Fallout 3's objects feel out of place

[Big No]

Like I said before, I could understand boarding the windows because of riots, but why board your door? Where will you live if you can't get inside your house? Since we see the wooden boards are nailed on the outside of the house we know that who boarded it was also on the outside.

I personally do not know either. But I presume there is a way to do it since the practice of boarding up doors and windows is a regular thing people do in the event of hurricane or rioting. Granted I doubt you'll be entering your house during a hurricane, unless you have a bunker in your basement.

Judging by the Megaton crater and radiation after we explode it, the white house being just a giant hole in the ground with a really deadly type of radiation, Vault 87 entrance (that you mentioned) was hit by one nuke and still the radiation will kill you almost instantly, most puddles on the ground will radiate you too. I would say that the radiation from the Nukes who hit Washington DC was quite deadly (this is also supported in game by showing that the Nukes used in the Fallout universe differ from ours because they don't seem to have such a powerful explosive power as real world ones [because wooden houses are still standing, some almost unscathed] but they are way more radioactive than the real world ones, because the radiation from it can still be felt in the environment after 200 years old and some places can still kill you in seconds if you walk into them). If you can die in minutes just by exploring ruins in DC after 200 years imagine how much radiation that city would have had after the bombs fell. I would say anyone walking in it would have died in seconds (like Vault 87 or the White House, 200 years after the bombs).

The radiation you can experience within the wasteland can vary a lot though. The White House gives off 4 - 6 rads per second even though it took a direct hit. Contrast with Vault 87, which also took a direct hit, gives of 3000 rads per second. Glitching into Megatons' ruins give off 22 Rads on average despite having just gone off. I'm presuming that Radaway and Rad-X were used in Pre-War times as well. There are many radioactive items from the Pre-War times, not to mention the fear of war, I'm guessing the two would be as common as a medkit. People could use them during the war, preparing for survival and such.

I don't think anyone could have boarded up around 5 windows and two doors (depending on the house) while an enemy was inside without the enemy coming out of the house, unless the enemy is bound in some way, but if it is bound already there is no point in going as far as boarding an entire house to keep the enemy there (it would be much easier to just keep the enemy bound or kill it right away).
Unless the enemy is some kind of critter that can't open doors, but then there is no point in boarding them since the critter can't open the door.

I really see no way why someone would board their house in Fallout 3 universe.

Boarding a large house like that will take hours and require a ladder or something else (if it has more than the ground floor).

Also I don't see the logic of someone thinking to themselves "I will look for more resources in the wastes, so I will now board up my house to keep my remaining resources safe until I return with more resources. It will only take an hour to do so and make a lot of noise by hammering these boards, attracting attention to me and my house, and it will take some time again once I return to un-board it again so I can go back inside while carrying more resources. Also I have to do this everytime I go out to scavenge."

There's ways to keep enemies inside while you board up the doors. For example, you stop for the night within this building to rest up, you'll move along at dawn not really caring about this house. Then a Scorpion runs inside, using some creativity, you could trap it in a room. But maybe you're saving your resources for later. But you're not staying there anymore, and you don't want the Scorpion catching up by busting the door down. Surely putting up some nearby planks of wood over a door wouldn't take too long a minute or too if everyone pulls their weight.

Boarding up a house to keep resources safe could be like one of those "I have too much useful stuff to just drop" situations. A wastelander kills a group of raiders but now he's bogged down on guns and armor. The wasteland is a dangerous place, he needs these items for either defense or bartering with traders. So instead of dragging them back to base, he leaves them in this nondescript house. But this is a scavenger wasteland, there's the chance somebody may come across them. Boarding up the house can keep your stuff safe and scavengers are not as likely to snoop in this house. They can still snoop, but it will not be as likely. It depends on the house and the situation really. Maybe someone was dumb enough to go outside and board up their house during the events, it's not like we haven't had skewed priorities before.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's many reasons why windows and doors could be boarded up besides Pre-War residents being silly. I personally don't think Bethesda needed to put a sign next to every door to tell why it's like that. I think they went for more like one of those "come up with your own conclusion" things. That and it'd kinda be weird for all these buildings to not have doors.

