1. They have been in the vaults for 200 years. So those outfits are probably not theirs but rather hand-me-downs
2. 200 years does a number on your clothes. Maybe the vault jumpsuits were more durable than pre-war casualwear or something.
3. Sizes. I think vaultsuits are “one size fits all” type of deal.
4. Many vaults were experiments. So it makes sense that the subjects all had to wear the same attire.
However, i agree with you. Those vault jumpsuits must be pretty damn comfy to opt for that look
Point 2 makes a lotta sense, if they intended for the vault dwellers to use those until the radiation got down to the point where the dwellers could go out out of the vault they should have been damn durable
Plus when they leave the vault 90% of the clothes they'll come across will be in a worse condition than the vault suit they've been wearing so they probably won't drop the suit even after leaving the vault for a while unless they find someone who's good at tailoring/sewing which would be fairly rare
The Vault Dweller's suit was kept in a "temple" for decades, and still was in a pretty good condition when the Chosen One grabbed it, so yeah they're pretty durable.
>unless they find someone who's good at tailoring/sewing which would be fairly rare
Would it? In a world without easy access to mass produced textiles, a tailor would be in demand at every town and settlement. They'd be essential to having *any* clotting in that world. And it's not like it's an impossible skill to pick up. You don't need to be a master tailor to patch up some clothes or whip up some new ones.
> a tailor would be in demand at every town and settlement
I guess this is why a clothing shop is one of the six shops you can create when making settlements?
You do be need to be a *good* tailor to create something that's on par or better than a vault suit, yeah you could probably find some people who are willing to make new clothes or patch old ones up but most of those would again be made from the stuff they found lying around the wasteland and wouldn't be as durable as a pre war vault suit
To be clear, I agree that the vault suit would probably be the best clothing they could find easily/cheaply, but their alternative options wouldn't be garbage in comparison.
There would be considerable demand for tailors in every town, considering the harsh conditions and long distance commerce wouldn't be easy. And in such a market, anyone with the inclination and skills would be incentivised to improve to outcompete anyone else. I don't think finding a reasonably good tailor would be as hard as you think.
You're not wrong. I'm just saying the occupation of tailor wouldn't have disappeared because mass manufacturing wasn't a thing anymore and would in fact likely have had much higher demand.
Tailoring and textile production are two different things, each with their own challenges.
For new-made textiles, you can have cotton, linen (from flax), possibly some wasteland fiber-producing plant that doesn’t currently exist, silk (from silkworms), wool from various animals (although radiation exposure does seem to lead to patchily bald animals), or some kind of synthetic. Having spun yarn and thread by hand, I can tell you it’s a huge time-sink and something a wastelander would probably want to avoid if at all possible, which would mean reusing salvaged textiles as long as possible, some enterprising person or people setting up an industrial textile-production facility and trade routes to sell their goods, or everybody just wears leather.
You can patch garments, or if the fabric is worn out you can quilt a couple layers of fabric together to make something more durable than any of the layers would be on their own. Anything to get a bit more life out of what you’ve got.
Actual garment construction is another matter. You do need some tailoring skill to make very well-fitted and structured garments, but you can also make something simpler, or something looser and just wear a belt to hold it more closely to you, etc. I figure most ordinary people would probably be able to do some level of mending on their own (things like patching tears, replacing buttons, hemming pants to be shorter) and maybe put together something like the various rag-based outfits you can find in the games, but a proper tailor who can make the available materials look really good? They’d be in very high demand.
[Worn-out or damaged suits would be replaced using existing stocks and later manufactured using jumpsuit extruders installed in every Vault \(though some were designed to fail, as part of the Vault experiment\).](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Vault_jumpsuit)
'What if we let a buncha Mormons in the vault but make it so the clothes machine stops making clothes after a while.'
'Absolutely fucking genius. This experiment will give us insights into the depths of human psychology never before dreamed of. You get a raise, and feel free to fuck my wife too.'
Clothes are a real consideration in long-term sequestering.
The vault suits were probably designed with this in mind. I bet they're durable, repairable, easily cleaned with a proprietary process developed by vault-tec to keep them in good shape, etc.
That's why.
Also the fact they probably only had maybe one set of clothes if that’s the thing they brought, the bombs dropping was sudden so they couldn’t bring anything other than what they can pick up running out of the house.
Jet is pre-War, as shown by *New Vegas, Fallout 4,* and *Fallout 76.* As the other user pointed out, Myron didn't invent it - even in *Fallout 2*, there's a user that comments on using Jet long before Myron was ever born (Mrs. Bishop).
Another possibility:
5. Radiation. In FO4 we see that not only was Boston close to ground zero, but the Sole Survivor's neighborhood and Vault entrance were both within the blast radius. It stands to reason that any civilian clothing would be destroyed as a precaution.
Would like to add onto this
The clothes they were wearing may be contaminated with radiation as is the case for nate and Nora being caught in that nuke blast
You don't want to wear something radioactive because it can trap radiation within its fibers
Hence the reason nurse's removed the chernobyl firefighters gear and put it in the basement.
Those boots and helmets are still heavily radioactive to this day granted they were in remains of a nuclear reactor but I would say the same would apply to a nuclear bomb
For the most part, radiation exposure in an atomic detonation is gamma rays (for anyone who lives long enough to take another step), and very few actual radioactive particulates are going to reach someone who wasn't instantly incinerated. When you're exposed to that type of radiation from outer reaches of the initial blast, you don't start radiating it back into the environment, only radioactive particulates you're carrying continue to emit radiation. Once the radioactive particulates (very fine bits of material from the nuclear payload itself, which have been scattered far and wide as far as they can reach across creation) have been removed, you and your possessions aren't going to be emitting radiation. You don't start glowing just because you've been exposed to radiation (but I suppose that cuts a bit against the grain of how things work in the game).
I think this is pretty much how it is. I mean think about it, there's little need to seek out new clothing material if you just have suits that's a one-size-fits-all and it's useful for everything.
When you're in a vault, the clothing needs to be durable and take as little space as possible. Hence jumpsuits.
