Fallout has been around for a while now. Despite the series being over 26 years old, with half a dozen mainline titles and even more spinoffs and expansions, one big mystery has remained contested between fans since the first game's launch. Who dropped the first nuke?
A nuclear bomb isn't something that just gets dropped on a whim, seeing as it led to the complete destruction of the Earth in the Fallout series, but fans have never been completely certain as to who dropped the first nuke and why. Some feel that it was purposefully left ambiguous because the end result was the same no matter who did it, but Fallout creator Tim Cain finally shed some light on the mystery earlier this week (thanks ).
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Speaking with YouTuber and Fallout mega-fan TKs Mantis , Cain drops the bombshell that it was actually China that launched the first nuke in response to the United States continuously experimenting with a bio-weapon called FEV, despite it being illegal. If that bio-weapon sounds familiar, it's full name is the Forced Evolutionary Virus and is the same one that caused the creation of horrid creatures such as the Radscorpion and Deathclaw.
The reason we got nuked is because bio-weapons were illegal and China found out we were doing FEV. They were like 'you have to stop it' and we went 'okay' and all we did is move it.
After discovering that this was not common knowledge in the Fallout community and that his unintended lore drop was "earth-shattering" for some fans, Cain immediately clams up and backtracks, jokingly explaining that he doesn't actually know and that it was probably the work of a rogue nation. Nice try Cain, but we see through your ruse.
Obviously, it wasn't just the existence of FEV that forced China to push the big red button. If you're up to date on your Fallout lore, you'll know that the two countries were at each other's throats well before the bombs dropped, and that the United States was conducting human experimentation with FEV to create super soldiers.
It was widely argued that this was the reason behind the United Stated getting nuked, but fans of the theory have never been able to completely prove it until now. Cain may not have much to do with the Fallout series these days, but he is one of the minds behind all the lore that Bethesda has been working with since it acquired the Fallout rights, and should probably be taken as fact given he's the source of Fallout itself.