Just how war-driven was Pre-War USA?

[CiderMuffin]

While there was a anti-communist attitude in pre-war America it wasn't just because China was another communist power, it was because China invaded Alaska. The attitude wasn't really transferred as it was born from the Chinese invasion and covert attacks. The cold war ended in the Fallout timeline, the Sino-American war wasn't a cold war it was an active war as China invaded the U.S. and the U.S. invaded China. A Cold war is an indirect war (stuff like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan where the U.S. supplied arms to resistence groups like Al Qaeda and the Soviet involvement with the Vietcong in the Vietnam war, while the two sides supported opposition they didn't directly fight each other) whereas the Sino-American war was a direct war

[stebbinsd]

And what does a cold war entail? Military chest-thumping. Look at the arms races that went on in just air superiority fighter tech alone.

It doesn't include actual combat ... which is required for a true war.

[Fonger]

 

And what does a cold war entail? Military chest-thumping. Look at the arms races that went on in just air superiority fighter tech alone.

It doesn't include actual combat ... which is required for a true war.

 

suspect Charlie Wilson would have a different view

[CiderMuffin]

 

And what does a cold war entail? Military chest-thumping. Look at the arms races that went on in just air superiority fighter tech alone.

It doesn't include actual combat ... which is required for a true war.

 

Not true, most of the cold war was fought with proxy wars. Using lesser countries to stick it to their opponents. Like the bay of pigs, Korean war and Vietnam war are famous ones.

[Moraelin]

Actually, far as I can tell, what you call "pre-war" is really just a misnomer. Now the people in the game do refer to just the day of the nukes fell in the USA as "the Great War", which I suppose makes sense; that's the only date that matters for why THEIR world is a radioactive wasteland. But actually, there was a long "pre-nukes" period of warfare. The nukes didn't just come out of nowhere, a la Skynet. The USA had been at war with Chine for 11 years straight at that point. The invasion of Anchorage was in 2066.

 

And arguably would have continued much longer, if not for the... Fat Man. While it DID give the USA a major advantage on the battlefield, it still boiled down to using nukes on China. It's almost immediately after that, that China uses some regular nukes on the USA, so, you know, it may have been just ye olde mutually-assured destruction. Don't use nukes on us, or we'll use nukes on you. That kinda thing. But at any rate, the war was really going very slowly.

 

And even the nukes in the USA were not the first nukes. In the Fallout timeline, the Middle East nuked each other over oil -- with a... generous helping from the EU -- in 2052 already. That's 25 years before the USA doomsday.

 

So it's not as much being war-driven, as having not much other choice than to BE actively at war, once the Anchorage invasion happened. And with neither side being able to really push the other to its knees (China IS big) it went on for 11 years straight.

 

To put things into perspective, that's almost twice as long as WW2 lasted. It's almost three times as long as the USA was involved in WW2.

 

So, yes, there was a LOT of time for Daisy's husband to die in the war.

[Fkemman11]

Let's not forget that the USA was supposed to have "annexed" Canada. That was NOT a peaceful operation. I'm sure that Canada put up some kind of resistance. In fact the paper I saw in FO3 over and over again showed clear lines of invasion into Canada. No way to mistake that for anything else. :wink:

[Moraelin]

Well, if you want to go earlier than 2066, the USA invaded Mexico in 2051. I guess they didn't want to pay for the wall :wink:

 

Canada was actually only formally annexed in 2076, i.e., a full decade into the ongoing war with China. Although it had been increasingly treated less like an ally and more like America's colony since 2067 or so, as the demands for military access on the way to Alaska turned into stationing troops there to secure the needed infrastructure (e.g., guarding the oil pipeline), to demanding resources for the war too, and eventually into treating Canada like America's backyard on the way to and from Alaska. In the last years before the annexation, it was pretty much referred to as "Little America."

