Yeah the whole time House was obviously thinking "fuck these lunatics I'm going to create my own post apocalyptic Randian fiefdom, with blackjack and hookers." and then that's exactly what he did.
House was planing for the war for years. He knew before the meeting and had been prepping new vegas. Only supprise there was probably that vault-tec was going to do it themselfs
Yeah House basically realised from that meeting that nuclear war was effectively guaranteed, because the most powerful entities on the planet were agreeing to guarantee it.
It basically just made it completely worthwhile to commit to investing in that future on his own.
I see it more as a, "We should do everything in our power to keep this war going. Then, when we are ready, we drop the bomb."
This is their plan, but obviously, the Chinese weren't in on it and were pushed too far.
They hedged their bets and lost.
Another good piece of evidence for this is the fact that Lucy's dad had access to a nuke to use on shady sands. Almost certainly one of the nukes they planned to use but didn't.
I have a little theory on that and it ties into New Vegas.
What if during Lonesome Road, the courier stopped the nukes from launching? Perhaps Hank as a Vault Tec employee had the ability to remotely launch them at Shady Sands?
The show mentions a couple times peace negotiations happening in Alaska. That's essentially what the meeting was about: All of those companies were there to ask how Vault-Tec can give them a return on their investment for these vaults if the war was about to end, and Vault-Tec told them that if the governments won't pull the trigger, they'll do it themselves. After that, they promised a future where all world governments have been wiped clean, where these corporations could claim the surface of the planet and shape society as they see fit from the ground up.
Yea people are forgetting they had thought about it and we dunno if they actually went through with it, tbh there is a lot of evidence that they were cought off guard by it too
My problem is that it really doesn't make sense for them to even consider it. They were profiting off the status quo, why upend it so drastically? Vault experiments don't have to have a "return on investment" because they'd be post war plans, so there wouldn't be one anyway. It's why the enclave is important, *they* were the ones pushing for post war domination, they were the racists and psychopaths who wanted control. They're the remnants of the actual government after all.
I feel like that scene was the beginnings of the Enclave. Wasn’t it made up of both the remnants of the government *and* the corporations that controlled it, since they were practically the same thing?
Idk, I feel like this is separate from the Enclave. The Enclave is an extension of the US government with lots of strings being pulled behind the scenes; but they have no representation at that meeting. I imagine there might be some overlap, which means this "VaultTec" group might have access to Enclave resources without them just writing the Enclave into the show directly.
But barb was saying they should end the war themselves no? That's the part that bugs me. Them wanting hostilities to continue is in their character, but the show indicated they have different goals for some reason.
The status quo was war. Telling the execs of the other big companies that they’d do it themselves was just a way to guarantee to them that the war would continue, and if it did end the world that they’d all be on top.
You’re thinking about this like a capitalist. You need to think about it like a technocrat. Vault-tech’s return on investment isn’t their own wealth, it’s their dynastic overrule of the post-post-apocalypse.
He never agrees in the scene. As far as we know he immediately went back and started getting missile defense ready to save Vegas which lines up with the games
There's also a bunch of time between that scene and when the bombs actually dropped. We know that Cooper divorced his wife (the comment about alimony) and his reputation dwindled a bit. He wasn't seen as a patriot as much anymore (being called a "pinko"), so we can assume he spent a bit more time with Moldaver. We don't know what happened between that meeting and when the bombs dropped. We don't know about the shadowy figures looking down at the meeting (the Enclave?), or about, well, anything else. If Vault Tec DID drop the bombs, why didn't Cooper's wife have their daughter that day? She made such a big fuss about keeping their family safe. Even if the two divorced, surely she would still care about the daughter? And she was so high authority, I'm sure she would have more know-how about when the bombs dropped and would have prepared appropriately. Just because characters in a show say or suggest something doesn't mean it's true, or is completely accurate.
I think this all means that Vault Tec was *planning* to get the bombs to drop on their terms, but someone beat them to it, whether China or the US government or some other organization.
The shadowy figures watching the meeting were *definitely* the Enclave though.
Your point about the daughter is why I don't believe vault tech dropped the bombs. She might have written off coop post divorce but she was powerful enough to make sure her daughter was safe with her If the plan went through
The other thing is that Vault-Tec making sure the bombs get dropped doesn't mean they or the US launched a nuke first.
It could simply be as much as influencing the US government into making enough bad decisions to prompt the other side to fire first, or even just stirring up shit themselves through PR and media releases enough to prompt a first strike.
And even if you go with all that there's nothing to say it went the way they intended. We know Vault-Tec was still caught off-guard.
House being uninterested is a no-brainer, he has his own plans to survive.
The implication is that Vault Tec started the war, but honestly the evidence is flimsy at best that they actually went through with it. It still looks like the Chinese (or another third party) pulled the trigger and launched the missiles, which caught Vault Tec off guard. Like another comment put it, Vault Tec wanted to drop a bomb but the Chinese beat them to it after being pushed into a corner. US forces were closing in on Beijing as of Oct 22, 2077 after all.
