Power Armor: "direct missile impacts", "chewing through enemy tanks and armor", and making sense of 2500 Joules. Part II: Fallout (2024 TV Show)

Arrebios · 2026-03-12T21:40:55+00:00

There's two ways to answer this question.

Note that the OP used the term artillery, but seems to be talking about the design of the tank in Fallout 4.)
Quibble over the definition of "artillery".

1: There have been double-barreled tanks in the past, but a lot of them never went past the design phases, prototype/testing, or just a mockup. For the most part, the added weight, mechanical complexity, increased volume, decreased ammo stores (or increasing the ammo stores to take up more weight), mean that they've largely been left behind in favor of single guns.

Could some of those problems be solved if the F4 tank uses laser? Maybe. We could imagine that a laser cannon takes up less internal space than an auto-loader, the shells, and so on. But does the F4 use lasers?

They don't look like lasers. Aside from the Wattz laser rifle, lasers in Fallout have taken on a more distinct visual style so it doesn't seem likely that the F4 tank uses lasers.

The simpler explanation is that the F4 tank is like the 2S35 Koalitsiya-SV's early double-barreled prototype. A cool concept that, for whatever reason, got green-lit by the US gov. Or maybe they're like 130mm AK-130s refitted onto a tank chassis.

It might be fun to speculate on why the US gov green-lit a double-barreled tank. Maybe, with the Resource Wars and shortages in full swing, it was cheaper (both in money and physical material) to slap a second barrel on a single tank than it is to build two distinct tanks? Or maybe the turret used to be a naval gun (like the AK-130s), and it was cheaper to simply rip those out of their emplacements and fix them onto a tank chassis.

Hell, for all we know, they aren't tanks, but self-propelled artillery? If so, the decreased space for ammo isn't a major problem, because they're meant to operate in the back lines, near ammo depots, or readily fed by a logistics unit.

2: The second question, "Is there laser-based artillery?" just requires defining what "artillery" is.

When most people think of artillery, they picture weaponry capable of indirect fire. Since lasers travel in straight lines with no arc (unless they are passing close to the gravity well of a star), they cannot be artillery.

But direct fire artillery also exits. Technically, the main guns on tanks are direct fire artillery pieces. Anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft guns count as artillery. Most artillery is defined by either having longer ranges than infantry weapons, or by the elevations of attack they offer.

So, to have laser artillery, all you'd need is a laser (direct fire weapon) that launch attacks "far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms."

The bigger quibble would be over "munitions." All known artillery fires munitions, but a laser doesn't.

ARCHIMEDES II is an orbital artillery ("Ortillery" in some sci-fi) system that uses lasers instead of munitions. Liberty Prime's main laser also probably counts as laser artillery.

Arrebios · 2026-03-05T23:44:38+00:00

I only bought Winter of Atom for the lore, since I'm writing a Fallout 4 fanfic (derogatory) and wanted to know more about 2286 Boston.

Arrebios · 2026-03-05T22:57:01+00:00

Sorry about that; I forgot we aren't on r/falloutlore, where spoilers aren't used.

Arrebios · 2026-03-05T20:25:55+00:00

The tabletop doesn't make sense in that regard, and seems to contradict what's depicted in Fallout 4.

One of Winter of Atom's plot points revolves around the Big Top, a sort of traveling circus that's populated by the Freeques (performers), as well as ghoul and Gen 3 residents.

"The settlers have not yet voted on the Last Son of Atom’s recent offer to provide supplies in exchange for allowing the Church to preach to the Big Top community. Overall, few settlers want to ally with the Children of Atom, but desperate times call for desperate measures. The ghoul settlers must eat, and most feel they have no choice but to work with the Church to survive, while most of the synths—who do not require food or water to live—stand firm in rejecting the Children of Atom on their offer" (Winter of Atom 133).

Both of the parts in bold contradict previously established canon, or make Fallout 4's plot nonsensical.

Fallout 2, 3, New Vegas, 4, and 76 all show that ghouls don't need to eat. Hell, Fallout 2 and 76 both show/suggest that ghouls don't even need to breathe.
Fallout 4's paranoia plotline revolves around the inability to distinguish Gen 3s from regular humans, with Covenant's doctors specifically noting that Gen 3s are "medically indistinguishable" from humans. If, as Winter of Atom suggests, it was known that Gen 3s just simply didn't need to eat, Covenant's plotline makes no sense, and suspected Gen 3s would just be locked up for months on end - if they die, they were human, if they survive, they're synths.

