Uhhh vault is for super rich people and the vault tec management people and their family. or people with connection to the management. Look at those vaults. Only hundreds. If one vault can only be home for like.. 200 peoples, that means 200 x 100 vaults = only 20K humans inside the vaults. And out of those vault dwellers, not all are living happy life.
15:14 that's Vault 120 - the under water Vault was cut from the game but there is a mod that brings it back - unfortunately the very ambitious sidequest tied to it wasn't finished by the devs
Came to comment this! Vault 120 from the quest "20 Leagues Under the Sea" was supposed to be a "Bioshock" style vault run by a hyper intelligent squid. Originally it was supposed to be a follow on from the Yangtze Repair quest and would have led to you having taken the Yangtze to the vault. The location on the map is somewhat accurate, the IRL Stellwagen Bank (called Stellwagen Gorge in game) is north of Provincetown (that cape you see east of Plymouth on the map)
@@BlueJayz474 yeah indeed crazy. My big dream regarding thefranchise would be if Bethesda and Obsidian would team up, make a newer version of the Creation Kit Engine 2 and develop Fallout 5 in a new location and then rerelease each Fallout game as a giant gamesized DLC in this new engine - I think if both studios would work together on this it would be feasable for them to finish the main game until 2030 and then bring out each DLC one year at a time but I guess nobody at Bethesda actually sees the potential this would have and the ridiculous amount of money they could make
@@jagerzaku9160 And what a shame that is. Considering how much I liked New Vegas, and how much they were able to do off of porting over assets from 3, and then adding to them, I don't see why he would dislike them, unless it were somehow a matter of some jealousy.
I think it's also fair to consider this image was shown at an undisclosed time before the bombs actually dropped. Who knows how many more were finished/started between this scene and the apocalypse.
@@xyreniaofcthrayn1195 No, he's specifically talking about the scene in the show, not the video game. The scene where Vault-Tec was basically selling vaults and stoking an atmosphere of experiment focused competition. Depending on when that scene takes places, there could have been more time to add extra vaults not currently represented by the ONLY official full map of all vaults in the US. This map, by virtue of when it appears, may or may not be complete, as it could also just represent only the vaults they were willing to sell, instead of listing all the ones they wanted to keep secret...
Most people are forgetting this isn’t a complete list, this is so early pre war that Vault Boy doesn’t even exists yet so any missing vault literally haven’t been built yet
Yeah, it could also mean that these were just plotted ones. We know from Fallout 4 there was at least one vault that was in construction hell, and was never finished on time. Pretty sure there were a handful of others in that way too.
Let's not forget these are just all the ones they had ready at the time, there's no exact date on the scene so there could be a lot more that got finished later or were under construction before the nukes hit.
@@gordonhowett7529 Some were their experiments. Remember the one that was supposed to house the mayor of Boston was still incomplete when the bombs hit. It had been supplied and equipped, but never got occupants.
@@WaltWW If they were going to drop the bombs on that day, it's unlikely Barb would have let her daughter go to a random party. I think that's a nod to the fanon idea that we'll never find out for sure who did it, but the Chinese, Americans, Vault-Tec and even the Zetans all planned to do it.
But it is established in the games that some Vaults were directly in some cities. For example, Vault 21 was right on the Strip of Las Vegas, the entrance not hidden whatsoever. And even smaller cities or suburbs can get a Vault; Vault 12 (Necropolis) was located in Bakersfield, and Vault 111 was in Sanctuary Hills. And it does make some logical sense, if a Vault is all the way out in the middle of nowhere, how are you supposed to make it in time before the bombs drop?
@PaleWhiteShadow depending on where you live the bombs might not drop on you right away. Also, there's no difference between isolating and centralizing a vault opening since even the vault entrance for 87 was hit directly.
@@DrendarMorevo But Las Vegas, LA, New York, San Fran, DC would are all examples of areas that most certainly likely would be direct nuke targets. In those cases Vaults in close proximity makes sense. We aren't talking about a small town in Oklahoma were people would have time to flee
think it also depends what experiments there running but there more in cities the built specifically to handle a direct nuke strike so the rather have u can get in quickly
so the one near Knoxville Tennessee is actually closer to oak ridge national laboratory, site of the Manhattan project. im betting that one is actually there!
11:14 you kinda went over this too quick, but that second vault in Tennessee is in Oak Ridge. This town has important history. It's the birthplace of nuclear weapons. It's a surprise Fallout hasn't explored it in a game yet. Quick rundown of history. Government came to the area, forced people off their lands, and formed the town to headquarter the Manhattan project and enrich the uranium for the first atomic weapons. Oak Ridge became known as the secret city and the workers didn't know what they were working on until the bombings happened. There's a park and museum there dedicated to the historic event right outside ORNL. It'd be cool if we had a main game set it East Tennessee.
Honestly would be a sick location for a fallout game, too bad we've already gotten an Appalachian fallout with 76, missed opportunity to use oak ridge.
As someone who’s been working on a Fallout TTRPG set in Minnesota for around 6 years now. Knowing that there’s potentially three vaults to work with in the state is amazing especially since Minneapolis and Duluth are playing big parts in the story. Here’s hoping we get more canon information on the area so I can intertwine my stuff with whatever the fallout universe does with the region.
@@mask-mimic Absolutely. Minnesota would be the perfect candidate for a Fallout game that focuses on a more winter climate. Though I’m perfectly content with it being DLC for a proper Chicago game as well.
@@LvlGenesis A game set in Chicago focused on Bethesda’s version of the Midwestern Brotherhood is most likely, although I think MN would be cool (though I’m biased towards the idea.) Having the two major factions take over one of the Twin Cities with a group of people who think the “Paul” in St. Paul Is Paul Bunyan, and do things like paint Brahmin blue. Of course a raider group based on Vikings.
yeah that one would be somewhere between Webster and Spooner in Wisconsin, but one clearly just NW of Duluth, and one somewhere in the Twin Cities. I love the idea about the various local raider factions based on Vikings, Paul Bunyan, etc. And it would be really awesome if you could visit the Fond du Lac res and it's somehow still almost completely intact, but you need to do a series of quests to be admitted in (lots of good chem shops, etc).
The New Mexico Vault appears to be at Los Alamos. That makes sense both as a tribute to its role in nuclear technology and because it is the wealthiest city in NM.
Oddly enough, the Vault in Canada is near CFB Shilo, which does have a Provincial emergency bunker there. I stayed in it a few nights when I was in the Forces.
That vault over Abilene, TX is likely Vault 39 from the scrapped BoS Sequel. Or at least a nod to it. Huge Air Force base there so cool to see it make the map.
As a Texan seeing so many vaults here makes me feel warm inside at the thought of potentially having the Enclave in a future fallout game set in Texas. :)
@@orbitingpluto3213 Even as a proud Texan myself I would rather see them do one in Louisiana. The unique culture of the area would blend well with fallout. And give them a chance to bring out some swamp monsters, I’m thinking radioactive super gators lol. Could even have a DLC or something that’s pirate related as an homage to the areas ties to 18th century piracy.
There IS a vault in Bar Harbor (Far Horbor DLC) but the one mapped here doesn't look close. I guess it also should be said that not all the vaults were built yet when this scene took place
Based on your location in northern New Mexico, that may be closer to Los Alamos. That would make from some interesting stories involving the Los Alamos National Labs. Oh boy!
I believe the cancelled Van Buren Project, which was the original developers attempt at Fallout 3 before the property was sold to Bethesda, was going to take place in the Four Corners area and Los Alamos was going to be a place in it, so that would make sense
Nebraska, ND, and SD have ICDM missile silos underground in the plains so maybe thats why there is a lot of vaults. They would have even more nukes to launch in Fallout
A vault in cooperstown NY makes sense because there’s multiple fallout shelters around town. I guess people were scared that they’d nuke the baseball hall of fame museum !
it definitely does make more sense. My thoughts were that it would be in Blackfoot so both people from Idaho Falls and Pocatello can get there but its more for the INL than anything.
