Y'know I'm starting to think Vault tec doesn't have our best interests in mind.

Interestingly, in Fallout 4 you can overhear a couple of Triggermen talking about the unfinished vault they've taken over. One of them is convinced that the vault was never intended to be finished and was essentially a scam to string the government along for more funding.

Evidently, the Vault-Tec company owners would've gotten along great with the owners of Boeing.

I know it's not 'official', but when Tim Caine says it, it becomes my head canon.

Something to with Vault Tec not being able to finish their 1000 vaults, is that the resource wars would also greatly affect their ability to maintain constant production of vaults

Insert Spiders Georg meme and Nebraska having 750 vaults and skewing the average

Based on what we have now in the lore, 120 vaults was the number they were able to build based on their number of experiments, with the exception of control vaults.

You also have to expect these Vaults to be massive in real life to house 1000 people and a storage of food, water etc.. The games can't really make them massive because of software and hardware limitations so overall the Vault program feels tiny to us.

I always liked to think that a lot of the vaults were just lost to time. Most of the experiments ended badly, it would make sense that a lot of them would just be sealed up after their inhabitants all died off and there was no one to open the door. Collapses and cave ins could shut entrances forever, there could be plenty that are just hidden away and still undiscovered, it’s not like the wasteland is fully charted already.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is a good example of what happens when people choose the lowest bidder, the bridge eventually tore itself apart because the government chose the cheap design (which didn't account for wind) over the good design. The bridge would wobble whenever a strong enough wind picked up, and that's what destroyed the bridge in time. IIRC, they replaced it with the better, safer design. But Vault-Tec is certainly capable of that, and likely to do such a thing.

I figured a few things with this. 1-Not all Vaults were numbered and aren't in the 1000s. The demonstration Vault under the cathedral, for one. Also, there may have been vault tec competitors. 2-Not everyone alive was ever in a vault. Most survivors just got lucky or had their own shelters. 3-Vault Tec didn't build all 1000 in time 4-There could actually be that many vaults, we simply don't see that many because video games are highly zoomed in.

The concept behind Vault 77 and the Puppet guy is still my favorite. Kudos to whoever came up with that later on

"I'm a programmer, I start at zero." In all my life/career as a technical person, never has such a simple statement caused such arguments between people on numbering. XD For the record though, and especially in this circumstance, it's an excellent choice (and as I'm typing "you could do cool things with 000", you talk about thinking you could do cool things with 000.). The way your thought processes marry interesting/creative ideas with logical layouts/progressions is just excellent. I'm just sitting here appreciating it. Anyway, thank you for the (early) Friday Fun Day! There's so much theory crafting in the fandom, it's definitely a blast to get some from one of the originators of the content.

You can clearly preface this by stating none of this is canon but I'm sure at least one person will treat this as a hidden revelation that changes the lore of Fallout forever 😅

In the TV show we see they didn't even plan on having any vaults in Indiana. I find that hilarious

I always assumed that 999 was the limit. glad to have that confirmed.

in new vegas there's another californian vault mentioned, the one the companion Lily is from. Vault 17

Minor thing, but we've known about annexed Canada having vaults since 3. In the town Vault 101 is built there's a rejected application form for it advising the resident to seek placement in 'newly annexed Canada'.

The most evil thing Vault Tec did was not making Vault 123 1:51 also even smaller with how overpopulated Fallout's Unite States probably is

I always liked the idea of shoddy vaults built in Canada for various experimental purposes, as well as a few nice vaults for the US military stationed there.

I always assumed that most of the vaults weren’t found because you never see all of a state, and a lot of the entrances would have been covered in dirt, debris, rocks and foliage. A lot of those would be long dead vaults, but some would still be ticking along in their own little world.

Tim: my headcanon is that the BEST vaults were like Tutankamon's tomb: completely well-hidden from robbers. I'm not saying all 1K were finished but I am saying there could be any number of hidden vaults, active and dead, waiting to be discovered. Potential DLC everywhere.

It is great narrative story telling that the pinnacle of corporate greed and corruption would cannibalize even its own plans to make a few extra caps.

