Amazon's Fallout Adaptation Seemingly Retcons Climactic Events of Fan-Favourite Game

It’s probably just an error in dates. Things happen, shows don’t always get things 100% correct. Jet contrails appear in Middle Earth, someone in the background forgot to add a year or two in the show timeline.

In-universe reasons could apply too, of course. I mean, this is the post-apocalypse world. There’s bound to be some errors here and there in record-keeping.

For the pedantic, Obsidian plus inExile (also MS) together make up the original brain trust of Black Isle that made original fallout to begin with, with writer Tim Cain the font of dark wit that really created the feel of the whole lore and universe at the start. So Obsidian's New Vegas is pretty much automatically the most authentic in post Bethesda fallout since it's the only I've written by the actual foundational writer if the franchise. And the only one that returns to the dark satire the world was originally meant to represent.

I'd love to see fallout 5 either return to obsidian and in exile while Bethesda works on TES6 for the next forty years, or see at least Cain, Uquhart, and Fargo brought in to tightly collaborate. It's all MS. They could make it happen.

I'm not interested in this show specifically because if it is good, it's probably the only good thing we will get from the property going forward. Bethesda lost their juice, and I haven't cared about the series lore since THEY stopped caring.
I'd just like a port of New Vegas on my Switch, please. Nothing quite like it.

Fallout 3 reckons that a hundred years after Fallout 1 people still haven't even picked up all the pre-war Nuka Cola bottles lying around the floor.

This was never a series for people who took timelines seriously.

Eh, it’s an adaptation. I will wait a bit before I write it off.

With how much terribly written garbage Bathesda pumps out, of course they're gonna be mad at the best Bathesda game that was not even made by Bathesda lmao

Par for the course with Bethesda, they don’t care about lore. Not at all surprised they couldn’t be bothered to get it straight.

I was never a fan of the specific ‘lore’ of this game as every time I checked a terminal id read a couple lines of the long ass messages and close out immediately.. most of the time I’d just fast click through each message without reading a word.. I just wanna scavenge the wasteland and kill sh**.. America was nuked.. the world is messed up.. I came out of a vault.. nothing more to see here imo lol

@ShadowofSparta Still waiting for stealthy Bosmers to come back in ESO. All existing lore nerfed when the Kit-e-Kat expansion arrived.

Isn’t the entire Fallout timeline complete nonsense because in reality Nuclear Fallout only remains highly dangerous for like a month after detonation and only a low level background radiation would remain after that. I believe you’d only need to stay in your bunker for like 4-6 weeks.

Isn't the entire thing a retcon since in the TV show the world ends in the 1950s apparently whereas in the actual story the world ends in 2077?

Edit: having watched episode 1 myself, whichever articles I've read that said that are wrong. It says the bombs fell in 2077 early in ep 1.

@ChrisDeku
It's a bit more complicated than that. Nuclear fallout can remain immediately lethal for anywhere from 1 to 5 years depending on several factors and you would have many other problems in the aftermath long term such as a lack of widespread access to clean drinking water or the heightened levels of radiation exposure even long term seriously messing up birthrates. But this is a franchise that also features guns that shoot visible slow lasers, teleportation and androids that pass the Turing test using primitive 50s style tech so don't expect scientific accuracy.

@ChrisDeku To be fair, most of the Fallout world isn't radioactive, it's only certain areas - and typically they're places with nuclear waste present, not places with still lingering effects from the bombs.

@PegasusActual93 Like I said above, the tech in Fallout is from the future (from our point of view), the world ended in 2077. The 50s style of various things is because the premise of the setting was "what if the future was like they thought it would be in the 50s?" Not "what if the world ended in the 50s?"

@ThomasHL Note that your evidence for this is from Fallout 3- Bethesda's first Fallout. But Bethesda never understood Fallout (as Matroska points out with Bethesda misunderstanding the what the pre-war world looked like by making it 1950's rather than "what the 1950's thought the future would look like". Actually the pre-war world in the original Fallout looked more like Futurama than the actual 1950's- it's retro futurism).

Before that yes this was a series that took it's timeline seriously. New Vegas does as well (being developed by fans of the original games and people who worked on the original games) which is why when most major characters speak about their backgrounds in that game they refer to past events and places (such as Marcus speaking about The Master from Fallout 1 and his time as sherrif of Broken Hills in Fallout 2) Fallout hasn't been a series for people who take timelines seriously since 2008, but before Bethesda it absolutely was.

Well... i would more quickly assume the TV show isn't canon.

