Saving Vault 68

[PeZook]

Let's abuse the Fallout universe some more.

Imagine, if you please, that you live in the Falloutverse. Your chosen profession? A proud Vault-Tec shelter administrator (alternatively known as "Vault Overseer")!

It is the year 2277, and for the last five years or so you and a small group of technical personnell (about 20 people or so, plus five security guards) were entrusted with day-to-day care of Vault 68, a state-of-the-art Vault-Tec fallout preservation center! You are tasked with keeping the vault ready for its residents should the unthinkable happen and the bombs started falling.

To your horror, the day comes. The sirens sound, and people who were assigned to your shelter start flocking in. You do your best to accomodate them, while listening on the radio how the world is ending. It's an absolute nightmare: there are a thousand people, fleeing from the apocalypse, scared and panicky...but you manage to pull through.

However, while you manage this nightmare, something begins to look odd. You can't be in every place at once, of course (the shelter is truly massive), but...all the residents are male.

The evening comes, and, Vault door secured on their time lock, you collapse into your chair at the office. You open Vault-Tec's sealed instructions and learn the horrible truth.

Your Vault has a thousand residents. 999 of them are males, aged 25-39. Only one female was assigned to your Vault. Furthermore, your Vault-Tec supervisor says this was done deliberately, and you are to observe, document and regularly report on progress of the sick "experiment" without undue interference.

Assuming you go "fuck this bullshit" at that moment, and decide to do whatever it takes to save your residents, what course of action can you take to ensure the Vault's survival? Take note:

1) The only female has her own room. At the time when you read Vault-Tec's letter, most of the residents do not have a clear picture of the situation.

2) The woman is a 25 year old college graduate. She is fertile and healthy (confirmed by Vault-Tec's medical examination)

3) Vault door are on a 40 year time lock. You are unable to open them, though this isn't to say it's impossible to do illegitimately.

4) There was a nuclear war, so it's probably not a good idea to open the door anyway. Let's say the vault is located 20 miles outside Chicago for purpose of determining damage done in the exchange.

5) As far as you know, the Vault is designed to function normally, without any other critical flaws.

6) If you're female, assume there are 1000 male residents, rather than 999 (that is, you're the sole woman assigned to the Vault).

[Shroom Man 777]

What's this randome altarnate realty supposed to be? I know jack shit about Fallout, so what's the main objective? To save the single last nubile smexy (female) co-ed on Earth from gang rape at the hands of nearly a thousand men as they slowly degenerate to their basal instincts and urges?

[PeZook]

What's this randome altarnate realty supposed to be? I know jack shit about Fallout, so what's the main objective? To save the single last nubile smexy (female) co-ed on Earth from gang rape at the hands of nearly a thousand men as they slowly degenerate to their basal instincts and urges?

Basically, you're in charge of a huge underground fallout shelter that was marketed as a way to save the American Way Of Life from atomic devastation. It can house 1000 people in comfort (separate apartments, fresh water in unlimited quantity, plentiful nuclear power etc.).

Vault-Tec is the company that built them and sold spaces in them before China nuked the fuck out of the US (and vice versa), but in reality the whole project was about studying various ways in which societies collapse/degenerate/survive, so every Vault was built with a flaw (yeah, I know. It's kind of retarded, but that's the premise).

You were chosen to run this particular flawed Vault and observe the experiment, but decided to go "Fuck them". The objective is to make sure your Vault survives in a state that's capable of rebuilding civilization in a post-nuclear wasteland.

[PeZook]

P.S. (because the board won't let me edit my reply anymore )

To add some detail: the Overseer has direct control over all Vault systems (like life support, power, etc) and has his own office equipped with basic necessities such as a bathroom, automated systems for making clothes and food, etc.

The Vault is also fully equipped with survival gear and has an armory with an assortment of small arms and ammo (including non-lethal devices), for use by security forces and eventually - re-colonization of the postnuclear wasteland.