The newly opened Vault 63 in 76 is explained to be actually a series of interconnected vaults with metro lines running between them. It was so big that they couldn't effectively rad shield it before the bombs fell. But from what the overseer says, it apparently held a large majority of southern WV by itself.

Tim I have wanted to thank you for years, playing fallout one and 2 really helped my reading, I played them whilst I was at school, I have struggled all my life with reading writing and spelling, your brain children and their text-heavy immersive story I'm sure you didn't mean to but you helped me so much enjoying reading and have put my life into a better direction thank you cant express how grateful I am.

I was very amused playing a mod that created a vault 495 in which it was a clerical error that created a vault with a ridiculously high number.

I always wanted it to be more than 1.000 vaults because i think the vaults are such a cool design and more vaults means more storylines

Personally the first thing that came to mind with the number of civilians per vault is that they probably just pulled an airliner. They overbooked. I mean by the time people found out it would be too late. And that probably also means that most vaults could be entirely imaginary. It’s really messed up, but on brand for vault-tec.

Discovered you about a week or two ago. Loving your content and the insights you give us. Grateful to hear about your experience. Thanks.

Tim thanks for taking the time to make these videos.

I love your videos, Tim. Very valuable information for designers and entertaining! keep it up!

Ahhh, a nice refreshing Tim video, fresh on the table. Thank you!

Interesting to hear this. I've spent more time thinking about VaultTec than I care to admit and my thinking has led me to: 1) On no level does VaultTec's behavior make sense really. Even if the experiments were to prepare humanity for long term space flight many of them don't make sense. For example, Vault 95 with the addicts, it's not really an experiment if everyone can tell you what will happen. 2) The ubiquity of nuclear power and radiation made nuclear war seem less apocalyptic. I really think people were so comfortable with nuclear stuff that nuclear war seemed like a thing they could get through and the vaults were more of a fail-safe. I think that's why VaultTec was fine to experiment, they didn't think the vaults were all that important. Again, unless VaultTec was up to something completely different, their behavior in no way indicates that they thought they were humanities last hope. 3) VaultTec can't be the only "Bomb-Shelter" company. Sure, VaultTec got the contract but I feel like they couldn't have been the only company doing this sort of work. Sure, VaultTec was building the big federal Vaults, but I have to imagine there were smaller companies doing personal, municipal, and corporate vaults. Maybe we just haven't seen them because they succeeded and are safe/better ran/planned or VaultTec/the Encalve harvested them long ago. Sorta like Nuka Cola. Sure it's the main one but there are regional's like Vim and Sunset Sarsaparilla. Seems odd that there would be different soda companies but not different shelter contractors.

Thanks, Tim! Wishing you the best! 💖

thanks for another great video tim ❤️ i love hearing your thoughts on the game and its history and your history as well

Interesting to hear your insight of the Vaults

Love getting this inside dope from you. I can listen all day long

Hi Tim , First of all Happy Fun Friday everyone . What are you thinking about in TV series mentioning about the idea of the Vaults ? When Vault Dweller Lucy comes out from her vault and encounters with her first trader in town . She said something like , The idea is that we're going to save america and we are previledge people . And also trader responds was , F. The Vaults like people whose left from outside are hates from the persons from the vaults. I love that logic and just wondering maybe not in production time of Fallout but after that , did you thought that kind of logic same as this or maybe different and also even not so did you like that idea ?

Tim is amazing. His insights etc are very helpful and extend beyond the game industry. Great stories and lessons. Thanks for an awesome channel. Im heading back to play fallout (pre todd howard). Bring back Troika!

I'm so happy you popped up on gregs channel, I had no idea you did youtube . I've been binge watching your commentary as... a sorta of podcast I listen to while I work. Cheers mate, much love from Australia

Thanks for making my day fun ❤ Love hearing would be lore from you

I think its cool how open and approachable tim is! Not all artists are this open about their creative process!

I like to listen your videos on background, very nice topics! 👍

I love your videos Tim!! Thank you!!!

Super cool to see some of the insight into this, especially the 3 digits because counting from 0 haha

I love the undiscovered vaults idea! More content for future games. I’m imagining a vault with a human evolution experiment, and it could contain a possible new branch of humanoid that’s become a different species entirely.

