also father said in dialog he remotely connected to the vault computer to free you, so this implies they still have a connection (and shows poseidonet is connected to the vaults)
@@KuroToaster2199 if you can find a x86 cpu that can be put in a toaster wait... i remember a toaster case if you buy it i can in fact put it in a toaster
One thing that isn’t mentioned is the Boston Public Library in Fallout 4, which has a terminal that's connected to similar terminals in every other library in the "Union of Public Libraries", which allowed for the transmission and receiving of information, mainly reading material found in each respective library's archives. However, a unique aspect of it was its ability to send and receive images, since some youths got in trouble for viewing the covers of some specific material.
In fallout 3 there is a couple cases of digitized pictures taken from a camera being shown on a terminal, vault 101 on their survey team where they took pictures of megaton and giant ants. This shows, at least from bethesda's perspective, that they are capable of displaying images. Fallout 4 and 76 makes this unrealistic with their pipboy games though.
As a fellow A+ certified person, he explained this very well also. I feel like there's definitely signs of local area networks and wide area networks, and I'm assuming there has to be some sort of server to host all of this information
@@TheItalianGentleman2394Secret underground servers, and i bet they’re all connected to every vault that was built, otherwise how did they send the go codes to open the vaults when the nukes flew in 2077? They probably had it all segmented out using tunneling on unicast but i think that’d be wayyyy to advanced for the programmers at that time, so what language of code did they use then, and how is that many computers attempt to connect but cannot when the institute and steel should have made it priority one to bring up the internet as a strategic advantage?
also, a thing to note: the fact we call them all terminals, means they almost _certainly_ didn't have a local operating system, and instead were connected to a server of some kind. Because a terminal is, for most purposes, just a glass display with a keyboard, that replaced using a teletype with paper and a fancy typewriter, at least in real world tech. And considering some of the cobbled together terminals from Fallout 4's setllement building mode... I think we can conclude that isn't far off base!
But this isn't true, because plenty of terminals are solo isolated pieces, and they can be used without a server. Terminal is just a word that was picked to differentiate between our modern computers and these atomicpunk computers.
@@Xahnel No. They are called terminals because they are the end points of a system. In the mid 70s no work was done on the terminal itself. It was just the input/output for the computer in a clean room in the basement. For a mid-size company in the late 70's early 80s the top of the line business computer was a DEC 10 or PDP 10/11. The modern computer has a server (of sorts) built into it and the Internet itself is just a very large distributed system.
You are talking about dumb terminals which were like you explained just a teletype with CRT instead of typewriter. However by late 70s there was other kind of terminals, one that was supposed to be used with server but still had some other basic functionality like basic text editing, basic calculations, disk drives support etc. Many of terminals by then had some kind of CPU, small amount of RAM in it for some more advanced logic like escape codes thus it wasn't hard. Irl thin clients (basically more modern and fancy word for terminal devices) died out because casual computing became very cheap, in Fallout it did not.
@@pavuk357 Yep. I'm thinking whatever functionality those "smart" terminals had were sufficient for small scale networks like shops, hotels etc. for local email and saving data to holotapes. "Terminal" probably stuck around as a name for those simple computers while "computer" referred to non-user-facing machines like in 70s before the home computer boom.
@@pavuk357If it's a machine with its own (limited) computing capabilities, it's a computer, not a terminal. "Smart" terminals and word processing units were mostly smaller minicomputers and early microcomputers. If it was a completely self-contained system with its own storage and suite of programs, it was a personal computer connected to a network, not a terminal.
I think your estimation of the relative "age" of the Fallout internet is spot on. I'm btw old enough to have been trained in how to access the DIALOG system, basically a database of research databases, via Telnet. This was in the later half of the 90s, and the technology was already obsolescent, so I've never actually had to use that training at any point in my carreer, but still.
Are LAN-parties still a thing? Playing to early morning with the power of caffeine, then sleeping under the desk. Yesterdays roomtemp pizza as late breakfast. Those fun times.
The "Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends" quote in the emoticon section got a laugh out of me!
I remember using Telnet to get onto BBS's in the early 90's. Good times, they were the only place I could talk about things like RPGs and not get beaten up! Heh. :)
This video is a life saver! I've been planning a campaign for my friends to play in the fallout ttrpg game, and the way it starts is a scientist in the party's home vault somehow getting the attention of a local branch of the Enclave. I had no idea how to do that until the mention of the Enclave-Vault Research Control that could be accessed through Posiedonet! Now I've got a lore friendly and logical way for that to work!
I'm in the planning stages of a multi-cross dimension jumper fanfic, that goes from a party of shmucks, to rulers of a civilization based in a vast nomadic space fleet. One of the universes they'll be visiting is FALLOUT, pre-war. Their hope? Prevent the Great War, put an end to the shortages and poverty of the Resource Wars. Nick some tech. I'm going to do everything possible to create a fic that still embraces the FALLOUT style, Cold War paranoia, retro-futuristic Super Science, but is set entirely in the pre-war world.
If I remember correctly there are a few terminals in old world blues that state big mountain was in communication with the Sierra Madre so perhaps Elijah originally accessed the network there
in the cold war times, there was a "Intranet", basically the internet but reserved to militally and scientists, so ( since fallout is heavilly based on that ) is techinally yes and in pratice no.
I believe it was a little further along but not by too much. I believe it had a public release and we can see it in everyday homes but it’s definitely rare and more for a professional work use something similar to 1989. Definitely don’t think it was military only use due to companies having mainframes. Which means it was in commercial use.
I remember in college I had to do a presentation on an important historical event, you could pick your own topic. For me it was the creation of the internet. I geeked out over this video multiple times, I remember everything I learned. However another question I have for the lore of fallout is what caused the Internets invention. If you don’t know in our world the Cuba Crisis caused fear of an attack on radio systems, communication and was incredibly important and we only had Radio. So as a back up we started creating the internet through Lan. So did the timeline in Fallout have the Cuba crisis or is it a much newer invention created to combat the Chinese. Thus it’s very much in it’s infancy.
So funny that you should release this video when you did. I am playing in a ttrpg of Fallout through the Exodus system. I am running a technician type character and I took the field scientist class as an advance class. In the progression of the class they eventually get a minor and major breakthrough to some sort of "discovery" I have talked with my Vault master about my discovery being able to access posiedon networks to disable security and other network access options with a pip boy. I shall definitely have to send this along to him.
Thank you for covering this, this is something I wondered whenever I visited the vault 21 LAN terminals or hearing the Commonwealth brotherhood revive wireless reports from the prydwen and such.
