Thanks to the Fallout series on Amazon Prime, the games in the series are currently celebrating a comeback. This is leading to increased interest in the background story
How many Vaults are there in the world ofFallout? The nuclear bunkers, called Vaults, play a central role in both the Fallout games and the series on Amazon Prime. At first glance, the bunkers are intended to provide protection for the population in the event of a nuclear war.
However, there is actually a dark secret behind the large underground facilities. A former developer now reveals in a vlog how many vaults there actually are in the world of Fallout.
A decision for the art director
The bunkers already appear in the first Fallout from 1997. This was developed at Interplay (The Bard’s Tale 1-3, Fallout 2). The lead designer at the time was Tim Cain,who co-founded Troika Games in 1998.
According to Cain, the team was expecting 1,000 Vaults in the USA at the time.The reason for this figure was a question from the then art director and later Troika co-founder Leonard Boyarsky. For the design of the Vault suites, he wanted to know how many digits should be left blank on the backs of the game characters.
Cain replied that there were 1,000 vaults. But since he is a programmer, he starts counting at 0. Therefore, three digits would be enough (0 to 999). After that, he didn’t think about it so much, Cain continued.
The team later realized that the 1,000 vaults had two problems. Firstly, a maximum of 1,000 people can be protected in each vault. This means that with 1,000 vaults, just 1 million people can be saved. That is not even 1 percent of the US population.
The reasons lie with Vault-Tec
On the other hand, with 1,000 vaults in the entire USA, 20 bunkers would have to be available in every state. Cain makes an example calculation for California and comes up with a maximum of ten facilities
Cain finds an explanation for at least the second problem, which has to do with Vault-Tec.The company simply did not build the 1,000 bunkers, according to Cain probably less than half.
The reason for this is, as so often, money. Vault-Tec was awarded the large government contract because it significantly underbid all other competitors. At the same time, however, the company completely miscalculated the planning and did not build the 1,000 vaults.
At the end of the video, the lead designer points out that his assumptions are not canonical. An important hint, because a few months ago a heated discussion broke out among Fallout fans about this very canon.
Further supplies for Fallout fans could be provided by the fan project Fallout London. This had to postpone its release indefinitely in April. Recently, however, there was a promising update. We have included the corresponding text in the link box.
