9 Little-Known Science Facts That Make Fallout Even Cooler

7. MAD - Fallout Was Nearly Our Reality

The whole situation in Fallout is essentially an alternative reality in which the tactics of the appropriately named MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) doctrine failed to work as a deterrent and backfired spectacularly.

Okay, as a quick recap, MAD works as a nuclear deterrent in the same way that cutting off your hands prevents you from breaking a nail. World powers work to stockpile as many nuclear weapons as possible to ensure that any country that would choose to launch their nukes would receive return fire in hellish abundance. During the cold war, stockpiles of nuclear weapons probably reached a peak of around 66,000 at points. That's a lot of nukes, and a number that will become significant later.

This is all fine and dandy until one country goes postal and decides to hit the big red button anyway (or even that we just think they did, but it turns out to be a false alarm).

In the real world we narrowly (and I mean narrowly) avoided this eventuality, but in Fallout the balance is tipped the other way and, although part of an alternative timeline, is probably alarmingly close to the reality we could have been living through has someone flicked the switch.