Thank you again for this channel. This is the stuff the Internet is for, Valuable perspectives. Im really glad your out here positively influencing people we need more of that. I'm an insomniac and I have been listening to your videos to escape my existential dread and aid my sleep, now I wanna make a game and my eyebags are reducing.

a retcon for why you can't find some vaults is because they caved in

I could listen to your voice for hours

I've always assumed there were about ~200 vaults. Very interesting.

Good video Tim, this probably isn't a question for, but take it if you like it. I would love to see, a Fallout game where a competitor to Vaultec was discovered, and they had built better vaults without the experiments or deception and were actually trying to save a decent chunk of humanity, that would be really interesting, it would juxtaposition well against the Vaultec vaults as how weird they are by comparison.

I feel like 3 digits (0 - 999) and then years and years down the line create the mythical 1000th of whatever it is.

Super funny that the original quantity of vaults was for designing the suits

Vault tech was never fully realized. Numbering them one by one brings into question what states approved vault tech contracts before other states ,could lead to a pile up of vaults in one region, while a later state to approve the projects would have fewer vaults. Too add to that the vaults would most likely be numbered by region like interstates rather than build number.

True to life, IIRC, both the US and Canada had nuclear shelter programs that kind of went nowhere and did a whole lot of nothing for anyone. The thing that stuck in my mind was that Canada's program started off as a means of setting up nuclear detection posts or some such, but getting people to man these posts ultimately meant accommodating at least one, if not two, families. Of course, all of that was incredibly expensive even just to build a network of two-man stations, nevermind something that'd house four to eight people. I think they ultimately tried some manner of do-it-yourself program that also went nowhere, maybe.

1:07 Oh… OH! Great video Tim

I would love to watch you do a play through of the first two Fallout games

Even a million is unrealistically high. You also have to store food for decades, which takes specially equipment like nitrogen flooded packaging. The vaults themselves are also going to be insanely expensive and in tunneling they usually lose a man per mile so just building them costs lives. Then after things cool down a bit and radiation is lower there will probably be lots of land that is still not useable a long time.

Good video, Tim.

Even though this is speculation, it helps creating more ideas for the lore. So it turns out Vault Tech didn't just use them as experiments, but they also lied about their estimates, knowing it was impossible to build 1000 vaults before the war.

iirc Fallout Bible used an exact number for how many vaults there are, which was less than 200. Of course it's also not canon, but the document shows some cool insight of what Avellone and the other guys at Interplay were planning at the time

One thing I'd like to know, that I haven't really seen covered. Is the difference between mak8ng classes and objects in C vs C++. You say a lot that you used C a lot longer than most for performance issues in early C++, but how was your preferred way to control objects in a language that doesn't have them. I get that you'd just create the function outside of the structure, but how do you safely tie them together.

The best example i can think of of private companies taking money and not using it to do anything has to be the privatized water companies in the UK. Our rivers are full of sewage while shareholders get constant patouts for essentially doing nothing. We haven't built a single reservoir for over 30 years. The worst, Thames water, has something like 60% of its drains and sewage systems that haven't been upgraded since the 1920's. They make Vault Tec look like good guys

So back in the day I used to write Fallout Fanfiction, I always had the thought that Vault numbers meant nothing. Like Vault 13 was in California. Vault 13 was also in Maine. Who would check? Vault Tec might have kept good records, maybe not. Who knows? But that way they could sell spots to rich individuals while also saying X vault is open to the public. Take money from states to shift over a couple of extra without having to level out the balance sheet. You could keep that secret from other people to protect the inhabitants.

This is so cool. Think about how cool this is to people who love Fallout. You get to hear the OG dev talk about all this cool stuff about one of the coolest games (Fallout 2). I liked 1 but 2 clicked with me. I love all the Fallouts (except 76 I never played it). It’s just so awesome to get to hear all this OG Fallout stuff from Tim Cain.

I always thought it was incredibly short-sighted for Bethezda to state that there are about a hundred vaults. Hundreds of billions of people and you're saying that's ALL Vault-Tek built? Bethezda should have said it was thousands and leave the exact number ambiguous. We'll soon be getting to the point where all the vaults are in games and they'll have to retcon the lore if they want to add more.

