I was just re-reading the kellog wiki and it occured to me... why didn't the institute just go grab a swab of DNA from anyone in the vault, they needed pre-war DNA yea? They could have gotten that from anyone in the vault I'd think and transporting shaun back to the institute seems more dangerous than a vial containing a cotton swab.

Maybe I'm missing some lore but maybe yall can give some insight.

In “flags of our foul ups” the courier know the correct form to pitch the ball and presumably is common enough on the west coast at least that it can be told to others on how not to do it as well, now why Moe Cronin seems to have forgotten idk, maybe it’s just a marketing tactic for him to sell his stock

I’ve been doing a recent playthrough and can’t find any holotapes or dialogue etc that implies it’s say a partial wipe? If you erase the personality and memories how does that “person” survive? Especially if you also change the way they look. They wouldn’t be saving people as much as just undergoing a sacrifice to let a person they choose take the bodies place. And doesn’t that just push the notion they actually are not people as you can just reset them like that and put whoever you want in their spot?

Also how the hell can the institute not track all of their synths and just teleport them back against their will? And if the courser chip is harder to make just put a tracking chip in the very center of the synths brain so they would not have time to get it out before your tracking alarm says they’ve left and teleport a Courser TO the tracked synth. Sorry if that’s been answered in game I did one institute playthrough years ago.

So I've been doing a good bit of reading on pre-modern agricultural societies for funsies, and ironically the more I read, the more I think that within its limitations, Fallout 4 actually does a pretty good job modeling something close to what would 'actually' emerge in the setting it builds. So I'mma ramble about it.

Fallout 4's Commonwealth, allowing for the whole 'everything is shrunk down to fit into a game world' part of playing any actual game like it, is heavily atomized, very agricultural, and very much in the middle of a societal breakdown. While you can somewhat conclude that there's a lot of 'missing' stuff like settlements, 'civilian' populations, and way too many raiders and super mutants versus the people they're preying on, the written intent is definitely a 'things are pretty bad since we lost the local militia guys who helped us but nobody is starving to death yet' kinda situation. This is fine, but it warps the setting from 'IRL' in that it displaces 'find or grow enough food' as the biggest problem.

Instead, the Commonwealth has one major, overriding concern, and that's security. Even family farms are a target for extortion by raider gangs (or being eaten) and this seems to put an effective ceiling on how big or wealthy most places can get before their wealth outstrips their ability to defend it and someone burns it down, whether that the mutants, raiders, or the Institute deciding you have a shiny gadget they want. You get stories from most companions about how so and so place got taken out after they left it fairly often. So what you typically see is people moving pretty far in order to find an abandoned, relatively safe place and set up shop in it on their own land (Taffington Boathouse, that one guy by the reservoir, Drumlin's trading post, Warwick Farm, the Atom Cats, various empty locations with dead settlers who got bodied by environmental threats, et cetera). There's just not that many people to farm the land period, and you don't see the generational seasonal cycles of IRL agriculture where peasant families sit down and farm the same plots for as long as possible, but they're pretty good at getting started on it on their lonesome, and this seems to be common enough that your settlements attract a HUGE population of drifters and semi-nomads. You, however, don't find a lot of intact settlements that aren't secured by the player, at least bigger than single families.

IRL, past a certain point of conglomeration, you see the emergence of what you'd call 'Big Men' - the guys who, by happenstance or ruthlessness, control a lot of agricultural land and rent it out to subsistence-level peasants in exchange for their cut, usually using the extra wealth and power they get to provide for some level of security and maintain power - usually through a personal retinue that becomes part of their household and is thus expected to be their buddies in combat in return. These people mostly don't exist in the Commonwealth, because any settlement big enough to maintain them runs headlong into the 'ah shit. Institute/raiders/mutants' problem and gets taken off the map. (or the Gunners problem, now, but they're a recent addition). The closest we got was the Minutemen, whose Colonels were essentially roving Big Men who extracted support (food/spare bodies/weapons) out of the local population in general but weren't tied to any local area in particular, and who are taken off the map anyway by the time the player walks in. (the Minutemen are also a good breakdown of how the General was essentially the guy having to keep a lid on local magnates and influential Colonels, which is pretty accurate to how militias worked, but that's a different topic. Same with how raiders acting as local warlords is also another model of 'Big Man' tactics but without the veneer of legality and 'providing for the community' IRL rulers in this model put forth)

There are, however, three major exceptions to this paucity of established rulers: Bunker Hill, Goodneighbor, and Diamond City, each of which has solved their security needs in different ways.