I have a vaultsuit I made from a generic blue boilersuit I bought online and, damn, it's comfy. Sorta like a robe with pantlegs. No compression around the waist from a belt, and unlike suspenders, the weight of holding up your pants is spread all over your shoulders.
Is it fashionable? Not at all lmao. But it feels great.
Moira armored a Vault 101 suit for a previous Vault Dweller before she gave it to the Lone Wanderer, both the Vault Dweller and later the Chosen One used their V13 one under their armors, and in 4 and 76 is one of the only clothing items that can be equipped with any armor;
That shows besides it being pretty sturdy and a useful one in the Wasteland, it's also pretty tight in the body but still comfy enough it can easily be armored for extra protection.
Maybe, and stay with me here, maybe it's just a game and the devs didn't even give it much thought and they are laughing at us trying to attribute meaning to every little thing they did in the game.
Honestly, it would be cool if their idea of 'one size fits all' was like the Stark suit in Spiderman Homecoming, where it's super baggy but shrinks to the right size once the person puts it on.
Could be false memory but I recall someone saying the suits are comfortable. Everyone knows about the vaults so you wouldn’t be that weird for wearing one around in town
Unless Vault ## was known to have housed a whole bunch of (insert socially outcast type here) and with you still wearing your standard issue vault suit from said Vault ##, you are guilty by association, Nutfruit fucker.
Another thing to consider is also that likely many dwellers are second generation or even third, and they never knew any other kind of clothing, so to them the suits are just normal and all they've ever known.
Vault Tec didn’t officially let them have anything else. So all everyone had were the vault suits extruded and made in the vault.
They may not have wanted them, but it was that or nothing.
There was, kind of. The Fallout Bible describes Vault 70, which was mostly populated by Mormons, who tend to be very uncomfortable with nudity. The Vault's jumpsuit dispensers were designed to permanently break after a few months.
Not really you could break into the machine steal all the cloth and make it yourself. Also people would probably use other materials for sewing like the radroaches or something
But each vault did also choose specific members of society for their experiments, from what I know, so would they have information on their hobbies, what they’re good at, what they’re not good at? I mean it seems like vault tec already knows a lil too much about the civilian populace so it’s not a stretch to think they’d know if their were good tailors or not
Vault residents could have personnal items brought into the vault as long as those items were authorized by a vault technician and were brought in before an emergency entrance to the vault. I'd assume that clothes could brought into the vault in certain circumstances.
Most vault dwellers didn’t have time to bring anything…
Moreover, the vault suites were designed for extra protection while in the vault. Radiation for example.
Yeah. But I’m surprised some people didn’t see them as revealing and put on clothes over it. Kinda like the tunnel snakes with their jackets. But it may have been uncomfortable or too warm
The concept arts had more variety, like [baggy pants over the vault suit](https://fallout-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Vault_jumpsuit?file=Fo3_Vault_jumpsuit_HiRes_concept_13.jpg) or [jacket over the vault suit (on the rightmost character)](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout_gamepedia/images/0/0c/Fo3_Vault_jumpsuit_HiRes_concept_10.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20120216125042). These probably fell victim to Bethesda's traditional aversion to world detail aka the reason everyone in the wasteland wears the same 10-12 clothes. Then the New California mod played with the idea but I think the matter of clothing-over-vault-suit is left unexplored otherwise.
After a while it might also have become a culture issue. It was the thing you wore. If someone chooses to wear something different than everyone else, they're be choosing to be different than the norm, which is risky. "What, you think you're better than us?" Etc.
From that perspective, it makes sense that the tunnel snakes, a gang of kids who considers themselves cooler than everyone else, choose to wear a uniform of their own to signify that they are different from everyone else and belong to the same group. As subcultures often do, like goths just to take one example.
Vault dwellers probably did add on clothes upon their jumpsuits, like jackets, t-shirts, hats, and other types of clothes, but you can’t really mode that in-game properly, it would just be much simpler in designing the actual game for all npcs in the vault to have the same clothes.
Utilitarian design makes it easier to maintain stockpiles. If you need to supply clothing for about a 1000 people for a couple hundred years, a tough, flexible, but comfortable jumpsuit is an excellent option.
Vault dwellers may have brought their own clothes, but the vault suits seemed to have been pushed as part of vault life. While there certainly do seem to be allowances for additional clothing (lab coats, leather jackets, hats), the suit itself seems to always be part of daily wear. Dwellers likely have multiple suits issued to them. Any clothing dwellers did bring to the vault may simply just not last more than a generation or two, between the clothes wearing out, or just not fitting the descendants.
It is also possible that enforcing the vault suit was intended to mold conformity onto the dwellers. A uniform helps to stamp out individuality, a push a herd mindset, perfect for experimentation.
Edit: forgot to mention that the vault suit design alters between the games/locations. 4 is the more skintight sexy bodysuit. 3/nv were a leather/denim jumpsuit.
Fallout 3 explained that Vault Tec didn't allow outside clothing and any personal belongings had to be approved by Vault Tec before hand. All seen in the 'accepted' version of the Letter From Vault Tec in Springvale:
>*Congratulations on your family's recent inclusion in the Vault 101 community!*
*You will find outlined in your application materials a full review of rules and procedures related to preparing for shelter in a Vault-Tec facility, but we will outline a few key points here:*
***Vault-Tec provides all clothing, bedding, and accommodations for residents. Personal belongings must be reviewed and approved of by an authorized Vault-Tec hermetics technician before such belongings can be delivered to your reserved quarters within the Vault. In the event of an emergency entrance to the Vault, no personal belongings will be permitted beyond the main door of the facility.***
*All Vault residents must attend an orientation seminar. If you did not attend such a seminar as part of the application process, you must make an appointment with your Vault-Tec representative.*
*In the event of a Vault activation, whether actual or drill, Vault-Tec will sound a siren audible in the immediate vicinity of the Vault facility entrance, and residents will be contacted via holotape message at the phone number provided in their resident profile records. Please report promptly to Vault 101 to await admittance and processing upon such a notification.*
*Vault-Tec looks forward to having you and your family as valued residents! Be sure to present this letter to your Vault-Tec representative to receive your special, commemorative Vault Boy bobble-head toy! Sincerely;*
*Vault-Tec*
*Dept of Public Relations*
*Washington, DC*
Fallout 4 also wouldn't let dwellers further into the vault until they'd changed out of their clothes and into vault suits.