Hi Tim, it's me, s00perd00per. I first want to say I'm very excited that you offer channel memberships now, and I'm incredibly happy to be able to help support you directly. I'm sorry for the lengthy comment that is to follow. TL;DR: I want to make a love letter to one of my most favorite games ever, but have some concerns (final paragraph contains my actual questions). I have a question about game design, but first a bit of rambling for context. I've never made a video game, but have always wanted to. I even know exactly what I want to make! When I was younger, Flash games were all the rage; some were silly, some were serious, and some could even compete with the Triple A titles of the time in terms of scope and mechanics (but not so much graphics). There was one in particular that sunk its teeth into me deeper than any game I've ever played, and I still play it daily. The problem is, it's a 20+ year old Flash game at this point. I've tried finding/playing similar games, but nothing I've found can measure up to it, so I've decided to do the work myself and make a spiritual successor, refining the mechanics and increasing the scope of the game. My question(s) are: Is it worth it to make a game for yourself? Will I still find it enjoyable to play after having made the game? Would it be wrong, morally or legally, to make a spiritual successor to this game? The original developer has all but disappeared from the internet, as is the case with a lot of old Flash developers. The game was somewhat simplistic, being essentially a defense/shooter game with enemies moving from left to right across the screen. Despite increasing the scope of the game, is there even room/a market for a simple game these days? Please help, as I'm in quite the pickle on deciding if I should take the plunge and make this, or if I should just continue to enjoy what I currently have available.

I like the idea that when they were building the vaults, they picked randomly from any number 1 to 1000 based on where they were building them and who they could get to invest. Lower income areas had higher numbers, higher income areas had lower numbers, so that those investing had different ideas of where they were along the list of 1000.

Another factor may be that a lotta vaults are built under buildings and in caves, many of them may simply still be there but the only entrance is buried under rubble and boulders. They may also be quite secluded like Vault 13 or 33 was before they had some internal crisis that required contact with the surface. Many vault experiments may have long since ran their course and has been either destroyed or made inaccessible by Enclave clean-up teams. A lot of time has passed since the bombs dropped so it perfectly makes sense for lots of vaults to just be lost to time, just not discovered by the protagonist of the game that goes through that area.

Hello Mr. Cain! I just want to add onto your statement as to the number of vaults possibly made by Vault Tec. Its a pretty good headcanon (most everyone else will just call it canon since you are Tim Cain) but I will point out that a number of vaults even in the Fallout Games went undiscovered for decades, even centuries by wastelanders, and so the possibility of there being more than 500 vaults is still plausible. Take for instance California. 6 vaults total found, but many regions were never really explored. Take the region above Sacramento. Yuba, Butte, and Sutter County were never explored in the original games, and with location such as Beale AFB (Houses one of the largest missile tracking radar systems in the world, able to track missiles across the entire west coast), the Sutter Buttes, and the town of Chico, all three of which had Nuclear Missile Silos in the 60’s. Yuba City had a very large population, and easily could have had a vault, even Oroville since it has one of the largest hydroelectric dams in the world. All I’m saying, is that just because we have found less than expected, doesn’t mean we found them all

I'm not good at math. But assuming 13 commonwealths and a vault 0 then every commonwealth would have 77 Vaults. Assuming all vaults got built (they didn't). Also the number of vaults around Vegas makes sense. Vaults would be around areas of major population centers. But assuming your method of 20 vaults per state. For Nevada there should/could be spread like this. 7 vaults in the Vegas area. 7 vaults in the Reno/Carson City area. 2 vaults in Elko 4 vaults in places like Winnemucca, Fallon, Yerington. and Tonopah. Or maybe Nevada only had 14 vaults on the books and they were just located in Vegas and the Reno/Carson City area. Like how you said some states probably got more vaults than others.

I'm not sure how much you know about real-life government contracts, but you are eerily close to common practices by defense contractors. Estimates being "off" by under-bidding and then later requesting more money to complete the project is super common. The more expensive the project, they more they will do this. Technically not supposed to, but everyone does it, mostly legally. Example, the F-35 project bid was way off. But when Lockheed Martin asked for more money, it was calculated that it would cost more to scrap it and start over with Boeing's proposal, so they got more money. Rinse and repeat for everything the government contracts out. You're head-cannon for Vault-Tec operating this way as well makes perfect sense to me!

