Barb Howard: the Vault-Tec Executive Married to the Ghoul

Barb Howard is a senior Vault-Tec executive in the pre-war flashbacks of the Fallout TV series, the wife of Cooper Howard and mother of their daughter, Janey. Cooper becomes the Ghoul, and his two-century search for Barb and Janey drives his story. Frances Turner plays her. (Fallout, "The Head"; Fallout, "The Strip")

Who is Barb Howard?#

Barb is the reason Cooper works for Vault-Tec. A company man thanks him for letting Barb use her connections to sign him, and Cooper admits he'd never done an advert before his wife asked. At the photo shoot he tries a thumbs-up in a Vault suit, and Barb tells him, "Go for it, Coop." (Fallout, "The Head")

She is high up in the company. A Vault-Tec recruit later remembers her as Bud Askins's boss, in charge of all the vault proposals. Her assistants include Betty Pearson, later overseer of Vault 33, and a new man called Henry, better known as Hank MacLean. (Fallout, "The Beginning"; Fallout, "The Wrangler"; Fallout, "The Other Player")

Why Barb stayed at Vault-Tec#

Cooper wants out of the city and talks about a ranch in Bakersfield. Barb says she needs the job because it guarantees them a spot in the vaults, "one of the good vaults". When he complains about a new rule against dogs in the vaults, she tells him she spends every day thinking about how humanity can survive a nuclear event that "will wipe out 90% of life on earth". She has worked to get them into a special vault for management that will oversee all the others. (Fallout, "The Trap")

Her days at work are grim. In one season 2 flashback an engineer tells her the vaults' water chips have a 30 percent failure rate and that Vault-Tec can choose who runs out of water. At a meeting, Robert House's double reveals RobCo's brain chip, the "automated man", and that House is getting Vault-Tec's cold fusion in return for it. Barb asks what for, and is told she'll find out after the bombs drop. (Fallout, "The Other Player")

The meeting that started it all#

Cooper doesn't know any of this. Lee Moldaver, then addressed as Miss Williams, tells him she knows a side of his wife he doesn't, and gives him a listening device. He hides it in Barb's Pip-Boy. (Fallout, "The Radio")

Through it he hears Barb and Bud Askins host leaders from RobCo and other companies. She offers each company several vaults to run its own experiments: "Whatever you want to do, no one needs to know." When House asks how Vault-Tec can guarantee results, she answers, "By dropping the bomb ourselves." She calls a nuclear event a tragedy but also an opportunity, ending with "War never changes." (Fallout, "The Beginning")

What Barb really knew#

Season 2 changes how the scene reads. In a flashback, a stranger in a Vault-Tec elevator tells Barb she is a replaceable part, and that if she forgets her place in the company she and her family will die. He tells her what to say at the coming meeting, and she finishes the sentence for him. Episode guides identify him as Siggi Wilzig, the scientist whose head Lucy carries in season 1, but the episode itself never names him. (Fallout, "The Other Player")

In Las Vegas Cooper confronts her and asks if she was a monster all along. She says she would do anything for Janey, and asks whether he wouldn't too. "There are worse people out there than me, Coop." When he asks who controls Vault-Tec, she says she doesn't know, and that she already tried to stop it. (Fallout, "The Other Player")

Las Vegas and the diode#

Barb flies to Las Vegas to deliver cold fusion to House at the Lucky 38, with Cooper and Hank, who has the case chained to his wrist. Cooper secretly plans to steal the diode. House tells him that Barb was meant to come alone, and that the moment Cooper bought his ticket, the date the world would end jumped forward by a month. (Fallout, "The Innovator"; Fallout, "The Wrangler")

Once the truth is out, she chooses Cooper's side. After he drugs Hank and opens the case, she uses the injector inside to take the diode out of Hank, then goes with him to hand it over. "The only way to save our family is to save the world," she says. Cooper gives the diode to the President of the United States. (Fallout, "The Other Player"; Fallout, "The Handoff")

At the airport they joke about Bakersfield and Colorado and congratulate Hank on his engagement to a hotel maid named Steph. Then agents arrive with a warrant from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Cooper tells her to act surprised and let him take the fall. Barb begs him not to admit to anything, but he says "For her" and goes. House later tells the Ghoul that the diode went straight into the Enclave's hands. (Fallout, "The Strip")

What happened to Barb?#

By 23 October 2077 something has broken between them: Cooper is working a children's birthday party with Janey, and a guest says he's doing it for the alimony. (Fallout, "The End")

In 2296, Hank claims through a chipped messenger that Barb and Janey are resting in stasis in his Las Vegas vault, and threatens to kill them unless the Ghoul takes Lucy home. With House's help the Ghoul reaches their cryo chambers, but the pods are empty. He finds a clue pointing to Colorado and leaves certain, for the first time in 200 years, that his family is alive. (Fallout, "The Wrangler"; Fallout, "The Strip")