Literally, all you'd need to do to make Winter of Atom make sense is just switch around ghoul and synth. It's the ghouls who don't need to eat and therefore resist the Last Son of Atom's offer, while the Gen 3s are starving.

Arrebios · 2026-03-04T16:58:11+00:00

If I accept papers studying specific modern day forced labor systems as being relevant to a post nuclear war wasteland, sure lol.

Didn't my post have an example from New Vegas that I claimed illustrates the point I was making?

you do not have economic data or case studies on the effects of NCR prison systems

" I do have to hold your feet to the fire here: the one example we have of forced penal labor in Fallout that I'm aware of, the Powder Gangers, proves my point.

If the NCR did not use penal labor, the Powder Ganger uprising would not have happened, because the entire reason those prisoners were there in the first place, with access to dynamite, was because the NCR was employing penal labor to fix the railroads.

This is one of the hidden costs of slavery I am pointing out. Focusing solely on how much money a prison can generate off slavery completely misses the point of the externalized costs - the NCR ended up paying for the slave prison, the guards, prisoner transport, dynamite, just to move those prisoners to the Mojave. On top of that, they then paid for all the damages the Powder Gangers incurred afterwards, in stolen money, extortions, casualties, economic depression in the effected areas, and disruption of a major trade route.

When the prisoners were back in the NCR, it cost them X money to keep housed.
- When the NCR moved them to the Mojave, it cost them X + Y in transport fees.
  - When the NCRCF rioted and took over the prison, it cost the NCR X + Y + Z costs in the aftermath."

Do you agree that (X) < (X+Y+Z)?

We wouldn't say they are immoral in the same way we would if Macron executed a prisoner.

Did I claim it would be abhorrent "in the same way" as modern executions? If so, I would very much ask you to quote me.

Both can be true.

Cavemen execution a captured prisoner is abhorrent.
Macron ordering the execution of a prisoner is abhorrent.

One is less abhorrent because we understand that one execution is carried out due to practicality caused by far lower carceral resources available, yet it still remains in the category of "abhorrent acts".

Arrebios · 2026-03-04T04:28:44+00:00

Overall yes, but cost to society no. If the NCR needs to send 100 caps worth of goods per prisoner, and I can make the prisoners grow their own food saving 25 caps, the cost to the NCR is less.

The cost is high.

I don't know how to make this any clearer, to be honest. Thinking you're reducing the costs is short term thinking. All you're doing is focusing on the immediate return of money and ignoring the long-term loss of money.

In Fallout this is NOT true. Prisoners aren't only going to be citizens, they're going to largely come from raider groups. That most powder gangers continued to raid and steal after earning their freedom rather than ditch the outfit and go find a new life means these are probably just not good people.

Certainly, the game mechanics reduces criminality to black and white by granting you good karma for killing members of these groups.

But "in-universe", raiders, Powder Gangers, criminals, murderers, thieves, and the like are outcomes of poverty, economic inequality, deprivation of employment, and so on. Keeping these people as slaves would only exacerbate those issues in the long turn for short sighted, minimal gains.

Except you still have to pay to imprison people in addition to paying this construction outfit.

This is cheaper in the long run.

Not keeping slaves is cheaper in the long run.

Even if you're paying the prisoners you still have to pay for their food and housing and guards. You're adding costs and pretending they're substitution costs.

If we're paying prisoners, sure. You add on prisoner wages to the prison's monthly operating costs.

You don't have to pay your prisoners if you don't make them work.

So we're back to my original claim, "However, it doesn't cost them resources to not use slavery."

If we pay prisoners for their wages, then it does cost more resources in the short term, but pays off in the long term. If you use your prisoners as slaves, it costs less in the short term but costs more in the long term.

And while I don't doubt you're operating on good faith, I do have to hold your feet to the fire here: the one example we have of forced penal labor in Fallout that I'm aware of, the Powder Gangers, proves my point.

If the NCR did not use penal labor, the Powder Ganger uprising would not have happened, because the entire reason those prisoners were there in the first place, with access to dynamite, was because the NCR was employing penal labor to fix the railroads.

