The complete Fallout chronology and canon timeline explained

❘ Published: 2024-04-30T15:31:44

Amazon Studios / Bethesda Softworks

With a history spanning over 25 years, the lore behind the Fallout games has become as deep as it is enthralling. As a result, it can be tricky to know exactly what’s happening and when it’s all taking place, so here’s everything we currently know about the Fallout timeline.

The Fallout franchise covers 210 years after the dropping of the first nuclear bomb. That history has recently been extended further by the Prime Video series of the same name, which takes place beyond even the most chronologically recent game.

Along the way, there are nefarious experiments, Lovecraftian horrors, and slim rays of hope that humanity may be able to recover after nuclear war brings it to the brink of extinction.

There’s a lot to get through, so read on for our full breakdown of the Fallout timeline as it currently stands.

The events before Fallout explained

Soldiers, including one in power armor, walk down a highway during the nuclear war.

The Fallout universe and canon timeline are brought about thanks to a mysterious event known as The Divergence. Until the end of WW2, the events follow a very similar format to our own, with a few minor changes (including the founding of companies like Sunset Sarsparilla.)

This all changed sometime between 1945 and 1961. The Fallout timeline essentially stays in a perpetual state of 1950s-style bliss. It’s likely that some later 20th-century wars and many countercultural movements and protests didn’t happen, leading to little self-reflection from the United States government and other world powers.

This allowed them to pursue scientific endeavors that many in our own world would consider unacceptable or immoral, leading to rapid advancement in different areas. This resulted in significant changes in the mid-21st century that defined the Fallout universe for hundreds of years.

In particular, many pioneering businesses leaned heavily into nuclear power and energy, using it to make everything from robots to cars. In 2042 RobCo Industries was founded by Robert House who eventually rules over New Vegas in the game of the same name.

RobCo created many of the automatons players encounter across the games. The following year, Mass Fusion was founded, bringing nuclear power to the masses and irradiating quite a few in the process.

Meanwhile, the question of energy became a huge issue for those at the top of the US government. In 2051, they sanctioned and then invaded Mexico to secure their oil and gas interests, before an energy crisis shook the country a year later.

It’s in 2052 that things really began to spiral out of control worldwide. In April of that year, the Resource Wars begin, resulting in the invasion of the Middle East by a European Commonwealth with the express purpose of securing their oil fields. Just a month later, the United Nations collapses.

In light of the spiraling events in Europe, the United States began Project Safehouse, a huge building project designed to protect the populace in the event of nuclear war. These structures would come to be known as Vaults.

Limited exchanges of nuclear weapons occurred during this time. The Resource Wars ended in 2060 when the Middle East ran out of oil enterily. Both sides were left devastated, and a huge civil war broke out across Europe.

By the mid-2060s, China also became desperate for energy and was aggressive in its relations with the United States. At the same time, both sides began testing spectacularly powerful new nuclear weapons, capable of destroying vast swathes of land.

In 2066, China invaded Anchorage, Alaska to seize its oil reserves, resulting in a huge conflict with the United States. The two sides continue to sporadically engage each other until the United States invaded mainland China in 2074, marking the beginning of the end for what remains of civilization.

On October 23rd, 2077 at 9.42 am, the first nuclear strikes landed in Pennsylvania and New York. Over the course of the next two hours, every nuclear power globally fired its weapons, quickly condemning the world to a bleak and uncertain future.

These moments are briefly shown in the Fallout 4 prologue, as the protagonist and their family quickly head to their spot in Vault 111. Additionally, the new Prime Video series shows this moment, as actor Cooper Howard witnesses the first warheads land in Los Angeles.

Fallout 76

The most recent Fallout game is also the earliest in the canonical timeline so far. The Vault, which gives Fallout 76 its name, opens, and the great door that separates it from the wastes slides free just 25 years after the bombs dropped, in 2102.

Set in rural Appalachia, Fallout 76 is the only MMO in the series. Thanks to the freedom of player choice, it can be a little difficult to pick out the canonical events within its timeline. That said, most of the main narratives that players complete on their way to level cap are considered factual Fallout history.

Vault 76 contains some of the best and brightest minds left in the country. The game starts as they leave the relative safety of their confines to begin rebuilding and repopulating West Virginia in an event known as The Reclamation. Standing in their way is a new class of mutated creatures known as The Scorched.

