Difference between revisions of "Vault 10"
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After surviving the nuclear strike, the Vaults remained as closed underground systems concerned only about their own survival. Many years have passed, until one September night the signal "clear" was received from the monitoring sensors, indicating that it was possible to live on the surface. Massive doors opened, and the first expeditions, in armored environment suits with dark black visors, armed to the teeth, carefully stuck their guns out of the Vaults. | After surviving the nuclear strike, the Vaults remained as closed underground systems concerned only about their own survival. Many years have passed, until one September night the signal "clear" was received from the monitoring sensors, indicating that it was possible to live on the surface. Massive doors opened, and the first expeditions, in armored environment suits with dark black visors, armed to the teeth, carefully stuck their guns out of the Vaults. | ||
| − | The surface was nothing like before. Heavily mutated creatures roamed the land, and the survivors on the surface lived in the state of anarchy. Overfilled with envy and hatred, the gangs met the expeditions only with fire. | + | The surface was nothing like before. Heavily mutated creatures roamed the land, and the survivors on the surface lived in the state of anarchy. Overfilled with envy and hatred, the gangs met the expeditions only with fire. However, there were already organizations which wished stability. Assisted with technology from the Vaults, their power grew immensely, and the city of Hub soon came to dominate the region around. With the discipline, intelligence and determination of Vault citizens, many seeing the sunlight for the first time, the forces of Hub managed to overcome the anarchy. |
| − | + | ||
Revision as of 03:39, 24 December 2006
Contents
History
An entire continent, diverse in its ecology, but mostly mountainous and thriving, once was filled with tens of more and less democratic countries, peacefully coexisting and developing. The largest of them specialized in all sorts of nuclear industries, exporting enriched uranium, nuclear reactors and just energy; the military exports were not uncommon, and thousands of missiles left the land yearly. Being this close to nuclear industry, concerns about safety were high, and tens of Vaults, deep underground bunkers, prepared to withstand nuclear strikes and survive autonomously, existed in the countries. Close ties and relations were maintained within, and it seemed like they would never be needed, but the external world was more harsh.
A small conflict with an insane nazi dictator from the other side of the planet resulted in a sudden nuclear attack. To make things worse, not only the cities were wiped out, but, with extreme malice, the enemy targeted the nuclear industry, from uranium mining and power production to waste reprocessing and storage. Thousands of Chernobyl-like disasters hit all around the country, covering it in radioactive materials, and few could survive outside the Vaults, the only reminders of the civilization left. While the response, turning the attackers into a glassy wasteland, saved from consequent invasion by conventional forces, it couldn't undo the harm done.
After surviving the nuclear strike, the Vaults remained as closed underground systems concerned only about their own survival. Many years have passed, until one September night the signal "clear" was received from the monitoring sensors, indicating that it was possible to live on the surface. Massive doors opened, and the first expeditions, in armored environment suits with dark black visors, armed to the teeth, carefully stuck their guns out of the Vaults.
The surface was nothing like before. Heavily mutated creatures roamed the land, and the survivors on the surface lived in the state of anarchy. Overfilled with envy and hatred, the gangs met the expeditions only with fire. However, there were already organizations which wished stability. Assisted with technology from the Vaults, their power grew immensely, and the city of Hub soon came to dominate the region around. With the discipline, intelligence and determination of Vault citizens, many seeing the sunlight for the first time, the forces of Hub managed to overcome the anarchy.
Today Vault 10 is a large, progressive nation of highly intelligent scientists and engineers, still continuing their traditional business in nuclear industry, producing top-grade nuclear and conventional weapons for countries who need more weight for their arguments.
Government and economy
Vault 10 consists of the underground facilities and the aboveground society. After surviving massive nuclear destruction which incinerated most of the former populations, Vault 10 is strictly held to the principle of extending underground vaults as the population grows, and regularly training for a fast, efficient total evacuation. The underground shelter facilities, once completed, are considered a part of the Vault and kept ready by small groups of people, ruled by the Coordination Center, the government of Vault 10.
The aboveground economy has passed different stages, starting as a extension of state-owned businesses above. These businesses then spread into large companies, which, with overwhelming support by referendum, declared independence of all aboveground facilities. Coordination Center retained only advisory powers over everything except the Vault itself, with the aboveground society comprised entirely of various corporations. As time passed, however, the world grew more dangerous and nuclear-armed, and companies have progressively moved to constructing all expensive facilities underground, widely dispersed and protected by thick layers of ground and stone. Today little industrial construction is done on the surface, and cities are progressively growing back underground, many people finding just elevators to the Vault facilities insufficient. Vault-Tec, the major company responsible for construction of the vault facilities, is experiencing steady stock value growth.
