Lone Wanderer The Lone Wanderer is the player character and main protagonist in " Fallout 3 " . Background . Beginnings . The Lone Wanderer was born on July 13 , 2258 to James and Catherine at the Jefferson Memorial , where they worked on Project Purity . Catherine died shortly after giving birth , due to cardiac arrest of an unknown cause . James suspended the project and traveled to Vault 101 via Megaton ( with the help of Star Paladin Cross ) . The Wanderer and their father were allowed to enter the vault , even though many others had been rejected and left to die , under unknown circumstances . The Lone Wanderer ' s origin was kept a secret in order to shelter the child from the outside world , and to keep up the pretense of the Vault - Tec Corporation ' s social experiment . Escape . The Lone Wanderer lived in Vault 101 without incident for nineteen years , but in 2277 , two hundred years after the Great War , James disappeared without any explanation . The young Lone Wanderer , with the help of Amata Almodovar , leaves the safety of the vault to look for James in the ruins of Washington , D . C . In order to find him , the Lone Wanderer travels across the wasteland searching for clues . Along the way , they disarmed Megaton ' s atomic bomb and helped collect data for Moira Brown ' s Wasteland Survival Guide , among many other activities or rumors thereof . After James is found , Project Purity can be put back on track , but the reunion is cut short when the Enclave commander , Augustus Autumn , arrives demanding control of the project . James , unwilling to allow the project to fall into the hands of the Enclave , sacrifices himself by filling the control chamber with deadly amounts of radiation , hoping to kill Colonel Autumn and the other soldiers in the process . The colonel manages to survive , however . After fleeing from the Jefferson Memorial , the Wanderer takes refuge within the Citadel and enlists the help of the Brotherhood of Steel to retrieve a G . E . C . K . from Vault 87 for the restoration of Project Purity . After retrieving this G . E . C . K . , the Wanderer is captured by Colonel Autumn and taken to Raven Rock . There , John Henry Eden presents the Wanderer with a canister of modified FEV for insertion into Project Purity , which would poison any mutated creature drinking the purified water . The Wanderer refuses and escapes , sabotaging Raven Rock in the process . After finally stopping Colonel Autumn , the Wanderer and Sentinel Lyons are faced with the dilemma of who would re - enter the radiation - flooded Memorial and activate the purifier . Once this decision is made , the Wasteland is finally given the greatest gift of all : a constant source of clean water . After Project Purity . The Lone Wanderer awakens two weeks later to face the consequences of their decisions so far and joins the Brotherhood as a knight , in their mission to distribute the newly - purified water and to hunt the Enclave remnants . This hunt would eventually put the Wanderer in control of an orbital strike , using it to destroy the Enclave mobile base crawler . During or after the events of " Fallout 3 " , the Lone Wanderer travels to various places such as The Pitt , Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta , and participates in a simulation of the . Legacy . By 2297 , the Lone Wanderer had disappeared from the Capital Wasteland , and their fate was unknown . Most citizens of the wasteland had a story about the Wanderer , and many of their actions had gone down as local legend . History had even forgotten their gender . Much of the documentation of their actions had , however , become flawed and were riddled with conflicting reports . On the 10th of September , Moira Brown began work on a biography of the Lone Wanderer . Appearances . The Lone Wanderer appears in " Fallout 3 " and all of its add - ons .