Where does the power come from in Fallout?
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- Опубликовано: 26 сен 2024
- How do so many areas and buildings have power, especially in the later games? Where does it come from, and should it even be possible?
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Or in smaller towns of Fallout: New Vegas, you see houses powering themselves off of an old fission battery plugged into the side. It's literally a nuclear reactor in a box, just strong enough to keep the lights and appliances of a single home running. You can see one directly outside of Doc Mitchell's door.
would be interesting if you could destroy those and the power would stop working like when you pull a fusion core fallout 4
@@_armu the power flickers for a second in fallout 4 but stays on when you remove the fusion core. Would of been a cool detail if removing it disabled lights and powered doors, and made terminals no longer powered. Maybe you could find places that already don’t have a fusion core so you’d need to install one to get the doors and terminals working again, and would of added another element to the resource. Do you spend one to gain access to a new area or keep it to power your power armor.
@@clan741 that actually sounds like a cool an interesting mechanic to have!
Too bad thats its too original of an idea for Bethesda.
@@clan741 Maby there's a back up system for when the power goes out 🤷♂️
@@blacktemplarbrotherlucius1935 I think Bethesda, puts in detail in different places. Mechanics are old and unoriginal. But their lore building I think is fantastic. Although that definitely applies more so to the elder scrolls series. But Fallout has good lore aswell.
One thing that's interesting, especially given the 1950s aesthetic and art deco design obsession of the universe, is the use of radios in the Fallout universe. There's a real life radio (that saw a resurgence of popularity in the real life 1950s) that doesn't require *_any_* electricity to function: The crystal radio. The radio uses a galena crystal and uses the power from the radio transmission itself to power a small speaker.
During the 1920s, these things became ridiculously popular and the United States Bureau of Standards even released official guides and manuals for people at home to make their own crystal radio and encouraged people to do so. Starting in the 1930s they saw a decrease in popularity due to affordable amplified receiver radios (like the old kind using vacuum tubes) becoming available. Although, during WWII, the crystal radios built by troops (called "foxhole radios") because Germans were detecting and triangulating the oscillator signal of Allied radio receivers. The crystal radio can't be detected because it's a passive system that works thanks to the radio signal's own power and transmission. There's nothing to track.
Also, in the 1950s, there was - get this - rocket-shaped pocket crystal radios that became hugely popular with kids. Now THAT is something that sounds right out of Fallout.
I looked it up and man that's hella cool
Sometimes I have to poop for a long time.
I want one now
bro, did you ever saw crystal radio that could power small speaker? All it can power is high impedance headphones. And it requires quite strong signal. And you can!t switch stations so easily. And so on...
@@frantisekdaart
"bro, did you ever saw crystal radio that could power small speaker?"
Yes.
v=N-HFZqdujPE
"All it can power is high impedance headphones."
Wrong.
v=z95QOC9yHrw
v=p_xNZTe4i1w
"And it requires quite strong signal"
Wrong again.
v=HvLmJGM_T3M
"And you can!t switch stations so easily. And so on..."
Also wrong.
v=mubvsqFrE88
I always thought it would have been alot more interesting in FO4 if the fusion cores taken from the buildings to use power armour actually had more of an impact, such as disabling the electrics in the building, and there could also be the same in reverse, areas with empty generators that need cores to power up and access the building, it would have given the player a little more to think about in terms of resource management, but I can see why something like that didn't fit into the direction Bethesda had in mind for 4. Shame though.
I have to wonder I that was intended as a mechanic at some early point but got axed for time and complexity, that said, a mod on this basis would be fun
Problem is it would ruin a lot of terminal lore since most players would take the fusion core first chance and never put it back
@@justanotheranimeprofilepic that's why it would be cool that's what players do now but if it shut down the building it woul make players think about taking it or at least make you come back for it after exploring the building
@@justanotheranimeprofilepicrn there's only pros to taking it and with how powerful they are I think there should be some cons
@@FlavaTown420 with the fan base fallout 4 is appealing to, having backtrack either to the start or midpoint in a dungeon for a fusion core would just annoy most players
In Fallout 4 my headcannon was that the fusion core generators were there for emergencies and that buildings themselves were still hooked up to the grid
I think the generators worked on their own, with the core as the thied tier backup, but my god I hate the cores completely.
The *reactor* in a T51 is meant to last 2-300 years of continuous use, not 200 years of *no* use and 20 minutes of use. Bethesda's decision to give Power Armor early and the resulting need to balance it absolutely destroyed the lore.
Yeah, I think that's a reasonable conclusion. The "fusion" cores aren't fully inserted because they aren't actually being used, or are only being used at a trickle to power the light and buttons on the generators themselves, as the generators are in standby mode and only begin producing full power when the mains power goes out and the core is fully seated.
@@DIEGhostfish yeah its Bad to the Lore but the Power Armor system in Fallout 4 was so much better than that in the previous Fallout parts and in my opinion: gameplay and fun>Lore
@@chrisrecchia2732 1&2 were the best.
I wanna get hooked up to the grip
This was actually fascinating. I always just slapped the label of fusion technology over everything because of how ridiculously efficient it would be, it hadn't even crossed my mind that fusion cores might not actually be fusion based. 76 shows that some of the power plants are still functional but just offline, but it did always bug me that buildings didn't seem to lose power when you looted the generator.
Old comment is old. Its fairly reasonable that building large fusion reactors would be costly and take a lot of time especially when displacing already existing infrastructure, aka the nuclear power plants. In real life it takes 10's of years to get something like a nuclear reactor power plant built imagine replacing one. What wouldn't take a super long time especially with lots of money from the government is producing small fusion cores for small fusion reactors attached to power armor. Supplies for power armor and also transportable generators is totally reasonable. We already live in a mixed power society anyways.
Mind was always more that and also, given how long it's been, ghouls etc that someone worked out how to get power going, not well enough to have things pre war but we'll enough to keep lights going at night
You have to remember Fallout isn't post apocalypse, it's post post-apocalypse. Many power stations have been rebuilt, especially on the West Coast, the NCR are close to pre-war technology levels. With working cars and trucks, though these are still somewhat rare. They also have working trains, that's why the Powder Gangers were in Vegas in the first place. To repair and connect the Vegas railway to the NCR one.
And the west coast brotherhood Connaclly has multiple fully operational tanks and aircraft and in 76 only 20 years after the bombs the brotherhood has functioning APCs parked at their main outpost and one at the front gate with power armor taking a seat next to the others instead of being the main source of strength
"Post post-apocalypse" - damn that's a really good point, spot on. I think that's why it's such an interesting world.
