Sole Survivor The Sole Survivor is the player character and main protagonist in " Fallout 4 " . Depending on the player character ' s sex , the Sole Survivor is either the husband or wife in a pre - War family and has a son , Shaun . Background . The Sole Survivor is either a male retired U . S . Army veteran ( Nate ) or a female law school graduate ( Nora ) . According to pre - War records of the Lookout at the USS " Constitution " , Nate served in the 2nd Battalion , 108th Infantry Regiment , while Nora was a lawyer . At some point during the Sino - American War , the Sole Survivor married , had a son named Shaun and bought a robotic butler named Codsworth . On October 23rd , 2077 , the Sole Survivor was preparing for an event at the Veteran ' s Hall in Concord , when a Vault - Tec representative approached the family with pre - approved papers for access into Vault 111 . Moments later , a newsreader announced that nuclear detonations were being reported , forcing the Survivor and their family to rush to Vault 111 . They were then sealed in cryogenic stasis under the pretense of being " decontaminated " by Vault - Tec scientist s . The Sole Survivor is kept almost undisturbed in this state from 2077 to 2287 . In 2227 , the Sole Survivor and their spouse are reawakened by two seen unknown individuals and one off - screen , who open the spouse ' s cryogenic tube with the intent of kidnapping Shaun . Though conscious , the Sole Survivor is trapped in their cryogenic pod and is powerless to do anything but watch their spouse being shot and their child abducted . The Sole Survivor is re - frozen , awakening in 2287 and escaping the cryogenic tube . Learning that they are the sole survivor of Vault 111 , the Sole Survivor emerges from the vault and vows to avenge their spouse ' s death and locate Shaun . Returning home . The Sole Survivor heads home to Sanctuary Hills , now ruined from the bomb blast , where they meet a distraught Codsworth , revealing to the Survivor that over two hundred and ten years have passed since they were frozen in the vault , also telling the player character to go to Concord for help . The Sole Survivor then meets Preston Garvey - one of the last of the Commonwealth Minutemen - and assists him in protecting settlers from a group of raiders and a deathclaw , later helping them to travel to , and settle into the remains of Sanctuary . The search for answers . After helping Garvey and his group , the player character is instructed to go to Diamond City , a settlement based in Fenway Park where they meet Piper Wright , the city ' s reporter , who tells the player character to seek out the city ' s detective Nick Valentine who is revealed to have been missing two weeks prior to the Sole Survivor ' s arrival in Diamond City . After finding Valentine , they learn the identity and location of their spouse ' s killer , a man named Conrad Kellogg . Tracking him down , Kellogg reveals that Shaun is in The Institute , a secretive organization feared by the people of the Commonwealth , that is based below the ruins of the Commonwealth Institute of Technology . The player character then kills Kellogg and retrieves a cybernetic implant from his brain . After some consultation with Nick and Piper , they head to Goodneighbor where they first encounter John Hancock , the self - appointed ghoul mayor of the town , and get help from Doctor Amari , a scientist skilled in neuroscience . The doctor assists the Sole Survivor in viewing the dead mercenary ' s memories and discovering that the Institute uses teleportation as the means of travel between their facility and the surface . During their hunt for Kellogg , the Survivor also witnesses the arrival of the Brotherhood of Steel in an airship called The Prydwen , their mobile airship HQ . The threat within . After viewing Kellogg ' s memories , the player character is then tasked to go to the Glowing Sea - the ground zero of the nuclear blast during the intro sequence - to find Brian Virgil , an ex - Institute scientist who specialized in researching the Forced Evolutionary Virus , who has escaped and gone into hiding , to get help in infiltrating the shadowy organization . Virgil , now mutated into a super mutant by prolonged FEV exposure , mentions that the player must kill an Institute Courser - one of the most advanced creations of the Institute , designed to be stronger , faster and smarter than average human beings - to get a special chip from it in order to access the Institute . Once the chip is retrieved , the player character is directed to find The Railroad , a secret organization that works to free synths from the Institute ' s control and give them normal lives in the Commonwealth , since only one of its members , Tinker Tom , can decode the chip and get the frequency code used by the Institute to teleport . A meeting long overdue . The player character then heads back to Virgil , who gives them a blueprint of a device that hijacks the frequency of the Institute ' s Molecular Relay . After retrieving the blueprints , the Survivor must seek assistance from one of the three factions : the Minutemen , Railroad or the Brotherhood . Once the device is built , the player character infiltrates the Institute to find their son . After finding a synth based on a young Shaun , it is revealed that the real Shaun was kidnapped in 2227 , sixty years prior to the Survivor ' s release from cryogenic sleep , and is now an old man who goes by " Father " , as well as the current Director of the Institute . The fate of humanity . From now on the Survivor faces a choice that will significantly affect the Commonwealth and its people . They can work against Shaun by assisting one of the factions ; the Railroad in destroying the Institute and liberating synths , the Brotherhood of Steel in order to exterminate all synths along with the Institute ; the Minutemen in destroying the Institute ( and the Brotherhood of Steel if made hostile to the player character ) in order to protect the Commonwealth . Alternatively , they can side with Shaun and help the Institute in securing the Commonwealth by destroying the Railroad and the Brotherhood of Steel ( The Minutemen can be persuaded to ally with the Institute after passing a few difficult speech checks ) . Any of the four choices results in Shaun ' s death , this being due to either the cancer he ' d developed by then , or by the Survivor ' s hand . At the very end , the synth child Shaun will refer to the Sole Survivor as its parent and asks them if he can go live with them anywhere in the Commonwealth to be a family . If the Survivor agrees , the synth child then gives the player character a holotape from the real Shaun with a message that differs depending if the player character sides with the Institute or not . In the holotape , the real Shaun tells his parent that he wishes they would give the synth child a chance to live as a family since Shaun himself never had the chance to with the Sole Survivor . The Sole Survivor then contemplates on the events that transpired and says that " This isn ' t the world I wanted , but it ' s the one I found myself in " and that they are now ready for anything comes ahead because they know that " War . War never changes . " Appearances . The Sole Survivor appears in " Fallout 4 " and all of its add - ons .