Just so you know, the one near minnesota in Wisconsin is directly upon the St. Croix river, which I believe is a major visit spot for boating/swimming.
You're spot-on with the upstate NY vault. That's Howe Caverns, an amazing labyrinth of natural caves. And the vault east of Albany just over the MA border makes perfect sense - Lenox, Massachusetts. Right in the Berkshires 🙂 Great job!!
Only 122 Vaults actually doesn’t seem like a lot, you have to wonder how many unmarked Vaults there are too? I would say that these Vaults are just the ones Vault Tec was advertising to the public. I wanna know just how many Enclave Vaults there are like Raven Rock from Fallout 3. We know Vault Tec was working with the Government in the lore.
There is only so many people able to pay $$ to get a place in the vault in the first place for them to exist plus like you said the ones they left off the map
nuka world got that little vault whit Barberton head and that ride also for fun 77 is just 1 guy and a box full of puppets vault 0 is nowe must likely non canon it had the brains of vault tech and 88 and114 where never finish
@@t84t748748t6 It seems like they reused the idea of vault 0 for vault 31, but i feel there's still place for it in the lore as a bigger vault for major vault tec employees? Plus, the new BoS is pretty similar to the Midwestern BoS - wasteland recruits, lower recruiting standards, expensable troops and more militaristic (while still having a few very religious elders).
122 is the figure given in The Fallout Bible, written by Chris Avellone for internal Black Isle/Interplay use in the making of Fallout 2 (he also worked on Fallout: New Vegas). It's not actually canon, but it's clear that Bethesda read it, as some terminals in FO3 and 4 reference information only available in it. Because "122" has never been said on-screen Bethesda are not bound by it. The highest number we've seen on-screen is Vault 118 (the Mount Desert Island vault from Far Harbour). Including Vault 0 and the three unnumbered vaults (the demo LA Vault from Fallout 1, the Among the Stars Vault from Nuka-World and the VTU Simulation Vault from Fallout 76) that gets us up to 122 again. The TV show also says "over a hundred" vaults. I suspect if it was closer to 200 they'd have said that, so I'd put the number of vaults between 122 and maybe ~150.
The vault near Phoenix near 6:00 seems kind of near the Palo Verde Nuclear power plant, considered one of the largest Nuclear Power Plants in the US and supplies power to several states in the west.
Yes this is Tonopah Arizona , the nuclear power plant resides in that small city. My grandparents use to live there and I could see the smoke from the highway going there when I was a kid. It’s very poor there and straight up desert lands. The I-10 is crazy packed so it’d be hard to make to that vault.
Madison area makes sense but why is the only other one like spooner/turtle lake area? Who knows but it's funny one of the most middle of nowhere vaults is in NW Wisconsin.
I am also from northern Wisconsin and when I watched the show I immediately looked at where the vaults would be. Madison, Minneapolis, the “Great Lakes” one is meant for Duluth/Superior… which would make sense. But I was honestly surprised by the Spooner/Rice Lake vault…. Nothing but small towns… I could see Eau Claire maybe… but it’s clearly not that far South.
Hey Nikki, PA resident here. The three vaults in PA are all but certainly meant to represent Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia. I mean, there are lot of other populated areas, but most non-residents can probably only name those 3 cities 😆They are really two popular cities with the capital situated fairly between.
I think the one in the middle is for State College which actually makes a lot of sense considering Penn State is an engineering pipeline for defense contractors
i noticed that most of the dots in Massachusetts were shown closer to the western part of the state, despite fallout 4 only taking place in the greater Boston area (from concord to quincy). i think the only in game vault the tv show maps there is vault 111, but of course 5 dots honed in on boston would be pretty distracting lol. also the vault that looks like its off the coast of provincetown could be a shoutout to the cut underwater vault in 4 (which would've been in nahant!)
This map was representing the vaults that they were willing to sell. There's a possibility that the vaults we know of were unlisted from this map, and/or not complete at the time the map was made. I think they would have made a great deal many unlisted vaults, and only indicated a portion to be sold.
I do like that, in the game, you can walk, relatively quickly, through concord and into Quincy. Which, of course, in reality, they are nowhere near each other lol
I think it's worth noting that Vaults that are in the middle of nowhere make a lot of sense in the lore. It just means that something was going on in the area, a governement/vault tec facility or a planned experiment on the local population. This could explain why the dots aren't centered in most of the larger cities, they're intentionally in the suburbs. The unfinished vault in 4 is a good example of a good reason why, it's just harder to build in the middle of a city. Maybe closer to the rich neighborhoods too. It also makes sense that there would be big clusters where local interest was more easy to gather. Especially in DC and Maryland where vault tec had their university, 76 was intended to be one of the controls after all. It would make sense to cluster a lot of control vaults of loyalists actually.
The third Vault in Kansas appears to be near Fort Riley military base, outside Manhattan, and the Kansas City vault, given how Vault-Tec liked to locate their vaults, I would suggest is in or around Subtropolis, a series of limestone mines on the Missouri side of the river which have been repurposed to secure storage, for both public and government use.
This is fantastic, I love it when people use their own corner of academia to give us an insight that we wouldn't otherwise have into fictional worlds like Fallout. Also, well done on apparently confirming that the Fallout 4 underwater vault that was cut from the game seems to be canon!
6:27 that location in New Mexico is almost perfectly on Los Alamos. Which is a national laboratory specializing in nuclear science and was the location of the Manhattan Project, where the atomic bomb was invented
Being from Dayton, Ohio I was a bit disappointed we didn't get a vault. But it makes sense to have the vaults in Columbus and Cincy. There is no doubt a huge Enclave or BoS installation in Dayton though thanks to Wright Patterson.
I think that Cleveland and Detroit need vaults too, because the retrofuturist split happened before the Rust Belt could form in the 1980's of our world.
Some of the locations that seem to be in the middle of nowhere are in fact military installations in the real world. Examples would be New Mexico having vaults for the relatively small population of the state that are closer to military goings on (and border patrol) than they are the actual cities. Also Montana, North and South Dakota. Actually, something really cool I noticed is the one in Colorado Springs, Colorado is literally the Cheyenne Mountain NORAD Station...which is already an actual bomb shelter. One that I do believe was used as inspiration for the concept of Vaults in the Fallout universe to begin with. Really cool stuff.
As a Canadian, I was very excited to see there was a vault in Canada. Even if it was due to us being annexed in the fallout universe. It looks to be near Moosomin, which I have never heard of before referencing the vault map with our own. I really hope we get a full game or DLC set in Canada like Ronto or something.
Im from Wisconsin. I grew up about an hour, hour and a half from the Spooner area. Spooner is kind of suprising, but not really. The reasons I can think of for Spooner having a vault are, Spooner is where Hwy 53, 63, and 70 come together. The Spooner Armory is almost a center point where it sits since the highways "X" in. The highway system connects the Superior, Ashland, Hayward, Spooner, and Rice lake armories. Those are the ones I know of in that area off the top of my head. Also, Shell Lake is quite a popular Tourist destination. When I was in the service, people talked about Shell Lake and Eau Claire a lot when I travelled out of state.
This is brilliant, Im talking about minor stuff in the show with my friends and you pointed out this show displays all the vaults. This is the most important background lore of the show.
Gotta love the random Canadian vault in the middle of nowhere 😭 The closest city of any notable size would be Brandon, Manitoba and it’d still be a very long drive from that vault. Even if it’s a map from before more vaults were made, why would the first one in Canada be in the middle of nowhere?
That second dot in Tennessee is very likely supposed to be in Oak Ridge. Considering that's where a lot of nuclear research is done in the US it would make a ton of sense to build one there as it has a 100% chance of getting targeted by nukes. It wouldn't make sense for vault tech to intentionally make a vault outside Knoxville instead of a larger city like Memphis.
