Forum:Progression of time and social changes in the fallout universe

i fully comprehend that fallout occurs in an alternate timeline. But the 50's laid the basis for all the musical and racial and social change in western culture for all of the 20th century. Elvis (who obviously existed in the fallout universe) made traditionally black music and made it acceptable to whites, leading to its evolution into more modern forms by artists such as the Beatles. This helped bridge into things like the civil rights and hippie movements. The economic success of the period allowed people to invest in leisure technology that blossomed into our modern computers and color televisions. Since the events that occurred directly led to the events in the real world, what events were different? Was the government strict and force american students to compete with the soviet students who at the time were learning much more advanced subjects. the problem with this assumption is that Elvis would not have gained such popularity were this the case. WHAT CHANGED?SUPERSTUDS 00:18, April 20, 2011 (UTC)SUPERSTUDS I can only see this occurring if: 1: The Beatles did not exist. 2: the Economy/Goventment of the 1950's was harsh. However: 1:Elvis and "Rock'n Roll" would not have taken hold.SUPERSTUDS 00:28, April 20, 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm. Good points, normally the focus is on the technological differences. Fraid I don't really have an answer, I'll have to think about it... Agent c 23:02, April 20, 2011 (UTC)

I think what's different is that, in the Fallout universe, technology developed at a faster rate than it did in our universe. Therefore, people were more afraid of the communists and put more trust into the government rather than against it, so the hippie era wouldn't have been as successful as it was in the real world. So most of the values that were prominent in the 1950s carried through unchanged. At least that's my theory of why everything remained in it's 50s era state. Without knowing exactly what went on during the Fallout 1960s, we can't tell for sure why things were they way they were. Thedarkscythe 01:01, April 21, 2011 (UTC)

technology did not develop faster. if anything it had developed more slowly. 1:they had no color television. 2:our technology is coming close to surpassing many prewar fallout tech. the only thing the did that is significantly more than ours is their AI, which humanity is close to creating. our circuitry is more advanced, robotics approaching prewar levels pleasure. Our weapons technology is approaching it. DARPA is testing the XM25 assault rifle, Each bullet has a targeting computer and a rangefinder based on the earth's magnetic field. Graphene paper is 10 times stronger than steel,20% as heavy and dense. Our tech is on the verge of Besting all prewar fallout tech. Our technology in 2011 is on the verge of fallouts in 2077. Besides, for all we know the government could have just been in a state of paranoia since around 2060ish. the Americans had a plague, a war, and a nuclear terrorist attack in an allied nation. these Could have culminated into a third red scare. this would be the cause of a 1950's-ish national frame of mind.SUPERSTUDS 23:02, April 25, 2011 (UTC) The pre-war government has been described as less-democratic than the government that we know today. My guess is that McCarthyism became more entrenched in the culture with the creation of the 13 common wealths, with so much much concentrated political power it's doubtful your going to see much opposition to McCarthyism. The 13 common-wealth system is described as being developed to help the american political system combat against the dangers of communism, the structure of the pre-war political system itself is McCarthyist, the pre-war system of US government defines reactionary.

From the cultural side of things it's doubtful that the counterculture would have ever emerged for several reasons.

1.The American press never liberalized like it did in the 1950s. The side effects of this would be that many influential beat writers who predated the 60s counter-culture and became great heros of the counter culture were never published. Writers like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac,Timothy Leary,Paul Goodman,Daniel Ellsberg,Rachel Carson and Noam Chomsky were never published. Without the political, spiritual,and cultural ideas these writers gave to the counterculture, it's doubtful whether the counter-culture would have materialized. Great court cases were decided in favor of many of these writers, it's doubtful any of these writers would have won in court in the prewar world (assuming they could even be published). Many other pre 1950s writers who gave the counter-culture inspiration but who were never associated with it would probably find their work go out of print or outright banned. Also many civil rights leaders were probably never published or given the chance to speak.

