0:01 I'm standing here in the
0:03 post-apocalyptic streets of the hit 2008
0:05 video game Fallout 3 and I have a
0:08 question does this look like a place
0:10 ravaged by hundreds of nuclear
0:11 explosions to you now obviously the
0:14 answer to that is yes but while playing
0:15 Fallout 3 for the first time over these
0:17 past couple of weeks I started to get
0:19 curious where exactly did all of these
0:22 nuclear bombs drop and I mean where
0:24 exactly did they drop down to the square
0:25 foot because I feel like I remember
0:28 seeing some obvious nuclear craters
0:30 while playing through the game but not
0:32 that many did I just miss them well I'm
0:33 going to figure it out and you're coming
0:35 with me if you want to we're going to be
0:37 scouring the capital Wasteland looking
0:39 for signs of nuclear Armageddon
0:41 including radioactive craters knocked
0:43 over electrical infrastructure and in
0:46 some cases literal nuclear bombs
0:47 anything that might be able to help us
0:50 pinpoint where this nuclear Fiesta
0:52 actually occurred and how many bombs
0:54 actually hit the ground in other words
0:56 we want to know how Bethesda chose to
0:59 fake the past in a place that doesn't
1:00 really have one
1:01 the types of places that we're going to
1:03 be looking at today really come in two
1:05 categories some of them are spots that
1:07 are very obviously sites of nuclear
1:09 explosions you know places that were put
1:10 there by the developer with the
1:12 intention that the player would stumble
1:15 upon them and go oh a nuclear bomb
1:17 exploded here maybe it has references in
1:19 the lore or maybe it's just really
1:21 obviously a radioactive crater the
1:22 second type of place we're going to look
1:24 at are places with the telltale signs of
1:26 a nuclear strike but no explicit
1:28 recognition by the game through
1:30 conversations or audio logs or whatever
1:31 places that we really have to pay
1:33 attention to the environment rather than
1:35 just being told by the game and then
1:36 technically there's also a third type I
1:39 guess which is places with uh literal
1:40 nuclear bombs in them that just didn't
1:42 explode so obviously this is a pretty
1:45 easy one this is the city of Megaton and
1:48 you can tell that a giant bomb fell here
1:50 on account of the Giant Bomb that's here
1:51 now this first one technically wasn't an
1:53 explosion so we'll use a little
1:55 unexploded icon on the map here you're
1:58 welcome now I know there's some debate
2:00 in the lore about whether this bomb
2:02 actually like fell here or if it was
2:04 brought here I'm sorry but these
2:06 malnourished post-apocalyptic weirdos
2:08 would not be able to drag a bomb there
2:11 and if they did why would they set it up
2:13 so that it looks like it crashed nose
2:15 first into the ground and made some kind
2:17 of impact crater we'll probably talk
2:19 more later about what the uh lower
2:21 communicates about the gamespace versus
2:23 what the environment communicates about
2:25 the gamespace uh but that is too boring
2:27 for the first half of a YouTube video we
2:30 have nuclear bombs to find and for those
2:31 you saying that a nuclear bomb never
2:33 could have fallen from an airplane and
2:35 impacted the ground without exploding
2:37 guess what yes it could have it happened
2:39 in North Carolina once twice I guess
2:41 technically here's a picture of it in
2:43 the little crater that it created
2:44 another place where there has obviously
2:46 been a gigantic nuclear explosion is
2:49 right here the White House now I know
2:51 what you're thinking wow it looks just
2:52 like the photographs with one small
2:54 difference this gigantic hole in the
2:57 ground big hole in the ground plus
3:00 radioactivity equals probably it was was
3:02 bombed by a nuclear explosion device out
3:05 of curiosity I went to that um nuclear
3:07 bomb simulator website in order to try
3:09 and figure out what size bomb actually
3:11 fell on the White House it looks like it
3:14 was most likely a 300 ton bomb which is
3:16 currently the smallest bomb in the
3:19 United States Arsenal Jesus Christ if I
3:21 had a 300 ton nuclear bomb and I had to
3:22 pick a target for it you know what I
3:26 would pick a very large empty field with
3:28 nothing in it in the middle of a desert
3:29 but if I was in The Fallout Universe I
3:31 would probably pick a military base
3:33 which is why the next place we're going
3:35 is Fort Banister the first thing that
3:36 you notice when you come here is all of
3:38 these tiny little craters dotting the
3:40 landscape almost like a bunch of little
3:42 nuclear weapons exploded all around but
3:43 then there's also this large crater and
