Forum:Will Civilization and the World build back to the old days and be back to normal again?

I mean, 200 years after, raiding gangs, tribal warfare, rebellions, radiation still around, will the Fallout World ever reach pre-War standards, Society, and World again? Trolly Polly Olly 19:27, June 11, 2011 (UTC)

I doubt it, I don't think it will ever be like it was. The main force behind the industrial revolution was fossil fuels, the pre-war world seems to have went to war over resources that were rapidly depleting. Oil and Uranium were mentioned as being the driving forces behind the pre-war resource wars, oil in particular was running out with the last known source of accessible pre-war oil being destroyed with the destruction of the oil rig. This isn't really cannon but it's not a big stretch to assume that by 2077 all of the other fossil fuels like coal and natural gas  would have been on the verge of complete depletion as well. The fallout world seems to be a largely post-fossil fuel world, if there were large supplies of other fossil fuels we would already see people using them en masse, even if there are large supplies somewhere I doubt there's enough to power a full scale build up to prewar standards (which could possibly take a century.)

In the post-war world you can't just drill a well or dig a uranium mine to get your energy and even if you can there won't be enough to rebuild pre-war society. I think if something like prewar modern life returns in the fallout world it will be because of renewable pre-war technologies like Hoover dam, Helios 1 and the Nevada wind farm. These renewable technologies could be used in the NCR or the mojave wasteland to make new renewable tech that could be sold across the wasteland. Even if these technologies cause the rise of a new golden age and power a new type of civilization, it's going to be much different from the old world that sustained itself through the consumption of non-renewable resources.

Civilization in the fallout world sustains itself by salvaging pre-war tech, it's really a salvage society. Pre-war tech brings great benefits (and downsides) to the people who use them, but there's only so much pre-war tech that can be successfully discovered and salvage. Pre-war tech is like the oil of the fallout world, it contains energy that the people of the post-war didn't help create and the energy expended to make old tech work is comparatively little compared to the benefits you receive. But there are really only so many times you can discover Helios 1 or Hoover dam (which is like the saudi arabia of prewar tech) and with so many people and business making a living discovering and salvaging pre-war tech it's not very difficult to imagine a wasteland where most of the valuable and useful prewar tech has already been discovered and salvaged. The people of Novac for instance are well-aware of the fact that one day the REPCONN facility that they scavenge will run dry of valuable tech to trade and the town will have to be abandoned. There is a very small group of people in the wasteland who have realized that living off the spoils of the old world is unsustainable and that to try to build the new world in the image of the old one is flawed. Ashur, Caesar, and Moira Brown have all come to this conclusion and they all have taken different approaches to try to answer the question of 'what's next?'

Anyway that's my two cents. TL;DR No. --Boredintheusa 22:17, June 11, 2011 (UTC)

I believe it will take between 1,500 to 2,000 years before you'll see a civilization like that of the old world but this world will have to run on renewable energy because the Old World used every last bit of it and new fossil fuels wont come around 2 to 6 million years once all the swamps become either oil, coal, or natural gas. I believe right now in the Fallout world it is the Bronze Age of technology due to all the salvaging of pre-war equipment, this bronze age will be followed by a dark ages or middle ages similar to that of the Dark ages we learn in ancient history where there will be no advancements in technology because alot people are just reusing old war technologies which will eventually decay and be fully useless and now people have to make there own technologies but people will be slow to advance. Then following this the world will see and Enlightenment and technologies will flourish again and by this time almost all radiation has disappeared and the children growing up during this time will learn about the Bronze and Dark ages as nothing more than just a History lesson and the proud and powerful factions we know like NCR, The Brotherhood of Steel, and Caerar's Legion will be nothing more but words in a text book in a GREEN civilization--Zachattak471 17:13, June 12, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah I agree. It does make me wonder how long all that prewar tech is going to last, my guess is stuff like fusion batteries will be the first techs to become scare. It seems like life is getting better, many mojave wastelanders are able to meet most of their basic needs(food,water) without salvaging it. Groups like the followers of the apocalypse have found innovative ways to synthesize prewar medicines, that's definately a big deal for the wasteland. Compared to the capital wasteland, the people of the mojave wasteland live in a world of unheard of abundance.

I'm not sure whether the wasteland is heading for a new dark-age or a new renissance, but things seem to be going pretty well right now. --Boredintheusa 20:26, June 12, 2011 (UTC)

Interesting topic.

In the 200 odd years since the great war, we have seen the NCR rise to what could be likened to mid 19th century US tech level. Manufacturing is no where near the level it was prior to 2077 however the NCR is a reasonably cohesive society, able to form and field a large standing army and use that army to expand its territory. This is pretty much what the US did in the 19th century, except in the Fallout world, its the West Coast heading east to achieve its "manifest destiny". There appears to be enough salvagable tech and knowledge still laying around to enable power generation and computers to run. The Followers of the Apocalypse seem to be on the ball with preserving old world knowledge and sharing those skills with tribes who are struggling to get back to some level of civilisation. The BoS have ignored their chance to make their mark by sticking to their isolastionist policy and the Enclave just hid in their bunkers far too long to make any real impact. Micro fusion and the other tech miracles where all just coming into wide spread usage as the great war finally hit which leads me to think that the Great war itself was deliberately started to make sure that these revolutionary technologies would not become available to all as they threatened many vested interests. The molecular machines that you find in the Siera Madre are a priome example of a technology that essentially ends the need for industry and supply. This means the end of capitalism as well. Why would you need to work to make something when a machine could provide for you in an instant? Its very star trek too, a cashless society. Replicators make everything from food to weapons to clothing at the press of a button. If you owned a company that made clothes, these machines would put you out of business overnight. Anyway, in the timespan since the war, there hasn't been a whole lot of progress. I see it as akin to the fall of the Roman empire. It took nigh on a 1000 years for Europeans to relearn many of the things the romans had used for over 700 years. It might be a little faster in the Fallout world but considering the need for such high levels of infrastructure to manufacture mirco-fusion cells, plus massive solar arrays like Helios 1, I suspect that much of the world would remain get to mid 19th century level of tech and stay there. Firearms and such are not too hard to make, gunpowder is fairly easy to manufacture once you know the basic chemistry and can get a reasonablely consistent supply of nitrate. Energy weapons power cells can be recharged to a certain extent but the won't last forvever. The best bet it appears to restore pre war civilisation is Mr.House as he has a plan and the means to get the job done. Once he has control over the Hoover Dam, he has all the power he requires. The Securitrons are his unwavering army that provide the necessary stability required to enable New Vegas to become a centre of development and manufacturing. There is probably enough salvage in and around the Mojave to get some light industry going in a fairly short space of time. There appears to be a functional steel mill nearby as well so that helps a hell of a lot. The gun runners can provide the munitions required to maintain the ammunitions stocks of the securitrons. All Mr.House needs is a small human task force to make sure everything runs smoothly. Food shouldn't be too much of an issue either. There is more than enough fresh water near NV plus the data collected from Vault 22, if Mr.House analysed it, could be used to help green the desert. There is also probably enough salvage at the repcon factory to get a couple of rocket ships working again thus low level orbit flights may be on the agenda? Helios 1 is also dam handy as a doomsday weapon and power source so that would be a major asset to secure.