There are also robotic servants capable of running maintenance on many (though not all) Vault systems and doing household chores.

[Oskuro]

I guess the best option would be to devote a security team to protect the female, and once she hooks up with someone, encourage her to have children. If the equipement on the Vault allows for some type of embryo manipulation, try and make sure all her offspring are female, twins if possible.

In order to avoid tensions, I would falsify documents to make the population believe that an influx of women would be arriving shortly after the bombings stopped, and eventually blame Vaul-Tec for deceiving us all once it is obvious that it wouldn't happen.
I would also sabotage the installation to keep the population busy with apparently fatal disasters.

With the time hopefully bought by the previous manuevers I would have tried to separate the woman and her family from the rest of the population, by allocating a series of rooms exclusively for them, or even using the Overseer-exclusive secret passages to house them and make them vanish, blaming their dissapearance on one of the "accidents".

Now, assuming the family can be kept appart, or even secret, it would be a matter of letting them churn out babies, and either having them hook up with members of the security team (wich would have been the promised reward to guarantee their loyalty to the project) or resort to artificial insemination once they are of age.

All this, of course, with the notion of balancing the male-female ratio and ensure long term survival. Most of the men that originally entered the Vault would ideally never even be aware that there are women in the premises, and die of old age without ever really knowing it. By the time the timelock deactivates, and assuming full cooperation from the woman and her family, and furthermore, assuming an steady birthrate of only girls, it would still produce way too few females of age.

The risk of eventual inbreeding would also be quite the nightmare, I guess.

[Oskuro]

Edit: To show the magnitude of the situation, I ran the following exercise.

Assuming that:

• Each woman of breeding age gives birth to a single baby each year
• Girls become of age at 15
• Women can breed up until the onset of menopause at 50
• All babies are female

By the time the original woman reaches menopause, she would've had 25 daughters, and of them, those of age (10) would've given birth to a combined total of 50 grandaughters, the oldest of them 10 years old.

So in a 25 year period, the female population would've increased in a meager 75 members, compared to the 988 single males (many of them in their fifties) remaining. Not even a 10%.

Yeah, I see a massive sperm donation drive as part of the plan.

[Shroom Man 777]

I'd segregate the HUEG population to more manageable bite-sized bits, like organize them into smaller communities, so they won't end up forming an uncontrollable mob that'll go "GIRL GIRL GIRL" like in Eurotrip, so they won't go crazy and try to gangrape the woman and - presumably - me as well, once they found out I lied about them or something.

I'd probably also keep them busy working and toiling and shit. But, what will they work on? What can they do aside from just sitting down there and doing nothing? I'd probably give them some kind of bullshit project to work on, like assign some of them to task-based communities. Tell them that they've been gathered to continue human culture, so we can have a group of poindexters preserving human maths and sciences, a bunch of girlie men tasked with ensuring that the art doesn't go extinct, a bunch of he-men.... pumping iron or something, mechanics to maintain equipment, teachers to teach those who don't know anything so they'll know something that'll be "useful", doctors and the medically oriented to make sure we don't get postapocalyptic pneumonia, and other intellectually inclined sorts to make stories and novels and works of fiction and shit to keep us entertained.

Try to recreate a smaller society in our bunker!

But Jesus Christ, they're almost all men. We'll fucking drown in goddamn testosterone! Oh shit!

[Junghalli]

Assuming the girl has no interest in adding prostitute or courtesan to her duties (which would honestly probably be the best solution and the one I would go with if I were the single female) the easiest way to avoid the obvious source of tension would be to squirrel the girl away in some isolated section of the complex with a few handpicked guards and maybe her immediate family (if any are present) and erase all public records of her existence in the Vault, or make up some story that she died or something. The bulk of the population could be kept ignorant of her presence. That leaves us with having to deal with a community of seriously sexually frustrated males for 40 years, but it will make things more manageable, in that it would eliminate one source of resentment toward the existing authority (me).

