Here an article about US expectations about the future
development, wich is actually descibing petty much the
ficticious history in Fallout, that let to the atomic war between China and the US

Reasons: expected wars for Oil and other Ressources
between China (and other rising countries) and the US

http://www.n-tv.de/1056891.html

I don't see it happen anytime soon. Why didn't the US just nuke Iraq or Afghanistan? For quite obvious reasons. Let alone the fact that they wouldn't get away with it.

If there ever is going to be another all-out world war, there's no point in bombing the enemy back to the stone-age. It's stupid as it would ruin all the resources and what not the other country may have to offer.

Cheers

Cause Afganistan is no military power.

Its different when China, India or Russia would go
into an open conflic with the US.

the good thing about Nukes is actually that they!
saved the peace in the second part of the 20th Centure.
Because of the obvius danger to make the enemy have to use them.
Nevertheless, back then there was struggle between political systems, and not a struggle for ressources,
wich will develop in the next decades.

I know Afghanistan isn't, but didn't Iraq supposedly have weapons of mass destruction and what not? We now know there never were any, not even biological weapons (since at least 1998)...

Using tactical nukes on bunkers and important structures never happened because of contamination problems. It might have saved some coalition forces lives as far as casualties of war goes, or maybe not.

Actually nukes never really saved peace (you know, there were still wars in the 20th century), in fact those same nukes cost lives right up to this day and beyond and we don't even really use them anymore because of the risk of a MAD-situation (mutually assured destruction) and huge contamination problems.

Against true terrorism, just 'having the bomb' won't work anyways...



Why would it be any different? It's not different.

Cheers

Now: wich countries did have open war in the 20th century, wich both owned nukes?
None.

Im not talking about third-country placeholder-wars between the US and Russia (such as Vietnam), - but open war between nuklear powers.

The whole reason for a country to optain nukes is not to use them, but
to get shielded from attacks. (such as Iran and North Korea)
or even better: Pakistan and India.

Once they own nukes, they have a certain savety from open war with
big military powers.

The attack on Irak for example is a good indication, that the US did not believe they really own workable nukes...

that's quite an interesting theory, never thought it this way...

I no I'm late to this convers but I was addicted to this game for the passed 3 weeks now and felt like putting in my two cents. I ve only played the secend fallout prier to this along with Oblivion and was pleased with the blend of both worlds. I felt It was slightly lacking in storyline content considering It took me close to a year of solid play to fully unravle every mystery of Fallout 2 were as 3 too me till now(3 weeks),yet I did find Fallout 3's main sorry line to be more griping than its predisesor with the implementing of SPOILER your father and his death and all. SPOILER OVER

Favoret thing:
From some one that loves millitary games and RPGs the one thing that stands on out the best in this game is when your walking along the top of a hill or high point and you see in the distance a small settlment. Looking at the terrain and objects surounding it(cars,trucks,bolders,ect.) along with the weapons at your disposal you can plan your aprotch not knowing wether or not its hostel which I havent had the pleasure of doing in any other game. Wether I plan to stand on a far hill side in the hidden position and pick them off one by one with the sniper rifle or get up on the large rock face closest to them and tose a couple hundred frags,nukas, and plazmids desimating all in there so called save haven. To to say the hell with trickery and blow open there gates with a Miny Nuke from a Fat Man and then charge in with my Assult rifle(or plazma cant alway make up my mind on those 2) and gun down the suvivors HAHAHAHaHahaha!sigh.
Just something fun to do.

And now some hints for beginners:
when making your skills make sure you Enginering is 35 so you can do the defusing the bomb quest so you get a how in megaton to store your spare parts for making homemade weapons which are usually better than the conventional with the exepthing of the dart gun.

Also focus on getting you small guns up first as they are the most used weapons in the first half of the game due to there abundancy which alows for free reparing by yourself.

as for perks you can only have 20ty so think hard on each one. I know its temping to get one like here and now that instanly lvls you but having perks that increase your combat efishancy or adds to your skills or attributes are far mor worth it in the end cause ones your lvl 20 the only way to rase those skills is from clecting bobble heads and reading books o and a bobble head hint the streagth Bobble head is in the Republic of Dave on the shelf in the Museum of Dave your on your own for the others.

O and So you dont make the same mistake I did with the Strickly Business quest Which was this guy told me to go out and inslave ppl which was wrong cause my first char was a good boy so I thought I would be better to shoot him in the head and lay waste to Paridise Falls and free the slaves. But the hint is if your worried about attracting bad karma from this quest just do the quest then do what I did because for every slaver killed and slave freed you gain good karma and you dont evan loose Karma for stealing from the slavers shops.

And another quest I screwed myself on Is SAVE 30 NUKA COLA QUANTUMS for the nuka cola challenge quest. I turned all myin into nuka gernades to desamate...well every thing. so remember to save 30.

The only things I found wrong with this game were not in the actual game play itstelf but in the unexpected freezes and random character glitches were some characters sudenly suspend in mid air. Although this isnt to often aslong as you stay on the path of the main Quests,but if your like me and enjoy searching the farthest depths of a game world you'll end up seeing alot of this. And Im not sure if it would be a factor but my ver is an Xbox 360 Verson of the game.

Final last minite thoughts:
Fighting raders=FUN
Fighting Supermutants=challinging FUN
Fighting weak animal(Mole rat,dog,ect.)=quick target practice
Fighting Strong animal(DeathClaw, Rad Scorp)= Frustration from wasting ammo and time after running bacwards shooting wildly and still managing to get pumiled in the process.

So theres my 2 cents on Fallout 3.

Dude, what the hell? Some of us are still playing this game..

The game-story unfortunately ends too quickly,
although there are such a huge amount of side quests left.

They should at least have implemented a "continue playing" options.

Basically I play the game, avoiding the last steps of the main quest, just to see the sidemissions.
This is not the best gamedesign.

They should have extended teh main story by including more of the many
sidequests as mandatory to continue.

i suppose they wanted to simply keep the "required" time low, to
finish the main plot.

Another thing:
the game is not well balanced when playing a long time.
After a while you get to be a super badass, killing everyone
without any difficulty.
Only some Deathclaws might pose a little thread then.

They should have included a part of the world as "superhard" area, where even hightrained characters have problems.

Gothic 1+2 solved this much better by using "Chapters"
where all creatures respawned / world got refilled, and got to be tougher new creatures.
(but not like in Oblivion, where they simply got harder to beat)

Sorry my bad Larry. Its just after reading the treads and looking at the dates of them that got ahead of myself and assumed that the majoridy already beat the main storyline due to its short langth. again my appolgy to you and anyone else that wasn't there yet and if your reading this before my first post i'll now warn you(even though late) theres a storyline spoiler in it.