Everyone got into a vault and I'm a 303 year old Ghoul sitting on his porch shooting rad roaches and raiders while sitting on my porch in vernon VT....
“Between Louisville and Lexington” is where the state capitol Frankfort is so that definitely feels right. Also glad to see my hometown Savannah got a vault :)
Washington's got vaults, so I pray for a Pacific Northwest story. If North Dakota got a vault, I'm sure there's a budget for purely government and military vaults. You know for the purposes of actually surviving and rebuilding the USA. They don't even have to be Enclave related.
As a New Mexico native, I want to say the vault there is in Los Alamos. Which makes sense, its where a TON of New Mexico's PhDs live and the infamous Los Alamos labs where Manhattan Project took place.
The part with the crashed satellite where the Doctor and Lucy are near LAX was a point I even found. They were north of LAX because you could tell from the tower next to the terminal that it was to he left, indication they were far north of it. There's a lot of landscapes that make little sense. Like how shady sands had a city in the backdrop. Unless that was actually part of the NCR capital... That makes no sense because SS was in the middle of the desert.
Shady Sands was built up after Fallout 1; When it's time to revisit it in Fallout 2, it's more of a full fledged city and is described as such in New Vegas at multiple points.
The three in SD are Sioux Falls(largest city in the state,) Pierre(State Capitol,) and Rapid City/Black Hills area(which houses a huge AFB.) South Dakota also has a pile of abandoned Nuclear Missle silos from the cold war Era and a bunch of fallout bunkers from the cold war era.
Something else I noticed about the project was that Vault 13's location on this map lines up perfectly with it's location in Fallout 2's map due to the geolocation data they used for reference. Whether they did this as a nice homage, or as a clue of things to come - or even just a sheer coincidence - I have no idea, but it's cool nonetheless.
It’s important to note that the vaults, while having some government funding, were still a private endeavor so omissions from major areas like Detroit and Indianapolis could easily be chalked up to Vaults Tec not coming to agreements with those cities/states for buying the land or zoning/construction agreements
11:15 As someone who used to live in the Knoxville area, that is closer to Oak Ridge, which is known in the real world as the Atomic City. Oak Ridge played a role in the Manhattan Project and would have been a major power center in the Fallout prewar USA.
3 interesting things to mention. The Vault out in the water near Massachusetts could be a reference to the cut aquatic vault from Fallout 4. There should be a marker near Bar Harbour, Main, we visit vault 118 in the Farharbour DLC. In Fallout New Vegas Chief Hamlin of the NCR Rangers stats that several rangers have been pulled away from the Mojave by the NCR President to hunt ghosts down in Baja.
I help you with Pennsylvania. The map is skewed slightly high You would have to drop it down a bit. You're looking at Pittsburgh, Altoona, York and Allentown If you use those as reference points you'll see that the ones in Maryland sit back down on the DC and stuff like that. So yeah your map is skewed about 50 miles north once you're hitting Virginia Maryland area
This is a super fun project! When youve got a chance, id love to see you break down lore of the vaults and really chart them, like we know the numbers and locations for all the ones weve been to directly, and lore for ones weve not been too, we can assume the vaults that are refrenced but not seen in the games are at least near by. Also, now i want a fallout game in texas really bad.
The one on the edge between Nebraska and Iowa is likely in Nebraska, but only just. The dot appears to be right about right about where Offutt air force base is, which happens to be the location of US Strategic Command. There's actually already an underground bunker there for high ranking military during emergencies. For instance in 9/11 that's where they took the president. So it makes sense that vault-tec would choose a location near there, if only for a military based experiment (which we've seen them do)
Missouri is probably Columbia, MO. State University is there, Interstate 70 runs thru it. It would take too much effort to explain why Jeff City doesnt make sense.
Nice! Thanks for doing this. Was immediately thinking about georeferencing when I saw that map in the show, but I knew I’d never find time to get around to it.
Hey Tunnelsnakesfool, 4:34 I live in Salem, Oregon(pronounced organ, like the liver. The “e” isn’t pronounced) and I believe there are two likely locations of the Salem Vault. One would be in Minto Brown State Park. It would be slightly northwest of the marked location on the West Salem side. (Salem is divided by a bridge.) Minto Brown has a “Taco Bridge” leading into a wetlands nature preserve. It would be away from prying eyes that may want to see what’s going on and would be secluded from the majority of the population. The other likely location would be downtown Salem. There are an interesting amount of underground tunnels underneath downtown. While less secluded, the earth is very hard claylike soil, leading to a good location to build an underground vault. It would have to be deep enough to keep the concrete away from the moisture and rain which is pretty constant for about 3-5 month out of the year. There are a couple bigger buildings downtown that would make it easy to hide a vault. So that makes it the more likely of the two suggested locations.
Cool Overview. I couldn’t resist taking the vault shot and putting it in photoshop, counted the vaults, overlayed a us map with capitals to see where they are. Would be cool to add the actual Vault numbers of the “Known” locations of vaults to this map. Many of the known Vaults have the info of what state & city they are in. Look forward to seeing a future cross reference version. I love Maps. ❤🤘 Rock on Cartographers & Vault Dwellers!
The one north of Pittsburgh is consistent with the location of the irl Iron Mountain/National Underground Storage facility for data and film so that’s cool to see.
I think it would make sense for vaults to be on the outskirts of cities, which we see in games. Assuming the cities were directly hit there wouldnt be much time to get people in. It’s interesting may are near highway junctions, since you’d make it easy on people from around those cities to there. Plus suburbs generally have weather people who would be able to afford it, so it makes sense.
If I had to guess (probably going really deep into the rabbit hole here but who cares) that the Vault located near Allentown, Reading and Pottstown PA is located along Route 100 near a town called Bechtelsville. If you look on the map, there is a huge hole being used as a quarry. Similar to Vault 111, this would’ve been good spot for a Vault door that lowered into the earth.
yeah i remember hearing about there being a cut underwater vault from fallout 4, had a mutant octopus boss fight n everything, so that's probably what the vault in the ocean near boston was representing
The one in SE Ohio is just to the east of Marietta, where Intercommonwealth Highway 77 crosses the Ohio River. The precise location may be around and to the north of Reno. This area is in the Wayne National Forest and verges on the western extent of the region of Appalachia, which includes southeastern Ohio.
My friend and I headcanoned a vault under Mt Rushmore. I come see this video - and I realize one of the vaults is literally where Mt Rushmore is. Not surprising, but it's still very cool that a Mt Rushmore vault is canon.
That third vault in Kansas not near Topeka and Kansas City definitely reminds me of the old cold war missile silo locations out in that area of the plains/flint hills area, Abilene specifically I know for sure had one which was pretty close as well, always fun to see these sorts of things as a local :)
Throwing my hat in, it appears that the vault in Western Colorado lines up with an area that was the leader in uranium production in the early 1900s and continued to be a major producer through the century, with Grand Junction being the largest population center in the area. Judging by comments, it looks like the focus wasn't only on population centers but also on places with nuclear history. I can fully picture there being a higher population in the area in Fallout's alternate timeline, with a lot of mining being done there for the warheads and other purposes.
It was probably already said, but the Vault in the water was probably the cut vault from fallout 4. It was in the water and was going to have a giant squid.
