Why does the West Coast Brotherhood Exist?

I'm not saying their goal makes sense or that it's even what they're doing, but that's what they're supposed to be doing.
 
Navarro: As with any real life military base, its construction is caused by multiple causes. IMHO, the Enclave not only use Navarro as a re-fuelling station (keep in mind this doesn't mean ROUTINE re-fueling station so much as needed to re-fuel SO MUCH aircraft), but could also be a hub for reconnaisance, maintenance, communications, command and control, etc.

BoS: Also IMHO, I do not see the necessity for NCR to commit the resources for a war of annihilation against the BoS. It was initiated by the BoS but won by NCR. NCR also seems to have appropriated a large amount of high tech from BoS.

If anything, I see the BoS as a wild card faction involved in NCR politics or as R&D (along the lines of Northrop Grumman or Skunkworks). They are not strong enough to run an empire but have enough power to swing regional power dominance in one direction or another (think of the legions role back in Roman days).
 
The way I have always viewed the BoS is that they are the good guys. The obsession with technology is rather obvious. You want power armor, and you do not want "bad guys" to have power armor or any other advanced tech. The problem however is whom do you trust in the wasteland even more so with advanced tech?

Taking a look at NCR the major objective for them is to obviously re-create civilization and through strong government means. While they could be classified as good guys at this time that can always change so the BoS can't even find itself dealing with perhaps the strongest faction in the world (The Enclave could be debated as such but you have to figure their numbers must be extremely low by now) Could NCR be trusted with such tech? Certainly not, and even if some treaty was made between the two that did not involve tech trade it would only be time before NCR realizes
betraying such a treaty would be more profitable than honoring it.

I believe the true goal, while many in the BoS seem to have become lost to it and prejudice to those outside the BoS is to actually help people.
I truly believe that the East coast BoS are doing what they are suppose to. Collect tech, restrict that tech to keep a power advantage, find ways to re-produce the tech, and help good people in military affairs.

Remember the BoS is more of a army not politicians. Perhaps I am simply speaking from my only heart and a personal view as a person who was in the army I simply cared about protecting my nation and my people. While I was certainly armed in a much superior manner I had no interest in having myself or the army govern the people we swore to protect.

In my opinion the BoS are the purest group in all of the Fallout universe. By no means are they perfect as they have developed xenophobia to any outside their own to a unhealthy point. Also the lack of diplomacy truly hurts them in the end, but if they could overcome these two problems I have no doubt they could outlast any current faction existing in the Fallout universe.

I know Fallout tactics isn't canon but I do believe that when you play the game and make the moral choices you can see that the BoS starts to make major changes they become much more liberal starting to accept outsiders into their ranks and becoming guardians of the people. To the point where discrimination can even end with ghouls and super mutants. The ending of FOT with this ending leaves the BoS without a doubt the strongest faction in the world. I believe this is where the BoS is suppose to be aiming for and I do believe that this goal may be achieved due to the BoS of the East.

Just my thoughts on the subject.
 
NuclearShadow said:
The way I have always viewed the BoS is that they are the good guys. The obsession with technology is rather obvious. You want power armor, and you do not want "bad guys" to have power armor or any other advanced tech. The problem however is whom do you trust in the wasteland even more so with advanced tech?

Taking a look at NCR the major objective for them is to obviously re-create civilization and through strong government means. While they could be classified as good guys at this time that can always change so the BoS can't even find itself dealing with perhaps the strongest faction in the world (The Enclave could be debated as such but you have to figure their numbers must be extremely low by now) Could NCR be trusted with such tech? Certainly not, and even if some treaty was made between the two that did not involve tech trade it would only be time before NCR realizes
betraying such a treaty would be more profitable than honoring it.

I believe the true goal, while many in the BoS seem to have become lost to it and prejudice to those outside the BoS is to actually help people.
I truly believe that the East coast BoS are doing what they are suppose to. Collect tech, restrict that tech to keep a power advantage, find ways to re-produce the tech, and help good people in military affairs.

