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So yeah, I've been playing Fallout 3 for Xbox 360. For anyone who doesn't know, the game takes place in the distant future in a war-torn, nuclear-ravaged American wasteland, where raiders, slavers, mercenaries, and all kinds of wicked monsters scour for the means to survive. It's pretty much Mad Max on stiff methamphetamines, if you can believe that (sorry fellas: no muscle cars with cannons or unintelligible Australian accents). At the beginning, your character emerges from the safety of an underground vault he grew up in, and you venture off with the freedom to do as you please. You can work to improve the lives of those scrounging in the wastes, or take advantage of their desolation.
Playing his game over the last couple weeks has got me thinking about how likely the events/history of the game will occur in reality. Certainly, the game is often downright preposterous - I'm sure we'll never have 20ft lumbering hell beasts roaming the countryside. But the reason why the country was nuked at all stems from fictional grievances between the United States and China which escalated into global war. These days, all you've got to do is pick up a newspaper and read the kind of abrasive, war-charged words North Korea is spouting to see that we're already heading down a dangerous path.
Some of the most disturbing material that can be found in Fallout 3 has to do with the many underground vaults themselves, set up by a corporation to "save" people from the ravages of nuclear war. In reality, their real purpose was to house the corporation's bizarre biological and psychological experiments on the residents themselves, usually resulting in horrific mutations, violent clones, and one memorable "Matrix-like" simulation in which residents are assaulted in a neverending fantasy environment of the mind.
It's easy to say this wouldn't really occur, but I believe we'd do well to remember the 1971 Stanford prison experiment, in which 70 volunteers agreed to fill inmate and guard roles in a mock prison for two weeks, only to exhibit unimaginably sadistic or fearful behavior without influence. Guards became wantonly cruel, humiliating the prisoners into utter submission. After only six days, the experiment was aborted, and many of the inmates required serious psychological counseling following the experience.
So, I guess my point is, we're just as capable of cruelty as we are curiosity, and history shows that - as a race - we're simply not responsible enough to keep ourselves from getting out of hand. It's a wonder we've been sitting for so many years on weapons that can harness the power of the Sun, and we haven't already wiped ourselves from the planet.
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Eponymous Kyle