The amount of research this probably took, honestly it’s impressive man. You’re truly one of the best. Doing some of the best deep dives on things I never knew I wanted to know
Mr. House probably had some mind of network or internet to be able to link himself to the forts bunker and upgrade his securitrons to the mk 2 versions
An interesting thing is some terminals in buildings, especially ones that repeat the same contents as others. Seem to be very close to Dumb Terminals, which are more or less a direct input to a localized mainframe. This is of the days where they had room spanning computers. Interfaces were anything from literal printers that printed out displays, to full screen interfaces. Not to mention the infrastructure of the early Internet was through modems which modulated the data to be sendable over phone lines. That's why old browsers like NetZero used to have the infamous 'dial up' tone. The data was literally audible sound back then. In fact the first connection for computers was literally a device you put you corded phone on, called an 'acoustic coupler'. Your computer would literally 'talk' over the phone line, but it you answered your phone or picked it up it would kill it's very delicate connection. Early tape medium was the same way, storing data essentially as audio on tapes. (Like literally cassette tapes). There were some experiments and hobbyists who tried broadcasting data over radio, but the problem with that is you would only be able to broadcast. You wouldn't be able to request unless you called in.
Now that i payed attention to it, that note that mention BBS is from 1968, so fallout has something close to an microcomputer (because i don't imagine the guy who has an minicomputer on his office using it for anything but work) since the 1960s, tho i can be incorrect on this and he had an minicomputer at home for personal use I would love to have an video about the computers of fallout :)
You're right, the tech in the fallout universe is pretty much 1980s computer tech. the 64KB Free on the startup of the Pipboy is very similar to what the Commodore 64 had on its screen when you first turned it on. In college in the 80s, we used to log on to arpanet and had to type everything in using telnet and Unix commands. In 1993, when I was graduating from college, a college professor of mine got a Beta copy of Mosaic and let me play with it because I was running a BBS at the time. For mail and messaging I used Fidonet which packets were sent and received twice a day at 14.4kbs, so email was pretty slow in todays standards. He said this software (he didn't call it a browser) is going to change the world. The Fallout universe didn't get into 90s tech and most likely was dealing with dialup and probably some satellite GPS tech on the Pipboy for the map system. The universe definitely didn't follow Moore's law and they never went fully digital like we are today, and still on vacuum tube tech, hence why a lot of the circuitry didn't get fried after the nuclear blast.
Fallout: we have the best suits of armor able to withstand a mini nuke to the body as a direct hit. Also fallout: have this computer that looks like a box and a typewriter
Deathclaw fan fiction erotica had me cracking up a bit. Good job Rad King. This sounds like the sort of thing that belongs at the Deathclaw Sanctuary and Menagerie I built on Spectacle Island.
I have a wonder, FO referred to "Inlook" as an analogue to Outlook. Now BGS is owned by Microsoft, could we see Microsoft exist in the Fallout universe?
Two things that nerd me out when it comes to subjects fallout, and computing history. I’ve also seen some evidence of forms similar to discord or early Reddit, or anything like that where people could have recreation time such as play DND, discuss other stuff I’ve even seen references to people playing a campaign of DND or something on the terminals glory to Adam. Love your videos.
I would 100% think the internet or something very similar would exist in the Fallout universe as there are tons of prewar emails back and fourth on different terminals across each game.
I remember computers with green text. We called them Dums (dumb terminals)And those noisy AF ribbon printers that were always lurking somewhere nearby. That was back at the start of my career in military intel. Compared to what we have and use now, it’s amazing we figured anything out. And don’t start me on punch cards.
Punch Cards , Sir or Ma'am aren't you late for your bridge game in the old folks home. In all seriousness though yeah bloody small miracle we got anywhere with that as a base line.
Thats a long way of saying Pre-windows. But yeah i grew up with DOS system, even one system had a cassette player for videogames (i think a particular commodore) Anyway, i always felt fallout ingame interface delightfully nostalgic.
Commenting before watching, i imagine falloits internet was like 50s internet for us, pc's connected through cable networks rather than wireless ones, like how the internet used to be a military tool
So... network data can be transmitted by radio wave... like you said considering all the advanced tech in the many pipboys does that mean they'd technically have wifi and be able to act as a hotspot?...
I would think the internet they would have had would probably more in the era of our dial up modems and more closed off servers that were not continuously connected to the "world wide web"
I would just like to point out that it is possible that the internet was a lot more developed pre blast day. It's possible that high atmosphere explosions knocked out a large amount of the satellite grid and major stability for the actual internet that had been developed. Also the accrued radiation could have degraded the circuitry reducing it to its more DOS-like integration point. Most terminals refer to a certain degradation of files and corrupted data. Also the player characters May simply be hacking into the dose system rather than accessing the full computer system because they don't have the proper clearances... But that's a ramble off...
@@James_Randal I didn't necessarily mean better, just that it could have been slightly further along than RadKing had summarized it to be; and that I didn't hear enough accounting for the variable of entropy over the apocalyptic timeline we are looking at. However I am a half brain dead idiot savant or sumting like dat, so maybe... PENGUINS
Could be that very basic online gaming exists in fallout, we are talking rpgs that are walls of texts that could be played with someone on the same server
Fallout doesn't use ARPA net setup, it uses the older Terminal to timeshared Mainframe, the terminals had very limited compute resources and were designed to simply relay commands to the central Mainframe - that Mainframe was often interconnected with other Mainframes and so could allow interaction between terminals on the interconnected Mainframes. Fallout's terminals are like the intermediate step between terminals and mini-computers ( PCs weren't at this step.), which allowed for running programs and services locally on the mini-computer, but were constrained to the limited local resources when not connected to the time-shared Mainframe.
You mentioning Hawaii and aloha net reminds me of how cool a fallout Hawaii could potentially be please consider doing a video about that concept I think it would be really cool
The internet sort of existed in the world of Fallout, but it never evolved into what we have. HTML was never invented, nor the network protocols used for the web. It remained as a system like in the early 80s where it was a server network you had to dial into. Home computers were common, but the technology remained primitive as key inventions from our timeline never came to be in theirs. So basically, mid 80s WAN is about as far as they got in the fallout universe and it seems they progressed at slower pace than we did. As for the Brotherhood of Steel, they are *heavily* reliant on radio WAN communication. The HoI4 mod Old World Blues highlights this fact, because all of the Brotherhood Chapters completely rely on and stay in contact with each other using massive powerful radio towers; In fact it is the only major advantage they have over all the other factions in that mod and the official setting itself. Even in the official video games the brotherhood uses large radio towers situated near to or on top of their bunkers to keep in contact with each other, along with old school HAM and AM radio communication.
6:08 oh i STRONGLY disagree that ethernet has been common since the 70's, it didn't take off until the late 80's. arcnet and tolken ring from ibm were more common at first, especially in businesses and government facilities. Xerox may have developed it in the 70's, but it was kinda trapped in park labs for years, and needed A LOT of work.