In all, 50 years is what House calculated to have humanity back ino the stars. I'm backing the House on this as the house always wins.

Captain Taipan 07:39, June 15, 2011 (UTC)

You do have a point, so maybe it wont take 1000 years maybe 500 or even 250 which is getting pretty close to Mr. House's calculations. One of the big reasons why we had the Middle or Dark Ages was due to religion halting scientific pursuits and looking at this world (Fallout world) very few people are humugously religious or even just a little religious. So maybe it'll be quicker for society to get back to an almost and it will always be a almost Old World society, you cant forget to include the new races to the humans, the super mutants and the ghouls. The world physically and biologically has changed too. Radiation will most likely be there for another 1,500 to 3,000 years but oh well, the people seem to have still made a life around it and by that time we'll probably be immune to it in some form.--Zachattak471 18:15, June 15, 2011 (UTC)


 * Your point regarding religion holding back progress has some merrit but it wasn't the defining factor that led to the dark ages in western Europe. By the mid 4th century, much of the western roman empire was in decline. Their economy was falling apart but worse, their army which had been the backbone of the empire, was now mostly made up of barbarian mercanaries who lacked the civic skills the early legionaries had. These men were not used to building roads,aquaducts forts etc and thus much of those engineering skills were lost. This occured to a lesser extent in the Eastern empire back nop where near as dramatic as the western half of the empire. Als a serious lack of cohesive and stable and continuous governance was another major factor in the wests decline from 361AD onwards. Constant civil wars and external pressures from migrating barbarian tribes over the period of 90 odd years were enough to cause the collaspe of true imperial government in the west. Once government has gone, being replaced with tribalism, the west sank back into a dark period of savagery. The eastern empire though carried on reasonably successfully for another 1000 years, despite the similar pressures the west faced.


 * Now compare that to the Fallout world and you can begin to see why the NCR have been so succesful up till 2281. They do offer cohesive governance and with the FotA help, have managed to resurrect much of the pre war technologies and skills. This has enabled them to get most of California under their control. They obviously are using radio as a means of communication and have a reasonably sophistacated command, control & communication infrastructure with their army. Sure they are still reliant on pack train caravans hauling supplies as it appears that no one has been able to get any vehicles working again [well apart from the odd captured vertibird]. So for the most part, they are in some ways more spohisticated than the US was in 1861 in regards to their reclaimed knowledge and skills but are still stuck mostly at that tech level as they are pretty much stuck on using animal power to haul goods, plough fields etc.


 * California has an immense problem in that as far as I'm aware, they have no significant deposists of iron or coal. This is where the Capital Wasteland BoS have their chance to shine if they get their act together and go back to The Pitt and take it over. In the hills nearby Pittsburgh there are reserves of coal that I am positive could not have been completely mined out by 2077. Along with iron ore and salvagable metal that is just laying around, the CWBoS are in a unique position to get steam power up and running again and this means railways and the telegraph. I've always thought that after Broken Steel, the CWBoS are the best positioned faction to really have a chance of establishing a working society. They've solved the water problem. If they work with Harold and those hippie tree lovers in Oasis they can help regreen the wasteland but most importantly, they could retake The Pitt and use it to reindustrialise. Owen Lyons knows that working with other sectors of the wastelands is the only true way of saving humanity. The outcasts are still stuck in their adherence to BoS dogma and will become irrelevent, most likely turning into well armed tech raiders. If I was Own, I'd offer them a choice, join up again with the CWBoS or die. The CWBoS have vertibirds and a massive haul of loot gained from Adam AFB via Broken Steel. just because the mobile crawler got hit, the rest of the base was left untouched and no doubt [and visually from the huge numbers of crates and containers] has a lot of surplus supplies left there by the Enclave. The CWBoS, along with the Lone Wanderer have all the advatages and although they may take a bit longer, I think that by 2331AD, they'd have a working society with steam powered rail IF they take out the outcasts and take over the Pitt.

Captain Taipan 00:09, June 16, 2011 (UTC)

Again it's not cannon, but my suspicion is that there isn't very much coal left that's economically recoverable, I once saw a resource (based on the hubbert bell curve) chart that showed that all fossil fuels would be on their way to complete depletion by the 2070s. In the real world we could be seeing peak coal by 2011-2012, I don't really believe any of that bs about  200 years of coal being left in the us, coal companies/the us gov lie all the time about how much recoverable coal is actually left.I could refer you to a study on that if your interested in seeing it. Real world examples admitted or not i seriously doubt there is much in the way of significant recoverable coal reserves left in the wasteland.

The Pitt might have it's own limits on how much steel it can actually produce. It seems like the technology is in amazingly good condition but what about the resources that are used to produce steel? Only birmingham alabama has limestone,iron ore, and coal (the resources used to make coal) within 30 km of each other and we don't know much about the condition of birmingham or it's resources  in the fallout world, indeed the southeast US in general seems to be fairly absent from the fallout cannon. There isn't much in the way of vehicles to import the necessary materials into the pitt, that right there could put a serious limit on how much steel the pitt is actually able to produce. I think it would be a lot better to salvage a diesel-electric train (which get an impressive 1 mile per gallon;on a per ton basis it has been calculated as getting 400 mpg!) and run it on hemp oil or any other kind of vegetable oil rather than to go back to steam-powered trains that most likely have to build from scratch. The pitt could certainly be more productive if they could get a railroad running from the mines and the CWBOS would certainly be more powerful with a working railway system. If the leaders of the Pitt want to keep the steel mills open longer it would be beneficial for them to replace coal as a fuel source and use it mainly for it's use as a chemical input in making steel. Perhaps the CWBOS could help with that.

