Hey there, I’ve seen some people online who very much despise the color found in Appalachia, saying it turns the game into a typical wilderness and destroys the feel of being a Fallout game. I would like to make a counter argument about that, but I’ll just start with a summary so those with better places to be can be there quicker.

TL:DR - Each wasteland makes sense to the given area it takes place in, even 76. Details found below. And if you’re in a hurry, make sure to take care and don’t overwork.

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So, let’s begin with what we believe would happen after nuclear radiation in real life. Sadly, we do have some historical examples to look at (wish we didn’t, but that’s the world we live in). Obviously we have strong cases on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan; the locations of the only two wartime nuclear strikes in history. But beyond that, we also can look at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island for examples as well.

What we see in all of these cases is that, while initial nuclear fallout would kill anything and everything, nature often takes over. Plant life can handle certain amounts of radiation and often thrive because of the lack of human interaction. The area doesn’t become a wild rainforest of strange creatures, but plant life certainly doesn’t take very long to start thriving again.

It’s predicted that in the case of a major nuclear war, while it would be an extinction level event for humans, plants could very well make it out of it rather quickly. We as humans consider plants to be weak, but a lot of plant life is actually very hardy, pretty hard to fully kill. But airborne radiodines (spelling?) would begin to decay semi-quickly, possibly falling off after around a month. A couple to few months after that, air and water would stabilize to a decent extent, possibly allowing plants to regain control over their growing. Pockets of fallout, or radioactive material, would certainly remain an issue in various areas, but that would be more contained and closer to the Glowing Sea than a whole wasteland. Deeper rooted plants like trees would be growing again fairly quickly, but Cold War predictions said that nuclear winter could last upwards of two years (mind you, winter more specifies “safe for humans” than plants, so this didn’t take into account much plant life). Cycles would fluctuate for a good amount of time after this period, but things would eventually settle and go on as normal.

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But this isn’t real life, this is Fallout, and this universe is vastly different to our own (in some ways more than others, War never changes...). But what we’ve been seeing in the Fallout universe is pretty close to real world predictions, we just haven’t had a chance to see it in action often.

It’s true, the “Fallout Look” is a bleak, deteriorating wasteland full of deadly, irradiated creatures and murderous raiders ready to kill you in an instant. It’s full of radiation, and frankly shouldn’t be able to support as much life as it does. That’s the world we’ve come to know as gamers, the wasteland, but we’ve never been led to believe that the whole world is that way. In fact, we have very little knowledge about an area until a game shows it to us. We know barren wastelands because it was the barren wastelands that we have gotten to explore, nothing else.

Look at where we’ve been.... Fallout 1 - Southern California, a large desert region of the US. Fallout 2 - Close to the same place, still a desert. Fallout 3 - The US Capitol DC - a place bombed all to hell, radiation pockets everywhere, the whole area seeing huge amounts of fighting. Fallout NV - Vegas, a desert region again. Fallout 4 - Boston, US, a moderately radiated zone close to a large radiation pocket known as the glowing sea, contested between warring factions.

All the areas we’ve been have either been deserts or warzones, and even those warzones are seeing plant life come back in areas that are less contested by humans. But when we go to new locations in DLC where less is happening, we begin to see more plant life. Honest Hearts showed us some pretty healthy plants in Zion and Far Harbor was actually pretty forested.

Now, we have Fallout 76, the star of our discussion. It’s only a few years after the war, but far enough from the war that plant life has time to stabilize. We don’t have warring factions vying for control and destroying the environment. We are in Virginia, a state known for its beautiful foliage, in an area that didn’t take a ton of radiation during the bombings. We do have a hellish wasteland in the north where the plant life doesn’t seem to grow, and the south is completely mine territory and thus difficult for plants to exist, but everywhere else makes sense for plant life to have full control over the environment. But let’s not forget the newcomers in the south east, the mysterious red spore plants that I theorize is our main villain.... but that’s for a different topic.

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Fallout 76 is more colorful than we are used to, the Fallout universe has never been something you would call pretty. But I argue that the Fallout universe hasn’t been explored much. The world is a big place and we’ve only seen some of the worst places it has to offer, so it stands to reason that colorful, high foliage regions are likely to exist and thrive. This game feels out of place because it is out of the norm for us, but when you get down into it, it fits just fine.

But what do you think? Is the colorful wasteland of 76 too much? Do you long for the old greys, browns, and greens of old? Maybe the new look is new and fresh to you? Let me know what you think of Appalachia.

Thank you all for reading this far, you have a wonderful day and a fantastic week!