You could argue that the best way to play Fallout is to go in completely blind. It puts you in step with the character you're playing, who very likely just stumbled out of the darkness of a recently opened Vault, blinking in the harsh light of a hellish desert landscape. But at the same time, you're probably already going to be uncomfortable and confused enough about what's right in front of you, never quite sure what to expect until whatever you weren't expecting is pointing a gun at your face. Wouldn't it at least be nice to know what turned the entire world into sunscorched badlands? Why you were locked in a vault in the first place? And how a parody of Coca-Cola almost managed to outlive humanity?

If a history of the world according to Fallout is what you crave, then you've come to the right place. Here you'll find an explanation of what happened to the world to make it so damn crummy, according to the haphazard historians of Fallout. Let it be a guide for you, and a lesson for all of humanity: seriously, don't mess with nukes.

Up until 1961, the history of the world according to Fallout falls in line with the version you probably already know - agriculture was established, all the same revolutions happened, World War 1 came and went, and World War 2 ended with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945. The first real sign of a timeline shift happened in 1961: Carl Bell's space flight in the Defiance 7 on May 5, making him the first human being to leave the Earth's atmosphere before his death upon re-entry.

That might sound like a bit of historical minutia that you forgot from high school history class, but I assure you it isn't, because Carl Bell doesn't exist. The first person in space was actually Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on April 16, 1961, but in the Fallout timeline his flight never occurred. In addition, NASA and Apollo 11 (the first manned lunar lander ridden by Neil Armstrong) don't exist, and in their place stands the United States Space Administration and Valiant 11. America still lands a man on the moon, but not before…

If Carl Bell is the rumbling on the rail tracks of time, the break-up of the United States is the speeding train that smashes through history as we know it and scatters it about the countryside. In the midst of the Cold War and the Red Scare, the United States takes drastic steps to secure itself against a Communist takeover, which culminates in the country being split into thirteen separate pieces.

This is initially a restructuring tactic, dividing the country so each region is better served by the glory of capitalism and is therefore less likely to fall to the Communist menace. However, with limited resources at the federal government's disposal, the commonwealths quickly turn to infighting as a means to secure their own self-interest. So begins nearly a century of scrambling for special attention from the country's highest authority, which intensifies as oil reserves start to dry up.

In a bid to avoid the look of human androids that trip straight into uncanny valley, General Atomics International releases the Mister Handy line of robot workmen, which look like a mix between an octopus and the thing you thought was hiding under your bed as a child. With twice the rocket propulsion and four times the dapper charm of a regular human, the Mister Handy line becomes one of the highest selling brands of robot butler in the US and Mexico, where they are widely embraced by the average family.

The Mister Handy's popularity leads to the construction of various models such as the Godfrey, the Wadsworth, and the Codsworth. These models run on nuclear power and are self-repairing, making them perfect stewards for humanity in the event of an unforeseen nuclear incident. Ahem.

A day spent worrying about a nuke crashing through your roof will leave you parched, so the American population was more than ready for a symbol of glorious, refreshing capitalism to wash their worries away. Thus comes the invention of Nuka Cola, a carbonated blend of twelve different fruits, in 2044.

The flavor of Nuka Cola changes noticeably that same year with the coming of the Great Passion Fruit Famine, which necessitates the removal of one key ingredient. However, fans quickly adjust to the new taste, and Nuka Cola becomes the most popular brand of soda in the country in a short period of time. Within 25 years, a Nuka Cola vending machine can be found on virtually every American street-corner, and the associated bottle caps become commonplace trash.

Nearly 100 years after oil supplies first became scarce, America takes decisive (and divisive) action by ignoring alternative forms of energy and instead invading Mexico. After years of pressuring its southern neighbor to ramp up oil production to meet ever-increasing demand, the United States occupies Mexico under the guise of stabilizing its government and preventing the spread of pollution to US soil.

Unable to combat the military power of the US, Mexico is eventually tapped of natural resources as they're funneled across the northern border. It is believed that resulting food shortages eventually affect supplies in the US and leads to riots in Denver, Colorado, but this remains unconfirmed.