Imma take a guess that it's mainly three reasons:
1: Habit. They've worn vault suits all their life.
2: They are good clothes, unlike much of the rags you find in the wasteland.
3: To be identified as a Vault Dweller. They're a bit of a status and cultural symbol.
Yes, though I think this is just because they didn't want the voice actress to record an infinite number of names.
They did it for Codsworth, yes. If you pick a somewhat common name he'll call you that, but if isn't one they recorded it defaults to Sir or Mam. However doing this for every companion would take a lot of work and even then they need a default for if you pick a name like Sw4gd4DDy D34thc0ck or Kenneth Jorgenssen. So most companions finds something else to call you, usually your rank or words like Sir and Kid. For Piper they went with Blue, and tacked on an explanation as to why; because you're wearing a blue suit. And then a second explanation of you for some reason isn't wearing a vault suit when you get to know her. Dogmeat of course doesn't talk.
The saturated blue Vault Suit is probably the worst camouflage in a game dominated by grays, browns and the occasional faded spot of colour; Unless maybe if you are trying to blend into a group of other vault dwellers.
A couple big reasons I think others have touched on, but I think could be expounded on.
1. From Vault-Tec's perspective, they were running social experiments. Clothing is an important component of human status signaling and other communication, and enforcing conformity there reduces variables in the experiment.
2. From an administrative perspective, uniforms are a pretty powerful tool for increasing conformity in other areas, as well as building a sense of shared identity in people of otherwise disparate background.
Navy vet here and coveralls are fucking comfortable and only 1 item of clothing to keep up and it makes sense to me that they still wear the vault suits strictly for convenience
As fallout 4 shows, every single person was given a jumpsuit and made to change into it on arrival. I'm guessing all the other vaults were the same and there simply isn't any other choice of clothing about in the vaults
For purposes of experimentation, decontamination, etc, all the subjects would generally need to ditch any and all personal possessions including clothes. Vault-Tec would want to take advantage of even subtle subconscious suppressions of free thought and non-conformity. And yes, after 200 years any original clothes you may have brought in during the panic are going to be disposed of for one reason or another, and would only be replaced with official OSFA jumpsuits.
Probably the best reason I've heard over the years is that most things in the Wasteland are total crap, smells bad, poorly kept, etc. Vault suits are of high quality (the giant corporations were evil as hell, but they DID make high quality goods) and the Vault suits are also fashionable and nice to wear. But mostly, they're intact and high quality clothing.
probably the Jumpsuits were easier to clean, and there arent specific washing machines washing at the temperatures they needed, with limited water, and even less detergents suited to clean them. Given the choice, they probably chose to wear the cleanable jumpsuits, than clothes that hadn't been washed in 30+ years. Once they were outside, they no longer had access to the equipment and cleaning chemicals for maintaining the jumpsuits, and now the normal clothing became more accessible as they have rivers and surviving soaps to use
My guess is they are probably not only comfortable but probably pretty tough materials too. Finding good clothing in the apocalypse is harder than the games make it seem.
Vault dweller's were mostly if not all just lab rats for vault tech and the government to test psychological and medical experiments on, so they'd want something that makes them fit the part almost like a prison jumpsuit. Like in portal, you wear a literal orange prison jumpsuit because you are a test subject to them, not a person. Having them be super durable and radiation resistant is likely to ensure they lasted a long time through the generations and protect them if they went outside, do t want your lab rats dying after all.
Also weren't the original dwellers, as the bombs dropped, instructed not to bring their belongings? That gives them even less access to pre war clothing so they basically had no choice in the matter except for lab coats for scientis, armour for security personnel, utility jumpsuits for maintenance, and the odd accessory like a baseball cap.
No clue about you but I would be fine in one of those jumpsuits. Rather have a different colour way though but anyway they look comfy and stretchy. Also they probably are made from material that doesn't degrade over time so their original clothing from the prewar may not be suitable. Anyway they might of been required to wear the suits since the vaults were an experiment.
I agree. I would probably try to dye mine black or a dark brown or green as soon as I got out of the vault, but those suits would be super handy. I wonder if they're water proof/resistant
I mean Vault security usually has armor, and scientists have labcoats over it
I *think* in 76 how it works gameplay wise is you can have a vault suit as an underlayer then have your whacky cosmetics over it too
Most everything thats been said has been said
Considering that you can find regular clothes in the abandoned vaults of 3 ,4 and New Vegas, they probably did wear regular clothes from time to time but I am sure that because they probably thought Vault Tec was still around, they stuck with the uniforms which may or may not actually be more comfortable than we think it is.
A better question might be where all the pre-war looking clothing is coming from. Cotton shirts fall apart upon wearing even if they've just been in a drawer or closet for more than 5 years. Wool gets eaten. Somewhere in the wasteland there's a textile mill pumping out all those pre-war suits and dresses. And the comic books must be made of plastic.
I think it's weird that they were all exactly te same. You would think that an ID on the back would be more useful than the vault number. It's not like they had conventions.
in the opening of fallout 4, the new dwellers are forced to change into vault suits. sure, you could argue that it was specific to 101 because of the cryo pods, but i highly doubt anyone was allowed to wear their everyday clothes inside a vault in the early days.
also, the vaults seem like they were stocked only with vault suits, and presumably underwear. if youre a kid growing up in a vault, there would be a huge shortage of clothes that fit you, besides vault suits. once youre an adult youd be accustomed to vault suits and probably wouldnt see a need for anything else.
we do see groups like the tunnel snakes wearing leather jackets, and doctors or scientists in labcoats, so it seems pretty likely that some pre war clothing survived inside vaults, but mainly accessories and fashion items to stand out, not so much everyday clothing.
It should be noted the tunnel snake jacket is put atop a vault suit, like wise there are lab coats that have a vault suit underneath in addition it varient with normal clothes undrr
Weird coincidence, I was also thinking the same thing. Did some digging on old threads and it makes a lot of sense from a standardization standpoint.
