Minefield

Minefield, by the time that the Lone Wanderer comes across it, is an abandoned settlement filled with, as the name suggests, frag mines. Travelers approaching the area must avoid the mines as well as rifle fire from a residing sniper named Arkansas, who will not only shoot at intruders, but will also attempt to detonate nearby cars with a well-placed shot to their fusion engines.

Background
Before the bombs fell, the isolated township of Ridgefield was a quiet community nestled in to the hillside, far away from any major roads. More than a century later, a tribe of military survivors stumbled across its remains while traveling from the north. They quickly realized the value of a defensible, hidden location, and managed to make it their own.

The settlers' fortune would run out, however, and on one fateful day, the slavers of Paradise Falls came to the town hidden in the hills, and gunned down anyone who stood in their way, enslaved the surviving inhabitants, with the sole known exception being Arkansas. He was a small boy when the slavers first came and captured nearly all of the people living in the town, and continued to swear revenge against the slavers, even as he grew older and older. Eventually, Arkansas managed to spread rumors that a new tribe had settled down in Minefield, which once again attracted the attention of the Paradise Falls slavers, who came to raid the town as they had before.

Upon their arrival, the slavers were harried by a hidden Arkansas with his sniper rifle, with their numbers decimated by the landmines scattered all across the ruined settlement. The slavers took heavy losses that day, and never came back. Now an old man, Arkansas still shuffles around Minefield, and remains as the sole inhabitant of the town.

Layout
Minefield consists of half a dozen houses built around a curving road, with a playground in the middle between the road. Mines are situated on the road, with Arkansas being situated in a destroyed house roof overlooking the road.

Minefield homes
This settlement has four houses that can be explored: the Benson House, Gibson House, Gillian House, and Zane House, all of which contain valuable loot, including pre-War books, medical supplies, and an R91 assault rifle. The interiors follow the same basic plan as houses in Tranquility Lane and Higgs Village in Old World Blues.

Notable loot

 * There are four skill books and nine pre-War books in Minefield:
 * Zane House (Average locked): A Pugilism Illustrated can be found in the children's room on a teddy bear's lap, with a pre-War book in the front room.
 * Gillian House (Average locked): Two pre-War books are in the front room, one on the bookshelf and the other on a table. A Grognak the Barbarian can be found on the child's bed upstairs.
 * Gibson House (Very Easy locked): A copy of Tumblers Today is on a desk, and four pre-War books can be found in the front room, one in the children's room on the bookcase, one in the master bedroom's bathtub, and one on the bedside table. In the living room, there is a locked model home (Very Hard) that can be unlocked using a key that can be found on Gibson's corpse inside the Capitol Post building.
 * Benson House (Hard locked): A pre-War book is on top of a ground floor bookcase, with a D.C. Journal of Internal Medicine and a pre-War book is in the upstairs master bedroom.

Related quests

 * Wasteland Survival Guide
 * Strictly Business

Appearances
Minefield appears only in Fallout 3.

Behind the scenes

 * The names of the houses in Minefield are references to the Hideo Kojima game "Snatcher". In the Capitol Post building in L'Enfant Plaza, a decapitated body sitting with its head between its legs can be found, with a note on it that says "SEARCH THE HOUSE". This is identical to a scene in "Snatcher". The house in the game also had a miniature house model. "Gibson" refers to Jean Jack Gibson, the character from Snatcher. The "Gillian's House" refers to "Gillian Seed", the protagonist of Snatcher. "Benson" is the name of two characters from the game as well (either Benson Cunningham- the chief or Harry Benson- the engineer). The name of the last house, Zane, is however not used in "Snatcher".