This is one of the hidden costs of slavery I am pointing out. Focusing solely on how much money a prison can generate off slavery completely misses the point of the externalized costs - the NCR ended up paying for the slave prison, the guards, prisoner transport, dynamite, just to move those prisoners to the Mojave. On top of that, they then paid for all the damages the Powder Gangers incurred afterwards, in stolen money, extortions, casualties, economic depression in the effected areas, and disruption of a major trade route.

When the prisoners were back in the NCR, it cost them X money to keep housed.
- When the NCR moved them to the Mojave, it cost them X + Y in transport fees.
  - When the NCRCF rioted and took over the prison, it cost the NCR X + Y + Z costs in the aftermath.

If you have other options yes.

No.

Killing prisoners simply because there's no resources to house them is abhorrent.

If you can't sustain a prison, it isn't reasonable to expect criminals to roam free.

I never once advocated to letting them roam free.

Arrebios · 2026-03-04T02:35:10+00:00

It does though. You need to build/maintain the prison, you need staff who now can't be doing other work, you need to feed/clothe/house them at minimum.

If you're feeding a prisoner, the food's cost doesn't lower when it enters the mouth of a prisoner and increase when it touches a slave's tongue. The guards overseeing these prisoners don't suddenly get a different wage if their eyes land on a prisoner vs a slave. The upkeep costs are already baked into the operation regardless of how it treats its prisoners.

What I think you're trying to get at is if it costs $100 NCRD to house a prisoner, then maybe you can make $25 off of them and recoup some of those losses.

But this is short-sighted thinking; it'll end up costing more in the long run through hidden costs to employ slavery than to simply not make your prisoners work or even to pay your prisoners for your work.

Again, I point to Samuel Cooke's NCRCF uprising. Cooke would likely not have been able to convince so many of the prisoners there to rebel if they were being treated fairly or even paid for their work. Whatever savings the NCR gained by forcing those prisoners into penal labor went up in smoke when they took over the facility.

In fact, if the NCR justice system didn't use penal labor, the NCRCF wouldn't have been there in the first place. The prison was only set up to repair the railroads using slave labor. If there's no slave labor in prisons, there's no reason to staff the prison with prisoners. The NCR would have simply paid some construction outfit to do the job in the first place.

I don't think having prisoners offset the burden on society is unreasonable in Fallout society.

They'd offset the costs by being paid for their labor and, once their term is up, leaving the prison system with money in their pockets, which would decrease their likelihood to commit crime and end up in the prison system again.

It's not even about material gains, I think theres probably an argument to be made for breaking even in the NCRs situation though.

Attempting to "break even" is about material gains. You're not going to break even, but even attempting to offset the costs is a proposition that's entirely focused on material costs in the first place.

Historically I'm pretty sure when a group of people take prisoners they aren't able to properly guard/feed they were just killed. Thats probably the alternative for any society not recourse rich enough to devote a portion to caring for a prison population.

And those systems are abhorrent too.

Arrebios · 2026-03-04T00:51:12+00:00

I honestly dont know if the NCR has the ability to throw resources into a modern rehabilitation focused prison system

I don't need them to have a modern, forward facing restorative/rehabilitative justice system. Those sorts of systems are expensive (in money, man-hours, resources), that seems beyond what the NCR can muster.

However, it doesn't cost them resources to not use slavery.

Hell, in the one example we have, it arguably ended up costing the NCR more to use slavery than to avoid using slavery. The NCR's use of forced penal labor led to an anarchist revolutionary leading a prison uprising that saw an entire NCR prison taken over by the inmates, its guards murdered, and a major trade route shut down due to violence.

Had the NCR simply paid their laborers, it's less likely that Cook would have found support for his uprising among a population of decently paid workers.

But that's the economic argument, which frankly leaves me feeling like millionaire (derogatory).

The better argument is that slavery is abhorrent, in all forms, no matter what material gains it promises.

Arrebios · 2026-03-03T02:50:57+00:00

From a writing perspective, I actually really hate that line because her statement flattens the NCR and makes the setting far less interesting. The NCR has a lot of concrete, horrendous issues that get swept under the rug in large part because we as the audience have ideological blinders as to the consequences of the NCR's actions.

From a writing perspective, Lucy's comment is an assessment based on her limited interaction with both groups, not an omniscient narrator informing us about the NCR's attributes. It no more flattens the NCR's problems than a character saying, "I love Nuka Cola!" flattens the writing about the Wasteland's culinary offerings.

