r/falloutlore • u/BooneLoverFNV • 7d ago
How good was Nate living based off what we know on the Pre-War era?
It seems like he has a large sized house without any visible problems, compared to what we know about the late Pre-War era, he must have been living pretty good
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u/T_S_Anders 7d ago edited 7d ago
IIRC, the actual style of home they have, was an all steel prefab designed to be churned out quickly and leverage economies of scale. They'd be sold to the government ad a way to cheaply house tons of soldiers and their families. It offered all the decor style of the time too so very much similar to what you see in Fo4. I'll see if I can dig up the name of the building type though; it's really quite interesting.
I think they were more like upper middle class. They do live in a fairly secluded neighbourhood and can afford something like a Mister Handy. Everything else felt modest, considering the upheaval at the time.
Edit: Lustron Houses. Enemaled Steel Houses for GIs returning from the war.
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u/Ordos_Agent 7d ago
Not sure I'd call his house huge. Two beds, bath, and a combined living room kitchen dining room. That's a "starter home." Which makes sense. He just got out of the army and has a newborn.
That said it's also a video game so some allowances for scale are to be made. The freestanding houses we find in Concord don't even have bathrooms for example and are basically a kitchen with a single bedroom on top.
So Nate and Nora seem to be living about as well as everyone else around them. So middle class? Nora has a law degree so they potentially could have a much higher income if the bombs hadn't dropped and she was working.
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u/DankDaze96 7d ago
And it's a bungalow because it doesn't have an upstairs
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u/Lumpy_Eye_9015 6d ago
Also it was massed produced along with several identical houses, presumably using old tin cans and burnt library books and whatnot
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u/EzEuroMagic 6d ago
17 WHOLE pencils went into the framework for this bad boy, slaps the house nervously
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u/BoiFrosty 6d ago
It's like a lot of cookie cutter houses for vets in the 50s. Driveway, back yard, lounge, and a couple bedrooms.
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u/HelloOrg 6d ago
In the world of that era, with mass poverty and inflation, they were probably in the 1% in terms of quality of life and access to amenities.
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u/NimrodTzarking 6d ago
The satire is kind of collapsing in on itself because I hear this description of a "starter home" and I'm like "yeah, that unobtainable dream of a bygone era."
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u/longjohnson6 7d ago
V.A check plus his wife being a lawyer i'd put their income the fallout equivalent of around 150k a year today,
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u/dlamsanson 6d ago
What's their investment portfolio looking like is what I wanna know
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u/longjohnson6 6d ago
With noras proximity to Boston I wouldn't doubt if some large companies like hollucigen or chryslus had her firm on retainer.
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u/Vodskey 6d ago
Does anyone know if it is ever stated or implied that Vault-Tec may have specifically built and filled Sanctuary themselves in order to house optimal test subjects? Nate and Nora would be good genetic candidates in the eyes of Vault-Tec, a decorated war hero and a successful lawyer with a newborn. That's some juicy data right there. How does the cryo affect reflexes? Intellect? Infant development? Lots to learn there just from one family, all in the name of science. I always wondered if it was possible that Vault-Tec helped get them the house under the guise of it being some sort of reward for their patriotism or whatever. Not that they couldn't possibly afford it themselves, I'm sure Nora brought in good money with her career, but I'm just curious. The vault is so close to Sanctuary, and the neighborhood just feels like such a perfect way to store your test subjects until the time comes to pop them in the freezer. I'd love to know if this is ever addressed anywhere in a terminal or something that I may have missed if anyone happens to know!
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u/eggs-benedryl 6d ago
I had totally forgotten, you're just given a space in the vault. Which is totally wild...
It wouldn't be impossible for VT to buy a subdivision nearby, deny applications for anyone they didn't want in the vault, then give them a discount on the house to get them near the vault.
Vault 111 is like.... 100 yards from their home ha
You greatly reduce the chance your dwellers aren't near their vault when the bombs drop
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u/Vodskey 6d ago
First of all, I adore your username! Sounds so sleepy and delicious haha
Yeah though I'm glad you think the theory has some merit, it seems like it would make perfect sense from the perspective of a mad scientist! I'd definitely want my test subjects as close and accessible as possible leading up to the big day, and a small Tranquility Lane-like neighborhood that's kind of tucked away from everything would be a great way to do that. Lure those subjects in with a false sense of security and then isolate them; that's Vault-Tec's bread and butter right there.
