Fallout : Brotherhood of Steel background The following is transcribed from the " " manual . The manual is included in the references . Introduction . In a future not far removed from our own , a world filled with marvel and wonder is shaken to its very foundations by the greed and destruction of mankind . Atomic war , the once impossible threat , has been unleashed and the face of the world has been scarred forever . Endless deserts and the twisted remains of our past are all that stand in the wake of the bombs . Small pockets of life , still driven by violence , scrape together a new world in the shadow of the old . " Fallout " takes place many years after the apocalypse , as humanity struggles to pick up the pieces . Some groups have barely managed to survive above ground , either scavenging the scorched ruins of megacities or surviving and adapting through mass mutation . Communities that were sealed in underground vaults during the war are now emerging to re - populate the blasted landscape . Striving to organize and sustain the human race , these tattered remnants of civilization are threatened by psychotic mutants , rogue computers , caravan raiders , and all manner of hostile creatures . Welcome to the wasteland . The Great War . The war that devastated the majority of the world population in a global nuclear conflict was primarily a resource war . As fuel reserves dwindled , the major super power attempted to gain control of them , leading to a course of events that would change the very face of the planet . . . In 2025 , as the planet ' s resources dried up , the United Nations fell apart , causing many smaller nations to fall with them as financial havoc swept across the globe . The handful of peace agreements between Europe and the Middle East were cast into a long , drawn - out war over the few remaining productive oil fields . By late 2035 , after the threat of a recently discovered super plague and the destruction of Tel Aviv by a terrorist nuclear weapon , the United States closed its borders . In early 2054 , the U . S . created " Project Safehouse " . Financed by junk bonds , this plan was responsible for creating large underground survival shelters , known as Vault s . Unfortunately , the money ran out 9 years later and the project was left incomplete , shortly after the Middle Eastern oil fields ran dry and the European War ended . In the winter of 2066 , China attacked Alaska over the last drops of oil in the world . In a desperate maneuver , both superpowers invaded neighboring countries in an effort to bolster their dwindling resources . The U . S . annexation of Canada was concluded by 2076 . Canadian timber provided fuel for U . S . military needs , and Alaska was reclaimed by early 2077 . In the early morning hours of Saturday , October 23 , 2077 , the sky was filled with nuclear missiles . Because of frequent false alarms , few made it to the Vaults when the final alarm sounded . Most people were trapped outside the closing Vault doors . No one knows who started the war , but after two hours of nuclear devastation , no one cared . The Vaults . Developed by a miliatary contractor called Vault - Tec , the Vaults were underground shelters meant to preserve Americans in the event of a nuclear war . At least , that was their official purpose . With a population of almost 400 million by 2027 , the U . S . would have needed nearly 400 , 000 Vaults to safely shield every man , woman and child . In reality , Vault - Tec was commissioned to build only 122 Vaults , in order for the US government to study pre - selected segments of the population to see how they react to the stresses of isolationism . Like many major military contractors , as Vault - Tec grew in finances and responsibility , it began to develop some highly experimental technologies . In a short amount of time , Vault - Tec was so thoroughly integrated with top - secret military research it was practically a division of the U . S . government . . . almost . Unknown to their financial backers , Vault - Tec created their own facilities , independent from the larger Vault network and kept secret from the U . S . government . These secret , " private " installations were used to research the latest vault mechanisms as well as technologies that would benefit mankind in a post - nuclear environment . And this included some extensive research into a substance classified as FEV . FEV & The Brotherhood . FEV < nowiki > [ Forced Evolutionary Virus ] < / nowiki > was initially developed in response to the " super plague " that tore through the world population prior to the Great War . Designed to push any biological entity ' s ability to adapt to harsh circumstances , the substance was found to possess startling abilities as a catalyst . Early tests created super animals - lab monkeys with greater body mass and higher intelligence . The military immediately saw some possible applications and took control of FEV research . Unfortunately , the initial test subjects quickly regressed into a far less intelligent , aggressive state , showing massive deformities and insanity . FEV was labeled " unstable " , but some experimentation still continued . When the bombs dropped , one of the major military FEV research centers was hit , releasing huge quantities of the substance into the air . The mixture of heavy radiation and a sweeping cloud of mutagenic material turned large numbers of humans into Ghouls , and created s , Giant rat s , and so on from the animals and plants across the U . S . But the story of FEV doesn ' t end there . Even after the war , an isolated group of scientists began experimenting on soldiers with an advanced form of the virus < nowiki > [ FEV - 2 ] < / nowiki > . The results were promising . . . but the surviving soldiers got wise . They rebelled , killed all of the scientists and locked down the facility . Relocating themselves and some high - tech equipment to a new base of operations , these soldiers took it upon themselves to become the unofficial peacekeeping force of the wasteland . . . they became the Brotherhood of Steel .