Tim Cain, the co-creator of the Fallout series, has a terrifying theory about the purpose of the Vaults. In a recent YouTube video, Cain explained that one thousand Vaults were planned during development, though far fewer are seen in the games. The reason for this–what Cain calls the hidden truth–is Vault-Tec itself.
“They didn’t build all one thousand Vaults,” Cain said. “They didn’t even come close. I know some of the Fallout games show Vaults still under construction when the bombs fell, so you could argue they were planning to do all one thousand and they just never made it – they never got there.
And then you have to go ‘well, why was that? What’s going on?’ Not only did Vault-Tec win the contract from the government by underbidding – severely underbidding – they probably also underplanned and underscheduled, and probably just didn’t think they were going to do them all.”
Cain postulates that this is a reason why the Vaults became used for social experiments. Rather than using the bunkers to save people, they were instead used to examine and manipulate human behavior.
“When you add in the fact that Vault-Tec probably knew they weren’t going to build 1,000, and the ones they were building were really bad, you can see where the experiment idea might have come in,” Cain concludes. “It’s like, ‘hey, we’re not going to build all these, so we’re not going to get a lot of people saved, so saving people obviously isn’t the goal. What if we did this other thing instead?’”
In sad, related news, Bethesda recently revealed that it has no plans to remake Fallout 1 and 2.
