What would life be like in a Vault

[samoja]

I was clearing out Vault 22 recently, and i found myself wondering, how would my character see the thing, being from the Vault himself and all. Would seeing other failed Vaults make him anxious. How would he even see the life outside having spent most of his life in a Vault.

I mean how would life in a Vault even look like, from the Vault dweller´s perspective the Vault is his entire world, he is born, lives and (probably) dies there, as far as he knows the world outside is completely inhospitable to human life, it may as well be in space(which if we go by the lore, is not at all accidental). What horror must it be to find out about the Vault experiments then, being stuck between staying in a vault and getting exposed with whatever sick twisted idea Vault-tec selected for you, or going out into certain death.

It´s a real horror scenario. Then on the other hand the community that develops in the Vault, it is fascinating to think about, being stuck with only 1000 others, knowing every person by name. Note how in every other Vault NPCs are given generic names, but in Vault 101 every NPC is named. Your character knows this people, they were his family for all intents and purposes, and so every death is not some random "vault dweller". And getting banished, how would that affect the Lone Wanderer? It would be kind of like being disowned by your own family.

To us as players the Vault is just a mildly interesting starting area, but it is so much deeper then that.

[jlf65]

It's the monkey sphere. Fallout games typify this concept. Anywho, there are places in the US where people are born, live, and die never leaving an area about the size of a vault, and with fewer people! I live in one such area for about 5 years when I was younger. Horrid place full of horrid people. If you aren't in their monkey sphere, you aren't even human.

[James_T_Quirk]

1) it's only a game...

2) In UK, 1 of the "Bog-men", or mummys from mud, was on exhibit at Community Museum, As schools visited they tested people to see the spread of DNA, 1 of the the Local Teachers was a Direct descendant of the 2500 year old Mud-Mummy..

3. vaults you can't see walls, Easter Island, eg : vaults that go wrong ...

4. The Prison System, worldwide ...

Amongst others ..

But Of course, I forget Space Flight/ Stations/ bases etc, all experiments to happen ... But Elon Musk's Idea for Mars is OK, but at less than 1000 people, sorry, they will be INBREADS in a couple of hundred years, not enough DNA Diversity, sadly More People Should Go ..

But you imagine being trapped in a tin can, tranversing to Mars, for say, 9 months, with for example all the people on last Train trip you went on, as Crew & Passengers ? May look like a mutants gore bag by the time it got to mars...

So unlike MOST Movies & TV shows, they would Psychologically TEST people first, like a subs crew etc ...

And compared to vastness of this universe, with stars, galaxies beyond count, our humble little World, in Humans Terms, IS Our Vault, like the Games, we just don't get it either ...

 

 

[IvoryOwl]

From an outside perspective (that may be shared by some vault dwellers); constricting and boring. You get to walk around the same corridors, see the same faces, be restricted to a certain type of job(s), etc. You are born there, you die there. It may not be so bad to those who are born into one because to them that is all they know. You could argue real-life ain't that different; once you get into a routine and semi-stable life, things end up feeling similar: Wake up every day, go to work or school, repeat a variety of monotonous tasks for hours on end, talk to the same people, discuss about the same topics, go home, socialize with partner and / or family, sleep, repeat.



The difference here is that outside of a vault you are given the possibility of breaking the mold more often or at least more significantly; move away, go on a trip, meet new people, look for a variety of tasks/hobbies/jobs, etc. Restrictions are more or less self-imposed and you can always break away from them should you wish so, whereas in a vault everyone has a role to play and they have to stick by it. You can't even pick a particular restaurant or brand because everything available is self-made and chances are there's only one or two cantinas for you to eat at.



Imagine you had to live the rest of your life inside your office building, that also has a self-sufficient system that is capable of generating the basics for survival, with no internet (or just local wifi) or other means of communicating with the outside world without breaking the Vault's rules (only under cases of extreme necessity). Recreation consists mostly on tabletop games, darts, billiards, dominos, cards, a limited set of books and "imagination is the limit" type of games. Would they even have room for baseball, football, basketball and/or other more athletic endeavors?



As for getting kicked out or asked to go on a mission, unless the person has spent their entire lives preparing for such an event I think it's practically a death sentence. In FO1 you're sent away with just the clothes on your back, a weapon, ammo, some kits (and, realistically, some packed rations and water). Good luck surviving the wastelands filled with rabid mutants, equally dangerous humans and radiation poisoning. It's a last resort sort of thing, like playing the lottery; not sending someone means death, sending someone, even if ill-prepared as hell, means there's at least hope. To me, it's just the Overseer attempting to ease the conscience of the people before the harsh inevitability hits them.

