Summary
- Only 17 out of the 122 Vaults in the Fallout universe were for protecting people. The rest... yeah, not great stuff.
- Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4 are the ones that presented more Vaults.
- The TV show expands on the lore with new Vaults, interconnected stories, and unsettling experiments.
A core aspect of the lore in Fallout is the Vaults: places designed to be a safe haven from the nuclear nightmare that came with the Great War. In reality, only 17 of the 122 Vaults were meant to keep people safe, the rest conducting all sorts of biological and social experiments on its inhabitants.
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PostsWith so many games and spin-offs, we’ve seen many of the 122 Vaults and the terrors they hold within. Most of them are empty when you find them, but thanks to the notes and records left by the people that came before, we can paint a picture of what happened in them.
Fallout
The game that started it all, although the series had a different look and feel back then. There are only three Vaults to explore, including the one your character hails from, but they are still rich with lore.
We’ve included Vault 29, since this game is the only instance (so far) where you meet someone who came from there. While that character never says the number 29, the Fallout Bible does say that number, and this was later canonized by Fallout 76.
Vault 12
Designed so the doors to the outside did not close properly, to study the effects of radiation on people. Those that survived became Ghouls, and founded the city of Necropolis.
Vault 13
The vault the main character hails from. Since it is a control Vault, no experiments were done on the people inside.
Vault 15
Social experiment putting people with opposite ideologies living together for 50 years. Due to overpopulation, the dwellers left the Vault and formed their own groups outside of it, creating many of the gangs you meet in the game.
Vault 29
The Vault Harold comes from, containing only children ages 15 and under. It is unclear what happened to their parents, although it is likely they were simply killed. It isn’t accessible in the game.
Fallout 2
Fallout 2, much like the previous game, only has 3 Vaults in total to explore, although two of them we already know of; 13 and 15. While they serve that story perfectly, it means that we only have one new Vault, and one of the more peaceful ones at that.
Vault 8
Another of the control Vaults, these dwellers lived peacefully and, after little more than a decade, they left the Vault to repopulate the land. 200 years later, Vault City thrives on top of what used to be Vault 8, with a functioning society and highly advanced medicine.
Fallout 3
Fallout 3 is when the series became part of the Bethesda brand, becoming the iconic RPG we know and love today. With its massive map, it has more Vaults than ever before, with their own gruesome stories to tell.
Vault 87
The main purpose of the Vault was to study the effects of the Forced Evolutionary Virus, which turned people into Super Mutants. Said Mutants eventually took over the Vault and either killed everyone else, or turned them into more of them.
Vault 92
This Vault studied the effects of a special White Noise on people, but it ended up turning everyone insane and, long story short, they all killed each other. Due to a water leak, the Vault is now infested with all manner of dangerous animals.
Vault 101
The Vault was meant to remain closed forever, to study the role of the overseer. In the hundreds of years that the Vault remained operational, contact with the outside was inevitable, which led to the origin of your player character in the game.
Vault 106
With psychoactive drugs being pumped constantly through the air ventilation system, the residents of this Vault didn’t last long, eventually turning on each other. When you visit it in game, not only are there still mad people inside, but the seemingly endless supply of drugs is still being pumped into the air.
Vault 108
This Vault was made to crumble, the power supply eventually failing, with limited access to entertainment but easy access to weaponry. They also studied cloning for some reason, which led to the Vault being taken over by clones of a dweller named Gary.
Vault 112
Dr. Stanislaus Braun led the virtual reality experiment being held in the Vault, with the residents being suspended in artificial paradises for an indefinite amount of time. Braun had endless control over the simulation, so once he was bored with it, he started “killing” his fellow dwellers, only to later revive them and wipe out their memories.
One Man, And A Crate Of Puppets Comic
The Vaults mentioned in the comic One Man, and a Crate of Puppets are mostly jokes, but that doesn’t make them any less canon. There’s even a reference to Vault 77 in Fallout 3, so while these experiments can’t possibly be taken seriously, they are still part of the Fallout lore.
Vault 43
All we know of this Vault is that it consists of 20 men, 10 women, and 1 Panther.
Vault 69
All we know of this Vault is that it consists of 1 man and 1000 women.
Vault 77
This Vault only had one dweller, who slowly went insane. His sole company was a crate full of puppets, the Vault Boy puppet becoming his main confidant. They eventually leave the Vault and murder plenty of bandits that cross their path.
Vault 69 and 68 are both mentioned in the Fallout Bible, with 68 containing 1 woman and 1000 men. If one exists, so should the other, but there is no mention of Vault 68 in any canonized way.
Fallout: New Vegas
Considered by many the highlight of the Fallout franchise, New Vegas has a focused narrative filled not only with twists and turns, but with new Vaults as well.
Vault 3
A control Vault, meaning that no experiments were held within. Due to the naivety of the dwellers, the Vault was taken over by Bandits once the gates were opened.
Vault 11
A social experiment was held inside this Vault, where the dwellers were told that, unless they sacrificed one of their own each year, they would all die. This was all a ruse, since if no one died, an automated recording would congratulate the survivors for their behavior. Shocking no one, everyone inside the Vault eventually died.