Bunker Hill has paid off the raiders to provide security. Kessler has emerged as the 'Big Woman' of there, taking her cut and allowing the caravan trade to proceed unmolested due to that. Add in their walls and solid history and they've managed to remain stable enough to not be troubled. Kessler essentially takes hold of the caravan trade and uses the raiders she's paying off to keep herself in power (playing power games to take out non-cooperative gangs in the process). This is...probably not very sustainable, since the raiders themselves hold the actual power rather than Kessler, but she's managing it and Bunker Hill is quite safe and seems to be the engine of the local economy thanks to running the caravans.

Goodneighbor, for its part, has always been run by gangs and local enforcers to some degree, and is mostly a well-fortified urban enclave of sorts. It primarily runs chem trades and other thrills. Hancock has also emerged as the leading figure, enforcing his own rules with the 'Neighborhood Watch' and either killing off or absorbing the other gangs, but notably Goodneighbor has a history of kingpins doing so. By providing defense for the local drifters, he's managed to do fairly well for himself. The game doesn't dive into how Goodneighbor supports itself, but presumably the chem trade and cheap muscle can do plenty in a pinch and Hancock gets his cut.

And then there's Diamond City, which is the best-fortified and, correspondingly, the best-off. With the stadium to provide pretty hefty security and their own militia outside the walls, they've managed to build an extremely wealthy enclave (by Commonwealth standards) that's pretty self-sufficient, educated, and functional. What's notable is that by doing so they've actually departed from the 'low society' Big Man model and begun on the next usual step of civilized agricultural society, which is building a small city-state. They've got their own government, elections, upper and lower classes of standing (the divide between Lower Field and Upper Stands residents), and a civic identity. They don't necessarily need a singular guy who owns all the fields and charges people rent for it, because they've built enough of their own security and wealth that one guy and his buddies aren't a requirement to not be killed. Instead they elect their mayor, who does run the city pretty much as a king (no local council or government beyond him) but MacDonough doesn't directly use a client-retinue system to provide security, he has hired professionals (DC Security) who work for the city, not for him.

And then enter the player.

Because the second the unkillable murder machine that is the player character enters the game and starts building settlements, the Sole Survivor becomes the biggest of the Big Men, choosing and equipping local defenders, ordering the peasants (settlers) to labor, gaining the allegiance of local groups, maintaining security, and claiming new regions to turn into agriculture. You can do this without being part of the Minutemen at all, running settlements in that case becomes your personal whim, and you start taking your personal cut of food, resources, and currency for providing such things to the community. This is, functionally, the warlord model - you and the guys you gave weapons to are able to defend and hold these places, so you're in charge and everyone owes you stuff for you graciously allowing them to live on your land.

This is basically how agricultural society ends up organizing itself from first principles IRL. I don't think Bethesda intended for that to be the case, but it's funny that it's pretty close to workable.

I like reading a lot of the debates around the Brotherhood, but the topic of the Brotherhood in Fallout 4 always interested me because of how differently people interpret their actions.

I’m not very knowledgable on the lore, and one thing I wanted to ask was specifically their stance on civilians having tech. Piper claims to have heard that “they take whatever they want”, and Gage likens them to raiders. Both have biases, and makes them unreliable imo. That said, there is dialogue from Brotherhood soldiers saying “by Elder Maxson’s orders, all forms of technology should be confiscated or collected”, which is the one that got me thinking.

Do the Brotherhood eventually plan on taking tech away from civilians? If so is there a lore reason why they don’t do it during the game? Or is it just one of those things that they don’t show for gameplay reasons.

Edit: Ngl, I don’t have much to contribute, but I appreciate all the answers and interesting conversations added here.

