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Power Armour

2015-11-16T12:07:33Z

2601:44:80:406:45C3:BB1F:B245:27F5: /* Fallout Power Armor */

[[File:Power_Armor.PNG|thumb|right|400px|All eight marks of Space Marine Power Armour.]]
'''Power Armour''' is a science fiction concept of armor which increases the strength, speed, and reflexes of those who wear it. It features heavily in science fiction/fantasy settings such as [[Warhammer 40,000]].

==Starship Troopers==

Like so many military science-fiction concepts, the modern idea of powered armor dates back to the Mobile Infantry of Heinlein's ''[[Starship Troopers]]''. The "Marauder" suit is bulky, with integrated thrusters and heavy weapons (including nuclear weapons and heavy explosives, carried as easily as a human soldier carries grenades). Their primary purpose is not to destroy indiscriminately (though they certainly can), but to "make war as personal as a punch on the nose" -- to [[Drop Pod|drop in]] and destroy with precision, in order to break the enemy in exactly the right way. In other words, it's much like Crisis [[Battlesuit|battlesuits]] with less [[Tau|weeaboo]] and more [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|humanity fuck yeah]] inside.

Heinlein never discusses [[pauldrons]], but the [[Space Marines]] certainly take after the Mobile Infantry's other aspects.

==Warhammer 40,000==
Because 40k has a huge hard on for Space Marines, and because no super soldier worth his genetic enhancements will go into battle without super armaments, 40k has developed nearly as large a hard on for power armor.

===Space Marine Power Armour===

The most iconic users of power armour in 40k are the [[Space Marines]] and the [[Chaos Space Marines]]. Made of ceramite layers upon plates of plasteel and adamantium/adamantine which will deflect all but the most powerful of weapons, Power Armour possess many life support systems designed to keep the Space Marine inside alive, even in the worst and most extreme of battlefield conditions.

The Black Carapace, one of the [[Gene-Seed]] organs, is specially designed to allow a space marine to interface his nervous system with his armor and is the last organ implanted in [[Codex Astartes|Codex]] Chapters. Amongst its features, power armour possess auto-senses to supplement the Marine's already considerable senses, auspex arrays to create minimaps and transmit data between squad members and commanders, painkiller delivery systems in the event of severe bodily damage, and waste recyclers to keep the Marine going for up to fifty days without fresh food or water. The power source is a backpack mounted generator which needs initializing, but after that can take solar energy to keep itself going.

There are eight types or '''Marks''' of Power Armour used by the Astartes. Regardless of their type, they all have massive [[Pauldrons]]. Pictures can be found in the gallery at the bottom of the page.

====Mark I: Thunder Armour====
The first type of Power Armour was designed for the [[Thunder Warriors]] and worn by many of the techno-barbarians of [[Earth|Terra]]. They provided basic protection against weapons and enhancements to upper-body strength, but that is all - the suit was incapable of supporting its own weight and did not provide any significant protection to the legs. Since they were only used on Terra, there was no need to protect them against the void. Though the lack of life support systems and much lesser degree of protection make them essentially useless in the 41st millennium, several Chapters retain sets of Thunder Armour for ceremonial purposes. If you were to field one now, it would probably count as carapace armor (4+ save) with a slight bonus to strength but a penalty to initiative.

In [[Deathwatch_(RPG)|Deathwatch]], you can actually get your hands on some. Be forewarned: it's noisy, doesn't offer as much protection, doesn't work with a Marine's Black Carapace, and actually might not be a whole suit of armor depending on its state of repair. Overall, it's kind of shitty, but it's a surviving artifact linked to the days of the living [[Emperor]] and early Imperium and that impresses other Marines and those Ecclesiarchy schlubs. Take it for formal occasions.

====Mark II: Crusade Armour====
Designed by the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] with the [[Great Crusade]] in mind, the Mark II armour was fully enclosed and contained all the life support and auxiliary systems now common among Astartes power armor, like a waste recycling unit and automated medical equipment. Much of these newer additions were made possible by a more efficient cooling system, which allowed a considerable reduction in the size of the powerpack. The helmet also came with a bunch of enhanced sensory equipment. Overall protection and flexibility was much improved, especially since the legs were now enclosed in armoured hoops and came with their own servomotors. Unlike the Mark I suit, the design is still sufficiently sound to remain in active, albeit extremely limited, use well into the 41st millennium.

====Mark III: Iron Armour====
Mark III armour was first conceived for <s>the [[Squat]] campaigns</s> boarding actions of the Great Crusade. It was pretty much a modified Mark II designed to provide better frontal protection for close quarters combat, essentially fulfilling the same role that [[Terminator]] armour would later fulfill. By the time of the Horus Heresy, the Mark III was slowly being phased out and replaced by Terminator armour, but it's still fairly common among the Traitor Legions. In fact, several of the more traditional Legions were reluctant to phase out Mark III because it was the most brutally iconic mark of power armour in their day, so there was talk of keeping it for honour guards or spear tip operations. Even into M41, the helmet or faceplate is still popular.

====Mark IV: Imperial Maximus Suit====
Now having access to more [[Standard Template Construct]]s, the Mechanicum was able to further refine power armour internal systems. In addition to having more advanced visual sensors, the helmet was now capable of movement. The suit was also made a whole lot lighter than before while managing to further improve on the Mark II's protective capabilities. Although the chest power cables were once again relocated to the outside of the plating, they were given an armoured sheath to protect them from damage. [[Horus|Horus Lupercal]] manipulated the Mechanicum's supply lines to ensure that the Legions that were planning to side with him in the Heresy would be fully equipped with Maximus Armour in time for the Heresy; as a result Mark IV was usually reserved for Chapter Masters and senior Captains of the Loyalist Legions. As the Legions were either fully or partially re-equipped with these suits by the time the [[Horus Heresy]] began, Mark IV is one of the most prevalent types of armour among the Chaos Space Marines.

Some Chapters/Legions also made their own sub-patterns of Maximus power armor, such as the Ultramarines' Praetorian-pattern.

====Mark V: Heresy Armour====
In between production of the Mark IV and what would be the Mark VI, both Loyalist and Traitor Legions found that they were running out of replacement parts for damaged systems. This would result in several Legions taking parts from older Marks and inadvertently making a brand new Mark of Power Armour. Although appearances varied widely as a result of its ad hoc nature, some form of standardization was achieved. One of the most notable was the introduction of molecular bonding studs on the left pauldron and both greaves, which made them look totally Metal. Probably one of the most common suits of armour in service among the Traitor Legions, since this was what most of them were wearing when they retreated to the Eye of Terror.

====Mark VI: Corvus Armour====
The much beloved [[Beakie]] armour. Designed as a stopgap measure while newer equipment remained in development, it incorporates some of the newly developed Mark VII features into the battle-proven Mark IV design, producing a suit of armour that is in many ways equal to its descendants. Although it offered no additional protection, Mark VI armour was the first to feature a redundant power system and parts that are slightly interchangeable with those of other marks. Somehow, it also manages to be lighter and fit together more smoothly than the current Mark VII Aquila, allowing for quieter movement, while the helmet includes further improved sensor systems in its, um, "beak". It was named the "Corvus" pattern after [[Primarch]] [[Corvus Corax]] of the [[Raven Guard]], as the XIX Legion was the first to be selected for field testing the armour. Due to the design's inherent stealthiness and legacy, it still remains the preferred armour among the sons of Corax, who tend to be saddled with older equipment anyhow. For reasons nobody can seem to explain, it was also sporadically used by the [[Alpha Legion]] around the time of the Horus Heresy even though it was never actually issued to them.

====Mark VII: Aquila/Imperator Armour====
The most common Mark of Power Armour among loyalist Space Marines, Mark VII armor was still being designed when the Traitor Legions reached the Sol System and seized [[Mars]]. When this fact became all too foreseeable, [[Rogal Dorn]] ordered the design teams transferred to Terra to prevent the Traitors from seizing it. Mark VII featured completely covered chest and arm cabling, a distinct helmet that provided more protection, a high level of compatibility with previous Marks, and also bore the Imperial Aquila on the chest, which was first used there to provide quick identification of the Loyalist Marines during the chaos of the Siege of Terra.

====Mark VIII: Errant Armour====
[[Jes Goodwin]] [http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/File:MkVIII_Errant.jpg originally] designed it with awesome [[Power Fist]]-style hands, a modified helmet, a streamlined power pack, and a more flexible leg-and-ankle joint. Games Workshop only bothered with using the altered breastplate, [[Derp|so the overall design looks like a regular Mark VII with a collar.]] Breaking the trend of reverse-compatibility between newer and older marks, this Mark can only accommodate the helmet designed for it, which kind of becomes a moot point when reserving it for officers, since everyone higher up than a battle brother will never wear his helmet. The specialist design, or the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]]'s head-up-own-arse tendencies around distributing new technology, are thought to be the probable reasons why it has yet to be widely adopted among Space Marine chapters. Because of its rarity, the armour is generally restricted for use by senior officers only, and even then they'll usually only be able to wear the breastplate. The [[Minotaurs]] chapter appears to be the only exception here, as almost all of their battle brothers have access to full suits.

It should be noted that, while artificer armor, at least in the art, looks like a pimped out Mk.VIII, the Minotaurs show us that Errant armor in fact doesn't improve armor save. Artificer armor, then, is a customized version of any later mark, without any seriously improved protection going into the Mark VIII on its own (well,Fantasy Flight [[Deathwatch_(RPG)|gave it some love]] with 1 more armour point and the ability to deflect some headshots to the chest, greatly improving its protection).

====Chaos Power Armour====
While many Traitor Marines are equipped with Marks IV or later (if you go by the models, almost all of them seem to have Mark VII armour with Mark VI legs), Chaos power armor is often a mix-and-match setup. Because Chaos Marines often have to go long periods with no access to proper industrial facilities, proper maintenance and replacement parts became an issue. Because of that, many subsystems in each suit of armor don't work and replacement parts come in the form of whatever they can dig up from plunder and taken off of corpses after [[Orks|raiding and looting]]. Furthermore, Chaos Marines like to customize their armor with devotional iconography and personal trophies, making sure that virtually each suit of armor is personalized and none are exactly alike. Where things get even weirder is when armor gets too steeped in Chaos and begins to twist, mutate, and turn partially organic, or has a daemon replace its machine spirit. Recent editions and artwork show senior Chaos marines with a sinister and more organic-looking power armour, a look they pick up after a while either deliberately or due to the Warp's influence. In the Rogue Trader Era, Chaos Power armor WAS organic, so this is actually a pleasant return to the old days.

===Terminator Armour===
Set aside for space marines who are exemplars of toughness, martial ability, and wonky proportions, [[Terminator]] armor, or Tactical Dreadnought armor, provides the best personal protection available. Heavily layered with adamantium and indestructible [[pauldrons]], a suit of Terminator armor is meant to steamroll nearly everything, and gives a fighting chance against everything else, which is anything that gives anybody else a fighting chance against Terminators. Standard loadout for Terminators are [[Power Fist|power fists]] and [[Storm Bolter|storm bolters]] or [[Power weapon]]s and [[Twin-Linked|twin linked]] bolters for the Chaos variant, but they are able to fit a shoulder-mounted Cyclone missile rack, equip heavy weapons systems, and arm with other killtastic melee weapons. Since most suits are about at least as old as the chapter that owns them, and that the pauldron allegedly contains a tiny fragment of the Emperor's own power armor, these suits are holy relics as well as top-quality wargear.

Despite all the pain they lay down (and keep away), Terminator armor has a few serious drawbacks. First thing is that it is seriously hard to make. Seriously. Most chapters have a only handful that they can distribute amongst their veterans and officers, and any lost suits are damn near irreplaceable. Second thing is that they lack mobility. They counter this mostly since Terminator armor can teleport into the thick of it, and judicious use of teleport homers can put them right where you need them, and a [[Land Raider]] can carry small squads. Beyond that, Terminators are otherwise going to be footslogging since they're too fucking huge to hitch a ride on anything smaller than a house. Unless you're fighting a fast or a crafty opponent, you won't care anyways.

Terminator Armor had 3 major designs: the Cataphractii pattern, the Tartaros pattern, and the Indomitus pattern. The Cataphractii was the first run at Terminator armor, developed after the mkIII power armor and sharing many systems. Bearing much larger power field generators and thicker armor, it provided better protection than future variants, but was much more unwieldy and difficult to use. In game terms, you get a 4++ and S&P. The Tartaros pattern shared many of its systems with the Mark IV power armor and was much more maneuverable than its predecessor but gave up some of its protection to do so. The Indomitus pattern is the current pattern of terminator armor, sharing similarities with the Tartaros pattern in therms of functionality, but is based of a design being tested during the heresy by the Iron Hands legion. After the Horus Heresy, Cataphractii pattern had eventually fallen out of general use; this may have been because was the last of that armor was either lost [[Adeptus Mechanicus|and the pattern became another lost technology]] in the following years, or because production was ceased in favor of later patterns, and most suits were either cannabilized or became chapter relics that wouldn't see field use again. There are also human-sized suits of Terminator armor, but the tiny amount of them that still exist are used exclusively by the Inquisition.

====Centurion Armour====
Since somebody at GW forgot that the [[meme|Xzibit meme]] wasn't funny anymore, Space Marines now have Centurion armor that they equip like a miniature walker vehicle, more like a mini-mech, a cute little dreadnought preparing space marines for their life after living. Centurion armour is "worn" over regular power armor, giving better protection (like terminator armor without the invul save) and comes in two flavors: assault and devastator. Assault Centurions are heavy assault units equipped with drills and meltas or flamers, meant to get in close to enemy strongpoints and fortifications and wreck shit. Devastator units are a heavy fire support units with hurricane bolters and twin-linked heavy weapons, which, in practice, provide less fire power than regular [[Devastator Squad]]s, but higher resilience.

===Aegis Armour===
The Power Armour of the [[Grey Knights]], Aegis Armour is master-crafted on the forges of Titan and inscribed with prayers and [[Matt Ward|wards]] to prevent [[Daemon]]s from possessing it. Based on parts from Marks VI, VII, and VIII, within the breastplate of each set is a copy of the Liber Daemonica. It frequently bears a stormbolter on its left forearm, keeping both hands of the wearer free to use. There is an Aegis/Grey Knight version of Terminator and Dreadnought armours, too.

=== Warhammer 40000: Space Marine ===
In [[Warhammer 40000: Space Marine]], the Marines are wearing what looks like regular Mark VII Aquila Armor. However, it appears to be far less bulky in comparison to similar armor portrayed in official artwork or [[Dawn of War]], suggesting it might be different. For one thing, it appears to be much more streamlined, with lower pauldrons that aren't quite as fucking enormous (although still unrealistically huge), and with more head room and mobility in the arm sections. This becomes very apparent when using ranged weapons, like the Bolter. This streamlining was likely done to avoid hilarious amounts of clipping. Judging by the fact that every other suit of Imperial power armour in the game - Chaos included - shares this appearance, it is probable that it is simply a reimagining, or a 'realistic version' of regular Space Marine armour. It's not like the Space Marine game is the first artwork to portray power armour with different proportions to other media.

===Human Power Armour===
Virtually identical to Space Marine power armor, these suits of armor are scaled down to fit regular humans (notice that this is the reverse of what it would have been 10,000 years ago). Human power armour is relatively quite rare, since it occurred to somebody that making good protection being an affordable and wide-spread asset would severely impinge on the current state of [[grimdark]], not to mention expensive.

Without the extra room and black carapace interface Marine armor provides, many suits of human power armor don't offer the same degree of protection, as much strength enhancement, or as many subsystems found in Marine armor. Still, the wearer will still be stronger, better protected, and better equipped than the [[Imperial Guard|guy in cardboard]].. There are a few variants, including a lighter suit and one for Chaos-fighting Inquisitors. Because these things are still super-rare, usually only [[Rogue Trader|people rolling in money]], [[Adeptus Mechanicus|tech fetishists]], and [[Inquisition|those able to declare not giving them power armor is]] [[heresy]], will have any.

====Sisters of Battle Armour====
Less bulky than the Space Marine armour, as they're designed for normal sized humans. Despite Astartes & Sororitas armour both giving 3+ saves on the tabletops, in actuality the power armour of the Orders Militant of the [[Adepta Sororitas]] provides less ballistic protection than Space Marine armour does. (The identical in-game protection is mostly because saves in 40k are decided on numbers between 2-6, so there aren't as many gradients in-between.)