Neo-Post Apoc.
@@TheGr8one1022 stupid question. what does post post apocalyptic mean exactly...
@@SenketsuFi it means that the world has stabilized after the apocalypse and societies are much bigger and more resilient. Kinda like the wild west or the oregon trail
Most impressive thing isn't the fact that power still exist but that 200+ year old light bulbs still work and haven't blown out
I mean usually the lights blow out from being turned on and off
@@DeosPraetorian If the lights are LED maybe but I'm pretty sure lights in Fallout are all incandescent, which means they have a finite amount of (I believe it to be) nitrogen gas inside the bulb and with them being on for 200 years eventually the nitrogen would be used up and the bulb to burn out
@@morticianflame The gas in incandescent bulbs is not a consumable. It's a non-reactive gas put there to displace oxygen so the filament doesn't oxidize and burn away when it heats up. If the bulb remains sealed and the filament doesn't break, it can theoretically continue to remain functional indefinitely. It is repeated heating/cooling cycles that eventually break the filament and make a bulb "burn out" from arcing across the break.
@@morticianflame some lights aren't incandescent and bulbs won't break just sitting there. It would take thousands of years for the nitrogen to leak out.
Or that Raiders, Bandits and other criminals are still around scavenging instead of trying to help grow a farm/community and stuff! Bandits and such should only really be in control within the first few decades, I guess, after that we should have at least civilised ourselves, although am not an expert(I like booze so am an expert in being an alkie lol)
I've always just assumed that settlements in fallout were powered by the sheer limitless power exuding from Todd Howard's body
"16 times the detail and 16 times THE POWER!"
@@_zigger_ Z
Hey it just works.
The power of his limitless charisma stat
The power of his gamer epicness, that is
I always viewed the Fusion Generators as manually triggered back up power supplies for the buildings which were never activated due to the war and grid staying online.
Looking at the Fusion core animation for power armour when you place the fusion core into the socket you have to push/ hit the fusion core further in to seat it fully and begin the reaction.
To activate the Fusion Generator is the same, push them deeper into the socket and it can deliver a short burst of power to give time to perform emergency tasks.
As for the generators animation always took a spinning part to be apart of the cooling loop as when you trigger the reactor the coolant has to be circulating before it is brought online or the piping and moving parts might overheat and warp/ crack or even melt some components.
I think that buildings are far more Energy intensive than Power armour as for a buildings usecase the back up power might only last a few hours or even Minutes,
while in power armour depending on activity levels the fusion core can last for around 10 hours in game, but lets be more realistic to the world and say a day.
This would also explain the sheer size difference between power armour and the Generator. The generator has to have a better cooling capacity to cover the sheer current draw while the Power armour has to be cooled by the frame and the actual armour pieces. So its like comparing an Air cooled engine and a water cooled engine
If fusion generators recharged fusion cores, it would make so much sense, because the Atom Cats have one outside of their garage, and i guess they'd need something to recharge their fusion core, given how much they use Power Armor
I agree the cores would be better called a capacitor and fusion is a brand name
the generators do charge the cores but won't accept cores anymore
The Hoover dam was designed to survive without people running it so I wouldn’t be too surprised if some of those bits of automation in things like the overflow rerouting would have become present in other hydroelectric sources across the country
I read somewhere that it could run for a total of 6 hours with no men operating it.
@@Notaffiliated64 and a futuristic version with robots it would need zero people for those two hundred years easily
@@davidos8760 but who's powering the robots for 200 years?
@@thestaminabs they are fusion or fission powered both can theoretically power the robots that long this makes sense thanks to the sci fi bordering magical fission tech let alone fusion
@@thestaminabs if robots are working the dam and generating power they could probably charge them selves in the dam
The fact about the noodle shop in DC being a generator is my new favourite detail.
Diamond City singlehandlely being powered by the heat created from those noodles
I always wondered why its name was "Power Noodles" tbh
I looked for their power source so many times, I thought it was an omitted detail, but it was there in plain sight the whole time.
@@852Duarte if you hack the noodle robot he slowly kills the entire city because he is unkillable himself
Nani ni shimasu ka?
My theory: The towns didn't want to rely on a remote location to remain working, to keep their town powered. One big raider attack on a power plant could leave a town powerless. If this happened in the middle of the night, the whole town could be killed very easily. So they power themselves from within.
I thought something similar, why would a massive settlement like Diamond City rely on a power source they couldn't directly maintain or control. It seems far more believable they would invest into their own sustainable power source.
I would say it's more general than that, infrastructure in general is difficult in unstable regions, that entire stretch from power plant to consumer must be safe. Plus, for that investment to be economical, you're going to want more than jsut a single producer and consumer, otherwise it makes more sense to just have the power plant to be at the settlement (or vice versa). And of course, once you say "multiple producers and consumers", you're talking tight and widespread social order that is so rare if it exists at all in-universe
Good theory
Too bad it's absolutely retarded
Thank you Jamie. That makes sense to me. It could be a mix of insufficient pre war power networks and wanting to ensure that they have a strong power source they can protect from things like raiders and super mutants.
Thats.. pretty much just OPs theory lmao things out of your control are vulnerabilities. The more of these needs you bring under your direct control, the safer you'll be. Just makes sense
Fusion cores are essentially more advanced version of radio thermoelectric generators (rtg) than what we have in our timeline.
We use those in satellites such as the famous voyager 1&2
lets not forget, most power stations in the world are made in a way to resist attacks and natural disasters. unless there is a constant bombing or a direct nuclear hit most of these structures can probably handle it. so its not odd that some of the old infrastructure for power generation remains intact ( on the outside)
The real issues will be a rust and decay of parts and wear on structures from lack of care and upkeep.
But with the know how and parts (or ways to produce them?) One could reactervate them.
Eg: Hoover dam, Helios, dayglow
One could also argue that some maintenance could be done by Protectrons or other such automated robots, thou complete refurbishment of a sub station might be beyond regular maintenance.
@@LazyLifeIFreak got to give it to protectrons a Mr handies. They do keep a few plants chugging
@@TheSemajshadow that's true actually. mr Handy's and protectrons still do their jobs after war.
Robots and chain link fences-
Fallout 3
Just a nit pik but terminals have internal power, which is why you find them working in every corner of the wasteland: Nuclear powered Commodore 64.
I noticed that too, in FO3, FO4 and NV. I think the radios are also self powered.
FYI in Nuka-World if you take the fusion core from the generator before the fight with the overboss, gage says power to the arena is down 40%.
30
That only makes it obvious that there is another generator somewhere.
