In 1997 Interplay Productions released a post apocalyptic roleplaying game, Fallout. The game was praised heavily for its realism in a sense, but also the ability of player choice and how to interact with the world around them. One of the biggest elements of Fallout’s apocalyptic story though is the Nuclear Fallout that was left from a great nuclear war through the world wiping most of civilization out. Fallout has had multiple games from 1-4, New Vegas, Brotherhood of Steel Tactics. All these games feature amazing stories from dark and gruesome survival tales and then just random and goofy things that can occur just in the wasteland.
One of the first things to know about the Fallout universe compared to reality is that sometime around the second World War and the 1950s instead of branching away from nuclear energy the American government only focused on nuclear energy and integrating it into everything. Another thing about Fallout’s universe is how their society runs and it’s some of the worst parts of America but to the extreme. From patriotism, capitalism, and our militarism or in better words Imperialism to some degree. The American government in Fallout is filled with Propaganda, secret societies, public human testing. And all of that are issues and things we hear about that happen in real life.
Fallout’s biggest support to its patriotism and militarism is its technological advancements, almost all of Fallout’s technology came from military testing and application before being integrated into civilian life. But if it was not military tested or made it was usually produced with some military application in the future or possible combat situations. Mr. Handy is a robot butler or servant of sorts that has 4 to 6 arms, each equipped with a different tool of sorts such as a flame thrower and super power saw that can cut through most metals. Now what civilian needs a personal butler capable of building or destroying most structures if properly recoded or hacked. Fallout’s human testing can be seen with its use of drugs and their medical uses but there were things never talked about.
Drugs for medical purposes in Fallout consist of Med X (morphine equivalent), Mentats (Adderall and memory supplements roughly), and Buffout ( Instant steroids and endurance). Med X was a common painkiller, but it was used too common for something on the same level as morphine. This painkiller was pushed over the counter as something like ibuprofen, and that doesn’t even go into the side effects and addictiveness of all of these drugs. While people outside of a military environment had the choice to be addicted to it, soldiers had no choice as suits of armor basically tanks would auto inject this into any poor human inside its steel jaws as they could be dying and bleeding out but not realize due to being injected with painkillers just so the government can attain a little bit more land or resources which is common for Fallout’s government. There is actually something similar to that happening right now, the sale of 7oh which is meant to help people get off of opioids or other hard drugs but people are either becoming addicted to opioids because of it or can’t get off 7oh never truly getting off opioids. What makes it really scary is this can be bought just over the counter at a local gas station.
Moving on from drugs, to talk about another ingestible, Fallouts Pink Goo. To be more specific in studying a nutritious food paste for soldiers to carry on the go, the U.S army came up with this Pink Goo that was nutritious but needed to be tested. The logical decision is to forcibly make a school only serve Pink Goo or even worse school food than before to make the students take the Pink Goo over the nasty food. Because it needs to be tested, so tell everyone involved that there are no side effects or possible bad outcomes other than taste and long term effects just need to be studied. Now any kid that ate the Pink Goo regularly developed a pink skin tone and also seemed to have frequent stomach issues. Sadly no other side effects were found in Fallout’s universe due to nuclear war happening before that experiment could reach a conclusion. The government changing food regulations in order to try something new has always been a thing both in reality and in fiction. But that does not always mean it is for the better as science is all about trial and error and what we say is healthy now could end up being terrible for us in the future, as history has shown over and over. The decrease in food quality in school compared to older generations makes me feel like I’m eating Pink Goo, not saying I’ll turn pink though.
Fallout is one the best game series I have ever played, but it is also probably one of the scariest at the same time. The game was made for money and creativity of course but I also think it’s a warning or a cautionary tale of sorts. It is different from reality enough that it seems impossible to live like that or that something like that could happen but at the same time that stuff that’s horrible and that gets done in Fallout like the drugs and the human testing, reality has already done that stuff. So think how easy we could have gone in the same direction Fallout’s universe has. Or maybe we will, the bombs did not come till 2077.