The second Idaho dot might be the Idaho National Laboratory, where a lot of early nuclear energy research was done. Seems like the kind of place that would be important in the fallout timeline
2 vaults in Wyoming looks like either Laramie or Cheyenne for the one right above Denver, Co. The one on the boarder of Nebraska and Wyoming would most likely be Torrington Wyoming
Amazing work on this (from a fellow Geo-nerd)! I know all of us in the fandom were excited to see canon maps, and clearly, you most of all. From this, my impressions are: - I think it's fairly safe and definitive to see the dots can represent multiple vaults. That's completely backed-up by the games. - It's impressive the logic the Fallout creators put into Vault locations: not only near population centers that would more readily need it based on their risk of being targeted by nukes (more so than rural/suburban America), but also state capitols consistently and also geographic security of mountains, explaining their prevalence in California and West Virginia. - Vault-Tec employees either said f*ck y'all or really wanted to protect Indiana, Connecticut, and Delaware. - - Plus, they really missed an opportunity for collaboration with GARY, Indiana. - I think it's SUPER interesting there's one each in Canada AND Mexico. Like Canada gets a consolation prize for being annexed (screw the GTA apparently lol), but Mexico too? what's US-Mexico relations like. - I do recall another UA-camr mentioning that there was planned underwater vault in Fallout 4. What a missed opportunity, cuz that woulda been Subnautica-levels of FUN. P.S. I still think we need a New Orleans set Fallout. Most unique geo-cultural region that wouldn't overlap with previous games (with a snowy based setting the only other contender... and Hawaii, which, did HI or Alaska get any vaults??), lending to plenty of new mutated creatures, but would easily slot into the musical vibe of the games.
Would be neat to see a layer on the map with known vault locations from the games as some of those are in pretty identifiable locations, probably taggable within a few hundred feet or so
The one in the water could be in reference to a cut quest in fallout 4 where you did go in a vault underwater and from my understanding you were supposed to have a fight with a sea creature under water
I wouldn’t be surprised if Vault-Tech kept some vault locations classified and not on this map. Might account for spots were vaults seem to be “missing”
Lore-wise, I'd say that most of the Vaults near cities would likely be outside of them, just based on logic. Cities would be primary targets for nukes and a Vault is useless if irritated/blasted by atomic fire before there was anyone there to close the Vault door. Any that are clearly inside a major city were likely like Vault 4: a Vault already occupied by a full compliment of people.
Your map is awesome! Even when it was on TV, I paused it around there so I could count, and I only counted like... 117, 118, vaults. There are 122 in lore, and so - leaving 4 or 5 vaults out purposefully does seem like a very vault tech thing to do. Sure it could easily be that they weren't completed or dug in yet, or they hadnt' even decided WHERE they were going to build them... They could also be in Alaska, Hawaii, or any of the numerous holdings that the US had. As for some of the vaults being in the actual cities they represent and others being out in the middle of nowhere - that sounds about right. Some of these vaults were experiments, some were actually control vaults, some others had military implications to them. as there was only like.. 15 or so control vaults (?) the likelihood that they would run the vaults in Oklahoma, Canada, Nebraska, and the Dakotas - as anything BUT wacky experiment vaults, is highly unlikely in my opinion...
Most likely for the South Dakota vaults is Rapid City, SD, Sioux Falls, SD and the central one is probably the capital Pierre, SD. Interesting note though is South Dakota actually has tons of underground bunkers throughout the state from the Cold War era.
So, weird coincidence: I started preliminary work on a post-nuclear war sci-fi series a couple of years ago and the location it is going to be set is almost dead-on where the vault in western Montana appears to be. I chose that spot specifically because nuclear projections showed that it would have less potential fallout than other areas and it was smack-dab in the middle of a very active geothermal area (which would have been the explanation for the subterranean shelter's power source). This makes me think that a *lot* of these seemingly random vault locations aren't random at all. (Currently finishing work on another series, and have another in the chute after this, but the *next* one after that will be the one I'd been researching for.)
For the non Nashville Vault, I am excited to say that just west of Knoxville is Oak Ridge Labs.... aka the blacksite labs where the WW2 "Little Boy" Atom Bomb was built... There are sooo many possibilities for this area
Kinda weird there isn’t a vault near Wichita Kansas considering it’s the biggest city in the state and it’s the airplane capital of the world. It would be a Enclave hotspot
If I were to guess, I'd say the one in Canada is located along Hwy 1; Elkhorn or Kirkella (no town), MB, or Fleming or Moomsomin, SK. A post on Reddit offers a reference in Toronto.
Thank you, very interesting. Many would not be in the actual city in some of those states. Some of those are military post/base, nuclear silos, ammunition depots, etc. It seems many of them that you mapped would be correct. Hopefully we get more information from Fallout some day that will help explain more. :)
Glad we could help on this awesome project
NO WAY! Yes thank you for making accessible Mapping software!
this is a first for me seeing the official google account comment on a vid
NANI? How does THIS happen?
Edit: It's the real thing; I even checked their playlists. HOW?
@@adamherrington2638. Same. I didn't even know they had their own UA-cam channel.
HEY GOOGLE! Do a Barrel Roll!
Technically vault 101 is right next to me but traffic is so bad I would never make in time lol
101 woulda been an okay vault too
I think the Vault in the Ash Heap from Fallout 76 is the closest one to me.
Also you would have to be rich to even get a spot in the vault 😭 See you as a ghoul if we’re lucky
Uhhh vault is for super rich people and the vault tec management people and their family. or people with connection to the management.
Look at those vaults. Only hundreds.
If one vault can only be home for like.. 200 peoples, that means 200 x 100 vaults = only 20K humans inside the vaults.
And out of those vault dwellers, not all are living happy life.
This is what I thought, unless cars in the Fallout universe are faster but idk what difference that would make
15:14 that's Vault 120 - the under water Vault was cut from the game but there is a mod that brings it back - unfortunately the very ambitious sidequest tied to it wasn't finished by the devs
Came to comment this!
Vault 120 from the quest "20 Leagues Under the Sea" was supposed to be a "Bioshock" style vault run by a hyper intelligent squid.
Originally it was supposed to be a follow on from the Yangtze Repair quest and would have led to you having taken the Yangtze to the vault.
The location on the map is somewhat accurate, the IRL Stellwagen Bank (called Stellwagen Gorge in game) is north of Provincetown (that cape you see east of Plymouth on the map)
Wouldn’t it be crazy if they finish that content for the upgrade coming at the end of the month?
@@BlueJayz474 yeah indeed crazy. My big dream regarding thefranchise would be if Bethesda and Obsidian would team up, make a newer version of the Creation Kit Engine 2 and develop Fallout 5 in a new location and then rerelease each Fallout game as a giant gamesized DLC in this new engine - I think if both studios would work together on this it would be feasable for them to finish the main game until 2030 and then bring out each DLC one year at a time but I guess nobody at Bethesda actually sees the potential this would have and the ridiculous amount of money they could make
@@funki4896Bethesda will never team up with obsidian, for some reason Todd doesn’t seem to like them
@@jagerzaku9160 And what a shame that is. Considering how much I liked New Vegas, and how much they were able to do off of porting over assets from 3, and then adding to them, I don't see why he would dislike them, unless it were somehow a matter of some jealousy.
I think it's also fair to consider this image was shown at an undisclosed time before the bombs actually dropped. Who knows how many more were finished/started between this scene and the apocalypse.
~1 minute thirty seconds as it was a news broadcast and the nukes dropped during the broadcast
@@xyreniaofcthrayn1195uhh this from the show
@@xyreniaofcthrayn1195 No, he's specifically talking about the scene in the show, not the video game. The scene where Vault-Tec was basically selling vaults and stoking an atmosphere of experiment focused competition. Depending on when that scene takes places, there could have been more time to add extra vaults not currently represented by the ONLY official full map of all vaults in the US. This map, by virtue of when it appears, may or may not be complete, as it could also just represent only the vaults they were willing to sell, instead of listing all the ones they wanted to keep secret...
@@Chris-re3lv episode 1 not 5 minutes in or did we watch two totally different shows by the name fallout with the same actors?
@@xyreniaofcthrayn1195 read
Most people are forgetting this isn’t a complete list, this is so early pre war that Vault Boy doesn’t even exists yet so any missing vault literally haven’t been built yet
Potentially. We don't know for sure.
Yeah, it could also mean that these were just plotted ones. We know from Fallout 4 there was at least one vault that was in construction hell, and was never finished on time. Pretty sure there were a handful of others in that way too.
@@majorplothole2620there was three in Boston do to corruption, poor timing and other problems
Let's not forget these are just all the ones they had ready at the time, there's no exact date on the scene so there could be a lot more that got finished later or were under construction before the nukes hit.
