r/falloutlore • u/StrainNo1438 • 4d ago
Raiders are just buds Fallout 4
This is kind of silly and I’m just wondering what other people think. I remember growing up seeing groups of dudes usually, but women too. They have like 4 friends that are like super close with them that they end up being friends with their whole life. It got me thinking are raiders just groups of friends that just team up and often influence each other to do dumb shit together? I feel like it would explain the vast numbers of them. It’s just the way people pare up and go figure most of them do dumb toxic shit like partying every night and raiding people for resources.
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u/chasewayfilms 4d ago
Raider gangs probably start out as just a group of friends. Then it gets bigger, becomes an organized crew. That doesn’t mean you aren’t all pals but it does mean the groupthink and herd mindset is strong. Making said crew an ample target for a charismatic or strong leader. They take power somehow, in the process setting precedent.
Then that process continues for hundreds of years, amplifying itself, until what was once perhaps simple drug-fueled armed robbery is now a list of unspeakable acts of cruelty.
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u/SignedName 4d ago
The Khans are a great example of this, starting off as a group of Vault Dwellers from Vault 15 and then becoming a street gang before eventually evolving into their own tribe, one could even say nation depending on which ending you get in New Vegas.
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u/PreviousAccWasBanned 3d ago
You mean people don't wipe out the raiders with a name group every time?
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u/RelChan2_0 4d ago
The Raiders in F076 were kinda like that, majority got trapped in a ski resort when the bombs dropped and started forming factions but they kinda started some love triangle and things kinda got crazy then went their own ways.
If I remember correctly, those who got stuck in the ski resort were also rich and powerful.
One faction also resorted to cannibalism, and despite their rules, one of them broke the rules and became a wendigo (still disturbed by that to be honest).
Heck, even those at Crater, their main base in 76, they still have people betraying each other.
If they were friends, they're the kind of friends who would get you in trouble constantly.
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u/ubermechspaceman 3d ago
The leader of the Raiders at the 'Top of the world' were lead by the CEO of a Pharma COmpany, who applied his asshole corporate techniques of leading pre-war to becoming the raider leader post-war
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u/RelChan2_0 3d ago
I hated that quest so much but I think it definitely makes sense that they would resort to their asshole ways in an apocalypse.
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u/ihopethisworksfornow 3d ago
People hate on the quest because of how long it is but it’s honestly a ton of dope backstory and lore
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u/millenniumsystem94 3d ago
A lot of people say that but I always get the feeling the people who do say that are also the same people who actually simp for the Ms Handy lol.
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u/millenniumsystem94 2d ago
If I actually do the quest, can I kill the Ms. Handy?
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u/RelChan2_0 2d ago
No
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u/millenniumsystem94 2d ago
No 🥲
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u/RelChan2_0 2d ago
You'll have to listen to Rose every time you login until you finish the quest, sorry
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u/safetospeak 3d ago
Well you've made my decision for 76. I'll kill all the raiders. Not found of the rich and powerful. Rather support the settlers then. Unless they're rich and powerful too....
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u/RelChan2_0 3d ago
Spoiler alert: most of the ski resort Raiders are dead by the time you start the game but they have a new leader in Crater but she's not well-liked. A Russian Raider wants to take over but sadly you can kill him in a quest, so they're your typical Raiders to be honest.
Don't think the Settlers are rich and powerful, most of them are handymen and just normal folks, at least from what I'm learning at the moment.
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u/kyle0305 3d ago
In Fo76 the Raiders were the rich and powerful. It’s stated that the rich got trapped at the ski resorts and instead of contributing they did what the rich do best, demand from others. Hence they became raiders
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u/Laser_3 3d ago edited 3d ago
In all fairness, they were trapped in an area with almost no resources and the Responders didn’t have enough supplies to help them. They didn’t have much of a choice but to start raiding if they didn’t want to starve, especially with their lack of any practical skills.
Edit: To be more clear, I mean that with the people they were (the rich and powerful who didn’t care much for others), it makes quite a bit of sense they’d become raiders. Other options existed, sure - but not ones the former rich and powerful would take.
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u/ihopethisworksfornow 3d ago
That’s pretty explicitly not true for like every raider tribe except the one where the leader killed herself.
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u/Laser_3 3d ago
They developed those skills as the years went on. Right when the bombs dropped, they had nothing. They were the rich and powerful, survival skills weren’t something they had until they developed those skills.
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u/ihopethisworksfornow 3d ago
Dude the quests very explicitly lay out how each raider tribe formed and died off, and the idea that they didn’t have a choice between survival or raiding is just flat out stated to not be true.
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u/Laser_3 3d ago edited 3d ago
And as I said, at the very beginning, they did not have the skills they were forced to develop.