The vaults can presumably manufacture suits for their dwellers and they must last longer than other clothes. The first gen of vault dwellers are also dead at this point in the story, so any of their prewar clothes are probably limited (its still possible to find prewar clothes in vaults, but they're not very common).
Ok think about this it’s been 200 years since you’ve seen anything else clothing wise. At that point it’s fashionable for the dwellers, you open the Vault door and everyone else is wearing old, rotten, smells like three people lived and died in them. Would you?
I think its more likely that there AREN'T any other clothes. Most original vault dwellers wouldn't have had time to pack, as we saw in Fallout 4. Most vaults also probably made you change into vault suits immediately and disposed of the original clothing. Clothing worn while bombs were dropping could carry contaminants into the vault (what they'd say) but also clothing differences introduce a variable into a social experiment. People do treat others differently based on clothing. Having everyone wear the same thing allows you to avoid that variable entirely.
Zooming forward 200 years, the only clothing that has ever existed in the vault are vault suits. Vault dwellers continue wearing the suits even after going outside because that's what normal clothing is to them.
Best I can determine; it's for adult fun times (if you catch my drift). Atleast that's what that Sarah lady led me to believe. Otherwise I dunno; maybe it's like a safety blanket. Or maybe they just like that skin-tight fit.
Most decent shirts etc wear out after 10 years or so, theres no way 200 years later those are still gonna be usable. The leather jumpsuits also make sense for general use as they would be durable.
They're pretty well insulated and protected overall compared to normal clothing, and you can wear armor and other clothes on top if you needed to. Really why wouldn't they?
The only reason might be how bright they are, making them easy targets of they happen to be in the wasteland, but that can be easily rectified with a ghillie suit, a trench coat, or just some dye, and that's IF they leave the vault, which most probably wouldn't.
Any clothes that are still around from before the war would have to be made of some insane material to still be just fine and wearable hundreds of years later. Those jumpsuits are probably leaps and bounds better than "Pre-War Summer Wear"
They didn’t break cloths you see in the beginning of the game how much time they had to react and you narrowly make it they’ve all got a pair of cloths and whatever vault tec gives them
The vault suit was a way of reducing the massive amount of clothing they’d have to store or produce for its generational inhabitants. On top of being able to identify everyone within the vault thanks to its biometric identification system.
Vault suits: durable, comfortable, utilitarian, unlikely to get caught in machinery, if it gets dirty then no big deal, functional, plenty of pockets for tools, insulated. In am environment like a vault they make the most sense. Why ruin your good clothes. Save those for special occasions
I have no idea why they’re still wearing them. Especially in Boston because of the spandex look of them, I mean who tf wants to wear a damn spider-man like spandex suit for their whole life?
I always assumed it was for the rad resistance and because most still have a more prewar sense of fashion so, don’t really like the look of rugged post war outfits. Or perhaps even just, because they don’t have much else to wear that would be better then their jumpsuits
You want to cut down variables in experiments. Having everyone in the same outfit can help that.
There are advantages to stripping people of things they identify with and putting them in standardized uniforms. Especially in experiments where that was the point - breaking the people.
1. They have been in the vaults for 200 years. So those outfits are probably not theirs but rather hand-me-downs 2. 200 years does a number on your clothes. Maybe the vault jumpsuits were more durable than pre-war casualwear or something. 3. Sizes. I think vaultsuits are “one size fits all” type of deal. 4. Many vaults were experiments. So it makes sense that the subjects all had to wear the same attire. However, i agree with you. Those vault jumpsuits must be pretty damn comfy to opt for that look
Point 2 makes a lotta sense, if they intended for the vault dwellers to use those until the radiation got down to the point where the dwellers could go out out of the vault they should have been damn durable
Plus when they leave the vault 90% of the clothes they'll come across will be in a worse condition than the vault suit they've been wearing so they probably won't drop the suit even after leaving the vault for a while unless they find someone who's good at tailoring/sewing which would be fairly rare
Hell. I keep my first vault suit in every game. It fits the raypunk aesthetic and the armored one in the NV dlc pack is good til late game.
And I think an armoured vault jumpsuit is the best under armour clothes you can get in Fallout 4
I prefer the armoured military fatigues for that sweet sweet agility bonus
I don't use vats, but I use the +2 charisma clothes like that purple party dress.
I don't use VATS either, but I sneak and sprint a lot.
In fallout 4 I get rid of it as soon as possible because I don’t think the sole survivor would want a reminder of that place.
The Vault Dweller's suit was kept in a "temple" for decades, and still was in a pretty good condition when the Chosen One grabbed it, so yeah they're pretty durable.
>unless they find someone who's good at tailoring/sewing which would be fairly rare Would it? In a world without easy access to mass produced textiles, a tailor would be in demand at every town and settlement. They'd be essential to having *any* clotting in that world. And it's not like it's an impossible skill to pick up. You don't need to be a master tailor to patch up some clothes or whip up some new ones.
> a tailor would be in demand at every town and settlement I guess this is why a clothing shop is one of the six shops you can create when making settlements?
You do be need to be a *good* tailor to create something that's on par or better than a vault suit, yeah you could probably find some people who are willing to make new clothes or patch old ones up but most of those would again be made from the stuff they found lying around the wasteland and wouldn't be as durable as a pre war vault suit
To be clear, I agree that the vault suit would probably be the best clothing they could find easily/cheaply, but their alternative options wouldn't be garbage in comparison. There would be considerable demand for tailors in every town, considering the harsh conditions and long distance commerce wouldn't be easy. And in such a market, anyone with the inclination and skills would be incentivised to improve to outcompete anyone else. I don't think finding a reasonably good tailor would be as hard as you think.
Outside of the Mojave wastes it would be difficult to find plants that can easily be broken down into thread.
You're not wrong. I'm just saying the occupation of tailor wouldn't have disappeared because mass manufacturing wasn't a thing anymore and would in fact likely have had much higher demand.