@ChrisDeku -(Question): "because in reality Nuclear Fallout only remains highly dangerous for like a month after detonation"

We all wish...Lol.

Because with the current Megaton payloads that thermonuclear minute missiles carry, the Planet would have nuclear winter for about 10 years after they hit, and during that time all the vegetation on the surface would freeze and die, and soon after all the animals would follow, and even if you're lucky enough to be in a bunker, you would want to wait much much longer than the 10 year nuclear winter to poke your head out, because the radiation would still be at extremely unbearable levels... people seem to have no idea how bad this would actually be in real life...its Crazy.

So actually the game paints a prettier picture than what reality really would be, but if you look at the movie and the game, they seem to use smaller lower yield nukes, kind of like the ones that the U.S used on Japan-(55 kilotons range) but just more of them to the same effect.

Again in reality, it would be way worse than most people think, not like the fantasy Universe in this game or movie.
But if you don't believe me, just store up on some Rad-Away and then everything should be fine...Lol

Happy Gaming ✌!

because the radiation would still be at extremely unbearable levels

I’m pretty sure this just isn’t true at all. The half-life of the isotopes is constant and predictable, it doesn't matter how many are fired or how big the bombs are, radioactive isotopes decay at the same rate.

Secondly, the worst-case scenarios for nuclear winter are based upon every nuclear warhead in the world being fired whereas in reality that isn’t even remotely feasible, as there’s more missiles than actual launch facilities by a huge margin. The number of missiles ready to fire right away is a small percentage of the total.

The Fallout games have people in vaults for 100+ years and then there are radioactive areas where the original bombs dropped 100 years ago.

Edit:
BTW the most up to date model for nuclear winter in which the USA and Russia fire every missile they have states that “However, the levels of smoke released into the atmosphere would be "orders of magnitude smaller" than those that helped wipe out the dinosaurs”. During this event around 25% of living species survived and around 50% of plant species. Thats just random animals without access to any technology or science etc.

@ChrisDeku -"because in reality Nuclear Fallout only remains highly dangerous for like a month after detonation"

I looked it up myself and made sure my facts were accurate before I commented.
So we're gonna have to agree to disagree, especially if your saying that your facts are more accurate, because you're original comment that it would last like a month long is ridiculous, but now you're trying to bring other things into the conversation that weren't brought up?

And as far as comparing it to the dinosaurs and what they went through, I wasn't making any comparisons so I don't know why you're mentioning that at all, besides your example uses 2 different types of radiation.

I'm pretty sure that the comet or meteor that struck the Earth wasn't made out of highly Radioactive Plutonium, and so I don't need a physics lesson with you quoting the half-life of the radioactive isotopes as being the equivalent is ridiculous, also don't need a lesson in the difference in Megaton yields because everyone knows the meteor was much worse, and that's because it's an Apple's to Watermelon comparison, we're just applying plutonium based Radioactive radiation from nuclear weapons to this conversation.

In the Game/Show they did Lob everything they had at each other, and so again nuclear winter alone would last like 10 years, which is (longer than the month long time span that you originally said it would be".

But again, No worries, agree to disagree.

Happy Gaming ✌!

I was watching a bit of the first episode. Couldn't really get into it. I wasn't really paying attention either. But turned it off around the point where people started fighting.

@RicksReflection

I'm pretty sure that the comet or meteor that struck the Earth wasn't made out of highly Radioactive Plutonium

It creates the exact same atmospheric conditions as a nuclear winter. You understand a nuclear winter is actually nothing to do with radiation right? It’s just debris in the atmosphere blocking the Sun and cooling the Earth.

The radiation is absolutely not the problem longterm. The most dangerous isotopes from a nuclear blast will be gone in weeks. People continued to live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and thriving cities exist there. Inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone there is now a thriving ecosystem of “ Moose, deer, beaver, wild boar, otter, badger, horses, elk, ducks, swans, storks and more are now being hunted by bears, lynx and packs of wolves”

Only low levels of radiation remain for years. The kind a society could easily tolerate with no intervention, and probably only a small increase in cancer rates and some other side effects.

(longer than the month long time span that you originally said it would be".

4 weeks is for dangerous radiation, this is separate from the atmospheric cooling event. Again, a nuclear winter is actually nothing to do with radiation.

Ok finished watching.
I start to think they may indeed retcon new vegas. But new vegas itself, the location and it's leader are very much re-confirmed.
I do wish this story was in the games. It's kind of too important for a tv show. Unless the TV show is It's own universe.

If this crap is excellent I'm next pope

@ChrisDeku - (Statement): "because in reality Nuclear Fallout only remains highly dangerous for like a month after detonation" (and) "You understand a nuclear winter is actually nothing to do with radiation right?"

