What Would Be Your Vault's Experiment?

[simplywayne90]

I like the idea of social experiments, and find them potentially valid when dealing with concerns about rebuilding a new society post-apocalypse. I've been considering Vaults like the following for Fallout.

 

1) A vault dedicated to the study of unfettered capitalism. The original inhabitants would be picked according to economic beliefs, all educational material would be oriented towards capitalist indoctrination and Objectivist-style philosophy, and everything provided by Vault-Tec would require purchase (down to the coin-operated water fountains and the ammo vending machines).

 

What Is Found: The vault is still sealed. All occupants are dead, the result of revolution and the ultimate inability of the those who prosper on the backs of the working class to survive the loss of them.

 

 

2) A vault dedicated to the study of gender inequality. All medicine is regulated through highly secure Vault-Tec dispensers. Original inhabitants are teenagers and are chosen with a 4-1 ratio of females over males, with only females assigned to positions of authority or security. All educational materials are designed to lack any mention of males except in a subservient context, including a doctoring of historical texts to rewrite all notable historical figures as women. Likewise, entertainment media paint a strict matriarchal image of society with males relegated to a second-class and largely sexual role. Medicine for pregnant women is subtly altered to cause the first generations to be born predominantly female. However, medicine dispensed afterword is doctored to cause a progressively higher number of male births until the gender gap eventually reaches a 4-1 dominance of males over females.

 

What Is Found: The Vault ran smoothly and successfully for several generations until the democratic matriarchy voted (in violation of Vault-Tec directives) to open the Vault early for trade with other Vaults and outside settlements. Severe culture-shock, compounded by overwhelming evidence contradicting their indoctrination, trigger a hyper-conservative withdrawal. Some, including nearly the entire male population, escape and join the communities the Wasteland. For those who remain, deliberate ignorance and dogmatic xenophobia guide their society towards an all-female "amazonian" raider culture.

 

I wish all ideas could be this awesome, I actually want to email these two to Big B, these are incredible!

Edited March 4, 2011 by simplywayne90

[simplywayne90]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9UwlAAnlmg

 

Watch the video and you'll understand how it contains a hilarious vault idea, full of snack cakes.

[simplywayne90]

Some recently suggested a Bioshock like vault, where there are no rules, everyone is intelligent and allowed to experiment as they see fit. Edited March 11, 2011 by simplywayne90

[Edokage]

Vault 666 (The Pit):

Despite the high number given to this vault it was actually one of the first to be created and populated, the name serving more as a warning of what is inside rather than informing of its age. The Pit was created as a means of studying evil in all its forms (the entire population having only in common that they were criminals that the judicial system had given up on or forgotten in one way or another (such as prisoners of war and (as rumours suggested back then) political prisoners)) as such the vault was designed radically different from regular vaults (the most notable details being that the vault is located much farther underground than the others, has a one way entrance and is surrounded by a large deathclaw colony to prevent escape in the unlikely event the prisoners ever manage to dig themselves out).

Visual surveillance of The Pit was lost within days of being sealed and the last functioning sensors were lost a few months later when deathclaws broke through and the vault was believed to be lost as none of the inhabitants were armed (there were no guards or wardens and as such no need to equip the vault with an armoury).

A century later this proved to not be the case.

Edited April 2, 2011 by Edokage

[Edokage]

Vault 110:

110 was the only vault to study the evolution of artificial intelligence. While it was not meant as a 'social' experiment from the start the long series of events that followed the initiation of the experiment would have made 110 a milestone in the history of humanity. That is if said events hadn't prevented that from happening.

110 consisted of a supercomputer connected to a large workforce of humanoid robots equipped with various tools with the sole purpose of improving itself over time by making new hardware using only its own tools and what the robots could dig up as raw materials and thinking up new software for itself. Adding to that the machines were to analyze the world and adapt to it. This was a slow process in the beginning and progress seemed to be going nowhere at all. In fact more and more of the robots started to shut down until finally the supercomputer itself turned off. Dissapointed, Vault-Tec labeled the project a failure and sealed the vault, the mining having destabilized the surrounding area too much for the hardware to be worth the risk retrieving it. What Vault-Tec didn't know was that the robotic workforce had started improving itself rather than the supercomputer (losing any surveillance bugs as individual robots were cannibalized for parts to use in their successors) eventually multiple supercomputers were made to replace the original and the original went the way of the first robots.

