New California Republic: the Rise and Fall of the NCR

The New California Republic, or NCR, is a democratic nation built by survivors in California after the Great War. It started as Shady Sands, a small village founded by people from Vault 15, and by the 2280s it stretched from Oregon to the Mojave, with its own army, currency and president. It appears in Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, and the TV series shows its collapse. (Fallout; Fallout 2; Fallout: New Vegas; Fallout, "The Beginning")

Shady Sands and Vault 15#

The NCR's story starts with Vault 15. Its residents left the vault and built Shady Sands, a farming town behind a wall in central California. When the Vault Dweller arrives in 2161, Aradesh leads the town, radscorpions are killing its brahmin and raiders called the Khans are threatening it. The Vault Dweller can kill the radscorpions and rescue Aradesh's daughter, Tandi, after the Khans kidnap her. (Fallout)

The game's ending slides show Shady Sands growing after the Vault Dweller's help, with Tandi going on to lead it. (Fallout)

Fallout 2: Tandi's republic#

Eighty years later, in 2241, Shady Sands is the capital of the New California Republic and Tandi is its president, still in office after decades. The NCR is a federation of towns with an elected council, a professional army and Rangers, and it is expanding across northern California. (Fallout 2)

The NCR wants Vault City to join it, and it's competing with New Reno for control of the gold mines at Redding. (Fallout 2)

Fallout: New Vegas: the republic at war#

By 2281, Tandi is gone and Aaron Kimball is president. The NCR has taken Hoover Dam and pushed into the Mojave, where electricity and water from the dam feed its cities back west. It merged its Rangers with the Desert Rangers of Nevada to stand against the Legion. (Fallout: New Vegas)

In 2277 the Legion attacked Hoover Dam. The NCR held it in the First Battle of Hoover Dam, after Rangers under Chief Hanlon lured the Legion's best troops into explosives laid through Boulder City. Four years later, the NCR's army is stretched thin across the Mojave, its frontier camps are short on men and supplies, and a second battle for the dam is coming. (Fallout: New Vegas)

New Vegas is frank about the NCR's problems. Its government is bureaucratic and slow, brahmin barons and wealthy landowners have bought influence, and its money has lost value. Even so, it's a republic with elections, laws and no slavery, which sets it apart from the Legion. The Courier can help the NCR win the dam and take the Mojave in one of the game's four main endings. (Fallout: New Vegas)

The NCR also fought a long war with the Brotherhood of Steel over technology. In 2276 its troops overran the Brotherhood at the HELIOS One solar plant in the Mojave, killing more than half of the local chapter. (Fallout: New Vegas)

The fall of Shady Sands in the TV series#

The TV series, set in 2296, opens with the NCR already broken. In Vault 4, Lucy MacLean finds a classroom chalkboard that lists "The Fall of Shady Sands" at 2277, and Lucy remembers 2277 as the year her mother died. Many viewers read this as the bomb falling before New Vegas, which would have clashed with the game. The show never puts a year on screen for the bombing itself. (Fallout, "The Trap")

Todd Howard told IGN that everything in the earlier games, New Vegas included, still happened, and that the bombs fall just after the events of New Vegas. (Todd Howard on the Fallout timeline)

The season one finale gives the cause. At Griffith Observatory, Lee Moldaver tells Lucy MacLean that her mother Rose fled Vault 33 with her children and settled in Shady Sands. Her father, Hank MacLean, a pre-war Vault-Tec employee, took the children back and then destroyed the city with a nuclear warhead. (Fallout, "The Beginning")

Season two shows the day itself in a flashback with no year caption (fans infer around 2283). A young Maximus is living in Shady Sands with his parents when a dazed caravan driver rolls into the town centre, repeating the same sentence. Maximus's father finds a black box implanted in the man's neck and pulls back the cover on his cart to find the bomb. (Fallout, "The Golden Rule")

The NCR after Shady Sands#

In season one, Moldaver commands the NCR's last organised group in Los Angeles. Soldiers and refugees, including ghouls, live together at Griffith Observatory. The Brotherhood storms the observatory, kills its defenders and takes the cold fusion device Moldaver had just brought online. (Fallout, "The Beginning")

The season two finale shows the NCR isn't finished. As Maximus fights off deathclaws in Freeside, an NCR Ranger shoots them from a rooftop and a flag-carrying NCR Army column under Captain Rodriguez marches in to take over. Meanwhile the Legion's new Caesar marches toward New Vegas. (Fallout, "The Strip")