2. Rock n'Roll fizzled out and died. I believe fallout NV provides evidence that rock and roll existed but it does not provide any evidence that it ever evolved beyond the bubble-gum pop commercialistic rock of the 50s. Sure 50s rock was really 'out there' compared to the social standards of the fifties, but by the 1960s it was already a parody of itself. Fifties rock could really push the edge of what was socially acceptable at the time but most fifties rock stars weren't very political. My guess is that record labels rode the fifties-style rock train straight into the ground producing the same crap until no one wanted to hear it any more. Without the writing of the aforementioned writers it's probably doubtful that rock n' roll bands would ever find the fertile intellectual ground they needed to express the kind of freedom they believed in. For instance the beatles were really just a bubblegum pop-band before they got into drugs and got hip with the counterculture, their material gradually became more political and more counterculture. Imagine the doors or many other psychedelic 60s bands without the writings of Huxley or Leary.

3. Drugs became a huge political issue instantaneously.While the united states government was never very supportive of any drugs besides the ones that are huge industries (alcohol & tobacco) during the fifties and early sixties drug use began to slowly come in under the radar. The US government did not really get wise to the fact marijuana and lsd were beginning to permeate the culture until it was too late to really do anything about it. The genie was out of the bottle.Nixon started the 'War on Drugs' in the seventies for political purposes mainly to attack the counterculture and turn people who used it (who might turn into dirty communist activists)into criminals. Politicians like Reagan,Nixon, and McCarthy believed that marijuana and later lsd turned people into communists,homosexuals,pacifists, sex fiends and promoted all sorts ofundesirable behavior. Given the McCarthyist paranoia that is built into the prewar system from the outset, the issue of drugs and drug culture would have been addressed immediately and suppressed more severely than in our own world (which is hard to do).

I believe all three of these situations would have been enough to stop the 60s counterculture from emerging, and could have kept us culturally in the 1950s.

--Boredintheusa 00:39, June 5, 2011 (UTC)

I'd guess that 1964/1965 would be around the time that culture stopped progressing. If there was a counterculture in the Fallout universe (Which the presence of the term "hippie" seems to imply), it was most likely crushed (Perhaps violently) before it could make any real changes. I really wish one of the games would kind of shed light on the topic. --GaussRifle 21:16, June 7, 2011 (UTC)

I think there was an attept at a counter culture at some period, perhaps the whole time, but it obviously wasn't the cultural impact that happened in the 60s/70s. The random encounter in Fo3 with the Wastelanders and the eyebot does use the term 'hippie', and I can't think of a reason why the word would come to be in a different context. 3Dog and his parents are what you could call members of the counter culture minority, passing down stories of the Man and the pre-war gov't. When you read the happy-go-lucky-yay-USA newspaper clippings, it's just that. Like any ideas to the contrary are to be stamped out. If there wasn't an underground, or even a public movement, they wouldn't have to sound so supressive of such activities. Remember the terminal in PL medical tents? And do keep in mind that the viruses, wars, rationings, and annexings before the war did cause nation-wide riots and protests. Hippies are on protests like flies on brahmin dung. Big McLargeHuge 22:17, June 7, 2011 (UTC)

It's very possible that there's might have been an attempt at one for a long time, Big McLargeHuge because there have always been dissidents in american society who are left out of the mainstream. I believe that the counterculture probably happened in the 2060s and 2070s instead of the 1960s and 1970s because of all the 'hippie graffiti ' on the fairly advanced bunkers in hidden valley. It is possible that the counterculture happened in the sixties and suffered a tremendous backlash like GaussRifle suggested, the fallout world seems to have had an almost scary degree of cultural stability (perhaps maintained through violence? father Elijah when lecturing about prewar slave collars mentions that pre-war america had 'a compliance problem'). A lot of basic technologies in the fallout world don't look like they ever progressed past the 1950s, Camp McCarran for instance is full of old prewar planes that all appear to be powered by propellors, that kind of tech stagnation could keep things culturally stagnant. Imagine your a fisherman in third century BC the technology your using that hasn't progressed in probably a thousand years then chances are you know what to expect from life, revolutionary cultural changes are possible but usually only when traditional approaches have failed. It might have been when traditional approaches began to fail (prewar-industrial civ) and break down into all the famines and wars that people began to embrace a counterculture. A lot of the military tech in fallout seems to have been invented mid to late 21st century, I wonder if that's true of the other advanced tech in the fallout world.