I guess you could refute this though by pointing out that there are a lot of people who were denied access to the vault because they weren't "on the list." Backup subjects, maybe? We know that obviously not all the neighbors in Sanctuary make it into the vault, especially with that random encounter that's all the ghoulified neighbors from Sanctuary who have gone feral, so apparently they did pick and choose the most desirable subjects in the neighborhood. Who knows. Fun to think about, though!
Concord is nearby, and Lexington I guess, but it would still be hard to get from there to the vault all the way up in the ass end of Sanctuary on short notice before the bombs fall. Granted it might just be a gameplay mechanic that makes it seem like you only have a minute or two to get to safety before the bombs fall, but who knows. By the time we get the alert in-game, New York and Pennsylvania have already been hit right? It's almost a miracle that Boston got any warning at all being so coastal and populated. It just makes sense to have all your subjects living right next to the vault, giving them the highest chance of being within walking distance when the bombs actually fall.
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u/eggs-benedryl 6d ago
Yea it is possible maybe that the people begging to be let in 111, had previously denied the spot VT tried to give them for whatever reason.
That being said Vt could probably advertised that buying a house in the neighborhood got you a spot automatically. Which they could use to sell them at a premium, control who lives there/in the vault etc.
Thinkin like a vault tec rep lol
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u/Parson_Project 6d ago
The Vault was probably built first with the neighborhood built after, so it's very probable.
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u/piskie_wendigo 4d ago
Yeah, vault tec was pretty deliberate about that sort of thing. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the sole survivor and everyone in that neighborhood were made generous offers by their employers or superiors to move to that neighbor after it was completed, solely on the basis of Vault-Tec trying to have a full selection of the people it wanted to test the cryo freeze on.
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u/Saramello 6d ago
Definitely well off. He's a bit like Cooper Howard ,the rare returning Veteran that's used as a poster child for the war. His wife's a lawyer, and god knows lawsuits would be rampant near the closing of the war. Middle/upper-middle class. It's telling though that Sanctuary is rather small meanwhile there's plenty of stories of poverty and suffering in many other larger areas of the map. Even some residents of Sanctuary have records of having issues paying for cars etc.
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u/Tishers 6d ago
You can also do some evaluation by reading some of the clues from their neighbors;
One appeared to be a psychiatrist (the house with the working terminal and the safe in the front bedroom) who does a side business of heavily medicating his patients with questionable drugs. So that puts that neighbor in an upper-middle class. As has been said; Nora is a lawyer and that too is upper-middle class, even for a corporate lawyer. Nate was probably an officer and might even be working for one of the research/development companies in the area.
The attack time is unclear; For Nate and Nora it seemed like a weekend since they were at home. Other places with administrative staff had people in the offices during the attack. There were quite a few couples who made it in to vault 111 and in the chaos at the gate it did not seem disproportionately one gender (that might be the case if it happened during a workday).
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u/ClassicGuy2010 6d ago
Wait the drug dealer neighbor was a psychiatrist? Always thought he was military too
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u/hotsizzler 6d ago
I think they wjere for sure struggling. One halotype Nora says that as much and this if worse comes to worse tgey can dust off her law degree.
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u/WizardlyPandabear 6d ago
The house is pretty small by real world standards, but large and nice by Fallout ones.
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u/BuffaloRedshark 6d ago
I don't know, a 2 bedroom 1 bath isn't a horrible starter home for returning veterans. Whole bunch of neighborhoods built in the 40s where I live that are 2 or 3 bed 1 bath with near identical floor plans
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u/Unicoronary 5d ago
About like you’d imagine given their backstories - a decorated military vet and a Boston lawyer.
Upper middle class in the suburbs. Pretty much what it looks like.
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u/FinalIconicProdigy 7d ago
He was a former soldier presumably with a pension? (Idk how that works really) and Nora is a lawyer in the Boston area. So they definitely made some decent money. Sanctuary is a relatively new community so the house must have been expensive.