Fallout is the story of paranoia, nationalism, and capitalism, all reaching an explosive climax, and the Vaults are symbolic of that. Held up as beacons of national pride, built by a benevolent corporation, the program was actually a grand social experiment run by a shadowy sector of the government.
The Vaults were advertised as protection from the horrors of nuclear war, allowing privileged families to take shelter underground while the world above them was wiped out. Then, once the coast was clear, they could return to the surface to build America anew.
Only a few Vaults were actually that. Many of them were actually stages for various social experiments ranging from somewhat innocuous to intensely horrific.
A note before we get into it: I’m only including canonical vaults that appeared within the series. There are others in supplemental material, mentioned in documents, or included in spin-offs, but the only vaults included are the ones we can visit.
10. Vault 34 (Fallout: New Vegas)
The experiment run in Vault 34 wasn’t as insidious as some of the ones later in this list, but it was obviously intended to fail. Simply, Vault-Tec provided the residents with an unrestricted armory, then packed it full of all kinds of weapons. In order to prevent all-out warfare within the confined space, the Overseer installed a lock on the armory to keep people out. The residents weren’t happy about being denied access to this, and began to riot.
During this time, some were able to leave the vault and establish The Boomers gang, while others continued fighting over the armory. During the battle, the reactor was damaged and began to leak radiation, turning most of the population into Ghouls.
9. Vault 106 (Fallout 3)
Vault 106 is the most straightforward horror vault in Fallout 3, but I’m putting it this far down the list because it feels almost trite in how it’s handled. As you wander the vault, you see ghostly visions pass through your sight. Spooky.
In truth, a psychoactive drug is being pumped through the ventilation system to… I guess test what happens when people are exposed to psychoactive drugs long term? Obviously, it drove all the residents murderously insane.
8. Vault 87 (Fallout 3)
This is another one of the really straightforward experiments in Fallout 3. Simply, the residents of Vault 87 were experimented on using a strain of the Forced Evolutionary Virus or FEV. To make matters worse for the residents, while the FEV strain researched at the Mariposa research base allowed subjects to maintain their intelligence (or even have it enhanced), the strain used here made them all dumb as pickles. As such, they were left to wander the wastelands as nothing more than brutish savages.
A bit better than psychoactive drugs. Maybe. I guess that depends on your perspective. Neither is ideal, however. I think we can agree on that.
7. Vault 12 (Fallout)
Vault 12 is one of the more straightforward betrayals by Vault-Tec. Simply, the door was never intended to seal properly, which meant that all its inhabitants were exposed to high doses of radiation.
Apparently, Vault-Tec was aiming to test the effects of radiation on humans, which is weird because they could have just looked out their window. The effect, as it turns out, was to change all of the vault’s population into Ghouls. Some of the now ghoulified population then left the vault to found the settlement of Necropolis or The City of the Dead.
6. Vault 95 (Fallout 4)
All of the vault experiments were cruel in nature, but Vault 95 had what was perhaps the most believably inhumane. It was home to a number of drug addicts who were told they were there for rehabilitation and recovery from their addiction. They would attend meetings daily support meetings to help them get through the withdrawals. It was going swimmingly for five years.
And then a Vault-Tec sleeper agent unsealed a stash of drugs, allowing it to be discovered. While some residents chose to stay clean, others gave into their vices. Eventually, this led to paranoia, and paranoia led to violence.
5. Vault 22 (Fallout: New Vegas)
“Stay out! The plants kill!” warns a makeshift sign as you approach Vault 22. Whether or not this Vault was actually a social experiment is a bit undefined. In it, scientists worked on a number of experiments with plants, some of which would be beneficial to post-war humans, such as stronger fertilizer and more resistant plants.
However, some of their experiments were backed by defense companies, one of which was a type of fungus that was provided by the Big MT Research Facility. Like all good horror mushrooms, the fungus infects the host and turns them into a colony. The process kills the host, at which point the growth pilots their corpse like a spore-spreading Gundam. The spores spread through the vault, turning its residents into mindless beasts. Some were able to escape, but most were infected.
4. Vault 96 (Fallout 76)
This vault was quite different than the other vaults in the system, as it was more of a means to preserve flora and fauna than humans. At least, it was on the surface. Once the vault was sealed its true purpose was revealed to the five inhabitants. They were to experiment on the creatures held within to test various mutations. Worse yet, they were shackled to the most inhuman of tortures: a quota.
The central mainframe would proved a research quota the team had to meet. If they didn’t it would kill them. Inevitably, one of the scientists failed to meet the quota and, as promised, the computer murdered them. The rest then tried to stage an escape. They were almost successful, but in the end, they suffered the worst fate of all: death by missed quota.
3. Vault 11 (Fallout: New Vegas)
The central premise of Vault 11’s social experiment was a simple one. Every year, the vault dwellers had to sacrifice a member of their own. If they didn’t, the Vault’s security system would kill all of them. Appeasing robots feels a lot like our current reality.
The dwellers created a democratic voting system. Someone would get voted to be Overseer, and their tenure would end with execution. This led to factions forming, political intrigue, and eventually in-fighting. The residents were gradually wiped out from a war within until, eventually, only five were left.
It was then that they realized that, in actuality, they were eventually supposed to become defiant of their situation and stop the sacrifices. If they chose not to kill someone, they would be commended for valuing human life and the vault would unseal. The final five were ashamed of the actions of their vault. In the end, only one person left the vault, while the others died with their shame.
2. Vault 112 (Fallout 3)
Vault 112 worked as planned, and, in fact, when the Lone Wanderer enters it in 2277, all of its original inhabitants are still alive. That sounds great, except they’re all playthings in the sadistic overseer’s virtual paradise.
All of the inhabitants of Vault 112 are trapped in a virtual reality environment known as Tranquility Lane. On the surface, the simulation depicts an idyllic version of America where everyone lives in peace, and that may have been the initial intention. Somewhere throughout the 200 years of being sealed, the overseer, Dr. Stanislaus Braun, got bored of utopia and decided to start murdering and torturing the virtual avatars of the inhabitants.
After he had his fill of carnage, he would wipe the memory of the vault dwellers, reset the simulation, and start over again. Over and over and over.
1. Vault 108 (Fallout 3)
The history of Vault 108 is kind of a mess. Like Vault 34, it was designed with an overstuffed armory. Managerial roles were left unfulfilled, the Overseer was chosen knowing he had little time left to live, and the main generator was designed to fail long before the Vault was set to automatically open. I don’t know why all that was set up because what makes Vault 108 so terrifying is Gary.
Vault 108 was equipped with a cloning chamber, and the scientists within the Vault, for some reason, decided to keep cloning a guy named Gary. For some reason, Gary clones were hostile to every non-clone in the vault, but the scientists kept cloning until there were around 53 of them. When you arrive at the vault, you find it overrun with these clones. Now, they merely stalk the hallways of the derelict vault, calling out “Gaaaaary” and attacking anything that comes within sight. Horrifying.
