Hungry for more Fallout? Come with me on a YouTube lore binge

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In Fallout, the Cold War basically never ended, and neither did America’s 1950s culture. Instead of a computer age, the world experienced an Atomic Age, where nuclear energy spread across the globe. Instead of fossil fuels, nuclear fission became the predominant means of powering pretty much everything from city-wide electrical grids to cars and even portable radios. That’s why even centuries after the bombs fell, you can still find a few electrical appliances and nuclear batteries (notably the fusion core that’s used in Power Armor and building-sized power generators) that are still working.

But there are a few key differences between the Cold War in Fallout and the real one. First of all, while the United States became a nuclear-armed superpower in both, its primary world rival was communist China instead of Russia. The Soviet Union still existed in Fallout’s pre-war world, but its power was greatly diminished, and the U.S. versus the CCP became the primary conflict that defined global relations.

It isn’t clear who fired the first shot in what becomes known as the Great War. (Not immediately, anyway…) But as seen in a lot of Cold War fiction, mutually assured destruction left the surface of the Earth bathed in radiation and a devastating nuclear winter. For a deeper dive into the history of the world before the end of the world — why is the U.S. using a 13-star flag, for example? — check out the videos above and below.

Frozen culture

Fallout’s pre-war world was an example of retro-futurist fiction. The bombs fell and irradiated the surface of the planet in 2077, 80 years in the future when the first game was released. But for most of the western world, the culture seems to have frozen in place around 1960 or so, with fashion, music, movies, and television, and a lot of ideas somehow not evolving for over a century.

That’s why you hear classic American standards, doo-wop, and country music like Nat King Cole, Johnny Cash, the Ink Spots, and the Andrews Sisters in the soundtrack. (And yes, the games are filled with the same kind of music.) Polygon has a deep dive into the music of Fallout, and an amusing take on how real music might have evolved in the wasteland, even though it didn’t.

Exactly why nothing new seems to have been made after the fictional boomer generation was born isn’t clear. But the real-world explanation is that the producers of both the games and the TV show are deliberately evoking the culture of the Cold War, to harken back to an older time while having the flexibility to tell a sci-fi story. Think The Jetsons…with more swearing and dismemberment.

There are a couple of key cultural differences to keep in mind, though. The upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement doesn’t seem to have happened in Fallout, as racism, sexism, homophobia, and similar problems aren’t obviously present in the pre-war world (at least not to the same degree as the real world). Instead the cultural divide deepens along class and ideological lines, with the real-world Red Scare of anti-communism becoming a much deeper and even more bitter fight. One of the most important conflicts before the Great War is an invasion of Alaska by communist China.

Capitalism and nationalism become indelibly intertwined in the United States. As hyperinflation spreads and small wars over resources begin, class divides deepen and the issues that the country has failed to address for a hundred years begin to fracture society. Mega-corporations like Amazon Vault-Tec are essentially ruling the United States.

In Fallout, that is, not the real world. Of course. Did I mention that the game series comes with a healthy and enjoyable dose of tongue-in-cheek cultural criticism?

Retro-Futurist tech

Technology is in a weird place in Fallout, both before and after the war. The abundance of nuclear energy and the diminished reliance on fossil fuels means that energy is in abundance pretty much everywhere, and that seems to have stymied the development of some technology while boosting others.

For example, computers seem to be on about the level that we saw in the real world during the 1970s and early 1980s, with huge rooms required for the most powerful mainframes, and personal devices limited to text-driven interfaces storing information on reel-to-reel magnetic tape. The iconic Pip-Boy “wearable” is about as small as a computer gets, with televisions and radios still working off vacuum tubes.

All that being said, robots are much more advanced in Fallout than in the real world, operating with incredible dexterity and capability, and some even appear to have rudimentary artificial intelligence with their own personalities. These resemble and are directly inspired by the robots seen in classic sci-fi television and movies, like Robby the Robot from The Forbidden Planet and B-9 from Lost in Space. The corporations in Fallout building super-advanced robots using computers that seem to be less powerful than a modern calculator is deliberately anachronistic.

Weapons technology is also in a strange place. In addition to handheld guns that resemble pistols, rifles, and shotguns in the real world, Fallout has rudimentary laser and plasma weapons — pew pew instead of bang bang. The games even have small “mini-nukes” that can be launched from a bazooka-sized sling.

The U.S. and China have both developed large, bulky suits of armor that run on their own internal nuclear power, Power Armor, that gives one person the offensive and def