First, you have to pin down what "terminals" actually are in the fallout universe. Terminals traditionally are just dumb terminals, or screens and a keyboard with enough circuitry to take input and output of serial data. That gives you the monochrome character-by-character interaction that fallout terminals show. Dumb terminals are just frontends for accessing a mainframe, either on the local or greater network. They can't store information or act like computers that we think of. The "terminals" in fallout are basically Apple 1 computers inside of cases styled to look like a combination of Commodore PET and Tandy TRS-80 Model 3/4 computers (PET has the slanted sides, the TRS-80 Model 3/4 match the rest but would need to be cut down removing the built-in floppy drives). I say Apple 1 because that computer was essentially what we see here, the main board contained a computer on one half, but the other half was actually just a circuit for a terminal on-board. It's essentially a terminal that also has local processing power, memory, and storage (via an internal cassette? Perhaps they had holotape drives internally that acted like local storage). Limitations don't matter, it's fiction, but that's the closest I can come up with that matches. By contrast, the pip boy is light years ahead as a technology, full screen rendering and bitmap graphic support all in a tiny (relatively speaking) device. We actually do interact with computers in the wasteland, just not traditional computers. The robots, that aren't robo-brains, showcase processing power of another world compared to what we're shown with the common terminals. The biggest example of this is Curie, an AI so advanced and developed that not only did it gain sentience, but it also gained the ability to understand emotions, empathy, etc. That nanny bot had to have had all of its components replaced with some space age level processing power to even give the start of that type of progress occurring. At least to me, this massive gap in levels of technological success from one area to the next, make it hard to assume any type of development in the world. Their common input systems are Apple 1's with networking, but they also have cryopods that inject the occupant's conciseness into a complete virtual world. That would like you still using a Commodore 128 or Amiga 500 in 2023 while a company uses a top of the line current system.
Before watching any of this, I don't think it actually does. Since the first game was actually kind of written in a time when the Internet was still a somewhat new thing, so it probably didn't get included into the 50s inspired world of Fallout.
There are no slurs for ghouls, genocide earns bad karma and capitalism is still praised as a decent way to run society…no, there clearly is no internet in Fallout.
The more connections a network has the more likely that at some point they will align and create a neural network and become sentient much like a human mind
I'd say they're all probably local and extended area networks. LANs, for sure. But the internet as we know it in reality, probably not. At least definitely not in 2277, because the infrastructure likely just doesn't literally exist. And even if it does, given the state of the power lines I'd wager that each locale is essentially cut off from each other anyway. I think there are more than a handful of examples of long-distance communication (from one end of the map to the other), but almost never from outside of the game's setting.
Well, now that I think about it, the CIA (or whatever equivalent) observation site beneath Slocum's Joe would probably imply an internet connection. There's no way there wouldn't be a connection back to the Pentagon, or at least the CIA home office. And I would imagine the Chinese agents would have some line of communication in their underground headquarters beyond 2-way radio. I guess, at the VERY LEAST, the internet as we know it wasn't widely available to the public.
... i actually have a old computer that could physically run robco os as like true hardware it currently doesn't have any os to begin with and so i would have to back port it from usb to floppy disk to actually install it but oh i can use it because it can support ms dos.
Well there's a lot of factories and office buildings in Fallout 3, nv, and 4 that have internal networks.. so yes. they do have a primitive deep-web so to speak
Interestingly enough, before Walt Disney died, he was working on the EPCOT project EPCOT was supposed to be a self-contained and fully functional town. Part of what he had wanted to try and do was have education done over the internet for courses in science to bring exprrts from places like NASA into the home, but the tech didn't exist in the state it needed to be for him to realize his vision. There's a vid here on UA-cam where he went over his vision himself. It was shot weeks before his death and was meant for investor eyes only, not for the general public.
This question is actually something I had been wondering about recently! I’m running a game of Fallout: The Roleplaying Game with the main villain as a sentient AI. My players recently convinced him to kill himself but I was trying to figure out if a sentient AI would be able to escape the one computer they found him on
It's actually completely canonically accurate for the AI to run away. The AI that was designed to be used to control the Neon Flats environment went a bit... Insane and escaped to the Library and part of the claim quest is to track it down and then shut down the computers in a specific order to trap it and pop it on a holotape. 😉 😁
My theory has always been that in this timeline they focused on nuclear technology so much the government didn’t bother to expand their network capabilities. However, my other theory is since in our timeline the internet was created by the government, the same as Fallout, they did develop it but kept it secret.
That’s a interesting point however I do believe it was more public. Not to the point where everyone had Internet in their homes, but to the point that it wasn’t extremely rare, my guess is it similar to what we had in 1989. Which would make the main reason for internet for professional use not worldwide connection
@@HashknightGamingWhat? Fallout is an alternative timeline. They didn't have a Cold War like us. Also they made it to 2077. They had plenty of time to work on it.
@@SirDankleberryThe "World Wide Web" as we currently know it isn't the "internet", it's just a means to publish rich text pages on an internet-connected server. And the Web only gained momentum when it could be used to deploy large-scale commercial activities, like e-commerce. The Fallout universe never got back to a state of economic prosperity, so there was no need for e-commerce to develop.
A nugget to think on, given the background of the Resource Wars, the 20th year or so when the nukes flew in 2077, having a barebones internet like that of the early 1980s could be a retrograde to keep people worldwide from finding out news in other countries similar to Orwell's 1984, the perpetual war and the armies never cross the borders to prevent 'cultural contamination'
I always imagined fallout internet like cyberpunk internet several closed off systems and net works maybe each state or common wealth having its own internet system
I mean it would make sense. Smaller systems easier to control by the government. Considering prewar America was going more and more authoritarian and propaganda slinging. It would make sense to divide and conquer systems as they were heavily monitoring for "communist" and "unAmerican" activities. Red scare mentality plus high technology.
There is references to the Vaults having an inter-vault network, the fact that VaultTec was supposedly going to monitor the progress of the experiment and the all clear signal support this. Yes the all clear signal could have been done via radio or other wireless methods, but I have yet to find a vault with wireless receivers or transmitters.
With BBS limited to phone lines, the speed was pretty slow. It would take around 1 hour to download just ONE IMAGE. The image will be sent encrypted, and then your BBS program would decrypt the downloaded image. Folks has to wait for 14.4 dial-up modems to where you could play Doom II deathmatches with someone else. Two-way voice communication was not possible when doing this. (Added) If you lost your BBS connection during an image download, you had to connect back in and then start all over for the image download.
It's crazy to think about how long it took to do things we mostly take for granted. Takes me about, .3 seconds to download and image. I'm glad to live in this Era. Can't wait for the technology to improve further over time.
@@jordonturner9559 Having personally gone from 14kbps to Gbps internet speeds in the past 30+ years, amazing how we have progressed, and how wonderful it is all today, compared to when I was a youth.
Fellow Utahn here and Zion is not the middle of nowhere! Having grown up near Springdale, I can confirm that it’s a tourist trap next to the middle of nowhere!
The Fallout series can make someone really appreciate our technology since we have existing technologies that are way better than most of Fallouts equivalent technologies except certain like robotics and energy weapons for example. We still have like 54 years till we get to 2077 so we got time to outdo them on what we currently lack in!
They also had hardlight holographic projections, brain life support tanks, matter - energy and energy - matter transmutation (GECK kits, Sierra Madre vending machines), highly miniaturized cold fusion power cells, and teleporters. We have a way to go before we beat that, but it's not impossible by any means to do in 54 years. At least some of these things will be achievable by then.