This armour also do not provide the same level of strength enhancement, but it gives enough to carry [[Heavy_Bolter#Heavy_Bolter|heavy bolter]]s and ammunition into combat, and fire them without a sister shattering her arms. Sororitas armor has noticeably smaller [[pauldrons]]. The leading theory behind why they chose this design feature is that smaller pauldrons cut back the material cost it takes to create this variant, without having to sacrifice the pair of perky, globular breasts.

Helmets are NOT included as standard either, mostly because the majority of Sororitas models have distinctive haircuts. But also because (according to [[Dark Heresy]])), the Sisters of Battle do not receive their helms until about halfway through their careers. This makes them inverse of the tradition held by the Astartes, where higher ranking officers are more likely to ditch their helmets instead.

The advantage of Sororitas power armour, though, when compared to all other human-scales of power amour, is that it runs off of the same fusion reactor that Astartes armour does, and therefore can run indefinitely, rather than for a few hours at a time. Another advantage is that it is not as bulky so it does not turn the wearer into a big giant target either.

=== Dragon Scale Armour===
Dragon scale armor is basically Mechanicum power armour, commonly used by militant Enginseers of Imperial Guard and Myrmidon [[Paladin|warrior priests]] of the Ordo Secutor. It does not have an external power source, as it derives power from Mechanicus implants (and therefore cannot be used by anyone outside the tech-priesthood or high-ranking [[Skitarii]]). Not as thick as Astartes power armour, it sports many more inbuilt devices and sensors and gets further pimped by the Techpriest wearing it as he progresses through the ranks of the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] to the point where it's hard to tell where the armour ends and its wearer begins. Some wonder if it is connected to the [[Void Dragon]].

==Fallout Power Armor==
Unlike Warhammer 40,000, [[Fallout]] powered armor is more "power" than "armor". It was originally made to allow troops to use heavy weapons on the move and with increased weight limit it was obvious to put some extra armor on the exo-suit. Even while it turns you into a nearly-indestructible walking tank, sneaking and camouflage are always considered better protection than armor in Fallout, so the main reason people use it is strength and radiation resistance bonuses. it is also possibly the most realistic armour here, strangely.
Been given a massive reworking in Fallout 4 making them into proper walking tanks rather than just better armor. Also can add jet packs to them.

===T-51b Powered Armor===
This armor only has +1 STR for some reason. What's even stranger is that the hunk of metal that you put on your head (AKA the helmet, but who calls it that?) gives you a +1 CHR bonus (probably because its heavily featured in old world propaganda, but yet again, so was the T-45d variant) . We really should be wearing around hunks of metal on our heads these days. After all, this armour be pullin' all dem bitches...

===T-45d Powered Armor===
After Bethesda got the rights to make Fallout 3, they were like "Guys, guys, let's make a SHITTY POWER ARMOR!" and they went through with it. The result was <s>far from shitty</s> a [[skub|mixed bag]]. Sure, it has -2 AGL, less rad. resistance, and makes you move around like the [[/co/|comic book guy]] from The Simpsons, but it looks '''''BAD-ASS!!!'''''

====NCR Salvaged Powered Armour====
This is the 'zombie' version of the T-45d Powered Armour. It has had all of what made it power armour ripped out by the NCR (because in New Vegas, they don't really teach you how to drive a suit of power armour) so now it's just a cool looking variant of metal armour with paint splashed on it (because NCR for the win!).

===Advanced Powered Armor===
The 2nd most advanced power armor and the newest, made by the Enclave who still have much of the pre-war resources. As a result it has little of the flaws of the older armours (T-45d and T51b models) while being better in every way. Save for the next power armour listed.

===Advanced Powered Armor MK II/Enclave Powered Armor===
Because advanced power armor wasn't good enough for the Enclave, Advanced Powered armor MK II was made. This is the armor that is featured in New Vegas, and while the NV variant kinda sucked, The variant in the 2nd game was OP (yet again, so was all the other power armors, but what the hell. OP for the win!). Although Bethesda fucked it up and made T-51b better. It was fixed in New Vegas (Although for some reason the power armor in NV is a 'medium' armor and degrades like it was made of cheap Chinese plastic).

===T-60 power armor===
The last pre-war armor made. Began to be issue shortly after the war with China ended and only was deployed in any number in Boston before the bomb felled.

==StarCraft Power Armor==
[[File:Terran marine.jpg|200px|thumb|right|Incredibly unoriginal, rip off of space marine armor. But still fucking cool looking.]]
In [[StarCraft]], the Confederate Marine Corps Power Armor, more simply called the CMC power armor, is the standard powered armor suit used by all military factions within the Koprulu sector. Despite the fact that each armored suit comprises a complex array of sensors and other advanced combat technologies, life-support systems, and its own independent power supply that appears to be a portable fusion reactor, it seems to be dirt-cheap as hell to manufacture, given that every armed force within the Koprulu sector can give one of these suits to every Terran marine worth a damn. Unfortunately, that technology doesn't seem to grant much actual protection; the marines are usually unceremoniously wiped out by the <s>dozens</s> hundreds during an engagement.

Along with that, however, it's not exactly known if the armor plating on the suit can protect the wearer from actual combat damage. The CMC armor is incapable of reliably protecting the wearer from projectiles, ruptures, or chemical attacks (apart from the passive hazards found in NBC environments), in both fluff and crunch, considering that it cannot hope hold out against: zergling claws, roach acid, the Marines' own gauss guns (hell, it can't even deflect the pistol rounds from their sidearms), fire and/or plasma, hydralisk spines, Mutalisk wurms, Psi attacks, Protoss photon guns, and really just about anything. Then again even tanks, huge giant robots and battlecruisers could not hold against said attacks en masse - this might say more about how nasty are weapons in StarCraft universe rather than how shitty is armor there, or more likely it's how real world armor works. In fact, some of the fluff describes it as existing more to protect the wearer from the recoil of the [[Gauss]] than anything else. In addition, Starcraft armor is primarily ablative - no armor in the game renders anything in the game immune to damage. In Heart of the Swarm game terms, consider a fully upgraded marine, marauder, reaper, and ghost:

The marine has 55 hit points and armor 3. On a per-hit basis, he takes 6 damage from a marine's assault rifle, 4 from a reaper's pistol,10 from a marauder's grenade launcher, 23 from a ghost's sniper rifle, and 25 from the sniper rifle when the ghost psionically charges the round.
The reaper is almost identical, but his armor is thicker - he has 60 hit points, so it takes 2 more pistol rounds (one more salvo, since they fire both pistols at once) to put him down.
The ghost's armor is substantially more impressive. Not only does he have 100 hit points, he takes less *base* damage from sniper rifles - 10, rather than 23, so it takes 10 sniper rounds, not 3, to kill him. However, he takes extra damage from psionically charged rounds - 50, enough to kill him in a mere 2 rounds.
The marauder has the thickest armor of the lot: 125 hit points and armor 4, with reduced sniper damage - but his armor is weak to grenades. His spread is 5 from the assault rifle, 3 from the pistol, 9 from the sniper rifle base, 25 from empowered sniper rounds, and 22 from the grenade launcher. This means he'll die in 6 grenades like a marine or reaper, compared to the ghost dying in 10 grenades, but will last much longer against the other three weapons.

Other variants exist, based on specialised functions. Medics wear a light armor that isn't designed for combat, but which carries advanced field surgical equipment and even some minor cybernetic construction equipment, allowing them to patch up wounded troopers and fix their busted armor. More visually distinctive is a model of power armor worn by Firebats. The armor is much bulkier than the standard armor, which keep in mind was already similar in size to terminator armor, especially in Starcraft II, where the thing's arms and pauldrons are bigger than its legs. Since the the armor's bulk makes it thicker, it can take far more abuse than the regular armor. As the name of unit might indicate, the armor uses a pair of built-in flamethrowers. The armor worn by Marauders in Starcraft II looks almost identical apart from a change in color, and has the same durability, but in place of flamethrowers uses grenade launchers that are best used against armor. The visual similarity between the two is neatly explained by the fact Marauder armor is rebuilt and repurposed Firebat armor. Despite the armors' size (and concomitantly longer legs), the guys using them are just as slow as regular marines. A third type of armor is made for Reapers, which looks similar to [[Assault Marines]] except their jetpacks are bigger.

Less well known, but still present, is the armor worn by the Protoss. This advanced alien armor, although considerably more "ceremonial-looking" than Terran armors, is actually significantly more durable. Not only is it comprised of more resilient materials, but it contains built-in devices that convert the bearer's psionic energy into a forcefield; though this is depleted by absorbing damage, it will eventually regenerate, if the user survives. Presumably, it also provides environmental protection, though that may have something to do with the fact that the Protoss' alien biology makes them hardier than humans. The common "Zealot" armor also has wrist-mounted devices that can focus psionic energy into energy-blades, which they use to rip 'n' tear shit. Dark Templars use similar devices to create "void blades", whose alien energies are one of the few things that can permanently kill "ruler" type Zerg such as Cerebrates.

== Metroid Power Armor==
AKA the "Power Suit" or "Chozo Power Suit", and one of the most powerful armor on this list. Like Starcraft, pretty much every scrub gets a power suit in Metroid (especially if you're with the Galactic Federation), but the main character's suit is the one you probably want to know about. [[Samus Aran]]'s armor is like a wearable, form fitting [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Titan]], designed by [[Lord of Change|magic bird people]] who took Samus in after her parents were killed. It completely kicks the shit out of basically ''all'' other technology in the Metroid universe; while a Federation plasma cannon is as powerful as a charged shot of Samus's Plasma Beam (which slices through aliens like a knife through warm butter), it's also nearly as big as a person, takes several minutes to charge, and requires a heavy power pack, while the proper Plasma Beam is integrated with all of Samus's other weaponry into her forearm-sized cannon, takes ''seconds'' to charge, absorbs ambient atmospheric energy to function, and is so energy-efficient it doesn't dip into her suit's resources whatsoever.

But that's not all, it's ridiculously modular and can accept pretty much any piece of technology ever and turn it into an upgrade, even if the Chozo had never once encountered the technology in question! Samus doesn't have any idea of how this works either [[Derp|but more or less all she knows about the suit and its functions is that it works.]]

When fully upgraded to end-game status, the Chozo suit shits all over every other suit here like a pigeon with precision diarrhea. The only real flaw in its design is that it is stupid easy to knock all of its power ups and reset to default -- Samus never manages to hold onto her upgrades between games. Like all Power Armours worth their name it also has [[pauldrons]]; the default pauldrons are actually pretty small, but add a Varia upgrade (where some materials have listed the pauldrons as a cooling system associated with the upgrade) and she can shame even the most ridiculous Space Marine.

== Halo Power Armor ==
[[File:Spartan.jpg|200px|thumb|right|Spartan MJOLNIR armour]]
Most people think of the Spartan power armor when they are asked about Halo. These suits cost as much as a UNSC ship and have the decency to protect the wearer from [[What|multiple Fuel Rod shots, despite being penetrated by a single pistol shot]]...inconsistency aside the Spartan power armor is in between the strengths of a Astartes power armor and the Terran power armor. Unlike most other armors, the enhanced speed and strength given by these things is too much for an ordinary human; anybody other than the Spartans, who underwent genetic enhancements, ends up getting mutilated in the armor just by trying to move in it. Other power armor in Halo includes both the Brute and Elite combat harness which boosts their already insane strength (twice that of a human of the same mass for elites, about two or so tons for a Brute) and reaction time (although Brutes tend to be a bit more sluggish than humans).

More noteworthy perhaps for the fact it does not cost as much as a spacecraft, does not have pauldrons the size of the user's head and is implied to be halfway to efficient or practical(if you took away its active ingredient, the shield generator) and is used by the SAS in SPEHSS is the ODST armour, which has both better data analyst equipment than the MJOLNIR and suspiciously similar play style to the piece of junk used in halo 1.

Of course there are the Forerunner Combat-Skins, but putting them here on the list would shit over any power armor listed there. How powerful are they? Enough that they could shrug off multiple melta-level bombs, fall off and survive a Slipspace rift without a scratch, tanking weapons that could dwarf most WH40K, Starcraft and Halo small-arms altogether, can command up to a million attack drones, and can shut-off your brain like a switch. However, in a setting where battlefleets can blow up planets and combat mechs can level cities (which are the size of continents), they are very tame in comparison.

It is also worth noting that Forerunner armor comes in mini-mecha and form-fitting varieties. Most of the above is for the mini-mecha, while form-fitting armor seems to be substantially less impressive.

== Metal Gear Exoskeleton ==
The Metal Gear series has featured exosuits throughout the series. While not very /tg/-ish, they do deserve a spot on this list for being either [[Indrick Boreale|balls-out wacky]] to [[Gabriel Seth|Complete awesome]].

===Solidus' Powered armor===
Solidus Snake, the third clone of the Sons of Big Boss, has a powered armor suit that allows him to enlarge his muscles at will, enhancing his strength and speed. He can also shrink them back down to allow him to fit into smaller spaces or appear naturally. [[/d/|It also has a pair of tentacles to shoot missiles and choke people.]].

===Cyborg Exosuits===
After the fall of the patriots, cyborg technology became prevalent. With CNT muscle fiber being as cheap to produce as plastic; just about every mercenary insane enough, opted to be augmented and encased in one of these things. Pioneered by The Patriots, the armor enhances the wearer's strength, agility, and survivability to absurd levels; turning them into [[Eversor|an unstoppable murder machine that will completely wreck the shit out of anything it faces]].

The caveat to this is that majority of cyborgs are....messed up. While some accepted augmentation willingly to enhance their abilities (and are thus, able to come into terms to their new life), there are a lot more who were only forced to undergo cyborg transformation, largely due to desperation or against their will. And those who don't accept the path of being murder on legs after augmentation don't really have a choice in it; recipients can be injected with fear-inhibiting nanomachines that will force them to fight, regardless of the circumstances, [[grimdark|all the while their inner self is trapped screaming in their mind and is unable to stop themselves]].

Some of the more notable examples include: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pWjrHIbss8 Gray Fox, the original recipient of this armor], was resurrected from the dead against his will and became a guinea pig for further experimentation in grafting exoskeletons onto people, particularly finding no reason to live and suffering painful feedback effects from the imperfect system.

Raiden, the more popular surviving recipien, was captured against their will, had nothing but his brains removed from their his body and had what's left of his head and brain placed on a cyborg body. He's known to [[awesome|throw titan-sized Metal Gears into the air]] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RypphRK14t8 before slicing them to ribbons before they land]. Other lulzy feats include [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzfYcwo7Wtw fighting, ''suplexing'', and ripping the arm off a Metal Gear the size of a Warhound Titan to engage it in a duel and destroy it.]

== Iron man's suit ==

Probably the most well known Power Armor suit in fiction. At its high end, Iron man's suit is flat out superior to anything in nonserialized science fiction short of a few cheese builds from role playing games, but hey comic books, even allowing him to fight Odinforce Thor, who mind you, has the power of a being who can destroy galaxies as the side effect of his fights. Sure his standard suits may be beaten by weaker stuff but if he really sets his mind to it, the things Tony can build are essentially magic contained in metal and [[Get shit done|get shit done!]]

== Destroyer Armor ==

Perhaps the snazziest and most powerful armor in fiction. This creation of Odin (Marvel Universe version) cannot be damaged by anything less powerful than Odin himself and can destroy just about anything weaker than Odin in a single hit. Forerunner suit, Chozo suit? HAH. This is made by gods who actually feel godlike. Crafted by someone who could eradicate entire galaxies as a side effect of his fights to battle even more powerful beings. Accept no substitutes, this is the finest power armor you'll ever find that does not ascend you to Celestial wonkyness. Even if it does run on magic.

Humorously, the things it was design for, to fight [[C'Tan| Celestials]] fails as they just one shot it the second it shows up.

== Strike Legion ==

[[Strike Legion]] has teraton pistols, Uzis that can outgun all of WH40K and planet busting grenades. You can survive those in one of these babies. [[Meme|''Like a bauss.'']] Even the weakest ones have built in shield generators and flight capabilities. That is really all that needs to be said. They are also mass produced. Like, standard issue level mass produced. By factions that can outnumber the Imperium of Man.

