I was listening to the Mama Dolce's radio broadcast in Fallout 3 asking why Americans were attacking the Chinese and it seemed hypocritical of them since they invaded American soil first, from what I understand. I'd like to know if the invasion of Anchorage by the Chinese was an unprovoked attack or if it was in response to something that pre-war America did.
Posted Sep 29, 2016, 8:57 AM UTC
Anchorage was an attempt by the PRC to gain control over some of the last remaining oil reserves, those in northern Alaska. It was provoked by energy resource scarcity, not any direct action by the United States. Everyone felt the pinch: I doubt any countries were exporting at that point, so U.S. policy could hardly be called "cruel." Giving them access to fusion tech, which wasn't nearly as far along as popularly believed, would have been insane since the two countries were military enemies.
Are we still calling the Fallout Bibles canon?
The Bible's are Semi canon, as in probably canon till proven wrong. Plenty of it is still good others, not so much
Are we still calling the Fallout Bibles canon?
There's precisely zero reason to declare them non-canon, beyond MCA's remarks made years after the fact. His opinion is irrelevant to the FOB's status as a secondary source, as when he made it, he no longer had any connection to the series.
There aren't any named conflicts that come to mind, but one would expect there was a lot of proxy warring going on just like there was between the US and USSR during the cold war. Neither side wanted to openly declare war on the other to avoid nuclear conflict, so they had some smaller countries with inexplicably acquired weapons and troop numbers fight another equally unrelated and suddenly armed country that happened to be close by their biggest enemy.
Ninja edit: There's also the Sea of Tranquility battle on the moon alluded to in Fallout 4, which we unfortunately know almost nothing about. But really, who else could it have been? Who would have had a space program besides the only other dominant superpower in the world?
From some distant source, I believe the Fallout Bible, China actually started drilling somewhere in the Pacific for the last sources of oil. The U.S sabotaged their oil platform, further throwing their economy into disarray. That same platform was eventually re-established by Poseidon and was converted later into the HQ of the Enclave before the bombs fell.
The United States annexed Mexico and Canada and probably stripped them bare of resources since the energy crisis was still ongoing as of 2077.
All these things factored together, it makes sense the Chinese took the initiative to attack. The U.S was busy holding on to their North American dominion.
By the end of the war, both the U.S and China were on the verge of collapse. The American forces were close to Beijing after having roamed the rest of the coast, while the interior of China was being assailed by small units in the Gobi desert.
At the same time the U.S was facing mass riots over the New Plague, Canadian occupation atrocities, domestic atrocities, deserting military units and a completely disjointed military effort.
To paint a crazy picture, straight from the wiki: the last days of the war were driven entirely by inertia as the command structure of the military either went into hiding in government shelters, shored up with the Enclave or tried to hold together an increasingly costly campaign in China.
By the time Roger Maxson staged mutiny, the bad diplomatic moves the U.S had made sealed it's fate as plague, riots and insurgencies were crippling it's ability to police itself and maintain a war effort against a country with hundreds of millions of people fighting on their home turf.
So yes, the U.S took a lot of aggressive actions against their neighbors and the international community before kicking the bucket with everyone else.
You could equally argue that the U.S was the one to launch the nukes at the behest of the more paranoid commanding officers, considering the president and most important officials had either gone into hiding or were in the middle of the Pacific waiting for the world to burn. Self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. The Chinese had held onto Anchorage for quite some time, even amid U.S invasions of the mainland of China. Either the war didn't make all that much progress, or the U.S was burning through men like it was Stalingrad to reach Beijing that quick.
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When the US stopped exporting oil to China they had only 2 option, whither and die from lack of resource or go to anchorage and take whatever they can get to survive
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Reminds me of the oil embargo we out on Imperial Japan before WW2.
The history of Sino-American relations is paved with misery and assholes. Chinese economy was reliant on fossil fuels and the US refused to either export them to aid the Chinese or sharing their nuclear fusion energy. The first is cruel, the latter insult heaped on injury.
The Chinese invasion of Alaska was the only remaining course of action that did not constitute high treason. Tell me, if you ruled a country of, say, 1.5 billion people, would you allow it to collapse like the European Commonwealth or the Middle East? Or would you do everything in your power to save your people?
Red Chinese Communist Detected.
Relocation to Little Yangtze for rehabilitation.
I am merely exercising my right to free sp
Better DEAD than RED.
I AM PROTESTING THIS INHUMAN TREATM
That all being said, the PRoA is obvious propaganda that has nothing to do with aggression from either side so much as it's trying to force American citizens to pity commies.