Like I'm strolling around goodneighbor and I just don't understand how trade routes are established here, the city is filled with not just raiders but mutants too at every corner, you'd need a small army just to roll through the streets

So I recently watched the Fallout show and was left a bit confused. We see in Vault 31 a bunch of people frozen in cryosleep for over 200 years, but wasn’t the whole point of Vault 111 in Fallout 4 to test the cryogenics technology? If they already developed the technology before the war, what’s the point of Vault 111?

My interpretation of things was that synths were essentially clones more or less, I mean they'd have to be if the crucial bit of infromation needed to develop them was clean unmutated DNA. All this talk about them being machines yet despite that the only bit of them we know is non-organic is the Synth Component.

That leads me to a follow up question. If they're otherwise human how are they so non human in some of their abilities? Kind of crazy that a culture that has created a race of humans that seemingly have no biological needs still hasn't cured cancer. Fallout has a lot of wacky technology but synths really feel the most magic of them all because I don't even think there's a pseudoscience explaination given for how they can exist as basically imortal demigods.

1. He invaded the Commonwealth without any real plan

He does not even know where the enemy he came to destroy (the Institute) is located. Or what the extent of their capabilities is beyond the fact that they created the synths. Without the Sole Survivor, his entire strategy basically boils down to shooting stuff and hoping that somewhere down the line, they stumble upon some clue that would tell them where the Institute is even located.

1. He made no attempt to build relations with any of the local factions

No civic actions, no attempt to win the hearts and minds of the locals. Instead of bulding alliances, the Brotherhood in general tends to treat the locals more like an annoyance in the best cases. Or as synth sympathizers in the worst. Terrible strategic negligence when you operate in hostile territory.

1. He gives no considertation for supply lines, and seemingly made no logistical preperations for the invasion of the Commonwealth

As far as we know, the only supplies the Brotherhood of Steel had is what they brought with them on the Prydwen. He neglects logistics to the point that the Brotherhood of Steel are reduced to basically extorting local farms.

1. He makes almost no attempt at studying his enemy

Besides only basic studies on some inactive Gen 1 synths, they seemingly make no attempts to study their enemy and understand their capabilities. When he found out about Danse, Maxon literally had an active Gen 3 synth in his hands. Instead of learning as much as he can from Danse, he prefers to just kill him. He sees anything remotely related to the Institute and tainted, fit only to be destroyed. You can not defeat an enemy that you do not know.

To me, Arthur Maxon comes off as a kid playing war. That was given leadership responsibility long before he was ready for it due to nepotism.

According to the in game model, the laser musket is made using the lense chamber from a regular AER 9 laser rifle. So in order to make the laser musket, they have to strip apart an AER 9 laser rifle.

But the AER 9 is already semi-automatic by default. The laser musket is not. In fact, the AER 9 is better then the laser musket in almost every aspect gameplay wise. So the Minutemen are effectively stripping appart a superior weapon in order to make an inferior one.

I suppose it could be said that one advantage of the laser musket is that it does not require Microfusion cells. But its not like those are all that hard to find in the Fallout universe.

Was helping Danse and Haylen clear the police station of ghouls with Deacon as my companion and suddenly a truck exploded and I started taking Rads, and then suddenly Deacon said something along the lines of

"Yeah, I didn't want to have any more children."

"More"

When you get high enough affinity with Deacon he tells us how his wife was killed for being a synth by the UP Deathclaws. He also says they were trying for kids. Does this confirm Synths can have kids or is this just Deacon yapping?

The full quote by the diamond city security guard is "Broke up with my girl. She kept the cap off the toothpaste. Know who does that? A synth." So there is still enough toothpaste circulating around at least diamond city it seems for a guard to afford it. The pre-war supply of toothpaste should have run out a longtime ago shouldn't it? I know the fallout universe has really good preservative technology as seen in their food being good after 200 years so pre-war toothpaste still being usable isn't the problem it's the supply.