== X-COM ==
[[File:NXCom.jpg|right|200px|thumb|XCOM operatives in Titan armor]]
[[File:MEC.png|right|200px|thumb|A trio of MEC troopers with kinetic pilebunker fists and minigun. Yes, you can make your own [[Terminator]] squad using MEC upgrades.]]
[[X-COM]] always had high-tech armor, but only two of these were actual power armored suits in the first game. The first one is the "Titan" armored suit, a heavy personal powered armor suit composed of alien alloys. These could drastically reduce damage, give the wearer increased strength and stamina, and were fully sealed from the outside-environment and had an array life-support systems, so the wearer was immune to poison, fire, and getting chocked to death. The other is the "Archangel" armor, while only about as durable as medium carapace armor, it instead sported a personal jetpack that allowed the user to hover and fly for limited amounts of time until they ran out of fuel. It was still sealed and possessed the same life support systems as the Titan armor.

However, in the ''Enemy Within'' expansion to the 2012 remake. This came in the form '''M'''echanized '''E'''xoskeleton '''C'''ybersuit troopers, or "MECs" for short. Departing from the usual type of armor, these require a considerable amount of cybernetic enhancements through the use of the game's Meld resource to use, which in game is shown in that MEC troopers have much of their body replaced with cybernetics (they basically look like smaller version of Robocop, minus the helmet) to interface with MECs; Giant powered-armor suits capable of carrying an array of powerful weapons, one of which is a giant fist weapon that can insta-kill just about almost anything it hits.

The pay-off far that is enormous, however. Unlike other low ranking soldiers in X-COM, the MEC troopers are extremely durable (to compensate for their size meaning they can't use cover.), and can use the most powerful guns in the game, that only the MEC's strength and durability allows them to use. Additionally, additional rank-up abilities and suit upgrades will further make MECs much more lethal as they progress through the ranks.

However, while MECs are incredibly powerful, they are not invincible. They are like XCOM's equivalent of tanks, and much like tanks, they tend to draw the biggest amount of enemy fire in the map (This is especially made more problematic by the fact that even the aliens' basic plasma pistol can be a threat to MECs and the enemy AI will usually prioritize anyone not in cover.), very limited ammunition stores that forces frequent reloads, and overall [[Imperial Guard|tend to lose against numbers where they're simply drowned by the sheer amount of attacks that come their way]]. Thus, relying completely on MECs isn't the best strategy, it is always best to supplement MECs with some infantry troops for support.

== Warmachine ==
[[File:PIP33007 500.jpeg|200px|thumb|right|A Khador Man-O-War Shocktrooper]]
[[Warmachine]] has had a number of different armors that technically qualify as power armor (almost all warcaster armor, for instance, includes enhancements to the wearer's strength and speed fueled by their magic), but probably the closest (and likely most famous) thing it has to traditional power armor is [[Khador]]'s Man-O-War armor. Designed because Khador found it the lack of materials to make cortexes for its [[Warjack]]s meant even with the effort it put into building its jacks to last, it had a problem with still having a lot of resources it wasn't using and its lack of any cheaper jacks meant the jacks it had tended to be too badly outnumbered. To compensate for these problems, they designed huge suits of armor that would allow the wearers to function almost like pseudo-Warjacks. The Man-O-War functions the same way Khador's jacks do: it's slow, heavily armored, and hits really hard when it gets in close. [[Fluff]] wise there's a problem with the built in boilers releasing steam where it shouldn't go and killing the wearer, but this doesn't show up in gameplay since it would make them too unreliable (plus it only happens when they're damaged enough, depending on the addition to the game). Not that they care as they gladly DIE IN STEAM!! Since the armor is still expensive to manufacture, Khador only allows its veteran troops to wear it, meaning they possess high skill with melee weapons.

While the Man-O-War is an industrialized solution to lacking mechanical brains for light warjack-production, they are not the only power armours in the [[Iron Kingdoms]]: Some very exentric mechaniks actually build their own armour called "Ironhead armour". Though the Man-O-War-armour is big and scary, these tend to be even larger and impractical, and are usually build so only the bearer can use it properly. The use for these is everything from mechaniks-work to warfare, as proved by Captain Dominic Darius of Cygnar, who actually build himself a small, wearable light 'jack which in turn creates new miniature 'jacks called Halfjacks as long as he activates the thing. The thing is a four-ton heavy machine, that births smaller machines at all times. I couldn't make this shit up.

Also, the [[Iron Kingdoms]] RPG allows players to own these armours - The Gods, Nations and Kings expansion allows for the use of Man-O-War armour and career, and the 52# issue of [[No Quarter]] has rules for your own custom-build murdermachine of steel and awesome.

== Star Wars ==
The [[Star Wars]] Expanded Universe has had some minor power armor use. The iconic stormtrooper armor is unpowered, but the "zero-G assault stormtrooper" or "spacetrooper" armor is a set of powered armor that is worn over stormtrooper armor and may have been associated with the dark trooper armor with was bigger and several dozen times more strength enhancing and protective but so unlucky it attracted the most deadly of jedi forces in mere seconds and was canceled for that reason. It incorporates a set of thrusters and other integrated weapons. Visually, it looks a bit like a cross of [[Terminator]] armor and NASA's Manned Maneuvering Unit, with a goofy, oversized stormtrooper helmet.

These were all based off mandalorian armor which was more streamlined and effective than storm trooper armor but also more expensive.

Power armor isn't used as much due to how useless armor is in the universe compare to plot armor.

There's also the Phase III Dark Troopers, which functioned as both automated robot infantry or could be worn as Power Armor, and was pretty much 40K Terminator Armor that wasn't hunched over, and had a built-in jetpack along with fun stuff like micromissiles.

Sadly, like all cool things in the Star Wars universe, it shows up for just a couple games and books, then gets immediately destroyed and you never use it.

== Real Life ==
[[File:Powered Exoskeleton.jpg|thumb|right|250px|DARPA exoskeleton going through it's paces in a rather literal sense]]
[[File:RLpowerarmour.jpg|thumb|left|250px|TALOS Power armour.]]
While they are still some ways off from producing a fully functional power suit, there is interest in the idea. Some people are now looking into making functional powered exoskeletons, this includes some guys in Japan and the US government. The basic idea works well enough, but there are still in the experimental phases and while they got the basics of the "power" part down they have yet to add the armor.

Even so, they still have a fair bit to go since the batteries for these things have at most a few hours of juice. Still, the first airplane's flight only was about 35 meters.

They're the only Superpower ability that aren't fictional(or at least Considered Pseudoscience IRL)

When they do ger armour, it will probably look like fallout power armour.

== Gallery ==
<gallery>
File:IronHandsMarkI.jpg|Mark I Thunder Armour
File:IronHandsMarkII.jpg|Mark II Crusade Armour
File:IronHandsMarkIII.jpg|Mark III Iron Armour
File:IronHandsMarkIV.jpg|Mark IV Maximus Armour
File:IronHandsMarkV.jpg|Mark V Heresy Armour
File:IronHandsMarkVI.jpg|Mark VI Corvus Armour
File:IronHandsMarkVII.jpg|Mark VII Aquila Armour
File:IronHandsMarkVIII.jpg|Mark VIII Errant Armour
File:Power Armour Components.png|Diagram of Aquila armour components.
File:Terran marine cutout.jpg|It actually fits! Still a bit unsure about those hips though.
File:Newsletter vision study.jpg|Eternal Crusade concept art. Again, fitting real snugly.

</gallery>

[[Category:Space Marines]]
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]

Fallout

2015-11-16T12:01:00Z

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''"War, war never changes."''

-Ron Pearlman

'''Fallout''' is a post-post-apocalyptic game series that takes place in America about a century or two in the future where America had been bombed so much that it has been left as a rotting, smelly and depressing wasteland that happens to have '''high as fuck raiders''' come up to you and attempt to have anal with a chainsaw or a laser weapon.

Despite the setting, most of the games are fairly [[noblebright]], with a darkly humorous streak and a series-long theme of rebuilding.

==Plot and Setting==
For those wanting an in-depth analysis of the Fallout storyline, the "Fallout Storyteller" Youtube series has a large number of episodes dealing with the subject and can be viewed [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvqm_pPD-aQ&list=PL7pGJQV-jlzD17YNNbt103xp0PkkUCoPU here].

Basically, post-apocalyptic America was filled with what seems to be... 50's-60's art style and pop culture humor.

Transistors were invented in 2067 rather than 1947, and humanity encountered alien technology around the time of World War 2 resulting in a society with computers that barely had 1MB of data storage and television was still black and white, but robots would clean your house and police your neighborhood while you yourself could own a disintegration ray hanging above the mantlepiece in case undesirables move into your neighborhood.

Some events still happened, such as Ronald Reagan and Nixon both becoming president. Others, such as the entire world running out of oil all at once, didn't. The US still landed on the moon in '69, but set up a moonbase and fought a war against aliens. Vietnam occurred, but the United States openly participated in combat operations rather than simply attempt to defend the South. There are other divergences that occurred much earlier as well (possibly because aliens were monitoring and abducting humans throughout Fallout history) evidenced by the altered architecture in Washington DC. Hippies and McCarthyism remained right up until the end.

The United States reorganized itself into 13 commonwealths with the states functioning as counties and the old Maryland Cowpens Flag with 13 stars replaced the Old Glory 50 stars.
The US progressed through the women's liberation and civil rights movements so by the time of the bombs falling racism and sexism were mostly forgotten.

One of the biggest differences is the miniaturization of nuclear reactors in Fallout, to the point that everything from cars to ammo cartridges for laser weapons have them. The cars that still remain, mostly no longer functional, actually explode in a mushroom cloud if damaged sufficiently.

During the lead-up to the end of the world, oil became the major resource in the world as supplies dried up. The Middle East oil reserves were drained dry and the region ceased to matter on a global scale when they pooled their uranium into weapons stockpiles and gave the world a preview of what was to come.
Europe had united into the "European Commonwealth" rather than the European Union, but when the Middle East blew itself away they turned inwards in petty wars over remaining resources until they had depleted themselves and ceased to matter on a global scale .
The same thing happened to the Soviet Union, leaving only the United States and China as the remaining superpowers, which stood alone. Alaska became the only source of oil left on Earth resulting in the last great war occurring between China and the United States for control of it. The US annexed Canada in its entirety, turning it into one giant mobilization center to retain the great white Northwest. The South American nations were left to fend for themselves.
China, rather than deploy the expected numerical superiority, focused on small elite teams utilizing advanced stealth technology while the United States deployed atomic-powered robots and advanced powered armors that contained commandos.

To advance their chances of victory, the US took the greatest minds of the world and created a secret facility contained underneath a mountain which was dubbed "Big Mountain" that lay somewhere in the deserts of the American southwest. There, scientists churned out amazing works straight out of science fiction from technology that could keep a brain alive in a jar forever to teleportation to cracking the secrets of the Chinese stealth suits. They were given ample numbers of Chinese prisoners of war to experiment on, as well as American citizens (and hippies) who were disappeared during the paranoia of the extended Cold War. Despite the high casualties and useless horrors that came out of the Big MT, the six executives in charge of the site were given unlimited authority within. Towards the end of the Resource War there was significant development of biological agents which would give a boost to the performance of ordinary soldiers; these were highly toxic, highly mutagenic substances called the "Forced Evolutionary Virus" or FEV and never resulted in a breakthrough. Although the war ended with the United States victorious, many foresaw the coming of the end as both sides built up their arsenals.

The Enclave, a secret Illuminati society which controlled the world governments (other than China), planned on allowing humanity to survive the oncoming destruction of all things that they believed was coming. They began building secret facilities which would serve as city-sized bomb shelters to allow them and their families plus a small select community to ride out the apocalypse, but many questions remained about how to rebuild. To study the psychological effects of living in giant underground vaults well in advance they set up a dummy corporation called "Vault-tec" which offered a place in shelters nearly identical to those belonging to the Enclave all over the United States. For a modest fee, citizens could purchase a place within these Vaults in the event of an imminent nuclear attack. Vault-tec hadn't predicted just how paranoid the people of the US had become, and as a result places filled up extremely fast. Those who couldn't get a place in the Vaults began coming up with alternatives, from personal fallout shelters to finding safe places for themselves and their communities to retreat to once the bombs fell.

Each Vault was put entirely in the hands of a Vault-tec employee called an Overseer, and most Vaults were actually sabotaged with some fatal flaw. These ranged from simple things like giving a population access to a large number of small weapons and encouraging them to see guns as an integral way of life while having a massive armory full of artillery and explosives that they were forbidden from accessing, to a Vault with a damaged seal on the door to let in radiation and see the longterm effects on humans, to a Vault with 1000 men and one woman and another with 1000 women and one man. Control Vaults also existed as a basis of comparison for all results.
The Enclave planned on using a false alarm nuclear attack to drive populations into the Vaults then keep them contained while studying the populations. But the actual nuclear apocalypse occurred much sooner than expected. What happened to cause it isn't known and who fired first isn't either, but the United States and China both unleashed their nuclear arsenals at each other.
What the effects on the rest of the world were is unknown as the games take place entirely within the United States, but the US was devastated.

The people in the Vaults hid away within, all suffering from the experiments needlessly with most Vaults falling to catastrophe as a result. The people who didn't get into a Vault attempted to survive as best they could. Most of those who did manage to escape annihilation had hidden in mountains, natural caves, or wilderness so far from civilization no bombs were launched at them.

Some property of the people in the Fallout universe results in some humans that receive radiation turns them sterile and causes them to lose the skin from their muscles rather than die horrible deaths like real life humans do. These people are called Ghouls, and they were known about before the bombs fell as the United States had done horrible experiments on people to satisfy the Enclave's paranoia. Some Ghouls lose all hints of their humanity and go feral, acting as animals and attacking everything that isn't another Ghoul with abandon while some Ghouls retain their intelligence, being exactly the same as they were prior (often a little grumpier, and in some cases...hornier). Ghouls are no longer harmed by radiation, and in fact receive some kind of nourishment from it. All Ghouls, regardless of intelligence, are immortal unless killed with violence and their bodies regenerate when irradiated. Perks that player characters can take in Fallout 4 suggest that some normal-looking individuals have taken on Ghoul characteristics, although it's equally possible to just be more flavorful description of an old Fallout standard Perk.

The humans who didn't turn into Ghouls mostly became tribals with varying degrees of friendliness and/or savagery. Few tribes retained the civilized knowledge from before and were oftentimes extremely hostile to those they encounter although many can be civilized through friendly contact with educated peoples.

Eighty four years after the bombs fell, Vault 13 in California opened and one of the Dwellers was sent to find a water purification chip to replace the malfunctioning one in their Vault. This is the story of Fallout 1.

The Vault Dweller (the canon name of the Fallout 1 protagonist) had many adventurers, and uncovered the secrets of a new race in the Wasteland; Super Mutants. The Forced Evolutionary Virus was one of the bioagents the Think Tank had discovered while attempting to create a type of super soldier to win the war against China, and was stored in various places when the bombs fell. The FEV turned some humans into giant hulks, many with reduced mental capacities although some were as intelligent as any other human variant. Like Ghouls, Super Mutants are immortal and healed by radiation. When a human who fell into an FEV vat and merged with a super computer studied the Super Mutants, he decided that they would be the new master race of the world and began to organize their numbers while having them abduct more humans to dip into FEV. Only those with no exposure to the Wasteland resulted in the pure Super Mutant strain he desired, and he took the name "The Master" while planning his glorious future. In time he created a cult of humans called Children of the Cathedral who turned the surface of his great facility into a church. After stopping The Master (possibly simply by pointing out that Super Mutants are sterile, possibly with a lot of dakka) the Vault Dweller returned to his Vault with the water chip only to be exiled forever. Many chose to follow the Vault Dweller, heading out with their action Moses into the Wastes where they founded a city called Arroyo in Oregon.