Exactly, these are the ones they were offering for sale to the other corporations.
They finished all the ones they were going to finish before they themselves dropped the bombs.
@@gordonhowett7529 Some were their experiments. Remember the one that was supposed to house the mayor of Boston was still incomplete when the bombs hit. It had been supplied and equipped, but never got occupants.
@@WaltWW Remember RobCo and Reppcon still separate entity in the scene until Reppcon merge with RobCo in 76.
so the year can be 74-75.
@@WaltWW If they were going to drop the bombs on that day, it's unlikely Barb would have let her daughter go to a random party. I think that's a nod to the fanon idea that we'll never find out for sure who did it, but the Chinese, Americans, Vault-Tec and even the Zetans all planned to do it.
I think it genuinely makes more sense for the Vaults to not be in the cities themselves but instead to be more isolated.
But it is established in the games that some Vaults were directly in some cities. For example, Vault 21 was right on the Strip of Las Vegas, the entrance not hidden whatsoever. And even smaller cities or suburbs can get a Vault; Vault 12 (Necropolis) was located in Bakersfield, and Vault 111 was in Sanctuary Hills. And it does make some logical sense, if a Vault is all the way out in the middle of nowhere, how are you supposed to make it in time before the bombs drop?
@PaleWhiteShadow depending on where you live the bombs might not drop on you right away. Also, there's no difference between isolating and centralizing a vault opening since even the vault entrance for 87 was hit directly.
@@DrendarMorevo But Las Vegas, LA, New York, San Fran, DC would are all examples of areas that most certainly likely would be direct nuke targets. In those cases Vaults in close proximity makes sense. We aren't talking about a small town in Oklahoma were people would have time to flee
@Kman20025 true, but if that's the case, how long do you *really* have between the bombs dropping and getting inside?
think it also depends what experiments there running but there more in cities the built specifically to handle a direct nuke strike so the rather have u can get in quickly
so the one near Knoxville Tennessee is actually closer to oak ridge national laboratory, site of the Manhattan project. im betting that one is actually there!
Could also be two vaults, but yeah almost certainly the labs given the Knox gold in '76
11:14 you kinda went over this too quick, but that second vault in Tennessee is in Oak Ridge. This town has important history. It's the birthplace of nuclear weapons. It's a surprise Fallout hasn't explored it in a game yet. Quick rundown of history. Government came to the area, forced people off their lands, and formed the town to headquarter the Manhattan project and enrich the uranium for the first atomic weapons. Oak Ridge became known as the secret city and the workers didn't know what they were working on until the bombings happened. There's a park and museum there dedicated to the historic event right outside ORNL. It'd be cool if we had a main game set it East Tennessee.
Honestly would be a sick location for a fallout game, too bad we've already gotten an Appalachian fallout with 76, missed opportunity to use oak ridge.
The one that's in the waters of Massachusetts, might be the cut Vault 120 I think.
It’s the vault in far harbour dlc
@@jordanenriquez4153 ah gotcha, I forgot about that one
@@jordanenriquez4153 The one in the water is potentially 120 from the cut content.
@@jordanenriquez4153I think the vault (vault 118) from far harbor is in Maine, not Massachusets - the underwater one is potentially vault 120.
@@jordanenriquez4153Bar Harbor is in Maine
As someone who’s been working on a Fallout TTRPG set in Minnesota for around 6 years now. Knowing that there’s potentially three vaults to work with in the state is amazing especially since Minneapolis and Duluth are playing big parts in the story. Here’s hoping we get more canon information on the area so I can intertwine my stuff with whatever the fallout universe does with the region.
I would love a proper midwestern fallout game.
@@mask-mimic Absolutely. Minnesota would be the perfect candidate for a Fallout game that focuses on a more winter climate. Though I’m perfectly content with it being DLC for a proper Chicago game as well.
@@LvlGenesis A game set in Chicago focused on Bethesda’s version of the Midwestern Brotherhood is most likely, although I think MN would be cool (though I’m biased towards the idea.) Having the two major factions take over one of the Twin Cities with a group of people who think the “Paul” in St. Paul Is Paul Bunyan, and do things like paint Brahmin blue. Of course a raider group based on Vikings.
yeah that one would be somewhere between Webster and Spooner in Wisconsin, but one clearly just NW of Duluth, and one somewhere in the Twin Cities. I love the idea about the various local raider factions based on Vikings, Paul Bunyan, etc. And it would be really awesome if you could visit the Fond du Lac res and it's somehow still almost completely intact, but you need to do a series of quests to be admitted in (lots of good chem shops, etc).
Is Ventura a ghoul?
I love that someone did this. Awesome work!
@@Cadkerk Hello!
Glory to Atom
KING
@@ArcticPenguin17 ⚛️
The New Mexico Vault appears to be at Los Alamos. That makes sense both as a tribute to its role in nuclear technology and because it is the wealthiest city in NM.
Oddly enough, the Vault in Canada is near CFB Shilo, which does have a Provincial emergency bunker there. I stayed in it a few nights when I was in the Forces.
Seeing the NO and Baton Rouge vaults just makes me want a Fallout game in swampy Cajun country even more.
im seeing Mirelurk but much worse lol
this video is why i love when a fandom has smart people in it because we get stuff like this
That vault over Abilene, TX is likely Vault 39 from the scrapped BoS Sequel. Or at least a nod to it. Huge Air Force base there so cool to see it make the map.
As a Texan seeing so many vaults here makes me feel warm inside at the thought of potentially having the Enclave in a future fallout game set in Texas. :)
I feel like Texas has to be a game at some point. I would also love Louisiana.
In the year 2050 yeah lol
@@orbitingpluto3213 lil bro doesn't know about BoS... LOL. if we ever go back Bethesda will have to redo all of that lore.
@@orbitingpluto3213 Even as a proud Texan myself I would rather see them do one in Louisiana. The unique culture of the area would blend well with fallout. And give them a chance to bring out some swamp monsters, I’m thinking radioactive super gators lol. Could even have a DLC or something that’s pirate related as an homage to the areas ties to 18th century piracy.
@@Gandalfthegoldenbird There is no BoS in Ba Sing Se
florida got a vault yes i can survive
You fool, it's to preserve the alligator population! They need those gators to make even more advanced deathclaws! :D
It's Florida, so you're screwed
@@BrotatoeGod nah Florida man was built for a fallout
Alligatorclaw?
I'm from NH it seems like I'm screwed
There IS a vault in Bar Harbor (Far Horbor DLC) but the one mapped here doesn't look close. I guess it also should be said that not all the vaults were built yet when this scene took place
Based on your location in northern New Mexico, that may be closer to Los Alamos. That would make from some interesting stories involving the Los Alamos National Labs. Oh boy!
Fellow New Mexican here same thought!
@@Gritz0003 Heck yeah!!! I'm In Rio Rancho so that would be a little bit of a drive for me. I may not make it to the vault in time.hahaha
I believe the cancelled Van Buren Project, which was the original developers attempt at Fallout 3 before the property was sold to Bethesda, was going to take place in the Four Corners area and Los Alamos was going to be a place in it, so that would make sense
@@jakeviscarra3150 Oh neat. I hope they use that story line at some point in the future.
Nebraska, ND, and SD have ICDM missile silos underground in the plains so maybe thats why there is a lot of vaults. They would have even more nukes to launch in Fallout
I thought of the NIKE program as well :D
Nebraska IRL is also home to STRATCOM at Offutt Airforce base, so it's a main target for any advisory with nukes
A vault in cooperstown NY makes sense because there’s multiple fallout shelters around town. I guess people were scared that they’d nuke the baseball hall of fame museum !
Huh if that’s true my cousins would probably be in that vault they live not to far from Cooperstown
That vault in between Idaho Falls and Pocatello might be in Blackfoot!