@@HappyBeezerStudios feet Brno
But also if you do that you break the fight and colter is invincible.
@@HappyBeezerStudios if anything it would imply there are more than one generator beyond that, why would anhyone design something to split 30% of the capacity and not if it's objectively not a failsafe measure and have the rest of the 70% stacked in 1 place ?: D
-a solar power plant in the mojave (Helios one)
-a fucking hydroelectric dam (powers a lot of the eastern NCR)
-solar panels
-nuclear reactor in a box (as mentioned by @malomalovids)
-wind (there is a lot of radioactive wind)
The fusion generators could just be backup generators like a lot of important buildings have irl in case the grid goes down.
except the grid did go down and you then took the core out. it doesn't make sense lol
@@mowvu5380it would 100% make sense if they ran back up for hundreds of years but didn't die after 20 minutes in power armour.
I have a PhD in physics, and a professional background in electrical engineering and I can certainly say I’ve never thought twice about this stuff, but I think the devs actually did. Also, funny enough there is a company in Cambridge, MA who is one of the leading fusion research entities. MIT also happens to have a nuclear reactor on/near campus.
How well do you understand theoretical physics?
EE as well, I really like seeing when these things are given proper consideration from game devs...
FO4 reiterates its status as the least intelligent game of the series by having downed and open transmission lines perpetually emitting sparks
Is your PhD theoretical?
@@simoneidson21 💀
@@simoneidson21 Dr. Fantastic moment
I like the idea that Fusion core is just a product name for a fission core created by Mass Fusion.
Basically a Mass Fusion Core, just how Xbox is short for DirectX Box
@@HappyBeezerStudios Microsoft DirectBox
well, if you dig around the details of Fallout 4, "Mass Fusion" was running a huge scam. Their "fusion" reactors are all fission. They did finally develop proper fusion but by then it was too late.
Dont stray from thinking of them as that product.
@@RaddSpencer all the while Vault tech was sitting on cold fusion tech and kept it secret. which brings us to what do they use to power the vaults for 200+ years.
I figure the unseated Fusion Cores that are harvestable ingame are actually mostly spent and the generators have a mechanism to eject a spent core (yet still partially plugged in, similarly to a car cigarette lighter) and the reason they don’t last as long in power armor is that, as well as they could possibly be a different, civilian core rather than a military-use core, same size and dimensions but the military model having a significantly longer operation time
@@billyparker5974 ok nerd
@@billyparker5974 I think this is an awesome comment. :D
Probably is we get the brotherhood mentioning in one quest (the quest where you track brotherhood distress beacons) that the fusion cores within the suits they had ran out within eight hours (similar to the in-game time the fusion cores last)
@@billyparker5974 While there is no direct night vision, the sole survivor can add two different ways to highlight enemies.
Interesting idea. They could be partially pushed out automatically as a way to show that they need replacing.
Power Armor might not need so much power, it could just use it very inefficiently, which is why it eats fusion cells so quickly.
This is ABSOLUTELY it. They were barely out of the prototype phase, and god knows the US didn't optimize things until later. I'll bet they were power hungry
The lore constantly contradicts itself, some sources state that the power armor reactors are capable of lasting several decades of use before depletion, while others state that the armors' fuel quickly depleted under heavy use.
It makes no sense to me, especially when you can acquire the X-01 suit in Fallout 4, that shouldnt be so inneficient then.
This is part of the reason why i never bothered trying to understand Fallout's lore, while it may seem interesting and complex in theory, it is a convoluted, self contradicting mess in reality that not even hardcore fans seem to agree on.
@@alanwatts8239 they're doing their best, I didnt even think about the more advanced armor being more efficient, that makes sense, or doesn't, lol, I agree; Fallout is doing it's best lore wise, and for coming from different studios, 30 years and 7 or 8 games, the first half of which they didnt think the series would ever get that far, is actually pretty good, the occasional contradiction is pretty much inevitable
@@alanwatts8239 usually it just goes to bethesda retconning and changing a lot of established lore. Power armor was one of the worst offenders. In the west-tek factory it states that they run on a variation of microfusion cells and have a life span of 200 years worth of continuous use. This was even apparent in fallout 3 where you could see a microfusion cell in the back of power armor. Then fallout 4 came along and its fusion cores. Honestly thats fine considering it was a different type of MFC than whats used in guns so it would make sense lore wise they have a different name and are larger in appearance. But then they only last a few in game hours? Maybe a full day with all the perks? It makes no sense. Some stated its been over 200 years so they are beginning to decay in efficiency but new vegas and the older fallouts establish it isnt hard to remanufacture or produce new MFCs not to mention the enclave had the ability to produce their own power armor even after the war (X-02 was what was used in fo3 as well as hellfire armor in the dlc, also new) so its a bit ludicrous to imagine that they can’t reproduce or reverse engineer fusion cores with the 200 year lifespan. I guess it was to balance out the power armor mechanic (they knocked it out of the park with the power armor honestly in terms of gameplay) but they could have done it with fusion cores having health which they already do just not for the player it seems. You let it get beat up and worn out you just get sealed in the suit or something just taking damage until you can pry your way out. The ability from that one perk to jettison out a fusion core to act as a grenade wouldve helped with this too. I just think they couldve done it better while still keeping with the older fallouts lore.
My personal headcanon is that with improper use of power armor, the fusion core is drained fast. That's why you need power armor training to wear the stuff in 3 and New Vegas, as the Courier probably knows it from experience, and doesn't want to waste a good fusion core, while the Fallout 3 protagonist never knew what power armor was before going through his journey.
In regards to the fusion core generators I think it’s just a matter of hardware or development time limitations, you’d need to do a lot of scripting to kill lighting nodes off in any interior and even more in an exterior area. Also the commonwealth does have a hydroelectric dam just south of Abernathy farms but given the lack of any water at base I don’t think it’s operational anymore.
Maybe the flickering you see in FO4 when you remove the "fusion" core is similar to a brown out and rather than serving as a dedicated generator, it supplements or balances power from other sources similar to a power factor correcter, by removing the core you wouldn't be killing power to a site, but rather in the long term reducing the life expectancy of the powered devices by removing the power filter for lack of a better word.
Maybe the fusion cores are just act like some kind of catalyst/accelerant in those "generators" since all are fully charged when someone removes it, while a Power Armor gets its power directly from it. And if a building is still connected to a somewhat live grid, it is possible the the generator is/was too, simply refeeding the surplus electricity to the grid that the building does not needs, so by shutting one down only makes the power-grid weaker, but does not kills the power completely.