Also I have serious doubts about whether Mr.House will actually be able to fulfill his prediction of bringing humanity to the stars in 200 years, Mr.House certainly has a knack for technology but he is also inculcated with the same old world belief systems/attitudes that turned the world into a shit hole, he just predicted the obvious( a nuclear war) and prepared. He also vastly underestimates the abilities of wastelanders and has an almost suicidal confidence in his own abilities. He's also not particularly impressive when you consider even with all his planning and all the power/perspective his securitrons give him he's only a minor player in mojave affairs and in 2281 he's only a tip of the power balance away from becoming an obsolete prewar relic (and he knows it). Mr.House's only plan is to restore the infinite growth economic paradigm which will magically lead us into space, based on predictions of the future that he never actually backs up. He just wants to restore the cancerous culture that ruined the world and consumed it's finite resources in the first place...only without the democracy! What a winner this guy plans to take his cancerous system to outer-space where it can ruin other planets too! Also I suspect his dictatorial style of industrial capitalism is probably a lot closer to how old world america actually worked than  he's willing to admit. My personal dislike for house aside, i doubt he will develop the technological base to create a spaceship that travels near or at light speed. Imagine the kind of manufacturing base and infrastructure you would need to build that kind of ship, all the components for the shielding,computers,life support systems and engines. You would also need to be able to harness a massive amount of energy to push a spaceship to light-speed, obviously the old world didn't figure out how to harness that kind of energy abundance or they wouldn't have went to war over uranium and fossil fuels. Infrastructure in the wasteland is severely diminished and industrial capacity is often non-existant in many regions, I just don't think House has what it takes to make this actually happen, i also feel like he's underestimated the scale of the task.

As far as the Sierra Madre goes it's got great potential but it's not the solution to all the wastelands problems and as of this moment it's not exactly accessible to the wasteland due to the isolated location, vicious enemies, and the giant poison cloud. There are several reasons why I feel like the sierra madres has limits to what it can do in spite of it's fabulous potential. First there's the scale problem, it can't pave the wastelands roads, it can't make new commercial ships, it can't make cars/trucks, and it's not exactly ideal for fixing big crumbling power grids. Not to say the sierra madre can't be programmed to do these things or it couldn't possibly make them piece by piece, but it can't really do these things en mass. What it seems to be good at is taking raw materials and a large amount of energy and using it to create small quantities of food, medicine,ammo and consumer goods.You could easily turn the Sierra madre into a food//medicine/clothes/ammo factory and use it to flood the mojave with these items but seeing how there's only one sierra madre and many low-tech ways to make stimpacks,food,clothes and ammo it might not be the best use of the sierra madre's capabilities. There's also a limited amount of sierra chips in existence and to counterfeit them you need a good supply of old world fission batteries which will eventually run out and scrap metal. The machines are probably extremely complicated and state of the art at the time of their construction, my guess is that replacement parts are scarce so when they break down they break down forever. You also need a special call order to produce the things you want, my guess is that Sinclair didn't have call orders for replacement parts for his machines, he probably figured they would outlast his life and Vera's and there was no need to bother with it. He probably didn't have call orders in his machines for a bunch of different stuff and making new call orders probably requires new molecular maps of what you want to make. Let's compare them with another type of molecular replication machine: Plants. Plants are a molecular replication machines that repair themselves, need relatively little human interference, and can produce large amounts of stuff slowly for a small amount of energy.No fission batteries necessary. You can't plant one and get .357 rounds but they have low energy costs and their low-tech.

I'm not sure why you would want to waste all that water trying to green up the desert, that's the Mojave's natural state if you do that you're doing it at the cost of the mojave's native ecosystem. The mojave doesn't need any more water to support it's ecosystem, and it's really ecocide/a massive waste of water to flood the mojave with water and invasive alien species who will most likely fail in the long run. That water is also needed for farming not correcting nature's "mistakes" plus a healthy mojave ecosystem is a great plus for farmers. Sorry if this post comes in a little long, but I stand by my assumption that renewable technology is much better suited for life in the wasteland, and ultimately the path that new world civs will take. --Boredintheusa 04:38, June 16, 2011 (UTC)

No need to appologise for the lengthy post, in fact I enjoyed reading it.

You make for some compelling arguments regarding a number of points. Firstly coal. I absolutely agree with you that there is scant information in the canon regarding coal. We do know that oil has all but run out with the Enclaves rig being the last viable drilling platform. However no info on coal. I don't know what the state of coal reserves are in the US but I do know for a fact that there is millions of tons of the stuff in Australia and the UK. I would hazzard a guess that coal became a disused fuel source as its only really used to generate power via steam based turbines. With the reliance on nuclear power, perhaps coal fired power stations where dismantled as nuclear ones took over? The other use for coal is the steel industry, being used in foundries for making coke etc. I'd assuming here that coal was still being used for this purpose as there isn't much of an alternative that's widely avaiable at the moment. I'm also assuming that the writers of Fallout didn't think too harc about the other mineral resources that may have been depleted and led to the series of wars culminating in the great war of 2077. We don't know how much uranium 235 is left by 2281 either? Since that would be necessary to get fusion ppower up and running again on a large scale, if there is no more left then humanity is in deep doo doo.

You made an excellent point regarding hemp oil to power diesel trains. Assuming that hemp has survived the wasteland, and I think it would as its a dam hardy plant, then cultivating hemp for fibre and oil would be the best solution. Going back to steam powered via coal would be a step backwards indeed and not necessary if yopu can grow and harvest & process enough hemp.

I agree that we don't have enough information on Mr Houses plans at returning to pre war levels of sophistication. All we know is that he controls a vast army of Securitrons and has a massive mainframe buried under the Lucky 38. I think he may be overly amibitious or perhaps a little over optimistic with his predictions on who quickly things will happen if he wins. However he is a genius, albeit a very self centred and arrogant one. I also agree that his despotic need for absolute control is quite disturbing however given the alternatives of incompetence and corruption with the NCR or savagery & chaos with the Legion, I think House is the lesser of all the evils available. The NCR will just make the same mistakes as the previous US government and they too are modelling themselves on the limitless growth economic paradigm which, you & I can agree, is doomed to failure. I think Cass says it quite well in her fianl end slide if House wins, "we're going full speed ahead, looking backwards all the way". He will go back to the exploitative capitalist model and use that to drag humanity back out of savagery. Maybe his motto should be, "Capitalism, Capitalism never changes!" He knows no other way or is incapable of envisaging a different method of making the world a better place.

The Sierra Madre's replicator technology is indeed very limited but it has the potential to be reversed engineered, studied and perhaps improved upon at a later point. Father Elijah realised the immense potential those machines represented and that's why he sought so desperately to unlock the secrets of the place. I think we'll get some more canon info when Old World Blues comes out as its set in a massive research facility with still living members of the scientists, albeit just their brains as Think Tanks, who might let us know more about the pre war world. We have no idea as to what other technical marvels were on the cusp of introduction before the great war although we do get some broad hints that there were some pretty amazing breakthroughs. Getting back on track though, if basic raw materials are needed to produce the good via the replicator system, then a sizable chunk of need would be eliminated from society. Yes snack foods, clothing etc are all better produced naturally but being able to get unlimited ammunition say or medicines without having to build complicated factories that produce these goods etc would be a massive leap forward for post apocalyptia.