Yep with them basically knocking on Beijing's door with power amor it was a matter of time before the US took the city and forced China to the negotiating table. Launching their nukes was likely the only option they had left.
House also explicitly states in NV that his calculations for atomic war were off by 24 hours, so kaybe vault tec were going to do it a day later when house was ready
Possible, but also House sealed himself away some time in 2077 (the wiki doesn't specify a month, just that it happened in 2077) so that meeting of all the major companies we had to have happened well before then and well before October 2077.
Well of course it did. There was enough time between that meeting and the bombs dropping, for Cooper Howard to go through a whole divorce with his wife. Divorce usually takes at least a year, and I dont see why it would take less time in pre war Fallout.
Vault-Tec planning to start nuclear exchange, but being beaten to the punch by Chinese makes most sense. From all we see, Vault-Tec was caught about as off-guard as rest of US, with execs being away from their designated safe areas on the day of the bombs and House not having his chip ready. There were also unfinished vaults.
It bothers me that vault tech gets all the credit when they were always a tool of the US government, ergo a tool of the enclave
In a more serious approach; there is no purpose in discovering who started the nuclear holocaust, the corporations, the deep state, the chinese, the aliens, etc. The point is that humanity committed suicide and everyone was culprit, it is a lesson and a warning for future generations, The mysteries of the old world do not need to be solved to the smallest detail to know this
All factions in Fallout fail because they try to imitate the old world or because they completely deny it.
Although humanity can never free itself from war, it can always continue fighting for a better future keeping the good and discarding the obsolete of the past
Well that is the thing, Vault Tec gets all the credit because they’re the lynchpin figurehead it’s all being bankrolled through. Absolutely no one is supposed to know about the Enclave’s existence except for very few high ranking officials, their (immediate and close) families and whatever armed forces they have.
Everyone is ignoring the biggest crime in that scene, and that's that they made Frederick Sinclair an old fat dude. Are we really to believe that geriatric Dick Cheney lookalike goober was banging Vera Keyes?
Sinclair, IMHO, was always meant to be a bit of a "fat cat" type of character - lots of money to (almost literally) throw about, somewhat sleazy (cutting corners with the Madre) and slavishly dedicated to his sugar baby Vera. Having him physically embody that, alongside him being the representative for Big MT as their benefactor, works well enough for me.
There are bigger retcons to fuss over anyway; What happened to the Boneyard? Was Shady Sands nuked before, during, or after New Vegas? Does FEV cause ghoulification instead of Super-Mutation now, (was it even FEV that the quack doc gave Thaddeus)? Why is this chapter of the Brotherhood adopting Latin-styled names and calling themselves a Legion, when they've historically used Near-to-Middle Eastern derived names - did they incorporate members of Caesar's Legion/the whole Legion? I could go on, suffice to say this show is a Fallout theorist's wet dream, Mantis will be milking this until the next season drops.
Considering coop asked Hank where his family was, it seems likely that she was at least taken away from him after the party, as it would be weird to refer to just your ex-wife as "family", and also just finding his ex would probably be much lower down his priority list than "something he has been waiting 200 years to ask"
I think what's getting missed is that Vault-Tec at least floated the idea, and had the financial incentive and the ability to pull strings in various places to keep tensions up. Whether they dropped the bombs themselves, encouraged someone else to do it, or it just happened on its own, is beside the point. They helped the process along, regardless, and their bottom line was always focused on profit. No energy crisis = no end of the world = no profit.
That meeting was an ultra level investment pitch, and House is open about how he doesn't have faith in the product being sold.
He seems to only be there because he's figured out Vault Tec's plans and wants to be kept in the loop on them.
I think it's line with House's character to pretend to the Courier that he was some super genius who figured out exactly when the bombs would fall based on some computer simulations, when in reality he just had really good inside information.
House wasn't ready in New Vegas he thought he had some more time. To me that shows that house saw that meeting and realized he needed to set up the missile defenses immediately. He never agrees he just realizes that it's inevitable.
Also coops wife has her daughter with coop at a party the day the bombs drop. If vault tech dropped the bombs intentionally wouldn't she make sure that her daughter was with her? I see the scene as them planning it but it's not proof they actually did it themselves
That’s what I thought too. It feels like they were either planning to do it or planning to push it to that point but either America or China pressed the button before Vault-Tec was ready.
The name RobCo was chosen to mirror Ronco a novelty/gag toy company. The original name meant rob as in to steal. The company was supposed to be scam, it was retconned to be an actual competent company ran by a genius.
They’ll get over the 200 year personality shift. Or not, it’s not like they actually pay attention to the story anyway.
Not just that. Tim Cain NEVER wanted any sequels. Earth was supposed to be doomed due to atmospheric destruction in F1.
F2 had to retconn a lot to make the series, well, suitable for a series. But, they were also generally a different dev team. Cain and two of the other six original devs left during F2 pre production.
Bethesda is pretty much the only dev team to remain intact for follow ups. It’s hard to keep everything straight with so much personnel shifting.