Also as a railway engineer: Our main system is divided to sections an substations. There's also some level of automatism like: if a main fuse goes down, the control unit that is responsible for that area try's to turn the power (fuse) back on, after some time, automatically (so in a thunder-storm we don't have to run around like crazy), and only after 2 failed attempts that grid stay "off" , and needs a manual reset, (if the shortage is no longer present).
That's why some unfortunate people, who touch the wrong thing, at the wrong time are guaranteed to get cooked, specially if they get suck!
I think perhaps the fusion cores are the battery and the “generator” is the transformer allowing the nuclear powered battery to use very little power over 200 years but the power armor is lacking that very large transformer (clearly) and so it draws from the core directly, using much more power in a much shorter timeframe
Was thinking the cores had multiple modes of interaction with a generator. The idea revolved around the fusion core generator being the actual producer of power, and the core is essentially a chargeable power source that’s inline with the generator’s power routing. The modes of interaction would have to do with the position of the core in the generator, with the partially exposed position for loot generators acting as a “charge” mode where the generator replenishes the core with the power it generates, while the fully inserted settlement position is like for a “pass through” mode, where the core is more just being used to complete the power circuit for the generator to power external devices.
Like a car battery. Also, cars have a way to charge batteries or at least keep them charged while running
Yeah, I agree. Mr. House needed a jump start from Hoover dam to bring his fusion system back on line. The mission (The House always wins 7) to sneak into the NCR held substation and place an override chip in the system. I would wonder if the FCs are just to kick start those larger fusion systems over until the reaction becomes self sustaining and then the FC core is pushed out. It could be the reactor refills the core which is why they always have a full charge, except for the one at the museum of history which is only at 50 percent. The ones you build in settlements haven't been in service long enough to for them to be fully self sustaining and/or recover enough power to be useable.
As an actual electrical engineer, I love this video topic and how you approached it.
yet didnt mention or clarify any of the mistakes?
well then how do they do it? 200 years a long time in machine life even with all the fission/fusion sorcery
@@jasonrarick2389 well considering that in fallout you have 500kg+ armor that you can walk around just fine and dandy in and an assisted aiming system that freezes time, its not too far fetched to think that their already super unrealistic fusion and fission technology could stay in power for hundreds of years, i believe in the original fallouts its mentioned that the fusion cores that are used for power armor can keep power armor going for hundreds of years, although that has been retconned by bethesda it seems to still be somewhat true with the generators in houses/establishments that seem to have been running for over 200 years.
@@Videoswithsoarin which you also didn't do
Consider also that the generators require nuclear material to build this could mean that the generator itself has a low amount of energy production and that the fusion core is being used to reach criticality for generating larger amounts of power. The core being slightly out when we find them in the wasteland could be like a fuse mechanism or a safety mechanism so that the generator does not explode.
My head cannon for the fusion cores was always that the fusion generators are storing excess power or nuclear material in the fusion cores. The fusion core is then just what Preston described it as, a battery.
Its there so if the reactor fails or something, you'll still have power for however long the fusion core's power reserves are good for. So when you remove a fusion core from a building's generator, you're not killing its power supply, you're yoinking its integrated battery backup.
I think buildings could have taken on a more sinister feel if the power cuts out when you pull the core. You taje the elevator to the lowest basement, find a core, the lights go out and now you have to fight ghouls in the dark all the way back up. I dunno. Might be the DM in me.
Basically the inverted version of how dungeons in the game usually work. You fight your way through the building and at the end get some elevator running that brings you back to the entrence.
The biggest problem about the power poles in FO4 is where the lines are sparking, you can see that there's no physical connection to that same line further down, and with no evident underground line feeding up, it made for a big oversight on the devs part. The most notable one is near County Crossing settlement close to a small generation station across the street.
Edit to add: Concerning "fusion generators", I can see there being 2 variants, one being like we can use for our settlements and is a single purpose generation system, and the other being a dual purpose generator for the area and a recharger for fusion cores. It doesn't deviate the fact that a building would have multiple sources of power, and could even be an oversight of the devs to fail to animate the rotors of the other generators that don't have a fusion core dock to it. Ultimately, buildings would have many redundant power sources that would provide power for an unknown/indefinite period of time.
Yeah this always made me facepalm when seeing them. FO4 made things so much more dumb and goofy, but not in a good way.
Ah, you must have missed the micro tesla coils fitted to it that transfer the electrickery through the very air itself! Mr Tesla was very pleased that they finally implemented that plan of his! 😁
How do you even notice that lol
@@aerystargaryenii2565 Paying attention to details, especially with a heavily modified game. Those sparks give 1 cap when scrapped with the right scrapping mod.
@@Celastrous I can't play the game without mods, and after playing it for over 5600 hours and having so many mods that the game would rather crash than run, still fun to play, as long as it actually runs that is...
You also have to factor in that pre war society would have been extremely power hungry. In the even that a massive chunk of the population and all of it's functioning devices suddenly disappeared, any rector assumed to still be standing might just be idling, for lack of a better term.
21:00 not having all 3 phases is not an issue in most cases. 3 phase is only present in commercial or industrial places so places with small motors, terminals, lights etc would be fine. all these single phase electrical circuits can use any one of the 3 phases. the issue of broken grids only arrises with large motors like elevators which are 3 phase. pumps are not necessarily 3 phase because single phase AC motors do exist, most motors in everyday life are single phase AC motors like fans, appliances and even some industrial tools like drill presses, lathes, welding equipment.
Dev of Fallout 3 didn't even think about power source. My man filled in the blank for them.
There is a mod I always use in fallout4 that gives solar panels in settlement builds. Love the no generator buzz noise.
I know I'm late but do you remember the name? I find it quite emersion breaking that the settlers sleep close to a 450 loud noise machine
In 76 you can connect your workshop to the grid from the local nuclear power plant but it doesn't give you much power unless you do the event to repair the power plant that your settlement is closest to.
76 is still alive? lmao
@@mortenera2294 isince wastelanders and BoS it's not that bad. It's a spin-off, so the lore accuracy is a bit questionable, but it can be a fun experience, if you allow it.
@@hyperturbotechnomike lores pretty rock solid
@@hyperturbotechnomike its in my top 3 spinoffs
3: tactics
2: 76
1: NV
we dont talk about the other spin off
@@Pigness7 If they would hzave called it Fallout Arcade instead of Fallout BoS, people might perhaps think different of it. It should have been marketed as an arcade game.