Yep. Only recently airline companies updated to more modern reservation systems (mostly Amadeus or Galileo), but Sabre, Pars and many others were really old tech. Also, in the Linux world if you want you can browse the internet via the terminal.
I wonder if an IRC or mIRC style chat system that was lost within the terminals of the prewar. Beyond this, I liked the idea. I recall that in Fallout 76, the West Coast was talking to the BoS scouts on a satellite based comm system, and it makes me wonder if the "internet" of fallout was wired for local, but satellite based for wider communication networks.
HyperText Markup Language or HTML was the base for all internet information sharing between mainframes before the use of servers and was text-based, using "ASCII", just like on the terminals in Fallout. Early graphics were text and character-based. In about 1995, Netscape, called Mosaic at the time, first integrated pictures, pics, in the GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) format with HTML. Windows made BMP pic files the most popular format to incorporate with HTML. Bit Map Images. And from there it all exploded to what we have today. I love old-school computers. I am old. LOL.
I remember making a comment on what was the "internet" like in the Fallout universe in the "WTF is with Inflation in Fallout?" video and came to a similar conclusion but based on how media is distributed and consumed in the Fallout universe. No video or audio streaming; no online gaming just local computer using holotapes or tabletop gaming; Radio, tv, newspapers and comics are alive and well. There was no disruption in those areas due to the limited computing capacity available to the public. Most of the networks available are local or private networks with limited connectivity between them. So I like the conclusion that theres no internet per se, and mostly use text interfaces and services. Good video.
Every time I hear about data being written to some physical storage medium and sent via mail, I remember a story my father likes to tell: I don't recall the exact year, but a guy he worked with would write data on architectural plans to floppy disks and mail them over to another building for use. Whenever they'd arrive, however, the data would be unusable - somehow damaged or corrupted. So he decided one day to follow one of these floppy disks along its entire trip, and found that a secretary was putting labels on them by... sticking the floppy drive in the top of a typewriter like it's a piece of paper. damaging it in the process.
This was REALLY well done and super thought-provoking! Maybe I'm just an engineering nerd, but I absolutely love your videos focusing on fallout's infrastructure
great video. for me, i'd say the internet still exists in fallout but as a static database of all information stored before the War. the only people who could make changes to it on private networks would be those with major technological capabilities, e.g. the Enclave, the Brotherhood Of Steel, and the Institute, though i could see either House in New Vegas and/or the NCR being able to do so as well.
@@HouseDagothCultist yeah I was trying to saying it's not Internet but then I was like wait local networks and shit is technically internet it's just not browsers and websites and applications. But I'd bet if the institute wasn't destroyed they could easily deploy satellites. They're making artificial humans. It's within the games realm of possiibility
Emoticons date back to at least 1881 ... The Internet, was preceded by internets , networks of networks one of which was (D)ARPANET which became the prototype and hub of a lot of them ... most of which later were all joined together to form The Internet, but a few are still separate even today .... Fallout still having a proto-Internet makes sense based on the in world history
Wouldn't MIT in fallout have more LANs and WANs in Massachusetts? Shouldn't it have a big brick of telecommunication building? Kinda like how AT&T makes there buildings to withstand a nuke?
The transistor wasn't invented in the Fallout universe untill a few years before the war, that's why computer chips and interfaces looked so outdated despite all their technology.
I'm one of the older gamers. I remember before windows was released we used to play a lot of dos games. One of my faviroutes was something called Battle Chess. The Chess pieces would turn into gollems, the knight would get on his horse and ride it. Then there was a game called Eagle Eye Detective. You had a pick between a boy or girl and solve small crimes in a small town. You had to question suspects and look for clues. So even before the internet and windows we already had some good games we could play on a simple system like dos. There no reason that the Fallout world couldn't have developed some graphics for their computer networks. With Mr House and the Securitrons facial interface there is proof of that.
fun fact: MIT was a node in arpnet, so in theory cit and in extension the institute has (or had) access to the network
Oh great tech priest please install Robco OS in me a humble toaster
Intranet (commercialized ARPAnet) and intramail are referenced regularly and a Poseidonet connection was likely hidden in there *somewhere*
also father said in dialog he remotely connected to the vault computer to free you, so this implies they still have a connection (and shows poseidonet is connected to the vaults)
@@KuroToaster2199 if you can find a x86 cpu that can be put in a toaster
wait... i remember a toaster case if you buy it i can in fact put it in a toaster
I would say most universities were hooked up.
One thing that isn’t mentioned is the Boston Public Library in Fallout 4, which has a terminal that's connected to similar terminals in every other library in the "Union of Public Libraries", which allowed for the transmission and receiving of information, mainly reading material found in each respective library's archives. However, a unique aspect of it was its ability to send and receive images, since some youths got in trouble for viewing the covers of some specific material.
The Intranet could send images... it was just slow.
I'm old enough to remember dialup. A very low quality photo could be sent then, but it may take 10 minutes to send or receive.
@@dhelix85 yep dialup when you could not call anybody when it is doing a request , i grew up with it because in remote Canada that is all we had
@@dhelix85 I remember those days. Fun days when mom picked up the phone and the connection died. Thankfully we got ISDN when it became available.
@@dhelix85it's not so much. The photo that was low quality as the whole monitor was low quality
In fallout 3 there is a couple cases of digitized pictures taken from a camera being shown on a terminal, vault 101 on their survey team where they took pictures of megaton and giant ants. This shows, at least from bethesda's perspective, that they are capable of displaying images.
Fallout 4 and 76 makes this unrealistic with their pipboy games though.
As someone who took his Comptia A+ cert test, I love that you explained networks and TCP/IP. Never thought I'd get that in a Fallout video
As a fellow A+ certified person, he explained this very well also. I feel like there's definitely signs of local area networks and wide area networks, and I'm assuming there has to be some sort of server to host all of this information
@@TheItalianGentleman2394Secret underground servers, and i bet they’re all connected to every vault that was built, otherwise how did they send the go codes to open the vaults when the nukes flew in 2077? They probably had it all segmented out using tunneling on unicast but i think that’d be wayyyy to advanced for the programmers at that time, so what language of code did they use then, and how is that many computers attempt to connect but cannot when the institute and steel should have made it priority one to bring up the internet as a strategic advantage?
I have recently started getting back into fallout. Now channels like you can help feed my addiction
also, a thing to note: the fact we call them all terminals, means they almost _certainly_ didn't have a local operating system, and instead were connected to a server of some kind. Because a terminal is, for most purposes, just a glass display with a keyboard, that replaced using a teletype with paper and a fancy typewriter, at least in real world tech. And considering some of the cobbled together terminals from Fallout 4's setllement building mode... I think we can conclude that isn't far off base!
But this isn't true, because plenty of terminals are solo isolated pieces, and they can be used without a server. Terminal is just a word that was picked to differentiate between our modern computers and these atomicpunk computers.