3:45 actually with this big crater you can
3:47 see it if you look on the pit boy map
3:49 that's how big it
3:51 is a little further west of Fort
3:53 Banister is a place called vault 87 this
3:55 is an underground Vault outside of which
3:57 a nuclear bomb exploded you can't get
3:59 within 100 ft of the place without dying
4:01 of radiation poisoning so that's good
4:03 enough for me Mark it down aside from
4:05 all those the only other place that is
4:06 an obvious candidate for this is a
4:09 gigantic crater in downtown DC this
4:11 gigantic crater is radioactive and in
4:13 the bottom of it there looks to be some
4:16 sort of missile sounds promising but
4:17 upon closer inspection it's not a
4:19 missile it's an airplane with an
4:22 unexploded nuclear bomb on it so it's an
4:24 interesting site for sure but it's more
4:26 in line with what we saw in Megaton uh
4:28 than an actual nuclear crater so we use
4:30 this icon again and and that's really it
4:31 for places in the game that seem to have
4:33 been made with the intention of a player
4:35 stumbling upon them and thinking that
4:37 they are a nuclear bomb site so what we
4:39 need to do now is look for places that
4:41 have indications that they were probably
4:43 hit by one of these nuclear bombs even
4:45 if it's not explicitly stated by the
4:47 game now obviously I could just
4:49 personally walk around this whole map
4:51 for days at a time in order to find
4:52 these spots but I figured there's
4:54 probably an easier way which is to go on
4:57 Google and find old Fallout fan forums
4:59 and see if anyone has uh asked this
5:01 question before which lo and behold they
5:03 have so I perused all of these threads
5:05 and collected any places that people
5:07 brought up frequently that we didn't
5:09 already cover the first one of those
5:11 places is a place called the German Town
5:13 Police Headquarters this came up on a
5:15 couple of different forums that I read I
5:17 don't remember there being any explicit
5:19 evidence of a nuclear detonation here
5:21 but let's take a closer look and see
5:22 what we can't find out that's the police
5:24 headquarters there you see behind it all
5:26 of these wooden buildings now the thing
5:29 with nuclear bombs is that they are
5:31 quite warm so they do tend to burn
5:33 things up so the existence of these wood
5:34 buildings does kind of indicate that if
5:36 there was a nuclear explosion around
5:38 here it either wasn't directly on the
5:41 ground or was a little bit further away
5:43 we do have the whole backside of the
5:45 building totally torn off and a large
5:48 chunk of it literally pushed in this way
5:50 you do have a train that was blown
5:53 completely off its tracks going that way
5:56 so if we were to draw two lines from
5:58 both of those points in the opposite
6:00 direction that the force was applied you
6:02 would end up with something kind of like
6:05 this so I do think there is a
6:07 possibility that there was an airburst
6:10 nuclear explosion right here quite a
6:12 long time ago and if I had to pinpoint
6:14 the spot I'd say it was probably right
6:17 about there now two other places that
6:19 were referenced on a lot of these fan
6:21 forums were number one on the top of 10
6:23 peny Tower apparently if you look South
6:25 you will see a nuclear crater and then
6:27 number two a couple different people
6:28 referenced there being an explosion in
6:30 Vernon Square now upon further
6:32 investigation I think the Vernon Square
6:34 One was actually just people
6:36 misremembering where that uh crashed
6:38 airplane was so that one's out but if
6:41 you go to the top of 10 peny Tower and
6:43 you look
6:45 South look at that looks an awful lot
6:47 like a nuclear crater to me this crater
6:50 is off the uh bottom of the map once
6:52 again you can see it on the pit boy but
6:53 if you get close enough you'll also
6:55 notice that the trees surrounding it are
6:57 knocked away uh in the direction that
6:59 the blast would have come from so as far
7:03 as I'm concern it's good enough mark it
7:05 down now this is where things get a
7:07 little bit trickier cuz as of now we've
7:10 marked off every place that is uh
7:12 obvious we've marked off all the places
7:13 that aren't obvious that people have
7:15 mentioned which really only leaves all
7:17 the places that aren't obvious that
7:19 people haven't mentioned and so far we
7:22 only have five actual possible locations
7:24 of an explosion uh which doesn't seem
7:26 like very many it's definitely a far cry
7:28 from the hundreds that allegedly fell on
7:31 this area so now what well I pretended a
7:32 moment ago that I wasn't going to just
7:34 wander around the DC Wasteland and look
7:36 for craters myself but that's exactly
