In the year 2077, relations between America and the People’s Republic of China have reached such crucial malfunction that, in a matter of two hours, the majority of the inhabitable Earth is reduced to irradiated cinders and the population of humanity, at least in the U.S., consists of a few people strong enough to withstand the nuclear winter and those with the resources to inhabit underground bunkers called Vaults.
This is the premise of the first entry of the “Fallout” series, released some 13 years ago by Interplay for the Windows 95 operating system, by now a meager fossil of technological evolution linking the Dark Ages to 7 and Snow Leopard. At that time, the projection of a world in a split-future paradigm that supported ‘50s conformity and jingoism that imploded seemed revolutionary, a statement on the dangers of nuclear build-up and defense/offense implementation.
But let’s step back for a second. Since before the Bomb was even fully realized, we have dreamt of both the supreme successes and desolate, dystopian ramifications of abusing the split atom. In place of an angry god who might smite the Earth for intangible sin, the atomic bomb represented a man-made equalizer that could do only that which theologians say supreme beings and scientists claim a meteor would be capable of; to quote Robert Oppenheimer at the Trinity Test and the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
The lasting impact of nuclear paranoia and idealism has informed art and the world the last 70 years in ways almost devoid of description. From Cold War spy thrillers to post-apocalyptic video games, our imaginations are fixated on what we will do with both the greatest and most fearsome of all human creations.
I invoked “Fallout” for the simple reason that Interplay and now Bethesda Softworks have created perhaps the most fully realized post-nuclear world, in terms of what society might resemble once life began to flourish once more, and whether or not humanity and its technological terrors would remain the dominant species, or if the monsters caused by massive radiation would level the playing field thanks to a million year jump start.
Fifties culture is inescapable where “Fallout” is involved, from gigantic fire ants (“Them!”) to oh-so-clever advertisements featuring the franchise icon Pip-Boy, an animated and always jolly blonde in a jump suit with a penchant for destruction and mischief. But though the timeline of the series jettisons all that occurred in our reality after 1950, the characters still bear the traces of social evolution, if only brought on by requisite survivalism thanks to the greatest catastrophe in human history.
As the “Fallout” universe, it has stretched on 200 years past the initial nuclear event and followed the factions who populate the future world. Gamers have traipsed across the Californian sprawl and the D.C. Capital Wasteland but, in October, will have the opportunity to venture into a slightly familiar but wholly re-imagined playpen of vice and madness: Las Vegas.
“Fallout: New Vegas” represents the second time that “Fallout” explored the Nevada desert climes, with New Reno in “Fallout 2” playing host to many crucial plot events. Developed by veterans of the original games now under Obsidian, “New Vegas” represents a return to form in some key aspects of gameplay, notably the sense of campy humor in face of horror that made the original titles an offbeat hit.
Critics of Bethesda’s newest installment said the desolate wastes of Washington D.C. and the lack of comedic deliverance betrayed the series’s spirit, but newcomers and oldsters alike praised the game for its more realistic view of how humans and the host of other sentient beings would feel in a world made into hell.
But this franchise represents but one vision of worlds to come. While humans have imagined the atom’s power, we have also fantasized an end of the world at the hands of zombies or a cultural dissolution when oil supply is exhausted or any number of other events that spell doom for life as we know it. Why do we dream of the end of the world? Perhaps when humanity is driven to doubt the beliefs that foster civilization, in terms of faith and tradition, they also accept responsibility for making the world keep turning or, in a bleaker view, grinding to a jagged halt in the wake of fire and then nothing.
