Vault 34 inFallout: New Vegaswas built in the Mojave Wasteland. Like most vaults in the game, this one was also home to a twisted experiment — one involving overpopulation and plenty of guns.
Vault 34 is found north of the Follower’s Outpost and east of the Aerotech Officer Park on the map ofFallout: New Vegas. The facility is nestled inside a cave system. The area is also highly irradiated, so it’s best to bring plenty of Rad-X and RadAway when visiting.
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The Gun Experiment in Vault 34
Vault 34 was built with a fully stocked armory that contained weapons and ammunition. This was what Vault-Tec had intended as they wanted to see how easy access to weaponry would affect the vault residents. It’s also likely thatFallout’sVault-Tec plannedfor the vault’s eventual overpopulation problem, given Vault 34’s construction. It was purposefully built with limited living space but plenty of recreational facilities.
Whatever the case, the people in the vault soon developed a gun-focused culture. Borrowing guns from the armory and carrying them around became the norm. Much later, however, issues began to arise with the gradual overcrowding of the vault. Notes written by the overseer reveal that the overpopulation problem led to violence among the vault residents. Thus, the overseer stationed guards by the armory to prevent the “more troublesome residents” fromgetting moreFalloutweapons.
This course of action quelled the greater population’s worries but not for long. Soon, inhabitants were calling for population control within Vault 34. Fearing for the worst, the overseer had a vault technician reroute the armory door’s controls so that only the overseer’s terminal could control it. They then sealed off all the weapons and ammunition from the rest of the vault residents. This angered a significant amount of people, and they claimed that the overseer’s actions were unjust as they had a “right to defend themselves.” Unsurprisingly,theFallout: New Vegasoverseerdenied their demands.
Riots began after the armory door was locked tight, and those who had demanded free access then left the vault altogether. The overseer, fearing they might come back, had guards stationed around the main vault door. This proved to be a mistake, however, as it left fewer patrols roaming the halls, and the remaining vault residents attacked the guards stationed near the armory. Though the vault guards managed to hold defend against the ambush, a reactor cooling vent was damaged in the fight.
Some of the fighting stopped after it was announced that the cooling vent was broken, but it soon gave way to panic among the vault residents. Detecting the damage in the cooling vent, Vault 34’s internal systems switched to its automatic safety protocol. This reconfigured the reactor so that it used a different set of pipelines for cooling. However, given the structural damage to the vault, radioactive gas started seeping into the living quarters.
By this time the main systems had gone on autopilot, and the overseer had no way of overriding the reactor’s functions. Even worse, the main vault door wouldn’t open, leaving the vault residents with no other choice but to try and survive with the growing level of radiation in the facility. Unfortunately, the overseer becomes a feral ghoul and becomes one of themost powerful enemies inFallout: New Vegas.
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Vault 34 in Fallout: New Vegas
WhenThe Courier ofFallout: New Vegasarrives at Vault 34, the place is in ruins. They’ll have to face off against hordes of feral ghouls — likely the past vault residents. There’s also an opportunity to save a group of non-ghoul vault residents who’ve been trapped in one of the lower levels of the vault. However, this comes at a price.
IntheFallout: New Vegasquest‘Hard Luck Blues,” The Courier takes a job from Morgan Blake of the NCR sharecropper farms. They’ll have to investigate the farm’s source of water as it’s been coming out irradiated recently. This eventually leads the player to Vault 34, wherein the reactor is the cause of the water contamination. Should they find the terminal entry labeled “SOS,” they’ll learn of the trapped vault residents and how they can save them by rerouting the system’s controls.
Should the player opt to help the human vault residents escape, they’ll be barred from shutting down the reactor, dooming the NCR sharecropper farms. Alternatively, shutting down the reactor will doom the surviving vault residents to their fate. Whatever the player chooses, they won’t gain or lose Karma, but helping Morgan will improve The Courier’s reputation with theNCR inFallout: New Vegas.
The Boomers in Fallout: New Vegas
Though Vault 34 may be in ruins, some of its former inhabitants are still roaming the Mojave Wasteland. Should the player save the human vault residents in “Hard Luck Blues,” they’ll move to Suite 300 of the Aerotech Office Park. Aside from them,TheFalloutCourier can also meetthe Boomers, who happen to be the group of former vault residents that left after the armory was locked.
The Boomers left Vault 34 with their guns and wandered the wasteland, easily killing off any raiders who came their way. Soon after, they found the Nellis Air Force Base and made it their home. They also restored the howitzers — huge guns that were fired from a distance — and use them to prevent any outsiders from getting too close. Of course, The Courier can bypass their attacks and even build rapport with the isolationist group. What the player does for them inFallout: New Vegasalso affects the ending.
The Boomers are a consequence of Vault 34 andVault-Tec’s unethical social experiments inFallout. They became so embedded in the facility’s gun culture, that it’s extended to how they treat the people of the wasteland. In fact, the former vault residents even call outsiders “savages,” and they plan to learn how to fly in aircraft so they can drop explosives across the Mojave Wasteland. InFallout: New Vegas, however, they’re settling with just keeping to themselves and keeping everyone else away.
Fallout: New Vegasis available now for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.
