The Great War started and ended on Saturday, October 23, 2077 when nuclear weapons were launched by all the nuclear-capable nations of the world (mainly from the United States, China and the USSR). The exchange lasted for approximately two hours, according to most survivors' accounts. Once the last atomic bomb and nuclear warhead had fallen, the world fell into the deep darkness of a nuclear holocaust.
The Great War
It is not known who launched the first nuclear weapon that started the conflict. President Richardson would tell the Chosen One that China launched first, however it is unknown whether or not he was telling the truth.
The nuclear exchange that characterized the Great War lasted for only a brief two hours, but was unbelievably destructive and reshaped the climate of the world even as it caused the fall of most of human civilization everywhere across the globe. More energy was released in the first moments of the Great War than all of the previous human conflicts in the history of the world combined. Entire mountain ranges were created as the ground buckled and moved under the strain of the cataclysmic pressure produced by numerous, concentrated atomic explosions. Rivers and oceans around the world were contaminated with the resulting radioactive fallout released by the relatively low-yield nuclear weapons used by all sides, and the climate changed horrifically. All the regions of Earth suffered from a single, permanent season once the initial dust blasted into the atmosphere by the nuclear explosions had settled - a scorching, radioactive desert summer.
Aftermath
Many American citizens did not heed the air raid sirens on October 23, 2077, believing them to be signaling just another drill. The Vaults sealed in their inhabitants as Earth burned in atomic fire. A few citizens took shelter where they could: sewers, and subway stations, drainage centers, Pulowski Preservation shelters, or in the case of the Keller family, the National Guard depot. However, without a very strong outer shield of dense metal or rock to defend them from both the heat and kinetic shock wave of the nuclear blasts (such as Lamplight caverns or Raven Rock), few civilians survived the full-out nuclear exchange. Some who were exposed to high levels of radiation became ghouls, and some of these ghouls, in turn, formed their own communities. Those who survived the nuclear exchange would form the basis for the brutal civilization that existed for the next 20 years, until the first Vaults re-opened.
Despite the global destruction caused by the war, many areas remained habitable, with low and tolerable levels of radioactive fallout. The surviving humans were in some parts of Earth able to continue living in the ruins of the pre-War civilization, establishing new communities and even small cities.
Around a week after the initial nuclear explosions, rain started to fall; however, none of it was drinkable. The rain was black; tainted with soot, ash, radioactive elements produced by the nuclear explosions and various other contaminants produced by nuclear weapons. This rain marked the start of the terrible fallout that marked the true, permanent destruction caused by the Great War. The rain lasted four long days, killing thousands of species that had survived the initial destruction of the bombs, be they animal, plant or micro-organisms. Those few living things, human, animal or plant, that survived after the rain ended were left to live in the now barren wasteland that had spread across Earth, where nearly all pre-War plant life had died either in the initial explosions or from the intense radiation produced by the fallout.
Some major global cities were not completely destroyed by the explosions because of their relatively low explosive yields, and cities such as Washington, D.C. even managed to maintain intact buildings despite relatively close detonations. However, most city streets across the post-nuclear United States were (and continue) to be blocked with rubble from collapsing edifices. In the ruins of Washington, D.C., most of the city's Metro system of subways remained intact. Though many Metro tunnels were blocked by collapsed masonry caused by the shock of the atomic explosions, the Metro's tunnel network remains the easiest, if not the only, way to move around the D.C. ruins.
Thanks to the efforts of Robert House, most of the city of Las Vegas, Nevada and the Hoover Dam remained intact, and many buildings still have electricity as of 2281. In the pre-War era, about 20 years before the Great War, House predicted when the bombs would fall. In the meantime, he installed defenses such as laser turrets on the roof of the Lucky 38 casino, which destroyed most of the incoming Chinese ballistic missiles before they hit Las Vegas. Had his platinum chip been delivered only a day earlier, an even greater area of the Mojave Wasteland could have been spared the terrible destruction. In time, the remains of Las Vegas came to be known as New Vegas.
Notes
There is debate on what time the Great War occurred, and whether it happened in the morning, or at night.
All clocks on the East Coast are stuck at 9:47.
In the Fallout: New Vegas add-on Honest Hearts, clocks found in the debris of Three Marys are also stopped at 9:47. This is despite the fact that Three Marys would be several time zones away from the East Coast, and so simultaneous bombings would not result in the same time stuck on the different clock faces.
According to the Fallout: New Vegas add-on Dead Money, the bombs were launched during the night of the Gala Event, suggesting that the nuclear holocaust happened when people were sleeping on the East Coast, and getting home from work on the West Coast. This also supports the ideas that people simply did not heed the air raid sirens or didn't have enough time to get to safety.
According to Carrie Delaney's holotapes, the school was packing up to leave Little Lamplight after a field trip. Unless they were going to be staying in school overtime for the trip, this could place the East Coast bombs in the 2-3 PM time range.
The war is sometimes referred to as World War III by fans and on the Fallout Trilogy PC cover. In the Fallout intro, the narrator states that "the storm of world war had come again". However, none of the in game characters in the series have ever referred it as such.
In real life, however, a nuclear holocaust is usually associated with the hypothetical World War III.
Behind the scenes
The following is based on the canceled Fallout movie and has not been confirmed by canon sources.
According to the script of the Fallout film, neither China, India, nor North Korea launched the first bomb. It was in fact Vault-Tec's executive of the vaults. He launched the first bomb to fulfill his own prophecy of nuclear annihilation.
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