Forum:Education, and intellectuals of Fallout

I have some problems with fallout mostly logic wise, however i still play it and regard it as one of the better games of gaming history.


 * 1st - How is it possible that the fallout world has scientists, and very itellectual people that are capable of constructing androids (Harkness), advanced weeaponry i.e. Tesla Cannon. There are no schools, the books can only teach in a limited amount. Most of the scientists have either died when the bombs fell and their remnents have minimal to no understanding of past tech or they are ghouls, the BoS itself and its Outcast counterpart still have basic knowlege of pre-war weapons. The Enclive i can understand but even so they them selfs are limited as their best armor can not out preform the T-51b.


 * (try and ignore the misspellings)*

STEEL BE WITH YOU!

If you're trying to find logic in Fallout 3, good luck, it doesn't really try that hard to make sense.  [Composite 4] (My Talk)

Actually, that aspect isn't terribly hard to believe. For one thing, the density of information storage in the Fallout universe is huge. In the Wasteland Survival Guide quest, you download not only the card catalog but the entire contents of a public library on to a wrist computer. I would guess that vaults, government facilities, and universities had extensive electronic libraries with massive amounts of information.

As for manufacturing, the U.S. military already has airliftable mini-fabrication factories that can assemble spare parts on site using base raw ingrediants. This type of automated manufacturing is likely a feature of most high-tech facilities by 2077. The hard part would be getting the proper raw materials, which is why keeping the steel plant in the Pitt running is so important. The Brotherhood of Steel seems to have limited capabilities in this area -- possibly because they are a new offshoot rather than a continuation of a pre-war organization like the Enclave or the Institute in the Commonwealth. DreadPirateMurphy 16:47, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

It's probably a mistake to assume that schooling, especially in our modern method, is the best or most efficient way of transmitting knowledge. The reason that modern education follows a classroom oriented approach is that, with enough students, a classroom environment ties up the least resources per student of any method. Different teaching methods, however, become more or less productive based on the amount of students being taught.

Teaching a full class of pupils is arguably the least efficient on a per student basis, as the entire class must advance at the rate of the slowest pupil, or the slowest must be left behind (requiring re-coaching later, or simple abandonment). On a one on one basis a student may be taught or guided by the professor at the most practical rate, naturally breezing through areas that the student grasps quickly and spending more time on areas they do not. Settlers in a post apocalyptic environment, such as the majority of the Fallout world, would not waste the time or effort on most of the education which we take for granted in our own environment. There's little motivation to attempt to force a reluctant student to learn, especially when they will be required to help scavenge, hunt, or otherwise assist the community with manual labor for which they won't require an education early on in life.

Organizations with a more stable or structured lifestyle, such as the Enclave, the Brotherhood, or anyone in a community where most of their needs will be met (such as growing up in some of the habitable vaults) would be more likely to experience what we've come to think of as a standard education than someone whose life will be spent fighting off raiders and figuring out where their next meal will come from. Math or science beyond counting the number of men with guns they say or figuring out if something is safe to eat would be a waste.AnaxagorasZ 19:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

First of all most normal humans used to live in the vaults ,I think, where science has been preserved. second most ghouls have been around since the great war and who know how many of them used to be scientists and could teach humans who survived outside of vaults, not to mention the vault residents could teach as well.

On the subject of Harkness: he's an android. Now, lots of records remain, not to mention whatever remaining dbases might exist in old miltary facillities. Besides, there are surviving schools, probably full of information, and the empty Vaults could have a lot, considering that they had schools. Besides, people could learn from existing technologies. Just look at Power Armor, or various laser and plasma weapons. A lot could be learned with some determination.

Harkness was most likley a pre war android that they discovered in the Institute, Given time people would eventualy begin to question things in their world and learn by doing not reading, you could assume some people like James, or Li who are blesed with the ability to grasp ideads quickly and easily would start tinkering and tearing apart everything they didnt know, and what they didnt learn by doing they could have learned via books, and the remaning computers in placed like Rivet City where there would be atleast some degree of stored information it is a Navy ship afterall. then the Brotherhood would be aquiring knowledge from the areas the take control of, old buildings and the enclave has Eden which contain god only knows how much data. Fawkes give us a little insight to how people can learn with the old surviving computers. there was atleast one vault the was dedicated gto the preservation of science and information, wherether it was a stupid control experiment which makes less then no sense to run an experiment on people after a nuclear war but hey what ever they want to do is fine no matter how little sense it makes.03:48, October 23, 2009 (UTC)Antily3f
 * The control experiments were intended as a test to see if long-term spaceflight and colonization of other planets were possible. --GaussRifle 19:24, July 5, 2010 (UTC)

I am sure in one of the introductions of the Fallout games it says that all the intellectuals and scientists were hidden away in one vault or other. Anyway, there were intellectuals and scientists in Earth's history before the rise of the computer, so it won't be really that hard to comprehend that it is possible afterwards. Thetford 14:17, January 24, 2010 (UTC)