Complex Numbers

Fallout Day

On October 23, 2077, the bombs fell.

The Fallout games follow an alternative timeline that branched off from our own just after WWII. In that fictional world, technology and culture took a different path, leading to nuclear war on this date. The games themselves are set some years after the event.

This illustrates the importance of having a backstory for your narrative. Video games are kind of an interactive story, and the ones like Fallout are compelling especially since they have a (relatively) consistent history.

There's a strong theme of comedy woven through the games' narrative, mostly dark comedy. Sometimes it's subtle, like encountering a ruined bathroom with an "Employees Must Wash Hands" sign above a sink containing a pile of skeletal hands. I don't think the games would work as well without the humor elements; if you're going to write about something as dark as nuclear armageddon, there had better be some laughs along the way.

With all the other fun and exciting ways we're all doomed, nuclear war seems tame these days. Hell, nuclear winter might even be the solution to global warming, right? And we can turn anything into an adventure if we try.

What's my point? I don't really have one. I just make it a point to observe Fallout Day every year.

Because war... war never changes.