Functional vaults

[DiDirector]

Hey dweller's how would vaults work if they weren't horrible inhumane test for the scientist at vault tech and others who supported them how would they work I know there's some stuff about it in the wiki but in real life years how would power, food, water, education, and other amenities actually work in these vaults?

 

[The_Proletarian]

There's a 1000 inhabitants per vault and they can grow their own food. People are assigned different duties and kids go to school. They must have had a lot of spareparts to be able to do continous repairs over such a long period of time I guess. By the time of Fallout 1, 80 years after the war there doesn't appear to be that many functional vaults left. I mean it's only Vault 13 that's still running. So I guess it was difficult to maintain the vaults that long.

I mostly disregard later additons to the Fallout series and the nu-lore of the vaults being run as experiments.

 

[Cambragol]

I made a 1000 person vault for Fallout New Vegas back in the day. It has every room and level fully detailed. It had huge levels for storage, and water, as well as power etc. It is a ruined vault though.

I made it as a modder's resource, without any lore, other than it was...ruined. I was never so keen on the whole 'vaults as experiments' either.

Check it out here: Vault 24

 

[Resardiv]

Keeping anything up and running for that long, solely relying on pre-stored spare parts, is going to be difficult. There's a limit to how long you can keep those operations going without degradation of quality or a general lack of resources. That's why the vault opened up on the West Coast after some time.
The vaults are pretty small, and there's essentially no redundancy if something breaks.
What Vault 8 did should be the modus operandi for most vaults: open up and utilize your technology to project power in the Wasteland. Rotting inside can only protect you for so long.

 

[The_Proletarian]

What Vault 8 did should be the modus operandi for most vaults: open up and utilize your technology to project power in the Wasteland. Rotting inside can only protect you for so long.

Agree! And Vault 13 only held out for so long because their "experiment" was to not leave the vault and to see for how many generations people could live secluded like that. For most other vaults they should just open like Vault 8, as you write.

 

[Resardiv]

Vault 13 only held out for so long because their "experiment" was to not leave the vault and to see for how many generations people could live secluded like that.

You bring up a great point, which reminds me of something similar!

While most people assume that nuclear war would result in MAD, that's not necessarily the case. A limited nuclear strike is equally possible, which would "only" cause major damage to large cities and some command structures. In that scenario, having some communities survive long enough for the government to re-establish itself would be a significant advantage. That's why the vaults were built, you can't "nuclear-proof" a country.

Another major issue I forgot to mention is consanguinity. The smaller the population of a vault, the greater the risk of inbreeding. Pakistan speedrun.