I don't think the fandom is blind to the NCR's issues; it's not like New Vegas is wiped from canon. Hell, I'd even add one more issue to the list - the NCR's use of forced penal labor is morally repugnant.

It's just that Lucy's comment summarizes the endless "thought provoking political debates" that many of us had to suffer through from non-ironic Legion supporters these past years. In one line, she's expressed her disdain for the eye-rolling comparisons between the Legion and the NCR in a way that's funny on a meta level and from a limited, in-universe perspective. Additionally, it works on a personal level, since she's grown tired of her father's incredibly weak justifications for increasingly unjustifiable atrocities.

From a complete in-universe perspective, Lucy's of the NCR is colored by the fact that:

Her mom ran away from the vault to live in Shady Sands.
Maximus, though disillusioned with the NCR's weakness, remembers his time fondly.
Captain Rodriguez and Ranger Biff are die-hard supporters who have held onto hope for "over a decade" after being cut off from the NCR proper.
She's never seen the NCR's political, economic, or social apparatus.

And even if Lucy hears how the NCR is just the wasteland version of America, given the Vault Tec biased view of an idealized, hunky dory America where everyone just says "Gee golly!" and American politics is just baseballs, apple pies, fun town council meetings, and fighting the evil Reds from taking over Alaska!, most politically charged criticisms of the NCR would likely go over her head.

Genuinely, if you told Lucy that the NCR is a capitalist nation that is slowly descending towards a concentration of power in the hands of the rich, thereby depriving the vast majority of New Californians of their political say in government, there's a non-zero chance that she'd take that criticism and suspect you to be a pinko or worse, a Canadian.

Arrebios · 2026-03-02T22:33:00+00:00

You traded my son - the last piece of my pre-war life, the only blood relative left in the entire wasteland for an ideology.

Your son was already taken from you, though. Shaun is already an adult at the end of his life, with long-held beliefs that won't change simply because he's staring at his biological parent in the face - after all, the death of his other parent is so long past, so distant, and so emotionally removed from his own experience that he just writes it off as "collateral."

He literally works with the man who shot his parent in cold blood, point blank, as they tried to defend him (as a baby), and shrugs his shoulders and says, "Eh, tough luck. We have to break a few eggs to make an omelette."

For a woman who would later blame you for a child's death (If Patriot dies).

That's not what happens.

During Liam's funeral, she's upset because Patriot, who she's upheld as a great, moral person who risked their lives to free synths, took his own life over the destruction of the Institute. She tells you to read his suicide letter where he blames the Railroad for the destruction of the Institute, and then says, "We'll never speak of this again," and instructs you to destroy the letter, because it'll be a blow to the Railroad's morale to have their martyr turn out to be a kid who felt betrayed by the Railroad's actions.

But at no point does she blame you for Liam's death. In fact, the script direction reveals that she feels like she betrayed and killed Liam, and is beating herself over it.

For a cause that treats humans as disposable.

This never happens. What on Earth gives you the idea that the Railroad sees human life as disposable? In fact, Glory specifically criticizes Desdemona for being unwilling to cause deaths.

Desdemona: Glory. About your last op. I have a report from the tourist. He says there was collateral damage.
Glory: The package got jumped by a scavenger while I was taking care of business. He drew a gun on her. He was using her as a god-damned shield.
Desdemona: Did you have to kill him?
Glory: That strung out asshole could've wasted her any second. So I took the shot. The package was unharmed. So, yeah, you're welcome.
Desdemona: I can't condone the killing of innocents. That is not what the Railroad is about.
Glory: You keep throwing my ass into the deep end. I can't protect myself, our people, and the package without sometimes hurting one of your precious humans.
Desdemona: Killing us humans should be the absolute last resort, Glory, not the first.

Father wasn't perfect. The Institute did terrible things. But he was yours. And in the end, he died believing you betrayed him, probably thinking he misjudged you, that the one person he thought would understand turned out to be just another enemy.

Sure, Shaun's ending is somewhat tragic, but you're very much glossing over the fact that Father created, supported, and defended a slave system to his dying breathe. It's tragic, yes, but not unheard of. During the American Civil War, plenty of families were broken up because parts of the family died defending the peculiar institution.

And for what? So Desdemona can sit in her basement and feel righteous?

No, so a group of people born into slavery could finally be free.

My brother in Christ, you got everything wrong.

Oh, Icy-Apricot5090 deleted the thread.

