Courier Six

The loose garbage that's sitting in the streets has to be from *after* the war. Source: when you live in a place that gets windy and rainy ever all that shit blows around and blows away and gets buried in the dirt. We've had bricks in our yard get buried in 1 season by the soil.

Maybe you could argue the city where the ground is primarily concrete that stuff didn't get buried. But then you have to consider a couple of other things. 1 - Concrete poured on the ground is susceptible to breaking up in places where there's seasons, like Boston. Cold, snowy winters, wet springs and falls, and dry, hot summers do a number on concrete that's not maintained. I'm imagining the most vacant lot where I live - which has similar seasonal weather - being like 5-10 years vancant and unmaintained where I can see the concrete breaking up and desinigrating and nature reclaiming it then multiplying that by 20-50.

Maybe they used special, hardier retrofuturistic concrete in the Fallout universe, and we can dismiss the idea of the ground being somewhat dirt where there used to be road, which brings us to 2 - Boston sits on a river and I'm guessing multiple other waterways that feed it. The garbage is going to go there. The same seasons that mess up concrete would eventually carry the trash into the waterways when it's windy or rainy or the snow melts.

So the 200 year old garbage should be gone. Where is it coming from?

The average contemporary American generates a fuckton of garbage because we buy everything from the store and everything from the store needs to come in some type of packaging or container for loss prevention and/or hygenic purposes that we then throw away. A little over 100 years ago, that wasn't the case. It's only with modern manufacturing technology and supply chains that we're able to package every god damn thing we consume in a way that is financially feasible for the companies manufacturing those things.

210 years after the bombs drop in Fallout, society is not back to that level of manufacturing and consumption. There appears to be a limited amount of manufacturing occurring. They're probably not manufacturing products with packaging that is going to create really persistent garbage, namely plastic. Plastic is a byproduct primarily of natural gas refinement, which is not something we see happening in Fallout - correct me if I'm wrong, though. I haven't played the first two games.

The lifestyle most people seem to be living in Fallout wouldn't generate a lot of garbage. Like people did 100-200 years ago, people likely use everyday items until they truly wear out then repurpose them until they're next to nothing. Clothing is a good example: wear it til it wears out, then cut it into rags to use until those get threadbare or gross. They can go in the fire that warms your house or that you cook on when that happens. Heck, I'm not 100-200 years old, but I grew up poor, and my dad did that! Waste from creation, for example, if you build a table out of wood, likely gets repurposed as well. Scraps big enough to use for smaller projects get used, smaller ones go on the fire. Containers for food storage likley get reused and repurposed if they get gross not thrown away in the streets.

So yeah, there is no reason for garbage to be there. Bad job, Bethesda 🙄 /s

So besides building here's my other motive for reinstalling Fallout 4 :]