Within theFalloutuniverse, there are seemingly endless Vaults set up by Vault-Tec for the purpose of safeguarding humanity. At least, that’s what Vault-Tec would have you believe. In reality, these Vaults were set up with the sole purpose of human experimentation, and there are a truly enormous number of them.
It’s very hard to establish what should or shouldn’t be included in ‘canon’ within the universe. Opinions differ from fan to fan and even Chris Avellone, the creator of theFalloutBible, has said that his work shouldn’t be used as canon while others strongly argue that it should.
It’s a bit of a minefield, so I’m going to stick with the things that are counted as canon by most people — the major games and the TV show. With that said, let’s look at some Vaults within theFalloutuniverse and their purpose within the Lore.
Fallout
The originalFalloutgame, developed by Interplay Entertainment and first released back in 1997, only introduced four Vaults into the lore of the universe, with two of them going on to be referenced inFallout 2.
Fallout 2
Surprisingly,Fallout 2only brings one new Vault into theFalloutuniverse, as well as the two that also appear in the firstFalloutgame.
Fallout 3
Fallout 3marks the starting point of what I like to call the explosion of Vaults. From this point on, each game adds a large number of Vaults that each add to the lore and prove precisely how terrible Vault-Tec truly is.
Fallout: New Vegas
Fallout: New Vegasreally boosted the number of known Vaults within the lore. There are eight in total, and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you by this point that they’re all pretty terrible.
Fallout 4
Including those introduced in add-ons,Fallout 4introduces eight Vaults into the universe, and their purposes according to lore can only reaffirm any bad feelings that you’ve already grown for Vault-Tec.
Fallout 76
Fallout 76adds the most Vaults into theFalloutuniverse by a mile. In total there are 14 Vaults to go through and Vault-Tec just keeps getting worse.
FalloutTV series
If you’ve not seen theTV seriesin its entirety, I suggest you turn back now if you want to avoid spoilers!
Vaults 31, 32, and 33 interconnected Vaults. The brainchild of Bud Askins, who we come to learn was one of the executives at Vault-Tec before the bombs fell. Only two of these Vaults house a population during the show, while the other holds the cryogenically frozen bodies of the executives themselves.
Vault 4 is outside of these three interconnected vaults and is where Lucy and Maximus are given shelter during the series.
During episode eight of the Fallout TV series, we are shown a map of all Vaults in the United States. On this map, there are 116 Vaults out of the 122 Vaults currently known within the canon of Fallout. One user over on Twitter took the time toplot all of the Vaults shown in the TV show on Google Earth, which I recommend checking out if you want to know more about the locations of the Vaults I’ve discussed here.
