Did the prewar-fallout world have some kind of internet?

Surf Solar

Surf Solar

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This might seem like a silly question, but I couldn't find any info regarding that in the bible and need it for my game.

We only know that the fallout world had working computers which often were connected with each other in local networks. But I could never find any info regarding some kind of internet (text based mostly I would assume) - which one could use to create interesting things, I believe.

Does someone know/assume?
 
Enclave oil rig is connected with Gecko power plant and this even with video. So probably yes, they do have something like the internet, even if it's just government related.
 
Yap I know, I was more asking for a non company/goverment related internet, like, you know, just the one we are using right now. ;)

Some net to "browse" through for the simple men and citizens.
 
In FO3 and FONV, there are pre-war email communications between employees of companies and between different divisions of companies at different locations. So, there seems to have been something like the internet. Their computer tech is different than ours though. Their internet may not have been as expansive ours, but that's speculation.
 
And remember that the fallout world was created back in a time when AOL was king and based around a time when computers weren't even hitting universities for a decade, so you can't really make any kind of comparison to how widespread and encompassing as the net is today.
 
I don't know the true answer, but it seems the only thing relatively similar to the internet is PoseidoNet. Then there were, as you said, local networks, and also some networks connecting different branches of the same company. All networks owned and controlled by private companies and the government.

Once again, I don't know the true answer, but if you ask me there shouldn't be any world wide web or USA web which "normal" citizens could use. Why? Because such technologies produced quite a revolution in our culture and introducing that element to the Fallout world would really make myself ask "then why all that retro-futuristic stuff?".

Basically I think the culture of Fallout's Pre-War USA is not compatible with an Internet-like net. There is probably no "realistic" explanation of why Pre-War culture was so tied to the 1950's even when it was almost 2080, but if we assume that normal citizens were never able to have access to a world wide web (and radio & television were still the ruling media), then it'd be easier to accept all that retro style.

Just my opinion anyway.
 
The key to uderstanding Fallout's version of the Internet lies in recognizing that it's the world of the future as it was envisioned in the 1950s; as if the technology really evolved in that direction, directed by the sci-fi of the time.

Personally, I don't see a problem with the Internet in Fallout, Eternauta. Technological revolutions take place in very specific circumstances. The Internet exploded because our culture and history created the necessary conditions for such an explosion to happen. In the Fallout universe, no such conditions appeared following the Divergence.

Consider industrialization, railways and the steam machine. The principle of operation of the steam machine were well understood in ancient times, but there was no actual need to design and build them, as cheap labor was readily available. It wasn't until the 19th century that the right conditions appeared for industrialization to boom.

People simply didn't need the Internet, although the technology was developed (the military really likes bandwidth).
 
Internet or not, I'm sure there were some spammers! At least one of them, Unvashed Villagers are hunting him across the wastes. :mrgreen:
 
There were hackers creating viruses, as evidenced by the problem in Hidden Valley in FONV. This would very likely have been someone accessing that network from the outside before the war. It's possible evidence of a public internet that the military was tapped into.
 
Fallout 1 in the computer science lab, when using the computers there had a response like this "surfing the interweb".
 
I'm pretty sure that they were talking about the Vault's internal network in that instance. It would seem that most vaults also maintain a connection to the greater Vault-Tec network as a whole but that access to it is limited to executive personnel for purposes of administration, monitoring and experiment maintenance.
 
There is something called an "Intranet" which seems to be there for personnel to communicate directly with each other in an office environment, but it seems limited to proprietary networks.

I don't see why there wouldn't be a larger, if a bit more primitive network like the ARPANET of the 1960s. Even if it were limited to large mainframe-types.
 
Yeah, looks like they had company networks, some of them interconnected to an extent, but nothing like the modern Internet.
 
we do.
but it's not a 'free internet' as we use today.
while it's 'dos-based' internet as an early one. (My daddy had an experience using ones). it is correctly 'intranet'. a WAN owned, administrated, and moderated by an organization that owns the network.

right now i think there's THREE organization in the post-war FO settings that have ones.
1. Enclave; being successor to the US Government, and given that Vault Tec is not a pure private organization but it's actually 'State Enterprise' (just like AMTRAK). by the FO2. it is generally accepted that Vault Tec is now integrated into the Enclave.
before ZAX stationed in the Raven's rock created John Henry Eden' personality. ZAX was tightly linked to the Poseidon Oil Rig (which housed the Enclave until its destruction at the end of FO2) and somehow, unflinchingly served its creator.
2. Brotherhood of Steel; another successor of the US Army. and it is said to inherit hi-tech stuffs (and attempting to develop new ones or improve the existing tech they have). During Owen Lyon's mission in the east coast, to be specific, looking for the Pentagon. Lyon's warband maintained communication channel with the Lost Hills throughout the operations. and once Lyon's warband secured the Pentagon, Lyon reported the warband's findings to the Lost Hills. finally the Lost Hills granted Lyons the rights to found an east coast chapter. this tells us that the Brotherhood has some form of internet.
3. Mr. House. the founder of RobCo, and the keeper of the advanced computer technology of the FO settings. if he doesn't have an Internet, how will the two factions above have access to it?
 
In Fallout 1 you can use science on one of the computers in the library in vault 13 and get a message saying something along:
"You spend several ours on the interweb without actually doing anything".

So yeah they must have had internet :wink:
 
and 'free internet' as we known today?

nah. how could it possible when computers are solely designed as 'working tools' and not having a second function as an entertainment instrument as it is today? does communication sattellite still works after almost a century since the great war??
 
Though it wasn't 50's science fiction, Heinlein's Friday totally predicts the internet and, even, Wikipedia. Outside of that, I know Mark Twain mentioned it in a short science fiction story in the 1890s. Given that prediction, I'd say Pop 50's retro-future would have internet. Of course, as mentioned, it would be different from ours. There might not be Facebook since it seems against the ethics and morays of that kind of society, but information accessibility and e-mail structures would surely be there.
 
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