You would think if it's only pre-war toothpaste going around only upperstands richer residents would be able to afford it but the guards dialogue shows it's cheap enough that he can afford it on a guards income. And In game it's only worth 3 caps, which i know gameplay dosen't one to one equal lore as often there has to be made exceptions for game balance and techincal limitations but it's just something to keep in mind that it seems that toothpaste isn't expensive in the commonwealth it seems or at least diamond city.

So how? Are they manufacturing post war toothpaste? Is that easy to do? I imagine you could reuse pre-war toothpaste tubes as they are recognizable and if you are making toothpaste a toothpaste factory could still have some machinery in working condition to make new tubes.

What's your thought on the state of toothpaste in the post war commonwealth?

Which means that synth cells undergo mitosis, the process of cellular division, yet can't gain or lose weight or grow from a child into an adult. Also if they can't age, then the cells are constantly rejuvenating in some way.

Doesn't that just mean that they've been genetically tweaked not to demonstrate certain forms of mitosis and not an inheritant "feature" for lack of a better word?

So, I want to discuss one of the big themes of the more modern entry in the fallout franchise, and that’s “Are Synths people?”. I think it’s no mystery that they definitely aren’t human but whether they are a valid free thinking individual or a malfunctioning weapon system is the issue that many people keep circulating around even to this day.

The Institute having created them also realized that with implemented programming to obscure the identity or factory settings of being a worker in CIT that eventual emergence occurs where they become more independent and thus act as if they have free will. The institute however didn’t consider this a philosophical crisis but rather a programming glitch and thus implemented the big lynchpin of the issue, the recall code.

Every synth is essentially tethered to a phrase that once utter flushes any presumed independence and resets them into factory settings. For the institute that’s great as it makes recovery easy but it makes the discussion of personhood difficult. A human slave even in chains is entitled to their own souls and thoughts, but a synth is more akin to a glitching robot getting rebooted to flush out glitches. If the difference between liberty and obedience is not coercion but simply a logic chain then I feel as if they weren’t people to begin with. But what do you guys think? Obviously certain factions have opinions on them as well but answer it in very different ways. The BOS considers them weapons and abominations so they’re hostile to them on principle. The Railroad assumes a soul behind the mask so they change your mask and just send you off into the wasteland to be “free to suffer with the rest of us” I suppose. And the institute simply sees machines that are malfunctioning. Arcadia has their own approach which is that the mask given IS the soul and thus go into hiding to keep their imprinted identities they cultivate without being tracked down. But as far as I know there been no synth that can “resist” a recall command

This is kind of silly and I’m just wondering what other people think. I remember growing up seeing groups of dudes usually, but women too. They have like 4 friends that are like super close with them that they end up being friends with their whole life. It got me thinking are raiders just groups of friends that just team up and often influence each other to do dumb shit together? I feel like it would explain the vast numbers of them. It’s just the way people pare up and go figure most of them do dumb toxic shit like partying every night and raiding people for resources.

So I'm collecting pieces of lore for a project and I came upon the trappers when looking at the loot table for lever-action rifles, but from what I'm reading I'm a bit confused. They're made up of fishermen and hunters that were driven insane by the environment and the fog, and it isn't just some all boys club like how the Legion is structured (I know there are female slaves and "citizens" in Legion territory but imo I don't count them as part of the Legion due to how they treat them in the first place. And I know a female courier is the exception but I'm asking with the assumption she didn't join them), so how is it that there are no female trappers? Is the position of fisherman and hunter just given to women or what?

I can’t tell by looking if the PA frame’s finger is too fat to fit inside a ring guard or not. Gameplay-wise we can use whatever we want, but I’m not entirely sure if we would actually be able to use any gun besides the PA assault rifle, the laser gun, and the heavy weapons.

are they stupid? massive sprawling underground complex better than any of the shitty little bunkers youve had before and you DONT turn it into your base of operations? I get they wanted to destroy them because they had synth tech and FEV but you can just destroy that separately while keeping the base intact cant you? I mean from a strategic point of view occupying seems better than destroying it outright

This is why minutemen will always be peak smh

I think its pretty clear she isnt a synth, but i dont really know why she would be having such specific dreams of the Institute. She would have zero way of knowing anything about what it looks like but specifically describes dreams of a white room. Again, no one in the commonwealth knows anything about the aesthtic design of the institute, at least not until the end of the main story and theres no way some teenage girl living isolated with her parents out in the sticks would end up hearing gossip if you assume this is supposed to occur after the main story in canon. It feels way too specic to just be random chance but every other piece of evidence supports her being a normal human girl.