As an electrical engineer I really enjoyed this, pretty sure you were spot on regarding the transformers and not being able to start 3-phase motors with a lost phase (this is a real thing that happens in industry that we call single phasing). Typically though most industrial sites and some utilities will have NGRs, neutral grounding resistors, that will allow normal operation with a single phase to ground fault. If you lose a second phase to ground it's a phase to phase fault and pretty much everything blows up. So losing just one phase might not happen depending on the situation. Anyways, wikipedia is a pretty good school it seems.
Btw, last December, we were able to generate power through fusion. Though it will take time for more widespread use.
One thing to take into account re maintenance is the ubiquitous presence of utility protectrons. It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to think that those protections can maintain facilities to some degree and repair each other (think Dwemer constructs if this were Elder Scrolls). In that vein, perhaps some of the random robot encounters on the roads are actually work crews following a maintenance schedule.
Far harbors fog condensers actually have an In universe explanation for how they work, theyre powered by the wind turbines on the island, Captain avery tells you about it like, 2missions into the DLC on her first optional mission
@@rjwaters3 Yeah, that's true. And they do shut down if you shut down the turbines. I guess my head cannon took over for a second since that doesn't make a ton of sense imo. Since island wide wireless power or a massive underground postwar wiring project doesn't seem realistic for Far Harbor; and the fog condensors at the far flung settlements have a mysterious source of power as well, seems of that they all convey to the wind turbines somehow. Also the condensors at the settlements keep running when the turbines shut down.
As an engineering student, I find this fascinating. Infact, the first thing I do when I join the Minutemen, is start building a power plant at Natick power station with the settlement mod.
@Black Boy King TV I build settlements for all factions.
There are actually some power stations in Natick MA circa 2022
Imagine how much cooler the settlements would have been if you could build proper infrastructure and transfer power between settlements, then you could even get radiant quests where people are leeching your power and you can go deal with them
@@swedneck Damnit, now I want Electro-Brahmin, a giant capacitor/battery with a long wire for charging/discharging, but when not in use it's wound around the Brahmin (that's wearing rubber boots). Anyone bumping it or trying to raid the caravan gets zapped! ⚡⚡⚡🐮🐮⚡⚡⚡ 😂
Colony builder games are cool
My theory is that the fusion generators CHARGE the fusion cores, hence why there is a core cycle button. The cores function like capacitors in a power supply for a PC and store energy. Granted this is almost assuredly wrong but in my head its more plausible
There was a theory in Fallout 4 for a very short time before it was debunked that you could place drained fusion cores in generators to recharge them, unfortunately not a mechanic.
But if you consider that the cores you get from generators are always fully charged I guess the intended use of the cores could go either way...
@@_armu Definitely possible.
i really struggle with these videos, because the decline in writing for fallout 3 and 4 is really jarring. its crazy to go from “power is a scarce resource” to “actually there’s live electricity under every square inch of the united states”
This is one of the biggest logic gaps in Fallout: Having abundant power from all kinds of nuclear sources (including fusion), but fighting the biggest war about oil due to an energy crisis…
When your nation is the only one with this energy source then it begins to make sense. The rest of the world was essentially using conventional methods
China didn't have nuclear reactors to the same extent as the USA.
They largely depended on oil which the USA had the last off in Alaska.
The US would never trade oil to communists and therefore they invaded Alaska.
The US wanted to keep its territory and hold a monopoly over oil and China was so desperate they invaded.
Do you reckon that the fusion cores are sticking out of the old box generators, and not the new ones that you build in settlements, because the old ones are slowly ejecting - just as they completely eject when they're spent in your power armour?
no, the fusion cores stick out to communcate to the player that they can be pulled out
The generators would blow in a couple years
Good point. @@aleanscm9350
Hmm what if the generators cycles the elements in the core convert it to what it needs and refuels it?
Eventually that would be depleted too because it's a closed system?@@vexile1239
In reference to the "unknown power sources". If we look at the guard, "Stockholm" in Megaton.. This man is in a location with no real way up and down (there is a tricky way). So we must assume there is more to his life than standing up there 24/7? He must have a bed, and a pathway down from his perch (at the least, someone needs to bring him food/water).
Based on this information, I believe there are parts of the open-world which aren't rendered at all, but accessible to other living things in the wasteland.
This is the thing that has always bugged me about the Fallout games.
It's the same problem that has been solved with the torch guys who are constantly maintaining the torches in dungeons, they are called lazy solutions!
watching your videos has reignited my passion to play the fallout series again, keep up the good work
i’m an electrician, i recently got into your vids and this is the one i’ve ben impressed the most with, great job man :)
Did you also achieve your studies on Wikipedia?
I've found a couple of those plutonium wells throught the Boston ruins. But they're usually in the less traveled parts. I've also always wondered how the lights haven't burnt out yet, but there is a light bulb that was installed in like 1915 that still burns today in a fire station. The more they get shut off the quicker they burn out.
"A light that burns twice as bright burns half as long"
@@HappyBeezerStudios This is somehow right in between a bot comment and a human comment.
Vaguely and tangentially on-topic, but utterly pointless to the discussion at hand
that light also is uselessly dull
@unfunny2258 same with the ones in the subway stations, as you usually have to click on your pipboy to see better. I just thought it was weird they were still flickering
Lightbulbs mainly burn out due to planned obsolescence, it's not even a conspiracy.
Pure speculation, but it's reasonable to assume that the fusion cores you get out in the wasteland are "spent" for commercial/residential use. They're partially ejected from the generators in which you find them, perhaps as a safety feature. This would explain why you only get a few hours or days out of them in your power armor. It would also explain why they're ejected at only a mostly depleted state given what happens to them with max Nuclear Physicist perks: they explode...something you certainly wouldn't want to happen in your residential applications.
fallout 1&2 says that power armor lasts hundrers of years so its bethesda who ruined fusion cores and power armor in this matter just for gameplay purposes
This makes sense... Failsafe at 5-10% so it auto ejects the core preventing meltdown.
@@lifemocker85 You said it yourself, "hundreds of years". Fallout 4 is set almost more than a century after the OG games, which is also more than 200 years since the great war, the power of most of those fusion cores is almost drained.
@@chimpy5323 "hundreds" can be also like 500
@@lifemocker85 It could be, but would you honestly expect all the horribly twisted companies in the wasteland to not jump on the ability to say "hundreds" of years the very instant they pass 200years of life expectancy?
pretty sure Old World Blues have Generators, mostly small ones, i remember them mostly in some of the scientists rooms, and The Giant Roboscorpion is drawing energy from somewhere, you can even overload the electricity in that boss fight to make the generator explode and make the fight easier.
He goes into this in the video; what you see in most places aren't generators, but the "power boxes" that connect to existing networks. And, in Big MT, there are those mysterious "smokestacks" (cooling towers?) just to the northwest of the Dome...
