first of all let me say that I have played fallout 1 and 2, (not 3 as i don't have the means) and i have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of both and this is not a swing at either games or the series, however I have noticed a popssible flaw in the scenario of the fallout world, that is the war for resourses that caused the nuclear apocolypse mainly as I am aware the war for oil and uranium from the intro of fallout one.

We know that the US at least had the technology before the war to create miniture nuclear fusion devices that could be used as an energy source (fallout 1&2 - microfusion cells). the "fuel" used in the process of nuclear fusion as i understand it is hydrogen, hydrogen neuclei to be precise, there is an increadibly large resource of hydrogen that is practically unlimited that is water. the hydrogen must be gathered through the acid catalysed dehydration of the water, which needs electricity but this can be generated by the fusion itself, evenif you just boil some water put it through a turbine and run a dynamo off the movement.

this means that niether oil, coal or natural gas are needed for energy generation or for use in transport (cars lorries boats planes etc) as nuclear fusion can be used for these puroses, and as the fuel for nuclear fusion is practicaly limitless there is no reason to fight for these resources, however oil does have a secondary use in plastics and pharmasuticals, however only a tiny percentage of crude oil is used in the pharmacutical or plastics industries compared to the consumption of oil in the transport industry (extrapolating from reality here as no evedence from fallout of these industries raw materials consumption is given).

uranium as of this moment as far as im aware is only used in bombs and nuclear fission reactors, it is my understanding that nuclear fusion would be much more efficent in both of these circumstances, as alot more energy per volume and per kilogram of fuel is released by nuclear fusion than nuclear fission, therefore making nuclear fission obsolete and making uranium an obsolete resourse (i'm extrapolating again as i don't know what uranium is could be used for in the fallout universe)

this shows that oil and uranium are obsolete resourses, therefore a war both costly economicaly and at great loss of life would not be fought for these resourses.

A war could obviously still have been fought between china and america, leading to the use of nuclear weapons (eg the cold war, which obviously didn't end in the apocalypse) however it wouldn't have been fought for resourses, but we know for a fact that it was, therfore meaning that the concept of fallout is flawed.

thats my argument, make of it what you wish and discuss

link to explination of nuclear fusion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion

link to explination of nuclear fission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission

Yes i'm aware that it's just a game and i should enjoy it, and I do. But I just had a thought is all.

FYI Fallout 3 was in an alternate universe which satirised the 1950s views of what the future would be like. It is fantasy.

It is also a game, entirely fiction.

He wasn't even talking about Fallout 3. He was talking about the backstory to all the games. And he makes a pretty good point.
The only way out of this little conundrum is that large scale nuclear fusion wasn't economically feasible or scientifically possible yet. That's the only way that I can see it working. I mean, do you see any evidence of large scale nuclear fusion anywhere in any of the games? I don't in Fallout 3, but I don't know about the other 2. The small scale microfusion cells probably work on a different method that might only be stable, feasable, or even just working in the small scale.

A microfusion cell can power a laser powerful enough to kill people and destroy robots. I don't know how much energy you'd need for that but I am pretty ♥♥♥♥ sure that would be able to power cars. Besides cars and boats are small scale

How about the Fallout 2 Gecko Power Plant?

That was a fission reactor. You had to get them uranium for fuel in one of the quests.

Do you know how much oil is used in making corn? And how much corn is used in making food?

Anyway.
I'm sure someone will talk about the oil companies conspiring against nuclear soon.

You mean like Watchmen?

AFAIK fusion power was invented not long before the war. You can't adapt a whole society to a new power source overnight. It takes time. Even if we invented practical fusion power today, we couldn't get rid of fission, coal and oil power plants until all of them were replaced with fusion power plants. That could take decades.

Using fusion power to power weapons and some cars is a lot easier and faster set up than powering a whole nation with it.

Also, it's just a game.

Falloutiverse is serious business. Way to think about this too hard and completely ruin the game. Jesus. Thank you, Wikipedia Scholar.

Spoilers: fusion power requires incredibly rare isotopes of hydrogen, not just "dump water on hot plate get fusion"

in general i thought it has always been much harder to miniturize technology that to make it bigger you start with something big and make it smaller (computers for example), in this instance there is evidence of miniturized fusion devices asin the ammo you can get in fallout one and two, so i thought that if they have the miniturized tech then they probably started with something biggger (for example take a look at the JET project and see how big that one is) but i agree that it may not be feasible to overhaul an entire countries energy system overnight. if microfusion cells work differently then they don't work by fusion, and that would be fine because then i couldn't make this argument cos i wouldn't have evedence that they had fusion tech

about the deuterium tritium problem, deuterium is about 0.015% abundent in all the hydrogen in the world, in two kilograms of hydrogen gas (H2) there are about 12.04x10^23 atoms of hydrogen 0.015% of that would be about 1.80x10^20 atoms of deuterium which as i understand is more than enough for a fusion reaction to happen, tritium is a hell of a lot smaller, however you can manufacture it with fusion, same goes for deuterium of course.

link for the JET thing:
http://www.jet.efda.org/

that reactor is nnot a true fusion reactor, I think it uses a reaction with hydrogen or it's isotopes to get neutrons out, neutrons arn't confined by a magnetic field so they can go out of the magnetic "bubble" and collide with the walls which are made of lithium and have waterpipes running through them neutrons collide with the lithium, that heat up the water into stem etc.

keep the discission going

I also agree with him but he should also consider the following. It's a game.