Hi Tim, it's me, Michael. No question here; I just wanted to say thank you so much for your videos! You are amazing and my inspiration in the industry! My absolute dream is to spearhead development on my own Cain-style RPG - but that is a lofty goal I am only taking small steps towards at this time. I have a job in the industry, and I am also working on my own small side project (I have a Steam page and the game is set to be released Q1 2025). All that to say I am building my programming skillset. As well, I am saving money to contract out aspects of the game that I cannot (or am not good at) do myself. (Not to say I have not put any development time toward the RPG already, but man do I need to stay heads down on releasing my current "small" project! I say ""small"" because no game feels small when you're at the second or third 90% of development... HAH) I hope one day I can point you toward that RPG and hopefully you can find unique aspects of it you like! Main inspirations for mechanics are Fallout, Fallout: New Vegas, TES Morrowind, and TES Skyrim. I cannot yet say the theme/setting inspirations as I have some diverging ideas both fantasy and sci-fi and will need to decide on one, plus it will be heavily influenced by whoever collaborates on the project with me! Which tangentially reminds me; I hope to have some the awesome experiences like you did as you fondly talk about some of your other projects from the 90s! P.S. I am currently about 65 pages deep into Hyperion (Dan Simmons) and it is spectacular so far. My smooth brain had to read the prologue twice, but now that I know it's *overtly* sci-fi and understand Dan's writing better it is a lot easier to read!

Even if its not canon, I love hearing your insight into the series.

I'd love for there to be a procedurally generated vault-centric fallout game set in new york, and you could have it so vault zero was a city sized vault with multiple entrances mid-vault gates, and district oriented overseers, trapped underground because of just how impossibly irradiated the surface is. please, someone use this idea. also another free Idea, just cause they were planning to start the war, doesn't mean they planed to do it so early, they may have needed to build more, and were caught by surprise by something else. there are probably hundreds of different incomplete vaults out there that people fled to and just had to use whatever infrastructure they had. that would also be a good story.

Ik my headcanon for a few years has been they ever only broke ground on about 150ish vaults as 1000 in the the time since they began building was just way beyond possible.

So because I happened to have the data hanging around, I divided 1000 vaults proportionately by state population (in 1960). IF all 1000 had been built AND they were allocated evenly, New York would have the most, at 94, followed by California at 88, Pennsylvania at 63, Illinois at 56, Ohio at 54, and Texas with 53. There would have been 29 for Massachusetts, DC would have had 4, Nevada only 2, and West Virginia would have had 10. My personal takeaway is how much our population used to be concentrated in the Northeast in the 60s, and how it's changed over time.

The population thing is always very interesting to me. People argue the 'suspension of disbelief' that what you see in a game might be 'representative'. They might say "the cities in Skyrim actually have several thousand people each, but 'the game of Skyrim' is not lore-Skyrim, it is a technology-constrained simulacrum". But to me, in a very literal sense... no. In Fallout 4, I can walk end to end in Vault 81. It doesn't contain 1,000 people. It contains, and has space to contain, about 20-25 including unnamed guards. I feel like we have to go with what we can actually see and hear and experience in the games that have been published. This is just me sharing some thoughts. I don't think anything Tim says strongly agrees or strongly disagrees. (Tim, if you happen to read this - thanks for being you. I really appreciate what you put out into the world.)

I'm working on a fallout Fanfilm set in Florida. The Sunshine Wasteland. In my plot and the lore myself and my friends have come up with, we only have 3 Vaults. And two of them are practically on the state borders because Florida has an underground aquifer system that makes it impossible for use to have deep underground structures. The one in central florida we imagine as an above ground vault. And we also acknowledge some lore from Fallout 4 where Vault Tec was so busy building Vaults they were almost out of money, and they were making errors with vault specifications. The latter is incase the vault numbers we picked are used in the future in other places. We found out one we picked was used for an unused Vault in 4 ironically.

I so paused the Fallout TV show and counted everyone of the dots on the map. 😂 Fallout is my favorite Game Series of all time. ❤

What was your favorite build in Arcanum 🤩 ?