However, the community retains the simple Vault's constitution, which requires a referendum for adding or removing any law, with voting via the electronic network. As a drawback, this has led to a number of flashmob-induced laws, restricting religions and protecting many obscure activities like streaking. The laws are not actually enforced due to the lack of government, but some community-minded volunteer organizations keep an eye on everything, and corporate security forces usually keep their rules in compliance with most important laws. Notable among them is the international Standart Security Corporation, which has a policy of assisting police in protecting the law, which in case of Vault 10 with no police made SSC de-facto law enforcement agency.
Economy of Vault 10 once was developing in all directions, but, however, some industries proved inferior. The civilian cars built in Vault 10 were just unarmed military ones, and, being uncomfortable, lost customers. Soon after that a dedicated study of economics was done, and it was decided to completely abolish all tariffs, allowing only profitable businesses to survive. Vault 10 maintains underground bases sufficient for all basic needs of the inhabitants, but everything else is obtained by whatever means are more economically preferable, export taking most of the GDP and import most of consumption. Modern export economy of Vault 10 is built around weapons trading, aerospace and heavy industries.
The currently largest corporation in Vault 10 is Aerospace Logistics, employing 10% of population, with Symmetriad/VaultTec Consortium rivaling.
Ecology
Major nuclear strikes and fallout, both from nuclear weapons and from uranium mines and destroyed industries have greatly influenced biosystems on the surface. Dense forests are mixed up with lifeless wastelands, and animals are greatly varied. While most areas are clean from radioactive contamination, every citizen or approved visitor can receive long-term and short-term radiation protection pills, and compact dosimeters are embedded in all coats, vests and jackets produced in Vault 10. One of the most popular pets is a radiation-resistant cat of unique Vault 10 breed.
Art
Vault 10 is strongly supportive of all forms of independent art, while strongly discouraging popular centralized culture. Elaborate graffiti graces every city's streets, interior and exterior of factories, and, if people don't decorate their houses themselves, someone else does it overnight. The official color palette for ships, planes and vehicles is Three-Dimensional Graffiti, drawn by the crew, which has a side-effect of confusing (and sometimes sexually stimulating) the opponents. Independent bands of all sorts are playing in thousands of clubs all over the cities, on the streets, in the underground vaults, and every military ship (due to lack of strictly civilian ones) has a small rock club aboard.
Ideology
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Freedom of speech is held to its highest, and each citizen is entitled to a personal virtual server and yearly five minutes on one of the TV channels. Shows with explicitly insulting racist, ageist, elitist and counterelitist material, like Bigtopians Say the Darndest Things are among the most popular ones, and the public laughs upon everyone not excluding themselves.
The population of Vault 10 is widely recognized as being one of the most cynical in The World. All religious organizations are charged with spreading bogus theories, demanded to pay full taxes, and required to insert disclaimers that their preaches are not based on any facts, and as result there are none of them in Vault 10. People of the Vault have always maintained critical view on religion, but, however, it is not outlawed, and there is a church in Vault 10 - Church's Chicken fast food restaurant.
Since law system of Vault 10 is held as simple as possible, all sorts of morality-related laws have been removed long ago. Some nations have expressed concerns about morality of Vault 10, demanding their citizens to never come close to the borders of Vault 10 [1], or to wear "full body condoms"[2]. According to intelligence data, the latter are primitive spacesuits with cameras and displays instead of glass and microphone-headphones system, both of which are remotely controlled and are shut down by the Morality Observing Officer once he notices something inappropriate. The best sightseeing for such tourists is usually a weapon test, since even space launches are full of uncenzored advertisements.
Defense and law enforcement
Defense budget of Vault 10 is 0 caps, which is fully sufficient to deter any nation from considering attack. Instead of centralized army Vault 10 relies on its corporations for defense. As the major export product is fully assembled nuclear missiles of all sorts, a few thousands of them are always waiting for customers in ready-to-fire condition. For other matters the official policy is "Government is not responsible for any use of rented weapons", and the corporations frequently rent weapons to proxy rogue states for 1 cap with condition to be immediately fired upon a specified target.
Internal crime defense relies on citizens themselves. Everyone receives army training, is encouraged to buy personal weapons, and anyone committing a crime can be legally killed on spot or hunted for joy and training. Cameras in public places have been banned, and it is illegal for police officers to directly carry out searches, so focus is on crime prevention and deterrence rather than prosecution. The nation's youth is held blameless for light crimes, and citizens are encouraged to prevent crimes and educate the young ones, which some of them do in very harsh ways.