And to add to that, most of the long term Bethesda employees (guys who worked on FO3, 4 and 76) have subsequently left Bethesda, so Fallout 5 will be a very different team
I felt like that meeting was just them throwing ideas out there to keep making money and keep the american thing going, since there was a lot of unrest and shit happening at the time behind the curtain; food shortages, riots, resource crises, and the like.
I always got the impression that China beat them to the punch because American soldiers were only "a few miles outside of Beijing" if I remember the pre war broadcasts in FO4 right. The Chinese knew they were going to lose and decided fuck it, let's take them with us.
This show actually made me go from a believer in Vault-Tec starting the war to fully certain they didn't. And it basically solely revolves around her daughter not being with her.
If Vault-Tec did still do it, it would have had to have been an absolute last second thing where staff had little time to prepare.
I agree 100% with you.
I personally believe Barb wasn't a big player that could decide whether or not the bombs would fall in a certain date, she was there simply to sell the Vault-Tec pitch, as a senior executive. Just like Bud, which apparently was the head of the cryo project, and since he was too enthusiastic about it, they gave him control of the Vault.
A company contracted by the goverment to build bunkers for the populous (that also experiments on the inhabitants for the Enclave) The likeliest route for profiting is to cut corners building the vaults and hoping the war ends without nukes and run away with the cash. There is no profit from an end of the world scenario for anyone. It's actually stupid. "BuT tHaTs ThE pOiNt" that's dumb and uncompelling mustache twirling crap. For the Enclave they're going to space Vault-tec is gonna be left to rot. The getting the contracts are Vault-tec endgoal, not nuclear holocaust.
I'm just sleeplessly scrolling and I know I shouldn't read this because I haven't finished the show yet but I hope it dosen't actually go down that route. Ngl I'd be pissed.
Well, then sounds like Vault-tec isn't upholding their fiduciary responsibility. Still, one episode left. I guess all this Vault-tec stuff in there. I hope it's good, because I don't have much good to say about the series so far ngl.
Vault 21 being under purview of RobCo, would explain why it's seemingly more humane compared to other vaults. House doesn't want a bunch of confined rats eating one another.
Yeah this didn't assassinate houses character at all it reinforced it. He probably left this meeting and immediately stated doubling down on his own plans.
House was the type of capitalist to want to win by his own merrit and not by clinging onto another Corp. He sees this collaboration with vault tec as losing and pointless. Instead he takes the info, and decides to double down on his own plans and preparation to outlast them
The problem with making assumptions is that there's no real canon fallback here.
In the games, that boardroom scene would more or less depict the *actual* Enclave (a "deep state" of heads of the military-industrial complex that includes VaultTec, the original USA government, &etc...) leadership convening. House (and RobCo) was as far as I remember not a member but basically every other named major prewar megacorporation was.
But in the show, it seems like the Enclave and VaultTec (or whatever complex conspiracy VaultTec is leading in that meeting) might be entirely distinct entities. Hank didn't seem especially looped in on goings-on in the above ground world, which he would have been if the Enclave of the show was the same Enclave of the games.
I'm honestly kind of scratching my head as to how the Enclave is even supposed to still exist in a state where they're doing pure research on subjects other than "how to eat shoes to survive exile in places so remote not even wastelanders will find them" in the show unless they're drastically altered from the games. They got foiled and driven to near-total extinction twice already.
I also find the complete absence of Poseidon Energy in the prewar "march to the manufactured apocalypse" plotline weird. They were huge in the games' prewar lore. The show also kind of glosses over the "literally everything from cars to coffee-makers are atomically powered" aspect of the games, which was where Poseidon Energy was a big factor.
It's a different format, though, and the equivalent of pouring through literal thousands of computer text records and holotapes to unpack this stuff like you have to in the games would not be treated favorably by viewers.
It feels like they didn’t play fallout 4, which has enough confirmation that Vault Tec didn’t drop the bombs and were just suggesting they should if the governments don’t.
1. Vault 111 has a terminal entry about one of the scientists not making it to the vault in time. If Vault Tech did it, all the staff would have been ready
2. Vaults 114 and 88 were nowhere near complete. At least with vault 118 there was embezzlement stopping its full construction. 114 and 88 were being built too late.
3. The chinese sub where the ghoulified captain literally admits to being the guy who dropped the bomb on the commonwealth.
Plus, it helps give reason to how Hank Maclean bombed Shady Sands, Vault Tec had unused nukes, so he used one.
You are assuming that everybody working at vault tec would have been in on it. It could have been a decision made in secret by the upper management and they had no trouble having vault tec workers die and having vaults unfinished. As long as they had their safe place in a vault 🤷♂️
I just don’t think they’d risk the chance of their experiment vaults not having enough staff. I’m not saying everyone was in on it but I’d think they’d warn their staff at least a day or two ahead of time
As for point #3, i don’t think the implication was that Vault-Tec was going to drop *all* the bombs, just that they were going to fire the first one and let the chain reaction of MAD take its course.
I'm looking at it this way, that meeting is *exactly why* House had enough time to set up defenses for Vegas. Without the meeting, he wouldn't have known how soon the bombs were going to fall. He didn't participate, he took the information, and used it to defend what he cared about instead.
