The Fallout Effect

June 17, 2012

It's my tenth birthday and I can't believe I have to put up with this crap. I hate my dad. Why would he make such a stupid decision? why did he move into this stupid Vivos vault when I was a baby? It's my birthday today and instead of having fun and playing outside like a regular kid, I get to eat some crappy-tasting cake in a cramped cafeteria.

Almost everyone here is either a complete whack job or a jerk. The only real friend I have is Amata. I can always count on her. It's times like this I think that I wouldn't be in this situation if it weren't for mom dying. I think it was her death that drove dad to make us move down here. My party's gonna start in about an hour and hopefully dad at least managed to find me something decent.

June 25, 2012

I think dad's gone crazy. He gave me a fucking gun. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it down in this vault, but he doesn't seem to care. Mr. Almodover, or "The Overseer" as he likes to call himself, gave me a pretty cool digital watch. I wear it so much it's like it's welded to my wrist. I got nothing of value from anyone else.

December 28, 2012

It's past the "day of the apocalypse" and nothing has happened. Big surprise. My dad keeps insisting that the end will soon be upon us and that I should be thankful I'm in such a protected place. I try to convince him he's mad, but he won't pay me any mind.

February 13, 2014

I sneaked into my dad's office today. Him being the vault's only dentist, he has information on all the residents. I figured I might be able to get some inside information on Christine by accessing his computer. I found nothing and was about to leave before I noticed his personal journals were left open. I read the most recent entry.

"The Novocain transport pipe has a leak at point 323-XY3. A constant supply of Novocain is being added to the air supply. Due to the security and health implications of repairing it, we have decided to leave it be. The dosage is said to be small enough to have no effect on residents." I couldn't understand most of what he was talking about. I heard his footsteps approaching, so I quickly ran back to my room.

January 16, 2015

I was incredibly bored one day, as I was most days, so I decided to snoop around dad's office. he has a bobble-head with a huge medical syringe on his desk for some reason. I found his journals again and decided to read. "The gap has slowly widened over the last year. The Novocain doses are increasing. At this level, we expect minor brain damage as a side effect. I warned Alphonse of the implications, but he's gone mad with power. At this rate, the leak is doomed to increase in size. Permanent brain damage will be the result. I wouldn't be surprised if hallucinations start to set in after enough time has passed. I hope to God things resolve themselves."

I didn't know what Novocain was, but I sure knew what brain damage was. I immediately confronted my dad about what he wrote. He passed it off as a novel he was writing. It explains things better than it being true. I'll choose to believe it. For  now.

August 04, 2017

I'm suffering from what I believe are terrible hallucinations. I keep seeing giant cockroaches and my watch has become oddly high tech. I vaguely remembered my dad's journal talking about this, so I ran to his office and started reading. "I'm sure of it. Everyone is going mad from the Novocain. They're starting to fabricate things in their senses. The terrifying thing is that these hallucinations even penetrate one's memories. It's as if it completely alters your perception. Everything is livable, no one is crazy beyond reason, but if things persist to an unbearable point, I'll be forced to try to repair the pipe myself."

This was ridiculous. Why would dad say such things? The giant roaches have always been there. Ever since I was born. I even shot one on my birthday! Andy the robot had worked at dad's office for years. He was even at my party! The sheer implication he was making, that people were starting to go crazy...it's just preposterous. I'm sure this is just an inventive story of him. I'm sure everything's fine.

September 24, 2018

Today is the day of the big test! I'm really excited! I hope I'll become a Laundry Cannon Operator...Ooh! Or maybe a Pip-Boy Programmer! That would be so cool! Well, I better get going; I don't want to be late. Hopefully, I won't run into Butch and the Tunnel Snakes on my way there.

March 11, 2021

I found a note from my father. "Son, the vault is falling into ruin. I need to try my best to repair the Novocain pipe. For some reason, I'm the only one not affected by the gas. If I don't succeed or something goes wrong, I'm leaving the vault. Son, you mustn't leave. Everyone in the vault has gone homicidal and I don't know what they'll do to you. I'm not even sure if you can understand this letter. But just know that I love you." Dad is so silly.

