Vaults are one of the most important motifs in the world of Fallout: bunkers that promise protection from nuclear war. But only a few of them actually serve this purpose, as terrible experiments took place in most of them. MeinMMO reveals how many Vaults there are in total and which are the worst.
Spoiler Alert: Anyone who has not seen the end of the Fallout series should do so first. Here, we explain some background to the story and the world of Fallout.
What are Vaults, actually? Officially, Vaults are protective bunkers with meter-thick walls deep underground, capable of living completely autonomously and being supplied with energy. Humans are supposed to survive the nuclear war here. A Vault is supposed to accommodate between 100 and 1,000 people.
After the war, the characteristic gear-shaped doors are supposed to reopen – ideally, after the radiation has decreased and the land is livable again. Depending on the Vault, the doors remain closed for different lengths of time.
By the way, the first Vault that is supposed to open is Vault 76. The story of Fallout 76 revolves around this Vault: The residents are drilled to make the wasteland livable again, so that all those who come after them find a rebuilt America.
However, very few Vaults actually fulfill the promise of protecting their residents. Horrible things happened in most of them.
Only 17 Vaults really protect the people
How many Vaults are there, anyway? According to the official canon, there are 122 Vaults (via Fallout Wiki). Most fans refer to this number, but no one can say for sure whether it is correct because:
- No one really knows whether VaultTec and the government are telling the truth here.
- There are some “demo” Vaults that are considered in part and not at all in other cases.
- It cannot be ruled out that there are unregistered Vaults where particularly important persons are housed.
Of the 122 officially known Vaults, only 17 are supposed to truly protect the residents. The other 105 Vaults are said to have hosted the notorious experiments.
What happens in Vaults? In the Fallout series on Amazon, a VaultTec employee, the creators of the Vaults, explains that Americans with enough money can buy a place here. However, many other companies are present at the meeting.
The companies have the opportunity to finance their own Vaults – and then do whatever they want there. In particular, the research group “BigMT” has invested quite a bit and “researched” here.
In many cases, they are social experiments, such as in Vault 69, where a single man was housed with 999 women. In others, far worse things have happened.
The worst Vaults in Fallout
Creating a “ranking” for the worst Vaults is quite difficult and highly subjective. MeinMMO Fallout expert Benedict Grothaus – that is me – has therefore tried to select those that I hope everyone can agree on: Yes, that is terrible.
In selecting, I come up with five Vaults that surpass all others in brutality:
- Vault 87: Here, research was conducted with the “FEV”, the “Forced Evolutionary Virus”, which turns humans into Super Mutants. All residents were infected immediately upon arrival and then observed by researchers.
- Vault 4: This Vault appears in the series. Researchers have “impregnated” women with mutated offspring here, leading to partially terrible chimeras.
- Vault 11: Every year, one resident was supposed to be
sacrificed
to keep the Vault running. All of this was just a sick experiment. - Vault 112: The overseer in this Vault keeps all residents as frozen “toys” that he can torture in his mental world as he pleases.
- Vault 12: The doors of this Vault never fully closed. As a result, all residents were exposed to radiation and, if they did not die immediately, mutated into ghouls.
- Vault 106: Here, the air was flooded with psychoactive substances, so all residents were constantly on drugs. This, however, led to increasingly aggressive behavior and eventually war in the Vault.
There are a few other examples, like Vault 81 full of deadly diseases or Vault 108, where multiple experiments were conducted directly. Among other things, the life-sustaining systems were supposed to fail after 20 years and a guy named Gary was cloned far too often.
Even though most Vaults resulted in the death or suffering of their residents, at least not all were supposed to be used only for cruel experiments. One of the research Vaults even intended to secure the survival of humanity by having scientists work on more robust plants. However, that also went wrong: A Vault in Fallout ends like The Last of Us and you can even visit it