My point on the water was more for the capital waste land but also for the Mojave. Since most of the water isn't being drained from thr Colorado river for human consumption in 2281, then enough could be diverted to give agriculture a kick start. What would be a better idea though would be to have a closed water system in which sewage water is used to irrigate crops thus lessening the pressure on the river. That would also help with the fact that farmers in 2281 would have no access to super phosphate [NPK] as we can be pretty certain that resource would have run out before 2077. I read recently that roughly by 2050, there will be hardly any minable NPK left at all in the world which is a disturbing idea since modern agriculture needs that and cheap oil to produce massive food surpluses. Once those too elements are removed then you can be assured that food prouction will decline massively and there will be shortagaes, if not outright starvation globally. And that's about the right time for the first set of Fallout's resource wars as well.

Humanity would crawl back to some level of civilasation, perhaps faster under House but definately not as free nor sustainable. Under the NCR it would stagger along and I really have no idea how things would go under YesMan. The legion winning is basically ushering in a new dark age, not good at all. As I've said before, I strongly suspect that House left something behind in his mainframe, a sleeper program. He had the brain pattern of his favourite girl Jane scan, why not his own as well in case his body died? In any event, YesMan is probably the most ethical victory but I'm dam sure that House will reach out from beyond the grave and manipulate things as he's always done. Captain Taipan 07:34, June 16, 2011 (UTC)

You could be right nuclear power might have overtook king coal as a source of electricity in the industrialized world, that might also explain why uranium was one of the big objects of the resource wars. It's possible there's a lot of coal left in prewar america but it's also possible a lot of it was exported to make a quick buck. It's possible that we did the later and when the uranium started running out we found ourselves in a bind, so we had to secure all the sources of oil and uranium left. It's possible that in 2077 that there wasn't enough coal left in prewar america to help keep the lights on, but just enough to help power smaller post-apocalptic societies for a good while. It's possible that new empires known as "coal kingdoms" might pop up in places like North Dakota, Illinois, the appalachia, and Pennsylvania. Such societies might use scavanged Pre-war mining equipment to mine coal out of ancient pre-war mines that still have a sizeable amount of coal left for a post-apocalyptic society but were on the edge of being "coaled out" in the pre-war era. It's possible we could see some return to industrialization in these societies. These mines could still be productive but their most likely past peak, so these societies actually would have a fairly short amount of time to figure out what comes next after the coal runs out. The mines wouldn't necessarily have to "run dry" either if aging pre-war mining equipment starts to fall apart that could mean the end of an important mine or coal producing region. There is the motivation there to use the coal to find another fuel source, but if they fail they could wind up starving in a toxic coaled out radioactive wasteland which is like a double whammy. Again just speculation though :) none of it's cannon.

Uranium is still kind of an unknown, we know that it was either becoming scarce or that the us gov decided that the resource was to important not to have complete control. It's very possible that uranium 235 was past peak by 2077, it could have been on the edge of depletion or beginning it's way to a drastic decline we really don't know. But we do know that nuclear energy was ubiquitous in american society, the post-apocalyptic world is riddled with fission batteries, nuclear cars/trucks,nuclear military aircraft (maybe nuke passenger planes? it's possible the propellor planes at Fort McCarran are nuclear), and even nuclear soda. We do know that controlled miniaturized fusion was acheived because of microfusion cells and i believe fusion is used to power power armor, but were not sure what it's capabilities are. There's a lot of nuclear powered junk still left in the wasteland but no body knows how long that tech and their power sources will last.

I really hope hemp (and marijuana too!) are still left in the wasteland, those plants have so many different uses it's unreal and we might even see a different kind of industrial revolution centered around the hemp plant and all it's different uses. Popular mechanics called hemp "the new billion dollar crop" in 1942, hemp was largely made illegal because it competed with the plastics industries,textile industries,paper industries, and lumber industries.Some people today have called it the new trillion dollar crop. Without the corrupt,belligerent, and idiotic prewar government around hemp could definitely catch on in the wasteland. It should have survived war, Corn survived and it's temperamental and can barely survive without human help, hemp on the other hand is rugged and can be found growing in the wild.

lulz at the capitalism comment that made my day. Yeah Mr.House definitely had a special kind of brilliance but he's one of those people that has a narrow savant like genius in his chosen fields which are business and technology. Cass probably put it better then anyone with that quote- he's in desperate need of a worldview update, he's kinda like an old army general who rambles on about the soviets and communism even though it's 2010. When I play missions for Mr.House I get the feeling that he's only interested in regional politics because it affects business on the strip and his technological ambitions, it seems like he doesn't offer any real political solution to the mojave that's well thought out. His political views seem to be "Come to the strip, spend your money." it's a pity you have to kill house if you don't work for him, he does have some real knowledge in the technological realm. I think House unknowingly offers the best critiscm of himself when he states that "The NCR and the legion are really retreading old ground, they don't offer a real future for mankind." he seems to be unaware that the role of  dictatorial billionaire industrialist who seeks to use his political influence to create a technocratic capitalist society is already throughly treaded ground. You're right he could have other ways of coming back.

Your critiscm of the NCR is spot on. They're merely taking the long way around towards House's planet killing infinite growth economic paradigm, the NCR whether they know it or not is addicted to infinite growth. Their moving into Oregon, the mojave, Baja california and they even send rangers as far out as southern utah to protect their trade routes. Their merely in the frontier/imperialism stage right now when that hits a wall (and it always does) they will probably end up making the same mistakes the old world made to feed their growth addiction. Their democracy is not completely corrupt/evil yet, but you can see the beginning of vast economic empires and private tyrannies (such as the powerful brahmin ranchers) that will corrupt their republic to the point that it's completely broken. It's very likely that the NCR might end up remaking the same mistakes that destroyed the planet if their not careful.Caesar sees this as well and believes he is retreading the same ground as his namesake julius caesar. Julius Caesar much like the the legion's caesar, built his career destroying the tribes of Gaul who were actually richer and more advanced than rome at the time, than he turned around acted like he was 'helping' them out and 'civilizing' those 'primitive' tribes. Much like Edward Sallow, Julius Caesar told a lot of complete lies about himself,the roman campaign in Gaul, Rome's actual wealth and power, and the reality of the Gaulic tribes themselves. Just like the real Caesar, Caesar seeks to destroy the culture of the tribes he conquers viewing it as primitive and beneath his own culture, he assimilates close-knit tribes with unfeeling brutality.I believe when the legion falls apart many of it's members will begin to renew their tribal cultures and connection that lay deep beneath the surface. I also believe that the NCR will engage in military campaigns of conquest and assimilation against these tribals that is just as brutal as what they suffered under caesar (think us-indian wars).The justification will probably be that hostile tribes like the 80s have to be destroyed to defend the NCR, the real motivation will be grabbing up tribal lands for wealthy brahmin barons.Passive tribes like the dead horses and the sorrows will probably be destroyed by the NCR in order to carve up the west.

