A Fallout fan shares their theory about who really dropped the first nuke – and it makes a lot of sense.

The Fallout show answers the longest-running question in the series: who dropped the bombs first in the Great War? Or at least, it certainly seems to, but one fan thinks that this “reveal” is purposely misdirecting the audience.

In the season one finale, we see a meeting between Vault-Tec and various other US-based corporations. Here, the Vault-Tec representative, Barb Howard, reveals that they plan to drop the drop the bombs themselves, to ensure that everyone involved with the Vault programme sees a return on their investments. The implication is that this is indeed what happened, and Vault-Tec started the war which destroyed the world.

However, over on the Fallout subreddit, one fan thinks this might not be the case. As set out by Reddit user Corpolentusmaximus2, the show might actually be setting up that Vault-Tec didn’t get the chance to nuke the world, and was beaten to the punch by China.

A Fallout Fan Theory On Who Really Started The War

China dropped the nukes, and the show confirmed that.

I know this sounds weird, given the fact that the show seemingly states that it was Vault-tec

But that actually proves that it wasn’t them, let me explain.

They planned to bomb the World, which would explain a lot.

But what if China nuked the US 20 hours Prior to Vault-tecs planned bombing run ?

Why twenty hours ?

Well Mr House says that he misscalculated the great war by 20 hours.

But now we see that he was involved in the plans to start the great war. This is not a lore error but him simply lying to the Courier to protect Vault-Tec, he never calculated the exact time of the War but knew it since he was involved in the great plan.

The Chinese, after loosing so much ground against the US, like stated in the TV Broadcast during the Fallout Show, launched nukes at US Forces, the US retaliated by launching nukes at China, which then lead to China striking american cities

This would explain why in Fallout 4 the TV Broadcast says that there have been multiple records of nuclear explosions on american soil. These reports would take time to reach him, seemingly showing that the great war took longer than just a few minutes, but more like 20 minutes or up to one hour.

And this theory is supported by the show itself even more.

The Ghoules wife was extremly high up in Vault-tec, at a point where she even was talking with all of the Higher ups of all Companies about the nuclear plans, which meant that she not just knew that they would drop the bombs but also when the bombs would fall.
therefore she would have goten herself and her family in safety Prior to the nukes, which didn’t happen.

She and her family seemingly where hit out of the blue and could have died when the nukes fell.

Vault-tec and the people involved with the plan to “drop the bomb themselfes” where unprepared for the bombs, which was shown in the Show and the Games

And the robobrain in Episode 8 just didn’t knew that it wasn’t themselfes who “cleaned” the World, because the end of the World was planned for 20 hours later anyways since he just didn’t knew it any better (yea the robobrain is kinda working against my theory but that can be ignored since the rest makes sense)

So what do you guys think ?

Is the any sense in what i wrote or did i miss something important

Btw sorry for my english, i am german.

EDIT: wow thx for So much attention

Some of you got really good additions for the theory, maybe it wasn’s 20 hour but more like a few days later when vault tec would have started the war,

But then chinese Spies discovered the plan and that along the high tension overall just lead to the nuclear strike from china

Btw i don’t think Mr House worked WITH Vault-tec, he rather would just play along, knowing that being with the guys planing it would give him enough time to prepare Vegas

Also Mr House propably didn’t protect Vault-tec by lying but just wanted to seem like an even more capable Mastermind by acting like he just predicted the war instead of knowing it, which would then get het him the platinum Chip from the courier, because if he told him that this was all planned then he would have lost any sympathy from the courier and therefor even loosing the Chip

Corpolentusmaximus2 goes over the theory in great detail here, but here’s a quick rundown. Basically, China was losing the war against the United States and decided to bomb the US far sooner than expected. This catches Vault-Tec off guard, which explains why Cooper Howard has custody of his and Barb’s daughter when the first bomb hits. Surely, if Vault-Tec had orchestrated it all, Barb would have made sure that she had their daughter that day. It’s possible that Cooper would have been in the loop too since he snooped in on the Vault-Tec meeting, but he’s clearly caught off guard when the war starts.

The user also argues that this explains another inconsistency – Mr. House. In Fallout: New Vegas, he says he predicted when the bombs would drop, but was off by 20 hours. Corpolentusmaximus2 says that this means China hit the US just hours before Vault-Tec intended to drop the bombs, which would be pretty ironic. They spent so much time planning the end of the world, only to be blindsided by the very conflict they were profiting from.

Many other fans enjoy this theory and also believe that this season one plot twist will be undone with yet another twist in season two. Given the ending of the first season, it looks like we’ll see Cooper’s family again further down the line, which would shed more light on what exactly went down on the day the world ended.