You're not going to have a viable breeding population with one female so you can just stop worrying about that. Long-term survival of our community is absolutely going to have to depend on importing survivors from the outside after the Vault opens. Thankfully in a worst-case scenario this shouldn't be too hard. We'll live very well compared to the low-tech foragers and farmers that'll exist outside in a worst-case scenario; we shouldn't have much trouble attracting people to a community that has things like flush toilets, running water, electricity, and antibiotics from communities that do not have those things. Less than worst-case scenario we just go to retirement homes after the Vault opens and our only challenge is surviving the 40 years in isolation.

Our big problem is that we'll all be old men by the time the Vault opens. Even the young men will be in their late 50s and early 60s by then. Middle-aged men will be in their 80s, and anybody older will probably be dead. Best case scenario our age range when the Vault opens will be 40-50 and up (that's assuming the initial population includes young children), and assuming an average age spread much of our population will be either dead or seriously enfeebled by the time the Vault opens. There is a serious question of whether we will have enough able-bodied men left by then to maintain our technology and manage a transition to the next generation (which will have to be either surface-survivor immigrants, children we have with surface-survivor wives, or some combination of the two) over the next 10-20 years after that.

With that in mind a very high priority is going to be teaching the vital skills needed to maintain our technology to our youngest members. We need to get the 20-somethings and teenagers and children (if they're present) to be our doctors, engineers etc. so that the people we have in those vital roles will still have a decade or three left in them by the time the Vault opens. We may have to look into "gearing down" from high technology we can maintain now to lower technology that doesn't require as many specialists to maintain.

It would be a good idea to restrict people's rations, enforce exercise on them, and generally make them live a lifestyle that's most likely to result in them still being relatively fit in old age. This may not be too popular, but if we're going to be old men by the time we get out and we're assuming worst-case scenario and planning to do something other than wither away it's definitely a good idea to at least try to shoot hard for being healthy, fit old men instead of 75 year old lardasses with chests fulls of heart surgery scars. The former will have much better odds of being able to do something other than basically sit there waiting to die.

Setting up a breeding program with the girl might not be a bad idea, but not to establish a viable breeding population (just forget about that), but so we can increase our cadre of skilled people who won't be staring down the barrel of imminent physical decripitude by the time we get out. If we could get her to have 1 child every 2 years for the next 25 years we could have a dozen or so extra skilled people between the ages of 15-40. If we could get some of her older daughters to have children of their own on a similar schedule during their teenage years and early twenties we could increase that further. That could definitely help.

Also, look into the possibility of getting a volunteer to have a sex change operation and take on the duties of, err, shall we call it our morale officer, and see if we have any surgeons qualified to do that. Because eliminating some of the massive sexual frustration that will exist in our community would be a very good thing. If no other volunteers present themselves, I may be willing to undertake this duty in addition to my normal duties as shelter administrator. Being a heterosexual male I would probably find it unpleasant (to say nothing of the idea of having surgery to change me into a gender I do not identify with), but it wouldn't be the worst sacrifice a human being has made for the good of their community by far.

Also, look into ways of busting out of the Vault. Unless it's a giant solid armored box 40 years is plenty of time to try to bust ourselves out. Even if it's questionable whether we could get out a project like that would probably be good for morale. A thousand males with little to do all day but stew in their own sexual frustration, grief, and despair is not a recipe for good morale.

[Ford Prefect]

Setting up a breeding program with the girl might not be a bad idea

You're right, it's a terrible idea.

in any case, as I recall there are Mister Handy robots inside the Vaults, which means that I have a ready made army of incorruptible bodyguards. As Overseer I definitely have the authority to change their programming, so I give them irreversible orders to immediately kill anyone that touches her without permission (myself included) and make sure she has one or two following her everywhere. Pretty much no one in the Vault will have the ability to destroy one Mister Handy (even if they can get together weapons, which isn't a given), while one Mister Handy could easily do the same to ten desperate men.

