Assembling a Mosaic of the Future: The Post- Nuclear World of Fallout 3

It was around 450 BCE when Leucippus and Democritus formulated the first theories about Atoms and Void. It took humanity 2400 years to turn those theories into weapons. At 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, the United States conducted the world's first nuclear test explosion at Alamogordo, New Mexico1. The nuclear age had begun. Fallout is a series of role-playing games set in a prolonged nuclear age that follows the fictional Great War of 2077. Its story follows an alternate history scenario that branches from our history at about 19502. Contrary to our history, an American is the first in space and the NASA continually sends astronauts to the moon until 2020. An energy crisis strikes the world around 2050 and especially the energy-hungry U.S.A. Due to the crisis, Europe invades the Middle East, the United States close their borders to Mexico, and China invades Alaska. At the same time a mysterious socially transmitted disease, the "New Plague " emerges. It kills hundreds of thousands worldwide. Fuelled by paranoia from the plague, and in order to satisfy its energy demands, the United States annex Canada in 2072 and regain Alaska in 2077. In this very year, an all-out atomic war between the United States of America and Chin