@@Xahnel No. They are called terminals because they are the end points of a system. In the mid 70s no work was done on the terminal itself. It was just the input/output for the computer in a clean room in the basement. For a mid-size company in the late 70's early 80s the top of the line business computer was a DEC 10 or PDP 10/11. The modern computer has a server (of sorts) built into it and the Internet itself is just a very large distributed system.
You are talking about dumb terminals which were like you explained just a teletype with CRT instead of typewriter. However by late 70s there was other kind of terminals, one that was supposed to be used with server but still had some other basic functionality like basic text editing, basic calculations, disk drives support etc. Many of terminals by then had some kind of CPU, small amount of RAM in it for some more advanced logic like escape codes thus it wasn't hard. Irl thin clients (basically more modern and fancy word for terminal devices) died out because casual computing became very cheap, in Fallout it did not.
@@pavuk357 Yep. I'm thinking whatever functionality those "smart" terminals had were sufficient for small scale networks like shops, hotels etc. for local email and saving data to holotapes. "Terminal" probably stuck around as a name for those simple computers while "computer" referred to non-user-facing machines like in 70s before the home computer boom.
@@pavuk357If it's a machine with its own (limited) computing capabilities, it's a computer, not a terminal. "Smart" terminals and word processing units were mostly smaller minicomputers and early microcomputers. If it was a completely self-contained system with its own storage and suite of programs, it was a personal computer connected to a network, not a terminal.
I think your estimation of the relative "age" of the Fallout internet is spot on. I'm btw old enough to have been trained in how to access the DIALOG system, basically a database of research databases, via Telnet.
This was in the later half of the 90s, and the technology was already obsolescent, so I've never actually had to use that training at any point in my carreer, but still.
Are LAN-parties still a thing? Playing to early morning with the power of caffeine, then sleeping under the desk. Yesterdays roomtemp pizza as late breakfast. Those fun times.
Did the last one like more than 10 years ago.
They're definitely still doable, but with Discord, not strictly necessary to meet in person.
@@mirceazaharia2094 last one for me was almost 20 years ago...
The "Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends" quote in the emoticon section got a laugh out of me!
I remember using Telnet to get onto BBS's in the early 90's. Good times, they were the only place I could talk about things like RPGs and not get beaten up! Heh. :)
This video is a life saver! I've been planning a campaign for my friends to play in the fallout ttrpg game, and the way it starts is a scientist in the party's home vault somehow getting the attention of a local branch of the Enclave. I had no idea how to do that until the mention of the Enclave-Vault Research Control that could be accessed through Posiedonet! Now I've got a lore friendly and logical way for that to work!
I'm in the planning stages of a multi-cross dimension jumper fanfic, that goes from a party of shmucks, to rulers of a civilization based in a vast nomadic space fleet.
One of the universes they'll be visiting is FALLOUT, pre-war. Their hope? Prevent the Great War, put an end to the shortages and poverty of the Resource Wars. Nick some tech.
I'm going to do everything possible to create a fic that still embraces the FALLOUT style, Cold War paranoia, retro-futuristic Super Science, but is set entirely in the pre-war world.
If I remember correctly there are a few terminals in old world blues that state big mountain was in communication with the Sierra Madre so perhaps Elijah originally accessed the network there
in the cold war times, there was a "Intranet", basically the internet but reserved to militally and scientists, so ( since fallout is heavilly based on that ) is techinally yes and in pratice no.
I believe it was a little further along but not by too much. I believe it had a public release and we can see it in everyday homes but it’s definitely rare and more for a professional work use something similar to 1989. Definitely don’t think it was military only use due to companies having mainframes. Which means it was in commercial use.
I remember in college I had to do a presentation on an important historical event, you could pick your own topic. For me it was the creation of the internet. I geeked out over this video multiple times, I remember everything I learned. However another question I have for the lore of fallout is what caused the Internets invention. If you don’t know in our world the Cuba Crisis caused fear of an attack on radio systems, communication and was incredibly important and we only had Radio. So as a back up we started creating the internet through Lan. So did the timeline in Fallout have the Cuba crisis or is it a much newer invention created to combat the Chinese. Thus it’s very much in it’s infancy.
I always love to see people talking about the Arpanet, rare is the credit to the giant who shoulders is being stand on.
Also remember that Vault tech has a network that spans all of it's stuff and maybe is connected to others.
So funny that you should release this video when you did. I am playing in a ttrpg of Fallout through the Exodus system. I am running a technician type character and I took the field scientist class as an advance class. In the progression of the class they eventually get a minor and major breakthrough to some sort of "discovery" I have talked with my Vault master about my discovery being able to access posiedon networks to disable security and other network access options with a pip boy. I shall definitely have to send this along to him.
Thank you for covering this, this is something I wondered whenever I visited the vault 21 LAN terminals or hearing the Commonwealth brotherhood revive wireless reports from the prydwen and such.
The amount of research this probably took, honestly it’s impressive man. You’re truly one of the best. Doing some of the best deep dives on things I never knew I wanted to know
Mr. House probably had some mind of network or internet to be able to link himself to the forts bunker and upgrade his securitrons to the mk 2 versions
An interesting thing is some terminals in buildings, especially ones that repeat the same contents as others. Seem to be very close to Dumb Terminals, which are more or less a direct input to a localized mainframe. This is of the days where they had room spanning computers. Interfaces were anything from literal printers that printed out displays, to full screen interfaces.
Not to mention the infrastructure of the early Internet was through modems which modulated the data to be sendable over phone lines.
That's why old browsers like NetZero used to have the infamous 'dial up' tone. The data was literally audible sound back then. In fact the first connection for computers was literally a device you put you corded phone on, called an 'acoustic coupler'. Your computer would literally 'talk' over the phone line, but it you answered your phone or picked it up it would kill it's very delicate connection. Early tape medium was the same way, storing data essentially as audio on tapes. (Like literally cassette tapes).
There were some experiments and hobbyists who tried broadcasting data over radio, but the problem with that is you would only be able to broadcast. You wouldn't be able to request unless you called in.
Now that i payed attention to it, that note that mention BBS is from 1968, so fallout has something close to an microcomputer (because i don't imagine the guy who has an minicomputer on his office using it for anything but work) since the 1960s, tho i can be incorrect on this and he had an minicomputer at home for personal use
I would love to have an video about the computers of fallout :)
You're right, the tech in the fallout universe is pretty much 1980s computer tech. the 64KB Free on the startup of the Pipboy is very similar to what the Commodore 64 had on its screen when you first turned it on. In college in the 80s, we used to log on to arpanet and had to type everything in using telnet and Unix commands. In 1993, when I was graduating from college, a college professor of mine got a Beta copy of Mosaic and let me play with it because I was running a BBS at the time. For mail and messaging I used Fidonet which packets were sent and received twice a day at 14.4kbs, so email was pretty slow in todays standards. He said this software (he didn't call it a browser) is going to change the world.