@Work and Stuff The giant roboscorpion needed to have an external poewr source in order to work, that is the main reason it was still a prototype
Little did you know, three weeks after this video the US government successfully discovered fusion power
I was filming for a settlement build in Fallout 4, and I passed a downed telephone pole line, and it still had power.
So, there’s obviously still power being generated in the commonwealth. Which, is so strange because the institute’s whole thing is that they’re having a power crisis.
Why don’t they just, take over the power source that’s making the city and its surrounding towns powered?
On the subway and underground areas if you have ever seen any of the urban exploration or interviews with some of the people that dwell within America's Underground they have electricity and tap right into the existing power network via rerouted cables and splicing... I know this is a much different scenario in the post apocalypse but some messages of the old Power Network would still remain regardless in a dilapidated state that is
the fusion cores could be fission batteries created as a result of fusion. The Plutonium wells are named that because they fuse lighter elements into plutonium drawing power from fusion. Then the plutonium waste is harvested and turned into fission batteries. The generators and cores are called fusion because their made by Mass Fusion.
Going further on the fusion generator bit, it is sticking out slightly further than one built for a settlement yes, but if you look closer the fusion core has a green light around it which is dim in the wild vs one built for a settlment which is very bright. If we take that at face value, it stands to reason that fusion cores plucked from wild fusion generators are nearing empty.
David Attenborough: "Here we see the wild fusion generator in it's native environment. Isn't it beautiful."
@@brodriguez11000 I'm sure this joke would be funnier if I knew who David attenborough was. 😅
My theory for the fusion cores and running buildings is that they’re not seated in those machines because those machines are backup generators, meant to be utilized in case the grid goes offline; which isn’t in the case in games like Fallout 4. That’s why they aren’t seated properly, because they need to be activated when the building no longer receives its power from the wider grid. It also makes sense that the fusion cores would only work for a short time in something as big as a building rather than 200 years, which also explains why power armor burns through them so quickly in comparison
Your fusion core theory actually makes sense.
I imagine that the fusion cores get ejected when they're low on power, and that's why they're not fully in the machines when you find them.
The spinning thing on the generators could simply just spin when a fusion core detected, so when you remove it, the machine stops running, since there wouldn't be a reason to if the fusion core is removed.
The reason the fusion core still has enough power to power your power armor (that's a mouthful), could be that as power is drawn, the core becomes less stable, so the generators are designed to eject them before they reach a set instability.
Or a more simple explanation could be that, Mass Fusion just wanted to rip off the consumer, so they set them to be ejected sooner. With the military however, they'd want to get as much battery life as possible, so they'd become the official core suppliers.
Fusion Cores might also work like chemical batteries, in which overtime their output decreases, to the point where they don't provide sufficient output the generator needs, but still enough to run the light and spinny bit, as well as run a suit of power armor for a few minutes.
I noticed that the fusion you place yourself in settlements don't allow their core to be removed. I am not sure if enemies can destroy them but I know they can cause turrets to need repair if you don't set enough up to prevent them from getting close. I like the heavy laser turrets in Fallout 4, if you are an enemy of the Brotherhood of Steel the heavy laser turrets will fight the vertibirds. Set them on a tall enough building and they have a surprisingly long range too. It is fun to get within range of them and annoy the enemies and watch the laser turrets attack them. If they damage them just go back as if you were setting them up and they can be repaired. You can also scrap them if you decide that you want something else in that spot.
lol concrete floor walls was the biggest protection
In Fallout 3, the Museum of Technology references having to install new (and unseen) fission power to power the Vault-tec display in one of the terminal entries. Separately, Mr. House (long may he reign) talks about how the strain of the laser defense system knocked out the 38's fusion power system and why he needs a jump start from Hover to bring the 38 and his other stuff back on line. Fusion and Fission power exist in small and midsized packages.
Mass Fusion could be locked in using Fission power because that's where their money was at the time and hadn't had time/resources/smarts to bring their own system to market.
14:45 National Ignition Facility recently had fusion where more power come out then was invested in via laser (after this vid uploaded)
An amount of laser energy went into fusion, and more energy was produced.
They used very inefficient lasers, so the amount of total energy invested didn't pay off energetically - but that's just because the facility wasn't built for efficiency.
We are actually getting closer to economical fusion! That Fallout retro-past is actually still ahead for us to experience :)
Does that mean fusion reactors will have a huge laser beam in the middle? Sweet
HAHA NOW WE HAVE COLD FUSION AFTER 219 YEARS
One could conclude that RTG's (good god, why even!?) are providing the power to the lights. In the real world, the Voyager 1+2 probes were launched in the 1977 ish and is expected to provide power to somewhere around 2025-ish, so its not completely outlandish, I propose that something similar to RTG's could be used to provide constant emergency power, thou it would still have be the kind of techno-pseudo-science of the Fallout universe.
That is effectively what the Plutonium Wells are in Fo4, I would assume. They are just stockpiles of plutonium the unit uses to crate power locally. City sized RTG. It also explains low power levels being able to make lights work but not large equipment since RTG's produce paltry amounts of energy for a very long time.
what a brilliant idea for a video, I haven't seen anyone tackle this subject before. I am impressed with the amount of research you have done. I had no idea about that terminal entry about powerlines being underground. Great video!
6:28 you would find large coils of wire in a generator. a generator consists of an alternator which converts mechanical energy into electrical energy so they could be generators still. if you doubt my qualifications im an electrician and ive installed residential automatic backup generators made by honeywell and generac in the 24kW range
I reckon that _"Fusion Cores"_ is just a brand name:
'Power Cores made by Mass Fusion!'
Legally speaking, just because it's not really fusion, it's still not lying...
I also reckon that the Fusion Generators are just *charging* the Cores using power from the grid - BUT they are themselves also power *_storage_* rather than actual generators, big nuclear batteries that still provide backup power if the grid goes down, so again legally speaking they do the same job as a generator... and because they're nuclear, they can power a small to medium-sized building _(larger buildings tend to have multiple)_ for decades.
