Anarchosyn said:
I can point to the Greek, Egyptian, Sumerian or Chinese cultures and remark how, after several hundreds of years, little was created in the sense of developing new technologies to exploit their agricultural base. They reached a level of maturity and, though cultural evolution wasn't absent, found a level of sustainable development which worked for eons (I think if you plotted these developments on a graph they'd exhibit a positive slope but the rate of marginal change would be very very small).
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200 years isn't a very long time, all things considered, and the vault doors didn't start opening immediately after the bombs fell. I must admit to being abit sketchy on my Fallout history in this regard but it seems that only the vault dwellers would be in a position to rebuild society (I'm aware that non-vault dwellers likewise survived but the conditions immediately after the fall seemed so harsh that most cultures devolved into more sustenance communities; eschewing technology and science for survivability).
On the issue of ancient cultures., I don't see the progress having much relevance here because anceint Greece, Sumaria, China, etc... had to develope all the knowledge for themselves. Their best minds were focused on developing knowledge that today is taught in 4th grade math classes. Vault dwellers and members of the Brotherhood or Enclave would likely learn basics of algebra, geometry, trig, etc...just as early as we do. Then wastelanders aren't without any knowledge. There are tons of science books, repair books, mags, etc...about the wastes. Basically the knowledge is there to be read by those who see advantage in doin so. And I'm not talking about people making combat drones or space ships; I'm just thinking developing irrigation, bridges, concrete walls for their bases, vehicular transport, newly made buildings, etc...
I agree society would be more targeted on surviability (esp. with deathclaws and overpowered mutant crickets), but wouldn't many basic techs help in that survival. If insead of fixing up that car in FO2 the same mechanic fixed up a crane or bulldozer, they could have build large fortified earthworks about their settlements. It's not high tech, but much better than chainlink. I realize now that Vegas hasn't been functioning long as is, but with in a decade I'd expect the tech there to replace the junk barrier with some reinforced concrete or earthworks.
Hadanelith said:
It occurs to me that progress towards greater civilization typically involves ever increasing amounts of technology; you know, the stuff that made the apocalypse happen in the first place. If I were a first generation wastelander, I'd be pretty wary of technology in general, since it smacks of the decadence that led to the Great War. Successive generations are likely to be more accepting of tech, but it takes time for attitudes to change. It could very conceivably have taken 200 years for the prevailing feelings toward high tech to be accepting again.
As for Fallout Technophobia...I've not see it in the games. There are tons of people happily using pre-war tech; be it guns, robots, medical tech, robodogs, toilets, etc... I've also never see references to technological holocausts like in Dune. So, I don't see that as an anwser.
