, but the consipratorial mindset does spread. Our idealists, if they are smart/connected enough to be valuable and retained, are smart/connected enough to recognize that they are being at least partially sidelined and excluded. A 'counter conspiracy' of sorts is thus likely to emerge over time. Such a group would begin to seek/sound more more sympathetic ears and look for where they can have the most impact. The lowest priority areas, where they are already being steered towards, become a natural fit.
For the Enclave a similar process will likely take place, and for similar reasons - resources too valuable to waste, too smart to dupe indefinitely, and too naive/idealistic to properly adapt to the envisioned new world. Some will no doubt be steered into leading the final glorious charges into China, or holding the fort in DC and the commonwealth capitals, but those who can not be written off will be steered into projects focused away from the extra planetary colonization and instead to efforts focused on 'reclaiming and restoring America'. Here again they would be steered into lower priority efforts, like stockrooms, resupply, etc.
TL
R both the Enclave and Vault Tec will have a need for a resupply/restock depot for raw materials, spare parts, and subjects/citizens. Both groups in the pre-war years will have useful but idealistic/naive members who need to be sidelined but not disappeared. Both groups of idealists will become more conspiratorial in time, and begin to deliberately gravitate to such depot projects in a semi-encouraged effort to 'subvert them' (IE: unknowingly aid core Enclave/Vault Tec leadership efforts to create backup supply of americans/test subjects).While such depots would need to be much larger than normal vaults, they would also need to be cheaper, as lower priority efforts. As lower priority efforts, there would also be fewer of them. One easy way of making them cheaper while still fulfilling the desired purpose will be to utilize pre-existing underground spaces. Mammoth Cave and Jewel Cave systems appear to be very good matches - Two of the three most extensive known natural cave systems in the world, both in pre-war US territory, one west of the Mississippi near the Rockies, one east of the Mississippi near the Appalachians. Both have existing park infrastructure which can be subverted, both have multiple entrances which can be utilized. The proliferation of waste dumps in the pre-war USA can be utilized as cover for both operations.
The end result, two /true/ control vaults, each receiving data from all the other vault experiments, each overstocked with raw materials, parts (including robot and vault construction/repair materials), both designed to be self sufficient for multiple centuries (to enable the Vault Tec reruns) and both containing space to support much larger populations than normal Vaults. Both are created and initially run by more idealistic elements of Vault Tec & Enclave.
The balloon goes up, the doors close. Fallout 76 happens. Modus gets back online. Raven Rock Zax apparently remains quiescent until fall of the Rig based Enclave. Theoretical Chicago Zax takes no known external action (at least prior to end of Fallout 4 sometime after 2287. The Rig has no access to/interest in the vaults prior to the events of Fallout 2. So there is a stretch from approximately 2102, when the Vault 76 reclaimer(s) reconnect MODUS to satellites and 2241, when Fallout 2 starts to work with. The hard constraints are that the inhabitants of the Jewel Cave depot do not expand west of the continental divide, south of the northern Denver suburbs or east of the Mississippi river. Likewise, the inhabitants of the Mammoth Cave depot can not expand west of the Mississippi river, north of the Ohio river, or north of the James River. Actual expansion will probably be much smaller, given the challenges of post-war Fallout North America. The soft constraints are the hazards of FO NA, the limitations of population growth (they have access to Vault 108 data on cloning, which includes data on how poorly that went, after all).
So we have two sizable populaces of hyper patriotic self-identified Americans, who idealize pre-war America, and are looking to rebuild it asap. They've got access to something close to the full story on most of the other vaults. They have got supplies to rebuild vaults, or expand their own. They have access to the entire technical and knowledge base of the US govt, Vault Tec, and the Enclave as of the evening of October 22nd, 2077.
So, whomever has bothered reading this far, what do you think happens next?
