Post Apocalyptic Wars - Practical?

[LordPariah]

Think about it.. Its already astonishing enough that humanity managed to become the dominant species again, what with the mutants, monsters, and environmental hazards of this new, dangerous world.

Its actually quite amazing that they managed to get such a relatively large populus with the lack of clean water and food. But then again its been 200 years, and this is the fallout universe so I dont quite know.

But the fact that humans managed to get such large populations once more and then begin waging a war with all of these other conflicts, like mutants inside their borders? Makes me think that they'd run out of people to throw at each other pretty quick. Even if it is a war of attrition and a siege like the Dam, the radiation, bad food, and dangerous creatures would surely shave a large amount of people off their fighting force and civilian population...

And now, with the discovery of the emerging threats of the Divide... New Vegas may be doomed either way.

 

Your opinion?

Edited June 27, 2013 by GaylordPariah

[RJLbwb]

Actually I would think with all the environmental damage small scale wars would be more likely since the smaller surviving human population has less resources. It would be worse in the South West because water is scare even in the best of times.

As for mutants, that word does not mean what the game developers think, so Fallout mutants are just magic. (keep in mind all land animals, including us humans, are just mutant sea worms) I mean seriously, how can those Death Claws find enough food in the desert to live in such numbers?

As for the quick recovery - that was the purpose of the Vault system. The pre-war US government wanted to “win” the nuclear was by being the first to recover.

 

As for the Divide, it's a bit hard to believe there are working missiles two hundred years after the war. Even if by some miracle the missiles haven’t decayed to uselessness, the warheads require these elaborate codes before they will go off (not to mention, why are they targeted on Jerk Water, California and not some city in China?) Maybe some group like BOS might figure it out, but some tribal with delusions of grander like Ulysses? More magic.

What's really the threat to New Vegas in the long run is sooner or later some group that is bright and clever, like the NCR, will be making their own nuclear weapons and then the legion will have to make their own and so on,... (somone say A Canticle for Leibowitz?)

[DeadlyDoughnuts]

Well you know what they say. War, war never changes.

[peadar1987]

It's been 200 years since the war.

 

The first vaults seemed to start opening in about 2130 (As per the fallout wiki), so 150 years before New Vegas. The bigger vaults housed 1,000 people. If there were maybe 5 vaults that worked properly in the California area (Vault 21, Vault 15 and Vault 13 are all known to have kept their population alive, and there could have been others), that's about 5,000 people. California today is home to about 40 million people, so let's assume there's enough fertile land and water about to keep just 5,000 people alive through subsistence farming.

 

So let's say that on average, each of the 2,500 women out of that number has three children (or 1.5 children per couple), every 25 years. You get a population increase of:

 

2130: 5000

2155: 7500

2180: 11250

2205: 16875

2230: 25312

2255: 37968

2280: 56953

 

So just from the descendants of the people who lived in those five vaults, the population has increased by a factor of ten. Now if you factor in the people who survived in places like Vegas, which was protected by Mr. House, people who were perhaps in other vaults or fallout shelters, people like the Survivalist in Honest Hearts, who was in a remote area, or the Shi, who were at sea, you'd have maybe a few tens of thousands of people knocking around in the years after the bombs fell, you'd have over half a million people in the region by the time of New Vegas. And that's if the women have 3 kids each on average. If bigger families are the norm, and in many pre-industrial societies, they are, maybe the average is as high as 5 kids per woman. Now you have 195,000 people in California, just by the time of Fallout 2, and by the time we reach New Vegas, there is over a million, just descended from the original 5,000 vault dwellers.

 

One thing people are very good at is making more people, whether we have the resources to feed them all or not. And when things like water and food start to get scarce, that's when people start to fight over them.

[peadar1987]

And besides, a game where you play a farmer in an isolated community who breaks his back 10 hours a day trying to scrape a living from the arid soil of a post-nuclear dustbowl probably wouldn't sell many copies.

[DeadlyDoughnuts]

And besides, a game where you play a farmer in an isolated community who breaks his back 10 hours a day trying to scrape a living from the arid soil of a post-nuclear dustbowl probably wouldn't sell many copies.

Shut up and take my money!

[RJLbwb]

And besides, a game where you play a farmer in an isolated community who breaks his back 10 hours a day trying to scrape a living from the arid soil of a post-nuclear dustbowl probably wouldn't sell many copies.

as he said. You really can't draw anything from a game were men with spears will charge men with automatic weapons.

 

But really the question is "is a post apocalyptic war in the Mojave Desert practical?" and going by history the answer is "iffy" It's fair to say the NCR and the Legion have at lest 19th Century technology - few if any vehicles so most logistics is done by pack animal and there were two wars fought in the Mojave during the 19th Century.

 

The Californian Campaign during Mexican-American War

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War#California_Campaign

The US Army column sent overland almost came to grief because of the lack of water

 

The second was the American Civil War

 

The New Mexico Campaign

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico_Campaign

Were a Confederate column from Texas was annihilated when it's supply train was destroyed by Union forces.

 

and then California Column

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Column

 

were Union forces successfully invaded Arizona and New Mexico using pre-positioned supplies

 

So the lesson from all this - First: it's all about logistics in the Mojave because there isn't enough food or water there to support a force larger than a dozen men. Silbey won every battle he fought only to watch his army die when they lost their rations. A nuclear war wouldn't change that because there really isn't much to ruin there to begin with. Second: the armies will be small, because EVERYTHING will have to be brought in by pack animal.

Edited July 26, 2013 by RJLbwb

[Groogo]

Amatures talk tactics, professinals talk logistics.

[TailAbNormal]

Another thing to factor in is that the nuclear warheads in the fallout universe are a lot less powerful, and have a far lower heat/radiation yield than real nukes. (As shown in the Lonesome Road add-on, and the Megaton nuke.)

Also, the population would be even larger when you take into account the ghouls that were created. Super mutants were created in california and D.C and are found only around those locations, less so in california since Mariposa was destroyed in the 1st game.

[RJLbwb]

Another thing to factor in is that the nuclear warheads in the fallout universe are a lot less powerful, and have a far lower heat/radiation yield than real nukes. (As shown in the Lonesome Road add-on, and the Megaton nuke.)

Also, the population would be even larger when you take into account the ghouls that were created. Super mutants were created in california and D.C and are found only around those locations, less so in california since Mariposa was destroyed in the 1st game.

The game is all over the place on nuclear weapons. On one hand there is a wimpy nukes you mention, and good example of that is Nellis AFB which took direct hits from multiple nukes, yet all the wooden building and other flimsy structures are still standing (like the hangers). On the other hand there is the account from the Survivalist in Honest Hearts who talks about it getting so radioactive weeks after the war that the snow was glowing. Zion Canyon isn't down wind of any major target if you look up the projected fallout maps the US government made so that implies this was wide spreed. Apparently there is also a population of humans who survived outside the Vaults, yet it is hard to see how would anything beyond plants and insects would survive if the planet was blanketed in a radioactive fog like in On The Beach.