The Fallout universe didn't get into 90s tech and most likely was dealing with dialup and probably some satellite GPS tech on the Pipboy for the map system. The universe definitely didn't follow Moore's law and they never went fully digital like we are today, and still on vacuum tube tech, hence why a lot of the circuitry didn't get fried after the nuclear blast.
Fallout: we have the best suits of armor able to withstand a mini nuke to the body as a direct hit.
Also fallout: have this computer that looks like a box and a typewriter
Another 30 minute video that could've been a 2 sentence email.
Happy holidays Randking. Hope Adem smiles on you and the rest of the Radking family this holiday season.
Adem?
Deathclaw fan fiction erotica had me cracking up a bit. Good job Rad King. This sounds like the sort of thing that belongs at the Deathclaw Sanctuary and Menagerie I built on Spectacle Island.
frontier == cringe lmao
You know it's a good day when radking post
I have a wonder, FO referred to "Inlook" as an analogue to Outlook. Now BGS is owned by Microsoft, could we see Microsoft exist in the Fallout universe?
Two things that nerd me out when it comes to subjects fallout, and computing history.
I’ve also seen some evidence of forms similar to discord or early Reddit, or anything like that where people could have recreation time such as play DND, discuss other stuff I’ve even seen references to people playing a campaign of DND or something on the terminals glory to Adam. Love your videos.
I would 100% think the internet or something very similar would exist in the Fallout universe as there are tons of prewar emails back and fourth on different terminals across each game.
Given how the vast majority of those are in the same building, and on terminals, I think they're building wide email servers instead.
The LAN in a building isn't the internet.
Most of them seem like examples of intranets, not internet.
I remember computers with green text. We called them Dums (dumb terminals)And those noisy AF ribbon printers that were always lurking somewhere nearby. That was back at the start of my career in military intel. Compared to what we have and use now, it’s amazing we figured anything out. And don’t start me on punch cards.
i own a ibm xt itl
Punch Cards , Sir or Ma'am aren't you late for your bridge game in the old folks home.
In all seriousness though yeah bloody small miracle we got anywhere with that as a base line.
17:33 You're allowed to call that part of Utah in the middle of nowhere whether you're from Utah or not.
Thats a long way of saying Pre-windows.
But yeah i grew up with DOS system, even one system had a cassette player for videogames (i think a particular commodore)
Anyway, i always felt fallout ingame interface delightfully nostalgic.
based & i approve
Commenting before watching, i imagine falloits internet was like 50s internet for us, pc's connected through cable networks rather than wireless ones, like how the internet used to be a military tool
Welp seems like it was more advanced than I thought 😂
So... network data can be transmitted by radio wave... like you said considering all the advanced tech in the many pipboys does that mean they'd technically have wifi and be able to act as a hotspot?...
So they had a shitty version of the internet
I would think the internet they would have had would probably more in the era of our dial up modems and more closed off servers that were not continuously connected to the "world wide web"
This is totally unrelated to the topic of the video, but I'd be interested in a video on the branches of Atom's theology.
I would just like to point out that it is possible that the internet was a lot more developed pre blast day. It's possible that high atmosphere explosions knocked out a large amount of the satellite grid and major stability for the actual internet that had been developed. Also the accrued radiation could have degraded the circuitry reducing it to its more DOS-like integration point. Most terminals refer to a certain degradation of files and corrupted data. Also the player characters May simply be hacking into the dose system rather than accessing the full computer system because they don't have the proper clearances... But that's a ramble off...
Oh really? Your telling me that the internet would be better before a nuclear war that destroyed the world? What makes you say that.
@@James_Randal I didn't necessarily mean better, just that it could have been slightly further along than RadKing had summarized it to be; and that I didn't hear enough accounting for the variable of entropy over the apocalyptic timeline we are looking at. However I am a half brain dead idiot savant or sumting like dat, so maybe... PENGUINS
@@MstrPhoenixMHD Me gustan los hombres grandes y aceitosos, ¿no?
Before watching the video, i remember reading email like measages in the terminals
Another great video :-)
Now we have to know if fallout have a version of online gaming.
Could be that very basic online gaming exists in fallout, we are talking rpgs that are walls of texts that could be played with someone on the same server
Fallout doesn't use ARPA net setup, it uses the older Terminal to timeshared Mainframe, the terminals had very limited compute resources and were designed to simply relay commands to the central Mainframe - that Mainframe was often interconnected with other Mainframes and so could allow interaction between terminals on the interconnected Mainframes.
Fallout's terminals are like the intermediate step between terminals and mini-computers ( PCs weren't at this step.), which allowed for running programs and services locally on the mini-computer, but were constrained to the limited local resources when not connected to the time-shared Mainframe.
You mentioning Hawaii and aloha net reminds me of how cool a fallout Hawaii could potentially be please consider doing a video about that concept I think it would be really cool
My only question did they also have a picture of a egg as the most liked picture on the Internet
To be honest, this is quite the fascinating topic to discuss.
The internet sort of existed in the world of Fallout, but it never evolved into what we have. HTML was never invented, nor the network protocols used for the web. It remained as a system like in the early 80s where it was a server network you had to dial into. Home computers were common, but the technology remained primitive as key inventions from our timeline never came to be in theirs.
So basically, mid 80s WAN is about as far as they got in the fallout universe and it seems they progressed at slower pace than we did. As for the Brotherhood of Steel, they are *heavily* reliant on radio WAN communication. The HoI4 mod Old World Blues highlights this fact, because all of the Brotherhood Chapters completely rely on and stay in contact with each other using massive powerful radio towers; In fact it is the only major advantage they have over all the other factions in that mod and the official setting itself. Even in the official video games the brotherhood uses large radio towers situated near to or on top of their bunkers to keep in contact with each other, along with old school HAM and AM radio communication.
BBS's are still alive today! I frequent several of them on a regular basis. Yall should join!
Radking you are the best fallout youtuber ever when it comes to fallout lore
6:08 oh i STRONGLY disagree that ethernet has been common since the 70's, it didn't take off until the late 80's. arcnet and tolken ring from ibm were more common at first, especially in businesses and government facilities. Xerox may have developed it in the 70's, but it was kinda trapped in park labs for years, and needed A LOT of work.
10 years? By brother in Atom’s Glory, we won’t have Fallout 5 that soon…
now this is a very good thorough lore video on
fallout internet
Good glowing to you too!
First, you have to pin down what "terminals" actually are in the fallout universe. Terminals traditionally are just dumb terminals, or screens and a keyboard with enough circuitry to take input and output of serial data. That gives you the monochrome character-by-character interaction that fallout terminals show. Dumb terminals are just frontends for accessing a mainframe, either on the local or greater network. They can't store information or act like computers that we think of. The "terminals" in fallout are basically Apple 1 computers inside of cases styled to look like a combination of Commodore PET and Tandy TRS-80 Model 3/4 computers (PET has the slanted sides, the TRS-80 Model 3/4 match the rest but would need to be cut down removing the built-in floppy drives).
