Trailer Fallout - Official Trailer

[trappedslider]

BTW the brain in a jar are Robobrains.

In the show it's clearly called "Brain on a roomba"

 

[payn]

Makes sense then why I don’t notice the sound issues (as much) my entire house is set in Sonos speakers.

 

[MarkB]

I am aware of what the wiki says.

But we're talking about the actual bombs actually shown on-screen here, not waffle from the wiki from the inconsistent info in the games. None of the ones shown even remotely approach 200 KT, no matter how much you tweak the variables. Let alone higher figures.

Re-watching the scene, I did notice one potentially important thing - these are ground bursts not air bursts. They were not hit by warheads from ICBMs, SSBMs, or even a cruise missile. They weren't bombs dropped from a plane (which also normally airburst - Hiroshima and Nagasaki did for example). They were detonated at or beneath ground level (which includes up to a few stories up).

So that means they could be larger than my initial estimate. When a bomb ground bursts, the radius of all aspects of destruction except the fireball and radiation zone are like 20-30% smaller (very crude generalization).

There's a grim tool you can play with here to see historical nukes: NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein

NB the destruction radii are quite conservative, rather than maximalist.

Even 150 KT ground burst would have caused 3rd degree burns at 4.7km - no-one would be walking or riding away, they'd be rolling around and screaming. Even a 20 KT bomb does that out to nearly 2km on a ground burst, and would have caused a ton more flash-fire than we saw.

So I would suggest the bombs we saw were probably more like 10 KT, given no-one caught fire, was blinded, or got any burns, and the cars didn't even have their windows shattered, only the huge ultra-vulnerable windows of the house did (meaning you're beyond even the "light damage" radius, where basically all windows will shatter).

They also had the sound/blast travel unrealistically slowly, but I'd put that down to artistic licence.

But them being ground bursts is very interesting (and definitely intentional given the complexity of the FX). It suggests that perhaps the Vault-tec alliance's plan to start the war themselves was very, very literal, and they just drove bombs into position. So perhaps you could say the wiki is correct in that the FO military typically used 200 KT or more bombs, but Vault-tec used significantly smaller ones (perhaps to ensure the right people could be in the right places to get to the shelters).

The other thing that's a little interesting is Janey is with Cooper, but her mother surely knew when the bombs were being detonated, so I wonder what is going on there.

Also even a 10 KT bomb in the middle of a bright day at 4km would almost certainly have blinded anyone looking in the direction of the bomb, as Janey was, but perhaps the blast was slightly underground? The trouble is the flash is from the fireball, which would have been nearly 450m wide. So maybe we just have to say that was unrealistic - or it may be that the bomb was significantly underground - the one used on Shady Sands almost certainly was underground, from the massive crater but limited blast damage.


It's the mixing, and also Nolan (not Jonathan Nolan, his brother, the film guy) is intentionally a dick about it, and very intentionally and consciously has mixed his film so even on most cinema setups, you have to strain to hear them clearly, because he delusionally thinks (or thought, he seems to have changed his mind somewhat with Oppenheimer and after the negative reaction and huge mockery for it with Tenant) that this "enhances the experience", rather than just screwing over a large part of the audience who are watching the movies in less-than-ideal theatres, have minor hearing issues which don't cause problems with other films, at home, and so on.

It's a slightly similar issue with high-end TV shows (including BBC ones here) - many seem to be mixed on the assumption that you have a 5.1 or better surround system that is fully and correctly set up. Now, what gets me is - we know that's completely false - almost everyone (I forget the exact figure, but it's very high, like over 80%) is watching TV with the sound coming from the TV's built-in speakers, or on a laptop or tablet or phone with terrible speakers or low-end stereo headphones. On top of that, many people just don't turn the volume up, because the mixing is such that, to hear the speech, "loud" sounds have to be VERY LOUD, and depending on the speakers, potentially even distorted. This is part of why so many people listen with subtitles on now.

If you have good quality headphones, or a proper surround setup, or even just a good soundbar, you probably won't come across the issue.

