i love the theory that fallout didn't just stagnate in the 1950s, it returned to it. not just out of nostalgia, but desperation.
as the world fell apart, oil drying up, war time anxiety piling on and trust eroding, the government needed something familiar to sell.
and what better tool for control than the most sanitized, era of âamerican valuesâ they could find?
aesthetics of nationalism, conformity, mccarthyist paranoia, all dressed up in chrome and smiles. it wasn't a freeze in culture, it was a calculated reversion.
the mythologization of a golden past becomes the scaffolding for fascist ideology. not because that past was ever real, but because it can be weaponized
myth, dressed up as memory.
in fallout's case, that myth is the 1950s. not the messy, violent, contradictory 50s that actually existed, but a state-manufactured fantasy of chrome smiles, and "american values." a world where conformity is virtue, fear is patriotism, and war is just another product.
because when people are scared, you don't give them answers:
you give them slogans. mascots. marching tunes.
you roll out project brainstorm, an actual pre-war initiative, and start pushing "covert and overt messages of extreme patriotism" into every corner of pop culture. comics. toys. music. sports.
whatever it takes to wrap the war machine in a smile.
prewar's retrofuturism isn't just for the vibes. it's state-sanctioned denial. it was a tight wrap around a dying empire, and the more things fell apart, the more they clung to that futile image.
like if they smiled big enough and said âapple pieâ enough times, the oil crisis and global collapse would just blink away while the world burns behind it.
it's the same old rot, lacquered in vintage.
a country that chose the past over the future, and got exactly what it asked for.
not progress. not reform. just reruns of a dream that never existed.
and then it ended, the only way it could end:
with a country so in love with its own mythos it pressed the button waving a flag in one hand and a nuka-cola in the other.