Seemingly missing the warnings from very recent history, the Overseer tasks the player with tracking down nuclear weaponry to destroy this new threat. The story culminates in a fight with the Scorchbeast Queen, who eventually succumbs to the superior firepower of the residents of Vault 76.

After successfully killing the Queen and ending the Scorched threat, life begins to return to Appalachia (via the Wastelanders DLC). This includes some major recognizable factions from the single-player games and the nefarious presence of raiders in West Virginia for the first time.

The game also marks the earliest appearance of the Brotherhood of Steel, though we know they formed much earlier, in the immediate aftermath of the Great War in 2077. Beyond that, much of the game plays out in the way the player decides and deciphering an exact course of events becomes near-impossible.

Fallout

The events of the first game in the franchise take place in 2161, almost 100 years after the bombs dropped. Set in Southern California, it follows a character known simply as the Vault Dweller. From the relative safety of their home in Vault 13, they head out into the wastes to find a working water chip and restore the broken pumping and filtration system in the Vault.

The character is canonically a male, and, thanks to the Vault Dweller’s memoirs, we have a fairly good idea of the game’s canon ending and the journey along the way. After successfully repairing the Vault’s systems, the protagonist learns that a mysterious figure known as the Master has been kidnapping humans and turning them into Super Mutants with the aim of establishing “unity” in the area.

This quickly becomes the driving narrative of the game, and it’s up to the player to stop the mutations in their tracks and kill the Master in the process. The events from there unfold as follows:

The Vault Dweller heads to the Children’s Cathedral, kills the Master, and sets off an explosion that destroys the building.
The former inhabitant of Vault 15 and now leader of the settlement Shady Sands, Aradesh, tasks the Vault Dweller with rescuing his daughter Tandi from a faction known as the Khans. Canonically, the Vault Dweller is successful in doing this, killing all of the faction’s members except one junior, Darion.
The Vault Dweller proceeds to the Mariposa Military Base to destroy the remaining vats of the mutant-creating Forced Evolutionary Virus. They are successful in doing this, but the original Dogmeat is unfortunately killed.
Aradesh and Tandi go on to found the New California Republic in 2186, becoming the organization’s first and second Presidents in the process.
Darion goes on to found a Phoenix faction known as the New Khans, who appear in the sequel.

Fallout 2

Fallout 2 is the most direct sequel in the Fallout series, offering major narrative threads drawn from the events of the original. This, alongside confirmations from supplementary materials and the events of later games, makes it relatively easy to pin down exactly what happened.

The game takes place 80 years after the first, in 2241, following a direct descendant of the Vault Dweller known only as the Chosen One. Fallout 2 is once again set in California, with some sections of the game bringing the neighboring states of Oregon and Nevada into play.

Following the events of the first game, the Vault Dweller was exiled from Vault 13 by the Overseer due to prolonged exposure to the wasteland. From there, they travelled North to Oregon and founded a primitive village known as Arroyo, before eventually disappearing after writing a complete memoir.

The game’s story starts just as Arroyo is experiencing a terrible drought. The Chosen One is selected by the village elders to head out into the wasteland to secure a Garden of Eden Creation Kit or G.E.C.K, a tool capable of bringing life to the barren landscape. From there, the events of the game canonically unravel as follows:

The Chosen One eventually manages to find Vault 13 and the G.E.C.K within it. Unfortunately, they find their entire village has been kidnapped by a mysterious organization known as The Enclave, who are eventually revealed as the remnants of the United States government.
They intend to test a devastating new biological agent on the villagers, designed to wipe out over 95% of the remaining population, leaving only those who have been specifically inoculated or who are protected from exposure (like Vault dwellers).
Using the PMV Valdez, an old tanker, the player is able to reach The Enclave’s base of operations, an oil rig in the Pacific Ocean. They manage to successfully free the citizens of Arroyo and the residents of Vault 13, before triggering a meltdown in the rig’s reactor core and destroying the entire site.
The release of New Vegas confirms exactly what happened after The Enclave were defeated in the West. The Chosen One uses the G.E.C.K to rebuild the settlement, now named New Arroyo, leading it through a new period of prosperity.

Fallout 3

Fallout 3 is the first game where verifying the exact canon becomes immensely tricky. Thankfully, later releases have shed further light on the player’s adventures in the Capital Wasteland. It has long been assumed that the morally good choices in the game are the ones that actually happened and that largely holds true here.

The Lone Wanderer sets out from Vault 101 to look for their father James, after he disappears in 2277, exactly 200 years after the bombs dropped. The two major canonical events largely occur in the iconic town of Megaton.

