Quote Originally Posted by Mastikator View Post
Besides "OYG what an amazing show" there's one bit of speculation I have.

Spoiler: The speculation
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Ok so in the final episode we learn THE TRUTH, that vault tech means to drop the bombs. And Barb Howard wants to do it for the safety of her child.

In the first episode we see Cooper and his and her child watch as the nukes drop.

Why, oh why, weren't they in the vault when this happened?

A thing to remember. That their plan to "eliminate all competition" was the very same plan that the Enclave had in Fallout 2.

We also learned in Fallout 2 that the experiments in the vaults was to learn about long term confinement for the enclave's generational ship to another planet.

So here's what I'm wondering. Did Vault Tech actually drop the bombs? Because it seems to me that they collaborated with the US federal government (aka The Enclave as per Fallout 2, 3), and the Enclave got wind of this plan and accelerated it even further. The Enclave caught Vault Tech off-guard by my estimations
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I would say it goes even deeper. Vault-tec's plan to drop the bombs first *is* the Enclave's plan to drop the plan first, because in a perfect world, there is no distinction between them (at least from the shadow government/Enclave's point of view - individual ambitious folk like Bud in Vault-tec might have a different view). The best case scenario from here, to me, is that both were caught off guard by China launching first. That fits with why the daughter was at the party and half the Vaults we see in the games aren't ready yet. It's also possible that the Enclave knew that China launching early was a possibility (the President was already on the oil rig days early, after all, but they might not have shared that wisdom with Vault-tec's management.