This will definitely have been brought up before as a point but I thought it would be interesting to discuss here. So here it goes.
Vaults are a staple of the Fallout series. False promises of safety from nuclear annihilation turned into sinister and creepy social experiments. There's been so many notable ones and quite honestly makes for some of the best lore of Fallout.
One question about the experiments however.....why?
So here's the thing: Vault-Tec creates these experiments to test human beings in a wide variety of conditions whether psychologically, physiologically, emotionally, physically and mentally. But whats the real purpose? Some of these experiments seem so bizarre and random that they are almost a waste of precious resources which are vital in the post-apocalypse
Take Vault 118 and Vault 114 for example. Both were designed to test the ultra wealthy. One had an incompetent overseer and extremely cramped conditions, the other was meant to propograte a severe upper/lower class divide and most likely Instigate conflict between residents. One question, why? What is the point?
What use is the research for rich families living in cramped conditions? What psychological lesson are they trying to learn from it? It makes me ask what the general purpose of these experiments are considering we know about so many of them at this point.
The games from what we can tell have implied that Vault-Tec no longer exists after the war (many vaults wait for a signal from HQ and never receive it) and yet it is Post - War when most of these experiments take place. Vault 87 experimented with FEV. Useful stuff for sure, but to who? The company is gone. West-Tek was annihilated into oblivion. Who does the data from that very specific experiment benefit aside from the scientists in that one vault?
I've heard people say the experiment data is transmitted to the Enclave. Fair point but then that begs the question, why? What use is social experiments when your plan is the genocide of all mutated life in the wasteland? I would doubt it's repopulation when considering half of the overall population of pure human vault dwellers are most likely dead by the time FEV Curling does its job. I've heard I think in the Fallout Bible about a mission to colonise another planet. That certainly helps with some of the experiments but that information isn't fully canonical and doesn't answer some of the other ones.
Essentially the points I'm getting at are this. A) What is the overall purpose of the Vault Experiments? (We have control vaults, mind control, super soldiers, FEV, disease cute. But who recieves the data? Who benefits really from these experiments? )
B) What is the genuine point behind some of these experiments? (For example one man and a crate full of puppets. Or Vault 76 securing nukes for Vault-Tec, even though the company is defunct 25 years later?)
If Vault-Tec is still active somehow, like a secret control vault full of personel or the Enclave is confirmed to be recieving all the data then it makes more sense but as far as I can tell the games have never doubled down on that.
If there's a clear and direct answer about this I'd be more than happy to know it. I'm just confused about the Vault-Tec situation.
