Iprovidelittlepianos
Vault Senior Citizen
Vault-Tec started the Great War.
I know, I know, it’s one of the dumbest/laziest “fan theories” that Bethesda fans have come up with. But I actually think it could work. Of course, the details of how exactly the Great War was started should be left a mystery. Ideally we should never find out who fired the first shot, and making the Great War into a perfectly executed Enclave/Vault-Tec conspiracy is stupid as hell. But, like I said, there are ways that this can work.
The year is 2077. The world has been patiently awaiting nuclear armageddon for almost a quarter of a century now, ever since the destruction of Tel Aviv revived Cold War fears of nuclear attacks. Vault-Tec is getting impatient. Obviously global thermonuclear war is bad for business, but fear of nuclear annihilation is what keeps them in business. And despite tensions being at an all-time high, the flow of money towards Vault-Tec is drying up. The government isn’t contracting the construction of any more vaults, or if they are, far less than they used to, likely due to military spending on more pressing issues (and if we accept the Vault Experiments as canon, the government simply has all the vaults they want/need for their experiements).
Additionally, as time goes on, far less people are signing up for Vaults. Perhaps the good old American independent spirit is leading Americans to build their own family sized bunkers and ride out the nuclear war on their own. I’m assuming that reserving space in a Vault is subscription-based, so the more people that sign up, the more money Vault-Tec makes.
The bottom line is, while fears of nuclear war may be at an all-time high, they clearly aren’t high enough, and that’s affecting Vault-Tec’s bottom line (hehe see what I did there). People need to be more afraid, more paranoid, sign up for a Vault and/or petition the government to build more. They need another bomb scare. They need another Tel Aviv.
The proto-Enclave has a vested interest in this as well, though they are less financially motivated. They need data from the Vault experiments, and they’re not really interested in waiting a few decades after nuclear war strikes to collect this data. They need citizens to be preemptively moved into the Vaults already so the grand social experiment can begin. The best way to do this would be to convince people that the threat of nuclear war has already arrived, in the form of frequent small-scale atomic terrorism. When it comes to a nuclear attack from China, people would have at least a few dozen minutes to get to their Vault from when the klaxon starts ringing to the moment the warhead hits. But a dirty third-worlder can drive a van right into your neighborhood and detonate a small nuclear device with no warning, reducing you and your family to radioactive cinders. The only way to protect yourself is to sign up for a Vault and move in immediately.
The higher ups in Vault-Tec and the proto-Enclave (which may be one in the same) work together to stage a false flag attack on an American city, one that isn’t too important in the grand scheme of things but still major enough to really get citizens’ attention. They set up some African terrorist cell as the fall guy (as obviously they can’t blame this on China without also retaliating against China, which would lead to full scale nuclear exchange anyway) and evacuate anyone of importance from the target location the week of October 23rd. In the early hours of October 23rd, 2077, they detonate the nuclear device. The plan went off without a hitch, and no one expects a thing.
Except for China. China detects this detonation and sees it for the false flag attack that it is. But China misunderstands the motivation, and assumes that America is going to use this “attack” as an excuse to launch their arsenal and wipe China off the map. China retaliates by launching their arsenal in an attempt to wipe out the U.S. first. The U.S. sees this and retaliates in turn. All their allies join in on the fun. Fours hours later, Vault-Tec’s stock price has plummeted. The CEO of Vault-Tec stares out a window on the oil rig and watches the world end. A tear falls from his eye. “Was it worth it?” he asks himself. If only he had shorted his own stock beforehand...
I know, I know, it’s one of the dumbest/laziest “fan theories” that Bethesda fans have come up with. But I actually think it could work. Of course, the details of how exactly the Great War was started should be left a mystery. Ideally we should never find out who fired the first shot, and making the Great War into a perfectly executed Enclave/Vault-Tec conspiracy is stupid as hell. But, like I said, there are ways that this can work.
The year is 2077. The world has been patiently awaiting nuclear armageddon for almost a quarter of a century now, ever since the destruction of Tel Aviv revived Cold War fears of nuclear attacks. Vault-Tec is getting impatient. Obviously global thermonuclear war is bad for business, but fear of nuclear annihilation is what keeps them in business. And despite tensions being at an all-time high, the flow of money towards Vault-Tec is drying up. The government isn’t contracting the construction of any more vaults, or if they are, far less than they used to, likely due to military spending on more pressing issues (and if we accept the Vault Experiments as canon, the government simply has all the vaults they want/need for their experiements).
Additionally, as time goes on, far less people are signing up for Vaults. Perhaps the good old American independent spirit is leading Americans to build their own family sized bunkers and ride out the nuclear war on their own. I’m assuming that reserving space in a Vault is subscription-based, so the more people that sign up, the more money Vault-Tec makes.
The bottom line is, while fears of nuclear war may be at an all-time high, they clearly aren’t high enough, and that’s affecting Vault-Tec’s bottom line (hehe see what I did there). People need to be more afraid, more paranoid, sign up for a Vault and/or petition the government to build more. They need another bomb scare. They need another Tel Aviv.
The proto-Enclave has a vested interest in this as well, though they are less financially motivated. They need data from the Vault experiments, and they’re not really interested in waiting a few decades after nuclear war strikes to collect this data. They need citizens to be preemptively moved into the Vaults already so the grand social experiment can begin. The best way to do this would be to convince people that the threat of nuclear war has already arrived, in the form of frequent small-scale atomic terrorism. When it comes to a nuclear attack from China, people would have at least a few dozen minutes to get to their Vault from when the klaxon starts ringing to the moment the warhead hits. But a dirty third-worlder can drive a van right into your neighborhood and detonate a small nuclear device with no warning, reducing you and your family to radioactive cinders. The only way to protect yourself is to sign up for a Vault and move in immediately.
The higher ups in Vault-Tec and the proto-Enclave (which may be one in the same) work together to stage a false flag attack on an American city, one that isn’t too important in the grand scheme of things but still major enough to really get citizens’ attention. They set up some African terrorist cell as the fall guy (as obviously they can’t blame this on China without also retaliating against China, which would lead to full scale nuclear exchange anyway) and evacuate anyone of importance from the target location the week of October 23rd. In the early hours of October 23rd, 2077, they detonate the nuclear device. The plan went off without a hitch, and no one expects a thing.
Except for China. China detects this detonation and sees it for the false flag attack that it is. But China misunderstands the motivation, and assumes that America is going to use this “attack” as an excuse to launch their arsenal and wipe China off the map. China retaliates by launching their arsenal in an attempt to wipe out the U.S. first. The U.S. sees this and retaliates in turn. All their allies join in on the fun. Fours hours later, Vault-Tec’s stock price has plummeted. The CEO of Vault-Tec stares out a window on the oil rig and watches the world end. A tear falls from his eye. “Was it worth it?” he asks himself. If only he had shorted his own stock beforehand...