And if the main power grid has been running at a lower capacity and/or intermittently for 200 years, those fusion generator/battery things would get enough top-ups to never run out.
the last part about developers making power generation being explicit only for story reasons is efficient and is one that FNV also leverages. If Obsidian set their fallout game to a place that does not have a cloes by hydroelectric dam, they would have done what they did as Interplay in Fallout 1 and 2. Being close to the dam just made it easy for them to have a big plot point that also had the benefit of power generation and that power generation also serving purposes like that in Helios 1 or in the independent quest line. Not being explicit in world building may seem lazy, but efficiency is just clever laziness. It is efficient to leave the idea of power generation behind if it serves nothing. They did not even need to justify explicitly how a post apocalyptic society had the resources and the know how to get an entire dam running after 2 centuries of neglect and war and get the power somewhere with damaged infrastructure, though the transmission lines do not seem that damaged. Heck this is the idea of chekov's gun where if you show a gun, shoot it at the next scene it appears otherwise omit it later.
well hoover dam was designed to last, it wasnt build by apple
@@Helperbot-2000 thank god it was but war and 200 years will never be kind to machinery more complex than a bolt action.
@@nitesy381 House mentions that the NCR was only able to restore the dam enough for it to be around 50% efficient from it's actual output. So they weren't able to fully restore it, only enough to be in "working conditions".
@@combinecommando001 Been to the damn just recently in a playthrough, yup the thing isn't running on full capacity.
@@combinecommando001 NV did put that into account.
In fallout 4, there’s a power line that is not connected to any line near the settlement right across the guard unit home base. One of the line is sparking. I followed the line and seeing it not connected to anything.
Heh, it's that magical underground power coming in from one of the poles!
In regard to fusion cores and fusion generators, I always thought that the reason cores deplete faster in power armor is because of efficiency. I think the big fusion generators are a large structure designed to create as much power as possible from whatever fuel is in the fusion core. but the power armor suits are built to be much more compact, so instead of an efficient generation of power from the core, it just depletes the fuel rapidly and eats up cores.
i also want to add that we know the default fusion generators can provide power to the buildings they are in, but removing the core and turning them off does not cut off power. this is likely because buildings draw power from an external source and the fusion core power is supplemental. we know this from fo4 nuka world where removing a fusion core for the overboss fight reduces the power to the electrified armor, but is not enough to fully disable it.
It's only the players power armor that depletes them though.
The BoS and others never run out of power in their armor.
@@Soundsofthewood thats the same thing as NPC's never running out of ammo. As far as I know the brotherhood still canonically use up fusion cores, its just they don't expire in gameplay because it would be janky to have brotherhood randomly leaving their armor around the commonwealth cause they ran out of power.
a thought that just occured while watching your fusion core section is that each core is a reactor that outputs a useful energy type and has some storage of it's own. the generator uses that energy to make a large amount of electricity and has additional stores of fuel so that 200 years of running a building is no problem and core replacements were regularly needed as the fusion reaction degraded these micro sized reactors.
power armor lacks and fuel storage and just uses the energy output of the reactor
that's my little theory i just thought of.
I'm surprised that steam engines weren't in fo4. Makes sense from a lore to. You had a massive war over oil gas and resources and yet you have combustion engines that takes oil and all that to use.
The problem with that is, what do you make the steam with? Coal, oil, gas, or wood. So steam power wouldn't work, the world had run dry of those resources.
Steam engines require fuel, like oil, natural gas, or some other power source. Modern power plants all use steam to drive generators, transducing the mechanical power in steam turbines into electrical power fed into a grid or storage.
Steam engines simply are not nearly as efficient as what we have today or what the world in fallout would have.
If a nuclear apocalypse happened irl and future people wanted power, it would be much easier to salvage an internal combustion engine from a car than it would be to fabricate their own steam engine.
@@Celastrous depending on the engine design. You can make a pop engine boat entirely out of tubes and a heater that wouldn't need oil
@@Xahnel wood. have you seen the commonwealth? So much dead, dry wood (and broken houses all over made of it).
@@liquidsleepgames3661 The heater would still need to be some source of fuel... Wood, candle wax, etc..
Here’s my theory: the fusion core contains the deuterium and tritium fuel to be used in a fusion reactor, hence why the generators shut down after removing the core. It also contains a small battery to jump start a fusion reaction.
It would be really cool if in Fallout 5c removing the core would cause a building to lose power, you could replace the core to get the building working again. Maybe they could incorporate this into a quest?
That is at least physically plausible. I'd like a more complex system than just fusion cores, but for a realistic and simple system those would work just fine imo
Have you considered, that probably Dave himself is responsible for restoring power to the capital wasteland?
@@OfficialRadKing33 shut up scam bot
my idea about the fusion cores is that they are fission as a fusion reaction is self sustaining (as stated by proctor ingram when reactivating liberty prime) meaning that it doesn't deplete or need refuleing, all it needs is the agitator to start the reaction
whereas fission power relies on the nuclear decay of atoms when they split, releasing energy. however you can only split a nuclear atom so many times until it becomes a stable isotope again, thus it depletes over time, the same behaviour seen by the "fusion" cores we know and love
the fact that the core eject makes this reaction go critical only furthers to back my point
when you consider that the cars of fallout are fueled by miniature reactors, i never really guessed why every building would have a backup, or just wasn’t connected to some sort of network/grid
It’s like the candles in Skyrim in random caves who lit them ?
Millennia of Draugr waking up purely to sweep the floors and change out the torches?
Millennia of Draugr waking up purely to sweep the floors and change out the torches?
How thoughtful of them
@@preserveourpbfs7128 and to go to the market for fresh apples
The draugurs wake up every day and take care of the ruins that's why they're not all entirely destroyed or unexplorable
I never noticed these things about FO4 "Fusion" Cores.
It would make most sense if they are just not plugged in. The flickering light and stopped generator could be explained with a 2 stage start up cycle a lot of real motors and generators have.
Half Inserted only powers the generator for start up
Fully inserted powers connected systems
I actually like this interpretation
The thing we have to remember though is that the fallout series isn't post-apocalyptic, they're past that point and have started entering the early stages of re-building. It's post _post_ apocalyptic.
The NCR is a perfect example of this, as they managed to re-invent functioning trucks and other vehicles, repaired numerous power plants and even brought a city back to life.
My head canon is that the generators in buildings are back up generators. Meant to kick in when a building loses power, they aren’t powering anything because they are on standby. This could explain why the core’s still have so much power, it doesn’t use much power to keep it running in standby. it also explains why they run out so fast power amor is very power intensive and the cores were only meant to power all or part of a building’s system until the power could be restored .
Bitter Springs was one of the few settlements in Fallout that had realistic lighting and also electricity complete with a generator and string of lights that to the best of my knowledge were only used in The Bitter Springs area.... also on a side note have you ever seen any of the pictures from the civil war in Syria with the power grid hundreds of cables and wires all in a conjoined malformed mess. ..
Shocked how interesting you were able to make this topic. Definitely subbing and watching some more content….and also starting another play through of F3.
Dude I love your in-depth videos. You cover every detail!
