Fallout Timeline: From the Divergence to 2296

Fallout's history matches ours until shortly after the Second World War, then runs on into a future that still looks like the 1950s. Every date on this page counts from the Great War of 23 October 2077, when the bombs fell. The games cover the years from 2102 to 2287, and the Prime Video series picks up in 2296, so the TV series is now the latest point in the story. (The Art of Fallout 4; Fallout; Fallout, "The End")

The Divergence and the road to war (after 1945 to 2076)#

Fallout's world shares real history up to around the end of the Second World War. After that it kept the style and politics of 1950s America while its science went in strange directions: atomic cars, robot butlers and computers built on vacuum tubes rather than microchips. (The Art of Fallout 4; Fallout 3)

• After 1945: The timeline split from ours. Many of the tall buildings that make up modern Boston were never built, which is why the Fallout skyline looks like an older idea of "the city of tomorrow". (The Art of Fallout 4)
• 1969: In Fallout's version of the space race, the Valiant 11 mission put three American astronauts on the Moon. A museum display in Washington DC still marked it two centuries later. (Fallout 3)
• Mid-21st century: Oil and uranium ran short, and wars broke out over what was left. The European Commonwealth fought the Middle East for its oil fields and then broke up into squabbling states. (Fallout)
• The 2050s onward: Vault-Tec won government contracts to build fallout shelters across the country. Many of the vaults were never meant to save anyone. They were sealed social experiments: in Vault 11 the dwellers had to choose one of their own to sacrifice every year, and Vault 108 was filled with clones of a single man. (Fallout 3; Fallout: New Vegas)
• 2065: Robert House, head of RobCo Industries, ran forecasts that told him a nuclear war was coming within years. He spent the next decade preparing Las Vegas to survive it. (Fallout: New Vegas)
• The 2060s: China invaded Alaska to take its oil. The United States answered with the first combat power armour, and later built Liberty Prime, a giant robot meant to retake Anchorage. (Fallout; Fallout 3)
• The 2070s: The army's Pan-Immunity Virion project, meant to beat a Chinese bioweapon, became the Forced Evolutionary Virus. Testing moved from animals to people, and the work was shifted to Mariposa Military Base in California. (Fallout; Fallout 3)
• The 2070s: The film cowboy Cooper Howard became the smiling face of Vault-Tec's adverts, pushed into it by his wife, Barb, a Vault-Tec executive. (Fallout, "The Head")
• The 2070s: A scientist Cooper knew as Miss Williams told Cooper that Vault-Tec had shelved cold fusion, a power source that could have ended the fight over oil. He began spying on Barb's company for her. (Fallout, "The Radio"; Fallout, "The Innovator")
• 2076: The annexation of Canada was complete. Canadians who resisted were put down by American troops, some of them in power armour. (Fallout)

The Great War (2077)#

The last year of the old world. America won in Alaska, then turned its army on its own hungry, rioting cities. (Fallout 3; Fallout 4)

• January 2077: General Constantine Chase led the American push that drove Chinese forces out of Anchorage. Newspapers in Washington celebrated the liberation of Alaska. (Fallout 3; Fallout 3: Operation: Anchorage)
• 2077: Before the bombs, Vault-Tec's leaders, among them Barb Howard, with Hank MacLean working under her, planned for the war they expected and for running what came after. Cooper overheard enough to turn on them. (Fallout, "The Beginning"; Fallout, "The Wrangler"; Fallout, "The Strip")
• October 2077: At Mariposa, Captain Roger Maxson found that the FEV test subjects were military prisoners, not volunteers. He took command, executed the scientists and declared his unit's desertion. (Fallout)
• 23 October 2077: The Great War. Nuclear missiles fell across America, China and the rest of the world in a matter of hours. Cooper Howard and his daughter Janey were at a children's birthday party in Los Angeles when the first bomb hit. (Fallout; Fallout 4; Fallout, "The End")
• 23 October 2077: Families who reached Vault 111 near Boston were frozen without being told. In Vault 31, under Los Angeles, Vault-Tec's junior managers went into cold sleep by design, to be woken one by one to run Vaults 32 and 33. (Fallout 4; Fallout, "The Beginning")
• 23 October 2077: Of the 77 warheads aimed at Las Vegas and its surroundings, House's computers disarmed 59 and the Lucky 38's lasers shot down 9 more. The strain crashed his systems, and it took him years to recover. (Fallout: New Vegas)
• Late 2077: Maxson's soldiers and their families sealed Mariposa and crossed the desert to a government bunker at Lost Hills. That group became the Brotherhood of Steel. (Fallout)
• Late 2077: The Enclave, a secret group of government, military and corporate leaders, survived in bunkers and on an offshore oil rig, still calling itself the government of the United States. (Fallout 2; Fallout 76)

The first century (2078 to 2160)#

The vaults stayed shut, the irradiated became ghouls, and the first new towns grew up in the ruins. (Fallout; Fallout 76)