 

It also wasn't without, well, some stuff you can put in a political justification for an all out invasion of Canada. The flip side to the US troops treating Canada like their b**ch, was that Canadians didn't like it one bit. So people started protesting, and the USA just ignored them. Then eventually some protests turned violent, and then by 2072 into acts of sabotage. E.g., in 2072 a major act of sabotage against the oil pipeline. Which the USA eventually used as excuse for the annexation. The USA pretty much went War On Terror on their ass, so to speak.

 

Anyway, the whole thing wasn't before the war with China, it was a PART of the war with China.

[chucksteel]

Let's not forget that the USA was supposed to have "annexed" Canada. That was NOT a peaceful operation. I'm sure that Canada put up some kind of resistance. In fact the paper I saw in FO3 over and over again showed clear lines of invasion into Canada. No way to mistake that for anything else. :wink:

 

If you watch the intro to FO1 you'll see news footage of US troops in PA shooting Canadians in the head and waving for the camera during the annexation. :yes:

 

Edit: I have no clue how to add youtube videos here but the canada stuff starts about 48 sec in. FO1 intro

[Moraelin]

Yep, it's been here from the start of the series. The story is basically that martial law was put into effect, and any act of protest or resistance was dealt with by a good old fashioned shooting on the spot.

 

 

Edit: I suppose the point was that "war never changes", it's always for resources, etc. And funnily, Nazi Germany is used as an example in the intro. Never mind that Germany was having a problem that was CREATED by the Nazis' wanting to have a war. At some point in 36, the choice became quite accutely that forcing all the imports into the rearmament instead of resources for the industry was starting to stall the economy. Schacht (you know, the guy who actually revitalized the economy without a war) and other economists went to Hitler and told him just that: he can have a growing economy, or he can have a war at the expense of putting the economy into a nose dive. Hitler chose that he wanted to have a war, dammit.

 

And I don't just mean resources like oil or tungsten. By the late 30's germany was having a serious protein defficit problem, and they knew it. Life expectancy was dropping, and child mortality was raising, even when in the countries around the opposite was happening. Why? Because the food imports had been throttled, to pay for building tanks instead. So what solution did they come up with? Hey, let's kill a few million Ukrainians and take their crops. But again, the whole war for resources was just because of wanting to have a war. It wasn't as much a war because of lack of resources, it was the opposite: a lack of resources was created by wanting to have a war.

 

But yeah, in the Fallout universe, people will do any brutal thing for resources. Including shooting some Canadian protesters in the head, or nuking the Middle East.

[MightyZ0G]

 

 

Yep, it's been here from the start of the series. The story is basically that martial law was put into effect, and any act of protest or resistance was dealt with by a good old fashioned shooting on the spot.


Edit: I suppose the point was that "war never changes", it's always for resources, etc. And funnily, Nazi Germany is used as an example in the intro. Never mind that Germany was having a problem that was CREATED by the Nazis' wanting to have a war. At some point in 36, the choice became quite accutely that forcing all the imports into the rearmament instead of resources for the industry was starting to stall the economy. Schacht (you know, the guy who actually revitalized the economy without a war) and other economists went to Hitler and told him just that: he can have a growing economy, or he can have a war at the expense of putting the economy into a nose dive. Hitler chose that he wanted to have a war, dammit.

And I don't just mean resources like oil or tungsten. By the late 30's germany was having a serious protein defficit problem, and they knew it. Life expectancy was dropping, and child mortality was raising, even when in the countries around the opposite was happening. Why? Because the food imports had been throttled, to pay for building tanks instead. So what solution did they come up with? Hey, let's kill a few million Ukrainians and take their crops. But again, the whole war for resources was just because of wanting to have a war. It wasn't as much a war because of lack of resources, it was the opposite: a lack of resources was created by wanting to have a war.

But yeah, in the Fallout universe, people will do any brutal thing for resources. Including shooting some Canadian protesters in the head, or nuking the Middle East.

 

 

 

the Nazis were the reaction to problems created in the treaties signed to end WWI which lead to conditions under which the Nazis could rise to power.

 

as for the original post, of course the world was in a state of conflict. the major cities of the USA get nuked at the start of the game. the intro shows the sole survivor serving in a conflict somewhere in the decade (?) before the game starts