I say Apple 1 because that computer was essentially what we see here, the main board contained a computer on one half, but the other half was actually just a circuit for a terminal on-board. It's essentially a terminal that also has local processing power, memory, and storage (via an internal cassette? Perhaps they had holotape drives internally that acted like local storage). Limitations don't matter, it's fiction, but that's the closest I can come up with that matches. By contrast, the pip boy is light years ahead as a technology, full screen rendering and bitmap graphic support all in a tiny (relatively speaking) device.
We actually do interact with computers in the wasteland, just not traditional computers. The robots, that aren't robo-brains, showcase processing power of another world compared to what we're shown with the common terminals. The biggest example of this is Curie, an AI so advanced and developed that not only did it gain sentience, but it also gained the ability to understand emotions, empathy, etc. That nanny bot had to have had all of its components replaced with some space age level processing power to even give the start of that type of progress occurring.
At least to me, this massive gap in levels of technological success from one area to the next, make it hard to assume any type of development in the world. Their common input systems are Apple 1's with networking, but they also have cryopods that inject the occupant's conciseness into a complete virtual world. That would like you still using a Commodore 128 or Amiga 500 in 2023 while a company uses a top of the line current system.
Before watching any of this, I don't think it actually does. Since the first game was actually kind of written in a time when the Internet was still a somewhat new thing, so it probably didn't get included into the 50s inspired world of Fallout.
If there had a telephone network there had a "internet"
Yeah, this is also what i think Fallout's internet was like, whenever i think about it.
If you take the enclave here bit from fallout 2
I guess they do
That was a private closed-off connection
There are no slurs for ghouls, genocide earns bad karma and capitalism is still praised as a decent way to run society…no, there clearly is no internet in Fallout.
Bro they call them ghouls.
Zombie, muties, ferals, no nose, and idk
Good point
I wonder if they had satellite communication?
And I wonder how The institute fits into everything.
If it did, I would imagine it would similar to the real world precursor ARPANET.
if upi are ta;lomg anpit TCP/IP and layers you are referring to the OSI 7 layer model
I’ve unfortunately forgotten what the fallout computers are called
I’ve been told that it’s terminal
BOO THIS MAN
May ⚛️ irradiate your day
GLORY TO ATOM BROTHER!
The more connections a network has the more likely that at some point they will align and create a neural network and become sentient much like a human mind
I would hope so if they got robots and plasma weapons
Big MT might have it to just look up facts about big MT
Every Vault was connected with a network of wires.
I'd say they're all probably local and extended area networks. LANs, for sure. But the internet as we know it in reality, probably not. At least definitely not in 2277, because the infrastructure likely just doesn't literally exist. And even if it does, given the state of the power lines I'd wager that each locale is essentially cut off from each other anyway. I think there are more than a handful of examples of long-distance communication (from one end of the map to the other), but almost never from outside of the game's setting.
Well, now that I think about it, the CIA (or whatever equivalent) observation site beneath Slocum's Joe would probably imply an internet connection. There's no way there wouldn't be a connection back to the Pentagon, or at least the CIA home office. And I would imagine the Chinese agents would have some line of communication in their underground headquarters beyond 2-way radio.
I guess, at the VERY LEAST, the internet as we know it wasn't widely available to the public.
... i actually have a old computer that could physically run robco os as like true hardware it currently doesn't have any os to begin with and so i would have to back port it from usb to floppy disk to actually install it but oh i can use it because it can support ms dos.
i have a ibm xt and it is so worth it
Well there's a lot of factories and office buildings in Fallout 3, nv, and 4 that have internal networks.. so yes. they do have a primitive deep-web so to speak
No. Intranet and Arpanet, yes.
Glory to the Radking and to Atoms children’s!🦠⚛️
Interestingly enough, before Walt Disney died, he was working on the EPCOT project EPCOT was supposed to be a self-contained and fully functional town. Part of what he had wanted to try and do was have education done over the internet for courses in science to bring exprrts from places like NASA into the home, but the tech didn't exist in the state it needed to be for him to realize his vision. There's a vid here on UA-cam where he went over his vision himself. It was shot weeks before his death and was meant for investor eyes only, not for the general public.
Well duh it was Florida in the 60s
I knew Walt Disney was evil but being an early adopter of online school pushes it over the edge! Lol
@@Ahnenerbe1944was just about to say thank god the technology didn't exist then
@@Ahnenerbe1944 you can just imagine the Disney online school lessons being like something out of a Nazi Hitler Youth Fan Fic xD
@@gusess5743 Walt Disney did nothing wrong .
This question is actually something I had been wondering about recently! I’m running a game of Fallout: The Roleplaying Game with the main villain as a sentient AI. My players recently convinced him to kill himself but I was trying to figure out if a sentient AI would be able to escape the one computer they found him on
Lol, nice.
Played a few sessions of Fallout TRPG but sadly had to stop due to college + work conflicts
eden is just fallouts chat gpt tbh
Sentient AI A Synth!
About to start Wasteland Warfare and will keep this antagonist in mind!
It's actually completely canonically accurate for the AI to run away. The AI that was designed to be used to control the Neon Flats environment went a bit... Insane and escaped to the Library and part of the claim quest is to track it down and then shut down the computers in a specific order to trap it and pop it on a holotape. 😉 😁
My theory has always been that in this timeline they focused on nuclear technology so much the government didn’t bother to expand their network capabilities. However, my other theory is since in our timeline the internet was created by the government, the same as Fallout, they did develop it but kept it secret.
That’s a interesting point however I do believe it was more public. Not to the point where everyone had Internet in their homes, but to the point that it wasn’t extremely rare, my guess is it similar to what we had in 1989. Which would make the main reason for internet for professional use not worldwide connection
We got the internet after the cold War calmed down, the fallout universe didn't get that chance as the bombs actually dropped.
@@HashknightGamingWhat? Fallout is an alternative timeline. They didn't have a Cold War like us. Also they made it to 2077. They had plenty of time to work on it.
@@SirDankleberryThe "World Wide Web" as we currently know it isn't the "internet", it's just a means to publish rich text pages on an internet-connected server. And the Web only gained momentum when it could be used to deploy large-scale commercial activities, like e-commerce. The Fallout universe never got back to a state of economic prosperity, so there was no need for e-commerce to develop.
@@Stoney3K Pretty sure in Fallout they got back to economic prosperity until the resources started running dry.
A nugget to think on, given the background of the Resource Wars, the 20th year or so when the nukes flew in 2077, having a barebones internet like that of the early 1980s could be a retrograde to keep people worldwide from finding out news in other countries similar to Orwell's 1984, the perpetual war and the armies never cross the borders to prevent 'cultural contamination'
I always imagined fallout internet like cyberpunk internet several closed off systems and net works maybe each state or common wealth having its own internet system
I mean it would make sense. Smaller systems easier to control by the government. Considering prewar America was going more and more authoritarian and propaganda slinging. It would make sense to divide and conquer systems as they were heavily monitoring for "communist" and "unAmerican" activities. Red scare mentality plus high technology.
