Would you rather be a Vault Dweller or a Wastelander?

Vaut city is a weird example.

They still have their vault, they try to keep themselves isolated from outsiders and mutants, they have many medications, including anti-rad, they control the birth with doctors and scientists.
But, in the same time, they drink highly irradiated water...
So, they have the means to heal themselves, but they are far too much exposed to be considered as viable survivors of the Enclave virus.

Also, you are right that Vault dwellers are also more vulnerable to outside threat, as their body is not used to fight radiation, post-war diseases, raiders and monsters, as they were never been exposed to them in the past, while the usual wastelander know these threats and thought of way to handle them.

But if you take a vault dweller that still lives in a closed vault, functionning perfectly, he would have a far better health than a vault city citizen.
 
I think that depends on your definition of health. The tempering influence of exposure isn't to be underestimated, and I'm sure that wastelanders and tribals have far better constitutions and tougher immune systems than anyone fresh out of the vault, on the whole. Vault dwellers spend their entire lives in cramped, relatively dimly-lit conditions, consuming recycled food and water and breathing recycled air that's been repeatedly pumped through ancient machines and been tainted with "tolerable" traces of all kinds of chemicals, residues, and rust.

I know Vaults are future-tech, and optimistic future-tech at that, but men serving on modern submarines under similar conditions commonly suffer from upper respiratory issues, musculoskeletal issues, skin problems, and a host of other symptoms, as well as an increased risk of mesothelioma and certain other illnesses due to constant exposure to hazardous chemicals and materials necessary for the sub's construction and operation. And that's staying under for three to six months at a time, where a lucky vault citizen might have to do it for ten decades. I'm not sure the dwellers would be such a hale and hearty lot.

That isn't even broaching the subject of psychological health, either. Even in the non-homicidal vaults, conditions would be cramped, monotonous, and controlled, privacy and personal space would be at a premium, and freedom would be nonexistent. The psychological stresses of those conditions would lead to discontent, widespread neuroses, and who-knows-what-else, even among populations raised to them. People aren't built for that.

I'd give Wastelanders the edge on this one. Vault Dwellers could probably maintain a reasonable level of fitness via gym facilities and keep themselves healthy with their advanced tech, but even in the first game, before the vault experiments, there was plenty to suggest that the Vaults weren't the perfectly functional underground tomorrowlands they'd been sold as. Wastelanders might suffer from a lot, but they suffer and survive, and they've got natural selection on their side.
 
Yamu said:
I think that depends on your definition of health. The tempering influence of exposure isn't to be underestimated, and I'm sure that wastelanders and tribals have far better constitutions and tougher immune systems than anyone fresh out of the vault, on the whole. Vault dwellers spend their entire lives in cramped, relatively dimly-lit conditions, consuming recycled food and water and breathing recycled air that's been repeatedly pumped through ancient machines and been tainted with "tolerable" traces of all kinds of chemicals, residues, and rust.

I know Vaults are future-tech, and optimistic future-tech at that, but men serving on modern submarines under similar conditions commonly suffer from upper respiratory issues, musculoskeletal issues, skin problems, and a host of other symptoms, as well as an increased risk of mesothelioma and certain other illnesses due to constant exposure to hazardous chemicals and materials necessary for the sub's construction and operation. And that's staying under for three to six months at a time, where a lucky vault citizen might have to do it for ten decades. I'm not sure the dwellers would be such a hale and hearty lot.

That isn't even broaching the subject of psychological health, either. Even in the non-homicidal vaults, conditions would be cramped, monotonous, and controlled, privacy and personal space would be at a premium, and freedom would be nonexistent. The psychological stresses of those conditions would lead to discontent, widespread neuroses, and who-knows-what-else, even among populations raised to them. People aren't built for that.

I'd give Wastelanders the edge on this one. Vault Dwellers could probably maintain a reasonable level of fitness via gym facilities and keep themselves healthy with their advanced tech, but even in the first game, before the vault experiments, there was plenty to suggest that the Vaults weren't the perfectly functional underground tomorrowlands they'd been sold as. Wastelanders might suffer from a lot, but they suffer and survive, and they've got natural selection on their side.
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Besides, Vault Dwellers needs the Vitamin D from the sun!
 
For people to actually adapt to the (massive amounts) of radiation around them, it would mean the human race evolving (not necessarily in a physical manner of appearance, but instead within our genome, chromosomes, and general DNA makeup). Evolution usually works for the best since it allows species to survive and adapt to conditions they normally wouldn't, but it can take a verrrrrrrrrrrry long time. Who knows, by the time the human race already starts to evolve to adapt to their irradiated world, they may already be on the verge of extinction.