7:38 what I'm going to do the question is did
7:41 I find anything yes I did take a look so
7:43 one candidate that I located was just a
7:45 little bit Northwest of rock Breakers
7:47 last gas and it is this big pit with
7:50 this hole there's actually kind of a
7:53 faint almost crater like look to this
7:56 whole area could it just be kind of an
7:59 eroded old mine definitely one of the
8:01 things I do like about this as an option
8:02 is it reminds me of something that
8:05 craters do in real life on planet name
8:07 of Earth uh which is they form Lakes
8:09 sometimes Crater Lake in Oregon is
8:11 probably the most famous example of this
8:12 at least in the United States but
8:14 there's also this one in Estonia that
8:16 kind of reminds me of things that you
8:18 might see in Fallout so that's pretty
8:19 cool none of the ones in real life were
8:21 made by nuclear devices of course they
8:23 were all uh created by asteroids or
8:25 volcanic eruptions but
8:28 still aside from that I was also
8:30 wandering around the I I it was the jury
8:32 Street Metro Station and I stumbled
8:35 across this this is a large empty open
8:38 field almost no trees and the trees that
8:40 are there are all knocked over in a
8:42 suspicious Direction it's subtle but the
8:44 details are there you can also see this
8:46 little cut in the ground here with this
8:48 rock up here I almost wonder if
8:50 something maybe exploded and forced this
8:52 rock to wedge itself up there also up
8:54 kind of near Fort Banister and this
8:57 Metro station is this spot it's things
8:59 like this that really Tickle My Fancy
9:01 because on one hand you can see this and
9:05 think to yourself wow what detail they
9:07 really put the work in to have evidence
9:10 of a nuclear explosion in the past but
9:12 on the other hand I would any of this
9:14 even actually survive a nuclear bomb
9:16 like I'm not even sure if a steel pylon
9:18 would survive 200 years not being
9:21 affected by a nuclear device much less
9:23 having been exploded by one but I kind
9:26 of think that's cool they put details
9:28 like this in the game to communicate to
9:32 us that this is postnuclear apocalyptic
9:34 even though the detail itself isn't
9:37 realistically postnuclear apocalyptic
9:39 you know it kind of reminds me of how
9:41 when people saw the movie Apollo 13 they
9:43 said this is ridiculous this is just a
9:45 bunch of Hollywood mumbo jumbo trash
9:47 even though it was all very accurate or
9:49 sort of like how Spotify had to program
9:51 their Shuffle not to actually randomly
9:53 Shuffle the songs cuz when it did people
9:55 didn't think it was randomly shuffling
9:57 the songs so they had to program it to
10:00 not actually randomly Shuffle the songs
10:02 so people would think it was randomly
10:03 shuffling the songs now I think there's
10:05 another argument to be made that maybe
10:07 things like this is just sort of dumbing
10:10 us down in a way Bethesda is just using
10:12 like the bottom of the barrel lowest
10:14 common denominator way to communicate
10:16 this particular aesthetic and maybe it
10:17 would be cooler if they were more
10:19 thoughtful about what life in a
10:21 post-apocalypse might look like maybe we
10:24 would get more interesting human stories
10:26 which is why Fallout New Vegas is good
10:29 but that the sort of constant argument
10:31 uh between three versus New Vegas I
10:34 think people do Totally Miss what things
10:36 three has that New Vegas doesn't because
10:38 they're so preoccupied with what New
10:40 Vegas has the three doesn't that's just
10:42 my opinion and I didn't play Fallout 3
10:44 when I was young this is not a Nostalgia
10:45 problem so don't you try and throw that
10:48 against me you New Vegas heads even
10:49 though you are completely right
10:51 obviously anyway where were we show me the
10:53 the
10:57 map all right perfect there's also an
10:59 unmarked spot on the map east of WTI
11:02 station that has a gigantic radioactive
11:04 crater so it's kind of funny that that a
11:06 doesn't have its own map marker but B
11:08 nobody online mentioned it cuz it's
11:10 seems very obviously a candidate for
11:12 this and I actually do kind of love that
11:13 there's not a map marker for it I think
11:15 that's kind of neat games now have too
11:17 many map markers too many we need to
11:19 restrict fast travel it's a whole other
11:22 video so at this point we have found
11:25 eight Nuclear Strike sites and two
11:27 unexploded nuclear bombs the lore of
11:30 Fallout 3 implies that DC was hit by
11:33 hundreds of nuclear bombs so what gives
11:34 well first of all I'm pretty sure we can
11:37 actually find a few more uh potential
11:39 Nuclear Strike sites we'll get to that