The first is the Lone Wanderer’s decision to disarm the nuclear bomb Megaton has been built around. The second is that the protagonist elects to help Moira Brown collect data for the Wasteland Survival guide, which itself becomes a significant document in the Fallout universe.

The game features multiple endings and some of the canon is a little open to speculation, however the following events have been confirmed as canon:

The Lone Wanderer repairs and starts the water purifier while the Brotherhood of Steel successfully eliminates The Enclave’s presence in D.C.
Fallout 4 also makes it known that Liberty Prime, the huge automaton weapon of the Brotherhood, is being rebuilt. This is confirmed in the Broken Steel expansion, in which The Enclave successfully brings the weapon down.
The Lone Wanderer and the Brotherhood also conquer Adams Air Force Base before the protagonist destroys the site with a hijacked orbital strike. The base later becomes the site of the construction of the monumental airship, The Prydwen, which appears in Fallout 4.

Fallout: New Vegas

New Vegas is part of the main series in all but name, and its potential additions to the Fallout timeline are as wide-ranging as they are impactful. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most difficult to pick apart, and finding confirmed events is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

We know the events of New Vegas start in 2281, just four years after Fallout 3. It’s also a fairly safe assumption that everything involving Robert House, his intentions, and actions up until meeting the Courier are accurate.

Before the events of the game begin, Caesar’s Legion and the New Californian Republic have been embroiled in a significant conflict. Much of this centers around control of the clean water supplied by the Hoover Dam, which the NCR narrowly managed to hold onto following an attack from the Legion.

The second battle of Hoover Dam also happened; we just don’t know who came out victorious. Most believe the NCR won the day, thanks to several mentions of the faction in Fallout 4, but that could just as easily be a result of their extensive legacy before the events of New Vegas.

Bethesda’s resistance to confirm a singular storyline could relate to the game being developed by Obsidian Entertainment, though Game Director Todd Howard has confirmed that there is a version of the events that have been agreed upon behind the scenes.

Fallout 4

Fallout 4’s placement in the timeline is the most complex and convoluted game of them all. At the time of writing, understanding exactly what happens when the protagonist escapes Vault 111 and enters the Commonwealth is near-impossible.

The game features no karma system, which can be a helpful method of ascertaining where the developers see the story heading into the main timeline. Additionally, the presence of several major factions and competing powers make the political situation complicated.

What we do know is Fallout 4 takes place in 2287, six years after New Vegas. Shaun ends up at the Institute, and the Minutemen find their feet, just as the Brotherhood of Steel arrives in earnest to stamp their authority on Boston and the surrounding area.

The game features four potential endings, which may have very recently been whittled down to just two. The writers behind the Prime Video adaptation of Fallout claim that the show should be considered canon, a claim backed up by Todd Howard and others at Bethesda.

The TV show begins in 2296, a further nine years beyond the events of Fallout 4. It features the Brotherhood of Steel airship, The Prydwen, which is destroyed in two of the game’s endings. Assuming the writers are correct we can effectively rule out both of those conclusions.

This leaves two options. In the first, the player chooses to side with The Minutemen, while the Brotherhood of Steel and The Railroad peacefully coexist after the Institute’s destruction. The other sees the protagonist side with the Brotherhood, destroying The Railroad.

If pushed, the former seems more likely, but there is no evidence to fully refute either outcome. That brings us up to date in the games. If you haven’t seen the Fallout TV show yet, be warned, spoilers are ahead.

Fallout (TV)

The Fallout TV series has added much to the existing lore of the games. Viewers were able to see the bombs drop on Los Angeles for the first time before the show jumps forward more than 200 years. By the conclusion of season one, the timeline has been extended all the way to 2297, the furthest forward that we have yet been able to venture in the Fallout universe.

Without breaking down the entire narrative, some events have major repercussions for events and places in the games. The clearest example is the fate of the Shady Sands settlement, which appears heavily in the first game before becoming the NCR capital.

The final episode of the series shows the destruction of Shady Sands at the hands of Overseer Hank MacLean, himself a secret pre-war employee of Vault-Tec. When exactly this happens is unclear but Todd Howard recently confirmed it was very soon after the events of New Vegas in 2281.

The show does not confirm the ultimate fate of the NCR though it appears the years since New Vegas have been particularly rough, despite their likely victory at Hoover Dam. The closing shot also shows the strip itself looking worse for wear, but what exactly has happened there is also unclear.