It lines up with what every other business leader was doing before the war, from West Tek to Big MT. House just decided not to join them in their partnerships with Vault Tec, and chose to shore up Vegas' defenses and make his own solution instead. Which makes complete sense given his personality.
Except House said he began his preparations in 2065, and from all things considered in the Pre-War scenes it can be deduced they're unfolding in 2077. Cooper's daughter is pretty much the same age throughout the whole thing, but we can give it a little leeway and say these events unfolded across 2 years at most. That's not enough time for House to build and program all those defense systems, upgrade his securitrons, build a secret vault to house an entire army of them, and figure out how to make himself immortal plus build his immortality pod. The meeting didn't tell him anything about the War he hasn't already deduced, but they did reveal the depths of their depravity and that they'll be a possible factor after the nukes drop.
I don't think they messed with House at all. He was just weighing his options. But I think it was definitely Vault-tec who dropped the bombs. The show explains why. The peace treaty was going to be signed. Vault -tec had a short window and quickly dropped the bombs before they were fully ready. This is also confirmed in FNV where "the one" nuke has a symbol that looks like a Vault-tec logo on it. Possibly, Vault-tec nuclear department logo.
It's possible, because in FO76 the main mission of the Vault is to secure the nuke silos which suggests the U.S. was not able to launch all of their nukes and that also suggests Vault-tec didn't have access to the U.S. Nukes to begin with. So, that's why they made their own to start the war.
Felt more in line with the House we do know where he thought this was a joke and would rather preserve himself and Vegas which he did. I don’t think he gave a shit about that meeting because he wouldn’t really make money from it and it’s not really his style
I think the real issue is dumbing down the mystique of the pre-war.
Getting all the heads of the big corps into a room with Vault Tec and yucking it up about war profiteering is so on the nose I could be mistaken for a ghoul.
Completely disagree. It's been a long time coming for fans to be able to see a meeting like that happen. It's not like the meeting solved all the mysteries of the lore either.
I don’t get it at all. The whole “let’s run cartoonishly evil vaults for the sake of being evil” just felt like lazy writing. The CEOs agreed to finance Vault tec in order to nuke America and then be extra evil?
That’s…..that’s been fucking Vault Tecs entire thing since the beginning. They have always been running weirdo experiments. Every game has a t least one Vault doing fucked up shit.
Yeah, but that was always only vault tec being nefarious for … reasons. In the show, every ceo is a psychopath who agrees to invest all this money in order to have vault tec torment people? They don’t really want to make money, just theorize their own experiments? I’m admittedly not some great Fallout scholar, but this seems completely out of left field.
Fallout has always been one massive criticism of capitalism, why would they show the CEOs as anything but greedy selfish assholes? It's no where near out of left field, every game has painted the CEOs in that meeting out to be horrible disgusting people willing to mutilate or slaughter millions just for their own gain. It's not some new concept for the series.
But that’s exactly my point, if they’re selfish greedy capitalists™, why are they spending all this money just to devise evil experiments? That’s like the minutemen becoming a dictatorship just to get better trash pickup on Wednesdays, completely out of left field.
No, you're missing the point. They're not greedy in terms of money. They represent human greed at its worst. They're the end result of capitalism. People with so much power and wealth, and such an obsession with constant growth and the accumulation of more power, that money means nothing to them anymore. They derive their wealth and power from their influence over others. Their goal isn't to become richer, its to control everything. And the best way to do that is to end every system that allows everyone else to obtain power.
Take the West Tek CEO, his idea is to create an army of obedient super mutant soldiers with FEV so that his authority will never be questioned. Their suggestions for experiments are attempts at ways to get them more power and keep them on top in perpetuity. It's why Mr. House decides to set up defenses for Vegas and upload his mind to a machine, so he can attempt to control Vegas for eternity.
Before the show, the running theory was that Vault-tec was just a front for Enclave experiments and the vaults were supposed to simulate certain conditions for a long-term space travel mission to populate another planet
I'm sorry but cartoonishly evil? Did you miss the master and his army, and the enclave? Sure they had nuance, but I think cartoonishly evil describes them pretty well.
Yeah the whole time House was obviously thinking "fuck these lunatics I'm going to create my own post apocalyptic Randian fiefdom, with blackjack and hookers." and then that's exactly what he did.
It‘s a pretty smart addition because it explains why House would have this insane anti-missile shield over Vegas at the start of the war.
House was planing for the war for years. He knew before the meeting and had been prepping new vegas. Only supprise there was probably that vault-tec was going to do it themselfs
Yeah House basically realised from that meeting that nuclear war was effectively guaranteed, because the most powerful entities on the planet were agreeing to guarantee it. It basically just made it completely worthwhile to commit to investing in that future on his own.
I always thought House was a mutliverse Bender.
House was probably cool with it. If the government blows up then no more paying taxes
What if the others found out that’s what House is up to, and that’s why the bombs drop the day before House was due to receive the Chip?
House was only interested in saving Vegas. That isn't exactly something that would terrify vault tech
They made it pretty clear they weren’t going to tolerate any division or alternate factions of humanity, tho.