11:41 in a minute but secondly there actually
11:43 might be a pretty good explanation for
11:46 this and it has to do with scale I feel
11:48 like I recall reading a quote from Todd
11:49 Howard or maybe somebody else at
11:50 Bethesda where they were talking about
11:52 how the Elder Scrolls uh isn't
11:55 necessarily meant to be a literal fa
11:58 simile of the world of Tamriel that
11:59 Skyrim is really more more of an
12:01 artist's rendition of the world with
12:03 kind of like a wonky sense of scale some
12:05 flexibility with the specifics of the
12:07 lore and a very loose grasp of realistic
12:09 unemployment numbers I couldn't actually
12:11 find the quote so if somebody knows it
12:12 please uh post it down below so I can
12:14 find it and if it's not a real quote if
12:16 I just made it up well post it down
12:18 below anyway so people don't know but if
12:19 we were to take the size scale of
12:22 Fallout 3 meaning the way that it
12:24 compares to the real size of that area
12:27 in Washington DC on Earth and apply that
12:29 scale to the number of nule clear
12:31 strikes that we found where would that
12:33 put us the only problem is there's a lot
12:35 of debate online as to the exact scale
12:37 of Fallout 3 you know we don't know
12:39 exactly how big stuff is we don't know
12:41 exactly how fast player characters are
12:43 walking and it's also a real mishmash of
12:45 locations rather than being an exact
12:48 scale model of a part of DC but the best
12:49 discussion of the topic I could find was
12:51 on a forum called No mutants allowed
12:55 back in 2009 and they also could not
12:57 agree at all but using all the
12:58 information that they provided on that
13:00 forum as well as spending some time
13:02 drawing squares on Google Maps I feel
13:04 pretty comfortable saying that the game
13:08 is roughly a 1 to8 scale of the area
13:09 that it represents so if we take that
13:12 scale and apply it to the number of uh
13:14 Nuclear Strike sites that we found so
13:17 far you end up with I'm going to tell
13:18 you in a minute because I have one more
13:20 idea about how we might be able to find
13:22 some more places that bombs have dropped
13:24 see I've already looked in the lore I've
13:27 already read the wikis the forums I've
13:29 already uh used my own mind but the one
13:31 set of people that I haven't talked to
13:35 are the smartest people in the world you
13:38 guys I put the call out on my Community
13:40 page a few days ago asking if any of you
13:41 knew of some potential places that we
13:44 could investigate and lo and behold you
13:46 came through so here's everything that
13:48 you guys came up with number one
13:50 Isabella proud's Camp behind the Tacoma
13:53 Industrial Park this is first of all
13:54 just an awesome place if you've never
13:56 been here I wish I could uh tell you how
13:58 to get here without giving it away but
14:00 it's just a really great location and
14:02 it's also very likely that this is the
14:03 site of a nuclear strike you have a
14:05 giant crater it's filled with water
14:07 there's radioactive ghouls that's a shoe
14:09 in as far as I'm concerned the next
14:10 place I saw somebody bring up was the
14:12 Arlington National Cemetery and if you
14:14 go there you won't immediately see any
14:16 signs of nuclear destruction but head
14:18 just a little bit north of it and this
14:19 is what you find this one looks a lot
14:20 like the ones that we found in Fort
14:22 Banister so I feel very comfortable
14:24 counting it somebody else brought up the
14:26 uh Pennsylvania Avenue to Georgetown
14:28 Metro station I don't know if I see it
14:30 obviously the train tunnels are all
14:31 collapsed which I think is what the
14:33 person was thinking the idea that well
14:34 how would they have collapsed if not for
14:36 a nuclear strike but this metro line is
14:38 really close to the White House so I
14:40 feel like it's probably a result of that
14:43 same uh Nuclear Strike so I'm not going
14:44 to count that one then someone else told
14:46 me that if I went to Oasis and looked
14:49 East off the edge of the map I would see
14:51 some kind of nuclear crater I looked all
14:53 the way from east to west and I was not
14:55 able to see it then there were two more
14:58 places and these two places might be my
15:00 favorite of them all first up you have a
15:02 place that's north of spring Vil but
15:04 south of the bomac river when you come
15:05 here you won't actually notice it right
15:07 away but pay close attention and what do
15:09 you see this little section of the river
15:12 looks an awful lot like a a sort of
15:14 decayed nuclear crater like something
15:16 that was caused by a nuclear explosion a