[Junghalli]

in any case, as I recall there are Mister Handy robots inside the Vaults, which means that I have a ready made army of incorruptible bodyguards. As Overseer I definitely have the authority to change their programming, so I give them irreversible orders to immediately kill anyone that touches her without permission (myself included) and make sure she has one or two following her everywhere. Pretty much no one in the Vault will have the ability to destroy one Mister Handy (even if they can get together weapons, which isn't a given), while one Mister Handy could easily do the same to ten desperate men.

How many robots will I have and how sophisticated is the AI in them? Can they be programmed to act as, say, doctors or engineers, or are they only going to be good for grunt labor? Can I make more of them?

[Ford Prefect]

Fallout is pretty retro, and so too are the robots. I'm pretty sure Vaults have only been seen with Mister Handy model robots, which would only really be useful for menial labour. Or in this case as bodyguards.

[Alyeska]

Mister Handy's and Robo Brains are the two types most likely to be found in a Vault.

[Junghalli]

So I have large numbers of strong, dumb robots at my disposal. Is that about right?

That still helps considerably. First off, as suggested, I can use them to help head off any possible threat of violent revolt. Second off, I can use them to help with the "bust out of the Vault" project. Third, it will reduce the problems of having to deal with an aging population with large numbers of enfeebled individuals if it gets to that point.

How exactly are Vaults constructed? I'm trying to think of how one might go about trying to break out of one.

It also occurs to me that if we could modify a couple of these robots into mobile sex-doll thingies this might go a ways toward reducing the sexual frustration problem. I take it they're relatively humanoid, so such modification shouldn't be too hard; it would mostly be a matter of putting padding and fake skin over them. The result would probably be nowhere near really convincingly human, but under the circumstances I doubt people would be too picky.

[Ford Prefect]

Mister Handy's and Robo Brains are the two types most likely to be found in a Vault.

Hmm, a couple of Robobrains would be even better for acting as bodyguards, because of the integrated lasers. Fallout 2 had that gang in New Reno which was supposed to be largely unstoppable because of Enclave supplied laser pistols: though in practice game balance meant they were largely worthless. Taking that into consideration, a couple of Robobrains would almost certainly be impossible for the more or less totally unarmed Vault dwellers to destroy. At least that way I could make sure that the girl doesn't get abused by the desperate masses.

It also occurs to me that if we could modify a couple of these robots into mobile sex-doll thingies this might go a ways toward reducing the sexual frustration problem. I take it they're relatively humanoid, so such modification shouldn't be too hard; it would mostly be a matter of putting padding and fake skin over them.

Oh lol.

[Junghalli]

He he, yeah, scratch that last idea.

[PeZook]

The way I see it, the main problem is avoiding total collapse of authority inside the Vault. Frankly, it almost seems better to just, uh, "get rid" of the woman in a staged accident, in order to remove the source of tensions.

Spiriting her away is another idea, but it has many points of failure: first, you need to get the vault's physician to cooperate and keep the secret (since she'll still need medical attention, and somebody has to deliver the babies - though mr. handys can do that, supposedly, I doubt the woman will enjoy being locked up somewhere, serviced by robots and serving as a baby factory.

Furthermore, somebody's gonna ask where the babies are coming from, since they need to be educated and cared for.

The other option is to assign killbots as her own bodyguards. Unfortunately, this will only work as long as somebody starts spreading rumors that the reason she's followed around by a couple Robobrains is that the overseer keeps her for his own. After a few years, people will readily believe it.

Our big problem is that we'll all be old men by the time the Vault opens. Even the young men will be in their late 50s and early 60s by then. Middle-aged men will be in their 80s, and anybody older will probably be dead. Best case scenario our age range when the Vault opens will be 40-50 and up (that's assuming the initial population includes young children), and assuming an average age spread much of our population will be either dead or seriously enfeebled by the time the Vault opens. There is a serious question of whether we will have enough able-bodied men left by then to maintain our technology and manage a transition to the next generation (which will have to be either surface-survivor immigrants, children we have with surface-survivor wives, or some combination of the two) over the next 10-20 years after that.