Makes more sense for it to be in Idaho Falls though. But yea, it could be.
it definitely does make more sense. My thoughts were that it would be in Blackfoot so both people from Idaho Falls and Pocatello can get there but its more for the INL than anything.
@@TheFreeman627 yea, I could see it acting as a mid way point of sorts so that people from both towns had a chance.
@@zacharymccants77. Well, "had a chance" unless it was a control Vault; If it wasn't, the survivors probably didn't make it.
@@Matt-id5mi I work at Idahoan in Lewisville. I usually imagine that in the universe, we are where the Instamash comes from, lol
Just so you know, the one near minnesota in Wisconsin is directly upon the St. Croix river, which I believe is a major visit spot for boating/swimming.
You're spot-on with the upstate NY vault. That's Howe Caverns, an amazing labyrinth of natural caves.
And the vault east of Albany just over the MA border makes perfect sense - Lenox, Massachusetts. Right in the Berkshires 🙂
Great job!!
Only 122 Vaults actually doesn’t seem like a lot, you have to wonder how many unmarked Vaults there are too? I would say that these Vaults are just the ones Vault Tec was advertising to the public. I wanna know just how many Enclave Vaults there are like Raven Rock from Fallout 3. We know Vault Tec was working with the Government in the lore.
There is only so many people able to pay $$ to get a place in the vault in the first place for them to exist plus like you said the ones they left off the map
There's also the white springs vault in Appalachia
nuka world got that little vault whit Barberton head and that ride
also for fun 77 is just 1 guy and a box full of puppets
vault 0 is nowe must likely non canon it had the brains of vault tech
and 88 and114 where never finish
@@t84t748748t6 It seems like they reused the idea of vault 0 for vault 31, but i feel there's still place for it in the lore as a bigger vault for major vault tec employees? Plus, the new BoS is pretty similar to the Midwestern BoS - wasteland recruits, lower recruiting standards, expensable troops and more militaristic (while still having a few very religious elders).
122 is the figure given in The Fallout Bible, written by Chris Avellone for internal Black Isle/Interplay use in the making of Fallout 2 (he also worked on Fallout: New Vegas). It's not actually canon, but it's clear that Bethesda read it, as some terminals in FO3 and 4 reference information only available in it.
Because "122" has never been said on-screen Bethesda are not bound by it. The highest number we've seen on-screen is Vault 118 (the Mount Desert Island vault from Far Harbour). Including Vault 0 and the three unnumbered vaults (the demo LA Vault from Fallout 1, the Among the Stars Vault from Nuka-World and the VTU Simulation Vault from Fallout 76) that gets us up to 122 again.
The TV show also says "over a hundred" vaults. I suspect if it was closer to 200 they'd have said that, so I'd put the number of vaults between 122 and maybe ~150.
The vault near Phoenix near 6:00 seems kind of near the Palo Verde Nuclear power plant, considered one of the largest Nuclear Power Plants in the US and supplies power to several states in the west.
Yes this is Tonopah Arizona , the nuclear power plant resides in that small city. My grandparents use to live there and I could see the smoke from the highway going there when I was a kid. It’s very poor there and straight up desert lands. The I-10 is crazy packed so it’d be hard to make to that vault.
As a person in Wisconsin, I'm scared that I only have 2 vaults near me in universe but I can't wait to see!!!
Madison area makes sense but why is the only other one like spooner/turtle lake area? Who knows but it's funny one of the most middle of nowhere vaults is in NW Wisconsin.
I'm from Wisconsin originally and moved to Missouri. Glad this isn't FO. We didn't get any!!!
Spooner is probably because of all the NG armories around it, and highway layout.
@drcrowlee yep we're screwed so is Indiana
I am also from northern Wisconsin and when I watched the show I immediately looked at where the vaults would be.
Madison, Minneapolis, the “Great Lakes” one is meant for Duluth/Superior… which would make sense.
But I was honestly surprised by the Spooner/Rice Lake vault….
Nothing but small towns… I could see Eau Claire maybe… but it’s clearly not that far South.
There was suposed to be a underwater vault in fo4 , kinda a bioshock flavored side quest but it was cut , neat to see its a connon vault tho
Maybe it'll be part of the next gen update!
Probably not tho
The vault in Maine should be Vault 118 which is right outside Bar Harbor (Far Harbor DLC).
My favorite dlc
Still feel the vault itself was a letdown in game
Hey Nikki, PA resident here. The three vaults in PA are all but certainly meant to represent Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia. I mean, there are lot of other populated areas, but most non-residents can probably only name those 3 cities 😆They are really two popular cities with the capital situated fairly between.
I would be very surprised if Vault-Tec's ultimate plan did not include a vault in each state capitol.
I think the one in the middle is for State College which actually makes a lot of sense considering Penn State is an engineering pipeline for defense contractors
The one on the left looks to be potentially in the New Castle/Slippery Rock area of western PA.
@@duanekc. And, also knowing Vault Tec, most of those were probably not out of the kindness of their hearts.
I was thinking the Harrisburg vault might be Hershey.
i noticed that most of the dots in Massachusetts were shown closer to the western part of the state, despite fallout 4 only taking place in the greater Boston area (from concord to quincy). i think the only in game vault the tv show maps there is vault 111, but of course 5 dots honed in on boston would be pretty distracting lol.
also the vault that looks like its off the coast of provincetown could be a shoutout to the cut underwater vault in 4 (which would've been in nahant!)
This map was representing the vaults that they were willing to sell. There's a possibility that the vaults we know of were unlisted from this map, and/or not complete at the time the map was made. I think they would have made a great deal many unlisted vaults, and only indicated a portion to be sold.
I do like that, in the game, you can walk, relatively quickly, through concord and into Quincy. Which, of course, in reality, they are nowhere near each other lol
I think it's worth noting that Vaults that are in the middle of nowhere make a lot of sense in the lore. It just means that something was going on in the area, a governement/vault tec facility or a planned experiment on the local population. This could explain why the dots aren't centered in most of the larger cities, they're intentionally in the suburbs. The unfinished vault in 4 is a good example of a good reason why, it's just harder to build in the middle of a city. Maybe closer to the rich neighborhoods too.
It also makes sense that there would be big clusters where local interest was more easy to gather. Especially in DC and Maryland where vault tec had their university, 76 was intended to be one of the controls after all. It would make sense to cluster a lot of control vaults of loyalists actually.
The third Vault in Kansas appears to be near Fort Riley military base, outside Manhattan, and the Kansas City vault, given how Vault-Tec liked to locate their vaults, I would suggest is in or around Subtropolis, a series of limestone mines on the Missouri side of the river which have been repurposed to secure storage, for both public and government use.
As a Canadian im happy to see one here in the land of the goose
Funny that it’s in literally nowhere in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, you’d think it’d be more near the Toronto area.
@@BlueJayz474 I think it's due to having a reference to Saskatchewan in Fallout 3.
Don't look into Fallout 4's protagonist bro
@@officialromanhours It was head canon, and was retconned by the person who said it.
This is fantastic, I love it when people use their own corner of academia to give us an insight that we wouldn't otherwise have into fictional worlds like Fallout.
Also, well done on apparently confirming that the Fallout 4 underwater vault that was cut from the game seems to be canon!
6:27 that location in New Mexico is almost perfectly on Los Alamos. Which is a national laboratory specializing in nuclear science and was the location of the Manhattan Project, where the atomic bomb was invented
Being from Dayton, Ohio I was a bit disappointed we didn't get a vault. But it makes sense to have the vaults in Columbus and Cincy. There is no doubt a huge Enclave or BoS installation in Dayton though thanks to Wright Patterson.
I think that Cleveland and Detroit need vaults too, because the retrofuturist split happened before the Rust Belt could form in the 1980's of our world.
