willdelve4beer
Well-known member
OK, did another playthrough of Fallout 2 and Fallout 4 recently, and got to thinking about something.
The vault dwellers (taken as a group, the survivors anyway), and what FO4 would call 'settlers' (non vault, or several generation post vault survivors) are each self sustaining factions. The other groups seem to be largely parasitic on one or both of the two.
So, what would happen if each of the "main" fallout factions woke up in a world where they are the only human (or humanish, in some cases) group on the planet? Nothing else changes, but every other faction just disappears, leaving their stuff behind.
As mentioned, I think the vault dwellers who weren't killed of by vault-tech shenanigans could potentially repopulate the wasteland, same for the generic 'survivors'.
The unity/supermutants - the west coast ones seem more or less sane, but as they're all sterilized/rendered defacto genderless, they'll gradually die off to accidents and general wasteland nastiness.
The raiders - most of these groups are just purely parastical, preying on settlers and scraping by with salvaging. With no settlers to prey on, I imagine they'll switch to a pure scavenger/hunter mode, at least until the leftovers run out. A much-reduced number might end of indistinguishable from settlers, in a few generations.
Brotherhood of steel - their purpose is gone, as are the de-facto serfs who provided the food and raw materials. While they may not like to admit, they are just as dependent on the wastelanders/settlers as the raiders, if in a more symbiotic manner. They would need to relearn farming and fishing, and fast.
Enclave- oddly enough, their fanatical isolationism might serve them well, at first. However enclave ideology seems predicated on a glorious return to a cleansed earth, ruling over grateful subjects (yes it is self-contradicting and more than a little daft). Going to be tricky to pull that off with no subjects to be grateful to their rulers. I'm guessing things go south pretty fast once they try to actually Rebuild America(tm), this group (even more than the brotherhood) seems really prone to factionalism and backstabbing syndrome as well.
Ghouls - there seems to be a lot of inconsistency on ghouls - do they inevitably decay to madness, or can they stay functional and normal for centuries? Support exists in the games for both ideas. I'm going to lean towards a fixed chance of going bonkers every year, and no recovery from the downward spiral once it hits. So we can have ghouls from even before the war (that crime boss in boston) staying sane-ish for centuries, but have most go 'off' quickly enough that things like the DC metro or Lexington area hordes can be explained. In this instance, similar to super mutants, ghoul world is doomed to an even faster downward spiral - no reproduction + gradual loss due to accident/predation + gradual loss due to mental decay = sad times for rough-skins.
Forgot - sorry:
the Institute. Ye Olde Robot(Synth) Rebellion seems pretty much certain at some point down the line. Gen 3's are just EZ bake people with control chips, apparently. At some point a chip is going to faulty, &/or a courier is going to get some clever ideas, and it will quickly be all over except for the screaming. Humanity 2.0 might be able to make a go of it, if the institute scientists didn't leave some sort of nasty deadman switch in the coding. Which, given their wildly inflated self-opinions, actually seems pretty unlikely. Deadman switches are for those who think losing is a distinct possibility, after all.
The vault dwellers (taken as a group, the survivors anyway), and what FO4 would call 'settlers' (non vault, or several generation post vault survivors) are each self sustaining factions. The other groups seem to be largely parasitic on one or both of the two.
So, what would happen if each of the "main" fallout factions woke up in a world where they are the only human (or humanish, in some cases) group on the planet? Nothing else changes, but every other faction just disappears, leaving their stuff behind.
As mentioned, I think the vault dwellers who weren't killed of by vault-tech shenanigans could potentially repopulate the wasteland, same for the generic 'survivors'.
The unity/supermutants - the west coast ones seem more or less sane, but as they're all sterilized/rendered defacto genderless, they'll gradually die off to accidents and general wasteland nastiness.
The raiders - most of these groups are just purely parastical, preying on settlers and scraping by with salvaging. With no settlers to prey on, I imagine they'll switch to a pure scavenger/hunter mode, at least until the leftovers run out. A much-reduced number might end of indistinguishable from settlers, in a few generations.
Brotherhood of steel - their purpose is gone, as are the de-facto serfs who provided the food and raw materials. While they may not like to admit, they are just as dependent on the wastelanders/settlers as the raiders, if in a more symbiotic manner. They would need to relearn farming and fishing, and fast.
Enclave- oddly enough, their fanatical isolationism might serve them well, at first. However enclave ideology seems predicated on a glorious return to a cleansed earth, ruling over grateful subjects (yes it is self-contradicting and more than a little daft). Going to be tricky to pull that off with no subjects to be grateful to their rulers. I'm guessing things go south pretty fast once they try to actually Rebuild America(tm), this group (even more than the brotherhood) seems really prone to factionalism and backstabbing syndrome as well.
Ghouls - there seems to be a lot of inconsistency on ghouls - do they inevitably decay to madness, or can they stay functional and normal for centuries? Support exists in the games for both ideas. I'm going to lean towards a fixed chance of going bonkers every year, and no recovery from the downward spiral once it hits. So we can have ghouls from even before the war (that crime boss in boston) staying sane-ish for centuries, but have most go 'off' quickly enough that things like the DC metro or Lexington area hordes can be explained. In this instance, similar to super mutants, ghoul world is doomed to an even faster downward spiral - no reproduction + gradual loss due to accident/predation + gradual loss due to mental decay = sad times for rough-skins.
Forgot - sorry:
the Institute. Ye Olde Robot(Synth) Rebellion seems pretty much certain at some point down the line. Gen 3's are just EZ bake people with control chips, apparently. At some point a chip is going to faulty, &/or a courier is going to get some clever ideas, and it will quickly be all over except for the screaming. Humanity 2.0 might be able to make a go of it, if the institute scientists didn't leave some sort of nasty deadman switch in the coding. Which, given their wildly inflated self-opinions, actually seems pretty unlikely. Deadman switches are for those who think losing is a distinct possibility, after all.