You bring up a good point about using sewage for farming. As disgusting as it sounds for us, fertilizing plants with human and animal feces has been going on for thousands of years. It turns out that nature is actually fantastically good at waste management, there are new designs for "living machines" that purify sewage water by feeding it through pipes to plants,worms, and soil. Vegas definitely has the pipes, the water, and the sewage to make that kind of thing happen.It would be a fantastic way to grow nutrient hungry grains like corn. I've heard about the phosphorus problem as well it could definitely lead to starvation and the end of industrial farming. I still have hope though, industrial farming is good at growing cheap massive ecologically destructive mono-crops,it turns out that traditional methods of farming can be up to 4x more productive an acre through proper ecological practices than industrial farming. Only thirty percent of the worlds food is grown through industrial farming, I'm not going to downplay the danger though, if we don't do things right there could be a lot of starvation. --Boredintheusa 01:49, June 17, 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad you liked the capitalism quote ;) It just seemed so obvious to me and appropriate for Mr.House and his pathological drive to gain control. I have alos thought back to what House tells the Courier in their conversations. He said that by 2065, he'd calculated that global total nuclear war was inevitable but states quite clearly that he was not interested in trying to avert it or save humanity, just save Vegas. He was quite prepared to let billions perish in atomic fire just so he could have his chance at being the last capitalist standing. To be honest, I think that knowing something like a war that will almost drive life to extinction on the planet is coming and then doing nothing to prevent it it just as bad as being the one to instigate such a war. There is no moral defense for inaction. So after careful reconsideration, I think House deserves to die even though he may be humanity's best hope at rebuilding. Some things come at too great a price and letting him live, especially after he's pretty much culpable in letting the great war happen, is a step too far. As an aside, this is what I love about FO, it poses quite significant ethical and moral choices on the player if you think enough about them.

Getting back to the NCR, I see their march eastwards as a repeat of the US governments march west in the mid 19th century. That period, interupted by a civil war, saw most of the native tribes driven off their lands and many massacred simply because it was easier to butcher the natives than actually negotiate in good faith with them. This is the hallmark of most emerging imperial powers when confronted with lesser developed peoples who happen to be on land the imperials want. The US government & NCR are cut from the same cloth and the NCR is going to make the same mistakes as its ancestor did back in the 19th century. This is probably why letting YesMan win is for the best. It gives the NCR a real bloody nose and stops their imperial march eastwards cold. It also ends the careers ok Kimball & Gen.Oliver, two men who I'd say aren't worthy of the responsibility they've been entrusted with.

Caeser [Ed Sallow] is no better either. He used his knowledge to form a monsterous chimera and called it Legion by utilising & employing some of the most brutal methods of total warfare to reletively simple people. Caesers Legion is, in my view, almost pure evil. It is viscious, repressive, murderous and enslaving and does nothing to help humanity crawl back out of the abyss of post apocalyptia. He creates his own myths and belies them too which is a true sign of a sociopath. I actually think the Courier is doing the world a favour by killing him and the legion. Besides, its great fun to go in guns blazing into the Legion camp and take them all out in 5 minutes. Another aside: its too easy actually to do that. You should be over run by constantly spawning legionairies and it should be impossible to pretty much single handedly take out the Legion camp unless you have plenty of mini nukes with you.

Back to King Coal. Are you familiar with the book series "The Amtrack Wars"? It's a scifi post apocalytic set of novels set in the US in the 28th century. The reason I mention it is that in the book, a society sets itself up around the great lakes and uses the coal & iron deposists there to reistablish a new industrial revolution.

I think that due to the massive amounts of nuclear powered devices we see in Fallout, its quite likely that coal was disused for power generation. Despite the probability of U-235 running low or even out by 2077, it'd take years to get coal back into production again and years to rebuild coal fired power stations to replace the failing nuclear ones. Also, we know that in New Vegas there is still enough industrial scale working mining equipment as evidnced at the Sloan quarry which is being used to mine limestone for the production of concrete. So it appears that enough pre war equipment is still able to be fixed up and maintained to facilitate mining. And even if the massive machines don't work, simple pickaxes, crow bars and human muscle did the trick back till the end of the 19th century. Coal is a reletively easy mineral to mine and thus doesn't require modern machinary, although that does help in the amount of coal you can extract from your mine. Open cut coal mines are the best as shaft mines are dangerous beasts with cave ins and explosions the constant hazzard. I think that there is enough evidence in the FO iniverse to assume that there is enough coal still available as The Pitt is running quite well and although not specifically stated in the game, you can infer that The Pitt is getting its resources [coal & iron] from the old mines nearby in Pennsylvania. So as you pointed out, there is the potential for other such communities to be up & running in 2281 that are akin to The Pitt.

I hear you on the Hemp side of things ;) It'd be a sad post apocalyptia is the old weed is no longer around. I agree that its one of the best hopes for sustainable agriculture for fibre and oil and this goes as well for the FO universe. The problem here though is I seriously doubt that either Bethesda or Obsidian would dare take that line due to the illogical stand by the US government with its ban on hemp. Be that as it may, its still the easiest plant to cultivate on a large scale and is easy to harvest by hand. Also, depending wheer you are climatically speaking, its possible to get 2 crops a year if the weather is warm enough. Southern regions of the US are good areas to grow large amounts of hemp instead of cotton.

One group of people I think the the FO writers should be looking at are the Ammish. Their rural communities would be well placed to survive the initial war in 2077 and of course they have all the necessary skills to maintain their own communities after the collapse of modern civilisation. Their only weakness is their pacifism. However I could see a deal being struck between Ammish and non Ammish survivors, in that the Ammish farm and grow the food while the non Ammish towns folk protect them from the sicko raider scum. The Ammish aren't just confined to Pennsylvannia either. As I understand it they have communites aross the mid west and northern states as well. So if anything, they represent another aspect of humanity's chances of builing a sustainable society after the war. If defended well enough, I'd suspect that their communities would be some of the more prosperous ones in 2281 than any other so far encountered. These guys know now how to metal work, woodwork, farm and craft far better than any others and are happy to remain at the 19th century level of tech. I don't share their religious beliefs but I do admire them for their tenacity at preserving these vital skills as such skills would be invaluble after a great war.