Remember the BoS is more of a army not politicians. Perhaps I am simply speaking from my only heart and a personal view as a person who was in the army I simply cared about protecting my nation and my people. While I was certainly armed in a much superior manner I had no interest in having myself or the army govern the people we swore to protect.

In my opinion the BoS are the purest group in all of the Fallout universe. By no means are they perfect as they have developed xenophobia to any outside their own to a unhealthy point. Also the lack of diplomacy truly hurts them in the end, but if they could overcome these two problems I have no doubt they could outlast any current faction existing in the Fallout universe.

I know Fallout tactics isn't canon but I do believe that when you play the game and make the moral choices you can see that the BoS starts to make major changes they become much more liberal starting to accept outsiders into their ranks and becoming guardians of the people. To the point where discrimination can even end with ghouls and super mutants. The ending of FOT with this ending leaves the BoS without a doubt the strongest faction in the world. I believe this is where the BoS is suppose to be aiming for and I do believe that this goal may be achieved due to the BoS of the East.

Just my thoughts on the subject.
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Well I think you're right about the East coast BOS but you have to understand that the most people on this forums do not consider F3 as cannon.
For those people the BOS is in F:NV state which means dying.
You see I have my own theory about why does DC BOS behave the way they do behave and I think IMHO that for those who can read between lines its pretty obvious.
But thats just my way of seeing things.
 
I would totally ignore the Midwest and East coast Brotherhood, in Tactics it would have been better if they'd switched the Reavers and BOS around. With the player as part of the large Reaver army bent on control of the wastes and a small splinter group of the BOS gone into exile over their fanatical worship of technology.

The Brotherhood and Followers in FO1 both have similar aspects to the monks in A Canticle for Leibowitz, it's a pity that instead of the Hubologists and cheap pop culutre references in Fallout 2 we couldn't have seen the BOS and Followers unite into a new church spreading across the land.
 
I don't think the BOS and Followers in general would ever merge into one organization.

The BOS are sort of hardliners, feeling themselves to be the last best humanity has to over, and pretty much sticking to that attitude.

The Followers on the other hand are more determined to help as much of humanity as possible, growing and changing over time.
It was a big blow to them when Caesar formed the Legion and decided to unite and subjugate the remnants of humanity by force on the belief that humanity would only endure and persevere under one dictator (dictator as in Roman terms, not modern).
 
The way they are written now maybe but back in 97 taking the drive mutants away ending as canon. In the eighty years between games they could have come together. It would of certainly been more interesting than the throw away Hubologists. And their organization could have become the church of new rome to the NCR's Texarkana.
 
Personally I am against merging the BOS and the Followers.

Let the Followers gain strength while the BOS withers away because of its own politics.

Also, the Followers don't spread a religion, they seek to educate and help wastelanders to become self sufficient.
They spread a message of people working together and rebuilding.

Groups like the Mormons of New Canaan would more likely become a religion that spreads out across the West because of the peaceful mission of its members.

The religion of Caesar probably only last as long as the Legion exists and it can only convert by force.
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
Personally I am against merging the BOS and the Followers.
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WHo would even suggest it? It's not like either have had any significant relations with one another and given the Brotherhood's conservationist policies versus the Followers complete opposite I see no reason why either faction would consider a unity. It's like people who suggest a BoS/Enclave merge based on the fact that both factions make use of power armour and laser guns; sure both the Followers and BoS have an interest in knowledge but I see little else in common.
 
Dalex said:
Well I think you're right about the East coast BOS but you have to understand that the most people on this forums do not consider F3 as cannon.
For those people the BOS is in F:NV state which means dying.
You see I have my own theory about why does DC BOS behave the way they do behave and I think IMHO that for those who can read between lines its pretty obvious.
But thats just my way of seeing things.
Click to expand...

Even if you do not consider Fallout 3 to be canon and if we ignore the existence of the BoS in the east. If I recall correctly when the BoS formed their intended goal was to re-establish civilization.
They certainly have not taken the correct steps thus far to actually
achieve this as they are only only doing half of what is needed.

There is no reason why their lack of doing the other half which is working with the people cannot be done. Obviously they can to some degree already do this as you have dealings with them in FO1 and FO2 which most certainly are canon.