Many years later in Fallout 2, the Vault Dweller's descendant called the "Chosen One" was sent to discover their ancestor's legacy and retrieve a lost piece of technology called a "Garden Of Eden Creation Kit" or "GECK" from one of the Vaults to turn Arroyo into a verdant paradise (supposedly). This lead the Chosen One on a journey where they discovered the Enclave had become active, causing immense misery to the Wasteland. They believed only those who had survived in an Enclave Vault to be worthy of inheriting the future with the tribals, mutants, and survivors of the Vault-tec Vaults as obstacles and threats. The Chosen One defeated them by blowing up their base of operations, an old oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was once the base of operations of the Poseidon Energy company that ran the bulk of the gas stations in the United States at one point. Along the way they helped a small local government in the town of Shady Sands establish themselves, which eventually became the New California Republic. One of the factions helping the Chosen One was the Brotherhood of Steel.

In Fallout Tactics, the Brotherhood of Steel began inducting tribes into its ranks in small numbers while defending the Wasteland against threats ranging from an army of renegade robots. The main group of the Brotherhood is separated from this group, which takes over Vault 0 and continues pushing eastwards. Although the bulk of Fallout Tactics is non-canon, the basic story remained.

In Fallout 3, the Lone Wanderer is the name of the protagonist and they leave Vault 101 after their father escapes the Vault in order to see the Wasteland restored to a livable state. They fight for control of Washington DC to wrest it from the grip of slaver tribals, the Enclave, and the various horrors created by FEV. They enlist the aid of the splinter Brotherhood group from Fallout Tactics in order to activate a GECK and restore the old US capital. Originally the Vault Dweller or an important storyline character died at the end from radiation poisoning, but a patch later made the player survive. In DLC content, the Lone Wanderer participated in a virtual simulation of the Battle of Anchorage between the US and China before the bombs fell in order to give the eastern Brotherhood access to a pre-war armory. They also traveled to Pittsburgh, now called "The Pitt", a former and current slavery operation in order to save the people there from tyrant and mutagenic degenerative disease resulting in horrible cave monsters in a very Mad Max storyline. They also journeyed to Point Lookout in Florida to deal with pre-war maniacs and vicious cannibal tribals. The Lone Wanderer then assisted the Brotherhood of Steel in wiping out the last of the eastern Enclave. At some point they entered an alien craft called "Mothership Zeta" that had been storing objects and humans stolen from throughout Earth's history, leading the abducted peoples in wiping out the aliens onboard the ship and taking it for themselves.

In Fallout: New Vegas, the player is known as the "Courier" and was shot in the head while taking the strange package of a poker chip made of pure platinum to New Vegas, which was the parts of Las Vegas that survived the bombs falling due to the Howard Hughes of the Fallout universe named "Mr. House" installing lasers on top of various buildings that neutralized the bombs as they fell. The player discovered that Mr. House had planned to survive the apocalypse suspended in a tank of fluid and thus timelessly immortal within it while controlling an army of robots. His robots were never activated as the control chip was lost when the bombs fell, so he used his robots to search for it for many years. After finding it he set about the task of ensuring it was brought to him while organizing the tribals into three groups that ran New Vegas casinos just like they ran before the war. He also booted out the inhabitants of the nearby Vault 21 (which studied the effects of gambling) and filled it with cement to protect the controls of his robot army. While the chip made its way to him, the New California Republic and a group of horrifyingly violent tribals called Caesar's Legion clashed for control of Hoover Dam. The Courier reclaimed the chip, then either sided with the NCR, Mr. House, Caesar's Legion, or simply took control of Vegas for themselves using the plan of the man who shot them to do the same. In any event other than Mr. House controlling the army he dies, and whoever is picked takes full control both of the Dam and New Vegas itself. In DLC content the Courier journeyed to Utah where they helped save two groups of peaceful tribals from a third group that had the backing of Caesar's Legion, then traveled to a hotel called the Sierra Madre full of advanced technology which had been blanketed in a deadly fog after the bombs fell and was coerced under threat of death by an insane renegade leader of the western Brotherhood of Steel to get into the secret vault, where they sealed him forever either to stop his plot to wipe out and enslave the Wasteland or simply for revenge. They then traveled to the Big MT, where they were dissected and replaced with robot parts by the insane executives from before the Great War who had converted themselves into robots controlled by brain jars. The Courier either destroyed the scientists or made him/herself their leader (possibly leaving their own brain behind to keep them all out of trouble). The final journey of the Courier was to The Divide, an old area of Nevada full of military bases that had contained the nuclear arsenal of the United States. Another courier calling himself Ulysses that had served almost every faction in the middle American Wasteland that had gone quite insane had lured the Courier there, as the travel of the Courier had provided enough economy for the people there to build a community before accidentally delivering a detonator which later blew up the people there. The Courier then either killed or recruited Ulysses and either prevented a nuclear launch or obliterated their enemies with an atomic payload.

In Fallout 4, the player character was a man or woman from before the bombs fell living in Boston, Massachusetts and had escaped to Vault 111 with their husband/wife and infant child when the first nuclear detonations began. This character is called the "Sole Survivor", and entered a Wasteland controlled by the eastern Brotherhood of Steel as well as many separate communities with their own eccentricities gained from the places they chose to settle at (from an American Revolutionary theme to a baseball culture). The story revolves around The Institute, which creates androids similar to Blade Runner Replicants which are hated and feared by almost every other group.

==Factions==

* '''New California Republic:''' The self-styled successor to the United States of America, the New California Republic started as an alliance of small settlements in northern California that now flies the flag of the two-headed bear. Through diplomacy and vigorous expansion, NCR controls most of old California and is currently (as of 2281) expanding into Nevada, intent on acquiring Hoover Dam to provide electricity to its citizens. NCR believes in liberty and justice for all, but staggers under its own bureaucracy, the corruption that comes with it, and high taxes. It is, by all means, the nicest of the larger nations, providing support to their citizens in return for relatively heavy taxes and following strict laws. The NCR grew out of an alliance of settlements, including Shady Sands (which later became the capital city), Vault City, the Hub, Redding, and Klamath. Because of them, the West is largely a safe place to live, but many individual towns aren't too happy about their desire to take everything for themselves. Their military is based on the Pre-War US military, but with a more tribal feel; normal troops are volunteers and conscripts from around the west, while the Rangers are the Special Ops unit, taking on any tasks too delicate, tough, or convoluted to be resolved with raw power (they also wear the ''bad ass'' Ranger Combat Armour from the front of the Fallout: NV box). The Nevada branch also took to using Heavy Troopers with big guns and salvaged power armour from their war with the Brotherhood, which, while cool, isn't as protective as the real deal, and loads heavier, too.

* '''The Brotherhood of Steel:''' Originally a group of US Army personnel who announced their desertion days before the bombs fell, the Brotherhood of Steel has evolved (or devolved) into a neo-chivalric order devoted to acquiring and maintaining the technology of the old world. The Brotherhood is divided into three major orders: the Scribes analyze and manufacture technology, and the Paladins and Knights form the core of the Brotherhood's military strength (the equivalent of officers and enlistees). Although they have the second-highest technology level of any faction in North America, the Brotherhood is slowly dying thanks to a combination of attrition, an unwillingness to recruit from the outside world, and generally being assholes to outsiders.
** The only order that actually is capable of surviving is the '''Midwest Brotherhood of Steel''' and the East Coast (D.C.) '''Capital Wasteland detachment'''. Not only did the Midwest guys opened up towards taking in new recruits from humans, but also include ghouls, deathclaws, super mutants, and the only robot that is not trying to murder people all the time, thus making them less asshole than the rest of the Brotherhood. These guys offer protections to people in return for fresh recruits and supplies. They rule like feudal lords over the Midwest, but they keep the place safe and humans and mutants actually like them. In the East coast, the Capital Wasteland detachment has [[awesome|fortified the ruined Pentagon]], making it their base of operations, and are actively protecting the surrounding settlements in the area by engaging super mutants and helping to distribute clean water to the people.
** Most chapters (all but the Midwest, really) also really hate mutants. This was fine when all super mutants were under command of the Master, but they also like killing ghouls (who are some of the nicest people in the series) and post-Master (read: civil and peaceful, although a bit mad if a Nightkin) super mutants. A notable exception was Jacob, a Paladin who befriended a super mutant named Marcus after getting into a fight with him. Marcus renamed the Mount Charleston ski lodge Jacobstown in his honor.

* '''Caesar's Legion:''' Caesar, the self-styled son of Mars, the God of War, has united eighty-six tribes under his banner (the bull) in Arizona, with undisputed territorial claims stretching as far west as the Colorado River. The Legion does not engage in diplomacy beyond "Join us or die." The Legion completely assimilates the people it conquers, destroying their old ways of life. To become citizens of the Legion means to throw away your heritage and traditions for security, prosperity, and continued existence. The Legion's army is a slave army composed solely of able-bodied men, owned entirely by Caesar. Women are confined to domestic roles and sexual slavery. The discovery of Hoover Dam brought the Legion into direct conflict with the NCR, which drives the story of ''New Vegas''.

* '''Followers of the Apocalypse:''' Despite the ominous name, the Followers are the most chill faction in the wasteland. They are devoted to understanding the mistakes of the past, helping people survive the harsh present, and building toward a noblebright future. While the Followers were instrumental in the formation of the New California Republic, they split over disagreements about the state's future and NCR poached many of the Followers' top people to staff their new Office of Science and Industry. Without NCR's backing, the Followers are chronically under-funded and over-worked, but hold on to their ideals in the face of harsh realities. Usually. There's one notable exception, a guy named Edward Sallow. His entry is right above this one.

* '''The Enclave:''' The Enclave's leadership is comprised of the descendants of US government officials from the Great War. They are the most technologically-advanced faction in the wasteland and take pride in being the only uncontaminated, mutation-free strain of humanity left outside the Vault experiments. Like the Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave arms its soldiers with energy weapons and advanced armor systems and are generally jerks to the world at large. Unlike the Brotherhood, the Enclave are willing to innovate and work with outsiders. Unfortunately for those outsiders, "work with" generally means "enslave and work to death." They got properly curbstomped in ''Fallout 2'' and ''3'', and are as of 2188 almost eradicated from the wasteland, save a few stubborn survivors.

* '''New Vegas:''' Thanks to billionaire industrialist Robert House, Las Vegas had a missile defense grid so it and the surrounding area survived the Great War mostly unscathed. Drawing power from the Hoover Dam and fresh water from Lake Mead, New Vegas is a small but successful community built primarily on providing entertainment to NCR citizens. As of 2281, House is still in control of Vegas. He maintains his iron grip on the three "rehabilitated" tribes that run the three major casinos with his Securitron robots. The people of New Vegas are secure from outside threats, but House demands absolute obedience and does not seem to care about the state of Freeside, the crime-ridden neighborhood built up outside the Strip.
** '''The Chairmen:''' Real cool gigs, baby, real cool. Rules the Tops Casino, they are the most cool and suave motherfuckers in Vegas. They mostly just play the rules and foster leaders who want to take over Vegas, all cool. They ain't no finks, dig?
** '''The Omertas:''' The leaders of the Gommorah Casino and Brothel, they ain't no damn low time criminals, see? They respect only their family and them Securitron of Houses', 'cause you don't wanna mess with the coppers. Sleazy bastards who are civilized only in appearance.
** '''The White Glove Society:''' The gentlemen and ladies of the Ultra-Luxe, they give only the most luxurious performance in whatever they do, be it their dresses (creepy porcelain-masks and pompous suits) or their cuisine, which ''definitely isn't human meat and never has been.''

** '''Freeside:''' House controls the Vegas Strip. This is all the other stuff, like how no one cares about the actual city of Las Vegas.
** '''The Kings:''' An exception to the 50s theme. Two guys found a place called 'The King's School of Impersonation', filled to the brim with Elvis impersonation stuff. They wore out the only tape of Elvis's voice they found so only Pacer and the newly-named The King talk like him. So on the outskirts of post-WW3 Las Vegas you have a gang based on Elvis impersonators. Actually decent; they were shoved out of Vegas proper but keep a little bit of order in Freeside.

* '''Shi:''' The Shi are focused around San Francisco. The Shi are led by the Emperor, though his chief adviser is the ''de facto'' head of the organization. The Emperor is actually the computer mainframe of the Chinese submarine ''Shi huang ti'', which washed up on shore after the Great War. Although the Shi prefer to remain apart from wasteland politics, they come into conflict with the Hubologists of San Francisco. They probably got conquered by the NCR.

* '''Hubologists:''' Scientologists with armor, guns, a spaceship, and porn stars instead of Tom Cruise. WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN THINKING INTERPLAY!?!?

* '''Tribals:''' Small independent tribes still persist in the wasteland. Some are peaceful, while others take to raiding and pillaging to survive or simply for lulz.
** '''Assorted Towns:''' Take some less-than-usually-ruined buildings, a bunch of people looking for a peaceful place to carve out a living, and a few guns, and you've got a city. Most towns have everything from ten to hundreds of citizens, and each one is often ruled by an unofficial leader of sorts (people rarely live long enough that it makes sense to elect some idiot). Notable cities are Megaton in Washington DC ([[Derp|a town build around an atom bomb that hasn't detonated yet]]), Shady Sands, Rivet City, Primm, Novac, and many others.
** '''New Caananites:''' Centered around the city of New Caanan in Utah, these bible-reading badasses kept Christianity alive with Tommy guns, .45s, and pure stubbornness until the White Legs razed the city to the ground and salted the earth. Now destroyed, their only surviving members are two guys of very different beliefs arguing over whether to save or to save a bunch of underdeveloped tribes in Zion. That is not a typo.
** '''Zion Tribes:''' The Dead Horses and the Sorrows are a bunch of real tribals who had reverted to something resembling Native American tribes. They are the tribes the aforementioned Caananites are arguing over.
** '''White Legs:''' A tribe based near Salt Lake City, the White Legs are trying to join Caesar's Legion. The price for joining the Legion is the destruction of New Canaan and all of its inhabitants. They succeeded at the first task, but two escaped their genocide and they followed them to Zion Canyon to finish the job. What they don't know is that Caesar will simply annihilate their culture and he's just using them to kill Joshua Graham. Dealing with them is the main plot of the ''New Vegas'' DLC campaign ''Honest Hearts''.
** '''The Great Khans:''' Formed by a cool guy named Papa Khan after the Chosen One murdered the New Khans (who were dicks), the Great Khans are one of the oldest raider groups in Fallout still active, about the same age as NCR as they both came from the same Vault. Unlike most raiders in the game, they're fairly friendly and figure it's better to just sell drugs and run protection rackets to villages than raiding. When they followed the old ways, the New Khans were led by the paranoid 90-year-old son of the leader of the Khans, who were the original group who came out of the Vault. They were also dicks who got stomped by the Vault Dweller. Their new leader Papa Khan was cool enough to stop all that dickery and replace it with drugs (although the Fiends, who get high on Khan drugs, make up for the lack of violence tenfold). The NCR still hates them, though, and the feeling is mutual due to a massacre at a Great Khan settlement that nobody wants to talk about.
* '''The Institution''': MIT turned evil. This is what happens when you don't play Big Mountain for laughs. For the past few decades been flooding the Commonwealth with robots.
*'''Minutemen''' An volunteer defence group made up of people all across Boston.

==Timeline==
*1945: Someone forgot to make the transistor and ultimately screwed it up for everyone
*2077: Humanity screwed up this year
*2161: The plot of Fallout 1, back when there was only about 3 deathclaws and lasers actually CUT
*2241: The Plot of Fallout 2, mega badassery and improvement off Fallout 1
*2277: The Plot of Fallout 3, the beginning of full 3D FPS, slow as fuck plasma weaponry and mega debuff power armor, also tried to turn up the Grimdark but failed
*2281: The plot of Fallout New Vegas, what Fallout 3 should have been.
*2299: The plot of Fallout 4, basically fixed everything Fallout 3 did wrong and added some new features to sweeten the deal.