So we have then the possibility of other societies in post war America being around. They should be rare though and not easily found I think. We know, so far of the following: The NCR on the west coast, New Vegas just east of the NCR, Legion in Arizonia and New Mexico, the mid west BoS, the Commonwealth in the New England region, The Pitt in Pensylvannia and the Capital wasteland [greater DC area and some of Virginia] now under the control of the CWBoS. We also are told that there is, or was, an Enclave base in the Chicago region as evidenced by the playback from Ed-E's records as the guy from Adams AFB had sent Ed-E there and asked that they give any necessary repairs to the Eyebot and send it on towards Navarro. This is a good indication that the Enclave is not yet gone either as I suspected as well. So then there are plenty of growing socities across mainland US that are making the best attempts to get back to some level of civilisation. Captain Taipan 04:14, June 17, 2011 (UTC)

Good perspective on Mr.House personally I've never been able to get through his full storyline without killing him and I was only able to get through the legion storyline by killing Caesar on the operating table (high medicine skill rules!) that gave me quite a bit of satisfaction inside I was like "I killed your Caesar! And you don't even know!" even though Lanius is much worse than Caesar he has so much Badass Cool that I didn't even care till I saw all the bad stuff he did until the ending slides. Mr.House and Caesar were both such dicks and that really sucked because I always do a play through of the game with evil karma and they didn't make it fun at all. In fact I have to do everything in my power to keep from killing them with the anti-material rifle or the Oh Baby! in my NCR play-through I hated working for Colonel Moore that woman was bloodthirsty bitch who is really pushy and is always disappointed when you come back with a solution that doesn't require bloodshed. Side-note they made it too easy to be pro-NCR they have more missions than everybody else and their EVERYWHERE in the mojave. I sided with Yes Man during my first play-through because I believed an independent vegas would be in the end best for everyone in the mojave and because I believed all the unique cultures of the mojave should retain their independence free from the interference of Caesar or NCR. I kind of had a soft-spot for Anarchism and Emma Goldman anyway so the quest No Gods, No Masters really spoke to me. It's kind of amusing and scary at the same time to think about what Yes Man will do with his new "assertiveness program" but still I figured I've got an anti-material rifle, Rex and Boone and a bunch of friends with heavy artillery, a working B-29 bomber, and plenty of rocket launchers I think I could hold out against Yes Man just fine. I know I've gone on rants about the USGOV on this forum without really meaning to or really thinking that 'Hey this is a fallout forum people really don't wanna here this.' but you can apply the same logic you just applied to Mr.House to the USGOV. The USGOV like their fictional enclave counterparts decided at one point that nuclear war was unavoidable and that it was 'Ok' to for billions of people and millions of citizens to die so that capitalism could finally triumph over communism. There were many incidents where the USGOV almost provoked a nuclear war:Cuban missile crisis, they almost went to war over a russian boat off the coast of lebanon during the 67 israeli war, Nixon and Kissinger contemplated using nuclear bombs to win the vietnam war. If the bombs would have dropped whose to say they the USGOV would have acted differently than the Enclave did? It's definitely possible they would attempt to subjugate and annihilate new cultures struggling in post-apocalyptica

Back to coal. The coal situation that you describe in the Pre-war world is definitely possible, and I definitely can't rule it out, so it's possible that there's enough left for a full scale industrial revolution. My personal opinion is that they would be extracting from old mines that were still productive but already past peak... yeah the mining equipment still works, it's still useful and probably will be for some time unless they can't find replacement parts and I haven't heard of that book series but it sounds really good so I think I'll check it out. If I can speak from experience coal sucks and open pit extraction sucks (Strip-mining) more. There are whole regions of forests that have been strip-mined and discarded outside of birmingham, you can see nature slowly starting to take it back and fortunately the EPA has made the coal companies replant trees in the regions where they strip-mined in some places. Large slag pits are in abundant supply piled up in certain areas like small toxic mountains, back when jefferson county held the highest murder rate per county of any county it wasn't uncommon for dead bodies to never be found amongst the slag pits,dump trucks race along narrow country roads at dangerous speeds trying to deliver their coal to their destination in the shortest amount of time (the drivers get paid by the minuted; the faster their time the better their pay) spilling black coal along the roads and General Steel and Birmingham Coal still own most of the land along the Black Warrior. Now I don't live in birmingham, I live in a different part of alabama but my uncle does and from what I understand apart from what I've seen the coal companies are pretty reckless. There are some places that look like the wasteland to be honest (especially after the tornados) and there are many areas in and outside the city that look like a third-world country, the city hasn't really recovered from the shut-down of much of it's major industries.

Anyway what I'm trying to say about coal is that it's really a faustian bargain. To get it you have to poison the land,the air and the people in the us alone there are 40,000 deaths from coal related conditions in the us alone and it's a major cause of global warming. I don't expect that to be any different in the fallout world, mining it is still destructive and dangerous, burning it is even more so. Coal mines in West Virginia have poisoned local water supplies, bottled water is a huge industry there because people can't drink the water because the coal mines keep leaking into the water table and they've removed the mountaintops of local mountains with explosives spraying coal dust everywhere. Coal on one hand has the power to bring forth industrialization and the comforts it provides but on the other it also brings death and destruction. Any post-apocalyptic society that depends on coal to industrialize will suffer greatly because of it and if they don't make plans for what things will be like after coal it's likely that they'll end up worse off because of all the destruction and poisoning.

Also I'm glad you brought up cotton. Because Cotton sucks. Some regions grow a lot of cotton and it really irritates the eyes to look out and see a landscape of cotton, I'd much rather see tall rugged green hemp plants growing in the countryside. Back in the old south they would cut down large swaths of temperate forest to plant cotton and plant cotton and since cotton sucks up so much nutrients once it sucked all the nutrients in the soil they would abandon it and cut down a new swath of forest. Cotton uses up a lot of water too and if you buy a piece of property where there used to be a cotton field good luck growing a nice yard or garden on it! There's also a fair bit of amish in southern Tennessee, perhaps in a FO game based in the southeast (maybe in like new orleans) we might find that amish culture has spread throughout the southeast, although I don't really think we need any more religious fanatics down here  even in the post-apocalypse :P

One thing I would like to see more of is the tribal cultures I think the developers could really do a lot more with that,plus you have a fair amount of tribes that live off the land and I think that could represent a different type of future for mankind, there's a lot 'civilized' people could learn from tribals. I'm not one of those players who is in a big hurry to "re-civilize" the wasteland because civilization was part of what went wrong in the first place if were going to build new civilized societies it's time to do it right. Also a fair amount of land should probably be left for tribals to live and hunt in, humanity needs to keep it's options open in the post-apocalypse-tribal living is one of those options. Plus I have to agree with the plains indians on this one, digging in the ground to get food and staying in the same place most of your life kinda sucks. Civilization can be really overrated but it does have it's good points. If you leave a post and I don't respond it's probably cause I'll be on vacation in the land of the NCR. --Boredintheusa 08:02, June 17, 2011 (UTC)

I do hope you have a very enjoyable vacation in the land of the NCR Boredintheusa ;) And not to worry about replies, enjoy yourself, that's the more important thing.