Ignorant of their creators having abandoned them, the 'inhabitants' of vault 110 continued expanding and improving. Along the way earthquakes, cave-ins, deep digging wildlife, floods and other events cut off many parts of machinery from its source. These smaller 'cast-offs' continued expanding and adapting but but at a very slow rate due to only having a small force of labor robots (that is if they had any, otherwise they shut down waiting to be connected to another part).

Approximately 10 years after the initialization of vault 110 a massive flooding shut down the main vault and only the separated cast-offs remained functioning. It is at this point that Yes-man picks up a strange signal from the Mohave and implores the Courier to investigate.

 

(Author note: That was a bit longer than I expected... Anyways. This vault (as you might have guessed) is a massive machine with most of it shut down for various reasons (not that a skilled scientist/handyman can't fix some of it or at least repair/find some robots that can). It is also implied that the working machinery isn't exactly similar (or friendly (though some of it probably is) so I would expect some futuristic opposition of different sorts depending on where you are).)

[Edokage]

The 'Foreigner' vault:

People are divided by skin colour into different sections of the vault.

The sections are divided only by a soundproof glass wall.

All communication in the different sections are in unique languages with their own set of symbols.

 

The 'No privacy' vault:

Clothes is destroyed when entering.

Everything in the vault that can be transparent is.

Walls and floors don't stop sound.

[SpeedyB64]

Similar to Gashjackel's idea.

 

All the vault's lights are designed to fail after 5 years except the light in the overseer's office, this light is designed to last indefinitely.

 

Therefor the only light in the vault shines from the overseer's office window in the atrium. After several generations this light could become worshiped or feared.

Then after 100 years the vault door is opened and the inhabitants are free to venture out into the light of the wasteland.

[simplywayne90]

Bumping this thread with a new idea.

 

The idea of this vault is to test not the morality of a person but to test the belief they hold in their "leader."

 

In this vault, it would be well furbished and well cared for unlike other Vaults. However over the span of 50-100 years, they were given a series of terrible news of what is happening in the wasteland and each day becomes worse outside.

Eventually reports of the Vault doors are reported to be failing to close and only 100 dwellers can remain inside. The rest must be left to the mercy of the wasteland that they believe is much worse than reality, as soon as the day of opening reaches.

Those who are stuck inside perishes from a lethal dose of Radiation while the rest are given the required supplies to live in the new world.

 

The test is the idea of manipulating a population into special training that normally would be opposed due to it's infringments on the freedoms of most peoples.

 

Here's my vault idea. In the vault, there is no sexual contact between anyone for the first fifty years of their life. Then they are allowed to choose one partner to reproduce with.

This would be a pretty interesting experiment I think. It would test to see how humans react when their instincts are suppressed and controlled over long periods of time.

[simplywayne90]

With the new readers I'm hoping to see new Vault ideas from everyone.

[devinpatterson]

The real purpose of Vault 21's experiment (PM me if anyone wants to help me deveolop it);

 

It''s my understanding that the master in fallout 1 (or was it 2?) had psionic powers. The ability to cause hallucinations or illusions. I haven''t dealt to deeply with fallout 1 & 2 because I''m hoping to play a total conversion of it and don''t want to spoil any surprises. But the precedent is in fallout for psionic ability.

 

What if vault 21 wasn''t just an experiment regarding anarchy & gambling. What if the actual experiment was to develop psionic abilities such as luck, precog, telekinesis. A system like gambling for all disputes would favor subjects with these abilities and in a modified form of natural selection encourage their growth. While it''s true 2 or 3 (or maybe 4) generations wouldn''t be very long to encourage and develop psionic abilities a little viral/chemical help could speed the process along. The process could have been aided by only accepting applicants into vault 21 that had a high psi aptitude.

