Warning: Some SPOILERS lie ahead for Fallout!The Great War remains one of the unifying events in the entirety of the Fallout franchise, and nuclear expert Dr. Emma Belcher is sharing her thoughts on just how possible it is to happen. Having happened some 200 years before the Prime Video series adaptation, and nearly 100 years before the first game in Bethesda’s franchise, the war was the result of years of tensions building between the United States and China, the only major nations left amid dwindling natural resources and energy.
After the United States reclaimed Alaska and invaded mainland China, The Great War properly began, with an all-out nuclear arsenal unleashed that resulted in a worldwide apocalypse and created The Wasteland, where players roam in the games. As it was revealed in Fallout season 1, however, The Great War was started by Vault-Tec, West-Tek, REPCONN, RobCo and Big MT in an effort to sell more of their vaults and shape the remaining world to their whim.
Now, as the show continues its acclaimed new season, ScreenRant‘s Grant Hermanns interviewed nuclear expert Dr. Emma Belcher to discuss Fallout. When asked about the likelihood of The Great War happening in real life with billionaires and tech executives planning it, the President of Ploughshares, a company dedicated to eliminating the threat of nuclear weapons in the world, began by acknowledging that “it says something that lurks in the background for a lot of us” that such an idea could happen.
Recognizing that there are “things going on behind the scenes that we don’t really know about“ and “power that we just can’t see,” Dr. Belcher says it’s one of the goals in her line of work to ensure the unknowns of “who’s pulling strings” isn’t leading to something as devastating as The Great War:
Dr. Emma Belcher: I think this is one of the fundamental things we think about with nuclear weapons and the power that they possess. There are nine countries in the world that have nuclear weapons at the moment, and they have the ability to launch nuclear war intentionally. Someone could decide, “This is what I’m going to do,” and sentence the rest of us to potential extinction, or they could do this by mistake, miscalculation, or misunderstanding.
Expressing that the power the ones with access to nuclear weapons have, much in the way Vault-Tec and the rest of the Fallout cabal did in planning the end of the world, is “fundamentally unfair to the rest of us,” Dr. Belcher also denotes that many in politics can be “held hostage by private sector interests,” particularly those making money “in nuclear weapons production.”
She went on to explain that Ploughshares is dedicated to “making it clear there are concentrations of power” and aims to clarify for the public “how anti-democratic these decisions are” and to “get people to feel as though they have more of a say in how much money is spent on nuclear weapons.” With there being, per her research, an estimated “$190+ billion a year spent on nuclear weapons,” a figure she describes as “mind-blowing,” there are “better ways” for the world to spend their money, and the government to spend their money:
Dr. Emma Belcher: Education, healthcare, you name it — is this really the way that we want to spend our funds? The United States is projected to spend upwards of $2 trillion on modernizing its arsenal over the next few decades. One thing we know about estimates is that they often get blown out, so that’s possibly not the real number, but we really live in a world where we are not all aware of what’s going on, the danger we’re in, who’s making decisions and why, or how we can possibly have a say in our future survival and the future survival of future generations.
Though having been a concern in American politics for the better part of 50 years, the past decade has arguably been one of the more scrutinized with regard to how involved non-political entities have been in government decisions. Between Elon Musk being the largest donor in President Donald Trump’s 2024 election campaign, and subsequently becoming part of his Cabinet, to pharmaceutical organizations getting support in lieu of public healthcare, among other examples, the separation between the two has frequently left people disillusioned when it comes to voting.
That being said, there are a few factors that are likely to keep anything like Fallout‘s Great War from occurring in the real world. For starters, the franchise is largely inspired by the fear of a nuclear apocalypse during the Cold War, and while said threat is still present today, it’s not quite to the extreme it was at that time. Additionally, with the world’s resources not yet having sparked a war for what’s left among countries, organizations appear to have a better chance of profiting from keeping the world alive.
The World Of Fallout Explained
In celebration of Fallout’s release on Prime Video, here’s Screen Rant’s complete guide to the franchise’s characters, locations, lore, and changes.
However, as Dr. Belcher notes, remaining vigilant and informed is the most important thing for humanity to ever see something like Fallout‘s Great War from coming to fruition. As also showcased in Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, communication in times of nuclear conflict is one of the most imperative things one can do, and as long as one is aware of the real dangers of such warfare, there’s always a better chance of keeping things from turning into The Wasteland.
Be sure to dive into some of our other Fallout season 2 & Ploughshares-related coverage with:
New episodes of Fallout season 2 air Wednesdays on Prime Video!