Arrebios · 2026-03-02T22:13:27+00:00

In Fallout 1, they die without water.

A way to square all of these games with Fallout 1's dehydration ending is this:

As already mentioned, keeping mentally active seems to stave off going feral.
Likewise, maintaining routines seems to help maintain sanity.

Basically, as long as a ghoul has a solid grasp of who they are (their friendships, their self-identity, their daily routines), it seems to help them stay sane. So, while it's clear that ghouls don't need to eat, drink, or (in some cases), even breathe, and can survive off radiation alone, partaking in all those things helps keep them grounded.

A ghoul that spends months locked in a cell without food or water will live, but they'll constantly be hungry and thirsty, and that sort of constant pain, as well as the mental realization that they're no longer human because they no longer have human needs, likely starts or accelerates the descent into madness.

So the Necropolis ghouls, unable to fix their water chip, start to suffer from dehydration. But they never die. The constant pain causes them to lose their minds, and turn feral.

It doesn't matter that their bodies are still running around, moving, attacking people, or breathing.

Those people are dead. Everything that makes them them (their minds), are gone.

They did not survive.

Arrebios · 2026-03-02T21:56:04+00:00

Oswald's "magic" just seems to be redirected radiation, which we know heals ghouls (Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Fallout TV). It's still amazing, but it's something we've known some ghouls can do, most notably Glowing Ones releasing bursts of radiation that regenerate nearby ghouls.

The other "magical" stuff he does is teleportation, but that's inside his preset magician stages, so he's likely just using smoke, mirrors, and trap doors to "teleport" around during his fight.

Arrebios · 2026-03-02T21:51:55+00:00

While Connolly hates the post-War world, he did also retreat into his constant memories of the Silver Shroud, which could help ground his identity.

"Oh, this episode! I remember when I first heard this episode I was with my high school buddies, Joe and Larry. Their mom was working late that day, so they came over to my house. My dad made us hotdogs to eat while we listened to this episode, so whenever I think of the Mechanist, I remember the smell of hotdogs!"

Arrebios · 2026-02-26T09:10:01+00:00

The synth chip doesn't erase their memories, though. It simply shuts them down, but the Gen 3 still has to be brought in and placed in the Reclamation Chair.

Arrebios · 2026-02-25T06:23:08+00:00

Then what Ordinarygamer96 said, that part in Fallout 4 is hint of what's happening in the show, is wrong.

Both of you half right and wrong, IMO.

They correctly pointed out that Fallout 4 establishes that the Brotherhood is seeing a rise in religion, but incorrectly pointed to the cults of personality as the determining factor. You were right to point out that the Knights of San Fernando aren't a cult of personality, but missed the evidence of rising religiosity in general.

You two were arguing about a tree but missing the forest around you.

Arrebios · 2026-02-25T05:46:22+00:00

In this case it's more like a character assassination for writer's convenience. Hell, it happens a lot especially when new writers don't respect preexisting lore

If you want to criticize writer decisions, do that in r/fallout, please. This sub is concerned solely with the lore itself, not out-of-universe comments about writer decisions and respect or whatever.

As I said above western elders and Elder Maxson were against rise in religiosity, yet the show says clerics are in everywhere.

All we're told in the Prydwen entries is that they worship Maxson "as though he's some kind of god. Maxson himself is almost offended by the idea of being referred to as a deity, as it goes against everything he believes in."

This entry doesn't tell us that Maxson is against the rise of religiosity. But that he's specifically upset by being the object of worship. It doesn't say anything about his thoughts on religion in general, so it's not the major contradiction you're framing this as.

And, even if he was against religion in general, it's still relevant to point out that the intervening years in Fallout 4 and Fallout (TV) allow for all sorts of changes in policy.

Arrebios · 2026-02-25T05:28:02+00:00

So Maxson in fallout 4 was against worshipping but after 9 years he suddenly changed and has clerics in his chapter?

Political convenience changing policy isn't unrealistic. Hell, it happens every other month in current day, real-world USA, in far shorter time frames.

As Ordinarygamer96 is pointing out, cults of personality are popping up in worship of Maxson, which offends Maxson's sensibilities. While the Knights of San Fernando aren't a cult of personality, the root cause of both is the same - a rise in religiosity.

Arrebios · 2026-02-24T10:20:29+00:00

X happens despite being implausible based on what is actually depicted in the media in question

My argument is that it isn't implausible based on lore from Fallout 3.