15:19 long time ago but has since eroded just
15:21 a little bit so the details are a little
15:22 subtler there's some good signs of
15:24 Destruction all around it as well and
15:26 then the other place is just south of
15:28 Fort Banister now obviously this is
15:29 pretty close to fortan canister so
15:31 whatever this is was probably caused by
15:34 the same bombardment bombardment but
15:35 it's far enough away that I want to
15:37 count it as a separate place and I also
15:38 just want to point out how relatively
15:40 subtle the details of this one are
15:41 there's an electrical pylon a little
15:43 ways away that got blown away in the
15:44 direction of the blast there's also a
15:46 mound in the middle of the crater here
15:48 which does happen sometimes if like an
15:49 asteroid smashes into the Earth really
15:51 hard sometimes it can hit it so hard
15:53 that it actually bounces a little bit
15:54 back up and pulls some of the land up
15:56 with it which can cause these little
15:57 Islands to form and some of these lakes
15:59 that are made of craters like we talked
16:00 about earlier now I know that a lot of
16:02 these details are probably an accident
16:04 and that Bethesda probably didn't really
16:06 think about each individual piece of
16:08 rebar kind of like how they probably
16:09 didn't really think about the fact that
16:12 in Skyrim these generating waterfalls
16:14 could be explained by something uh
16:16 hydrologically uh realistic but I do
16:18 think it's neat how this combination of
16:21 intended lore and uh Happy accident
16:23 environmental design can cause you the
16:25 player to almost generate these little
16:27 mini stories about what may have gone on
16:28 in these places so those are all great
16:30 cand Cates and I really feel like it
16:32 helps flesh out the map that we've put
16:34 together so far but one thing that kept
16:36 bugging me was that even with all these
16:37 marks down it just seems weird that
16:40 there's not that many craters everywhere
16:42 you know this was a nuclear war this was
16:44 everybody uh shooting off every single
16:46 bomb they had you would think that the
16:47 land would just be a waste land of
16:49 craters like um if you ever see that
16:52 footage of Old World War I battlefields
16:54 it's just like pounded with artillery
16:56 but also there is a little bit of a
16:57 scientific explanation or whatever you
16:59 want to say a lot of people brought this
17:00 up when I posted about Fallout 3 they
17:03 said most of the bombs were Air Bursts
17:05 which means they don't create craters
17:07 necessarily and air burst explosions
17:09 also spread the damage out which kind of
17:12 explains how there's just like a general
17:13 destruction across the whole landscape
17:15 rather than like these specific points
17:17 of Destruction there's great arguments
17:18 going either way you could just say
17:20 artistic license you can say it's an air
17:21 burst whatever you want to do I'm
17:23 interested in what the game environment
17:24 is actually communicating to us which is
17:28 why for good measure I did one final lap
17:30 around the whole map and I didn't see
17:34 anything else well kind of probably one
17:35 more thing that might be worth
17:36 considering is that all of these little
17:39 nuclear puddles around could be signs of
17:41 smaller uh nuclear bombs hitting the
17:44 Wasteland but most of these places where
17:46 you find these uh nuclear puddles and
17:47 whatnot don't have a ton of other
17:49 environmental evidence going for them so
17:51 I don't believe that's the case you can
17:52 make that argument if you want but I'm
17:54 not doing it that's not for me that
17:57 means that the actual for real face
18:00 value total of nuclear explosions in
18:03 Fallout 3 is
18:07 12 and also the two Duds obviously now
18:08 the neat thing is if we take that amount
18:11 and we apply that uh 1 to8 scale that we
18:13 know Fallout 3 is probably built at we
18:16 do get 96 nuclear strikes which you know
18:18 it's a far cry from hundreds but it's
18:20 definitely enough you know it's
18:22 definitely sufficient to level an entire
18:24 metropolitan area the only slightly
18:26 amusing thing about that is that we know
18:28 for a fact that Las Vegas was targeted
18:31 by 77 nuclear bombs so this would sort
18:33 of imply that they saw the capital of
18:35 the United States as only a marginally
18:38 more important Target than Sin City but
18:39 you know maybe they were worried about
18:41 what Mr House was up to I you don't I
18:44 can't blame him he's a conniving freak
18:45 okay that's it if you support me on
18:46 patreon you're one of the greatest
18:48 people I know we'll see you in the next video
