Fallout

Fallout is a roleplaying computer game developed by Black Isle Studios and distributed by Interplay. It is set after a three-hour nuclear war in 2150 destroys civilisation. You play a survivor from Vault 13, the first person to leave the vault in 50 years. You must recover the water chip that the vault needs to survive.

The game is one of the most original roleplaying games ever. Although the game is set in 2150 or so, it's got a 1950's aesthetic feel to it (you know the age of duck and cover to protect yourself from a nuclear bomb). It's also got a wicked sense of humour, not to mention wanton violence, especially if you choose the Bloody Mess trait for your character. It's got lots of in-jokes and it's really the humour that hooks you in.

Although released in 1995, it still seems fresh today. A sequel (surprisingly named Fallout 2) was much of the same, but still very good.

The Fallout series is the best computer games series I have played. It takes place in a post nuclear world where human kind is struggling for survival. There are currently three Fallout games two which have been developed by Black Isle Studios and one which have been developed by the Australian company MicroForte. Fallout and Fallout 2 are both Post Nuclear Role Playing Games, while Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel is a Post Nuclear Tactical Combat Game. In Fallout and Fallout 2 you control one character through the game. You can of course recruit companions along the way, but your control of these characters is very limited. In Fallout Tactics however you get full control of all party members.

Fallout and Fallout 2 takes place in different parts of California while Fallout Tactics takes place in the midwest. In Fallout you are a member of one of the many underground nuclear proof vaults, Vault 13 to be exact. All vaults are equipped with a waterchip which should work until the end of time, however Vault 13's waterchip is not working properly and only have 150 days left until it stop working. So you are chosen to go out into the world and find a new waterchip.

Fallout 2 takes place a few decades after the orginal Fallout. You are the descendant of the character from Fallout, and live in a small village. In order for the village to survive you have to find a Garden of Eden Creation Kit, G.E.C.K. for short.

Fallout Tactics takes place somewhere between Fallout and Fallout 2. You play a new initiate in the Brotherhood of Steel. You can recruit 5 party members into your squad, and arm them as you see fit. The Brotherhood will give you missions to perform and you can complete this mission in whatever way you want, as long as you complete the mission objectives.

The negative consequences of an action, whether it be a statement, a change (say, in the economy), a love affair, or even or the detonation of a nuclear weapon.

The Braves are believed to have shopped Rocker in the winter of 1999-2000 to teams that included Cleveland Indians and Montreal but didn't find any takers during the fallout after his public tirade. --Cox News Service, June 23, 2001

Shares of specialty apparel retailers suffered a sector-wide fallout on Friday as a raft of analyst downgrades and company warnings fueled concern that the U.S. economic slowdown will dent second-quarter profits and hit June same-store sales. --Reuters, June 22, 2001

Fallout, technically, is the effect of radioactive particles (usually from a nuclear detonation, but not always) 'falling out' of the atmosphere. This effect of nuclear events is usually the farthest-reaching, and in the case of low-order events like reactor leaks, the most dangerous and destructive.

The type of particles that are distributed will vary depending on the cause. In the case of reactor releases, the radioactive material is typically steam (unless the leak is compounded by other disasters such as the fire at Chernobyl). The steam, which is composed of radioactive water and possibly other contaminants, will eventually cool. Droplets of it will mix with atmospheric humidity, or just condense themselves, and fall as rain or mist. This is the fallout.

In the case of a nuclear or thermonuclear detonation, the fallout is usually composed of materials sucked up into the mushroom cloud and irradiated falling back to earth. Mostly this will be dust which results from thousands of tons of earth and debris being lofted and irradiated. There is typically a negative correlation between the area of damage a nuclear explosion is intended to cause and the amount of fallout it produces. This counterintuitive relationship is due to the fact that in order to do widespread damage with a nuclear weapon, targeters will use airbursts to spread lower (but still massive) blast and thermal effects over a wide area. With an airburst, however, the center of the explosion is several thousand feet above the ground, which is the nearest source of debris and soil to irradiate and distribute. As a result, most of the fallout from an airburst is the remains of the weapon itself, which is tiny compared to the tons of material tossed about when the weapon is set off near ground level in a groundburst.