How long would things last in a PA world?

Shardik said:
I don't know for sure, since I don't think I've ever seen a terminal in the game smashed open so you can see the components. But since all the other electronics in the game seem to pre-date transistors and integrated circuits, I'd guess they probably do use vacuum tubes.
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Whammytap said:
Yes. Transistors and semiconductors were never invented/discovered in the Fallout universe.
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Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but vacuum tubes wear out after like 40 years. So I don't think terminals would actually still work.
 
It depends on use and storage conditions and just plain 'ol dumb luck when it comes to tube tech--at least from my experience with tube amplifiers in the music biz and the tube radios my husband and I take apart (and sometimes even put back together!) for fun. I've personally seen 75-year-old tubes in radios that were stored in basements and barns come to life and test within parameters. And sometimes you'll get a brand new one that's dead out of the box.

I think a little magic is involved, personally.
 
Whammytap said:
It depends on use and storage conditions and just plain 'ol dumb luck when it comes to tube tech--at least from my experience with tube amplifiers in the music biz and the tube radios my husband and I take apart (and sometimes even put back together!) for fun. I've personally seen 75-year-old tubes in radios that were stored in basements and barns come to life and test within parameters. And sometimes you'll get a brand new one that's dead out of the box.

I think a little magic is involved, personally.
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It could also be postulated that after the divergence of the timeline from ours, there could have been major improvements made to vacuum tube technology.
 
Operation Wignut said:
It could also be postulated that after the divergence of the timeline from ours, there could have been major improvements made to vacuum tube technology.
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Very, very true, good point. It's like the park train at my local zoo--it's a steam locomotive that was designed and built in the 1970s. It's ridiculously efficient compared to the ones they stopped making when diesel locos came onto the scene and hardly resembles what we'd think of as a steam engine.

Who knows what improvements happened to the "old" technology in the Fallout universe?

Off-topic musing: People criticize that there was no cultural development from the 1950s to 2077. I'd like to think that 100+ years, there was all sorts of cultural development and people simply came back around to the old ways. Platform shoes, virtual pets, and Norwegian black metal were all experimented with and summarily rejected. Maybe in 2077 "retro 1950s" was just the style.
 
I think my patience and sanity would last a lot longer in a real nuclear apocalypse than they do when I'm playing Fallout 4.
 
Whammytap said:
Off-topic musing: People criticize that there was no cultural development from the 1950s to 2077. I'd like to think that 100+ years, there was all sorts of cultural development and people simply came back around to the old ways. Platform shoes, virtual pets, and Norwegian black metal were all experimented with and summarily rejected. Maybe in 2077 "retro 1950s" was just the style.
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People criticize holding on to the past? For All's sake, people are living in a preserved wasteland of Old-World ideas, why wouldn't they adopt them? There's a certain type of maturation a society has to reach before cultural development can take hold, and it's obvious atomic bombs wouldn't exactly catalyst that reaction. Do people just expect an entirely same universe to come from a no-internet age of constant fear?
 
So...you're saying that between the point of divergence of the Fallout universe and ours (1950s) to 2077 there were no silly fads? I just picked out a few examples, they don't have to be the same ones we had here. Giddyup Buttercup, perhaps? I'd hardly consider platform shoes to be a great cultural achievement--on the contrary, they're just the sort of frivolous thing produced by an immature society.

I'm not sure what my comment had to do with the post-War wasteland. 2077 is when the bombs fell.
 
Whammytap said:
So...you're saying that between the point of divergence of the Fallout universe and ours (1950s) to 2077 there were no silly fads? I just picked out a few examples, they don't have to be the same ones we had here. Giddyup Buttercup, perhaps? I'd hardly consider platform shoes to be a great cultural achievement--on the contrary, they're just the sort of frivolous thing produced by an immature society.

I'm not sure what my comment had to do with the post-War wasteland. 2077 is when the bombs fell.
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Sorry, got confused. Disregard everything I said.
 
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