This is probably a reason to assign tech-savvy people towards attempting to open the door and/or tunnel out of the Vault. Or both, since it will keeps the dwellers occupied, working on big engineering projects.

It would be a good idea to restrict people's rations, enforce exercise on them, and generally make them live a lifestyle that's most likely to result in them still being relatively fit in old age. This may not be too popular, but if we're going to be old men by the time we get out and we're assuming worst-case scenario and planning to do something other than wither away it's definitely a good idea to at least try to shoot hard for being healthy, fit old men instead of 75 year old lardasses with chests fulls of heart surgery scars. The former will have much better odds of being able to do something other than basically sit there waiting to die.

That's a good idea: additionally, it gives the residents hope and a goal to strive for "We must be prepared to brave the wasteland! Work hard towards survival of our community!"

The problem of maintaining authority is a very pressing one, and will be present throughout the 40 years or however long it takes to bust out, so any little bit helps.

Also, look into the possibility of getting a volunteer to have a sex change operation and take on the duties of, err, shall we call it our morale officer, and see if we have any surgeons qualified to do that. Because eliminating some of the massive sexual frustration that will exist in our community would be a very good thing.

Frankly, adding a single, uh "morale officer" is going to increase sexual frustration, rather than decrease it: there is now a source of release available without having to wrestle with buzzsaw equipped robot butlers, even if it's a "fake" woman. I predict the "morale officer" will quickly become overworked and kill himself.

If no other volunteers present themselves, I may be willing to undertake this duty in addition to my normal duties as shelter administrator. Being a heterosexual male I would probably find it unpleasant (to say nothing of the idea of having surgery to change me into a gender I do not identify with), but it wouldn't be the worst sacrifice a human being has made for the good of their community by far.

Uh, no. That's a terrible idea. You're supposed to lead the vault, becoming a designated sex worker for all the residents will just completely ruin your authority. How do you expect to lead a thousand males if you declare they can fuck you at will?

[Ford Prefect]

Personally, I'm not all that worried. Situational homosexuality will kick in at some point, at which point we can mellow out and enjoy the next forty or fifty years.

[Bounty]

How many robots will I have and how sophisticated is the AI in them? Can they be programmed to act as, say, doctors or engineers, or are they only going to be good for grunt labor? Can I make more of them?

I'm not sure about making more of them, but at least one of them works as a (mediocre, but serviceable) medic in Fallout 3. Whether the Vault has the necessary software to reprogram a stock Mr Handy is unknown, but it'd be pretty stupid if they didn't.

[PeZook]

I'm not sure about making more of them, but at least one of them works as a (mediocre, but serviceable) medic in Fallout 3. Whether the Vault has the necessary software to reprogram a stock Mr Handy is unknown, but it'd be pretty stupid if they didn't.

Vault 101 didn't, apparently. Of course ,their Mr. Handy was old and quirky, but they didn't seem to be able to just wipe his memory and load in a backup when they needed a new doctor, so they ended up with a maniacal amputation enthusiast in charge of the clinic.

The Brotherhood's field medic robot was a military model, too. Of course, it was rather hilarious how their self-important scribes couldn't be arsed to run a simple 60 second diagnostic program to make it not cut important bits off people.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Why even bother with attempting to 'breed' her at all? As vault overseer, I'm aware that one of three possible conditions exist:

1) Everyone else is wiped, and this vault contains the only people left on earth.
2) The surface is wiped, and this and several other vaults contain the only people left on earth.
3) Some people on the surface survived, thus they, this vault, and possibly other vaults contain the only people left on earth.