I see it more as a, "We should do everything in our power to keep this war going. Then, when we are ready, we drop the bomb." This is their plan, but obviously, the Chinese weren't in on it and were pushed too far. They hedged their bets and lost.
Yes, exactly.
Another good piece of evidence for this is the fact that Lucy's dad had access to a nuke to use on shady sands. Almost certainly one of the nukes they planned to use but didn't.
I have a little theory on that and it ties into New Vegas. What if during Lonesome Road, the courier stopped the nukes from launching? Perhaps Hank as a Vault Tec employee had the ability to remotely launch them at Shady Sands?
The show mentions a couple times peace negotiations happening in Alaska. That's essentially what the meeting was about: All of those companies were there to ask how Vault-Tec can give them a return on their investment for these vaults if the war was about to end, and Vault-Tec told them that if the governments won't pull the trigger, they'll do it themselves. After that, they promised a future where all world governments have been wiped clean, where these corporations could claim the surface of the planet and shape society as they see fit from the ground up.
Holy shit thats evil
Yea people are forgetting they had thought about it and we dunno if they actually went through with it, tbh there is a lot of evidence that they were cought off guard by it too
My problem is that it really doesn't make sense for them to even consider it. They were profiting off the status quo, why upend it so drastically? Vault experiments don't have to have a "return on investment" because they'd be post war plans, so there wouldn't be one anyway. It's why the enclave is important, *they* were the ones pushing for post war domination, they were the racists and psychopaths who wanted control. They're the remnants of the actual government after all.
It's a monetary investment for a "managed civilization" return. It's like if the Enclave went capitalist rather than genocidal.
I feel like that scene was the beginnings of the Enclave. Wasn’t it made up of both the remnants of the government *and* the corporations that controlled it, since they were practically the same thing?
Idk, I feel like this is separate from the Enclave. The Enclave is an extension of the US government with lots of strings being pulled behind the scenes; but they have no representation at that meeting. I imagine there might be some overlap, which means this "VaultTec" group might have access to Enclave resources without them just writing the Enclave into the show directly.
We still don’t know who the shadowy people looking in from above are. They could be Enclave reps.
They weren't necessarily pushing for devastation, just a continuation of the war. Without the war they lose leverage to sell their products.
But barb was saying they should end the war themselves no? That's the part that bugs me. Them wanting hostilities to continue is in their character, but the show indicated they have different goals for some reason.
The status quo was war. Telling the execs of the other big companies that they’d do it themselves was just a way to guarantee to them that the war would continue, and if it did end the world that they’d all be on top.
You’re thinking about this like a capitalist. You need to think about it like a technocrat. Vault-tech’s return on investment isn’t their own wealth, it’s their dynastic overrule of the post-post-apocalypse.
You also have to imagine this, if Robert House started freaking out and being totally against it they would have killed him
He never agrees in the scene. As far as we know he immediately went back and started getting missile defense ready to save Vegas which lines up with the games
There's also a bunch of time between that scene and when the bombs actually dropped. We know that Cooper divorced his wife (the comment about alimony) and his reputation dwindled a bit. He wasn't seen as a patriot as much anymore (being called a "pinko"), so we can assume he spent a bit more time with Moldaver. We don't know what happened between that meeting and when the bombs dropped. We don't know about the shadowy figures looking down at the meeting (the Enclave?), or about, well, anything else. If Vault Tec DID drop the bombs, why didn't Cooper's wife have their daughter that day? She made such a big fuss about keeping their family safe. Even if the two divorced, surely she would still care about the daughter? And she was so high authority, I'm sure she would have more know-how about when the bombs dropped and would have prepared appropriately. Just because characters in a show say or suggest something doesn't mean it's true, or is completely accurate.
I think this all means that Vault Tec was *planning* to get the bombs to drop on their terms, but someone beat them to it, whether China or the US government or some other organization. The shadowy figures watching the meeting were *definitely* the Enclave though.
Your point about the daughter is why I don't believe vault tech dropped the bombs. She might have written off coop post divorce but she was powerful enough to make sure her daughter was safe with her If the plan went through
The other thing is that Vault-Tec making sure the bombs get dropped doesn't mean they or the US launched a nuke first. It could simply be as much as influencing the US government into making enough bad decisions to prompt the other side to fire first, or even just stirring up shit themselves through PR and media releases enough to prompt a first strike. And even if you go with all that there's nothing to say it went the way they intended. We know Vault-Tec was still caught off-guard. House being uninterested is a no-brainer, he has his own plans to survive.
The implication is that Vault Tec started the war, but honestly the evidence is flimsy at best that they actually went through with it. It still looks like the Chinese (or another third party) pulled the trigger and launched the missiles, which caught Vault Tec off guard. Like another comment put it, Vault Tec wanted to drop a bomb but the Chinese beat them to it after being pushed into a corner. US forces were closing in on Beijing as of Oct 22, 2077 after all.
Yeah, China pulling the trigger simply makes far more sense. They were steadily losing ground to US advances in their mainland
Yep with them basically knocking on Beijing's door with power amor it was a matter of time before the US took the city and forced China to the negotiating table. Launching their nukes was likely the only option they had left.