Network is one word, also use punctuation
@@AdminAbuse bro is grammar police
@@AdminAbuse 🤓
they all shared memes, but it was only Marty Robbins memes
I bet the internet is filled with the brotherhood of mid
@@KuroToaster2199 Omg toaster
There is references to the Vaults having an inter-vault network, the fact that VaultTec was supposedly going to monitor the progress of the experiment and the all clear signal support this.
Yes the all clear signal could have been done via radio or other wireless methods, but I have yet to find a vault with wireless receivers or transmitters.
With BBS limited to phone lines, the speed was pretty slow. It would take around 1 hour to download just ONE IMAGE. The image will be sent encrypted, and then your BBS program would decrypt the downloaded image.
Folks has to wait for 14.4 dial-up modems to where you could play Doom II deathmatches with someone else. Two-way voice communication was not possible when doing this.
(Added) If you lost your BBS connection during an image download, you had to connect back in and then start all over for the image download.
It's crazy to think about how long it took to do things we mostly take for granted. Takes me about, .3 seconds to download and image. I'm glad to live in this Era. Can't wait for the technology to improve further over time.
@@jordonturner9559 Having personally gone from 14kbps to Gbps internet speeds in the past 30+ years, amazing how we have progressed, and how wonderful it is all today, compared to when I was a youth.
13:51 Very unexpected to see Norwegian here. It says "Can be connected to host machines and terminals" and "Can be connected to host machines".
Fellow Utahn here and Zion is not the middle of nowhere! Having grown up near Springdale, I can confirm that it’s a tourist trap next to the middle of nowhere!
RadKing's content never disappoints.
Don't like him too much or Bethesda will try and make you pay for this channel. Lol
The Fallout series can make someone really appreciate our technology since we have existing technologies that are way better than most of Fallouts equivalent technologies except certain like robotics and energy weapons for example. We still have like 54 years till we get to 2077 so we got time to outdo them on what we currently lack in!
I'm sure until then we will have seen nukes again
They also had hardlight holographic projections, brain life support tanks, matter - energy and energy - matter transmutation (GECK kits, Sierra Madre vending machines), highly miniaturized cold fusion power cells, and teleporters. We have a way to go before we beat that, but it's not impossible by any means to do in 54 years. At least some of these things will be achievable by then.
As a former airline agent I knew Sabre was an old piece of software, but I didn't realize it was from the 60s. That explains so, so much...
Yep. Only recently airline companies updated to more modern reservation systems (mostly Amadeus or Galileo), but Sabre, Pars and many others were really old tech. Also, in the Linux world if you want you can browse the internet via the terminal.
Sabre, PanAmac, Deltamatic…
As someone who lives in Utah unless you're in the Salt Lake area it's really middle of nowhere 😂
I wonder if an IRC or mIRC style chat system that was lost within the terminals of the prewar.
Beyond this, I liked the idea. I recall that in Fallout 76, the West Coast was talking to the BoS scouts on a satellite based comm system, and it makes me wonder if the "internet" of fallout was wired for local, but satellite based for wider communication networks.
HyperText Markup Language or HTML was the base for all internet information sharing between mainframes before the use of servers and was text-based, using "ASCII", just like on the terminals in Fallout. Early graphics were text and character-based. In about 1995, Netscape, called Mosaic at the time, first integrated pictures, pics, in the GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) format with HTML. Windows made BMP pic files the most popular format to incorporate with HTML. Bit Map Images. And from there it all exploded to what we have today. I love old-school computers. I am old. LOL.
I remember making a comment on what was the "internet" like in the Fallout universe in the "WTF is with Inflation in Fallout?" video and came to a similar conclusion but based on how media is distributed and consumed in the Fallout universe. No video or audio streaming; no online gaming just local computer using holotapes or tabletop gaming; Radio, tv, newspapers and comics are alive and well. There was no disruption in those areas due to the limited computing capacity available to the public. Most of the networks available are local or private networks with limited connectivity between them. So I like the conclusion that theres no internet per se, and mostly use text interfaces and services. Good video.
Every time I hear about data being written to some physical storage medium and sent via mail, I remember a story my father likes to tell:
I don't recall the exact year, but a guy he worked with would write data on architectural plans to floppy disks and mail them over to another building for use. Whenever they'd arrive, however, the data would be unusable - somehow damaged or corrupted. So he decided one day to follow one of these floppy disks along its entire trip, and found that a secretary was putting labels on them by... sticking the floppy drive in the top of a typewriter like it's a piece of paper. damaging it in the process.
Oof!
That can’t be true
@@Jump-n-smashuh, it could be. The 8" floppy disks look like a giant envelope to be fair.
Funnily enough, the begining of the movie 'WarGames (1983)' is probably the best representation of hacking in a movie to date.
>>When you remember BBS and feel concerned that people didn't know about them.
Why should there be any concern ? Do you feel empathy for the technology that predates your birth by decades ?
This was REALLY well done and super thought-provoking! Maybe I'm just an engineering nerd, but I absolutely love your videos focusing on fallout's infrastructure
great video. for me, i'd say the internet still exists in fallout but as a static database of all information stored before the War. the only people who could make changes to it on private networks would be those with major technological capabilities, e.g. the Enclave, the Brotherhood Of Steel, and the Institute, though i could see either House in New Vegas and/or the NCR being able to do so as well.
But that's the thing the internet isn't static.
@@Donovarkhallum I mean, without satellites and cloud servers it would be very static.
@@HouseDagothCultist yeah I was trying to saying it's not Internet but then I was like wait local networks and shit is technically internet it's just not browsers and websites and applications. But I'd bet if the institute wasn't destroyed they could easily deploy satellites. They're making artificial humans. It's within the games realm of possiibility
Emoticons date back to at least 1881 ...
The Internet, was preceded by internets , networks of networks one of which was (D)ARPANET which became the prototype and hub of a lot of them ... most of which later were all joined together to form The Internet, but a few are still separate even today
.... Fallout still having a proto-Internet makes sense based on the in world history
I did not know until now that the logo for Skynet (of Terminator fame) looked so very similar to the Milnet logo.
Wouldn't MIT in fallout have more LANs and WANs in Massachusetts? Shouldn't it have a big brick of telecommunication building? Kinda like how AT&T makes there buildings to withstand a nuke?
It's kinda weird how a society that can create fully self-aware AIs also uses equipment that went out of production in our world's 1980s.
The transistor wasn't invented in the Fallout universe untill a few years before the war, that's why computer chips and interfaces looked so outdated despite all their technology.
I'm one of the older gamers. I remember before windows was released we used to play a lot of dos games. One of my faviroutes was something called Battle Chess. The Chess pieces would turn into gollems, the knight would get on his horse and ride it. Then there was a game called Eagle Eye Detective. You had a pick between a boy or girl and solve small crimes in a small town. You had to question suspects and look for clues. So even before the internet and windows we already had some good games we could play on a simple system like dos. There no reason that the Fallout world couldn't have developed some graphics for their computer networks. With Mr House and the Securitrons facial interface there is proof of that.