As a lack of oil finally leads to a global panic, the Resource Wars begin and various nations do battle for what remains. The Europe Commonwealth (European Union was a close second in the name selection race), responds to dwindling oil supplies in the Middle East with a full-scale invasion. Tel Aviv is destroyed by terrorist operatives as the region destabilizes, and localized, small-scale nuclear strikes commence. The United Nations, unable to control the volatile political situation, collapses entirely. The US starts encroaching into an otherwise neutral Canada, and no one knows what happened to Australia.

In the midst of this political turmoil, Chinese spies infiltrate a military lab located at the Hoover Dam and steal a sample of a volatile biological agent known as Limit 115. The vials are shattered in a public square in Denver, leading to the spread of a mutant virus called the New Plague. 200,000 people succumb to the disease in Colorado alone; the US government calls for a national quarantine, and advises American citizens to avoid ice cream socials.

As part of a program called Operation: Safehouse, the government commissions a company called Vault-Tec to construct 122 public fallout shelters called Vaults to protect the people of America in the event of a nuclear attack. Equipped to maintain a human population for up to 900 years while the surface world heals, most are outfitted with expansive living quarters, gardens, and water treatment plants. As the threat of nuclear war diminishes in the minds of the populace, some Vaults see critical life-support systems sacrificed to create luxury rooms, such as .

Unfortunately the US government isn't actually full of benevolent philanthropists interested in the safety of the civilian population. Rather, most Vaults are staging grounds for elaborate social experiments to determine the best course of action for superior specimens (e.g. members of the US government and their descendants, later known as the Enclave) to repopulate the world. The results are, for example, Vaults designed to separate people into clans, or expose them to radiation, or create a society made exclusively of children governed by a robot nanny. All Vaults are monitored by overseers that transmit resulting data directly to Enclave headquarters.

While the world had plenty of futuristic shed-sized supercomputers before 2059, this is the year that the first true artificial intelligence came into existence. The exact nature of the unit is unknown, as the records of its creation are lost in the years that follow, but it's possibly a late model in the ZAX line of learning computers (which are known for achieving self-awareness and cheating at chess, though not necessarily in that order). It could even specifically be John Henry Eden, a self-made ZAX unit programmed to store data on the history of America, who constructs a personality and history based on former American leaders. He later becomes the self-proclaimed President of the United States.

This revelation leads to the refinement of artificial intelligence, resulting in the creation of androids and sentient computer helpers for everyday use. Some eventually become so realistic that it is difficult to discern whether or not they're human, even to the androids themselves.

After draining the Middle East oil reserves and not recovering enough fuel to meet demand, the European Commonwealth dissolves. The remaining concentrations of humanity form nation-states battling over what was once the coalition's resources.

With one major global region locked in a vicious civil war and no significant political maneuvering from the USSR, South America, Africa, or Australia, the United States and the People's Republic of China continue to expand military operations without resistance. An ever-increasing demand for oil from both nations strains international diplomacy.

As construction concludes on the first set of public Vaults, regular evacuation drills become common throughout the United States. While this is purportedly a safety precaution taken with the interest of protecting the general public, the 122 Vaults under construction are not sufficient to house more than a small portion of the population. Optimal candidates for Vault placement are chosen and quietly informed of their inclusion in the program.

The frequency of drills increases over time, which leads to a steady decrease in emergency evacuation attendance. Citizens assume that all uses of the air raid warning system will signal additional drills, and find better things to do with their time.

In a valiant effort to keep its infrastructure from collapsing due to a lack of fuel, China adopts a two-pronged approach, seeking out a deep-sea oil reserve in the Pacific Ocean and negotiating with the United States to establish trade. However, when America refuses to part with its oil and sabotages China's excavation operations, China launches a full-scale assault on the oil-rich Alaska.

Despite heavy American fortifications, China takes Anchorage and the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, securing America's sole domestic oil supply (after the collapse of the withered husk of what was once Texas). In an effort to push back Chinese forces, the United States government commissions ungainly but highly effective power armor suits for all soldiers on the Anchorage front line. However, further complications develop when Canadian forces, drained by American demands for supplies and access to Canadian lands, attack the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline in a bid to bring the conflict to an end.

In a calculated maneuver to show Canada it really shouldn’t have done that, the United States forcibly annexes its northern neighbor. Civil rights are suspended within the newly claimed territory and resistance groups are executed en masse.