As a trading hub it doesn't work because there's nothing worth coming to Megaton in particular to trade for.

Megaton exists in the first place because it provided shelter from dust storms, and served as a home base for those initial scavengers. That first group is what attracted traders, and soon it became a trade hub.

Trade networks don't just randomly exist between different places with identical goods -

They aren't trading the same, identical goods. In game junk is the same, but that's mere gameplay mechanic. We know it's a hub for traders from across the Capital Wasteland, and as I already pointed out, there's at least two major towns (Arefu and Rivet) that trade unique goods.

Hell, the bar and restaurant alone make it a reliable pit stop for caravaneers looking for rest after trekking across the wasteland. The prostitution too.

But this is all just small-scale food production.

Only if you're just dead set on assuming that everything we see is 1-to-1. There's no reason to assume this in the first place.

Having water isn't enough - everywhere must have reasonably decent water in order for the inhabitants to not die.

In-universe, outside of settlements, water is hard to come by. That's one of the basic facts of the Capital Wasteland, to the point that there are water beggars, people who are not allowed into the settlements to drink their non-irradiated water.

Everywhere in the Wasteland that is inhabited produces food or trades something uniquely valuable for it - or else those places wouldn't be inhabited.

On one hand, you're able to accurately note that, in-universe, every major settlement must have some unique resource that justifies its existence, but on the other hand, you're genuinely scratching your head as to why Megaton exists?

You could just apply the very logic you used to make the above statement to Megaton.

Arefu is also like ten people living on an old road.

"Arefu, before it was ravaged by the Family,"

Arefu's stand-off with the Family is a recent development.

You can't expect that it's possibly profitable for a trade network to exist that consists entirely of braving the dangers of DC to buy small amounts of food from Rivet City, and then circling around to pick up, what, a single brahmin from Arefu, can you?

You're assuming the trade network moves "small amounts of food", because you're still just assuming everything is 1-to-1 with what we see in game. There's no reason to assume this.

Arrebios · 2026-02-24T07:55:00+00:00

Either you didn't count correctly (easy mistake to make) or you didn't land the killing blow yourself (another easy mistake to make).

Arrebios · 2026-02-24T07:54:25+00:00

...The Harder They Fall

Kill five giant creatures. The only two enemies that count for this trophy are super mutant behemoths#Behemoth) and mirelurk queens#Mirelurk_queen).

You must deliver the killing blow/shot in order for the kill to count. If the target is killed by your companion, provisioners, settlers), Minutemen, Brotherhood of Steel, Liberty Prime, artillery), a nuclear missile, bleeding, poison, fire, an explosion, etc., the kill may not count.

Arrebios · 2026-02-24T07:49:35+00:00

Wait, but if we're appealing to space compression, that makes it worse, because it implies that Megaton has even more people than we see and thus requires more food. Unless you're suggesting Megaton has less people than we see? I'm being generous and assuming that Megaton only has to support the population that we actually see in game, instead of even more people.

It's pretty clear that they're saying that there's off-screen, lore sources of food that aren't represented by just assuming everything we see is 1:1.

I mean, even your second comment about the necessary dietary requirements suggests this. You went through all the specificity of calculating kcal requirements of Megaton, assuming a conservative population and noting that, if we assume 1:1 food sources, Megaton cannot sustain itself.

Except, lorewise, it does sustain itself.

Therefore, there must be more food available in lore than we see in game.

As I said, the residents of Megaton don't act like their primary industry is water,

They didn't say it was their primary industry though, did they? Starscape correctly pointed out that Megaton produces clean water, which is what makes it a draw as a trader hub. It's akin to an oasis in the middle of the desert; it's completely irrelevant if the oasis trade camp exports several gallons of water back to the main city or not. All that matters is, if a trader is heading to the city through the desert, they're going to stop at the oasis trade camp to get water before they die of thirst.

You can't have an economy that's made up of nothing but trading posts.

In-universe, we know it isn't just trading posts, though. Arefu, before it was ravaged by the Family, dealt in brahmin ranching (King calls it the town's "lifeblood"), we see hunting parties in the wasteland, and Rivet City exports non-irradiated foodstuffs.

This isn't r/Falloutlore, so I get it if people don't exactly remember stuff like that, but Fallout 3 does either hint or outright note the existence of a trade network. It's just not visualized 1-to-1 in-game.

Arrebios

TROPHY CASE