The next Fallout game – Fallout 76 – has just been announced. But what lies inside Vault 76? Turns out we had the answer a full three years ago, when then-resident soothsayer Steve got the scoop on not just that, but the contents of Vaults 1 through 111. So why wait for E3? Scroll this way to get the answers right now…
Vaults! When the nukes dropped on the Fallout universe, humanity slithered into hundreds of these life-sustaining, radiation-proof vaults, unaware that the sinister corporation charged with building the things had a hidden agenda. Vault-Tec used these underground bunkers to carry out bizarre sociological experiments on their unwitting residents, playing them off against one another in sick power games or pumping their air supply full of psychoactive compounds.
Fallout 4 has got literal oodles of previously unknown vaults to discover and explore. And would you know it, I just happen to have an exhaustive list of the contents of each one. How did I come across this exclusive dossier? Well, between you and me, let’s just say I made them all up in a regrettable afternoon’s work, realising too late that I hadn’t the patience or ability to get to 111, nor the modicum of shame required to consider not posting the thing as it is.
Right, here you go. Sorry.
Vault 1: Just spiders, a vault filled shin-deep with spiders. Anybody who complains about or mentions that there are spiders everywhere or remarks that it’s impossible to eat cereal without also shovelling spoonfuls of writhing spiders into your mouth is immediately banished from the vault.
Vault 2: Populated entirely by refugees from the spider vault. Residents must place their hands on their hips once a day and shout “I am so glad there are no spiders here in Vault 2, the spiderless vault that I love.”
Vault 3: Very, very slowly spinning vault. Nobody really notices.
Vault 4: Upside-down vault.
Vault 5: Inside-out vault. All other vaults are technically contained within this vault.
Vault 6: Isometric vault. No ceilings. No northwest- or northeast-facing walls.
Vault 7: Big-head mode vault.
Vault 8: Every vault resident is arbitrarily assigned a number upon entry. Five years into the experiment a pre-recorded fart sound will play across the vault and a voice will say “ooooh, who did that massive fart, I bet it was resident number 71, he smells like poo and is a big idiot”.
Vault 9: Ceilings are a couple of inches lower here.
Vault 10: No forks.
Vault 11: Very few forks.
Vault 12: One big fork everybody has to share.
Vault 13: Spooky vault.
Vault 14: The rooms of this vault are laid out such that when viewed from above they spell out the sentence “HOW COME IN THE FILM UNBREAKABLE BRUCE WILLIS ENCOUNTERS HIS ONE WEAKNESS, THAT IS, DROWNING, IN LITERALLY HIS FIRST ATTEMPT TO KNOWINGLY USE HIS POWERS OF INVULNERABILITY FOR GOOD?”
Vault 15: No girls allowed.
Vault 16: Only girls allowed.
Vault 17: Only Girls Aloud allowed.
Vault 18: Equivalent B*Witched vault.
Vault 19: Overseer is a cool robot dog who skateboards around the vault making sure everybody is having a fun time.
Vault 20: Overseer is an angry robot dog who rollerblades around the vault belching knockout gas.
Vault 21: Something really clever thought up by somebody with a proper university degree in social studies or psychology or something, in which positions of authority in the vault are arbitrarily assigned and then disorder is fomented through, I don’t know, the unfair distribution of wealth? How about that? That sounds alright. Good vault.
Vault 22:Slippery ice physics vault.
Vault 23: This vault’s PA system is constantly playing 1981 hit ‘Pull Up To The Bumper’ on an endless loop, until after several years the residents can no longer notice or recognise that the chart-topping new wave club anthem is filling the air around them. When finally released back into the wastelands however, the overpowering lack of Grace Jone’s thinly veiled ode to doing it in the bum drives the vault dwellers into bumper-deprived madness.
Vault 24: Similar to Vault 23, except with the ‘Here Come The Girls’ song from the Boots ads instead.
Vault 25: Overseer is a friendly woman named Georgia who’s always there to help.
Vault 26: Contains a bee.
Vault 27: They sellotaped biscuits to the undersides of all of the chairs in this one to see what happens.
Vault 28: Has a “rumpus room”.
Vault 29: Whatever a breakfast nook is, this vault is just one massive breakfast nook.
Vault 30: The person with the fullest and juiciest lips is elected as Overseer. Once a month a big syringe filled with lip-fattening saline solution descends from a ceiling high above a wrestling ring next to a ladder.
Vault 31: Features the longest Scalextric track of any vault.
Vault 32: A slightly more than average number of the vault dwellers are named Adam, which unsettles everybody in a way they cannot quite put their finger on.
Vault 33: Populated entirely by people who feel the need to mention potassium any time somebody is eating a banana. Yeah, we get it, that’s the one thing everybody knows about bananas. Get a grip.
Vault 34: Spiders again.
Vault 35: Spiders.
Vault 36: Spiders.
Vault 37: Ohhhh, it’s spiders.
Vault 38: Everybody in this vault is told, daily, that dogs can drive cars now. “Dogs can drive cars now,” the dwellers will often be heard saying to one another. “The world has changed and now a dog can drive a car,” is another thing you might overhear. When the day finally comes to leave the vault, an animatronic dog will drive a car past the vault entrance and none of the vault dwellers will find this strange. “The world is just as we expected,” they will murmur. At this point the Overseer will jump out from behind a rock and say, “you idiots, dogs can’t drive cars, we made that up”.
Vault 39: Tasked with building an animatronic dog that can drive a car very briefly for the purposes of another experiment.
Vault 40: Everyone gets smashed with a big hammer on the way in, as a social experiment to see what happens when big hammers just start smashing people to bits.
Vault 41: Shaped like a giant bowl so that all the dwellers eventually tumble into a big helpless pile at the bottom of the vault.
Vault 42: The only form of entertainment is the final third of one episode of the Clangers, the one where the soup dragon gets well broody and the clangers are all like “hey dude, chill the eff out we’re on the moon, what is your actual beef.”
Vault 43: Friday night is burrito night in vault 43, otherwise everything is the same.
Vault 44: Residents are only allowed to speak in Simpsons quotes.
Vault 45: Residents are only allowed to speak in Moe (from The Simpsons) quotes.
Vault 46: Residents are only allowed to speak in quotes from season three, episode ten of The Simpsons, ‘Flaming Moe’s’.
Vault 47: Allow me some more spider vaults.
Vault 48: This is the second last spider vault.
Vault 49: The final spider vault.
Vault 50: As residents first enter the vault, the Overseer looks at each one in turn and says either “yes” or “no”. She never explains the criteria on which the dwellers are being judged, and no further distinction is ever made between those residents who had had “yes” said to them and those who had heard “no”. Some found the mystery mildly annoying, but the strange introduction is quickly forgotten about and life eventually continues as normal. Two years in the vault fills with spiders.
Vaults 51-111: Spiders.