All-Clear Signal

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

Lynette says that Vault 8 opened once they received the “All-Clear Signal” (though she is unaware of where exactly this signal came from). It’s presumed that this signal was sent by the Enclave, and that they sent a similar signal to Vault 13 soon before the start of the game. But what I’m wondering is why did the Enclave send this signal at all? From what little we know about them, they seemed to have abandoned the vault experiments almost entirely. Their use of Vault 13ers in their machinations seems like an afterthought, like “oh yeah, remember how we have these bunkers full of unmutated humans on the mainland? Let’s use that!” As far as we know they haven’t used any information that they could have gained from the vault experiments, unless they had a vault full of aerospace engineers somewhere.

The only explanation I can think of is that in the early decades after the Great War they were very involved with the vault experiments (collecting data, sending out All-Clear Signals to control Vaults, etc), but after a generation or so they lost interest and abandoned the project, possibly because they realized how pointlessly insane most of the vault experiments were.

 

[Mr Fish]

Probably just an automated signal. Like a failsafe. This vault is meant to go up top and rebuild. Plan A to G was probably completely fucked by the lack of communication so finally H was just if time expires to date X then Y triggers, which is the signal.
Doesn't have to get more complicated than that.

 

[Atomic Postman]

Yeah I imagine it was a case by case basis. Control Vaults got the all-clear after 25 years or whenever the US Gov assumed things would be clear.

Experimental vaults would be up to the discretion of monitors. In the case of 13, it's experiment hadn't concluded so the control over the All Clear was not yet deployed.

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

I guess that make sense. Ironically enough, if the signal was automated then Lynette’s theory about the origin of the signal was half right. Although if the Enclave didn’t personally send them the signal then it makes that whole conversation a bit of a red herring.

 

[Mr Fish]

I wouldn't consider it a red herring. She's a person in the world of Fallout with her viewpoints and a personal history and she's recounting events that transpired from her perspective. When anyone does that they could be flat out wrong about something. I don't think every bit of dialogue needs to objectively factual. People are people, and sometimes they're wrong. The further removed you get from the event the muddier it gets to get the truth. You might not get factual truth out of her but you get perspective that can help contextualize how much of a shitshow their vault experimentation was.

 

[Atomic Postman]

It clues the player into the All-Clear Signal as a basic thing and that it's coming from somewhere that survived the war, I'd say that's justification enough for the dialogue

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

I wouldn't consider it a red herring. She's a person in the world of Fallout with her viewpoints and a personal history and she's recounting events that transpired from her perspective. When anyone does that they could be flat out wrong about something. I don't think every bit of dialogue needs to objectively factual. People are people, and sometimes they're wrong. The further removed you get from the event the muddier it gets to get the truth. You might not get factual truth out of her but you get perspective that can help contextualize how much of a shitshow their vault experimentation was.

I think you misunderstood what I meant. The dialogue with Lynette pretty explicitly implies that she is NOT correct and doesn’t know what she is talking about. I wasn’t saying it’s a red herring just because she’s wrong. To me it feels like a red herring if she is right, or half-right at least. If we are assuming the All Clear Signal was automated, that is functionally the same as thinking that the signal was sent by “detectors” on the surface. The question is “who sent the signal?”, and if the signal was an automated response from the Enclave, then Lynette is pretty much right, the signal wasn’t sent by anyone, a computer handled it. But the question is meant to set up that some mysterious organization must have survived the war to send this signal, foreshadowing the eventual reveal of the Enclave. If the signal was automated then the Encksve wouldn’t have needed to survive the Great War for Vault 8 to receive the signal. That is what I meant by her dialogue regarding this being a “red herring”. I hope this make sense, I’m finding it difficult to communicate my thoughts on this subject.