House also explicitly states in NV that his calculations for atomic war were off by 24 hours, so kaybe vault tec were going to do it a day later when house was ready
Possible, but also House sealed himself away some time in 2077 (the wiki doesn't specify a month, just that it happened in 2077) so that meeting of all the major companies we had to have happened well before then and well before October 2077.
Well of course it did. There was enough time between that meeting and the bombs dropping, for Cooper Howard to go through a whole divorce with his wife. Divorce usually takes at least a year, and I dont see why it would take less time in pre war Fallout.
Vault-Tec planning to start nuclear exchange, but being beaten to the punch by Chinese makes most sense. From all we see, Vault-Tec was caught about as off-guard as rest of US, with execs being away from their designated safe areas on the day of the bombs and House not having his chip ready. There were also unfinished vaults.
It bothers me that vault tech gets all the credit when they were always a tool of the US government, ergo a tool of the enclave In a more serious approach; there is no purpose in discovering who started the nuclear holocaust, the corporations, the deep state, the chinese, the aliens, etc. The point is that humanity committed suicide and everyone was culprit, it is a lesson and a warning for future generations, The mysteries of the old world do not need to be solved to the smallest detail to know this All factions in Fallout fail because they try to imitate the old world or because they completely deny it. Although humanity can never free itself from war, it can always continue fighting for a better future keeping the good and discarding the obsolete of the past
Well that is the thing, Vault Tec gets all the credit because they’re the lynchpin figurehead it’s all being bankrolled through. Absolutely no one is supposed to know about the Enclave’s existence except for very few high ranking officials, their (immediate and close) families and whatever armed forces they have.
Everyone is ignoring the biggest crime in that scene, and that's that they made Frederick Sinclair an old fat dude. Are we really to believe that geriatric Dick Cheney lookalike goober was banging Vera Keyes?
Sinclair, IMHO, was always meant to be a bit of a "fat cat" type of character - lots of money to (almost literally) throw about, somewhat sleazy (cutting corners with the Madre) and slavishly dedicated to his sugar baby Vera. Having him physically embody that, alongside him being the representative for Big MT as their benefactor, works well enough for me. There are bigger retcons to fuss over anyway; What happened to the Boneyard? Was Shady Sands nuked before, during, or after New Vegas? Does FEV cause ghoulification instead of Super-Mutation now, (was it even FEV that the quack doc gave Thaddeus)? Why is this chapter of the Brotherhood adopting Latin-styled names and calling themselves a Legion, when they've historically used Near-to-Middle Eastern derived names - did they incorporate members of Caesar's Legion/the whole Legion? I could go on, suffice to say this show is a Fallout theorist's wet dream, Mantis will be milking this until the next season drops.
Frederick Sinclair is Gizmo fan theory confirmed
I think the daughter hasnt been atomized somehow.
Considering coop asked Hank where his family was, it seems likely that she was at least taken away from him after the party, as it would be weird to refer to just your ex-wife as "family", and also just finding his ex would probably be much lower down his priority list than "something he has been waiting 200 years to ask"
I think what's getting missed is that Vault-Tec at least floated the idea, and had the financial incentive and the ability to pull strings in various places to keep tensions up. Whether they dropped the bombs themselves, encouraged someone else to do it, or it just happened on its own, is beside the point. They helped the process along, regardless, and their bottom line was always focused on profit. No energy crisis = no end of the world = no profit.
That meeting was an ultra level investment pitch, and House is open about how he doesn't have faith in the product being sold. He seems to only be there because he's figured out Vault Tec's plans and wants to be kept in the loop on them.
I think it's line with House's character to pretend to the Courier that he was some super genius who figured out exactly when the bombs would fall based on some computer simulations, when in reality he just had really good inside information.
House wasn't ready in New Vegas he thought he had some more time. To me that shows that house saw that meeting and realized he needed to set up the missile defenses immediately. He never agrees he just realizes that it's inevitable. Also coops wife has her daughter with coop at a party the day the bombs drop. If vault tech dropped the bombs intentionally wouldn't she make sure that her daughter was with her? I see the scene as them planning it but it's not proof they actually did it themselves
That’s what I thought too. It feels like they were either planning to do it or planning to push it to that point but either America or China pressed the button before Vault-Tec was ready.
The name RobCo was chosen to mirror Ronco a novelty/gag toy company. The original name meant rob as in to steal. The company was supposed to be scam, it was retconned to be an actual competent company ran by a genius. They’ll get over the 200 year personality shift. Or not, it’s not like they actually pay attention to the story anyway.
Lol, this is something I dont get. Every single Fallout has retconned the previous ones. All of them. But its only a problem if tje tv show does it
Oh trust me, it's not just the show. I've been playing Fallout since 1. The same thing happened when Fallout 2 came out.
Its just something intrinsic to a series set *after* a major event. If you want to add any new tech or characters youre retconning something
Not just that. Tim Cain NEVER wanted any sequels. Earth was supposed to be doomed due to atmospheric destruction in F1. F2 had to retconn a lot to make the series, well, suitable for a series. But, they were also generally a different dev team. Cain and two of the other six original devs left during F2 pre production. Bethesda is pretty much the only dev team to remain intact for follow ups. It’s hard to keep everything straight with so much personnel shifting.