==Technology==
Now, the weapons tech used in this can be explained in many, many ways, but the easiest way is to think of all the WH40K tech, but more convenient with the added bonus of not [[Plasma|blowing up in your face once in a while]] but with the downside of guns jamming every 3 seconds and [[Rage|guns that rot before your eyes]]. Still, the weapons tech can be badass in an alternate universe (if you accept the 37,933 year difference between the universes) so the fallout tech is still considered cool. The fallout universe also incorporates REAL LIFE GUNS into the series (and a whole bunch of them) such as the skorpion, MP5, MG60, M9, etc.
This then changes in the later games (and in the 1st, but that was the 1st) to 'Hunting Rifles', '10mm Sub-machine Guns' and 'Miniguns'. Oh well.
Its easier to just say the tech in fallout swings between Madmax weapons, to real weapons to 50's ray guns, to crazy shit like shotgun fist and a weapons that fire eight mini nukes (a shotgun of nukes if you will).
Also one of the deadliest weapons in the 2D games was a BB gun. No, really. Aim for the eyes.

As for armor, well... 
The majority of the wasteland has rags as 'armor' and a baseball glove as a 'pauldron', although some people have done better (and some creatures too). Let's go over the basics:
* '''NCR''' has your mass produced, easily recognizable uniform that has a desert color (no, not dessert, but I wish it did. That is, if the dessert wasn't so [[Rage|IRRADIATED!]]). The most technologically advanced armor they have is the other 'mass-produced-but-not-produced-as-much' NCR veteran combat amour, which is basically [[Awesome|riot armour with a trench coat over the top and a riot helmet with glowy eyes]], though they also have T-45d power amour with the tech ripped out of it so untrained users can wear it without killing themselves, leaving an empty and sad metal shell behind. Though they do put an AC in it.
* '''BoS''' has [[Power Armour#Fallout Power Armor|power amour]] (don't get your hopes up, this is ''Fallout'' power armour we're talking about).
* '''Legion''' has football gear since its the closest thing to roman armor they can find. Higher ups do have better armor, mostly just scrap-metal plates but a few like the Legate have [http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101105221411/fallout/images/b/be/LegateArmor.png sweet forged armor].
* '''Raiders''' have stuff stolen from: women they've raped, people they've slaughtered, houses they've raided, prospectors they've held up then slaughtered etc.
** '''Khans''' you get biker gear you bought with the drug money you make.
* '''The Enclave''' have power armor far superior to that of the brotherhood (still Fallout power armor)
* '''Various mercenaries''' have 'combat armour'. Supposedly the stuff average troops wore in actual military things. Usually mid-level gear for you in the games, and pretty decent when it comes to letting you not get killed.
*'''minutemen''' going with there colonial theme the minutemenhave made laser muskets.

==Notable People==
* '''Protagonists'''
** '''The Vault Dweller''': From Fallout 1. Sent out of Vault 13 to fix the 'water chip', ends up saving humanity (or at least the bits of it in that part of California).
** '''The Chosen One''': From Fallout 2, grandkid of the Vault Dweller. Foretold to do cool stuff, and does.
** '''The Warrior''': The Fallout Tactics main character. The player can create their own character like in the other games, but can also go with the presets called "Mick", "Snake", "Peter", "Wilma", or "Betty". All were Tribals recruited by the Brotherhood of Steel army that moved east, and by the end of their career was appointed General of the pacified Chicago.
** '''The Lone Wanderer''': From Fallout 3. East coast, lived in vault 101. No-one ever enters, no-one ever leaves. (Yeah, right. Plot kicks off when your dad bails on the place, and you follow him.) Until the Broken Steel DLC, it was possible to actually not survive the 'good' ending at the end.
** '''The Courier''': From Fallout: New Vegas. Not from a Vault at all, just some Courier who gets shot in the head by some hip creep in a chequered suit during the opening cutscene. You get better, then get to decide who controls Hoover Dam.
** '''The Sole Survivor''': From Fallout 4. Boston area, Vault 111. A pre-War American citizen, former army stiff who mustered out before the bombs dropped, and got thrown in cryo with most of the Vault members when they got in, oldest living person in the Fallout universe who isn't a mutant or a robot. Woken up by a couple of douchebags who shot their spouse and kidnapped their son, <s>starting the plot</s> who then knocked him out for a bit again, until he woke up and left, starting the plot CORRECTLY this time.
* '''Allies''':
** '''Mysterious Stranger''': Some guy in a trenchcoat and fedora (not a trilby mind you) who appears when protagonists who are extremely lucky need him to take a few shots at their foes then disappear again. In Fallout: New Vegas, a guitar playing man is hinted to be the Mysterious Stranger's son and carries his special pistol that he can give to the player. In Fallout 4, the Mysterious Stranger sticks around a bit longer and can actually be interacted with for a short time.
** '''Miss Fortune''': Same as the Mysterious Stranger, except as a woman wearing an elaborate showgirl costume who was only found around New Vegas.
** '''The Storyteller''': A character from a Youtube series, linked earlier in the article, that began as a voiceover presenting the lore of Fallout and turned into a full-time job for the creators as a Brotherhood of Steel gentleman who <strike>never shuts up</strike> tells everyone he meets the stories and history of the setting. due to fan request, he became a fully-voiced mod companion for Fallout: New Vegas who was quite pleased to meet the Courier he'd been telling folks about. Bethesda, current producers of the Fallout games, became quite fond of the project and are considering him for a legitimate addition to Fallout 4 (and thus canon) while the team works on the Fallout 4 mod and season 4 of the series (which is how he fits into Fallout 4, chasing an android/clone NCR experiment designed to recreate the Chosen One that has gone rogue and abducted a female NCR Ranger on its way to The Institute).

==See Also==
[[Brother Vinni]] for not-Fallout miniatures.

Fallout

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''"War, war never changes."''

-Ron Pearlman

'''Fallout''' is a post-post-apocalyptic game series that takes place in America about a century or two in the future where America had been bombed so much that it has been left as a rotting, smelly and depressing wasteland that happens to have '''high as fuck raiders''' come up to you and attempt to have anal with a chainsaw or a laser weapon.

Despite the setting, most of the games are fairly [[noblebright]], with a darkly humorous streak and a series-long theme of rebuilding.

==Plot and Setting==
For those wanting an in-depth analysis of the Fallout storyline, the "Fallout Storyteller" Youtube series has a large number of episodes dealing with the subject and can be viewed [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvqm_pPD-aQ&list=PL7pGJQV-jlzD17YNNbt103xp0PkkUCoPU here].

Basically, post-apocalyptic America was filled with what seems to be... 50's-60's art style and pop culture humor.

Transistors were invented in 2067 rather than 1947, and humanity encountered alien technology around the time of World War 2 resulting in a society with computers that barely had 1MB of data storage and television was still black and white, but robots would clean your house and police your neighborhood while you yourself could own a disintegration ray hanging above the mantlepiece in case undesirables move into your neighborhood.

Some events still happened, such as Ronald Reagan and Nixon both becoming president. Others, such as the entire world running out of oil all at once, didn't. The US still landed on the moon in '69, but set up a moonbase and fought a war against aliens. Vietnam occurred, but the United States openly participated in combat operations rather than simply attempt to defend the South. There are other divergences that occurred much earlier as well (possibly because aliens were monitoring and abducting humans throughout Fallout history) evidenced by the altered architecture in Washington DC. Hippies and McCarthyism remained right up until the end.

The United States reorganized itself into 13 commonwealths with the states functioning as counties and the old Maryland Cowpens Flag with 13 stars replaced the Old Glory 50 stars.
The US progressed through the women's liberation and civil rights movements so by the time of the bombs falling racism and sexism were mostly forgotten.

One of the biggest differences is the miniaturization of nuclear reactors in Fallout, to the point that everything from cars to ammo cartridges for laser weapons have them. The cars that still remain, mostly no longer functional, actually explode in a mushroom cloud if damaged sufficiently.

During the lead-up to the end of the world, oil became the major resource in the world as supplies dried up. The Middle East oil reserves were drained dry and the region ceased to matter on a global scale when they pooled their uranium into weapons stockpiles and gave the world a preview of what was to come.
Europe had united into the "European Commonwealth" rather than the European Union, but when the Middle East blew itself away they turned inwards in petty wars over remaining resources until they had depleted themselves and ceased to matter on a global scale .
The same thing happened to the Soviet Union, leaving only the United States and China as the remaining superpowers, which stood alone. Alaska became the only source of oil left on Earth resulting in the last great war occurring between China and the United States for control of it. The US annexed Canada in its entirety, turning it into one giant mobilization center to retain the great white Northwest. The South American nations were left to fend for themselves.
China, rather than deploy the expected numerical superiority, focused on small elite teams utilizing advanced stealth technology while the United States deployed atomic-powered robots and advanced powered armors that contained commandos.

To advance their chances of victory, the US took the greatest minds of the world and created a secret facility contained underneath a mountain which was dubbed "Big Mountain" that lay somewhere in the deserts of the American southwest. There, scientists churned out amazing works straight out of science fiction from technology that could keep a brain alive in a jar forever to teleportation to cracking the secrets of the Chinese stealth suits. They were given ample numbers of Chinese prisoners of war to experiment on, as well as American citizens (and hippies) who were disappeared during the paranoia of the extended Cold War. Despite the high casualties and useless horrors that came out of the Big MT, the six executives in charge of the site were given unlimited authority within. Towards the end of the Resource War there was significant development of biological agents which would give a boost to the performance of ordinary soldiers; these were highly toxic, highly mutagenic substances called the "Forced Evolutionary Virus" or FEV and never resulted in a breakthrough. Although the war ended with the United States victorious, many foresaw the coming of the end as both sides built up their arsenals.

The Enclave, a secret Illuminati society which controlled the world governments (other than China), planned on allowing humanity to survive the oncoming destruction of all things that they believed was coming. They began building secret facilities which would serve as city-sized bomb shelters to allow them and their families plus a small select community to ride out the apocalypse, but many questions remained about how to rebuild. To study the psychological effects of living in giant underground vaults well in advance they set up a dummy corporation called "Vault-tec" which offered a place in shelters nearly identical to those belonging to the Enclave all over the United States. For a modest fee, citizens could purchase a place within these Vaults in the event of an imminent nuclear attack. Vault-tec hadn't predicted just how paranoid the people of the US had become, and as a result places filled up extremely fast. Those who couldn't get a place in the Vaults began coming up with alternatives, from personal fallout shelters to finding safe places for themselves and their communities to retreat to once the bombs fell.

Each Vault was put entirely in the hands of a Vault-tec employee called an Overseer, and most Vaults were actually sabotaged with some fatal flaw. These ranged from simple things like giving a population access to a large number of small weapons and encouraging them to see guns as an integral way of life while having a massive armory full of artillery and explosives that they were forbidden from accessing, to a Vault with a damaged seal on the door to let in radiation and see the longterm effects on humans, to a Vault with 1000 men and one woman and another with 1000 women and one man. Control Vaults also existed as a basis of comparison for all results.
The Enclave planned on using a false alarm nuclear attack to drive populations into the Vaults then keep them contained while studying the populations. But the actual nuclear apocalypse occurred much sooner than expected. What happened to cause it isn't known and who fired first isn't either, but the United States and China both unleashed their nuclear arsenals at each other.
What the effects on the rest of the world were is unknown as the games take place entirely within the United States, but the US was devastated.

The people in the Vaults hid away within, all suffering from the experiments needlessly with most Vaults falling to catastrophe as a result. The people who didn't get into a Vault attempted to survive as best they could. Most of those who did manage to escape annihilation had hidden in mountains, natural caves, or wilderness so far from civilization no bombs were launched at them.

Some property of the people in the Fallout universe results in some humans that receive radiation turns them sterile and causes them to lose the skin from their muscles rather than die horrible deaths like real life humans do. These people are called Ghouls, and they were known about before the bombs fell as the United States had done horrible experiments on people to satisfy the Enclave's paranoia. Some Ghouls lose all hints of their humanity and go feral, acting as animals and attacking everything that isn't another Ghoul with abandon while some Ghouls retain their intelligence, being exactly the same as they were prior (often a little grumpier, and in some cases...hornier). Ghouls are no longer harmed by radiation, and in fact receive some kind of nourishment from it. All Ghouls, regardless of intelligence, are immortal unless killed with violence and their bodies regenerate when irradiated. Perks that player characters can take in Fallout 4 suggest that some normal-looking individuals have taken on Ghoul characteristics, although it's equally possible to just be more flavorful description of an old Fallout standard Perk.

The humans who didn't turn into Ghouls mostly became tribals with varying degrees of friendliness and/or savagery. Few tribes retained the civilized knowledge from before and were oftentimes extremely hostile to those they encounter although many can be civilized through friendly contact with educated peoples.

Eighty four years after the bombs fell, Vault 13 in California opened and one of the Dwellers was sent to find a water purification chip to replace the malfunctioning one in their Vault. This is the story of Fallout 1.

The Vault Dweller (the canon name of the Fallout 1 protagonist) had many adventurers, and uncovered the secrets of a new race in the Wasteland; Super Mutants. The Forced Evolutionary Virus was one of the bioagents the Think Tank had discovered while attempting to create a type of super soldier to win the war against China, and was stored in various places when the bombs fell. The FEV turned some humans into giant hulks, many with reduced mental capacities although some were as intelligent as any other human variant. Like Ghouls, Super Mutants are immortal and healed by radiation. When a human who fell into an FEV vat and merged with a super computer studied the Super Mutants, he decided that they would be the new master race of the world and began to organize their numbers while having them abduct more humans to dip into FEV. Only those with no exposure to the Wasteland resulted in the pure Super Mutant strain he desired, and he took the name "The Master" while planning his glorious future. In time he created a cult of humans called Children of the Cathedral who turned the surface of his great facility into a church. After stopping The Master (possibly simply by pointing out that Super Mutants are sterile, possibly with a lot of dakka) the Vault Dweller returned to his Vault with the water chip only to be exiled forever. Many chose to follow the Vault Dweller, heading out with their action Moses into the Wastes where they founded a city called Arroyo in Oregon.

Many years later in Fallout 2, the Vault Dweller's descendant called the "Chosen One" was sent to discover their ancestor's legacy and retrieve a lost piece of technology called a "Garden Of Eden Creation Kit" or "GECK" from one of the Vaults to turn Arroyo into a verdant paradise (supposedly). This lead the Chosen One on a journey where they discovered the Enclave had become active, causing immense misery to the Wasteland. They believed only those who had survived in an Enclave Vault to be worthy of inheriting the future with the tribals, mutants, and survivors of the Vault-tec Vaults as obstacles and threats. The Chosen One defeated them by blowing up their base of operations, an old oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was once the base of operations of the Poseidon Energy company that ran the bulk of the gas stations in the United States at one point. Along the way they helped a small local government in the town of Shady Sands establish themselves, which eventually became the New California Republic. One of the factions helping the Chosen One was the Brotherhood of Steel.

In Fallout Tactics, the Brotherhood of Steel began inducting tribes into its ranks in small numbers while defending the Wasteland against threats ranging from an army of renegade robots. The main group of the Brotherhood is separated from this group, which takes over Vault 0 and continues pushing eastwards. Although the bulk of Fallout Tactics is non-canon, the basic story remained.

In Fallout 3, the Lone Wanderer is the name of the protagonist and they leave Vault 101 after their father escapes the Vault in order to see the Wasteland restored to a livable state. They fight for control of Washington DC to wrest it from the grip of slaver tribals, the Enclave, and the various horrors created by FEV. They enlist the aid of the splinter Brotherhood group from Fallout Tactics in order to activate a GECK and restore the old US capital. Originally the Vault Dweller or an important storyline character died at the end from radiation poisoning, but a patch later made the player survive. In DLC content, the Lone Wanderer participated in a virtual simulation of the Battle of Anchorage between the US and China before the bombs fell in order to give the eastern Brotherhood access to a pre-war armory. They also traveled to Pittsburgh, now called "The Pitt", a former and current slavery operation in order to save the people there from tyrant and mutagenic degenerative disease resulting in horrible cave monsters in a very Mad Max storyline. They also journeyed to Point Lookout in Florida to deal with pre-war maniacs and vicious cannibal tribals. The Lone Wanderer then assisted the Brotherhood of Steel in wiping out the last of the eastern Enclave. At some point they entered an alien craft called "Mothership Zeta" that had been storing objects and humans stolen from throughout Earth's history, leading the abducted peoples in wiping out the aliens onboard the ship and taking it for themselves.