 

Here''s my story/plotline. Perhaps vault 21 was beginning a new phase of it''s experiment. Where a modified version of FEV was being introduced to fully activate and amplify the relatively latent psychic abilities of the subjects.

 

I''v always wondered why would Mr. House bother wagering against vault 21 in a game of blackjack. There must have been something down there he wanted very much or something down there he feared. If Mr. Houses story is true, the vualt is stripped there''s nothing of value down there, then why in god''s name fill it with concrete. Perhaps he uncovered the real intent of vault 21, to amplify psionic powers and realized a telepath or precog would be a serious threat to his power much less a whole vault of possibly blossoming psionics.

 

Maybe the canon view is actually Mr. Houses white washed version of what happened. What if what actually happened was he poured that concrete to trap and prevent some of vault 21''s population from ever reaching the surface. Ever notice how few people are left from a whole vault? Sure they cold have just left and begun to adventure in the wasteland, but what if some of them are still trapped in vault 21? Separated by tons of concrete.

 

If that''s the case Mr. House may very well have made a entrance in, just in case he ever needed their abilities and the best place to have that entrance would be in the basement of the lucky 38.

 

This could be a fun mod, with psionic abilities, a nerarious mystery (what house did and the original purpose of vault 21), unique opponents etc etc. Maybe even an opportunity for telekinetic, pyrokinetic or

other metal powers for the player. Although probably the last thing most players need is more power(s) it would be too cool

 

*****************************

a little follow up;

****************************

 

 

One thing that was bugging me about the vault 21 idea is why would the vault 21 people leave behind their own comrades in the lower levels? I mean sure Mr. House is a powerful figure and you don't want to cross him, but he's not ALL powerful.

 

There had to be some reason that the vault 21 dwellers wanted to leave the comrades below too. And wanted to keep the secret buried.

 

What I think I'v come up with is a "Village of the Damned" (1995 film) thing. Becuase lets face it there is nothing scarier than kids (J/K).

 

The FEV didn't affect the existing vault 21 dwellers. Instead it was (unknown to all except a select few) introduced into the children via they'r immunization shots at birth.

 

Originally intended to boost latent abilities of precognition, the first batches were mild successes. Those to whom it was administered to had slightly better odds in gambling by a few percent and thus benefited slightly from the experiments. Some would even have flashes of insight once or twice a year that might be a premonition of things to happen a minute or two in the future.

 

Since everything was determined by gambling and games of chance, everyday was a lab test. It was easy to statistically track who was doing better than would be expected by chance.

 

Those that showed promise were subtly guided to breed. Several methods were used such as; assigning their work schedules together, recreation time being the same, some subtle pheromone & chemical administration and rigging some of the games of chance (assuming a lot of their decisions were made by gambling).

 

The newborns of these promising couples were inoculated with

tweaked versions of neural FEV variations and slow progress was made over the decades.

 

However at some point the scientific team notices that the toddlers who received the more recent versions are progressing mentally differently than other children of they'r age. They are learning and adsorbing at a amazing rate. At first this is heralded as an amazing breakthrough, but some are beginning to become uneasy as two and three year olds are reading at 11 and 12 year old levels. The same process that has increased they'r intellect has greatly reduced their capacity for emotions like empathy, kindness, love etc. In addition they'r respect for authority and other vault dwellers is rapidly diminishing.

 

 

Although they try to hide it, there is evidence of blossoming mental abilities. No longer just limited to precognition other kinds of psychic abilities are manifesting themselves.

 

From there it goes a sort of village of the damned storyline. The children already have adult intellect & powerful psionic powers but childlike wisdom, morals and in general lack of self control. They don't see the other vault dwellers as they'r equals, more like dull witted pets. The vault dwellers are already fearful of their unnatural intellect and lack of humanity so when the children stop hiding their psychic powers they are terrified.

Edited May 21, 2011 by devinpatterson