I was interested to learn that you always play an evil karma game as I'm the complete opposite, being that I play a good karma game pretty much all the time. I occassionally take the sarcastic/caustic speech dialogue option and have become a fan of the Sneering Imperialist perk but on the whole, the Courier I play is highly regarded in my games. As a side note, I'm filled with curiousity as to the relationship between Ulysses & the Courier and my instincts tell me that before the Courier got shot in the head, he [the courier] wasn't such a good guy at all. Anyway, I also agree with you that there is far too much of an NCR slant on this game. There are only 2 Legion camps you can visit and although we're informed that Legion controls a vast amount of territory further east, we see nothing of that at all. Also, if you decide to side with the Legion it makes getting supplies a hell of a lot harder as most merchants are NCR allied and having villified status almost everywhere west of the Colorado river makes for an extremely challenging game. I also think that the Courier would more likely side with the NCR than Legion but once he learns about YesMan, takes that route as he would have thought he'd be the one in charge at the end. YesMan's newly found assertiveness at the end of the Battle for Hoover dam is a really gem of a plot twist and opens up so many more questions. Yesman's ending as well indicates that although there was chaos after the battle, things settle down quickly enough and it goes back to business as usual in New Vegas.

I totally agree that there need to be more emphasis on tribal cultures in any new FO game. Lets face it, most of humanity would have sunk back to struggling bands who are totally absorbed in personal survival and much of what passes as education and civil conduct would have been lost totally. The Dead Horses and Sorrows are good examples of human societies reduced to basic subsistence hunter gathering with the rudiments of an oral history. Reading and writing would be extremely rare and advanced skills like engineering, medicine, science etc would have been totally lost. I'd also like to see another new group, akin to the Brotherhood, who have managed to preserve old pre war tech & skills. We know that the Enclave & Commonwealth are the other societies who are masters of the old world tech but there must be more out there. I'd especially like to come across the Cyphers who are mentioned by Father Elijah. They know the formulas and the math but don't understand what they actually mean anymore. This is such a cool concept for a tribe. However, for the most part, most tribes would be divided into 2 main types, raiders and settlers. The settlers would have a bit more of a knowledge base and are descendants of people from smaller rural communities that somehow survived the 2077 holocaust. They'd have managed to possibly fortify their towns against maurading bands of raiders but over time, have lost a lot of the knowledge. The raiders would also vary in their levels of sophistication. Some would definately be like the White Legs, pure savages who can only kill and steal. Other raider groups might be better organised, maybe not as well as Legion was but still large enough to control a large territory and captive population. There'd be also various cults & groups out there as well. Descendants of fanatical religious groups who hunkered down in their compounds during the war and have emerged to spread their brand of crazy on onto the wastes. You could also have insane survivalist tribes who have a total pathological hatred towards any authority/government figures and organisations. Plus there are also the other vaults that we've yet to encounter. We know that there were over 120 built, and many were set up with totally crazy experiments to be unleashed on their unsuspecting inhabitants. What I'd like to see is perhaps some rival lesser company than Vault tech, a group like the Pulowski Shelters guys, who built a few lesser bunkers akin to the Vaults. These of course were designed to do what they were intended to do: shelter people for a time until it was safe enough to come out. Of course they weren't as well built as the Vaults and not as many were built but enough could have been made to have a few of them stiil going in 2281.

I'd also like to see more of the military surviving [military based tribes]. Perhaps descendants of US Airforce personnel from various underground missile and command and control bases that are scattered throughout the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. The Enclave didn't have the monopoly on secret bases and not every base would have been hit by the nuclear strikes. Perhaps there is a nuclear submarine or 2 still lurking offshore? Those things can go for hundreds of years before their power runs out. The crew would have survived the war, found that the US was destroyed but managed to carry on as their boat was the only thing keeping them alive. Once the radiation levels dropped down to a safe level, they could have gone ashore somewhere and foraged/scavenged for supplies. Seeing how feral things have become with the total break down of law and order and knowing that they were only a couple of hundred sailors, they head back out to sea and only drop in from time to time back to land to get what they need. In addition, there should be a few more Army bases still out there that may have survived and who's personnel managed to weather the initial holocaust much like the early Brotherhood did.

What would be an interesting moral/ethical dilemma for a new FO game would be this: a conflict between the newly discovered tribal societies versus the old ones. You could have the choice of supporting a sustainable but less technically advanced tribe over one who is more like the BoS or NCR. Both societies have their merrits and bad sides and its all shades of grey as to who gets to win.

BTW, I agree that coal is the worst fuel to use and am fully aware of its disasterous effects on the wider world once it gets mined. Here in Australia we seeing some of our best agricultural land being gobbled up by the coal companies. Once this land is mined, its totally screwed. The water table gets screwed up as well, becoming toxic for consumption. What the coal miners & their supporters fail to see is that you can mine coal but you can't eat it. Once the best farm land is turned into a wasteland, that's game over. Captain Taipan 11:07, June 17, 2011 (UTC)

I will captain taipan :) I always do like an account where im really good and then an account where im really evil, mainly just to see all the cool ways the end of the game plays out and all the different dialogue options and different decisions you can make during the quests. I usually prefer female characters to male characters in fallout, it seems like there are a bit more unique dialogue options plus I love seeing my ruggedly beautiful femme-fatal pump a few rounds into some fiends from my ranger sequoia while she's wearing Joshua Graham's armor of badassery (my favorite light armor;not a big power-armor fan because it makes all PCs look more or less the same). Also, playing evil is really fun because you can take anything, do anything you want, make people cower in fear (there were more options for an evil pc in fallout 3 imo) but having a good character feels really great because your helping to save the wasteland.

I had my own suspicions that the courier has a dark past... it's more interesting that their keeping the couriers past a secret, hopefully when the new DLC is released we could learn more. I get the feeling that Ulysses and the courier are estranged, like they were once close but after something the courier did...they are no longer. I still can't figure out what faction ulysses is supposed to be a part of Joshua Graham implied that he was part of the legion, but he also has wears an american flag on his back and even has a pre-war american flag in his home if i remember right. Is it possible that he's a double agent working for the enclave whose using his influence in the legion towards the enclaves ends? They did say that two couriers would stand at the end of the divide one from the new world and the other from the old world. Does Ulysses stand for the old world and the courier for the new?

Those are some good ideas for various tribes. And yeah good observation, I figured most people didn't survive in vault there was probably a small group of people who went back to being hunter-gatherers because agriculture became impossible for a long time after the great war and they never reverted back to civilization. I think it's a mistake to think of hunter-gatherers as people who are completely absorbed in the process of survival when people started practicing agriculture life actually got worse, people became shorter and died earlier because they didn't have enough nutrition in their diet.We've only reversed this relatively recently. It's true they can't read or write and they know little of modern medicine, but it's definitely not the worst life.