It doesn't look like society ever got out of the manufacturing-industrial economy of the 1950s and fully embraced the consumer culture/service industry economy that we don't enjoy today. It seems like people had the start of a consumer culture with all kinds of the appliances, household products, fifties-style suburbs and automobiles, but it's still relatively small scale compared to our consumer culture. --Boredintheusa 00:09, June 8, 2011 (UTC)

Excellent topic & discussion. I do agree that counter culture appears to have come at a very late junction in the FO pre war universe. There are enough hints & clues that back this up. As mentioned earlier, graffiti on the exterior walls of the Hidden Valley bunker enterances in New Vegas are a good indication that there was an element of the hippie counter culture within the US prior to 2077. That is the most obvious hint yet there are more around in all the FO games.

The point regarding mid fifties rock being a fad in the FO universe is also rather telling. Elvis was a shock to mainstream America in 1955 but within a few years had won over the media and had become a cultural icon that lasted beyond the Great War. However it appears that rock music itself, the various forms of the jounre, didn't develop sufficiently to allow groups like the Beatles and Rolling Stones to have their impact on counter culture. The context here is that rock began in the US in the mid fifties but it was the British that absorbed it and re-introduced it back to the US in the mid 60's. So if the US was still deeply mistrustful of alternative ideas, being due to the MacCarthyist paranioa that had obviously triumphed as a mind set in the US, its logical to agrue that even ideas and new cultural memes from a respected ally such as the UK is agood agrument as to why rock & the counter culture may have never flourished as it did in our reality.

However the problem is that we simply do not have enough "lore" of the Pre War era to truly say whether or not a counter culture formed in the 2060's period. I am hopeful that Chris Avilione will one day expand the Fallout Bible to include more detail of the pre war world as well as a more deatiled look at history between 2077 and FO1, specifically looking at other nations globally and their struggles in the post apocalyptic world. 124.169.229.35 00:48, June 8, 2011 (UTC)

Who knows whether rock and roll took off in england or if the English government allowed it, (it's possible they had their own red scare) it's also possible that rock did evolve during that time period it might have been pushed underground. Who knows what happened, we do know how ever that the fallout world failed to follow down the path our society went down for many reasons unknown. The cultural stagnation that America suffered must have definitely effected the rest of the world as there plenty evidence in the fallout world that America in the fallout world was a powerful world empire (though with communist rivals) much like America after 1945. One thing that I think that is responsible for the cultural homogeny and technological stagnation (in many places) is that the fallout world followed down a much different technological path than we did. They appear to have invested heavily in nuclear technology, biomedical technology, vacuum tube technology and rocket technology. it's very possible that the fallout world invested so much of it's money into developing these technologies that they didn't develop other technologies along the way (commercial jet aircraft for instance). In our world both sides of the cold war spent 7 trillion dollars building and maintaining nuclear arsenals. How much money and resources did the fallout world spend developing nuclear cars,trucks,trains, fission batteries, nuclear power vertibirds,micro-fusion cells, and nuclear powered power armor? How much money would you have to spend to create something like a stimpack (if it's possible) and make it widely available? We're at the highest technological level our world has ever known and 2 billion people still practice subsistence agriculture (not that that's necessarily bad). it's very possible people just didn't feel to change a lot of their tech or a lot of the cool stuff never made it to market.

I would be extremely interested to learn about the fallout counterculture and how it played out in the end, there has to be some really interesting caveats to a retrofuturistic counterculture :) --Boredintheusa 05:30, June 8, 2011 (UTC)

the counter culture was obviously stifled in some way. i think that it didnt end but instead was underground and never gained mainstream support. it could have stayed as an underground movement until the great war. i imagine they would protest the resource wars. whoever wrote about the technology being stagnant in other periods of time has a good point, it doesnt advance and your culture cant without it. certain tech advance faster and certain ones didnt advance at all. its pretty crazy that something small like how ppl reacted to communism and the govt completely changed everything. i suppose since the 60's never got going that none of the 80's got to happen- it would be amusing to see their take on that period too. JimmyDreznaut017