Exactly 200. And I don’t think realism should be an issue, now that Fallout 2 and Wild Wasteland exist. Consider them “super-nukes,” if you prefer.
ETA October 23, 2077 to ???, ???, 2277 so not exact to the day…
How much do we know about the world outside of US, Canada, and China? There are a few European characters, of course. Some stranded (and ghoulified) before the war, some inexplicably present.
That sort of thing is why they aren’t even trying for “realism”. IIRC, the developers asked experts what would be left after 200 years and the answer was “essentially nothing”, so they decided to ignore realism in favor of preserving the post-apocalypse feel that is central to the setting.
Obviously, those buildings are being preserved by a generous grant from the SuperMutant Historical Preservation Society.
Really, I think this is more reason why it has been an ongoing mistake to project so much time between episodes. But now we’re looking at Fallout: New Vegas cotemperaneous with Fallout 3, and since Three Dog is still around, Fallout 4 is much more closely timed as well. I mean, if he had been ghoulified, you wouldn’t need the original voice actor (who has been confirmed as reappearing). You could get the same Krusty the Clown guy who does all the ghoul voices.
As much as I would like the Fallout series to diversify its settings, there really only seem to be two countries that can work: America and China. The setting is so steeped in 50s USA retro futurism that there’s really not a lot of preexisting lore for a European locale. You’d pretty much have to rebuild the lore and cultural flourishes from scratch, and there’s no guarantee the result would feel congruent with the Fallout we already have. China is the only exception, because it actually gets a lot of attention in the previous games as rival superpower to the US. There’s plenty of prewar propaganda floating about. If you set a game in China, then you could either portray China as being pretty much the same as the prewar US, just flipped around, OR have it actually live up to the ridiculous American propaganda. Either could potentially work and both would be exotic while still maintaining a satirical aim at the US.
One of the British characters (Desmond from the Point Lookout add-on in Fallout 3?) mentions things in England are as bad, if not worse, than they are US. It’s been a while since I played it but I believe there’s also an oblique allusion to radioactive storms and mutated sea monsters in the Atlantic as well.
I admit the in-universe background to the UK hasn’t been as well established as it has with the US, but I don’t think it wouldn’t be hard to conjure up a retro-50s nuked London, complete with “Keep Calm And Carry On”-type posters and some intrigue over the rightful heir(s) to the throne (can a ghoul be King/Queen, even if they are 200 years old?).
Having said all that, I really liked Old World Blues so I think a Fallout game set in the Boston area does have some potential.
The DC landmarks were the only thing that would make anyone guess it was Virgina/Maryland and not Utah or Algeria or Mongolia. Take those away (and the town names, obviously) and I doubt anyone would ever guess where the game is set. In fact, I bet nearly 100% of the people asked would guess “western US” based on it being a Fallout title, Fallout 1/2 being set in the western US and this place looking pretty much the same as those.
Which is my point. They had a chance to do something more than “same setting, new buildings” but stayed with it. Whether out of some fear of upsetting Fallout purists or just not thinking about it, they missed an opportunity to do something different.
Unfortunately, they picked two locations in the United States that look dramatically different from one another “in real life” and made them essentially the same. The US is a place of dramatic geographic and climatic changes from coast to coast but they dropped the ball on portraying that entirely.
Is there a site for that? Living near Detroit there is a lot of talk about the decay of buildings, and from the way they talk about it on those shows, it sounds like stone block construction, or reinforced hardened concrete construction should still be easily recognizable after 500 or more years. The Colosseum as an example.
Damaged reinforced concrete does not hold up to the elements well - the rebar actually causes more damage as it rusts and expands.
There wasn’t a whole lot going on in Britain in the fifties. The US was obsessed with its atomic future, but Britain was mostly obsessed with rebuilding its war damage in concrete. If they did Fallout in London it would probably have to be retro-sixties stuff. Mods and Rockers and Dr. Strangelove.