Some of the locations that seem to be in the middle of nowhere are in fact military installations in the real world. Examples would be New Mexico having vaults for the relatively small population of the state that are closer to military goings on (and border patrol) than they are the actual cities. Also Montana, North and South Dakota. Actually, something really cool I noticed is the one in Colorado Springs, Colorado is literally the Cheyenne Mountain NORAD Station...which is already an actual bomb shelter. One that I do believe was used as inspiration for the concept of Vaults in the Fallout universe to begin with. Really cool stuff.
As a Canadian, I was very excited to see there was a vault in Canada. Even if it was due to us being annexed in the fallout universe. It looks to be near Moosomin, which I have never heard of before referencing the vault map with our own. I really hope we get a full game or DLC set in Canada like Ronto or something.
Im from Wisconsin. I grew up about an hour, hour and a half from the Spooner area. Spooner is kind of suprising, but not really. The reasons I can think of for Spooner having a vault are, Spooner is where Hwy 53, 63, and 70 come together. The Spooner Armory is almost a center point where it sits since the highways "X" in. The highway system connects the Superior, Ashland, Hayward, Spooner, and Rice lake armories. Those are the ones I know of in that area off the top of my head. Also, Shell Lake is quite a popular Tourist destination. When I was in the service, people talked about Shell Lake and Eau Claire a lot when I travelled out of state.
The Maine one is off, but most likely the one near Bar Harbor (aka Far Harbor) under the hotel.
This is brilliant, Im talking about minor stuff in the show with my friends and you pointed out this show displays all the vaults. This is the most important background lore of the show.
As someone who grew up in Morristown, NJ, I'm glad we would have a vault to raid in the apocalypse.
Gotta love the random Canadian vault in the middle of nowhere 😭 The closest city of any notable size would be Brandon, Manitoba and it’d still be a very long drive from that vault. Even if it’s a map from before more vaults were made, why would the first one in Canada be in the middle of nowhere?
Omaha's vault is under their airport. Interesting
Tbh it's probably a bit further south near Offutt Air Force Base, that would make more sense
That second dot in Tennessee is very likely supposed to be in Oak Ridge. Considering that's where a lot of nuclear research is done in the US it would make a ton of sense to build one there as it has a 100% chance of getting targeted by nukes. It wouldn't make sense for vault tech to intentionally make a vault outside Knoxville instead of a larger city like Memphis.
Everyone got into a vault and I'm a 303 year old Ghoul sitting on his porch shooting rad roaches and raiders while sitting on my porch in vernon VT....
“Between Louisville and Lexington” is where the state capitol Frankfort is so that definitely feels right. Also glad to see my hometown Savannah got a vault :)
Washington's got vaults, so I pray for a Pacific Northwest story.
If North Dakota got a vault, I'm sure there's a budget for purely government and military vaults. You know for the purposes of actually surviving and rebuilding the USA. They don't even have to be Enclave related.
We got fallout the frontier already. 🤣
@@brandon9172🙅♀️
@@brandon9172 Some poor bastard is going to look that up and be scarred for life
As a New Mexico native, I want to say the vault there is in Los Alamos. Which makes sense, its where a TON of New Mexico's PhDs live and the infamous Los Alamos labs where Manhattan Project took place.
The part with the crashed satellite where the Doctor and Lucy are near LAX was a point I even found. They were north of LAX because you could tell from the tower next to the terminal that it was to he left, indication they were far north of it.
There's a lot of landscapes that make little sense. Like how shady sands had a city in the backdrop. Unless that was actually part of the NCR capital... That makes no sense because SS was in the middle of the desert.
Shady Sands was built up after Fallout 1; When it's time to revisit it in Fallout 2, it's more of a full fledged city and is described as such in New Vegas at multiple points.
The three in SD are Sioux Falls(largest city in the state,) Pierre(State Capitol,) and Rapid City/Black Hills area(which houses a huge AFB.) South Dakota also has a pile of abandoned Nuclear Missle silos from the cold war Era and a bunch of fallout bunkers from the cold war era.
so there's not a vault in Alaska? I might have to move
There was a huge war in Alaska in the Fallout universe with China so there could be a secret one and for sure military bases.
Alaska gets invaded by China.
If I’m not mistaken Alaska was where America was fighting the Chinese in lore so not much time to build a vault
Vault 25 was in Eastern Anchorage
@@MatthewCaban i live 8 hours away from Anchorage, i’m cooked
Something else I noticed about the project was that Vault 13's location on this map lines up perfectly with it's location in Fallout 2's map due to the geolocation data they used for reference. Whether they did this as a nice homage, or as a clue of things to come - or even just a sheer coincidence - I have no idea, but it's cool nonetheless.
Great work on the map!
The mix of vaults near bases is a given but big shout out to all the reservations.
It’s important to note that the vaults, while having some government funding, were still a private endeavor so omissions from major areas like Detroit and Indianapolis could easily be chalked up to Vaults Tec not coming to agreements with those cities/states for buying the land or zoning/construction agreements
11:15 As someone who used to live in the Knoxville area, that is closer to Oak Ridge, which is known in the real world as the Atomic City. Oak Ridge played a role in the Manhattan Project and would have been a major power center in the Fallout prewar USA.
3 interesting things to mention.
The Vault out in the water near Massachusetts could be a reference to the cut aquatic vault from Fallout 4.
There should be a marker near Bar Harbour, Main, we visit vault 118 in the Farharbour DLC.
In Fallout New Vegas Chief Hamlin of the NCR Rangers stats that several rangers have been pulled away from the Mojave by the NCR President to hunt ghosts down in Baja.
I help you with Pennsylvania. The map is skewed slightly high You would have to drop it down a bit. You're looking at Pittsburgh, Altoona, York and Allentown
If you use those as reference points you'll see that the ones in Maryland sit back down on the DC and stuff like that. So yeah your map is skewed about 50 miles north once you're hitting Virginia Maryland area
This is a super fun project! When youve got a chance, id love to see you break down lore of the vaults and really chart them, like we know the numbers and locations for all the ones weve been to directly, and lore for ones weve not been too, we can assume the vaults that are refrenced but not seen in the games are at least near by. Also, now i want a fallout game in texas really bad.
Wooo! I thought you weren't gonna talk about the show anymore but I'm glad you're back for a lil bit!!
The one on the edge between Nebraska and Iowa is likely in Nebraska, but only just. The dot appears to be right about right about where Offutt air force base is, which happens to be the location of US Strategic Command. There's actually already an underground bunker there for high ranking military during emergencies. For instance in 9/11 that's where they took the president. So it makes sense that vault-tec would choose a location near there, if only for a military based experiment (which we've seen them do)
Missouri is probably Columbia, MO. State University is there, Interstate 70 runs thru it. It would take too much effort to explain why Jeff City doesnt make sense.
Nice! Thanks for doing this. Was immediately thinking about georeferencing when I saw that map in the show, but I knew I’d never find time to get around to it.
Hey Tunnelsnakesfool,
4:34 I live in Salem, Oregon(pronounced organ, like the liver. The “e” isn’t pronounced) and I believe there are two likely locations of the Salem Vault.
One would be in Minto Brown State Park. It would be slightly northwest of the marked location on the West Salem side. (Salem is divided by a bridge.) Minto Brown has a “Taco Bridge” leading into a wetlands nature preserve. It would be away from prying eyes that may want to see what’s going on and would be secluded from the majority of the population.
The other likely location would be downtown Salem. There are an interesting amount of underground tunnels underneath downtown. While less secluded, the earth is very hard claylike soil, leading to a good location to build an underground vault. It would have to be deep enough to keep the concrete away from the moisture and rain which is pretty constant for about 3-5 month out of the year.
There are a couple bigger buildings downtown that would make it easy to hide a vault. So that makes it the more likely of the two suggested locations.
Cool Overview. I couldn’t resist taking the vault shot and putting it in photoshop, counted the vaults, overlayed a us map with capitals to see where they are. Would be cool to add the actual Vault numbers of the “Known” locations of vaults to this map. Many of the known Vaults have the info of what state & city they are in. Look forward to seeing a future cross reference version. I love Maps. ❤🤘 Rock on Cartographers & Vault Dwellers!