In Fallout: New Vegas, the player is known as the "Courier" and was shot in the head while taking the strange package of a poker chip made of pure platinum to New Vegas, which was the parts of Las Vegas that survived the bombs falling due to the Howard Hughes of the Fallout universe named "Mr. House" installing lasers on top of various buildings that neutralized the bombs as they fell. The player discovered that Mr. House had planned to survive the apocalypse suspended in a tank of fluid and thus timelessly immortal within it while controlling an army of robots. His robots were never activated as the control chip was lost when the bombs fell, so he used his robots to search for it for many years. After finding it he set about the task of ensuring it was brought to him while organizing the tribals into three groups that ran New Vegas casinos just like they ran before the war. He also booted out the inhabitants of the nearby Vault 21 (which studied the effects of gambling) and filled it with cement to protect the controls of his robot army. While the chip made its way to him, the New California Republic and a group of horrifyingly violent tribals called Caesar's Legion clashed for control of Hoover Dam. The Courier reclaimed the chip, then either sided with the NCR, Mr. House, Caesar's Legion, or simply took control of Vegas for themselves using the plan of the man who shot them to do the same. In any event other than Mr. House controlling the army he dies, and whoever is picked takes full control both of the Dam and New Vegas itself. In DLC content the Courier journeyed to Utah where they helped save two groups of peaceful tribals from a third group that had the backing of Caesar's Legion, then traveled to a hotel called the Sierra Madre full of advanced technology which had been blanketed in a deadly fog after the bombs fell and was coerced under threat of death by an insane renegade leader of the western Brotherhood of Steel to get into the secret vault, where they sealed him forever either to stop his plot to wipe out and enslave the Wasteland or simply for revenge. They then traveled to the Big MT, where they were dissected and replaced with robot parts by the insane executives from before the Great War who had converted themselves into robots controlled by brain jars. The Courier either destroyed the scientists or made him/herself their leader (possibly leaving their own brain behind to keep them all out of trouble). The final journey of the Courier was to The Divide, an old area of Nevada full of military bases that had contained the nuclear arsenal of the United States. Another courier calling himself Ulysses that had served almost every faction in the middle American Wasteland that had gone quite insane had lured the Courier there, as the travel of the Courier had provided enough economy for the people there to build a community before accidentally delivering a detonator which later blew up the people there. The Courier then either killed or recruited Ulysses and either prevented a nuclear launch or obliterated their enemies with an atomic payload.

In Fallout 4, the player character was a man or woman from before the bombs fell living in Boston, Massachusetts and had escaped to Vault 111 with their husband/wife and infant child when the first nuclear detonations began. This character is called the "Sole Survivor", and entered a Wasteland controlled by the eastern Brotherhood of Steel as well as many separate communities with their own eccentricities gained from the places they chose to settle at (from an American Revolutionary theme to a baseball culture). The story revolves around The Institute, which creates androids similar to Blade Runner Replicants which are hated and feared by almost every other group.

==Factions==

* '''New California Republic:''' The self-styled successor to the United States of America, the New California Republic started as an alliance of small settlements in northern California that now flies the flag of the two-headed bear. Through diplomacy and vigorous expansion, NCR controls most of old California and is currently (as of 2281) expanding into Nevada, intent on acquiring Hoover Dam to provide electricity to its citizens. NCR believes in liberty and justice for all, but staggers under its own bureaucracy, the corruption that comes with it, and high taxes. It is, by all means, the nicest of the larger nations, providing support to their citizens in return for relatively heavy taxes and following strict laws. The NCR grew out of an alliance of settlements, including Shady Sands (which later became the capital city), Vault City, the Hub, Redding, and Klamath. Because of them, the West is largely a safe place to live, but many individual towns aren't too happy about their desire to take everything for themselves. Their military is based on the Pre-War US military, but with a more tribal feel; normal troops are volunteers and conscripts from around the west, while the Rangers are the Special Ops unit, taking on any tasks too delicate, tough, or convoluted to be resolved with raw power (they also wear the ''bad ass'' Ranger Combat Armour from the front of the Fallout: NV box). The Nevada branch also took to using Heavy Troopers with big guns and salvaged power armour from their war with the Brotherhood, which, while cool, isn't as protective as the real deal, and loads heavier, too.

* '''The Brotherhood of Steel:''' Originally a group of US Army personnel who announced their desertion days before the bombs fell, the Brotherhood of Steel has evolved (or devolved) into a neo-chivalric order devoted to acquiring and maintaining the technology of the old world. The Brotherhood is divided into three major orders: the Scribes analyze and manufacture technology, and the Paladins and Knights form the core of the Brotherhood's military strength (the equivalent of officers and enlistees). Although they have the second-highest technology level of any faction in North America, the Brotherhood is slowly dying thanks to a combination of attrition, an unwillingness to recruit from the outside world, and generally being assholes to outsiders.
** The only order that actually is capable of surviving is the '''Midwest Brotherhood of Steel''' and the East Coast (D.C.) '''Capital Wasteland detachment'''. Not only did the Midwest guys opened up towards taking in new recruits from humans, but also include ghouls, deathclaws, super mutants, and the only robot that is not trying to murder people all the time, thus making them less asshole than the rest of the Brotherhood. These guys offer protections to people in return for fresh recruits and supplies. They rule like feudal lords over the Midwest, but they keep the place safe and humans and mutants actually like them. In the East coast, the Capital Wasteland detachment has [[awesome|fortified the ruined Pentagon]], making it their base of operations, and are actively protecting the surrounding settlements in the area by engaging super mutants and helping to distribute clean water to the people.
** Most chapters (all but the Midwest, really) also really hate mutants. This was fine when all super mutants were under command of the Master, but they also like killing ghouls (who are some of the nicest people in the series) and post-Master (read: civil and peaceful, although a bit mad if a Nightkin) super mutants. A notable exception was Jacob, a Paladin who befriended a super mutant named Marcus after getting into a fight with him. Marcus renamed the Mount Charleston ski lodge Jacobstown in his honor.

* '''Caesar's Legion:''' Caesar, the self-styled son of Mars, the God of War, has united eighty-six tribes under his banner (the bull) in Arizona, with undisputed territorial claims stretching as far west as the Colorado River. The Legion does not engage in diplomacy beyond "Join us or die." The Legion completely assimilates the people it conquers, destroying their old ways of life. To become citizens of the Legion means to throw away your heritage and traditions for security, prosperity, and continued existence. The Legion's army is a slave army composed solely of able-bodied men, owned entirely by Caesar. Women are confined to domestic roles and sexual slavery. The discovery of Hoover Dam brought the Legion into direct conflict with the NCR, which drives the story of ''New Vegas''.

* '''Followers of the Apocalypse:''' Despite the ominous name, the Followers are the most chill faction in the wasteland. They are devoted to understanding the mistakes of the past, helping people survive the harsh present, and building toward a noblebright future. While the Followers were instrumental in the formation of the New California Republic, they split over disagreements about the state's future and NCR poached many of the Followers' top people to staff their new Office of Science and Industry. Without NCR's backing, the Followers are chronically under-funded and over-worked, but hold on to their ideals in the face of harsh realities. Usually. There's one notable exception, a guy named Edward Sallow. His entry is right above this one.

* '''The Enclave:''' The Enclave's leadership is comprised of the descendants of US government officials from the Great War. They are the most technologically-advanced faction in the wasteland and take pride in being the only uncontaminated, mutation-free strain of humanity left outside the Vault experiments. Like the Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave arms its soldiers with energy weapons and advanced armor systems and are generally jerks to the world at large. Unlike the Brotherhood, the Enclave are willing to innovate and work with outsiders. Unfortunately for those outsiders, "work with" generally means "enslave and work to death." They got properly curbstomped in ''Fallout 2'' and ''3'', and are as of 2188 almost eradicated from the wasteland, save a few stubborn survivors.

* '''New Vegas:''' Thanks to billionaire industrialist Robert House, Las Vegas had a missile defense grid so it and the surrounding area survived the Great War mostly unscathed. Drawing power from the Hoover Dam and fresh water from Lake Mead, New Vegas is a small but successful community built primarily on providing entertainment to NCR citizens. As of 2281, House is still in control of Vegas. He maintains his iron grip on the three "rehabilitated" tribes that run the three major casinos with his Securitron robots. The people of New Vegas are secure from outside threats, but House demands absolute obedience and does not seem to care about the state of Freeside, the crime-ridden neighborhood built up outside the Strip.
** '''The Chairmen:''' Real cool gigs, baby, real cool. Rules the Tops Casino, they are the most cool and suave motherfuckers in Vegas. They mostly just play the rules and foster leaders who want to take over Vegas, all cool. They ain't no finks, dig?
** '''The Omertas:''' The leaders of the Gommorah Casino and Brothel, they ain't no damn low time criminals, see? They respect only their family and them Securitron of Houses', 'cause you don't wanna mess with the coppers. Sleazy bastards who are civilized only in appearance.
** '''The White Glove Society:''' The gentlemen and ladies of the Ultra-Luxe, they give only the most luxurious performance in whatever they do, be it their dresses (creepy porcelain-masks and pompous suits) or their cuisine, which ''definitely isn't human meat and never has been.''

** '''Freeside:''' House controls the Vegas Strip. This is all the other stuff, like how no one cares about the actual city of Las Vegas.
** '''The Kings:''' An exception to the 50s theme. Two guys found a place called 'The King's School of Impersonation', filled to the brim with Elvis impersonation stuff. They wore out the only tape of Elvis's voice they found so only Pacer and the newly-named The King talk like him. So on the outskirts of post-WW3 Las Vegas you have a gang based on Elvis impersonators. Actually decent; they were shoved out of Vegas proper but keep a little bit of order in Freeside.

* '''Shi:''' The Shi are focused around San Francisco. The Shi are led by the Emperor, though his chief adviser is the ''de facto'' head of the organization. The Emperor is actually the computer mainframe of the Chinese submarine ''Shi huang ti'', which washed up on shore after the Great War. Although the Shi prefer to remain apart from wasteland politics, they come into conflict with the Hubologists of San Francisco. They probably got conquered by the NCR.

* '''Hubologists:''' Scientologists with armor, guns, a spaceship, and porn stars instead of Tom Cruise. WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN THINKING INTERPLAY!?!?

* '''Tribals:''' Small independent tribes still persist in the wasteland. Some are peaceful, while others take to raiding and pillaging to survive or simply for lulz.
** '''Assorted Towns:''' Take some less-than-usually-ruined buildings, a bunch of people looking for a peaceful place to carve out a living, and a few guns, and you've got a city. Most towns have everything from ten to hundreds of citizens, and each one is often ruled by an unofficial leader of sorts (people rarely live long enough that it makes sense to elect some idiot). Notable cities are Megaton in Washington DC ([[Derp|a town build around an atom bomb that hasn't detonated yet]]), Shady Sands, Rivet City, Primm, Novac, and many others.
** '''New Caananites:''' Centered around the city of New Caanan in Utah, these bible-reading badasses kept Christianity alive with Tommy guns, .45s, and pure stubbornness until the White Legs razed the city to the ground and salted the earth. Now destroyed, their only surviving members are two guys of very different beliefs arguing over whether to save or to save a bunch of underdeveloped tribes in Zion. That is not a typo.
** '''Zion Tribes:''' The Dead Horses and the Sorrows are a bunch of real tribals who had reverted to something resembling Native American tribes. They are the tribes the aforementioned Caananites are arguing over.
** '''White Legs:''' A tribe based near Salt Lake City, the White Legs are trying to join Caesar's Legion. The price for joining the Legion is the destruction of New Canaan and all of its inhabitants. They succeeded at the first task, but two escaped their genocide and they followed them to Zion Canyon to finish the job. What they don't know is that Caesar will simply annihilate their culture and he's just using them to kill Joshua Graham. Dealing with them is the main plot of the ''New Vegas'' DLC campaign ''Honest Hearts''.
** '''The Great Khans:''' Formed by a cool guy named Papa Khan after the Chosen One murdered the New Khans (who were dicks), the Great Khans are one of the oldest raider groups in Fallout still active, about the same age as NCR as they both came from the same Vault. Unlike most raiders in the game, they're fairly friendly and figure it's better to just sell drugs and run protection rackets to villages than raiding. When they followed the old ways, the New Khans were led by the paranoid 90-year-old son of the leader of the Khans, who were the original group who came out of the Vault. They were also dicks who got stomped by the Vault Dweller. Their new leader Papa Khan was cool enough to stop all that dickery and replace it with drugs (although the Fiends, who get high on Khan drugs, make up for the lack of violence tenfold). The NCR still hates them, though, and the feeling is mutual due to a massacre at a Great Khan settlement that nobody wants to talk about.

==Timeline==
*1945: Someone forgot to make the transistor and ultimately screwed it up for everyone
*2077: Humanity screwed up this year
*2161: The plot of Fallout 1, back when there was only about 3 deathclaws and lasers actually CUT
*2241: The Plot of Fallout 2, mega badassery and improvement off Fallout 1
*2277: The Plot of Fallout 3, the beginning of full 3D FPS, slow as fuck plasma weaponry and mega debuff power armor, also tried to turn up the Grimdark but failed
*2281: The plot of Fallout New Vegas, what Fallout 3 should have been.
*2299: The plot of Fallout 4, basically fixed everything Fallout 3 did wrong and added some new features to sweeten the deal.

==Technology==
Now, the weapons tech used in this can be explained in many, many ways, but the easiest way is to think of all the WH40K tech, but more convenient with the added bonus of not [[Plasma|blowing up in your face once in a while]] but with the downside of guns jamming every 3 seconds and [[Rage|guns that rot before your eyes]]. Still, the weapons tech can be badass in an alternate universe (if you accept the 37,933 year difference between the universes) so the fallout tech is still considered cool. The fallout universe also incorporates REAL LIFE GUNS into the series (and a whole bunch of them) such as the skorpion, MP5, MG60, M9, etc.
This then changes in the later games (and in the 1st, but that was the 1st) to 'Hunting Rifles', '10mm Sub-machine Guns' and 'Miniguns'. Oh well.
Its easier to just say the tech in fallout swings between Madmax weapons, to real weapons to 50's ray guns, to crazy shit like shotgun fist and a weapons that fire eight mini nukes (a shotgun of nukes if you will).
Also one of the deadliest weapons in the 2D games was a BB gun. No, really. Aim for the eyes.

As for armor, well... 
The majority of the wasteland has rags as 'armor' and a baseball glove as a 'pauldron', although some people have done better (and some creatures too). Let's go over the basics:
* '''NCR''' has your mass produced, easily recognizable uniform that has a desert color (no, not dessert, but I wish it did. That is, if the dessert wasn't so [[Rage|IRRADIATED!]]). The most technologically advanced armor they have is the other 'mass-produced-but-not-produced-as-much' NCR veteran combat amour, which is basically [[Awesome|riot armour with a trench coat over the top and a riot helmet with glowy eyes]], though they also have T-45d power amour with the tech ripped out of it so untrained users can wear it without killing themselves, leaving an empty and sad metal shell behind. Though they do put an AC in it.
* '''BoS''' has [[Power Armour#Fallout Power Armor|power amour]] (don't get your hopes up, this is ''Fallout'' power armour we're talking about).
* '''Legion''' has football gear since its the closest thing to roman armor they can find. Higher ups do have better armor, mostly just scrap-metal plates but a few like the Legate have [http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101105221411/fallout/images/b/be/LegateArmor.png sweet forged armor].
* '''Raiders''' have stuff stolen from: women they've raped, people they've slaughtered, houses they've raided, prospectors they've held up then slaughtered etc.
** '''Khans''' you get biker gear you bought with the drug money you make.
* '''The Enclave''' have power armor far superior to that of the brotherhood (still Fallout power armor)
* '''Various mercenaries''' have 'combat armour'. Supposedly the stuff average troops wore in actual military things. Usually mid-level gear for you in the games, and pretty decent when it comes to letting you not get killed.
*'''minutemen''' going with there colonial theme the minutemenhave made laser muskets.