March 12, 2021

Amata woke me up. She said there was a lock down. Officers were patrolling the halls and my father had escaped. She gave me a pistol and ran off. My God, I see what's happened. My father wasn't crazy. He was telling the truth! He was trying to save us all Everything I knew was a figment of my own creation. The ridiculous uniforms everyone wore the giant cockroaches, the robot doctor....it was all so ridiculous! How could I have been so stupid?!

I ran out of my room, determined to escape with my father. I cut a path of blood along my way, shooting what I thought were giant roaches and officers. Who knew if they were real or not? I shot the Overseer in cold blood and walked away from the sobbing form that was Amata. The exit to the vault was just within reach. I could feel my mind on fire. Everything warped before my eyes. I collapsed to the ground.

Date Unknown

I woke up at the entrance to the vault. I still had my uniform. I still had my Pip-Boy. It was all the same. I looked around. A barren landscape extended for miles. I was free of the vault, yet everything remained the same. How could this be? It hit me. It's all real. I was sane; my father was the crazy one. I had entered into a new, post-apocalyptic world and it was mine for the taking! I felt unstoppable! I picked up a radio signal on my watch and started running through the scorched field. On the horizon was what appeared to be a shanty town of some sort. I had a good feeling about this. I was on top of the world. I was unstoppable. I was the Lone Wanderer!

Subject 134 is one of our most interesting cases. We have no name for him, but he calls himself "the Lone Wanderer." He was found running around the Mojave Desert screaming, shouting, and talking to random foliage. he was also reported to be seen shooting at wildlife with a BB gun. Upon closer interrogation, he insists upon thinking he's in a post-apocalyptic landscape. He insists upon calling me Lucas Simms, the sheriff of some place he calls "Megaton." 

He keeps telling us that his cell is a house I provided him with upon diffusing the bomb in the center of town. The bomb he is referring to is what I believe to be the sculpture in the courtyard. We let him out occasionally. He always has the same reaction. He insists upon being in an apocalyptic world. We have no idea where he came from; he appeared to pop up out of nowhere. All we know for sure is that he shows little hope for improvement.

Point Lookout

So, it was past midnight. My brother and I were checking out the new DLC for Fallout 3 called Point Lookout; it had just been released at the time. He was the one playing, and I was on the bed next to the computer, observing. 

If you are familiar with this DLC, you know there is a mission in which you are sent to retrieve a very special book for an old man living in one of the mansions on Point Lookout. The book was called the Kriveknih and, later on, you find out that it supposedly has some kind of dark power and needs to be destroyed. You can either give it back to the man or destroy it by taking the book to the Dunwich building in the Capital Wasteland.

As my brother is interested in occult stuff, he found this quest really interesting. Before even doing anything more with the quest, he went on Falloutwiki and looked up all the info he could find on the book and what would happen after. I thought it was stupid of him to get everything spoiled, if he now found it such an interesting quest, but he said he somehow felt some kind of greater importance to it.

After shooting through the Ritual Site, killing all of the swampfolk there, he decided to destroy the book, which forced him to go back to the Capital Wasteland (the original game world). At this point, he didn't have enough caps to buy another river-boat ticket, so he killed Panada (a trader in Point Lookout) at the docks, and took all of her caps. I found this very strange, as my brother isn't playing as a bad character and would always do the morale and right thing, wanting good karma....but not this time.

After coming back to the riverboat docks in the Capital Wasteland, he began making his way towards the Dunwich building. Girdershade, the place where you get the Nuka-Cola Challenge, was the closest location discovered, so he went there, only to realize that the place was deserted. The two people that used to live in the little town had vanished. We thought it must have been a game bug, as my brother never killed them. We ignored it and he moved on.

finally, he arrived. He went through the levels pretty quick, witnessed the hallucinations and the self-opening doors. We weren't really scared by any of that because we knew it was going to be there. He got to the underchambers and placed the book on the creepy-looking alter, and it somehow completed the mission by destroying the book.

