Thanks to the Amazon series, the apocalyptic setting of Fallout is back in vogue in 2024. However, the original game “Fallout 1” was created in 1997 by Interplay. The then lead designer Tim Cain now discusses how many bomb shelters, the Vaults, were planned in the world of Fallout and how many were actually implemented.
This is what Cain says about the number of Vaults in Fallout: In a vlog, the RPG designer talks about the number of Vaults in Fallout. These are the bunkers that Americans were supposed to flee to in order to ride out the fallout after a nuclear disaster. Some Vaults hosted bizarre experiments.
However, Cain says this is not “canon”; he merely shared what he knows:
- The team expected to design 1,000 Vault Tec Vaults in the USA – that was just an aesthetic number.
- The artist asked him how many digits should be left blank on the back of the game pieces, and Cain said 1,000, to have a round number. Because he is a programmer and starts counting with “0,” 3 digits on the back were sufficient – thus 0-999.
- There was a “Vault 0” in Fallout Tactics – here, Vault Tec saved so much on the budget that the AI malfunctioned and developed murderous tendencies.
Vault Tec built far fewer Vaults than they were supposed to
So are there 1,000 Vaults in Fallout? No, Cain quickly clarifies. If 1,000 Vaults had actually been built, one would have had to see about 20 Vaults in Fallout 1 and 2, which cover all of California, to make the statistics believable. However, there were only four to six Vaults visible in the games.
Cain says there could also be an “in-game explanation” for this. Vault Tec simply did not build 1,000 Vaults, not even close:
“Vault Tec built less than half, probably even far fewer Vaults than they were supposed to. I believe it’s far less than a thousand.”
Cain considers Vault Tec a typical construction company that gets a huge contract from the government because it makes the cheapest offer, but then fails in the actual execution of the contract because it cuts corners everywhere.
There are indications that only about 120 Vaults exist in Fallout
As PCGamer explains, there is a map in the TV show that shows 120 Vaults. This would mean that the Vaults in the current canon of Fallout are indeed as rare as Cain suspects. Even 1,000 Vaults would not have been nearly enough to adequately protect the population of the USA:
What was the highest number of a Vault ever seen? According to a list of all known Vaults, the winner is “Vault 118” in Fallout 4: For Harbor (via fandom).
The Vaults in Fallout exude a morbid fascination, as the inhabitants there did not just sit out the time; odd experiments were conducted on some of the Vault residents, which continue to excite sci-fi fans and stimulate the imagination to this day. Even though one would certainly prefer to be in one Vault over others: Fallout has a “Vault 69” and it is just as bad as you think