Vault 17
You can’t visit this Vault in the game, but it is mentioned by Lily Bowen as the place she comes from. It seemed like a peaceful community, until they were captured by the Master and turned into Mutants.
Vault 19
The dwellers of this Vault were split into two teams, red and blue. Each team was induced with a sense of paranoia over the other, and while we don’t know the ultimate fate of the Vault, we can assume they killed each other.
Vault 21
The social experiment of this Vault was that every dispute was settled by gambling. The residents of this Vault not only survived, but some of them even thrived by turning the Vault into a hotel for outside survivors.
Vault 22
This Vault’s scientists were seemingly harmless, studying plant growth to combat world hunger. As expected, it all goes wrong, the plants and fungi taking over the Vault and turning the dwellers into mindless and violent creatures.
Vault 34
This Vault was stocked with an overflowing amount of guns, generating a gun-centric culture over the years. Said guns were strictly controlled by the overseer, making part of the dwellers leave and form the Boomers faction; those who stayed suffered radiation poisoning due to a malfunction and became Ghouls.
Fallout 4
Fallout 4 is a return to form for the series, since once again the main character is a resident of a Vault. Unlike previous entries, however, the Vault the player hails from isn’t one of the control Vaults.
Vault 75
This Vault raised children to be exceptionally fit and smart once they turned 18. The physically and mentally able were harvested for their organs, the intelligent and obedient ones were recruited as scientists, while all others were just executed. The children eventually rebelled and escaped the Vault.
Vault 81
Meant for human experimentation, this Vault aimed to create a universal cure by infecting the dwellers with all sorts of diseases. The first overseer of the Vault betrayed the scientists, preventing the experiments from taking place and allowing the residents to lead peaceful lives.
Vault 88
Lack of funding meant that this Vault was never finished, although it was meant to test different devices and distribute them to the other Vaults.
Vault 95
This Vault was a social experiment on drug addiction, posing as a safe haven for recovering from withdrawal. Once the doors were sealed, the dwellers were eventually given access to a large supply of drugs, which led to violence and the general collapse of the Vault.
Vault 111
This is the Vault the main character comes from, and it explores the effects of cryogenic sleep on people. This allows the main character to exist before the nuclear war, since once they enter the Vault, they are put into cryogenic sleep and only wake up over 200 years later.
Vault 114
This Vault offered volunteers all the luxury they could imagine, when in reality the Vault was designed like a prison. The chosen overseer was an incapable fool, and that too was by design, since the point of the Vault was to study people under highly stressful situations.
Vault 118
The idea behind this Vault was to have 10 social elites with 300 underlings, but the Vault was never finished and only the elites made it inside. To survive the Great War, these elites had their brains transplanted into robots, making them seemingly immortal.
Fallout 76
The jump of the Fallout franchise into the multiplayer world had a rocky start, but it now holds a lively population ready to explore the many dangers of both the Wasteland and the new Vaults. While 76 is the latest game in the series, it is located at the earliest point in the timeline.
Vault 51
This Vault had no overseer, instead holding elections run by a ZAX supercomputer. This computer was given the instruction that the perfect overseer could answer any crisis, so it subjected the dwellers to many artificial problems to find the perfect overseer, eventually killing most residents of the Vault.
Vault 63
While the door to this Vault is a place you can visit in Fallout 76, there is currently no way of going inside.
Vault 76
The titular Vault is one of the few control Vaults, meaning that no experiments were held inside. In fact, the members of this Vault were highly skilled individuals, considered key in the repopulation of America after the Great War.
Vault 79
While no experiment was held inside this Vault, it wasn’t one of the control Vaults. The point of Vault 79 was to hold the gold reserves of the American government until it was needed to stabilize the economy.
Vault 94
The social experiment held inside this Vault aimed to see the reaction of post-war settlements to peaceful interactions. So, once the Vault doors opened, the dwellers invited people from the outside to live in harmony. These people slaughtered everyone and, in their ignorance, triggered a nuclear explosion that created the Mire.
Vault 96
This Vault looked into mutations on the flora and fauna due to radiation, and forced scientists to meet a weekly quota or be killed (they were all meant to die eventually). The scientists, along with the overseer, tried to escape, but they were slain by the A.I. holding them hostage.
Vault 2 is mentioned in the Wasteland minigame, being controlled by a sports-obsessed overseer. While not strictly canon, this might be the Vault Bruiser comes from, since the blood sport he said he was subjected to is oddly similar to American Football.
Fallout TV Show
The Fallout TV Show is not only a great adaptation of the video game series, it also expands the lore, adding even more Vaults for us to explore. Most of them are interconnected, which is expected when you deal with a more linear type of storytelling.
Vault 4
This Vault was another attempt at human experimentation around the effects of radiation, but the subjects managed to break free and take over the Vault.
Vault 31
The next few Vaults are connected, with Vault 31 overseeing the experiments being held in all three.
Vault 32
The residents of this Vault were subjected to extreme torture, likely to find the most resilient individual.
Vault 33
The dwellers of this Vault are unaware of what is happening in the other Vaults. They are carefully married to the members of Vault 32 to breed the perfect human, following defunct eugenics ideals.
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