If 2 or 3 are the case, then those people should be capable of restoring population assuming a more rational male/female ratio. If 1 is the case, humanity's fucked no matter what because there is no possible way to restore a population from a genetic bottleneck of one female. So no matter what the case, using the one remaining female in your world as 'breeding stock' is ultimately useless.

With that in mind, I like Shroomy's idea the best: Separate the population into more manageable, semi-isolated chunks. It's a lot easier to deal with a mob of 100 than it is a mob of 1000.

[SylasGaunt]

On a less serious note.. try and tunnel to vault 69?

Pretty much any attempt at shifting the male/female ratio is pretty much doomed to failure so trying isn't worth it. Perhaps seeing if there's a decent porn supply should be on the 'to do' list.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm rather pessimistic about being able to protect one woman from 999 men unless I can some how control things as to isolate everyone from everyone else. This is a sort of situation I would perfectly expect law and order to break down in and people to be irrational about, since it will be playing on some of the most basic human drives possible, and I am literally outnumbered 1000:1 at worst, and maybe less if my technical crew is trustworthy (see below).

Assuming I can pretty much control the vault at will, then I become effectively a prison warden. I control them by controlling access to food and water, as well as controlling who and when I let out of their rooms. They're going to be angry and hate me for it, but they'll be alive (I hope.)

Assuming I can't control them, well.. the only option I can see is to kill off some if not most of the populace, humanely if possible since this is going to be a rough decision to take but to survive I need some means of cutting the odds down. About the only people I'd consider letting live are the Vault tech personnel, and anyone with indispensible skills that might be a benefit in the future possibly surviving. Using the "sperm donation" option for viable long term survival as well. I'll also add rather harshly that killing off the populace also ensures that supplies will last longer since there will be fewer folk around to consume them. Its not the solution I'd LIKE to do, but I dont see any other option really that isnt risky and doesnt leave me horribly outnumbered.

Also I am going to point out a few things:

Technical crews are arguably not "part" of the experiment - they are part of the team observing and maintaining it (in theory), and thus I would expect a possibly more normal ratio of men to women (assuming they are hetereosexual that is, that need not be the case) it would be stupid to use those women to offset the ratio because a.) there are too few and b.) they're technical experts and I fucking need them too much to risk them with a potentially unruly populace.

Having to worry about the technical crew AND the population makes things difficult, possibly unwinnable, because I ams ure I will need some of those tech crews to keep the Vault operating. Having to fight both groups is simply going to guarantee me becoming more and more tyrannical.

Given the above, the ratio of the population should be 999 males and 1 female, since it wouldn't include the technical crew.

[Ford Prefect]

I'm rather pessimistic about being able to protect one woman from 999 men unless I can some how control things as to isolate everyone from everyone else. This is a sort of situation I would perfectly expect law and order to break down in and people to be irrational about, since it will be playing on some of the most basic human drives possible, and I am literally outnumbered 1000:1 at worst, and maybe less if my technical crew is trustworthy (see below).

They're almost totally unarmed, and a Vault is largely made out of corridors. Essentially, if the entire populace goes crazy and tries to attack you or the woman, a they will be running in a tight cluster with nowhere to high against a robot they can only damage if it stands there and lets them wail on it with lead pipes, which is in turn armed with lasers with will cut them to pieces with relative ease. A thousand people isn't even anywhere near the required amount required to drain a Fallout-style nuclear power source. They won't even need human maintenance, as a Mister Handy is capable of performing self-maintenance and maintenance on other robots.

[PeZook]

A Mr. Handy is also equipped with a huge fucking buzzsaw mounted on a manipulator, which is kind of...intimidating, when you think about it.

EDIT: Vault 101's only operational Mr. Handy also had a flamethrower installed, though this could've been a field mod.

[Ford Prefect]

I'm pretty sure the flamethrower is actually a blowtorch ... which has a flamethrower setting. I'm not sure why its blowtorch has a flamethrower setting, but it is Fallout, I guess.