 

[Sn1p3r187]

In a sense. It makes sense for the Mojave since in real life there's not that many people in an area as large as the Mojave. It makes sense for there to be burned out houses and the like. But for Fallout 3? There's really no excuse for that, I mean the East Coast is one of the most populated areas in the U.S. So it'd make sense for them to clean out the burned out buildings see them being used for housing or business. Though in reality there wouldn't be a D.C. left standing in the event of a nuclear attack. Especially an air burst of at least maybe 1-2 Megatons (If we're going by 2017 standards on Nuclear conflict). Though considering Bethesda fucked up the series and made it much like the 1950's-1960's, they could've dropped anywhere between a 10-20 Megaton air burst.

 

[Sn1p3r187]

But Washington DC was one of the most bombed places in the USA, I doubt anyone outside of Vaults would have survived in the area and the radiation would be so bad no one would be able to live there for decades after the apocalypse happened. So unless most people in the USA capital boarded their houses before the bombs fell I can't see how they would do it after the bombs.
Also Washington was under heavy police, military and even private protection (as we can see from the military checkpoints and all the armories, military forts, national guard HQ and even from many of the factories and other large businesses there having lots of robot and turret automatic defense systems), I don't think the riots there would be as bad as in other areas of the USA.

And I still can't imagine why someone would board their own house... About riots I can understand boarding their windows, but also their doors? Where will they live if they can't get into or out their house, specially because it seems like the situation on the entire country (even on the whole world because of the resource wars and the great war) is even worst than in DC? We can't even say that the residents boarded the house before leaving to the Vaults because once the bombs started to fall everyone who believed it was happening rushed right away to the vaults or their own private shelters (which seems to have failed for most of them judging by all the skeletons and un-looted supplies we can find in all the Fallout 3 pre-war "shelters").

For example, in Fallout and Fallout 2 (can't remember about FO:T) we see no boarded houses at all because it makes no sense that there will be boarded houses like that (and people in those games have the means and skills to actually build and repair houses and stuff, so they could board a house if they wanted to).

True, you have a point. But the population on the East Coast is pretty high when you bring it up to how many high priority targets there are on the East Coast. Compare that to there being at least 112 million people (I'm going off of the 2010 census info. By 2077 it could be 250 million) who live there, and I see it likely some people will go out to re-inhabit D.C. As for the doors, I think a lot of those got boarded up after the bombs fell and the rioting insured. Though I think a lot of them had already decided their fate to die instead of having to live after everything went to shit. Though what's strange to me. Why would board their doors up from the outside? It makes more sense from the inside. But I think that's just Bethesda never thinking. Yes the radiation would be high initially. But afterwards then comes the blast and then fallout. And fallout can happen within a week. More than enough time to board your windows and doors and let anarchy rule the streets.

 

[Prone Squanderer]

But I think that's just Bethesda never thinking.

Was that meant to be a shocking revelation?

 

[Sn1p3r187]

Was that meant to be a shocking revelation?

No it was meant to be a compliment.

 

[Big No]

In a sense. It makes sense for the Mojave since in real life there's not that many people in an area as large as the Mojave. It makes sense for there to be burned out houses and the like. But for Fallout 3? There's really no excuse for that, I mean the East Coast is one of the most populated areas in the U.S. So it'd make sense for them to clean out the burned out buildings see them being used for housing or business.

That might go both ways though. It could just as easily be said that the Mojave's version makes less sense since only a handful of houses are boarded up. Small towns in the Mojave, a somewhat nuclear-free wasteland would not experience nearly as much trouble as D.C. would experience due to D.C.'s dense nature and more damaged state. So why go through the trouble of boarding up your then?

Besides my what-if scenarios I brought up above, there's not as much of a reason to board up your house in a place like the Mojave, a stable, spread out region compared to the CW a dense, chaotic region. Not saying there isn't reasons of course, but there are less reasons I see in comparison.