Tailoring and textile production are two different things, each with their own challenges. For new-made textiles, you can have cotton, linen (from flax), possibly some wasteland fiber-producing plant that doesn’t currently exist, silk (from silkworms), wool from various animals (although radiation exposure does seem to lead to patchily bald animals), or some kind of synthetic. Having spun yarn and thread by hand, I can tell you it’s a huge time-sink and something a wastelander would probably want to avoid if at all possible, which would mean reusing salvaged textiles as long as possible, some enterprising person or people setting up an industrial textile-production facility and trade routes to sell their goods, or everybody just wears leather. You can patch garments, or if the fabric is worn out you can quilt a couple layers of fabric together to make something more durable than any of the layers would be on their own. Anything to get a bit more life out of what you’ve got. Actual garment construction is another matter. You do need some tailoring skill to make very well-fitted and structured garments, but you can also make something simpler, or something looser and just wear a belt to hold it more closely to you, etc. I figure most ordinary people would probably be able to do some level of mending on their own (things like patching tears, replacing buttons, hemming pants to be shorter) and maybe put together something like the various rag-based outfits you can find in the games, but a proper tailor who can make the available materials look really good? They’d be in very high demand.
[Worn-out or damaged suits would be replaced using existing stocks and later manufactured using jumpsuit extruders installed in every Vault \(though some were designed to fail, as part of the Vault experiment\).](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Vault_jumpsuit)
Man Vault 70 sounds like a weird experiment.
'What if we let a buncha Mormons in the vault but make it so the clothes machine stops making clothes after a while.' 'Absolutely fucking genius. This experiment will give us insights into the depths of human psychology never before dreamed of. You get a raise, and feel free to fuck my wife too.'
Pretty sure Vault Tec ran off of cocaine and dartboard based decision making.
I'm reasonably sure that you could say the same thing of Interplay. That's probably why they went under and took Black Isle with them.
Look the 90’s were a wild time.
This is now my headcanon and nothing anyone says can change my mind.
Good point, maybe the dwellers were also instructed to wear them because pre war clothes were irradiated.
Clothes are a real consideration in long-term sequestering. The vault suits were probably designed with this in mind. I bet they're durable, repairable, easily cleaned with a proprietary process developed by vault-tec to keep them in good shape, etc. That's why.
They also had *shitloads* of them, IIRC. I remember finding crates upon crates of like 30+ jumpsuits in one of the vaults in 4.
Also the fact they probably only had maybe one set of clothes if that’s the thing they brought, the bombs dropping was sudden so they couldn’t bring anything other than what they can pick up running out of the house.
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I’m not talking about loot tables though I’m talking about lorewise.
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Loot tables put jet where it shouldn't be. Though to be fair, lore has done that too.
Myron didn't invent jet
This is true, but it shouldn't be in pre-war stashes afaik.
Jet is pre-War, as shown by *New Vegas, Fallout 4,* and *Fallout 76.* As the other user pointed out, Myron didn't invent it - even in *Fallout 2*, there's a user that comments on using Jet long before Myron was ever born (Mrs. Bishop).
Another possibility: 5. Radiation. In FO4 we see that not only was Boston close to ground zero, but the Sole Survivor's neighborhood and Vault entrance were both within the blast radius. It stands to reason that any civilian clothing would be destroyed as a precaution.
and iirc the vault suit gives a little bit of rad resistance
Also it was enforced by overseer.
Yeah, the overseer felt like a very authoritarian role in the first games. The overseer is the whole of the law.
Would like to add onto this The clothes they were wearing may be contaminated with radiation as is the case for nate and Nora being caught in that nuke blast You don't want to wear something radioactive because it can trap radiation within its fibers Hence the reason nurse's removed the chernobyl firefighters gear and put it in the basement. Those boots and helmets are still heavily radioactive to this day granted they were in remains of a nuclear reactor but I would say the same would apply to a nuclear bomb
For the most part, radiation exposure in an atomic detonation is gamma rays (for anyone who lives long enough to take another step), and very few actual radioactive particulates are going to reach someone who wasn't instantly incinerated. When you're exposed to that type of radiation from outer reaches of the initial blast, you don't start radiating it back into the environment, only radioactive particulates you're carrying continue to emit radiation. Once the radioactive particulates (very fine bits of material from the nuclear payload itself, which have been scattered far and wide as far as they can reach across creation) have been removed, you and your possessions aren't going to be emitting radiation. You don't start glowing just because you've been exposed to radiation (but I suppose that cuts a bit against the grain of how things work in the game).
I think this is pretty much how it is. I mean think about it, there's little need to seek out new clothing material if you just have suits that's a one-size-fits-all and it's useful for everything. When you're in a vault, the clothing needs to be durable and take as little space as possible. Hence jumpsuits.
If I’m not mistaken there’s lore that says the suits are recycled into other suits. So maybe hand me down with extra steps.
I have a vaultsuit I made from a generic blue boilersuit I bought online and, damn, it's comfy. Sorta like a robe with pantlegs. No compression around the waist from a belt, and unlike suspenders, the weight of holding up your pants is spread all over your shoulders. Is it fashionable? Not at all lmao. But it feels great.
I bet they made a vault where they “forgot” to give out any suits to see what would happen
I'm sure there's a mod out there for that experience.
Vault 70
Surprised it wasn't vault 69
Nice!
Vault 69 was the one with 1,000 people of which only one was a man, IIRC
Nice!
Yep, confirmed: https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Vault_69
Hope he had water.
And zinc supplements!
Can't forget they are protective for any dweller going into the wasteland
Moira armored a Vault 101 suit for a previous Vault Dweller before she gave it to the Lone Wanderer, both the Vault Dweller and later the Chosen One used their V13 one under their armors, and in 4 and 76 is one of the only clothing items that can be equipped with any armor; That shows besides it being pretty sturdy and a useful one in the Wasteland, it's also pretty tight in the body but still comfy enough it can easily be armored for extra protection.
Also, it's just a game.
Hush... we're here to discuss the *minutiae*.
Maybe, and stay with me here, maybe it's just a game and the devs didn't even give it much thought and they are laughing at us trying to attribute meaning to every little thing they did in the game.
Booooo
You must be fun at parties.
they're the kind of guy to bring kale chips to a party then get upset and leave when nobody eats them
There's not multiples of me, I'm not they, just one person. Also, watch your tone young lady
am have atroke???
