Fallout just made a huge change to its lore — here’s why that’s brilliant

The Fallout TV show has made a significant change to the game’s lore, and I can’t lie; I think it’s brilliant. 

The Pre-War history of the Fallout games has always been deliberately vague and ill-defined. For the longest time, the broad strokes were that the US and China had become embroiled in an exhausting war. This forever war had worn out both superpowers and left them with no viable military options other than nuclear weapons.

At some point on Saturday, October 23, 2077, the nukes began to fly. Who pressed the big red button first is up for debate (the US remnants believe it was China, but they would say that, wouldn’t they?), but we know exactly what happened next. In the space of 24 hours, humanity was pushed to the brink of extinction, with almost every major city being destroyed by nuclear fire.

The lucky (although that’s questionable) survived deep underground in the Vaults, while the poor souls on the surface fought over scraps in a desperate attempt to survive. It was genocide on a planetary scale brought about by man’s inhumanity to man. Except according to the Fallout Amazon series (By the way, check out our Fallout TV show review here), it actually wasn’t.

Prime Video

I don’t want to set the world on fire…

Yes, the Fallout show reveals that this wasn’t a failure of diplomacy or humanity’s natural inclination to bash rivals on the head with the sharpest stick that led to our destruction — it was capitalism. You see, the bigwigs at Vault-Tec realized that to truly “win” the great game of Monopoly that corporations had been playing, it wasn’t about earning more than their competitors: they had to outlast them. And how better to outlast your enemies than clearing house and starting again with yourself in charge?

That’s right, Vault-Tec launched the first nuke that sparked the Great War, knowing they could ride out the chaos in their vaults and rebuild the world in their image. It’s a shocking reveal but one that adds a delicious cherry on top of the satirical all-American ice cream that is Fallout. You see, as long as the Fallout games have existed, they’ve been a satire, poking fun at American consumerism and capitalism.

The games are essentially one big joke, using the apocalypse to make light of the human drive to own things. That’s why the wasteland, which could have been anything, defaulted so quickly back to a capital-driven society where the cap might have replaced the all-mighty dollar as currency — but for all intents and purposes, they’re the same thing. 

This is how the world ends…

It’s a world where the corporations that made Sugar Bombs and Abraxxo were destroyed centuries ago, but these brands still provide status, just like how, in our world, owning a certain car marks you as special. A setting where the US government sold out the safety and protection of its citizens to a private company that saw profit in the apocalypse. 

It’s meant to be a grim world where capitalism replaced democracy, and humanity paid the ultimate price. Making Vault-Tec the ultimate reason for the end of civilization is a brilliant move that underlines that central message. Capitalism is ultimately self-destructive and stymies progress, even in the face of oblivion, because it’s a philosophy that needs winners and losers.

That central philosophy that in a functioning capitalist society, there are the haves, and the have-nots is what drives every conflict in Fallout and results in the cycle of violence and carnage we see play out in the games and TV shows. So that’s why I love the new lore because it’s the perfect punchline to an already brilliant joke; doomsday wasn’t an accident; it, like everything else in Fallout, was a product bought by the rich and powerful for the low, low price of everything.

If you’ve enjoyed Fallout and want to know more, then we have guides to the Fallout cast and the Fallout soundtrack for you to enjoy. That’s not all, though we’ve also done some digging to bring you everything we know about Fallout season 2. Finally, we worked out the SPECIAL stats and perks of the main characters in the Fallout TV show. That’s enough reading to see anyone through the apocalypse.