Wasteland Travel

[AverageShyGuy]

Here's a question that will affect a mod I'm working on and I'm hoping people have input to help me out. How long do you think it would take for two adults and a teen to leave the Capital Wasteland and travel to the Mojave? Months, Years? I'm wanting my mod to be as lore friendly as possible so I want to base travel time off of a real type aspect. Thanks in advance.

[WastelandAssassin]

is there any info regarding what is between the two areas? any large settlements? which organizations are in power at the time?

if you are trying to go for realism , you need to consider water supplies at the very least (let's assume that food could be found along the way , but water isn't as easy)

do you consider these people to be in top shape? not getting sick or such? are they on foot? riding a brahmin? on foot? maybe using some vehicle?

 

basically , there are plenty of things you need to be clear about , before you can try and make estimations for travel duration

if one of the characters has a pip boy , you can assume they can calculate a decent path to travel through . if not , it would be stumbling in the hopeful general direction , which would take far more time

and it really depends on what you are planning as events along the way , as a simple event can drastically change the journey

[madmongo]

Back in pioneer days, people walked about 20 miles a day over long distances. According to google, Washington DC to Las Vegas is about 2,000 miles as the birds fly, or about 2,500 by road.

 

2,500 miles divided by 20 miles per day works out to 125 days. That's with no days off to rest.

 

If you walked 6 days a week and rested one day, it would take almost 21 weeks.

 

If your hikers aren't used to walking every day, they will be much slower at first and will have foot blisters and other problems that will slow them significantly until they work up to the ability to keep a 20 mile per day pace consistently.

 

The terrain matters. You'll cover a lot more ground on the flat parts of the midwest than you will walking through the Appalachian and Rocky mountains. Overall though, 20 to 25 weeks would probably be in the right ballpark.

[madmongo]

I knew that the Brotherhood of Steel sent a large group to the midwest, and that the west coast Brotherhood of Steel lost contact with this Midwest Brotherhood group. Given that the Brotherhood is a powerful group with high quality weapons and power armor, that alone indicates that the midwestern U.S. might not be the safest area to travel through.

 

I didn't know much else about the midwest though, so I spent a little time since my last post poking around through wikis and such about what is actually in the Midwest and the Rocky Mountains, etc.

 

John Cassidy in Fallout 2 says that the midwest has mile-wide tornadoes and that the entire area is one big radioactive dust bowl.

 

After the Master's defeat in Fallout, super mutants fled eastward out of California.

 

As the NCR has expanded, surviving groups of super mutants, Enclave remnants, and displaced Brotherhood of Steel groups have all fled eastward out of California. Some will be in the mountains, others kept going and ended up in the midwest.

 

Caesar's Legion controls a lot of territory, especially in the southwest, but extending up into Colorado as well. Given their military nature, I think it can be expected that they are engaged in armed conflict on all sides of their borders, not just the western border with the NCR. In FNV, Lanius talks about all of the difficulties that the Legion faced in Colorado, so that's definitely not a safe area to travel through.

 

There are also other groups like the Reavers in the midwest.

 

Based on all of this, I think it's a pretty safe bet that your two adults and a teen aren't just going to casually stroll from DC to Nevada. They are probably going to be spending a lot of time running away from hostiles and finding safe ways to get where they are going.

 

With that in mind, I would say that their 20 to 25 week straight journey is much more likely to be a year-long walk from hell.

 

If you want your mod to be lore friendly, having an NPC talk about things like huge radioactive tornadoes and Reaver attacks after their journey will not only make it fit in with their lore, but will explain why it took them a year to get from one side of the US to the other.

[AverageShyGuy]

Thanks for the advice and knowledge. I am learning more about the lore myself as time goes by. I did some basic research and found a cool map of the entire US during the Fallout world. I don't know if I can link it here. (Somebody let me know if this is not acceptable.) Here it is. https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?hl=en_US&mid=1puuQVpbfh4ofYflJxJPB6iul6JQ&ll=37.10133096712915%2C-107.75242842817931&z=4

 

I take it that is a good representation, though as was mentioned, it does leave out any other faction territories. I guesstimated about five months travel time. The gist of the story is that two adults and a teen, from Springfield Ill, made a trip to the Capital Wasteland. They visited and then decided to head for home. On the return trip, the two adults were killed, leaving the teen on their own. Having heard of New Vegas as the city of lights and untouched by war, she decides to make her way to the Mojave. I won't put in a lot of experiences in her journal logs, though she will make it known how dangerous the travel was. She will have to pass through a small portion of Caesar's territory though she will eventually make her way through.

 

The idea is to make it believable that she had time to travel to the Capital Wasteland in time for certain events, leave for home, run into troubles, head for the Mojave, travel with some more troubles, make it to the Mojave with time to set up a business and become known to a couple groups, all before the Courier runs across her path.

 

I guess I could make it that the travel took a couple of years, which may have matured her and toughened her, and still fit into the timeline of FNV. It's still a work in progress. I'm trying to lay the story facts first so when I do put it on the Nexus, people won't rip it apart for being "not lore friendly" or "not thought out story". You know?

[dubiousintent]

madmongo has created quite a good summary IMHO.

 

The closest historical parallel seems to be the "Oregon Trail", which was the main transcontinental "foot highway" west with other famous trails branching off to other destinations at various points. The "Great Wagon Train of 1843" took from May to October to move 700-1000 emigrants by wagon from the vicinity of Independence, Missouri to the Willamette Valley, Oregon. That was in part because that large a party was able to improve the rough route as they traveled to enable their wagons passage. The Wiki article has lots of detail, including food and equipment suggests that would still apply in the Fallout universe.

 

The "California Trail" is the one that cuts across Nevada. It's actually longer than the "Oregon Trail" (3,000 miles (4,800 km) versus 2,170 miles (3,490 km)). They are the same route until they split at at the junction of the Raft and Snake rivers in Idaho. Again, lots of detail in the wiki article.

 

Such a small family party as you propose is at extreme peril, and not just from "hostiles". Anyone who has lived in the mid-west through a winter can attest to how rapidly roads and highways breakdown from the "freeze and thaw" cycle. "Tornado alley" runs from Texas North to North Dakota, and to the NE. Map. The damage caused by such storms (roughly 1,000 per year in the US) are going to be accumulating outside of those communities that still retain any organization. Overland travel is going to much more like that prior to the 1800s than the 20th Century. Your family group is going to be lucky to average 10 miles per day without roads if they are taking anything more than they can carry in backpacks. Maneuvering around fallen trees and over waterways of various sizes takes time. (The 20 miles per day was only while crossing the relatively flat prairie lands. They might only manage 1-3 miles a day in the mountains as a lot of that was "vertical".) The highway system has created more accessible "passes" through rough terrain that would most likely remain reasonably passable, but modern "gas station maps" are not going to show terrain features, and won't hold up to weather.

 

While writing this I saw your reply to madmongo. A good resource for the sort of problems a small party would have is the account of the "Lewis and Clark Expedition". Given your "female teenager on her own", she is going to survive only by assuming everyone is hostile until proven otherwise. That alone is going add to the time it takes to travel. "Off-road" and "sneaking" most of the time. "Foraging" is the alternative to buying supplies in town, and it takes a lot of time. It's the primary reason agriculture is more cost effective than "hunter gatherer" labor. Definitely give her a couple of years to make it to New Vegas.

 

-Dubious-

[AverageShyGuy]

Thanks Dubious. Will take that into account as well. While she's traveling, let's hope she doesn't die of dysentery.