At this point, my brother figured it would be a good time to head to Rivet City to sell some stuff he had gotten from Dunwich. Guess what? Not a single person could be found there. At this point we got really freaked out. We checked the other settlements: Megaton, The Citadel, Tenpenny Tower, and all of them were empty. We restarted the game and reloaded, but nothing helped. 

We figured we could go back to Point Lookout and see if there was anyone left there. The only problem was that Tobar (the guy who owns the boat) wasn't around anymore either, so we couldn't buy a ticket. When my brother was about to leave the boat again, he was attacked; attacked by the very same people missing from all of the settlements.

It must have been over 100 people just charging the boat - throwing grenades, shooting missiles, wanting my brother DEAD. He didn't really have anything that could kill all the people at once, so we thought it would be a good idea if he went into the little cabin on the boat and wait for them to come. That didn't work out as we planned.

They didn't run in; instead, someone with a fat man launched a mini-nuke into the cabin, completely blowing my brother into pieces. Right after that, the game froze and we had to restart it.

Now, everything was fine. No one attacked us and everyone was exactly where they were supposed to be.

(I apologize if there are any typos in the place names and such. I have never played Fallout 3 or looked into it, so I don't know what's right. If you see a typo, just tell me in the comments and I'll get right to it.

Some /x/philes claimed that this was 100% possible through a series of glitches, btw.)

Galaxy News Radio Numbers Station

Fallout 3 contains several in-game radio stations. The most diverse and important of them is Galaxy News Radio. Many players of the evil persuasion know you can kill Three-Dog (the DJ) and he will be replaced by a technician called Margaret.

Margaret doesn't have a charismatic personality and has very little to say. It seems like she doesn't enjoy her new announcing duties for the station. She also never appears in person and, therefore, cannot be killed. Once Three-Dog is dead, you're stuck with Margaret.

What most players don't know, however, is that under certain circumstances, Galaxy News Radio will become a "numbers station." A numbers station is a station that broadcasts an unusual coded message. Many of these exist in real life and some hypothesize they are a nuclear retaliation control network.

Simply check Wikipedia for more information about these odd broadcasts, as they relate to the real world. Anyway...

No one is really sure which actions are needed to hear the numbers station in Fallout 3. It appears that you must kill Three-Dog, because no one has reported hearing the numbers station with him still alive.

It also appears that you have to skip over the quest, "Galaxy News Radio," where you help boost the signal so the station can broadcast further than the immediate DC area. This is easy enough to do with either a speech check or simply using FalloutWiki to look up where to go next and advance the main plot.

Finally, you definitely have to choose to destroy Raven Rock. This is the actual trigger to turn GNR into a numbers station and it will remain as such for the rest of the game. However, the vast majority of players who perform these actions still continue hearing the standard GNR broadcasts, so there must be several more requirements the community has yet to isolate.

If you're lucky enough to have hit upon the right set of circumstances, you will get a message just after destroying Raven Rock. "Radio signal lost," it'll say, before another message appears a few seconds later that says, "Radio signal found." You cannot, however, actually listen to GNR just yet because you didn't boost the signal and are out of range of the broadcast.

Luckily, Raven Rock is situated high in the mountains and is right near one of the few places outside DC that you can get high enough to catch the signal. So far, there are six confirmed locations to hear the GNR numbers station.

1. Within the immediate DC area, obviously. This is true for the normal Galaxy News Radio throughout the game.
2. At the top of the ferris wheel at Pilgrim's Landing. This is only accessable through the Point Lookout DLC.
3. On the tops of some of the satcom arrays you can climb in the northwestern map area.
4. On the roof of Tenpenny Tower, though this may be within the normal broadcast range.
5. On the highest point of the broken bridge around Arefu. Again, this may be within broadcast range anyway.
6. On some of the highest points of the mountaintop in the area near Raven Rock. This is obviously your easiest chance to first listen to the numbers station.

