Fallout, Britain and the 1950s Apocalypse

A friend of mine recently sent me the reveal trailer for the Fallout 4 mod Fallout: London. Now, the notion of a Southern England-set Fallout is something familiar to me. And, even if I haven't played every game in the series, I have enjoyed them - and the shared reference point of Fallout: New Vegas among a number of my friends that gave birth to Fallout: Home Counties in the first place means that I have a certain affection for it. 

What I'm saying is, it feels like I have a stake in this matter.

Now, I'm going to pick at some of the elements of this mod in such a way as may be less than gracious. I will freely admit to a partial knowledge of the mod and that I have nary a fraction of their digital ability. Further, that the team are limited by the constrains of the base game. The team includes a reasonable contingent of British people in it as well - this will not be an outside-looking-in depiction of a culture.

That said....

There are a few things I would like to address regarding the mod and its presentation of a post-apoclyptic London. 

Firstly, I think it can hardly be denied that the Fallout universe is one where 'the 1950s never ended'. We largely see this in the US, but, well, Cold War Paranoia, technology, culture, politics - all act out a continuation of the 1950s in some sense. Despite decades passing, this remains the case; no 1960s, no Woodstock, no cultural revolution, no Watergate thus no end to an Imperial Presidency.... 

(I can find no references to the Civil Rights movement, but Jim Crow certainly appears to be over - perhaps brought about by the same kind of top-down government that would turn fifty states into thirteen commonwealths).

To lay things out: the 1950s in Britain, even sketched in broad nigh-on-cliche terms was not the 1950s of the United States. The winding down of Empire is only part of it. National Service would only end in 1957; not only did British forces remain in Germany, but fought in Korea, Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya and the Suez Crisis. Domestically, you have the pinch of Rationing together with the post-war political consensus getting on with the work of rebuilding. You have a country devastated by bombing (apt!) being rebuilt by idealistic (hubristic?) architects and city planners - removing slum housing, producing high-rises and new towns - like Milton Keynes with its numbered streets (the same movement that would produce a barracks like this and the Barbican).

To say nothing of the Festival of Britain and the Skylon.
(Image via those nice chaps on Wikipedia)

Frankly, I can do little better than to recommend the linked series of reviews if you want a quick dive into things. They are reviews/summaries of David Kynsaton's social history of post-war Britain, with useful timelines and the occasional acid comment. The blog's same reviews of period fiction are also helpful.

• 1948-51
• 1951-55
• 1955-57
• 1957-59

There is little evidence, however, that Fallout: London has gathered any of this raw material into the mod. If in Fallout America never has Woodstock, Britain never has the Beatles and Carnaby Street. What do we have instead? Barrage balloons (against the A-Bomb?!?), Vera Lynn (excusable, thanks to Kubrick), Tommies, 'Fascist pamphleteers', London street gangs, Peaky Blinders, a 'Feudal Aristocratic hegemony'. This is all the stuff of the 1930s and the Second World War. [I leave aside the invocation of post-1950s subcultures - where are the Teddy Boys?] A post-war Establishment involves more technocrats, middle-class intellectuals and union leaders; a post-war revolution involves more communists. It's like mixing up (for an American setting) the Industrialists and Railway Barons of the Gilded Age with the Cold War Military-Industrial Complex. Not the biggest or strangest of mistakes, but a notable error nonetheless.

The view we get of London is mostly Victorian-red brick ruins and war-scarred landmarks. Closest thing to a modernist monolith is the 'blast-proof' walls of Westminster (shown below) (the Ministry of Truth is still around, however). This bit of concept work seems to have the right idea.

I know all this might be a little too much like looking for historical accuracy in a counterfactual setting. Besides, vanilla Fallout is as often Mad Max as 1950s ruination. But Fallout: London does seem to have strayed a little from the setting notes. There is perhaps something in a Britain that indulges nostalgia about the 1940s in a way that America might indulge nostalgia about the 1950s - but I'm not sure that Fallout: London actually does this.

The Fallout games also use not only the trappings of 1950s history, but also (science) fiction. There seems less of this in Fallout: London. No John Wyndham on display; no Death of Grass, no Quatermass Experiment. Not a hint of Ridley Walker. Triffids seem tailor-made for Fallout! I've covered this sort of thing on the blog before, if in a rather amateurish format. Where are the lonely concrete left-over RAF bases, as in 'The Hour that Never Was'? Where are the Ealing comedies? Where is Molesworth? Looming post-war tyrannies, as in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four or Lewis's That Hideous Strength are perfect for Fallout - perhaps there's some of them in the background. 

The problem may be that the iconography and choices of Fallout: London are all, I suppose, those of the path of least resistance. The equivalent of the Big Ben and Rule, Britannia identifying shot and musical sting in a film (Cf, this). The Guards Division in bearskins and red tunics. Buckingham Palace, the Palace of Westminster, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square. Red buses and pillarboxes. Tommy Atkins, street gangs. King Arthur and Camelot. It reminds one of a tourist shop bulging with ugly postcards, Royal bobbleheads and Union flags. It's (almost) a hair's breadth from Dick Van Dyke dancing on rooftops. [Harsh!]

Of course, again, I don't know enough about this mod.  I couldn't tell you how good it is, where it will end up or how Shandified it is. But I think I can tell you what's not there.