Fallout Blows Up the Commodification of Doomsday

The world of Fallout is full of destructive power. This post-nuclear-armageddon world is one of laser guns, mutant monsters, and guns that fire actual mini-nukes, yet the most powerful weapon in the world is time — and a board room full of greedy executives with enough power to start the end of the world just to raise stock prices.

At least, that's what Vault-Tec junior executive Bud Askins (Michael Esper) argues in an ominous secret meeting between CEOs of big corporations (RobCo, West Tek, Big MT, and Repconn) that takes place in Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s TV adaptation, which premiered April 10th on Prime Video.

In a scene that resembles the SEELE meeting room in Neon Genesis Evangelion, Bud talks about time being the ultimate weapon of mass destruction and, were there to be a little incident like say, nuclear holocaust, time is how Vault-Tec and the other corporations will defeat their enemies and "win the great game of capitalism" by outliving all competition. Of course, that's not enough. The only way to guarantee results for their investments is to drop the bomb themselves — to guarantee the war results in doomsday so the doomsday vaults are actually necessary. "There's a lot of earning potential with the end of the world," the CEO of Rob-Co says. 

This meeting is never described in any of the Fallout games, but it strikes at the heart of the series: the idea that unbridled capitalism would make power-hungry corporations willing to literally burn the world to the ground if it means bigger market shares. The Fallout franchise takes place in an atompunk retro-futuristic world two centuries after nuclear war destroyed the planet. We never truly learn what exactly happened when the world ended in the games, but we do know a decades-long resource war between the US and China eventually led to a thermonuclear war that obliterated the planet. 

The games take a satirical, Dr. Strangelove-like tone in their approach to '40s and '50s Americana, with Cold War-era paranoia and corporations and capitalism running rampant. The TV adaptation takes this last part further, by focusing on the commodification of doomsday — which is a bit weird to see coming from Amazon — and spelling out who killed the world.

Throughout the series, we slowly learn how the vaults that kept people safe from the nuclear radiation are actually not the ideal remnants of America that protagonist Lucy (Ella Purnell) thinks they are, and Vault-Tec is not exactly a company that lives up to its smiling mascot. But it is in the storyline that follows actor-turned-Vault-Tec-spokesman Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) in pre-war times that we really see the evils of the company. 

This retro-futuristic America is actually filled with propaganda that hides its new Red Scare, as Howard mentions how many actors and filmmakers are being blacklisted for their political leanings. Making matters more complicated for Howard, a fellow actor makes him realize that the company has a "fiduciary responsibility" to make money for its investors by selling doomsday vaults, which of course, serve no purpose unless the world is on the edge of nuclear armageddon.

That's where the big corporate meeting comes in and Howard's wife, Barb (Frances Turner), who works for Vault-Tec, suggests dropping the bomb. "A nuclear event would be a tragedy, but also an opportunity," Barb tells the other executives. "Perhaps the greatest opportunity in history, because when we are the only ones left, there will be no one left to fight. A true monopoly." 

Communism was a red herring, and it was never about resources or saving the world or even making sure those who could pay for a spot in the vaults to survive. It was always about control and the bottom line. "War never changes" is the most recognizable quote in the Fallout franchise, and Vault-Tec found the way to make it change, to eliminate it: time. As the riddle goes, time devours all things, slays kings, ruins towns, it ends wars. 

Not only is this a huge reveal for fans of the games who have long theorized who dropped the nukes, but it is more significant in the context provided by the TV show because we learn the U.S. and China were seemingly on the verge of a ceasefire. Peace was an option, but not for Vault-Tec, who we learn throughout the season had become one of the most powerful entities in America, on par with state governments. Not only did they have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure their biggest product — the vaults — was needed and used, but they were willing to ensure all their economic competitors (which Bud Askins refers to as "every other living human that isn't us") starve and die from the fallout until only the corporate elite remained. 

In the meantime, the corporations split the finished vaults among them to use in social experiments to compete to see which company can produce the most apt society to survive and rule over the wasteland — like super mutants, or in the case of Vault-Tec, "the ultimate class of super managers."

That reveal is as timeless as it is timely, with today’s constant news of billionaires working to extend their own lives, but also ensuring they're the only ones left in the event of global annihilation — with some tech CEOs building extravagant bunkers or even rockets to go to space. That's not to mention the sycophantic climate change deniers in positions of power who don't care about the acceleration of the end of the world as long as their stock options rise, or the guy who owns a rocket company who also bought one of the biggest social media platforms on the planet — one specifically known for its relationship with media and the news — only to run it to the ground and make it a cesspool of disinformation, bigotry, and right-wing extremism. Suddenly, Vault-Tec doesn't sound so far-fetched. 

This is the core of Fallout, a game set in a world of terrors, filled with multiple storylines of how the U.S. government essentially sold its people to businesses. The vaults, which started out as just safe havens from where the protagonist emerges centuries after the war, quickly became a focal point for the franchise's satire about capitalism selling protection against doomsday while ensuring it happened. In Fallout 2 the vaults are retconned into being the home of truly devilish experiments, which forever changed the trajectory of the games. Even the rich people, the scientists, and the musicians who got a place in a vault that protected them from the bombs ended up living in a house of horrors. 

If the games have a message, it's that the experiments did not succeed, that the corporations betting on the end of the world died alongside it, that fiduciary responsibility taking priority over peace is absolutely wrong and will only lead to atrocities. The people of the vaults may think they live in the utopia that will restore America to its former glory, but nothing good can come from a group of people led by a brain on a Roomba and the remnants of a centuries-old corporation — as seen by Vault 32 succumbing to violence and death upon discovering the true secret of Vault-Tec.

Fallout Season 1 is streaming on Prime Video. Join the discussion about the show in our forums. 

Rafael Motamayor is a freelance writer and critic based in Norway.