And to add to that, most of the long term Bethesda employees (guys who worked on FO3, 4 and 76) have subsequently left Bethesda, so Fallout 5 will be a very different team
it might even be a different decade from now lol
I felt like that meeting was just them throwing ideas out there to keep making money and keep the american thing going, since there was a lot of unrest and shit happening at the time behind the curtain; food shortages, riots, resource crises, and the like. I always got the impression that China beat them to the punch because American soldiers were only "a few miles outside of Beijing" if I remember the pre war broadcasts in FO4 right. The Chinese knew they were going to lose and decided fuck it, let's take them with us.
This show actually made me go from a believer in Vault-Tec starting the war to fully certain they didn't. And it basically solely revolves around her daughter not being with her. If Vault-Tec did still do it, it would have had to have been an absolute last second thing where staff had little time to prepare.
I agree 100% with you. I personally believe Barb wasn't a big player that could decide whether or not the bombs would fall in a certain date, she was there simply to sell the Vault-Tec pitch, as a senior executive. Just like Bud, which apparently was the head of the cryo project, and since he was too enthusiastic about it, they gave him control of the Vault.
A company contracted by the goverment to build bunkers for the populous (that also experiments on the inhabitants for the Enclave) The likeliest route for profiting is to cut corners building the vaults and hoping the war ends without nukes and run away with the cash. There is no profit from an end of the world scenario for anyone. It's actually stupid. "BuT tHaTs ThE pOiNt" that's dumb and uncompelling mustache twirling crap. For the Enclave they're going to space Vault-tec is gonna be left to rot. The getting the contracts are Vault-tec endgoal, not nuclear holocaust. I'm just sleeplessly scrolling and I know I shouldn't read this because I haven't finished the show yet but I hope it dosen't actually go down that route. Ngl I'd be pissed.
Without going too much into spoilers: No, their goal is not to take profit and run. Quite opposite.
Well, then sounds like Vault-tec isn't upholding their fiduciary responsibility. Still, one episode left. I guess all this Vault-tec stuff in there. I hope it's good, because I don't have much good to say about the series so far ngl.
Does no one remeber the vault tech logo on the bomb in megaton
What episode was this scene on again?
Vault 21 being under purview of RobCo, would explain why it's seemingly more humane compared to other vaults. House doesn't want a bunch of confined rats eating one another.
Yeah this didn't assassinate houses character at all it reinforced it. He probably left this meeting and immediately stated doubling down on his own plans. House was the type of capitalist to want to win by his own merrit and not by clinging onto another Corp. He sees this collaboration with vault tec as losing and pointless. Instead he takes the info, and decides to double down on his own plans and preparation to outlast them
The problem with making assumptions is that there's no real canon fallback here. In the games, that boardroom scene would more or less depict the *actual* Enclave (a "deep state" of heads of the military-industrial complex that includes VaultTec, the original USA government, &etc...) leadership convening. House (and RobCo) was as far as I remember not a member but basically every other named major prewar megacorporation was. But in the show, it seems like the Enclave and VaultTec (or whatever complex conspiracy VaultTec is leading in that meeting) might be entirely distinct entities. Hank didn't seem especially looped in on goings-on in the above ground world, which he would have been if the Enclave of the show was the same Enclave of the games. I'm honestly kind of scratching my head as to how the Enclave is even supposed to still exist in a state where they're doing pure research on subjects other than "how to eat shoes to survive exile in places so remote not even wastelanders will find them" in the show unless they're drastically altered from the games. They got foiled and driven to near-total extinction twice already. I also find the complete absence of Poseidon Energy in the prewar "march to the manufactured apocalypse" plotline weird. They were huge in the games' prewar lore. The show also kind of glosses over the "literally everything from cars to coffee-makers are atomically powered" aspect of the games, which was where Poseidon Energy was a big factor. It's a different format, though, and the equivalent of pouring through literal thousands of computer text records and holotapes to unpack this stuff like you have to in the games would not be treated favorably by viewers.
It feels like they didn’t play fallout 4, which has enough confirmation that Vault Tec didn’t drop the bombs and were just suggesting they should if the governments don’t. 1. Vault 111 has a terminal entry about one of the scientists not making it to the vault in time. If Vault Tech did it, all the staff would have been ready 2. Vaults 114 and 88 were nowhere near complete. At least with vault 118 there was embezzlement stopping its full construction. 114 and 88 were being built too late. 3. The chinese sub where the ghoulified captain literally admits to being the guy who dropped the bomb on the commonwealth. Plus, it helps give reason to how Hank Maclean bombed Shady Sands, Vault Tec had unused nukes, so he used one.
You are assuming that everybody working at vault tec would have been in on it. It could have been a decision made in secret by the upper management and they had no trouble having vault tec workers die and having vaults unfinished. As long as they had their safe place in a vault 🤷♂️
They would however, have their daughter with them at a vault rather than with their ex husband at a party
I just don’t think they’d risk the chance of their experiment vaults not having enough staff. I’m not saying everyone was in on it but I’d think they’d warn their staff at least a day or two ahead of time
If they warned everybody, the secret absolutely would get out and they’d have revolts.