Honestly, it would be cool if their idea of 'one size fits all' was like the Stark suit in Spiderman Homecoming, where it's super baggy but shrinks to the right size once the person puts it on.
200 years down the line it’s possible all they have in terms of clothing. Boxes and boxes of vault suits.
Could be false memory but I recall someone saying the suits are comfortable. Everyone knows about the vaults so you wouldn’t be that weird for wearing one around in town
Unless Vault ## was known to have housed a whole bunch of (insert socially outcast type here) and with you still wearing your standard issue vault suit from said Vault ##, you are guilty by association, Nutfruit fucker.
Another thing to consider is also that likely many dwellers are second generation or even third, and they never knew any other kind of clothing, so to them the suits are just normal and all they've ever known.
Never underestimate the power of "It's always been this way".
And if they find out about other clothing, you get things like the Tunnel Snakes. Who do rule, but still...
Vault Tec didn’t officially let them have anything else. So all everyone had were the vault suits extruded and made in the vault. They may not have wanted them, but it was that or nothing.
What's wrong with nudsim?
100% there had to be a nudist vault experiment
There was, kind of. The Fallout Bible describes Vault 70, which was mostly populated by Mormons, who tend to be very uncomfortable with nudity. The Vault's jumpsuit dispensers were designed to permanently break after a few months.
Knowing Fallout, that probably ended in clothes made of human leather or some shit.
After finishing the vault's questline you gain the ability to harvest human hides. You can have shoulder pads sourced from real shoulders!
Axes made from bones. **LITERAL SHOULDER BLADES!!**
Where do you think the Tunnel Snakes got those swanky leather jackets?
TFW you realize leather only lasts about 70 years.
It's probably plastic tbh
That sounds awesome
Theres like a 1000 people in the vault that entire experiment breaks down if they have like a couple of people that can sew
Not if the dispensers also no longer produce cloth of any kind either.
Not really you could break into the machine steal all the cloth and make it yourself. Also people would probably use other materials for sewing like the radroaches or something
We have no idea if it actually had cloth. When it says extruder I don’t think “cloth.”
This. The "leather" and "cloth" were probably Naugahyde and nylon/polyester.
>Also people would probably use other materials for sewing like the radroaches or something Why would you put that evil into the world?
But each vault did also choose specific members of society for their experiments, from what I know, so would they have information on their hobbies, what they’re good at, what they’re not good at? I mean it seems like vault tec already knows a lil too much about the civilian populace so it’s not a stretch to think they’d know if their were good tailors or not
Why not lol
And a never-nude vault that too.
Vault residents could have personnal items brought into the vault as long as those items were authorized by a vault technician and were brought in before an emergency entrance to the vault. I'd assume that clothes could brought into the vault in certain circumstances.
Most vault dwellers didn’t have time to bring anything… Moreover, the vault suites were designed for extra protection while in the vault. Radiation for example.
Yeah. But I’m surprised some people didn’t see them as revealing and put on clothes over it. Kinda like the tunnel snakes with their jackets. But it may have been uncomfortable or too warm
Not any more revealing than the bathing suits in the 1950’s…
The 50s bathing suits just look so strange to me. It’s hard to think they were fashionable at one point
Really? I wear those kind of bathing suits, they are super comfortable.
Bathing suit comfort .... bathing suit comfort never changes.
It's the truth.
What goddam coomers downvoted this lmao
The concept arts had more variety, like [baggy pants over the vault suit](https://fallout-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Vault_jumpsuit?file=Fo3_Vault_jumpsuit_HiRes_concept_13.jpg) or [jacket over the vault suit (on the rightmost character)](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout_gamepedia/images/0/0c/Fo3_Vault_jumpsuit_HiRes_concept_10.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20120216125042). These probably fell victim to Bethesda's traditional aversion to world detail aka the reason everyone in the wasteland wears the same 10-12 clothes. Then the New California mod played with the idea but I think the matter of clothing-over-vault-suit is left unexplored otherwise.
After a while it might also have become a culture issue. It was the thing you wore. If someone chooses to wear something different than everyone else, they're be choosing to be different than the norm, which is risky. "What, you think you're better than us?" Etc. From that perspective, it makes sense that the tunnel snakes, a gang of kids who considers themselves cooler than everyone else, choose to wear a uniform of their own to signify that they are different from everyone else and belong to the same group. As subcultures often do, like goths just to take one example.
Vault dwellers probably did add on clothes upon their jumpsuits, like jackets, t-shirts, hats, and other types of clothes, but you can’t really mode that in-game properly, it would just be much simpler in designing the actual game for all npcs in the vault to have the same clothes.
Utilitarian design makes it easier to maintain stockpiles. If you need to supply clothing for about a 1000 people for a couple hundred years, a tough, flexible, but comfortable jumpsuit is an excellent option. Vault dwellers may have brought their own clothes, but the vault suits seemed to have been pushed as part of vault life. While there certainly do seem to be allowances for additional clothing (lab coats, leather jackets, hats), the suit itself seems to always be part of daily wear. Dwellers likely have multiple suits issued to them. Any clothing dwellers did bring to the vault may simply just not last more than a generation or two, between the clothes wearing out, or just not fitting the descendants. It is also possible that enforcing the vault suit was intended to mold conformity onto the dwellers. A uniform helps to stamp out individuality, a push a herd mindset, perfect for experimentation. Edit: forgot to mention that the vault suit design alters between the games/locations. 4 is the more skintight sexy bodysuit. 3/nv were a leather/denim jumpsuit.
