Multi-generational starship

Part of a series on
Vault-Tec Corporation
Subsidiaries
Future-Tec · Hawthorne Medical Laboratories · Vault-Tec Game Studios
Notable facilities
Vaults (List of known Vaults) · Vault-Tec headquarters · Vault-Tec Regional HQ · Vault-Tec University · Vault-Tec: Among the Stars
Notable technologies
Vaults · CAMP · Food paste · G.E.C.K. · Series 1000 shelter · TOMIS · VATS · Vault Star super-reactor · ZAX
Miscellaneous
Multi-generational starship · Project Safehouse · Vault Dweller's Survival Guide · Vault-Tec bobblehead
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The multi-generational starship was a long-term plan by the Enclave to address the problem of Earth's destruction in the wake of a global thermonuclear war. Fearing that the war would render the surface of the world uninhabitable, the Enclave elected to create an interstellar vessel to take the "best and brightest" off world to a new planet that could be colonized and human civilization started anew.^{[Non-game 1]}

Lacking the know-how on how to build this vessel, beyond using nuclear engines to power it for centuries, Vault-Tec worked with the Enclave to turn Project Safehouse from a limited preservation program into a vast social experiment to provide the necessary data to build the starship: How to store most of the colonists in cryonic suspension without damage, how to organize the crew maintaining the ship over multiple generations, how to grow food and recycle water and air in a closed environment, and test the practical limits of the weapons. Control Vaults like Vault 8 were set up to study human behavior when recolonizing the surface.^{[Non-game 1]}

Ultimately, while the Vault experiments were implemented by Vault-Tec and fed data to the Enclave Vault-Research Control on the oil rig, the starship never materialized. Whether it was a lack of time to implement it, or sabotage of Enclave facilities meant to link Enclave hubs together^[1] - especially the beating heart of their master plan^[2] - the Enclave has not pursued offworld colonization, instead focusing first on continuing the war against China, then, in a marked radicalization, trying to commit genocide on humanity and wipe it out to resettle the habitable surface.^[3]

Behind the scenes[]

• The specific idea of the starship was vaguely hinted at in non-game materials and interactions by Tim Cain, but the details were not available until 2023, when he released The True Purpose of Vaults in Fallout video blog that put all the experiments in context. Originally speculated by Chris Avellone to be the result of too much X-Files, it was actually an idea Cain created when Chris Taylor remarked on the limited number of Vaults and how they could not save humanity. Cain retroactively wrote the experiments into the continuity, turning them into a vast data gathering exercise and seeing every Vault since as contributing in some form to the creation of a starship. The list of experiments released in the Fallout Bible did not mention the spaceship specifically, but easily shows how the experiments would study issues essential for preparing for a multi-generational, interstellar voyage: Irradiation, isolation, equipment breakdowns, colonist makeup (including ideologies, ethnicities, gender and age), and other social and environmental pressures.
• The post-apocalyptic book A Canticle for Leibowitz has been cited by Tim Cain and Fred Zeleny as an inspiration for various elements of the Fallout series.^{[Non-game 2][Non-game 3][Non-game 4]} It also inspired elements of the Wasteland series, a major creative influence on Fallout. The book concludes with a faction of Catholics leaving Earth in a multi-generational starship to escape a second nuclear war.

References[]

Non-game