The one north of Pittsburgh is consistent with the location of the irl Iron Mountain/National Underground Storage facility for data and film so that’s cool to see.
I think it would make sense for vaults to be on the outskirts of cities, which we see in games. Assuming the cities were directly hit there wouldnt be much time to get people in. It’s interesting may are near highway junctions, since you’d make it easy on people from around those cities to there. Plus suburbs generally have weather people who would be able to afford it, so it makes sense.
If I had to guess (probably going really deep into the rabbit hole here but who cares) that the Vault located near Allentown, Reading and Pottstown PA is located along Route 100 near a town called Bechtelsville. If you look on the map, there is a huge hole being used as a quarry. Similar to Vault 111, this would’ve been good spot for a Vault door that lowered into the earth.
yeah i remember hearing about there being a cut underwater vault from fallout 4, had a mutant octopus boss fight n everything, so that's probably what the vault in the ocean near boston was representing
The one in SE Ohio is just to the east of Marietta, where Intercommonwealth Highway 77 crosses the Ohio River. The precise location may be around and to the north of Reno. This area is in the Wayne National Forest and verges on the western extent of the region of Appalachia, which includes southeastern Ohio.
77 , or just 7 is a reoccurring number in fallout, due to the numbers relevancy in Radiation.
My friend and I headcanoned a vault under Mt Rushmore. I come see this video - and I realize one of the vaults is literally where Mt Rushmore is. Not surprising, but it's still very cool that a Mt Rushmore vault is canon.
That third vault in Kansas not near Topeka and Kansas City definitely reminds me of the old cold war missile silo locations out in that area of the plains/flint hills area, Abilene specifically I know for sure had one which was pretty close as well, always fun to see these sorts of things as a local :)
Throwing my hat in, it appears that the vault in Western Colorado lines up with an area that was the leader in uranium production in the early 1900s and continued to be a major producer through the century, with Grand Junction being the largest population center in the area. Judging by comments, it looks like the focus wasn't only on population centers but also on places with nuclear history. I can fully picture there being a higher population in the area in Fallout's alternate timeline, with a lot of mining being done there for the warheads and other purposes.
As someone from Kentucky, I think the vault in our state is in Frankfort, the capital of the state. It’s between Louisville and Lexington
It was probably already said, but the Vault in the water was probably the cut vault from fallout 4. It was in the water and was going to have a giant squid.
The second Idaho dot might be the Idaho National Laboratory, where a lot of early nuclear energy research was done. Seems like the kind of place that would be important in the fallout timeline
2 vaults in Wyoming looks like either Laramie or Cheyenne for the one right above Denver, Co. The one on the boarder of Nebraska and Wyoming would most likely be Torrington Wyoming
Amazing work on this (from a fellow Geo-nerd)! I know all of us in the fandom were excited to see canon maps, and clearly, you most of all. From this, my impressions are:
- I think it's fairly safe and definitive to see the dots can represent multiple vaults. That's completely backed-up by the games.
- It's impressive the logic the Fallout creators put into Vault locations: not only near population centers that would more readily need it based on their risk of being targeted by nukes (more so than rural/suburban America), but also state capitols consistently and also geographic security of mountains, explaining their prevalence in California and West Virginia.
- Vault-Tec employees either said f*ck y'all or really wanted to protect Indiana, Connecticut, and Delaware.
- - Plus, they really missed an opportunity for collaboration with GARY, Indiana.
- I think it's SUPER interesting there's one each in Canada AND Mexico. Like Canada gets a consolation prize for being annexed (screw the GTA apparently lol), but Mexico too? what's US-Mexico relations like.
- I do recall another UA-camr mentioning that there was planned underwater vault in Fallout 4. What a missed opportunity, cuz that woulda been Subnautica-levels of FUN.
P.S. I still think we need a New Orleans set Fallout. Most unique geo-cultural region that wouldn't overlap with previous games (with a snowy based setting the only other contender... and Hawaii, which, did HI or Alaska get any vaults??), lending to plenty of new mutated creatures, but would easily slot into the musical vibe of the games.
The vault north of Sacramento definitely has to be at Beale Air Force Base
Would be neat to see a layer on the map with known vault locations from the games as some of those are in pretty identifiable locations, probably taggable within a few hundred feet or so
Might be a bit more difficult doing that since the maps are naturally scaled down from the real world.
The one in the water could be in reference to a cut quest in fallout 4 where you did go in a vault underwater and from my understanding you were supposed to have a fight with a sea creature under water
Nice to know there's a shelter near me both IRL and in fallout
I wouldn’t be surprised if Vault-Tech kept some vault locations classified and not on this map. Might account for spots were vaults seem to be “missing”
Lore-wise, I'd say that most of the Vaults near cities would likely be outside of them, just based on logic. Cities would be primary targets for nukes and a Vault is useless if irritated/blasted by atomic fire before there was anyone there to close the Vault door. Any that are clearly inside a major city were likely like Vault 4: a Vault already occupied by a full compliment of people.
Your map is awesome! Even when it was on TV, I paused it around there so I could count, and I only counted like... 117, 118, vaults. There are 122 in lore, and so - leaving 4 or 5 vaults out purposefully does seem like a very vault tech thing to do. Sure it could easily be that they weren't completed or dug in yet, or they hadnt' even decided WHERE they were going to build them...
They could also be in Alaska, Hawaii, or any of the numerous holdings that the US had.
As for some of the vaults being in the actual cities they represent and others being out in the middle of nowhere - that sounds about right. Some of these vaults were experiments, some were actually control vaults, some others had military implications to them.
as there was only like.. 15 or so control vaults (?) the likelihood that they would run the vaults in Oklahoma, Canada, Nebraska, and the Dakotas - as anything BUT wacky experiment vaults, is highly unlikely in my opinion...
Most likely for the South Dakota vaults is Rapid City, SD, Sioux Falls, SD and the central one is probably the capital Pierre, SD.
Interesting note though is South Dakota actually has tons of underground bunkers throughout the state from the Cold War era.
So, weird coincidence: I started preliminary work on a post-nuclear war sci-fi series a couple of years ago and the location it is going to be set is almost dead-on where the vault in western Montana appears to be. I chose that spot specifically because nuclear projections showed that it would have less potential fallout than other areas and it was smack-dab in the middle of a very active geothermal area (which would have been the explanation for the subterranean shelter's power source). This makes me think that a *lot* of these seemingly random vault locations aren't random at all.
(Currently finishing work on another series, and have another in the chute after this, but the *next* one after that will be the one I'd been researching for.)
For the non Nashville Vault, I am excited to say that just west of Knoxville is Oak Ridge Labs.... aka the blacksite labs where the WW2 "Little Boy" Atom Bomb was built... There are sooo many possibilities for this area
Kinda weird there isn’t a vault near Wichita Kansas considering it’s the biggest city in the state and it’s the airplane capital of the world. It would be a Enclave hotspot
If I were to guess, I'd say the one in Canada is located along Hwy 1; Elkhorn or Kirkella (no town), MB, or Fleming or Moomsomin, SK. A post on Reddit offers a reference in Toronto.
15:14 Vault 120 was a cut under water vault, story-wise they wanted it but they ran out of time.
TBH with how clustered the midwest vaults are (the nebraska and kansas ones, with desmoins), I could totally see a game taking place there.
Thank you, very interesting. Many would not be in the actual city in some of those states. Some of those are military post/base, nuclear silos, ammunition depots, etc. It seems many of them that you mapped would be correct. Hopefully we get more information from Fallout some day that will help explain more. :)
The East Tennessee vault could definitely be towards the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with its nuclear research and such.
That Maine Vault... is a little south of where it is actually located. That's Vault 118 from the Far Harbor DLC which is Bar Harbor Maine
I didn't know you were in GIS as well! Nothing weirder than getting home from an 8 hour shift of staring at Pro only to see it in a Fallout video!