(Answer): You keep taking us deeper down the rabbit hole, when it's completely not necessary.

You keep intertwining the 2 Different scenarios and acting like your educating me on this subject matter, and that in doing so, it'll somehow make you right about it, or your original statement that I commented on.

You're using the commonalities "of the winter effect" between two "different Causal scenarios", all the while ignoring what caused them to begin with, and therefore completely ignoring the important leftover byproduct (aka..Radiation) that you get from the (Nuclear Cause) versus the (Impact Cause), and so you ending up saying they're exactly the same in every way, and so you're right?

I'm sorry but your evaluating the information Wrongly.

One uses a (Dirty) Radioactive delivery system to create the winter effect..aka Nuclear War, and the other one does not..aka Impact Winter via asteroid or comet, and as a result, it doesn't leave behind the SAME prolonged radioactive signature that the nuclear war scenario does. Here are the 2 Different Definitions.

(An impact winter): is a hypothesized period of prolonged cold weather due to the impact of a large asteroid or comet on the Earth's surface.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/impact_winter

(Nuclear winter): the chilling of climate that is hypothesized to be a consequence of nuclear war and to result from the prolonged blockage of sunlight by high-altitude dust clouds produced by nuclear explosions.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuclear%20winter

And just so you know, after the War, the U.S and Japan used methods to mitigate the exposure to radiation to make the area more habitable after the the bombs were dropped, via scraping and removing several feet of the topsoil off, as well as removing any radioactive debris and then storing all of it at a proper nuclear dump site, just like they more recently did, when the Fukushima Nuclear Reactors melted down in Japan.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191212081926.htm

And as far as Chernobyl, the exclusion Zone is massive, so naturally as you get further out from the reactor site itself, you have lower radiation levels equivalent to being exposed to 40 bananas in a day, so life has had a chance to surprisingly flourish, but even then, if you compare it to the same species not living in those same radioactive zones, there's still differences in their health and longevity.

Also some food for thought, after a Full Scale Nuclear War, there won't be anyone really left to try to mitigate Fallout radiation like in these examples we've used, like dumping billions of metric tons of concrete on top of Runaway Nuclear Reactors, or Digging Up Topsoil three to six feet down and dumping it at proper waste sites to make things more habitable.
So the habitability of the environment 1 month out as you originally suggested, is simply not feasible, no matter how you want to try to use mental gymnastics to frame it.

Again, if you don't agree with facts that I presented, then we're going to have to agree to disagree, but no worries, it's been fun!

Happy Gaming ✌!

@RicksReflection I mean it’s basically a scientific fact that the dangerous radiation from a Nuclear bomb will have decayed before 4 weeks are up. That after that the radiation threat is basically “You might have 57% higher likelihood on contracting cancer” kind of threat. It’s the kind of threat we’d take super seriously right now, but not in a post apocalyptic society.

These are the accepted facts: the dangerous parts are the initial blasts and fires. Then the atmospheric cooling event. Radiation is not a longterm factor in the kind of society that will live after a nuclear war. No one will be giving a damn about small radiation when they’re trying to not starve.

@ChrisDeku -(Statement): "mean it’s basically a scientific fact that the dangerous radiation from a Nuclear bomb will have decayed before 4 weeks are up."

I've read it takes 4 to 5 weeks for harshest levels to drop, but it doesn't go away completely and make it safe for humans without a Rad Suit, so what your saying is partially true...aka...a half truth, but it's much more nuanced than that.

Look at this link and you'll see all kinds of different situations and mitigating circumstances, that show how you can't just use one simple methodology, and cut and paste it to every physical substance around us, as an example: Underground aquifers well be one of the last things to be irradiated, but if radiation eventually makes it down to the underground aquifers, it could take thousands of years before their free of radiation.

https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/effects/wenw/chapter-2.html

By the way, this is a separate issue, but linked nonetheless, I want you to picture all of the nuclear power plants that exist in the entire world (currently at 436), that would most likely be active (in a 6 minute decided) full scale nuclear war, and picture the amounts of constant persistent radiation they would produce and release around the world with their runaway nuclear meltdowns happening all at once, with no one to stop or mitigate any of their constant radiation releases.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267158/number-of-nuclear-reactors-in-operation-by-country/

You can't look at one piece of information and make a simple conclusion, you have to put the whole picture with all of its elements and differing situations into proper perspective. Because each one element feeds into the other.
Again no worries, it's been fun.

Happy Gaming ✌!