I think one important thing to consider is that people change and groups are made of people and therefor they can change as well.
The only reason why the BoS would be dying is due to shrinking amounts of members which can be fixed. I do not believe for a second that they would be dying out but just being stubborn until they are forced to make changes.

Since we are looking at a group that is based off the US army lets look at some real history of such. African Americans were finally allowed to serve officially and were segregated and faced much discrimination. Today things are greatly different compared to then.
Women of course would be next and some would argue (And I would agree) that they are still heavily discriminated against from them being able to take any MOS that is extremely likely to put them in combat to even ignoring reported sexual assault cases on them. (The BoS actually seems to be much more advanced with the equal rights and respecting of women in the military than we are today) Also it seems that we are very close to finally letting our soldiers be open about their sexuality and not restricting homosexuals from joining.

As you can see groups can change and comparing the BoS to the closest real life group shows that they should be fully capable.
There is no reason why they could not build up relations with settlements protecting them, educating them, and recruiting willing
young men and women from them. The settlements could continue to govern themselves. The BoS already has the means to do so and there will come a point where they have no choice but to do so. To believe they would simply never change their methods and reach extinction is simply unreal, even more so since we are talking about a group that is well trained, disciplined, highly educated, and well armed. What other group other than the Enclave has all of these things when it comes to their entire population.

I believe that even if BlackIsle was still around and still making the FallOut games that this is where the BoS would have headed.
I wouldn't go to the extreme FOT did (accepting mutants and such), but certainly could see them much farther in their progression of social evolving than in FO3. In-fact its quite amazing that even in BlackIsle's games that the BoS was not at this point, I would actually say the continued existence of the BoS under their current
storyline is likely impossible to begin with.

As a person who was in the army if I try to imagine myself in a similar situation where the world was in ruins and the chain of command was simply gone and all I had was the people I was stationed with I could imagine myself being stubborn at first not allowing civilians to join any combat situations and recruiting them in the ranks. But obviously I would have to deal with hostiles and illness taking the lives eventually I would have to replace the people I lost. I would have to start depending on those civilians, finding out which ones I could depend on and training them the best I could.
What choice would I have? I would have to try to gather as much people, supplies, and try to get at-least one secure (or as secure as possible) position. Then look to expand on such after obtaining those things.

It seems that the story of the BoS is close to what I would do except the fictional things such as power armor. However in their history it never really mentions picking people up on the way. With them coming from Mariposa as top secret facility/base their numbers would have been extremely low to begin with. With a major war going on and the facility being a top secret one to begin with it would want to draw as little attention as possible so it would have naturally be lightly guarded. With the execution of the scientists (which would have likely been more than them than soldiers) this would have left the soon to be BoS way too low in numbers.

"November 2077 Captain Maxson, his men, and their families, arrive at the Lost Hills bunker a few weeks later, suffering many casualties along the way, including Maxson's wife (but not his teenage son). The surviving soldiers go on to become the Brotherhood of Steel."

So due to it being a secret base that obviously would not want more than whats needed and to not draw attention plus the major war going on with China you would have to imagine that this would be a very small group of people to begin with. On top of it they clearly had a high casualty rate leaving even less of them. Now either they picked people up on the way and after and its simply not mentioned or the BoS history is one of impossibility. I am stuck having to believe that they not only recruited then but continued to do so for sometime. No way would they have lasted so long (200 years?)
without such even more so due to the low population to begin with.
I think its clear that the BoS is NOT 100% (or even close) descended from Mariposa but those whom joined afterwards.
Whatever process they did back then is all they would have to do again.
 
Don't forget about NCR-BOS war.

While maybe Captain Maxson and his team wanted to slowly introduce technology to wasteland their descendents aren't so interesed in it.

They started war because they did not want others (NCR) to have technology.

BOS in fallout:NV is dying by their own choice.

Of course if NCR-BOS truce ending would be canon then there could be some young members who after more contact with outside world would try to reform BOS or simly would left BOS.

About fallowers and BOS: it would not work , Bos wants to hoard technology, fallowers want to use tochnology to help others..
 
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