Also not sure how I feel about America killing itself just to help China die slower. I sympathize with the Chinese, until they tried to see if MAD was real or not, but I'm not going to act like foreign invasions are ever okay.
Yes, it is propaganda very much. After all, isn't truth the first casualty of war?
Classics aside, it's a situation where there's no clear good guy and no real solution that didn't involve plenty of death (after ze Amerikans closed the door on negotiations).
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That's what always makes me feel so bad about the fallout world. China weren't necessarily the bad guys, they had literally no other alternative. The US were bad guys, and it cost the entire planet their lives.
Because they didn't give the Chinese what little oil they had left? The two countries were mortal enemies. Would the Chinese have done otherwise if the oil field was in Xinjiang instead of Alaska? I doubt it. They would have used the advantage to crush the U.S. economically. The controlling element within the American government had decided that nuclear war was inevitable anyway, so all their policy moves were directed at surviving it on their own terms. The Chinese may have felt the same way.
They also didn't share the technology for nuclear power, so the Chinese were stuck. It's not about whether China would do the same, we don't know, but the sad tale of a country and people spread to desperation. The nukes were fired because the Chinese were finished. There was no way to repair the situations. It just scares me, because I feel that we could end up the same way, with nukes flying around as we run out of oil unless we invest in green energy.
You don't share your cutting edge tech with your enemies, that's just stupid.
It'd be like giving Iran nukes
Obviously the Chinese already had fission technology. The weaponized nuclear material for the warheads that created the wasteland didn't fall from heaven. The nukes were fired (presumably: there's a theory out there that the Zetans were actually responsible) because the Chinese had lost in Alaska and were losing in China. They could have surrendered and put the burden of rebuilding on the U.S., but they chose to burn the world instead.
Nuclear energy is the most viable solution out there right now. Green energy is still in its infancy, and there are enormous reserves of fossil fuel remaining -still the cheapest way to generate electricity. Solar and other renewable sources will be viable one day, but pretending the day has already arrived is wasteful and pointless. In any case tensions have actually decreased, despite what you hear in the news, to the point that countries competing to sell each other energy is a thing.
In general, Fallout is a lengthy critique and deconstruction of capitalism and nationalism. Even in the very first one, there's a very clear juxtaposition between the smaller, commune-like settlements and groups (like Shady Sands, the Vault, the Brotherhood of Steel, Followers of the Apocalypse or the Unity) and the cutthroat, large cities that ignored the communal spirit in favor of greed and power grabs (Junktown, Hub, Set's Necropolis, Adytum Regulators).
It's actually the opposite, it critiques the ever creeping Fabian socialism in a free society. It shows where it leads and that we must never let it get there.
The great evils of Fallout, particularly the pre-war world, are rooted in the intersection of capitalism, nationalism, and environmental devastation (all of which, of course, fed off of each other). Huge, anti-democratic corporations manipulated the governments of their respective countries into horrifying genocidal wars to pursue objectives from profit to racial and ideological unity, while letting peak oil and climate change destroy the ecology of the Earth. The nuclear exchange was inevitable because the American, and almost certainly Chinese, peoples forgot their humanity in favor of increasingly extravagant violence, and it all came crashing down in 2077. War never changes. It should, but it just doesn't, because war is profitable to very powerful people and their nationalistic lapdogs.
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Never mind, you really don't know what you're talking about.
Ant, it's pretty clear you're not paying attention, at all, to what the game's telling you. Or reality, for that matter, as the Fabian society and socialism are forces for good. Unrestrained capitalism is not.
No, they were both the bad guys. Both the Chinese and Americans were suffering under the heals of a brutal socialist regime. One just had the benefit of a culture founded on free market economics and liberty.
In what way was the American regime socialist? Because it was pretty fucking far from any definition of socialism. The abuse of workers, shooting rioters, siccing soldiers on people, it has all the hallmarks of a fascist state, not a socialist one.
Unless you think that Nazis were socialists, in which case you're beyond help.
That is basically Soviet Union. And I wouldn't call Shady Sands, BoS and such as ''communal'' since they had strong leadership. I do not agree with Ant, claiming that Fallout is a critique of socialism (it isn't) but is more about human nature overall than against a specific system.
everything in your power to save your people
like killing the entire planet with nuclear fire
fucking commies
That's America's fault. Why they pushed a nuclear-armed state to the point where nuclear annihilation was the only remaining option I have no idea.
there is never a point when killing literally the entire planet is preferable to just your own country dying unless you're a cartoon super villain
Yes, which is why America never should have pushed a nuclear-armed state in a bid for its total and utter destruction.