I need to see all the vaults that were built. According to a loading screen in Fallout 4 only 122 got built

Maybe a logical plan would be for Vault-Tec begin with 1,000 vaults - partially financed by the company but mainly paid for by the .1% - and hope for popularity and demand for an expansion of this program would pressure federal and local governments to finance additional vaults for the average family.

I don’t know where it was that I got this idea exactly but I believe there’s canonically 120 vaults after Bethesda took over. The interviewer that was quizzing the show’s cast asked that question and reaffirmed that too. I’m not sure where that came from though. Community, please help me out here.

Even if they did use every number the very next game would be a classified vault nobody knew about

Wow, immediately interesting to know there was planned to be 1000 vaults. Idk why but I always thought there'd be closer to like... 200-300. Honestly, this makes me feel a little better about the show adding vaults to the area, which was one of the few real issues I personally had with the show lore-wise.

Hello Tim, Thank you for another video. I enjoyed it very much. I have a question My friends and I over here in the mitten of America just want to know- have your team had any thoughts, ideas, or concepts of what the single vault in Michigan would withhold? Were you guys planning on having only one in Michigan in the first place or was that a decision on Bethesda?

I think another option is just that the games don't show you every vault that exists in the area

If Vault-Tec dropped the bombs or even initiated the Great War like the show suggested, they should’ve known exactly what their pseudo deadline was to complete the vaults. This means if the show is true, Vault-Tec never planned to actually finish 1000 vaults. Someone might say “Well why would there be vaults under construction at the time of the Great War?” It’s possible that could be a distraction or a way to ease people’s minds by implying there is enough time to finish this vault, hence the bombs won’t drop soon.

That leads me, in *my* non-canon brain, to the possibility (probability) that Val-Tec had more malignant intentions, but I have to get my spelunking gear before I go down *that* particular rabbit hole.

Hey tim I have had a question. Ever since your video on how you guys at Trioka were involved in the bidding on the fallout IP and how it eventually went to Bethesda. Well it got me thinking. I know you usually like working on new IP instead of existing IP so if you for some reason had magically gotten the fallout IP was it more you thought you could make money to help Trioka thrive or did you genuinely want to work in the IP again despite your usual hesitance toward revisiting old IP.

Vault 0 now canon

You can accuse Vault Tec of a lot of things, but I don't think shoddy workmanship is actually one of them. The vaults worked and did what they were supposed to do, and many if not most, seem to be fully functional after 200 years.

Wouldn't it be smart by Vault-Tec to build vaults away from populated areas because there would be less radiation? Someone dropping bombs is more likely to drop them on a city rather than in the middle of nowhere.

I think it's neat how we get vaults in each game but the number is random. Like we never see a 1,2,3 vaults in the same state. 3 is in Nevada but 1 and 2 are somewhere else.

Since the annexation of Canada is canon, there should be vaults up here too. Eh. Of course, ours would be numbered in metric... 😂

even in the initial phase there could be different shelters, there could be less than 1000 inhabitants, there could be much more but I think this also had to be found out - what is the optimal number of residents and by the way, the best way to communicate and I think even if Volttek was a government contractor, it’s not necessary that no one else built the shelters

I'm good with the corporate corruption explanation. I think that jives quite nicely considering. I always thought that the mafia vault was hilarious! Honestly, I just wish they would work towards incorporating all the maps into one single game. Perhaps using the train mechanism from Nuka world for transitory purposes. In my mind, I can see it playing out in FO4 as having to take over and then repair a power station plus a substation (thereby upping the difficulty) this would then power the nearby train.

I don't know if you'll see this, but whatever. Of these two, which would you say is closer to your original idea for power armor? Treating it like any other armor (3, NV) or more like a vehicle (4, 76)?

I dont know why, but i feel like something in the lore somewhere said there were only 126 confirmed vault construction projects by the time the bombs fell with some never being finished. If we tale into account some ultra wealthy people would have their own personal vaults like John-Caleb Bradberton AND we included demo vaults im gonna guess theres only around 200 Vaults across the US and Annexed Canada. As an aside: i would love to see a Fallout Game set in China. See the other side of the war so to speak. Did they have their own Vault-tec? What mutations could have occurred in their wildlife? Etc