The vaults are likely the most iconic aspect ofFallout’s setting, with the lore of Vault-Tec’s mysterious social experiments expanded upon with each successive release. However, a tidbit we hadn’t known about the vaults was recently revealed by Tim Cain, producer and one of the biggest influences on the original Fallout (thanks,TheGamer).
In avlog on his YouTube channel, Cain revealed that Leonard Boyarsky, art director on Fallout, asked what numbers he should allow for on the back of the vault suit. Cain asked him to allow for a range between 0 and 999.
“Interplay Said ‘We Don’t Need Fallout’": How Fallout Was Nearly Not Made
The game faced a lot of challenges - including a D&D incursion - to get made.
“The original design for vaults was that there was going to be one thousand,” Cain explained. “The only reason this pin was placed in the original game was when Leonard was doing the vault suit, he asked how many digits he’d need to keep on the back. Because we had Vault 13, but he wanted to know is there going to be a Vault 106, is there going to be a Vault 1,218? And I thought, well, let’s just say there’s a round number, there’s a thousand.”
Cain concedes that this isn’t canon, and Bethesda has never explicitly stated how many faults there are. He adds that even if Vault-Tec had planned 1,000 vaults, there’s a high chance they wouldn’t have finished all of them.
If we combine the vaults in Fallout, Fallout 2 and the Fallout television series, we only see between 8 and 10 vaults in all of California. This number certainly falls short of the number of vaults you’d expect in a high-population state in a 1,000-vault United States.
The highest numbered vault we’ve seen so far in the series is Vault 118 from Fallout 4’s Far Harbor expansion, and cut content from Fallout 4 included a Vault 121.
There’s a chance Vault-Tec disregarded population density and built 800 vaults in Wyoming. Barring that, there probably aren’t 1,000 vaults, but there is plenty of scope for hundreds more than what we’ve seen so far.