One thing to bear in mind is that the Fallout timeline splits off from ours well before the development of modern ICBMs. Most of the bombs dropped in 2077 were just that - bombs, not much different in appearance to those dropped in WW2, dropped from planes. Both crashed planes and unexploded bombs can be found around the world in the games, and where they have exploded they tend to leave ground-level craters.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

One thing to bear in mind is that the Fallout timeline splits off from ours well before the development of modern ICBMs. Most of the bombs dropped in 2077 were just that - bombs, not much different in appearance to those dropped in WW2, dropped from planes. Both crashed planes and unexploded bombs can be found around the world in the games, and where they have exploded they tend to leave ground-level craters.

That's not quite right. There are, in all the Fallout games put together, 5 nuke craters from the war (and 1 from later). We know hugely more bombs than that were dropped, and many nuked locations have no craters. These all seem to be exceptional - 2 are from bombs that got knocked off-target by Mr House, and 2 are from nukes that must have been air burst to cause the destruction they did, but presumably were so large they caused a crater anyway (which can happen with a large enough bomb). The other is less clear. The one from later is from an accidental ground-burst whilst moving an unexploded nuke.

All the rest aren't nuke craters. The FO76 crater is from a space station impact. The many smaller craters in FO3 are from artillery and other conventional explosives.

There has never been a period when nukes were dropped from aircraft to ground burst except those designed specifically as bunker-busters. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were air bursts. It would make no sense whatsoever to drop air-drop nuclear bombs to the ground unless you intended them as bunker-busters (and if they'd done that, the vaults would likely have been toast)

To drop bombs on LA from planes you'd also need to breach US airspace (or be on a clear course to) for multiple hours before you could actually get to LA (given the planes used are clearly not supersonic, let alone hypersonic as seen in various FO games, especially FO:NV). There's no question air raid sirens would be going off long before the planes actually got into position, and interceptors and so on would have been launched. None of which happened. This was a complete surprise attack. Which, given we know Vault-tec planned to initiate the war, would make sense. So I think we can be pretty confident about what we were being shown there.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It could well be that the FO universe never got around to H-bombs given the odd mix of advanced/retarded technology they tend to feature.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It could well be that the FO universe never got around to H-bombs given the odd mix of advanced/retarded technology they tend to feature.

I believe the internal Fallout lore bibles specify that they did get to H-bombs, but I think it would be a strong retcon if they made it so they didn't, or at least only managed to use the early Soviet "layer cake" approach to them.

They do have fusion plants but I think it's unclear what principles they operate on, and wouldn't necessarily mean they have H-bombs. I notice the cold fusion device's appearance was loosely modelled on a real "low-temperature fusion" device (which probably doesn't actually involve fusion).

Spoiler

Cold fusion remains elusive—but these scientists may revive the quest

The first public results from a Google-funded project reveal renewed interest in the long-sought but controversial nuclear energy source.

www.nationalgeographic.com

 

[trappedslider]

It could well be that the FO universe never got around to H-bombs given the odd mix of advanced/retarded technology they tend to feature.

Megaton-class thermonuclear weapons had largely been retired by the major nuclear powers in favor of much smaller-yield warheads by the time of the Great War. An average strategic warhead in 2077 had a yield of about 200-750 kilotons, because of a massive increase in radioactive fallout in place of thermal shock, much like a salted bomb in our own world. (this is taken from one of the survival guides, a non-game source)

So, I'm guessing they got around to it then changed their minds at some point before The Great War.

 

[Argyle King]

I wonder if we will see Super Mutants in season 2.

There were a few hints at their development and experiments in season 1. A hand on a covered body in one of the more science-y episodes looked a little bit like one of the Nightkin.

 

[payn]

It could well be that the FO universe never got around to H-bombs given the odd mix of advanced/retarded technology they tend to feature.

Exactly, these don’t bother me so much with the whole vintage but more advanced than current tech vibe of FO.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I wonder if we will see Super Mutants in season 2.

There were a few hints at their development and experiments in season 1. A hand on a covered body in one of the more science-y episodes looked a little bit like one of the Nightkin.

One of the corporate heads muses on doing something that might be an indication of him moving in that direction with one of his Vaults.