Supplies began to run out within the first week, and they started sending out groups to take what they needed immediately, fearing others would be doing the same thing. They weren’t going to be able to farm, and at first, they were holding out hope that the military was going to be restoring order and could potentially help them.
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Geraldine_Fitzsimmon%27s_holotape
By the end of the nuclear winter, the raiders barely hung on due to a terrible winter (and the Responders couldn’t reach them until it was over). While the timeline isn’t extremely clear, from here it seems like Thorpe took charge and lead them to be raiders since what they were doing wasn’t working.
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Charleston_Capitol_Building_terminal_entries#It_was_a_massacre
They didn’t know how to survive in this situation at all. At that point, becoming desperate and stealing from others to survive was their only real option. That doesn’t make it the correct choice, but there wasn’t another option they could take without attempting to make a trek elsewhere as a large group, which likely would’ve killed a good chunk of them anyway and would’ve removed the hope of military rescue they were banking on (or I guess the bartering option one wrote about, but who would’ve came by and be willing to trade jewelry for supplies?). After Thorpe took over, that sealed their fate, with the kind of person he was and how these were the rich and powerful used to doing that sort of thing.
If these were people with some actual survival skills and not the rich and powerful, maybe they wouldn’t have become raiders. But they weren’t, and Thorpe made an army.
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u/kyle0305 3d ago
Nah raiding is never justified. They could’ve just offered their help to the Responders and would’ve received help in return. Also should’ve taught themselves skill and learn from others. But they didn’t. Like the rich irl they believe they were entitled to what others had worked for and so they just took it while doing nothing to contribute themselves
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u/Laser_3 3d ago
You can’t just teach yourself survival skills out of the blue. Most people will die on being stranded in the wilderness with little to no supplies, and that’s exactly what happened in 2078’s winter to a good chunk of the raiders. Thorpe did take advantage of the chaos to make them worse.
My point is that if they weren’t going to leave (and perhaps might not have been able to; again, these people had no survival skills and might not have been able to make the trek to civilization), and how they kept not knowing what to do (one person suggested about pawning off some valuables instead of locking them up; that could’ve worked, but they chose not to, not that I have any idea who’d have traded for them in the middle of nowhere), I hold that them becoming raiders was almost unavoidable. That’s not saying it was justified, but they weren’t going to be farming and they weren’t going to survive any other way unless they could leave the resort (and they couldn’t).
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u/kyle0305 3d ago
It was definitely not inevitable. It’s explicitly stated several times that they resorted to raiding because they were greedy, and they were evil people at heart
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u/Laser_3 3d ago edited 3d ago
That’s why they ultimately went with Thorpe’s plan when he took charge, but he couldn’t have done that without the nuclear winter killing them in droves first due to their poor survival skills.
And remember, the loading screens (which is what you’re citing here) are generalizations that cover the entire history of the raiders. By the end, of course they were even worse than they were pre-war. But initially, all they did was make some bad choices, suffer horribly during the nuclear winter and then Thorpe took charge and had them do what was the only viable option they had with their lack of skill: raid. They were other paths they could’ve potentially taken, but there’s no world in which they could’ve became a proper settlement. They would’ve either needed to leave the area for somewhere safer (which they weren’t doing since they thought the military would rescue them) or, somehow, trade valuables away (which was something they voted against, and frankly, I have no idea who they would’ve traded with during this time frame since almost no one was traveling). Their pasts made them more than willing to consider raiding, but circumstance was the real reason they were pushed that far.
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u/Laser_3 3d ago
Unfortunately, you need the crater raiders (the only group of the original raiders that’s still alive) to remain alive in 76 due to needing to vaccine everyone you can from the scorched plague. Crater is the second major town in the region and the only one catering to raiders, so they’re essential for ensuring vaccination rates stay high.
That said, they aren’t rich anymore considering the end of the world and the deaths of most of the original members of the gang. Most are post-war recruits from across America. You’ll have the chance to make them somewhat rich, however (though you could betray them for foundation at the last minute to have crippled their forces, secured their leader’s hold on the faction and prevent them from being as influential as foundation if you set everything up properly).
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u/Bigfoot4cool 4d ago
Just some buds, hanging out, chillin, decorating the camp with the bodies of travelers who wandered through your territory, sharing some snack cakes
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u/Stupid_Jackal 4d ago
Some groups undoubtedly fit that archetype closer then others like the Great Khans who see each other as extended family. But for the most part? No. Your typical Raider gang is almost always made up of dregs from other groups who banded together largely only because they understand that there is strength in numbers and utility in having someone else for your targets to shoot at. With most of their roster of members constantly growing and shrinking as members get killed in raids, break off to form their own crews, or kill each other for any variety of petty reasons.
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u/Carne_Guisada_Breath 3d ago
The raiders are great story tellers. I always let the Back Street Apparel lady finish her story about pranking and killing the young raider that was afraid of fire. I then shoot her in the back of the head. The two stories about the insane motorcycle rider are epic.