• 2078 onward: Long exposure to radiation turned some survivors into ghouls: scarred, long-lived and often treated as monsters. Cooper Howard was one of them. (Fallout; Fallout, "The End")
• 2102: On Reclamation Day, 25 years after the war, Vault 76 opened in West Virginia. Its dwellers found Appalachia emptied by the Scorched plague and the scorchbeasts, and the local Brotherhood chapter already dead. (Fallout 76)
• Early 2100s: The scientist Richard Grey fell into a vat of FEV at the abandoned Mariposa base. He came out as the Master, a mutated mind that began turning captured humans into super mutants. (Fallout)
• Early 2100s: Settlers and raiders came back to Appalachia, and a Brotherhood expedition from California arrived to rebuild the chapter. Around the same time the Ghoul was working as a bounty hunter in Ohio. (Fallout 76)
• 22nd century: Beneath the ruins of the Commonwealth Institute of Technology in Boston, survivors who had sheltered underground formed the Institute and went on to build synths. (Fallout 4)
• 2142: Shady Sands was founded in Southern California by people from Vault 15. (Fallout; Fallout, "The Trap")
• Mid-2100s: The Master took over a vault under Los Angeles and set up the Children of the Cathedral, a cult that hid his army behind a friendly face. (Fallout)

The Master and the rise of the NCR (2161 to 2240)#

The first two Vault Dwellers' stories, and the birth of the first real nation after the war. (Fallout; Fallout 2)

• 5 December 2161: The water chip in Vault 13 failed, and the Overseer sent one dweller out to find a new one. (Fallout)
• 2161: The Vault Dweller travelled through Shady Sands, Junktown, the Hub, the ghoul city of Necropolis and the Brotherhood of Steel bunker at Lost Hills. (Fallout)
• Early 2160s: The Vault Dweller killed the Master under the Cathedral and blew up the FEV vats at Mariposa. The super mutant army fell apart. The Overseer then exiled the hero. (Fallout)
• Afterwards: The exile led a group north and founded the village of Arroyo. (Fallout; Fallout 2)
• 2189: Shady Sands and its neighbours formed the New California Republic. Tandi, the girl the Vault Dweller once rescued from raiders, later became its president and still held the office in 2241. (Fallout; Fallout 2; Fallout, "The Trap")
• Around 2197: Far to the east, a Brotherhood airship expedition crash-landed near Chicago and founded a Midwestern chapter, which fought a machine intelligence called the Calculator. (Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel)
• 2198: Shady Sands became the NCR's capital. (Fallout, "The Trap")
• 2227: Institute agents broke into Vault 111. The mercenary Kellogg killed one frozen parent and took the baby, Shaun; the other parent was put back to sleep. (Fallout 4)

The Chosen One and the Enclave (2241 to 2242)#

Eighty years after the first game, the Enclave came out of hiding. (Fallout 2)

• 2241: Arroyo was starving. Its elder sent the Vault Dweller's grandchild, the Chosen One, to find a Garden of Eden Creation Kit. A classroom timeline in the TV series marks this year as the NCR's peak. (Fallout 2; Fallout, "The Trap")
• 2242: The Enclave seized the people of Arroyo and Vault 13 to test a new FEV strain meant to kill everyone with mutated DNA, which by then was almost everyone. (Fallout 2)
• 2242: The Chosen One reached the Enclave's oil rig off the coast of California, freed the prisoners, killed the soldier Frank Horrigan and destroyed the rig. President Dick Richardson died there too. The survivors built a new village with the GECK. (Fallout 2)
• After 2242: The NCR, with Brotherhood help, broke the Enclave's last West Coast base at Navarro and hunted down its remnants. (Fallout: New Vegas)

East and west (2243 to 2280)#

The Brotherhood went east, a new empire rose in Arizona and the NCR pushed towards the Colorado River. (Fallout 3; Fallout: New Vegas)