With fusion generators, I always assumed the opposite and that the generators themselves are supplying power to the fusion cores, not that the cores are powering the building through the generator. After all, we know from the spinning ride in the Hubologists quest in Nuka World that other pre-war machinery used fusion cores and that they weren't just limited to power armor and gatling lasers. The Overseer of Vault 81 also asks for fusion cores, but they clearly don't have any power armor and they have their own generators, so they must be needed for some alternate use that we never see. Having a means of plugging a fusion battery into the mains supply to recharge it would be extremely useful for large buildings that may need to keep powering intensive machinery like elevators in case of a power outage or emergency, and it keeps that backup power source on the premises just in case.
It would even make sense for how they retain full power when you take them, but they have a greatly diminished battery life when used 200 years later. It could work similarly to how your phone's battery gradually loses its ability to store energy because of degradation and excessive charging. An electrical device being given constant charge for over 200 years would absolutely lose its effectiveness. And like you said, removing the core doesn't affect how anything functions in the building, so clearly the buildings are receiving power from elsewhere. But also a single fusion core couldn't provide enough power to supply a whole building when it was shown that a minimum of 3 cores were needed just to start the Nuka World spinning ride for the Hubologists.
Since you mentioned that point about fusion cores found in buildings being seated differently... Maybe they are pushed in halfway for charging, and pushed in fully as battery backup when grid power goes off. It would explain why every core you find is fully charged.
I just recently found your channel. I must say I love the work you put into these videos and she’s some light on parts of the game I never put too much thought into.
I like your fusion core and station theory. But I have one thought as well to put in what if those aren't just a one-way conduit? What if the stations can both charge the cores but also drain them at times of need kind of like a battery backup
The basements of larger buildings have fusion reactors, and many houses are visibly connected to fission batteries. I thought it didn't go any deeper than that
That's kind of interesting to consider. The state's ability to supply power was probably very spotty towards the end of the war, and it would fit into the Fallout universe that shortly before the bombs the energy crisis was so bad that most people were responsible for arranging their own electricity.
If you assume the blue lights radiating from the fusion core inside a reactor are Cherenkov Radiation, the difference in intensity between those in reactors working in the wild and the ones built in your settlements show that the old ones still glow but only weakly. This supports the idea of only small amounts of energy being released and with that lesser amounts of particles being emitted by older generators than in those newer ones working at full capacity.
2 things:
1) Fusion cores may be rechargeable. It's possible that the ones found in buildings are on a recharge cycle, thus explaining why they are always at 100%.
2) They definitely DO NOT have room-temp superconductors. In those games, I saw nothing just hovering off the ground as if by magic. That is a sign that room-temp superconductors aren't a possessed technology. To make something hover off the ground, you only need two things: a large permanent magnet, and a room-temp superconductor. You don't need power, cryogenics, wings, propellant, or motion. Just those two things. So if they had that technology, things would be hovering and there's nothing that would necessarily make them stop hovering. Given the utility and bad-assery of making things float in the air, any society not doing that doesn't have this tech
I'm surprised you did not back up your "settlements needing better power sources than the old world underground network once they get big enough" theory with the amount of quests/major events that revolve around the matter. Gecko in fallout 2 being a massive power plant that you can fix up (either for the residents of Gecko, Vault city or endings that weren't able to make it into the game), Helios one being a location that the Legion and Brotherhood of Steel fight for (either for a weapon or for *drum roll please* power). Shoot, the entire plot of NV is about Hoover dam to an extent. Yes it is all examples of large factions or settlements using large pre-war sources of power but it clearly shows the drive/need for more power to expand (Vault city being a great example). I believe these motivations and desire clearly shown in the quests could also apply to why the old world networks may still work, or at least be another piece of the answer. What is stopping someone or a group of people being the ones to repair and maintain some of the powerplants over the past 200 years if the chosen one could do it in Gecko. They do not entirely need to be completely self-sufficient.
Either way this channel has grown so much and I love all of these videos. Easily one of the best fallout lore channels. Keep up the great work man, much love
I always thought those fusion core generators are for backup, so once they are removed, the building is still powered by the main source.
Additional conjecture.
"Mass Fusion": The name of the manufacturer.
"Generator - Fusion": A generator either powered by "fusion" or manufactured by "(Mass) Fusion."
"Fusion Core": A device called either "Fusion Core" or "Fusion - Core" by which you identify either the type of power source or manufacturer, followed by either its intended purpose or product name.
My though, the generators you pull the fusion core out of are recharging stations for the fusion cores.
Or perhaps refueling Stations.
Topping off the Fissile or Fusible materials depending on if the core is working like it's name sake or its misleadingly named.
It’s worth considering too that the emp from the nukes would likely take the systems out for some period of time. If they where automated, they might have come back online after some time being deactivated, which might have saved them from the wear they’d experience running with no maintenance. Ultimately though, I think the developers are others occupied and can’t commit to the universe likes it’s fans do. Star Wars is a good example of this I feel
I imagine the fusion generators you find in buildings functions more as backup generators than generators that power the building full time. Given how much power you can pull from one using an effectively new one in a settlement. I also imagine the core getting partially ejected might be an indicator that it needs to be replaced with a new one. So likely, they're mostly depleted by the time the sole survivor picks them up.
What impresses me the most is that in Fallout no one focused on repairing vehicles, the ability to travel by vehicle is probably the first thing that would come to my mind in such a world, especially where cars had mini nuclear reactors.
Generally, Fallout is on the one hand an optimistic vision that life, humans would survive a nuclear apocalypse and on the other hand a very pessimistic one, that people would not be able to rebuild.
I've made a short Light Bulb Master's degree and found that incandescent bulbs have an average maximum life of 2000 hs (two and a half months being continuously active), and the most durable light bulbs we've got are LED with an avg max life of 50.000 hs (5 years and a half). But considering that in the FO universe there are not transistors, I must say we are in a little trouble trying to construct this lore. Maybe there is a lightbulb factory active that still delivers to every settlement in the wasteland. This counts also for pre-war food, two hundred years are a heck of a lot of years. 🤔
As an electrician and a fallout fan this was cool to watch! 😂
I think it's reasonable to assume that 1. some damage was mitigated immediately after the blast by the army; and 2. given that it's still possible to find pre-war gouls, the maintenance knowledge is not completely lost and some repair and maintenance is still happening, though at a very limited scale.
Cool video, but here is an idea, fusion cores are able to recover charge, so when powering a building they have low power drain, but when powering a power armour they use more power than the core can recover causing the core to suffer from burnout resulting in them not being able to recover charge