Vault-Tec's Plan *SPOILERS*

CT Phipps

Carbon Dated and Proud
The most controversial part of the show aside from the destruction of Shady Sands is the revelation that Vault-Tec (either acting as a proxy of the Enclave or the predecessor to the Enclave) was responsible for starting the Great War or were planning on doing so.

I'm inclined to agree with Tim Cain that he thinks Vault-Tec didn't drop the bombs themselves but, like so many of their other operations ended up screwing the pooch. Basically, they intended to drop the bombs at some point but the Chinese preempted them.

But why? What do they get out of this?

I'm inclined to think Vault-Tec's plan is motivated by the fact they want to be able to control the circumstances of the fall while maximizing their profits up until the point of the Great War. If the Great War doesn't happen, Vault-Tec is ruined as they can't keep the threat of nuclear war hanging over humanity forever. It's also 90% likely to happen from their perspective. That 10% is a wild card, though, and could mean it happens at a point they can't know or not.

Basically, a controlled crash is better than risking nuclear war wiping your fortune out completely.

The promise of the Vault-Tec meeting is to provide the oligarchy of America (future Enclave?) with a bunch of the suckers they've assembled for their Vaults already to use as test subjects and effectively selling them as slaves for their private projects. They will then work together to ride out the apocalypse with their own plans on rebuilding afterward.

The rest of these vaults are experiments to get the technology to rebuild the world--they were never to save the inhabitants.

I think this meeting is meant to predate both House's plans for New Vegas and Sinclair's plan for the Sierra Madre hotel. The vaults, the 112 of them we know, were never meant to save anyone but were all experiments on how to rebuild the world afterward. Both of these "arks" are the way the oligarchy actually intends to weather the storm with unimaginable luxuries and technology that isn't going to be available to the average Vault-Dweller.

Some people also think Vault 31 is the heart of where Vault Tec's executives are frozen but I'm inclined to disagree and think it is entirely made of middle managers. Furthermore, I'm inclined to think that it was actually Bud trying to save the employees of his company that would have otherwise been thrown to the wolves. It's not the basis for Vault-Tec's master plan (if they still have one). If there is a "true" Vault-Tec base, it's probably closer to Vault-0 as described in Tactics.
 
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