• Late 2240s: Edward Sallow, a Followers of the Apocalypse scribe, was captured by a tribe in Arizona, taught them to fight, and made himself Caesar. His Legion, built on a copy of ancient Rome, swallowed tribe after tribe. (Fallout: New Vegas)
• 2250s: A Brotherhood expedition under Owyn Lyons left California for Washington DC. Lyons made the ruined Pentagon his base, the Citadel, where the chapter found the unfinished robot Liberty Prime, and over time turned his chapter towards protecting the locals. (Fallout 3)
• 2258: The Lone Wanderer was born near Washington. Their mother died in childbirth, and their father, James, took the baby into Vault 101. (Fallout 3)
• 2274: The NCR took Hoover Dam. Mr. House sent his Securitron robots out to meet them, signed a treaty, and opened the Strip of New Vegas to visitors. (Fallout: New Vegas)
• 2277: The Legion attacked Hoover Dam under its Legate, Joshua Graham. NCR rangers lured them into a mined Boulder City and won the first battle; Caesar had Graham covered in pitch, set alight and thrown into the Grand Canyon. (Fallout: New Vegas; Fallout: New Vegas: Honest Hearts)
• 2277: James left Vault 101 to finish Project Purity, a water purifier for the Potomac, and the Lone Wanderer followed. The Enclave, run by an AI calling itself President John Henry Eden, tried to seize the purifier. The Brotherhood took it back with Liberty Prime, and the purifier was switched on. (Fallout 3)
• 2277: Rose MacLean left Vault 33 with her children and went to Shady Sands. Hank brought the children home and told the vault she had died in a plague. The show's classroom timeline dates "the fall of Shady Sands" to the same year. (Fallout, "The Ghouls"; Fallout, "The Trap"; Fallout, "The Beginning")
• 2278: The Brotherhood destroyed the Enclave's base at Adams Air Force Base in the Capital Wasteland. (Fallout 3: Broken Steel)
• 2278: NCR troops attacked the Great Khans at Bitter Springs and killed families along with fighters, a massacre that haunted the NCR in the Mojave. (Fallout: New Vegas)

The Mojave and the Commonwealth (2281 to 2287)#

Two of the best-known games, and the fall of the NCR's capital in between. (Fallout: New Vegas; Fallout 4)

• 2281: A courier carrying House's platinum chip was shot and left in a shallow grave near Goodsprings by Benny of the Chairmen. The Courier survived and ended up deciding who held Hoover Dam. The Second Battle of Hoover Dam had four possible winners: the NCR, the Legion, House, or an independent Vegas. (Fallout: New Vegas)
• Just after 2281: A brainwashed caravan driver pulled a cart carrying a nuclear bomb into Shady Sands, and it went off. Hank MacLean had sent it. A boy named Maximus survived inside a fridge. Todd Howard has said the bomb fell "just after the events of New Vegas". (Fallout, "The Beginning"; Fallout, "The Golden Rule"; Todd Howard on the Fallout timeline)
• After Shady Sands: Without its capital the NCR fell apart. Remnants held out at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and in the Mojave. Miss Williams, now going by Lee Moldaver, led the Los Angeles survivors, and refugees in Vault 4 called her the Flame Mother. (Fallout, "The Trap"; Fallout, "The Beginning"; Fallout, "The Profligate")
• 2287: In the Commonwealth, the Minutemen were nearly wiped out at Quincy, and the Railroad was on the run after Institute raids on its safehouses. (Fallout 4)
• 23 October 2287: The Sole Survivor woke in Vault 111, 210 years after the war, and went looking for Shaun. The trail led into the Institute, where Shaun, now an old man called Father, was its leader. (Fallout 4)
• 2287: Elder Arthur Maxson brought the East Coast Brotherhood to Boston on the airship Prydwen. Depending on the Sole Survivor's choices, the Brotherhood, the Railroad or the Minutemen destroyed the Institute, or the Survivor took it over. (Fallout 4)

The TV series (2296)#

Both seasons of the show take place in 2296, nine years after Fallout 4. (Fallout, "The End"; Fallout, "The Golden Rule")

• 2296: Raiders posing as a wedding party from Vault 32 attacked Vault 33 and took its Overseer, Hank MacLean. His daughter, Lucy MacLean, went to the surface to find him. (Fallout, "The End")
• 2296: Lucy, the Brotherhood squire Maximus and the bounty hunter known as the Ghoul all chased the head of an Enclave defector, which held what Moldaver needed to restart cold fusion. (Fallout, "The End"; Fallout, "The Head")
• 2296: At the Griffith Observatory, Lucy learned that Hank had destroyed Shady Sands and that her mother had become a feral ghoul. Moldaver started the cold fusion reactor before she died, Hank escaped towards New Vegas, and Lucy and the Ghoul followed. (Fallout, "The Beginning")
• 2296: In the Mojave, the Legion had split into rival camps after Caesar's death. Deathclaws held the Strip, and the NCR was down to a last holdout in the Mojave. (Fallout, "The Profligate"; Fallout, "The Wrangler")
• 2296: At a secret Vault-Tec facility, Lucy found Hank brainwashing kidnapped wastelanders with control chips. She shut down the system and chipped her father, and he lost his memory. House had earlier called him one of the Enclave's acolytes. (Fallout, "The Strip")
• 2296: The Lacerta Legate made himself the new Caesar and marched on New Vegas. The Ghoul found his family's cryo pods empty, with a clue pointing towards Colorado. (Fallout, "The Strip")

Where the story stands#

As of October 2026, 2296 is the furthest point in the Fallout timeline. Season 2 ended with a new Caesar marching on New Vegas, the Brotherhood looking for more power, and the Ghoul still searching for his wife and daughter. Season 3 began filming in June 2026 but has no release date yet. For the full plot of each part, see the Fallout story explained and the games in order. (Fallout, "The Strip")