Vaults



A Vault is a type of a subterranean television studio. Originally, they were designed for the sole purpose of producing low-cost, low-quality television programs for the viewing displeasure of the general populace. Sadly, many Vaults today have lost their federal funding and are forced to present the same, tired celebrities in increasingly inane challenges.

History
Commissioned by the producers of reality television as part of Project Primetime, Vault-Tec built at least three and a half such Vaults over the country. However, when the storm of public opinion came in 2076, the Vaults were hastily converted into fallout shelters for the general populace.

Unknown to the inhabitants, however, was the fact that the video cameras installed in the Vaults were not removed in the conversion process. This has led to a highly enjoyable series of television programs that went largely unwatched on Earth due to the minor apocalypse experienced a year later.

Still, a few lucky owners of original Radiation King televisions continue to enjoy such classic re-runs as Mutie and the Geek, Pimp my Highwayman, Raider Spouses and Queer Eyebot for the Straight Guy.

Behind the scenes
The Vaults were actually based on real life ant colonies, right down to the Overseer laying thousands of eggs. Anyone who has spent time examining their garden will regularly spot a single ant questing for a replacement water chip. These ants rarely succeed, with their typical fate being death by the Giant Footprint random encounter.

Cut content
The developers of Fallout initially intended the player to discover that they were, in fact an ant. This was swiftly dropped in favour of the much more realistic Vault Experiment, which in turn was subtly altered by various drunk designers who couldn't remember which version of the timeline was the current 'official' one. Eventually the whole concept was scrapped in favour of a randomly-generated series of holodisc notes, which were only ever intended to cover up for the lack of a consistent direction in the design of the game.