Unless, of course, they are forced to evolve. This was the Master's plan. Aside from his worry that we would eventually kill eachother over differences, he also feared that mankind wasn't adapted to an irradiated mutated world, and by the time we finally did evolve our race would probably already be near death. So when he stumbled across the FEV he came up with the plan for the Unity (that and probably a mixture of general insanity one might gain from floating around in FEV-2 VATS for months on end). He figured if humanity couldn't evolve on their own, he could MAKE them evolve with the Forced Evolutionary Virus, and therefore save the human race. He really did have our best interests at heart (even if he was partly insane). But as crazy or "disgusting" as the Masters plan may have seemed, back then (60 or 80 years after the Great War), it was probably the best plan anyone had (damn sure better than the Enclave's "kill everyone who ain't pure" plan). In fact, if the FEV-2 didn't completely destroy our re-productive organs, then the Master would have been the best hope for humanity (of course some people are going to resist being dipped in a virus which painfully forces you to evolve, so he had to take "cautionary" measures).
 
Wait a minute. Everybody in the Post nuclear war has been exposed to FEV? Even Vault City? Then wouldn't they be mutants? I mean is it in small amounts or something enough to cause significant mutations enough to make them a bit more durable against radiation? Shoot. If people really wanted to preserve the outside world they shoulda just made cities underground, or at in sea where the exposure to such elements wouldn't be as harsh. I guess nobody was really going to be safe from the virus either way it went. Whether Vault Dwellers come out or not, they won't be safe. But later generations will adapt.
 
Okay. How about a crude example of a Vault Dweller and a Wastelander not using Fallout what so ever. Akira, say people grew up in Neo Tokyo 38 years after World War III. Exposed to outside elements of the world, but things were relatively clean. Including health care. Crude comparison, but I'd compare Neo-Tokyoians to Vault Dwellers in terms of health cleanliness but Wastelanders in Attitude. But either way. If the system exists there to keep later generations from Biological, Chemical, and Radiological hazards then their lifestyle and health and maybe some attitudes could be compared to Vault Dwellers. If there were some mysterious city in the mountains far North of NYC that has a 100 foot wall and keeps out all outside influences. Only to find a city that look truly like a Utopia, but paranoid and on age of outsiders. It has perfect health care, perfect living standards, low mortality rate, low radiation exposure then it's like a Vault on the outside and in the open.
 
The Lieutenant theory about the FEV being everywhere have been officially disregarded a decade ago...
 
Oh, well then.

I also think the Lone Wanderer from Fallout 3 counts as a Wastelander considering he was born there but lived 19 years of his life in a Vault. Him leaving was nothing more than him facing the wastes again.
 
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The Lone Wanderer is kind of an odd case. It falls to what your stance on nature vs. nurture is. He's the product of wasteland genetic stock and he did spend a brief period exposed to outside influences, but he had to have been younger than a year old when he was admitted to 101, and I'd be willing to venture that he was younger than six months. Functionally speaking, the formative influences on his biology, psychology, and physiology were indistinguishable from those of the vault dwellers. In fact, given the scouting parties, there were likely 101 residents who had spent far more time exposed to the wastes than he ever did (prior to expulsion).
 
Oh thanks. Oh yeah, about what Nao said about Vault City. Considering that they're in the best health and have the best technology to offer around. I think in some way they would be Vault Dwellers, just on the outside and far more xenophobic and racist of outworlders than any person should be. Oh yeah I think the Chosen One repaired the Gecko power plant and soon Vault City took care of then contaminated water with maybe anti radiation solutions. I'm sure that one guy in the courtyard was the only case. But as for everything else. The Vault Dwellers may live longer live due to free access to health and overall cleanliness, heck even some tech that could make them live very long lifespans. But they're less durable and tough then their Wasteland counterparts who live shorter lifespans, but are tougher than rock. I also think the Courier was just a Wastelander.
 
Sn1p3r187 said:
Oh thanks. Oh yeah, about what Nao said about Vault City. Considering that they're in the best health and have the best technology to offer around.
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I wouldn't use the words "the best health" to describe the sweeping sterility of the entire male populace and verging on the edge of genetic extinction by the time the Chosen One happened upon them. Looks like there's a lot of details you've got to get squared away, since you're either mistaken about or unaware of many of them, but correcting all of that is easier said than done. First you've got to know what you don't know...