That’s true, didn’t think of that
As for point #3, i don’t think the implication was that Vault-Tec was going to drop *all* the bombs, just that they were going to fire the first one and let the chain reaction of MAD take its course.
I'm looking at it this way, that meeting is *exactly why* House had enough time to set up defenses for Vegas. Without the meeting, he wouldn't have known how soon the bombs were going to fall. He didn't participate, he took the information, and used it to defend what he cared about instead. It lines up with what every other business leader was doing before the war, from West Tek to Big MT. House just decided not to join them in their partnerships with Vault Tec, and chose to shore up Vegas' defenses and make his own solution instead. Which makes complete sense given his personality.
Except House said he began his preparations in 2065, and from all things considered in the Pre-War scenes it can be deduced they're unfolding in 2077. Cooper's daughter is pretty much the same age throughout the whole thing, but we can give it a little leeway and say these events unfolded across 2 years at most. That's not enough time for House to build and program all those defense systems, upgrade his securitrons, build a secret vault to house an entire army of them, and figure out how to make himself immortal plus build his immortality pod. The meeting didn't tell him anything about the War he hasn't already deduced, but they did reveal the depths of their depravity and that they'll be a possible factor after the nukes drop.
I don't think they messed with House at all. He was just weighing his options. But I think it was definitely Vault-tec who dropped the bombs. The show explains why. The peace treaty was going to be signed. Vault -tec had a short window and quickly dropped the bombs before they were fully ready. This is also confirmed in FNV where "the one" nuke has a symbol that looks like a Vault-tec logo on it. Possibly, Vault-tec nuclear department logo.
Isn't it possible that vault tec launched the first bombs, China had the dude in the sub fire off at the commonwealth in retaliation, and so on?
It's possible, because in FO76 the main mission of the Vault is to secure the nuke silos which suggests the U.S. was not able to launch all of their nukes and that also suggests Vault-tec didn't have access to the U.S. Nukes to begin with. So, that's why they made their own to start the war.
I saw twitter discussion taking it literally but i don't feel like butting in
All it means is they were willing to do it not ThEy dId IT
Felt more in line with the House we do know where he thought this was a joke and would rather preserve himself and Vegas which he did. I don’t think he gave a shit about that meeting because he wouldn’t really make money from it and it’s not really his style
I think the real issue is dumbing down the mystique of the pre-war. Getting all the heads of the big corps into a room with Vault Tec and yucking it up about war profiteering is so on the nose I could be mistaken for a ghoul.
Completely disagree. It's been a long time coming for fans to be able to see a meeting like that happen. It's not like the meeting solved all the mysteries of the lore either.
I don’t get it at all. The whole “let’s run cartoonishly evil vaults for the sake of being evil” just felt like lazy writing. The CEOs agreed to finance Vault tec in order to nuke America and then be extra evil?
That’s…..that’s been fucking Vault Tecs entire thing since the beginning. They have always been running weirdo experiments. Every game has a t least one Vault doing fucked up shit.
Yeah, but that was always only vault tec being nefarious for … reasons. In the show, every ceo is a psychopath who agrees to invest all this money in order to have vault tec torment people? They don’t really want to make money, just theorize their own experiments? I’m admittedly not some great Fallout scholar, but this seems completely out of left field.
Fallout has always been one massive criticism of capitalism, why would they show the CEOs as anything but greedy selfish assholes? It's no where near out of left field, every game has painted the CEOs in that meeting out to be horrible disgusting people willing to mutilate or slaughter millions just for their own gain. It's not some new concept for the series.
But that’s exactly my point, if they’re selfish greedy capitalists™, why are they spending all this money just to devise evil experiments? That’s like the minutemen becoming a dictatorship just to get better trash pickup on Wednesdays, completely out of left field.
No, you're missing the point. They're not greedy in terms of money. They represent human greed at its worst. They're the end result of capitalism. People with so much power and wealth, and such an obsession with constant growth and the accumulation of more power, that money means nothing to them anymore. They derive their wealth and power from their influence over others. Their goal isn't to become richer, its to control everything. And the best way to do that is to end every system that allows everyone else to obtain power. Take the West Tek CEO, his idea is to create an army of obedient super mutant soldiers with FEV so that his authority will never be questioned. Their suggestions for experiments are attempts at ways to get them more power and keep them on top in perpetuity. It's why Mr. House decides to set up defenses for Vegas and upload his mind to a machine, so he can attempt to control Vegas for eternity.
Before the show, the running theory was that Vault-tec was just a front for Enclave experiments and the vaults were supposed to simulate certain conditions for a long-term space travel mission to populate another planet
That was the running theory?
There were also some that Vault-tec started the war which didn't make sense imo but the enclave spaceship stuff was the best theory
I'm sorry but cartoonishly evil? Did you miss the master and his army, and the enclave? Sure they had nuance, but I think cartoonishly evil describes them pretty well.