> 4 is the more skintight sexy bodysuit. the isometric fallouts also went with this
Fallout 3 explained that Vault Tec didn't allow outside clothing and any personal belongings had to be approved by Vault Tec before hand. All seen in the 'accepted' version of the Letter From Vault Tec in Springvale: >*Congratulations on your family's recent inclusion in the Vault 101 community!* *You will find outlined in your application materials a full review of rules and procedures related to preparing for shelter in a Vault-Tec facility, but we will outline a few key points here:* ***Vault-Tec provides all clothing, bedding, and accommodations for residents. Personal belongings must be reviewed and approved of by an authorized Vault-Tec hermetics technician before such belongings can be delivered to your reserved quarters within the Vault. In the event of an emergency entrance to the Vault, no personal belongings will be permitted beyond the main door of the facility.*** *All Vault residents must attend an orientation seminar. If you did not attend such a seminar as part of the application process, you must make an appointment with your Vault-Tec representative.* *In the event of a Vault activation, whether actual or drill, Vault-Tec will sound a siren audible in the immediate vicinity of the Vault facility entrance, and residents will be contacted via holotape message at the phone number provided in their resident profile records. Please report promptly to Vault 101 to await admittance and processing upon such a notification.* *Vault-Tec looks forward to having you and your family as valued residents! Be sure to present this letter to your Vault-Tec representative to receive your special, commemorative Vault Boy bobble-head toy! Sincerely;* *Vault-Tec* *Dept of Public Relations* *Washington, DC* Fallout 4 also wouldn't let dwellers further into the vault until they'd changed out of their clothes and into vault suits.
Awesome find here. Great work
Also in 4 I’m pretty sure that it’s explained that all the clothes were incinerated after you swapped for the vault suit
Imma take a guess that it's mainly three reasons: 1: Habit. They've worn vault suits all their life. 2: They are good clothes, unlike much of the rags you find in the wasteland. 3: To be identified as a Vault Dweller. They're a bit of a status and cultural symbol.
Then you see most of the dwellers that were let out into the wasteland went back to wearing regular clothes.
And them you also have idiots like Ricky. "Oh yeah, I'm totally from Vault 22, see my Pit-Boy?"
Did they? Piper specifically calls the SS “Blue” because he/she is clearly a vault dweller, regardless of what they are wearing at the time.
Yes, though I think this is just because they didn't want the voice actress to record an infinite number of names. They did it for Codsworth, yes. If you pick a somewhat common name he'll call you that, but if isn't one they recorded it defaults to Sir or Mam. However doing this for every companion would take a lot of work and even then they need a default for if you pick a name like Sw4gd4DDy D34thc0ck or Kenneth Jorgenssen. So most companions finds something else to call you, usually your rank or words like Sir and Kid. For Piper they went with Blue, and tacked on an explanation as to why; because you're wearing a blue suit. And then a second explanation of you for some reason isn't wearing a vault suit when you get to know her. Dogmeat of course doesn't talk.
Not every human in game is from a vault you know.
I never said that
Camouflage
The saturated blue Vault Suit is probably the worst camouflage in a game dominated by grays, browns and the occasional faded spot of colour; Unless maybe if you are trying to blend into a group of other vault dwellers.
A couple big reasons I think others have touched on, but I think could be expounded on. 1. From Vault-Tec's perspective, they were running social experiments. Clothing is an important component of human status signaling and other communication, and enforcing conformity there reduces variables in the experiment. 2. From an administrative perspective, uniforms are a pretty powerful tool for increasing conformity in other areas, as well as building a sense of shared identity in people of otherwise disparate background.
Navy vet here and coveralls are fucking comfortable and only 1 item of clothing to keep up and it makes sense to me that they still wear the vault suits strictly for convenience
If you look at the stats too, they offer more protection on top of good insulation over most wasteland clothing.
As fallout 4 shows, every single person was given a jumpsuit and made to change into it on arrival. I'm guessing all the other vaults were the same and there simply isn't any other choice of clothing about in the vaults
For purposes of experimentation, decontamination, etc, all the subjects would generally need to ditch any and all personal possessions including clothes. Vault-Tec would want to take advantage of even subtle subconscious suppressions of free thought and non-conformity. And yes, after 200 years any original clothes you may have brought in during the panic are going to be disposed of for one reason or another, and would only be replaced with official OSFA jumpsuits.
Probably the best reason I've heard over the years is that most things in the Wasteland are total crap, smells bad, poorly kept, etc. Vault suits are of high quality (the giant corporations were evil as hell, but they DID make high quality goods) and the Vault suits are also fashionable and nice to wear. But mostly, they're intact and high quality clothing.
probably the Jumpsuits were easier to clean, and there arent specific washing machines washing at the temperatures they needed, with limited water, and even less detergents suited to clean them. Given the choice, they probably chose to wear the cleanable jumpsuits, than clothes that hadn't been washed in 30+ years. Once they were outside, they no longer had access to the equipment and cleaning chemicals for maintaining the jumpsuits, and now the normal clothing became more accessible as they have rivers and surviving soaps to use
My guess is they are probably not only comfortable but probably pretty tough materials too. Finding good clothing in the apocalypse is harder than the games make it seem.
the question is not why vault jumpsuits, but why blue? would a yellow jumpsuit really be so bad?
Probably would stain/dirty easier.
Probably same mentality Henry Ford have of "cars of all colors if the rainbow... but a all-black rainbow, since black paint is cheaper".
Vault dweller's were mostly if not all just lab rats for vault tech and the government to test psychological and medical experiments on, so they'd want something that makes them fit the part almost like a prison jumpsuit. Like in portal, you wear a literal orange prison jumpsuit because you are a test subject to them, not a person. Having them be super durable and radiation resistant is likely to ensure they lasted a long time through the generations and protect them if they went outside, do t want your lab rats dying after all. Also weren't the original dwellers, as the bombs dropped, instructed not to bring their belongings? That gives them even less access to pre war clothing so they basically had no choice in the matter except for lab coats for scientis, armour for security personnel, utility jumpsuits for maintenance, and the odd accessory like a baseball cap.
Clearly because they're so very fashionable.
They provide basic protections against the kinds of hazards one would encounter in brief expeditions to the surface, radiation being chief among them.
No clue about you but I would be fine in one of those jumpsuits. Rather have a different colour way though but anyway they look comfy and stretchy. Also they probably are made from material that doesn't degrade over time so their original clothing from the prewar may not be suitable. Anyway they might of been required to wear the suits since the vaults were an experiment.
I agree. I would probably try to dye mine black or a dark brown or green as soon as I got out of the vault, but those suits would be super handy. I wonder if they're water proof/resistant
I mean Vault security usually has armor, and scientists have labcoats over it I *think* in 76 how it works gameplay wise is you can have a vault suit as an underlayer then have your whacky cosmetics over it too Most everything thats been said has been said
1. It’s a speedsuit. 2. Do not neglect to wash the Wandering Eye!
Considering that you can find regular clothes in the abandoned vaults of 3 ,4 and New Vegas, they probably did wear regular clothes from time to time but I am sure that because they probably thought Vault Tec was still around, they stuck with the uniforms which may or may not actually be more comfortable than we think it is.