Since you started the topic, you ought to know best exactly what you mean when you're distinguishing between 2 different "kinds" of people. My thoughts on what separates "Wastelanders" from "Vault Dwellers" is not their geographical placement, but where either they or their parents emerged on the surface from. Ultimately everyone's a surface dweller, so why make any distinctions between them? But those who came from Vaults, whether they're living on the surface like the Vault City Citizens or the inhabitants of Shady Sands (shortly after its founding, before growing and accepting immigration) are "Vault Dwellers", I'd say. Those who came from smaller-scale shelters who couldn't stay protected for long periods, or those who barely escaped the nuclear cataclysm by sheer luck, and lived for generations in the harsh terrain of the Wasteland are "Wastelanders".

If it weren't for the Vault Behavioral Project, I might hands down prefer to be a Vault Dweller. But because that option is, at best, a craps shoot of living a "normal" life or being tortured and toyed with by any number of different social stresses, growing up on the surface has its advantages. At least for Wastelanders, the elements that are out to get them are fairly stock and predictable. Mutated predators, lack of resources, other Wastelanders, etc. Assuming you had the luck to be part of a control Vault, then yes your life expectancy would be substantially better than any Wastelander, and then the question would be would you be able to cope with and/or enjoy living in a cramped quarters that will never change or grow, and could you accept an unchanging lifestyle, no matter how much safer and cleaner it could ever be than the alternative? Personally, while I know I'd have difficulties with many obstacles, if only for the fact that I could create something of my own, I'd rather be a Wastelander.
 
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About the lone wanderer, he lived almost his whole life in Vault 101 and is born from parents whom the background is unknown.
We know that James & Catherine spent some time outside, but we don't know if they spent their whole life outside or if they came from a vault themselves.
 
Vault 101 is the only vault we've seen in the Capital Wasteland that wasn't an unqualified massacre, so I'd say the odds of James or Catherine coming from a vault are probably pretty slim. There is the interesting possibility of one or both of them coming from 101 itself, having gone out with one of the original survey teams in the decades before Alfonse Almodovar became overseer and never returned-- the timing for it would have been right, and it would explain why Almodovar let James and TLW in when he was so staunch about returning to the isolationism and closed gene pool called for in the original 101 experimental parameters-- but with nothing suggesting this in the game it's just fanwank.
 
Fo1-Fo2 established that most wastelanders came from a vault or had ancestors coming from a vault.
So, except when it is specified otherwise, i tend to assume this.
Also, there is the fact that James & Catherine are doctors/scientist, with some advanced knowledge.
It fits pretty well with a vault background.
At last, we have to assume that there is a whole world outside the limited number of location that you explore, a whole world full of vault. (at least in the Fallout equivalent of the USA)
 
"My idea is to explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a post-nuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun. " .

What did Tim Cain mean? If ya don't mind my asking
 
He meant he'd rather explore the possibilities of a "what would happen if a world-wide nuclear war occurred" question and have that be the general focus of the game, instead of focusing on menial things like the graphics, effectiveness, and damage of a plasma weapon.
 
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Sn1p3r187 >
Personnally, i chose it because it emphasis on the lore, the setting, the societies and what they mean rather than in combats & other trivial stuff.
I also comes from one of the main (if not the main) original founders of the franchise.
 
Yamu said:
That isn't even broaching the subject of psychological health, either. Even in the non-homicidal vaults, conditions would be cramped, monotonous, and controlled, privacy and personal space would be at a premium, and freedom would be nonexistent. The psychological stresses of those conditions would lead to discontent, widespread neuroses, and who-knows-what-else, even among populations raised to them. People aren't built for that.
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Quick reaction on this: that might be true for the first generation of vault dwellers, however the new generations would've known nothing else than the vault. As long as they didn't teach their child too hard about how the world outside used to be, they would probably not notice, and certainly not care about how little their world is. It's the world outside that would be disturbing to them.

And, with a big enough pool of people, evolution would still happen in a vault, though it would perhaps favour other traits.
Just because they come from a harsher world, the wastelanders' gene pool doesn't necessarily have to improve so much. More resistant to their environment, possibly, but that's pretty much it.
 
Yamu said:
That isn't even broaching the subject of psychological health, either. Even in the non-homicidal vaults, conditions would be cramped, monotonous, and controlled, privacy and personal space would be at a premium, and freedom would be nonexistent. The psychological stresses of those conditions would lead to discontent, widespread neuroses, and who-knows-what-else, even among populations raised to them. People aren't built for that.
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Yes but the vaults were never described to be cramped (except that stupid poem in F3), in fact the rooms in the F2 vaults looked quite spacious so the cramped dark conditions line is overused. And if you look at Vegas, then most of the Vaults failed either due to their own stupidity or outside intervention. Otherwise everyone would be fine (Boomers for example).
 
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