Transport system
Vault 10 shares many distinctive features, which could be compared with the pre-Bush United States, Japan, Soviet Union and Hell. The common feature with the US is ethnic diversity. Vault 10 resembles Japan in corporate culture and mountainous terrain; only the mountains are even worse. The cold weather, location right next to the arctic cap, and vast unpopulated, barely habitable terrain, remind one of teh Soviet Union. Finally, the safety of land travel in Vault 10 resembles Hell.
With many thousands of miles to pass, young mountains and cliffs all around, there are few practical ways to get around between the small, widely dispersed cities. For industry, Kriegsbahn has a few railroads, where wide, hermetically sealed trains carry around bulk goods and people in radiation-shielded cars, which are decontaminated upon arrival. Inter-vault subways are clean, but as well offer just a few lines, due to immense expenses involved in their construction. The only answer was air travel, and it isn't as impractical as it may seem. Some lightweight aircraft can fly an hour on three gallons, even though relatively slowly, making ~150 knots, and cost just about 20-30 thousands. Airbus A380 can reach 77 mpg per passenger if fully loaded, and make it quite fast. With massive automotive industry of US, developed roads, typically short distances and mostly flat landscape, changing cars for planes wouldn't make much sense, but in our situation cars and even buses would be completely incompetitive even without counting road network cost, and that network would be simply impossible even despite our frightening economy.
Of course, Aerospace Logistics, the consortium of actually almost independent companies, became as powerful as nobody else. With time, they established the victory and nailed the automotive coffin, banning cars off the cities streets, manipulating the greenies - who could think that by some coincidence people would just buy planes? Of course, a company which ten years before, among the ruthless capitalizm and anarchy, has proven itself so kind and philanthropic to create and sponsor thousands of free piloting and aircraft-DIY clubs for the nation's youth, couldn't have mercantile plans in mind, it funded the greenies just to help preserve whatever remains of environment the country had left. Besides, the company didn't rip people off, but instead dropped the prices and offered cheap kits which teenagers could easily assemble; and trading in a good car, to be sold abroad, sometimes could cover the cost, so in the economic boom nobody but the poor noticed a drop in their budget. As the short-term economy rush reached its peak, long-term investments became more and more common. As the paranoia about the new nuclear war took place of the excitement of rebirth (Vault-Tec, of course, playing absolutely no role in creating that hype), the companies took a much more serious take on the protection of their assets, and more and more industries, mostly expensive ones, were built underground, the mountains above ensuring safety even under massive bombardment. With cities slowly being complemented by the Vaults again, people as well preferred to sleep under their protection, leaving the surface mostly for recreation. The bolts sealing the cars' coffin were welded, as they lost even potential use.
It turned out that tanks still could have some use - patrolling the railroads and traversing contaminated terrain - but not too wide. However, even lightweight and well-powered Type 90 or T-80 wouldn't get far in the mountains, let alone heavy Abrams or Merkava. Even the local design, Scorpion, based on Type 90, with 60hp per tonne and special transmission and tracks for climbing, can only pass local areas. Of course, this makes practice and serious use of tanks limited, as well as hinders their capabilities. Scorpion is an excellent APC and IFV destroyer, as it's even faster, and the winner if it gets to shoot first, due to FCS, but that's all about "if" - it (as the Type 90) can take a shot from Rheinmetall L55, or from a NS light tank, but not from NS MBT and heavy tanks. Well, of course, enemy tanks are not a problem in defense, as they will get stuck before even reaching the border, but, when operating in other countries, they may be a major threat. For this case, the doctrine calls for the use of aerial vehicles against them, since they are more effective and much easier to deliver, not to mention that aircraft are way more numerous than land vehicles around the Vaults.
Recent decisions
Amidst a growing level of unemployment, thousands of workers have been fired and then replaced by automatic systems. This was resolved by adding machines to workers. Mondas Ltd and Symmetriad started to replace volunteers' body parts with stronger, better, metal prostheses, to create the best industrial workers in the world.
As safety of all products and systems was explored, it was decided that the responsibility of companies is to prevent major damage from anything. Under pressure of the Fire Dept., it became forbidden to use flammable materials in buildings construction or products, with few exceptions where there is no replacement.
Cars are banned in Vault 10, and citizens can either use extensive monorail systems reaching everywhere, Aerospace Logistics transport for long flights, or improve their health by walking on the pristinely clean, tree-filled streets of Vault 10 cities, free from automotive transport.