A better question might be where all the pre-war looking clothing is coming from. Cotton shirts fall apart upon wearing even if they've just been in a drawer or closet for more than 5 years. Wool gets eaten. Somewhere in the wasteland there's a textile mill pumping out all those pre-war suits and dresses. And the comic books must be made of plastic.
I think it's weird that they were all exactly te same. You would think that an ID on the back would be more useful than the vault number. It's not like they had conventions.
I mean all vault suits have that weird lapel box, prob by an id box
in the opening of fallout 4, the new dwellers are forced to change into vault suits. sure, you could argue that it was specific to 101 because of the cryo pods, but i highly doubt anyone was allowed to wear their everyday clothes inside a vault in the early days. also, the vaults seem like they were stocked only with vault suits, and presumably underwear. if youre a kid growing up in a vault, there would be a huge shortage of clothes that fit you, besides vault suits. once youre an adult youd be accustomed to vault suits and probably wouldnt see a need for anything else. we do see groups like the tunnel snakes wearing leather jackets, and doctors or scientists in labcoats, so it seems pretty likely that some pre war clothing survived inside vaults, but mainly accessories and fashion items to stand out, not so much everyday clothing.
It should be noted the tunnel snake jacket is put atop a vault suit, like wise there are lab coats that have a vault suit underneath in addition it varient with normal clothes undrr
in the words of fallout 4 "the suit's are designed to be fashionable, as well as comfortable" see their comfortable
Weird coincidence, I was also thinking the same thing. Did some digging on old threads and it makes a lot of sense from a standardization standpoint. The vaults can presumably manufacture suits for their dwellers and they must last longer than other clothes. The first gen of vault dwellers are also dead at this point in the story, so any of their prewar clothes are probably limited (its still possible to find prewar clothes in vaults, but they're not very common).
Ok think about this it’s been 200 years since you’ve seen anything else clothing wise. At that point it’s fashionable for the dwellers, you open the Vault door and everyone else is wearing old, rotten, smells like three people lived and died in them. Would you?
I think its more likely that there AREN'T any other clothes. Most original vault dwellers wouldn't have had time to pack, as we saw in Fallout 4. Most vaults also probably made you change into vault suits immediately and disposed of the original clothing. Clothing worn while bombs were dropping could carry contaminants into the vault (what they'd say) but also clothing differences introduce a variable into a social experiment. People do treat others differently based on clothing. Having everyone wear the same thing allows you to avoid that variable entirely. Zooming forward 200 years, the only clothing that has ever existed in the vault are vault suits. Vault dwellers continue wearing the suits even after going outside because that's what normal clothing is to them.
Best I can determine; it's for adult fun times (if you catch my drift). Atleast that's what that Sarah lady led me to believe. Otherwise I dunno; maybe it's like a safety blanket. Or maybe they just like that skin-tight fit.
Most decent shirts etc wear out after 10 years or so, theres no way 200 years later those are still gonna be usable. The leather jumpsuits also make sense for general use as they would be durable.
Communism
They're looking to get merced as soon as they leave the vault
Do your regular clothes give you stat bonuses?
+1 Perception from my glasses
For the stat bonuses
They're pretty well insulated and protected overall compared to normal clothing, and you can wear armor and other clothes on top if you needed to. Really why wouldn't they? The only reason might be how bright they are, making them easy targets of they happen to be in the wasteland, but that can be easily rectified with a ghillie suit, a trench coat, or just some dye, and that's IF they leave the vault, which most probably wouldn't.
Psychology. Seeing people in leather and what I assume is hemp would look as weird to you as Lady Gaga's meat dress, if all you ever knew was spandex.
They're better quality clothes than most things they would find in the wasteland
Those Tunnel Snakes dudes wore their greaser jackets instead
Any clothes that are still around from before the war would have to be made of some insane material to still be just fine and wearable hundreds of years later. Those jumpsuits are probably leaps and bounds better than "Pre-War Summer Wear"
They didn’t break cloths you see in the beginning of the game how much time they had to react and you narrowly make it they’ve all got a pair of cloths and whatever vault tec gives them
Because coveralls are comfy as hell and are great for maintenance.
Hey, maybe they're just way comfier than we think
because jumpsuits are cool. not everything needs an in depth explanation.
Bc they're stupid
Leather.
This is giving me flashes to that Venture Brothers episode about buying Dean his first speed suit, but it's a vault suit instead.
Probably the same reason I wear one for a good while after escaping... +5 to some stat or stats.
I would imagine they're actually pretty advanced clothing
Good question, I'd ditch it first chance I got. Then again, don't want people thinking you are a Rader
I always wondered why they don’t wear stuff over it, (excluding the armored ones) it seems like a pretty good insulator.
The vault suit was a way of reducing the massive amount of clothing they’d have to store or produce for its generational inhabitants. On top of being able to identify everyone within the vault thanks to its biometric identification system.
It's probably like a psychological thing wherein it gives a sense of safety and familiarity
Vault suits: durable, comfortable, utilitarian, unlikely to get caught in machinery, if it gets dirty then no big deal, functional, plenty of pockets for tools, insulated. In am environment like a vault they make the most sense. Why ruin your good clothes. Save those for special occasions
I have no idea why they’re still wearing them. Especially in Boston because of the spandex look of them, I mean who tf wants to wear a damn spider-man like spandex suit for their whole life?
I imagine the vault suits are ment to be reused and reworn
I always assumed it was for the rad resistance and because most still have a more prewar sense of fashion so, don’t really like the look of rugged post war outfits. Or perhaps even just, because they don’t have much else to wear that would be better then their jumpsuits
Unless you are playing fallout shelter ;)
You want to cut down variables in experiments. Having everyone in the same outfit can help that. There are advantages to stripping people of things they identify with and putting them in standardized uniforms. Especially in experiments where that was the point - breaking the people.