When you tune in, you'll hear a familiar voice: Three-Dog, despite the fact that you killed him earlier. He doesn't seem to be 'in character,' so it's technically not Three-Dog but his voice actor, Erik Dellums.

He reads a series of numbers in a monotone, depressed voice, always reciting a list of single digits between nine and twelve characters long (i.e. "nine-three-seven-nine-one-seven-two-zero-three-four."). He never uses multi-digit numbers like 'eleven' or 'forty.'

These numbers are followed by widely varying lengths of morse code. The song "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" follows this. All other music tracks seem to be inactive on the numbers station.

The morse code was the easiest part of the mystery to crack, as the code is widely available and many people actually know it by heart. We quickly had a list of a great number of messages in English. Some sounded completely mundane and even comical, such as, "Washed the car today, maybe Chinese for dinner," or, "Have you watched my Youtube video yet? I uploaded myself kicking bums in the nuts."

You may be saying, "But wait, Youtube doesn't exist in the Fallout universe," and you're right. As far as we could tell, all of the messages sounded like they were based in our reality, somewhere near present day.

Some of the messages, however, are quite sinister, such as, "The Queen has died today. The world mourns, as on days like these, we are all brits," or, "I can't believe they've actually done it. Not long left. The noise. I can't take the noise anymore. I have a pistol in the attic."

Just recently, a player on the wikiforums noticed a message that brought light to the meaning of them. He was reading a thread that collected all known messages (transposed from Morse to English) and he saw the line, "one-two-zero-five-five-two-eight-two-zero-one-zero. What you talkin' 'bout? You'll be missed."

He realized this referred to the recent death of Gary Coleman and the numbers were the time and date of his death. He immediately scanned through the messages to try and find more examples of this apparent future telling by a game that's more than a year old. The next message he read shocked him and pushed him to enlist the aid of others to decipher the codes.

"nine-four-five-four-two-zero-two-zero-one-zero. Accident in the gulf, several dead. Oil spill apparently averted." He realized this was the BP explosion and the erroneous day-one assessment that the well was not leaking.

From this point on, all numbers will be transcribed as times and dates. All times were given in-game in military format and remain so in this document.

Numerous members of the FalloutWiki message board began looking for the messages to see what else we could learn. We quickly found that most of the dates were after the game had been released, yet some were from the past. "22:16 April 18, 1865. he's dead and blame will probably be placed on that actor, Booth. Johnson better not cheat me out of the payment." This shed new doubt on the official version of the Lincoln assassination.

As the community quickly started piling up interpretations of the messages, the moderators of the site summarily banned everyone who had posted in the thread. All references to the numbers station was removed from FalloutWiki and filtering software was put in place to prevent reposting of any relevant information.

A few people, however, are still trading emails today and slowly finishing the translation of the remaining messages and putting dates to the existing ones.

• "The queen has died today. The world mourns, as on days like these, we are all brits." 4:02 March 19, 2014
• "Have you watched my Youtube video yet? I uploaded myself kicking bums in the nuts." 4:16 December 24, 2012
• "I can't believe Britney's actually won an oscar!" 21:33 February 27, 2023
• "I can't believe they've actually done it. Not long left. They were warned, but they just had to keep pushing the boundaries of science. The noise. I can't take the noise anymore. And the light, dear God! The Universe is slowly unraveling around us. I'm not going to wait for death. I have a pistol in the attic." This is the only message not preceded by a string of numbers.

It may be worth noting that the latest date on any of the messages is 1:27 July 6, 2027.

Fallout 2's Secret Ending

In Fallout 2, after you beat the game, you can continue playing. Remember that defunct vault near the beginning? The one with the toxic sludge on the ground and the elevator where you can kill golden geckos? It's called "Toxic Caves" on the world map, but it's clearly a very small vault with three levels, including the first cave level where you take a ladder down to the actual vault structure.