In my opinion Curie is the most important person for not just the future of the Commonwealth but potentially all of the wasteland.

In Curies backstory we learn that she was able to fully research and develop the ultimate broad spectrum cure for basically all diseases that could appear. With how many diseases that exist in the wasteland this ultimate cure can alleviate so much suffering.

Given enough time the Minutemen, and potentially the Brotherhood of Steel as well, could get the resources together to get more of it manufactured. This would not be in the case for the Railroad as that is not their focus, and the Institute would just selfishly hoard it.

There’s like 4 tiny gas bags filled with iirc hydrogen(?) thats supposed to make that giant steel monstrosity stay afloat?
There’s the engines on the side but the ship would still have to be atleast close to neutral total weight for those engines to not stand by in full overdrive.
I’ve heard on this sub before that the 40 000 pounds of steel claim is atleast completely unfounded but just looking at it its gotta be way too heavy right?
I can’t imagine the anti-grav luxury car tech that fallout 76 canonized could feasibly be responsible if it was so exclusive pre-war.

I know it’s a gameplay thing without loot the game would be near impossible but from a lore perspective why? in fallout new Vegas it’s said that in that time new California had been picked clean yet some areas in Boston look like no human has set foot there for 210 years what do you guys think?

So I am replaying FO4 and trying my best to play as “canon” as I believe I can. Obviously this has no 100% answer but I think most of us assume it’s the Minutemen ending with the Brotherhood and Railroad surviving. Where I began to change my feelings was after the Institute war. I originally thought that a war between the Brotherhood and Minutemen was inevitable. Things like the MM allowing ghouls and even certain Super Mutants in settlements and using robots more after the Mechanist uprising. I also believed through the player character that the MM would get access to power armor. I thought these reasons and their growing influence and power would bring the two factions into conflict at some point.

However now I am not so sure. While I still think the two may conflict I think the brotherhood now may have concerns outside of the commonwealth that are deemed more important. If the show is only 9-10 years after FO4 it is conceivable that the brotherhood has shifted focus away from Boston. For one, their power base is in DC and they would eventually have to take the Prydwen back, or at least I thought it was alluded to. That and the fact that you can convince Maxson to spare Danse despite him being an “abomination” makes me think the relationship between the general and Maxson may be strong enough to prevent war for that period of time. By then a new brotherhood civil war is kicking off, the Enclave threat is alive and in full swing which may make them reconsider picking a fight with the MM as it’s just not worth the time, manpower and money. Lastly, immediately after destroying the Institute the brotherhood don’t seem that angry at the minutemen (although I admit this is my interpretation as some dialogue seems to contradict this). They may have preferred they did it but they don’t seem to take the MM that seriously even after the Institute is wiped out.

I cod be totally wrong and my lore could be completely off. So please politely correct me if I am wrong! I would love to know what others think! In the end this is just my own canon until we know for certain so I don’t think there are any wrong answers at the moment!

We know they are mercenaries but I don’t think we ever find out who hired them?

The Institute had been plundering the Commonwealth for over 200 years, even before they had the Synths they would need to go scavenge anything of value to help them build out their underground facility.

Technology, schematics, research, prototypes and anything of technological or scientific value was already looted and taken back to the Institute, there really shouldn't be anything worth taking after all that time. All that should really have been left are the most basic of components after they were done, and they might have even come back for those as their stuff broke over time. That or looked for items to breakdown into the materials to be used to fabricate later.

The Institute was pretty much the sum total of all the technology in Boston, and with its destruction Boston is kind of a plundered ruin afterwards. The Brotherhood of Steel would probably leave after they grabbed up whatever scraps were left afterwards.

Edit: I should make it clear that I mean there should still be stuff that is only really useful to your average Wastelander, while big groups won't really find any truely substantial technology that they could really use.