==Notable People==
* '''Protagonists'''
** '''The Vault Dweller''': From Fallout 1. Sent out of Vault 13 to fix the 'water chip', ends up saving humanity (or at least the bits of it in that part of California).
** '''The Chosen One''': From Fallout 2, grandkid of the Vault Dweller. Foretold to do cool stuff, and does.
** '''The Warrior''': The Fallout Tactics main character. The player can create their own character like in the other games, but can also go with the presets called "Mick", "Snake", "Peter", "Wilma", or "Betty". All were Tribals recruited by the Brotherhood of Steel army that moved east, and by the end of their career was appointed General of the pacified Chicago.
** '''The Lone Wanderer''': From Fallout 3. East coast, lived in vault 101. No-one ever enters, no-one ever leaves. (Yeah, right. Plot kicks off when your dad bails on the place, and you follow him.) Until the Broken Steel DLC, it was possible to actually not survive the 'good' ending at the end.
** '''The Courier''': From Fallout: New Vegas. Not from a Vault at all, just some Courier who gets shot in the head by some hip creep in a chequered suit during the opening cutscene. You get better, then get to decide who controls Hoover Dam.
** '''The Sole Survivor''': From Fallout 4. Boston area, Vault 111. A pre-War American citizen, former army stiff who mustered out before the bombs dropped, and got thrown in cryo with most of the Vault members when they got in, oldest living person in the Fallout universe who isn't a mutant or a robot. Woken up by a couple of douchebags who shot their spouse and kidnapped their son, <s>starting the plot</s> who then knocked him out for a bit again, until he woke up and left, starting the plot CORRECTLY this time.
* '''Allies''':
** '''Mysterious Stranger''': Some guy in a trenchcoat and fedora (not a trilby mind you) who appears when protagonists who are extremely lucky need him to take a few shots at their foes then disappear again. In Fallout: New Vegas, a guitar playing man is hinted to be the Mysterious Stranger's son and carries his special pistol that he can give to the player. In Fallout 4, the Mysterious Stranger sticks around a bit longer and can actually be interacted with for a short time.
** '''Miss Fortune''': Same as the Mysterious Stranger, except as a woman wearing an elaborate showgirl costume who was only found around New Vegas.
** '''The Storyteller''': A character from a Youtube series, linked earlier in the article, that began as a voiceover presenting the lore of Fallout and turned into a full-time job for the creators as a Brotherhood of Steel gentleman who <strike>never shuts up</strike> tells everyone he meets the stories and history of the setting. due to fan request, he became a fully-voiced mod companion for Fallout: New Vegas who was quite pleased to meet the Courier he'd been telling folks about. Bethesda, current producers of the Fallout games, became quite fond of the project and are considering him for a legitimate addition to Fallout 4 (and thus canon) while the team works on the Fallout 4 mod and season 4 of the series (which is how he fits into Fallout 4, chasing an android/clone NCR experiment designed to recreate the Chosen One that has gone rogue and abducted a female NCR Ranger on its way to The Institute).

==See Also==
[[Brother Vinni]] for not-Fallout miniatures.

Fallout

2015-11-16T11:36:54Z

2601:44:80:406:45C3:BB1F:B245:27F5: /* Plot and Setting */

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''"War, war never changes."''

-Ron Pearlman

'''Fallout''' is a post-post-apocalyptic game series that takes place in America about a century or two in the future where America had been bombed so much that it has been left as a rotting, smelly and depressing wasteland that happens to have '''high as fuck raiders''' come up to you and attempt to have anal with a chainsaw or a laser weapon.

Despite the setting, most of the games are fairly [[noblebright]], with a darkly humorous streak and a series-long theme of rebuilding.

==Plot and Setting==
For those wanting an in-depth analysis of the Fallout storyline, the "Fallout Storyteller" Youtube series has a large number of episodes dealing with the subject and can be viewed [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvqm_pPD-aQ&list=PL7pGJQV-jlzD17YNNbt103xp0PkkUCoPU here].

Basically, post-apocalyptic America was filled with what seems to be... 50's-60's art style and pop culture humor.

Transistors were invented in 2067 rather than 1947, and humanity encountered alien technology around the time of World War 2 resulting in a society with computers that barely had 1MB of data storage and television was still black and white, but robots would clean your house and police your neighborhood while you yourself could own a disintegration ray hanging above the mantlepiece in case undesirables move into your neighborhood.

Some events still happened, such as Ronald Reagan and Nixon both becoming president. Others, such as the entire world running out of oil all at once, didn't. The US still landed on the moon in '69, but set up a moonbase and fought a war against aliens. Vietnam occurred, but the United States openly participated in combat operations rather than simply attempt to defend the South. There are other divergences that occurred much earlier as well (possibly because aliens were monitoring and abducting humans throughout Fallout history) evidenced by the altered architecture in Washington DC. Hippies and McCarthyism remained right up until the end.

The United States reorganized itself into 13 commonwealths with the states functioning as counties and the old Maryland Cowpens Flag with 13 stars replaced the Old Glory 50 stars.
The US progressed through the women's liberation and civil rights movements so by the time of the bombs falling racism and sexism were mostly forgotten.

One of the biggest differences is the miniaturization of nuclear reactors in Fallout, to the point that everything from cars to ammo cartridges for laser weapons have them. The cars that still remain, mostly no longer functional, actually explode in a mushroom cloud if damaged sufficiently.

During the lead-up to the end of the world, oil became the major resource in the world as supplies dried up. The Middle East oil reserves were drained dry and the region ceased to matter on a global scale when they pooled their uranium into weapons stockpiles and gave the world a preview of what was to come.
Europe had united into the "European Commonwealth" rather than the European Union, but when the Middle East blew itself away they turned inwards in petty wars over remaining resources until they had depleted themselves and ceased to matter on a global scale .
The same thing happened to the Soviet Union, leaving only the United States and China as the remaining superpowers, which stood alone. Alaska became the only source of oil left on Earth resulting in the last great war occurring between China and the United States for control of it. The US annexed Canada in its entirety, turning it into one giant mobilization center to retain the great white Northwest. The South American nations were left to fend for themselves.
China, rather than deploy the expected numerical superiority, focused on small elite teams utilizing advanced stealth technology while the United States deployed atomic-powered robots and advanced powered armors that contained commandos.

To advance their chances of victory, the US took the greatest minds of the world and created a secret facility contained underneath a mountain which was dubbed "Big Mountain" that lay somewhere in the deserts of the American southwest. There, scientists churned out amazing works straight out of science fiction from technology that could keep a brain alive in a jar forever to teleportation to cracking the secrets of the Chinese stealth suits. They were given ample numbers of Chinese prisoners of war to experiment on, as well as American citizens (and hippies) who were disappeared during the paranoia of the extended Cold War. Despite the high casualties and useless horrors that came out of the Big MT, the six executives in charge of the site were given unlimited authority within. Towards the end of the Resource War there was significant development of biological agents which would give a boost to the performance of ordinary soldiers; these were highly toxic, highly mutagenic substances called the "Forced Evolutionary Virus" or FEV and never resulted in a breakthrough. Although the war ended with the United States victorious, many foresaw the coming of the end as both sides built up their arsenals.

The Enclave, a secret Illuminati society which controlled the world governments (other than China), planned on allowing humanity to survive the oncoming destruction of all things that they believed was coming. They began building secret facilities which would serve as city-sized bomb shelters to allow them and their families plus a small select community to ride out the apocalypse, but many questions remained about how to rebuild. To study the psychological effects of living in giant underground vaults well in advance they set up a dummy corporation called "Vault-tec" which offered a place in shelters nearly identical to those belonging to the Enclave all over the United States. For a modest fee, citizens could purchase a place within these Vaults in the event of an imminent nuclear attack. Vault-tec hadn't predicted just how paranoid the people of the US had become, and as a result places filled up extremely fast. Those who couldn't get a place in the Vaults began coming up with alternatives, from personal fallout shelters to finding safe places for themselves and their communities to retreat to once the bombs fell.

Each Vault was put entirely in the hands of a Vault-tec employee called an Overseer, and most Vaults were actually sabotaged with some fatal flaw. These ranged from simple things like giving a population access to a large number of small weapons and encouraging them to see guns as an integral way of life while having a massive armory full of artillery and explosives that they were forbidden from accessing, to a Vault with a damaged seal on the door to let in radiation and see the longterm effects on humans, to a Vault with 1000 men and one woman and another with 1000 women and one man. Control Vaults also existed as a basis of comparison for all results.
The Enclave planned on using a false alarm nuclear attack to drive populations into the Vaults then keep them contained while studying the populations. But the actual nuclear apocalypse occurred much sooner than expected. What happened to cause it isn't known and who fired first isn't either, but the United States and China both unleashed their nuclear arsenals at each other.
What the effects on the rest of the world were is unknown as the games take place entirely within the United States, but the US was devastated.

The people in the Vaults hid away within, all suffering from the experiments needlessly with most Vaults falling to catastrophe as a result. The people who didn't get into a Vault attempted to survive as best they could. Most of those who did manage to escape annihilation had hidden in mountains, natural caves, or wilderness so far from civilization no bombs were launched at them.

Some property of the people in the Fallout universe results in some humans that receive radiation turns them sterile and causes them to lose the skin from their muscles rather than die horrible deaths like real life humans do. These people are called Ghouls, and they were known about before the bombs fell as the United States had done horrible experiments on people to satisfy the Enclave's paranoia. Some Ghouls lose all hints of their humanity and go feral, acting as animals and attacking everything that isn't another Ghoul with abandon while some Ghouls retain their intelligence, being exactly the same as they were prior (often a little grumpier, and in some cases...hornier). Ghouls are no longer harmed by radiation, and in fact receive some kind of nourishment from it. All Ghouls, regardless of intelligence, are immortal unless killed with violence and their bodies regenerate when irradiated. Perks that player characters can take in Fallout 4 suggest that some normal-looking individuals have taken on Ghoul characteristics, although it's equally possible to just be more flavorful description of an old Fallout standard Perk.

The humans who didn't turn into Ghouls mostly became tribals with varying degrees of friendliness and/or savagery. Few tribes retained the civilized knowledge from before and were oftentimes extremely hostile to those they encounter although many can be civilized through friendly contact with educated peoples.

Eighty four years after the bombs fell, Vault 13 in California opened and one of the Dwellers was sent to find a water purification chip to replace the malfunctioning one in their Vault. This is the story of Fallout 1.

The Vault Dweller (the canon name of the Fallout 1 protagonist) had many adventurers, and uncovered the secrets of a new race in the Wasteland; Super Mutants. The Forced Evolutionary Virus was one of the bioagents the Think Tank had discovered while attempting to create a type of super soldier to win the war against China, and was stored in various places when the bombs fell. The FEV turned some humans into giant hulks, many with reduced mental capacities although some were as intelligent as any other human variant. Like Ghouls, Super Mutants are immortal and healed by radiation. When a human who fell into an FEV vat and merged with a super computer studied the Super Mutants, he decided that they would be the new master race of the world and began to organize their numbers while having them abduct more humans to dip into FEV. Only those with no exposure to the Wasteland resulted in the pure Super Mutant strain he desired, and he took the name "The Master" while planning his glorious future. In time he created a cult of humans called Children of the Cathedral who turned the surface of his great facility into a church. After stopping The Master (possibly simply by pointing out that Super Mutants are sterile, possibly with a lot of dakka) the Vault Dweller returned to his Vault with the water chip only to be exiled forever. Many chose to follow the Vault Dweller, heading out with their action Moses into the Wastes where they founded a city called Arroyo in Oregon.

Many years later in Fallout 2, the Vault Dweller's descendant called the "Chosen One" was sent to discover their ancestor's legacy and retrieve a lost piece of technology called a "Garden Of Eden Creation Kit" or "GECK" from one of the Vaults to turn Arroyo into a verdant paradise (supposedly). This lead the Chosen One on a journey where they discovered the Enclave had become active, causing immense misery to the Wasteland. They believed only those who had survived in an Enclave Vault to be worthy of inheriting the future with the tribals, mutants, and survivors of the Vault-tec Vaults as obstacles and threats. The Chosen One defeated them by blowing up their base of operations, an old oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was once the base of operations of the Poseidon Energy company that ran the bulk of the gas stations in the United States at one point. Along the way they helped a small local government in the town of Shady Sands establish themselves, which eventually became the New California Republic. One of the factions helping the Chosen One was the Brotherhood of Steel.

In Fallout Tactics, the Brotherhood of Steel began inducting tribes into its ranks in small numbers while defending the Wasteland against threats ranging from an army of renegade robots. The main group of the Brotherhood is separated from this group, which takes over Vault 0 and continues pushing eastwards. Although the bulk of Fallout Tactics is non-canon, the basic story remained.

In Fallout 3, the Lone Wanderer is the name of the protagonist and they leave Vault 101 after their father escapes the Vault in order to see the Wasteland restored to a livable state. They fight for control of Washington DC to wrest it from the grip of slaver tribals, the Enclave, and the various horrors created by FEV. They enlist the aid of the splinter Brotherhood group from Fallout Tactics in order to activate a GECK and restore the old US capital. Originally the Vault Dweller or an important storyline character died at the end from radiation poisoning, but a patch later made the player survive. In DLC content, the Lone Wanderer participated in a virtual simulation of the Battle of Anchorage between the US and China before the bombs fell in order to give the eastern Brotherhood access to a pre-war armory. They also traveled to Pittsburgh, now called "The Pitt", a former and current slavery operation in order to save the people there from tyrant and mutagenic degenerative disease resulting in horrible cave monsters in a very Mad Max storyline. They also journeyed to Point Lookout in Florida to deal with pre-war maniacs and vicious cannibal tribals. The Lone Wanderer then assisted the Brotherhood of Steel in wiping out the last of the eastern Enclave. At some point they entered an alien craft called "Mothership Zeta" that had been storing objects and humans stolen from throughout Earth's history, leading the abducted peoples in wiping out the aliens onboard the ship and taking it for themselves.

In Fallout: New Vegas, the player is known as the "Courier" and was shot in the head while taking the strange package of a poker chip made of pure platinum to New Vegas, which was the parts of Las Vegas that survived the bombs falling due to the Howard Hughes of the Fallout universe named "Mr. House" installing lasers on top of various buildings that neutralized the bombs as they fell. The player discovered that Mr. House had planned to survive the apocalypse suspended in a tank of fluid and thus timelessly immortal within it while controlling an army of robots. His robots were never activated as the control chip was lost when the bombs fell, so he used his robots to search for it for many years. After finding it he set about the task of ensuring it was brought to him while organizing the tribals into three groups that ran New Vegas casinos just like they ran before the war. He also booted out the inhabitants of the nearby Vault 21 (which studied the effects of gambling) and filled it with cement to protect the controls of his robot army. While the chip made its way to him, the New California Republic and a group of horrifyingly violent tribals called Caesar's Legion clashed for control of Hoover Dam. The Courier reclaimed the chip, then either sided with the NCR, Mr. House, Caesar's Legion, or simply took control of Vegas for themselves using the plan of the man who shot them to do the same. In any event other than Mr. House controlling the army he dies, and whoever is picked takes full control both of the Dam and New Vegas itself. In DLC content the Courier journeyed to Utah where they helped save two groups of peaceful tribals from a third group that had the backing of Caesar's Legion, then traveled to a hotel called the Sierra Madre full of advanced technology which had been blanketed in a deadly fog after the bombs fell and was coerced under threat of death by an insane renegade leader of the western Brotherhood of Steel to get into the secret vault, where they sealed him forever either to stop his plot to wipe out and enslave the Wasteland or simply for revenge. They then traveled to the Big MT, where they were dissected and replaced with robot parts by the insane executives from before the Great War who had converted themselves into robots controlled by brain jars. The Courier either destroyed the scientists or made him/herself their leader (possibly leaving their own brain behind to keep them all out of trouble). The final journey of the Courier was to The Divide, an old area of Nevada full of military bases that had contained the nuclear arsenal of the United States. Another courier calling himself Ulysses that had served almost every faction in the middle American Wasteland that had gone quite insane had lured the Courier there, as the travel of the Courier had provided enough economy for the people there to build a community before accidentally delivering a detonator which later blew up the people there. The Courier then either killed or recruited Ulysses and either prevented a nuclear launch or obliterated their enemies with an atomic payload.

In Fallout 4, the player character was a man or woman from before the bombs fell living in Boston, Massachusetts and had escaped to Vault 111 with their husband/wife and infant child when the first nuclear detonations began. This character is called the "Sole Survivor", and entered a Wasteland controlled by the eastern Brotherhood of Steel as well as many separate communities with their own eccentricities gained from the places they chose to settle at (from an American Revolutionary theme to a baseball culture). The story revolves around The Institute, which creates androids similar to Blade Runner Replicants which are hated and feared by almost every other group.