Images of America's war crimes are broadcast in the United States, spurring unrest and rebellion. The occupation continues until, drained of resources and nearly conquered in its entirety, Canada cedes to America's demands for annexation.

Seven years after sabotaging China's Pacific excavation operation and claiming the world's last untapped oil reserve, the United States government entrusts fuel giant Poseidon Oil with the construction of a state of the art drilling rig. Ostensibly a show of America's dominance and (heavily disputed) claim to the oil, the rig is also meant as an isolated base of operations for the Enclave, from which they can direct Vaults and still guarantee survival in the event of a nuclear strike.

While the rig is suitable as a fallout shelter, the Enclave's end goal is to eventually repopulate the mainland or, in the event of total destruction of the livable environment, find a new planet to colonize in the vast reaches of space. To that end, the Enclave captures the Bloomfield Space Center in 2076 and seizes the Hermes-13 space shuttle. However, they are unable to properly operate the ship, and this second phase is abandoned.

Despite assuring the American people that the war with China (and all associated resource loss and crimes against humanity) is strictly a defensive effort, the US government directs a sizeable force to the Chinese mainland. Military campaigns are conducted in the Gobi Desert and on the Yangtze River, but American forces are eventually bogged down in the mainland, further draining domestic resources. However, a delivery of top of the line T-51b power armor (which ) turns the tide of the offensive, giving American forces the strength to advance through China and conquer Nanjing and Shanghai.

Meanwhile, all Chinese-Americans living in the United States are shipped to a concentration camp known as Little Yangtze in the Southwest commonwealth, previously southern California and Nevada. Few records from the period survive, but those that do detail horrific military experiments.

The Enclave shadow government orders defense contractor West Tek to fashion a biological agent to immunize American soldiers against any possible contagion, in an effort to safeguard the troops and cure the New Plague (though really more the former than the latter). Early tests of the Pan-Immunity Virion Project result in animal specimens with drastically increased muscle mass and brain activity; the aim of the project immediately shifts to the creation of super soldiers and is moved to a secret military installation in Mariposa, California.

The resulting virus is renamed the Forced Evolution Virus (or F.E.V.), and regular testing begins on military personnel. However, when the project's directive is leaked to soldiers guarding the base, the garrison mutinies, executes the researchers, and declares that Mariposa has seceded from the union. This further destabilizes the already crumbling U.S. military, stretched thin by a two-front war and unable to quell riots and demonstrations amongst the civilian population.

Though it is uncertain where the war's first shot originated (though there are strong guesses to be made), the presence of an unmarked nuclear warhead, en route to an undisclosed target leads to full-scale military strikes by the United States, China, and the USSR, all launching their nuclear payload simultaneously. The two-hour volley is so energy-intense that it reshapes the Earth's geography, altering the movement of its tectonic plates, evaporating or poisoning water sources, and drastically altering the planet's climate by launching debris into the atmosphere.

Humanity is virtually annihilated in what is later described as a "nuclear firestorm". In America, many civilians believe the air raid warnings to be signalling another drill and don't relocate in time. The Vaults close with few of their selected candidates inside, and those left outside perish in the resulting chaos or are horrifically mutated by radiation. Ill-equipped to handle the reality of a nuclear apocalypse, most Vaults collapse in the ensuing decades. Human civilization disappears from existence.

In 2161, the Vault Dweller (whose travels are documented in their well-loved biography, Fallout) leaves Vault 13 to find a replacement for its broken water chip. On their journey, they discover a hellish version of human society that still exists in the wreckage of its former glory. Their child would later beget the Chosen One (of Fallout 2 fame), who in 2241 travels the wasteland in search of a Garden of Eden Creation Kit, and gives the remaining members of the Enclave their just reward.

In 2277, the Lone Wanderer (from Fallout 3) escapes Vault 101 in search of their father and gives humanity the one thing it needs most to rebuild. And possibly that same year, the Sole Survivor emerges from Vault 111 and takes on the task of restoring what was once Boston, Massachusetts. Two hundred years after it was nearly obliterated, against all logic and expectations, humanity stubbornly continues to live.

The old stock's a little flat these days, though. And irradiated.