[jlf65]

According to this, the minimum population with negligible loss of genetic diversity due to inbreeding is 160.

NOA actually did a study that advanced the "50/500" rule:

[quote]The "50/500" rule of thumb initially advanced by Franklin (1980) and Soule (1980) comes the closest of any to attaining "magic number" status (Wilcox 1986). This rule prescribes a short-term effective population size (Ne) of 50 to prevent an unacceptable rate of inbreeding, and a long-term Ne of 500 to maintain overall genetic variability. The Ne=50 prescription (termed "the basic rule" by Soule 1980) corresponds to an inbreeding rate of 1% per generation, approximately half the maximum rate tolerated by domestic animal breeders (Franklin 1980). The Ne=500 prescription is an attempt to balance the rate of gain in genetic variation due to mutation with the rate of loss due to drift, and is based on a genetic study of bristles in Drosophila (Franklin 1980).[/quote]

 

[samoja]

[quote=jlf65]

 

According to this, the minimum population with negligible loss of genetic diversity due to inbreeding is 160.

NOA actually did a study that advanced the "50/500" rule:

Quote:

The "50/500" rule of thumb initially advanced by Franklin (1980) and Soule (1980) comes the closest of any to attaining "magic number" status (Wilcox 1986). This rule prescribes a short-term effective population size (Ne) of 50 to prevent an unacceptable rate of inbreeding, and a long-term Ne of 500 to maintain overall genetic variability. The Ne=50 prescription (termed "the basic rule" by Soule 1980) corresponds to an inbreeding rate of 1% per generation, approximately half the maximum rate tolerated by domestic animal breeders (Franklin 1980). The Ne=500 prescription is an attempt to balance the rate of gain in genetic variation due to mutation with the rate of loss due to drift, and is based on a genetic study of bristles in Drosophila (Franklin 1980).

 

[/quote]

Short term, but it is still not without consequences long term. Humans had a "tight squeeze" about 70 000 years ago, only 20 000 humans survived. We are still seeing consequences of this.

such a population would have largely uniform genes and many genes would be lost permanently, apart from that if any sort of genetic defect showed up it could spread quickly among the population.

Even in breeding programs it is customary to occasionally "refresh" the blood by adding fresh blood from outside, not so when your population has a hard cap.

[James_T_Quirk]

jlf65, sorry I will go with samoja's thoughts, The Ice Age Bottleneck is a good example, some research suggest tighter numbers than that, less than 5000.. but we ended up with this bunch of pyshco-monkeys, who think they are all different, all special (or children of God), they are fixated by skin colour & Locations & lets not forget "shiny things", they like to display ...

Maybe the End result, from fighting for warmish Cave space, with Neatherthals (thinking you are superior, Cold, Hungry helps with a genocide)

 

 

[jlf65]

No problem, I won't take it personally. More people makes more sense in any case, I was merely pointing to info about absolute SMALLEST pop sizes. It always struck me that Vaults were larger, anyway. They only have a few people in the games because of hardware limits - the same reason for all the differences to "real life" - that and game-play mechanics, of course. A "real" Vault would have needed more people if only for all the normal radiation people of that society absorbed. I imagine genetic diversity was higher, but also rates of birth defects and cancers.

[samoja]

[quote=jlf65]

 

No problem, I won't take it personally. More people makes more sense in any case, I was merely pointing to info about absolute SMALLEST pop sizes. It always struck me that Vaults were larger, anyway. They only have a few people in the games because of hardware limits - the same reason for all the differences to "real life" - that and game-play mechanics, of course. A "real" Vault would have needed more people if only for all the normal radiation people of that society absorbed. I imagine genetic diversity was higher, but also rates of birth defects and cancers.

[/quote]

It´s kinda like living off of grain and sugar, you can do it for a little while but fairly soon you will start suffering protein and vitamin deficiency, small population can sustain itself in the short term but in the long run you get the same effect as European royal houses, genetic defects start cropping up, and in this small of a population there is not enough people for them to disappear naturally. Doubly so for a population living in a heavily irradiated area.

[James_T_Quirk]

Genetic Mutantations are a fact of Life, why 1918-19 Flu, only killed about 50 million, most had a immunity, those who didn't died ..

In this New World of Super Bugs, it may be our end, Human Race plagued by Rampant Virulent Diseases, until there a small population left, that natural disaster may finish us off ..

Of Course the weak, lightly muscled, enlongated, from weigthlessness, emaciated from calorie restrictive diet (promotes Longevity), may come back from mars or orbit, and pay there respects & lend a hand, but I think Off World Immune Systems will not cope for Sure .. Plus they will look like "greys", we may just shoot them ..