==Factions==

* '''New California Republic:''' The self-styled successor to the United States of America, the New California Republic started as an alliance of small settlements in northern California that now flies the flag of the two-headed bear. Through diplomacy and vigorous expansion, NCR controls most of old California and is currently (as of 2281) expanding into Nevada, intent on acquiring Hoover Dam to provide electricity to its citizens. NCR believes in liberty and justice for all, but staggers under its own bureaucracy, the corruption that comes with it, and high taxes. It is, by all means, the nicest of the larger nations, providing support to their citizens in return for relatively heavy taxes and following strict laws. The NCR grew out of an alliance of settlements, including Shady Sands (which later became the capital city), Vault City, the Hub, Redding, and Klamath. Because of them, the West is largely a safe place to live, but many individual towns aren't too happy about their desire to take everything for themselves. Their military is based on the Pre-War US military, but with a more tribal feel; normal troops are volunteers and conscripts from around the west, while the Rangers are the Special Ops unit, taking on any tasks too delicate, tough, or convoluted to be resolved with raw power (they also wear the ''bad ass'' Ranger Combat Armour from the front of the Fallout: NV box). The Nevada branch also took to using Heavy Troopers with big guns and salvaged power armour from their war with the Brotherhood, which, while cool, isn't as protective as the real deal, and loads heavier, too.

* '''The Brotherhood of Steel:''' Originally a group of US Army personnel who announced their desertion days before the bombs fell, the Brotherhood of Steel has evolved (or devolved) into a neo-chivalric order devoted to acquiring and maintaining the technology of the old world. The Brotherhood is divided into three major orders: the Scribes analyze and manufacture technology, and the Paladins and Knights form the core of the Brotherhood's military strength (the equivalent of officers and enlistees). Although they have the second-highest technology level of any faction in North America, the Brotherhood is slowly dying thanks to a combination of attrition, an unwillingness to recruit from the outside world, and generally being assholes to outsiders.
** The only order that actually is capable of surviving is the '''Midwest Brotherhood of Steel''' and the East Coast (D.C.) '''Capital Wasteland detachment'''. Not only did the Midwest guys opened up towards taking in new recruits from humans, but also include ghouls, deathclaws, super mutants, and the only robot that is not trying to murder people all the time, thus making them less asshole than the rest of the Brotherhood. These guys offer protections to people in return for fresh recruits and supplies. They rule like feudal lords over the Midwest, but they keep the place safe and humans and mutants actually like them. In the East coast, the Capital Wasteland detachment has [[awesome|fortified the ruined Pentagon]], making it their base of operations, and are actively protecting the surrounding settlements in the area by engaging super mutants and helping to distribute clean water to the people.
** Most chapters (all but the Midwest, really) also really hate mutants. This was fine when all super mutants were under command of the Master, but they also like killing ghouls (who are some of the nicest people in the series) and post-Master (read: civil and peaceful, although a bit mad if a Nightkin) super mutants. A notable exception was Jacob, a Paladin who befriended a super mutant named Marcus after getting into a fight with him. Marcus renamed the Mount Charleston ski lodge Jacobstown in his honor.

* '''Caesar's Legion:''' Caesar, the self-styled son of Mars, the God of War, has united eighty-six tribes under his banner (the bull) in Arizona, with undisputed territorial claims stretching as far west as the Colorado River. The Legion does not engage in diplomacy beyond "Join us or die." The Legion completely assimilates the people it conquers, destroying their old ways of life. To become citizens of the Legion means to throw away your heritage and traditions for security, prosperity, and continued existence. The Legion's army is a slave army composed solely of able-bodied men, owned entirely by Caesar. Women are confined to domestic roles and sexual slavery. The discovery of Hoover Dam brought the Legion into direct conflict with the NCR, which drives the story of ''New Vegas''.

* '''Followers of the Apocalypse:''' Despite the ominous name, the Followers are the most chill faction in the wasteland. They are devoted to understanding the mistakes of the past, helping people survive the harsh present, and building toward a noblebright future. While the Followers were instrumental in the formation of the New California Republic, they split over disagreements about the state's future and NCR poached many of the Followers' top people to staff their new Office of Science and Industry. Without NCR's backing, the Followers are chronically under-funded and over-worked, but hold on to their ideals in the face of harsh realities. Usually. There's one notable exception, a guy named Edward Sallow. His entry is right above this one.

* '''The Enclave:''' The Enclave's leadership is comprised of the descendants of US government officials from the Great War. They are the most technologically-advanced faction in the wasteland and take pride in being the only uncontaminated, mutation-free strain of humanity left outside the Vault experiments. Like the Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave arms its soldiers with energy weapons and advanced armor systems and are generally jerks to the world at large. Unlike the Brotherhood, the Enclave are willing to innovate and work with outsiders. Unfortunately for those outsiders, "work with" generally means "enslave and work to death." They got properly curbstomped in ''Fallout 2'' and ''3'', and are as of 2188 almost eradicated from the wasteland, save a few stubborn survivors.

* '''New Vegas:''' Thanks to billionaire industrialist Robert House, Las Vegas had a missile defense grid so it and the surrounding area survived the Great War mostly unscathed. Drawing power from the Hoover Dam and fresh water from Lake Mead, New Vegas is a small but successful community built primarily on providing entertainment to NCR citizens. As of 2281, House is still in control of Vegas. He maintains his iron grip on the three "rehabilitated" tribes that run the three major casinos with his Securitron robots. The people of New Vegas are secure from outside threats, but House demands absolute obedience and does not seem to care about the state of Freeside, the crime-ridden neighborhood built up outside the Strip.
** '''The Chairmen:''' Real cool gigs, baby, real cool. Rules the Tops Casino, they are the most cool and suave motherfuckers in Vegas. They mostly just play the rules and foster leaders who want to take over Vegas, all cool. They ain't no finks, dig?
** '''The Omertas:''' The leaders of the Gommorah Casino and Brothel, they ain't no damn low time criminals, see? They respect only their family and them Securitron of Houses', 'cause you don't wanna mess with the coppers. Sleazy bastards who are civilized only in appearance.
** '''The White Glove Society:''' The gentlemen and ladies of the Ultra-Luxe, they give only the most luxurious performance in whatever they do, be it their dresses (creepy porcelain-masks and pompous suits) or their cuisine, which ''definitely isn't human meat and never has been.''

** '''Freeside:''' House controls the Vegas Strip. This is all the other stuff, like how no one cares about the actual city of Las Vegas.
** '''The Kings:''' An exception to the 50s theme. Two guys found a place called 'The King's School of Impersonation', filled to the brim with Elvis impersonation stuff. They wore out the only tape of Elvis's voice they found so only Pacer and the newly-named The King talk like him. So on the outskirts of post-WW3 Las Vegas you have a gang based on Elvis impersonators. Actually decent; they were shoved out of Vegas proper but keep a little bit of order in Freeside.

* '''Shi:''' The Shi are focused around San Francisco. The Shi are led by the Emperor, though his chief adviser is the ''de facto'' head of the organization. The Emperor is actually the computer mainframe of the Chinese submarine ''Shi huang ti'', which washed up on shore after the Great War. Although the Shi prefer to remain apart from wasteland politics, they come into conflict with the Hubologists of San Francisco. They probably got conquered by the NCR.

* '''Hubologists:''' Scientologists with armor, guns, a spaceship, and porn stars instead of Tom Cruise. WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN THINKING INTERPLAY!?!?

* '''Tribals:''' Small independent tribes still persist in the wasteland. Some are peaceful, while others take to raiding and pillaging to survive or simply for lulz.
** '''Assorted Towns:''' Take some less-than-usually-ruined buildings, a bunch of people looking for a peaceful place to carve out a living, and a few guns, and you've got a city. Most towns have everything from ten to hundreds of citizens, and each one is often ruled by an unofficial leader of sorts (people rarely live long enough that it makes sense to elect some idiot). Notable cities are Megaton in Washington DC ([[Derp|a town build around an atom bomb that hasn't detonated yet]]), Shady Sands, Rivet City, Primm, Novac, and many others.
** '''New Caananites:''' Centered around the city of New Caanan in Utah, these bible-reading badasses kept Christianity alive with Tommy guns, .45s, and pure stubbornness until the White Legs razed the city to the ground and salted the earth. Now destroyed, their only surviving members are two guys of very different beliefs arguing over whether to save or to save a bunch of underdeveloped tribes in Zion. That is not a typo.
** '''Zion Tribes:''' The Dead Horses and the Sorrows are a bunch of real tribals who had reverted to something resembling Native American tribes. They are the tribes the aforementioned Caananites are arguing over.
** '''White Legs:''' A tribe based near Salt Lake City, the White Legs are trying to join Caesar's Legion. The price for joining the Legion is the destruction of New Canaan and all of its inhabitants. They succeeded at the first task, but two escaped their genocide and they followed them to Zion Canyon to finish the job. What they don't know is that Caesar will simply annihilate their culture and he's just using them to kill Joshua Graham. Dealing with them is the main plot of the ''New Vegas'' DLC campaign ''Honest Hearts''.
** '''The Great Khans:''' Formed by a cool guy named Papa Khan after the Chosen One murdered the New Khans (who were dicks), the Great Khans are one of the oldest raider groups in Fallout still active, about the same age as NCR as they both came from the same Vault. Unlike most raiders in the game, they're fairly friendly and figure it's better to just sell drugs and run protection rackets to villages than raiding. When they followed the old ways, the New Khans were led by the paranoid 90-year-old son of the leader of the Khans, who were the original group who came out of the Vault. They were also dicks who got stomped by the Vault Dweller. Their new leader Papa Khan was cool enough to stop all that dickery and replace it with drugs (although the Fiends, who get high on Khan drugs, make up for the lack of violence tenfold). The NCR still hates them, though, and the feeling is mutual due to a massacre at a Great Khan settlement that nobody wants to talk about.

==Timeline==
*1945: Someone forgot to make the transistor and ultimately screwed it up for everyone
*2077: Humanity screwed up this year
*2161: The plot of Fallout 1, back when there was only about 3 deathclaws and lasers actually CUT
*2241: The Plot of Fallout 2, mega badassery and improvement off Fallout 1
*2277: The Plot of Fallout 3, the beginning of full 3D FPS, slow as fuck plasma weaponry and mega debuff power armor, also tried to turn up the Grimdark but failed
*2281: The plot of Fallout New Vegas, what Fallout 3 should have been.
*2299: The plot of Fallout 4, basically fixed everything Fallout 3 did wrong and added some new features to sweeten the deal.

==Technology==
Now, the weapons tech used in this can be explained in many, many ways, but the easiest way is to think of all the WH40K tech, but more convenient with the added bonus of not [[Plasma|blowing up in your face once in a while]] but with the downside of guns jamming every 3 seconds and [[Rage|guns that rot before your eyes]]. Still, the weapons tech can be badass in an alternate universe (if you accept the 37,933 year difference between the universes) so the fallout tech is still considered cool. The fallout universe also incorporates REAL LIFE GUNS into the series (and a whole bunch of them) such as the skorpion, MP5, MG60, M9, etc.
This then changes in the later games (and in the 1st, but that was the 1st) to 'Hunting Rifles', '10mm Sub-machine Guns' and 'Miniguns'. Oh well.
Its easier to just say the tech in fallout swings between Madmax weapons, to real weapons to 50's ray guns, to crazy shit like shotgun fist and a weapons that fire eight mini nukes (a shotgun of nukes if you will).
Also one of the deadliest weapons in the 2D games was a BB gun. No, really. Aim for the eyes.

As for armor, well... 
The majority of the wasteland has rags as 'armor' and a baseball glove as a 'pauldron', although some people have done better (and some creatures too). Let's go over the basics:
* '''NCR''' has your mass produced, easily recognizable uniform that has a desert color (no, not dessert, but I wish it did. That is, if the dessert wasn't so [[Rage|IRRADIATED!]]). The most technologically advanced armor they have is the other 'mass-produced-but-not-produced-as-much' NCR veteran combat amour, which is basically [[Awesome|riot armour with a trench coat over the top and a riot helmet with glowy eyes]], though they also have T-45d power amour with the tech ripped out of it so untrained users can wear it without killing themselves, leaving an empty and sad metal shell behind. Though they do put an AC in it.
* '''BoS''' has [[Power Armour#Fallout Power Armor|power amour]] (don't get your hopes up, this is ''Fallout'' power armour we're talking about).
* '''Legion''' has football gear since its the closest thing to roman armor they can find. Higher ups do have better armor, mostly just scrap-metal plates but a few like the Legate have [http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101105221411/fallout/images/b/be/LegateArmor.png sweet forged armor].
* '''Raiders''' have stuff stolen from: women they've raped, people they've slaughtered, houses they've raided, prospectors they've held up then slaughtered etc.
** '''Khans''' you get biker gear you bought with the drug money you make.
* '''The Enclave''' have power armor far superior to that of the brotherhood (still Fallout power armor)
* '''Various mercenaries''' have 'combat armour'. Supposedly the stuff average troops wore in actual military things. Usually mid-level gear for you in the games, and pretty decent when it comes to letting you not get killed.

==Notable People==
* '''Protagonists'''
** '''The Vault Dweller''': From Fallout 1. Sent out of Vault 13 to fix the 'water chip', ends up saving humanity (or at least the bits of it in that part of California).
** '''The Chosen One''': From Fallout 2, grandkid of the Vault Dweller. Foretold to do cool stuff, and does.
** '''The Warrior''': The Fallout Tactics main character. The player can create their own character like in the other games, but can also go with the presets called "Mick", "Snake", "Peter", "Wilma", or "Betty". All were Tribals recruited by the Brotherhood of Steel army that moved east, and by the end of their career was appointed General of the pacified Chicago.
** '''The Lone Wanderer''': From Fallout 3. East coast, lived in vault 101. No-one ever enters, no-one ever leaves. (Yeah, right. Plot kicks off when your dad bails on the place, and you follow him.) Until the Broken Steel DLC, it was possible to actually not survive the 'good' ending at the end.
** '''The Courier''': From Fallout: New Vegas. Not from a Vault at all, just some Courier who gets shot in the head by some hip creep in a chequered suit during the opening cutscene. You get better, then get to decide who controls Hoover Dam.
** '''The Sole Survivor''': From Fallout 4. Boston area, Vault 111. A pre-War American citizen, former army stiff who mustered out before the bombs dropped, and got thrown in cryo with most of the Vault members when they got in, oldest living person in the Fallout universe who isn't a mutant or a robot. Woken up by a couple of douchebags who shot their spouse and kidnapped their son, <s>starting the plot</s> who then knocked him out for a bit again, until he woke up and left, starting the plot CORRECTLY this time.
* '''Allies''':
** '''Mysterious Stranger''': Some guy in a trenchcoat and fedora (not a trilby mind you) who appears when protagonists who are extremely lucky need him to take a few shots at their foes then disappear again. In Fallout: New Vegas, a guitar playing man is hinted to be the Mysterious Stranger's son and carries his special pistol that he can give to the player. In Fallout 4, the Mysterious Stranger sticks around a bit longer and can actually be interacted with for a short time.
** '''Miss Fortune''': Same as the Mysterious Stranger, except as a woman wearing an elaborate showgirl costume who was only found around New Vegas.
** '''The Storyteller''': A character from a Youtube series, linked earlier in the article, that began as a voiceover presenting the lore of Fallout and turned into a full-time job for the creators as a Brotherhood of Steel gentleman who <strike>never shuts up</strike> tells everyone he meets the stories and history of the setting. due to fan request, he became a fully-voiced mod companion for Fallout: New Vegas who was quite pleased to meet the Courier he'd been telling folks about. Bethesda, current producers of the Fallout games, became quite fond of the project and are considering him for a legitimate addition to Fallout 4 (and thus canon) while the team works on the Fallout 4 mod and season 4 of the series (which is how he fits into Fallout 4, chasing an android/clone NCR experiment designed to recreate the Chosen One that has gone rogue and abducted a female NCR Ranger on its way to The Institute).

==See Also==
[[Brother Vinni]] for not-Fallout miniatures.