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u/Chai_latte_slut 4d ago
You might find this amusing, you might not. But when I was a little shithead teenager, me and all my other shit heads friends would roam around our town skating and getting up to shenanigans. We would break into abandoned places, do drugs, steal shit, and just be menaces to society. We used to have this thing we called "rape & pillage." We wouldn't actually "rape" that was too far for us (looking back, I'm not even sure why we called it that.) anyways, if we ever got bored of doing drugs some nights, we would ask the others, "want to go rape and pillage?" And then we would all load up into a friend's car and drive around and cause mayhem. We would steal stuff from peoples lawns, drive through people's yards, throw fire works at peoples houses. A few of my friends did actually take it to her and broke into someone's house once, I thought that was a little too much. Over time though. Our rooms were decorated with random loot we stole: road signs, random yard shit, we stole a fire hydrant once lol. Believe it or not, we actually managed to loot two fire hydrants lol. We stole a bench seat from an auto body shop once two. I have many other wild stories from my teenage years lol feel free to inquire if you're interested in hearing them. Anyways, your post made me think about my past, and made me realize that ya, we basically were kind of like raiders lol so to summarize, I don't think your theory is too far off
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u/MartyDonovan 3d ago
You sound like the droogs from A Clockwork Orange engaging in a bit of the old ultraviolence, real horrorshow like
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u/Cassy_4320 4d ago
And your parents were o.k. with that?
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u/BILADOMOM 4d ago
His parents probably didn't even know lol kids don't share everything with the grown ups, pal
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u/BUSY_EATING_ASS 4d ago
Probably not, but teens can get away with a lot unless they're completely unsubtle and stupid.
Same with Raiders.
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u/sejgalloway 3d ago
In my head, it's the exploitation of others (whether that be theft, SA, murder, or enslavement) that makes them raiders.
If they're just buddies then they should start a settlement and join the Minutemen like all good citizens of the Commonwealth.
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u/StrainNo1438 2d ago
True that. I see a lot of bros out there now though that I wonder about in an apocalypse scenario. How quickly would they resort to horrible stuff like raiders? Toxic friend groups.
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u/International_Bend68 3d ago
I’m still bothered by a video I saw a couple of years ago. A male raider was digging a grave for his girlfriend/wife. Made it not so easy for me to 100% outright revile every single one of them like I want/wanted to.
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u/hindsighthaiku 2d ago
I like the libertalia computer from fo4. some of those raiders started as minute men who fled the castle after it's fall, did their best to survive, and eventually resorted to killing and stealing to survive. they knew what happened and weren't stoked about it.
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u/Snoo_72851 2d ago
One of my many on-and-off plot bunnies is a fic about a small gang of raiders living in Boston reacting to the fucked up bullshit that happens in 4. Imagine you have been raised in a society where all old technology may as well be faerie magic, where there's rumors that the ocean is infested with kaiju (and if you look out into the bay you do see an actual kaiju peering back at you); you're not entirely sure how or why guns work, there's some buildings where strange machines kill you just kinda because, you're not quite sure why the pre-war people wanted buildings that shot them.
And then one day you're out and about, high out of your fucking mind, looking around a nearby store where your pal Jemfery swears he heard a noise and you think he's just freaking from bad Jet but you gotta check for shamblers regardless, you look up and you see a skyscraper fly over the city, surrounded by giant metal birds, screaming about the Brotherhood of Steel, which as far as you've heard are some big time raider gang from somewhere up the coast.
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u/BloodforKhorne 16h ago
It's the guys who rob a liquor store instead of getting a second job. They have to have that decision making to be a raider. Recently in 76, they tried to make a "moral" raider faction, but it's still the same depravity.
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u/Icy1551 4h ago
It depends on the location and time period. For instance, the Khan's are raiders but also a culture and a people. Violent drug runners, but with a sort of society and structure. Vipers pre-New Vegas were kind of a weird serpent cult group of raiders. Older raider groups seemingly came from larger populations like a vault or established city or something so probably just aren't a group of buddies that got carried away.
Fallout 3 & 4 raiders (Nuka World raiders are a different story) are kind of generic and in smaller groups. A few are part of larger but unseen gang but nothing like the raider city-states of 1 & 2.
So yeah, those five dudes you absolutely obliterated in Fallout 4 were probably childhood best friends trying to survive, who might have also turned to chems to cope with their new life of violence and theft.
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u/kyle0305 3d ago
No. Raiders are scum. They aren’t even friends and constantly back stab each other (sometimes literally). Raiders really shouldn’t be getting justified. They are scum who should either leave their raider days behind and integrate into communities, or be killed/imprisoned
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u/zeprfrew 4d ago
Imagine growing up with Cook-Cook as a friend.