If you have one of the original pressings of the game and haven't patched it, you can return to the Toxic Caves after the game is over. If you have the item "Heart Pills" from the Westin murder case, you can kill yourself in the elevator

After the usual death scene plays, the screen will stay black without the menu opening back up. After several minutes, you will begin to hear a hollow, echoing white noise cave-type sound. The screen will slowly fade back in and your character will be in a pile of that nasty biomass goo that was around the Master in the first game. Your character will stand up and the usual ambient soundtrack will start playing, but the white noise continues.

Explore this new level but DO NOT pick any locks. Those areas are extremely off limits and the developers put some very nasty programming tricks into the code to protect their secrets.

As you continue further into the level, the white noise will increase in volume and the ambient soundtrack will begin to glitch out. This may be because the Fallout engine wasn't designed to be able to play two music tracks simultaneously.

Passing locked door after locked door, you will come upon many of the characters you met earlier in the game. Oddly, only characters that died or that would reasonably be expected to die after you last saw them are the only ones you will find. Like the official endings, the characters found vary depending on how you played the game.

If you were the good guy and tried to solve problems without violence, you will find only a few bad guys and other unfortunate victims here. If you slaughtered every down, however, you will see several-hundred characters.

Regardless of what you did earlier, none of the characters will speak to you or react in any way. They can't be pick-pocketed, killed, pushed aside, or healed. If you even try to use First Aid, Doctor, or any healing items on them, a text box pops up that says, "It's much too late for that, Chosen."

It would appear that this place is Purgatory or, possibly, Hell (based on the fact that it's populated entirely by dead characters). The final character, who stands just before the final door, is always the player character model from the first game. This is the only character you can interact with and, as you approach, the white noise reaches a crescendo and the ambient music abruptly cuts out.

If you simply bypass him/her and open the final door, the game will play the end credits once again, but with pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasake victims in the background. This is in extremely poor taste and many have wondered why the creators would be so insensitive. When asked, they deny the sequence exists and call it a hack that was never in the official game at all.

After the end credits are over, you are greeted with a typical game over screen and get booted to the desktop.

If you talk to the final character, he will explain that he is, in fact, the Vault Dweller from the first game - your ancestor. He will tell you that he is disappointed in the way you turned out. He turns his back on you and your character collapses in a pile of bones, a death animation that I have never seen in any other part of the game. Afterward, the game fades to white and the computer locks up, forcing a hard reset.

There is a third option: those locked doors I mentioned earlier. There is one door; it's always random which door it is, but if you get lucky you can use any heavy explosive to blow it open. Inside, you will find a single foot locker containing a 10mm pistol with no clip in the picture and no ammo. None of your normal 10mm ammo can be used with it.

You can 'load' the gun with the 'Easter Egg' found in the basement of New Reno Arms, however. Fire this at the final character and the game will cut to an over-the-shoulder video showing a young man playing an unidentified game similar to Fallout.

Some people claim this is an early version of either Fallout Tactics or Van Buren, but nothing on the screen seems to fit the descriptions of either games. In addition, neither game had started development at the time of the original release of Fallout 2.

The video itself is poorly lit, with the apparent intention of being a creepy cipher, but nothing spooky actually happens in the video. The man simply plays the unknown game and the video slowly fades back to your desktop. It's a cool trick, but I'm not sure how they managed a gradually translucing screen back then.

Another strange trick is that according to many players, the final character always matches the character they used in Fallout 1. Both gender and apparel at the end of the previous game are represented. At first, this would appear to be a save game hack not unlike Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid, but the trick works even if the first game was played on a different computer without any of the data transferred to the new PC.

It's recommended that you do not turn on any televisions in your house for several hours after experiencing this third ending. You will quickly realize that the white noise in the game is coming from your television. Cable, satellite, and even antenna (if you still have that) are all somehow incapable of picking up a signal for some time after the third ending.

Computers and internet connections, however, still seem to work. That's how I'm writing this to you now. The funny thing, however, is that I turned my television off nearly an hour ago, as well as my computer speakers, but I still hear the static getting louder.