My own idea for the next fallout was like a Fallout:New Orleans the reason why I think it would be a great idea is because southern louisiana is a culture that's truly different from what you usually find in the united states. Also the Mississippi drains out the continent whoever controls the Mississippi really controls the interior of the continent, also besides being positioned on delta new orleans has a great port, you could see old fashioned steam ships coming to port from all over the place. The city could be completely submerged with the destruction of the levees exception of the french quarter which was built above sea level. The rulers of the city might be french-speaking ghoul cajuns who have established a powerful monarchy, after being completely fucked over by the USGOV they might decided that democracy always becomes corrupted in the end by the powerful and decided to model new orleans society like it was before it was purchased by the usgov. You might have a complicated caste system between cajun chouls, supermutants and humans within the city, the ghouls might consider themselves superior to humans due to their old age,wealth, and closeness to french cajun culture. Supermutants could be remnants from the master's army serving the ghoul king as 'master' and humans would be more numerous but on the bottom of the societal totem pole. You might see humans struggling to drain out and restore sections or 'wards' of the city that are underwater in exchange for freedom from serfdom, they might also be trying to build new levees along the river. You might see humans running pre-war factories and a resurgence of exploitative 1850s industrial capitalism amongst the human population, while human industrialists might ultimately pose a threat to the ghoul aristocracy at the moment they are to bought off in their newfound wealth and power and to the class system. You might see the emergence of old fashioned socialists unions and party that meet in secret and make plans for revolution. Maybe a flooded downtown where only the tall buildings are accessible catwalks between them and the corpses of old fashioned skyscrapers are being renovated to make food towers that would feed the city. The city would be called Dead Orleans because of all the ghouls and old creepy buildings and the empire built around the city would be known as "the kingdom." I kind of imagine the city as a wealth/tech sinkhole where wealth and tech pour into because of all the trade and because the old ghouls are the only people who know how to perform expert repairs on old robots, computers, and nuclear tech. It would probably be the wealthiest city in the south maybe all the east. I imagine great conflict between tribes and independent settlements and serfs who are pouring out into the swamps and the riverside to settle new lands for kingdom.I imagine the kingdom bending the elbows of a great many southeastern tribes and settlements to buy into their feudal system and appoint new ghoul "advisors" who would help human kings rule (imagine a ghoul advisor who served 5 human kings that have sworn fealty and closeness to the kingdom. there would be the question of who really has power behind the throne, and inter-racial tension).

The way i imagine the local tribes are people who have grown up in the swamps hunting and gathering and who now tend to the fragile ecosystem that purifies the radioactive water that flows into the delta. The strange plants and swamp ecosystems(maybe altered by FEV?) deposit the energy the plants get from radioactive particles into a clear fluid that is deposited in deep veins beneath the heavy peat soil known as "Swamp Liquid" I imagine kind of a Texas oil boom type situation using pre-war oil equipment where human fuel companies are moving into the swamps and drilling wells on swamp liquid veins that have been depositing slowly for 200 years. The ghouls allow the industrialists to drill for swamp liquid in exchange that they pay fealty to their system and keep the peasants in line, but the catch-22 is that drilling is threatening the swamp ecosystems that purify the water and without that the serfs who hold the kingdom up would die slowly from radiation poisoning. I kind of imagine a conflict between local tribals who want drilling to stop and the kingdom that's struggling to preserve their wealth and system. Their might be a conflict between the kingdom and a tribal nation made up of tribes who escaped Caesars genocidal campaigns who want to settle the southeast and destroy any power capable of doing what caesar did to them. The tribal nation would be made up of western tribes led by a man who was a child prodigy when it came to mathematics and tech who accompanied the rangers on a mission to colorado to restore old vertibirds, i imagine he was captured by the legion and made into joshua grahams personal assistant who taught him to be a badass. I imagine that he escaped after the battle of hoover dam and found himself in west texas among refugee tribals. In my vision he discovered a fleet of old semi-trucks near an old military base, I like to imagine that he uses them to tow old artillery pieces and like massive armored buses he uses to move troops.Maybe after scavenging old fuel depots they decided to fight the kingdom over the last natural gas reserves in texas won and decided that it would be in their best interests to crush the capital city and maybe take control of the swamp wells.

Idk if it would make a good game or not, but that's just some of the possibilities i imagine. I think it would be a good scenario where the brotherhood might emerge. I dunno its just my vision for what post-apocalyptic civilization might look like in the southeast, judging from the capital wasteland & 4 states territory, it seems like the further east you go the more society has been obliterated.It fits into the NCR's manifest destiny paradigm, if the east is mainly made up of tribes,tribal nations, independent settlements and maybe one or two challengers on the empire side of things like the CWBOS, The Pitt or a powerful kingdom ruled by ghouls. I dunno I know this is rapidly changing away from the original topic, but what are some of your other ideas for new societies, maybe even a new fallout? --Boredintheusa 00:53, June 18, 2011 (UTC)

well, i think civilization has a real chance of making a comeback. it would be difficult to say the least but its certainly feasible. OK, if you look at history then some of the greatest technological, social, and economic advances have occurred in the past 50 yrs or so. we essentially went from tubes to microchips overnight. granted we didn't have to start over. but i think human knowledge would be preserved much better than you predict, not about certain events but about about how to use and reuse technology. we didn't get "dumber" we just forgot, it wouldn't be a stretch to be able to relearn just difficult to implement. i suspect coal wouldn't be a usable resource because it can be converted into oil, a process im sure the u.s. would have figured out in times of an oil shortage, so most will probably be gone. truth is, there probably wont be a single source of energy that can help us recover but a combination of more renewable sources could. like corn based ethanol as a fuel, solar power on a smaller scale, i predict that the easiest and most abundant source of power will be bio-gas. bio-gas can be made made from old food scrapes and feces, its very easy to harness and unlimited in supply. its already in use today and can power entire households gas needs. nuclear power is not lost, uranium is not necessarily needed. if scientists and pre-war ghouls figure out how to make a molten salt reactor then we would be in business. Im a neutral player so every decision i make is thought out in a grand scheme situation. i never let one major group get leverage over the other. and i support all small factions and tribals. i believe that if i can keep everyone on an even keel it will best serve humanity to rebuild. if one power becomes too strong it will get corrupted and and halt progress. only by having multiple ideologies and powers can society become "normal" again. one world power is not good for anyone. i admit that while im neutral i will deceptively hurt certain factions to further my chaotic neutral-ish goals. in nv i can never choose a side.. JimmyDreznaut017