Why Did They Nuke Medfield?

[Fear2288]

I never really considered the location of the initial impact in the Commonwealth but I guess I was bored enough today.

I wanted to find out where exactly that impact happened and compared the FO4 map to a real-world map of Boston and its surrounding area.

Obviously, the first challenge was taking into account that the FO4 map isn’t to scale and doesn’t actually include many of the major towns and cities that the real-world region does - in fact, I was most surprised to see that they entirely changed the course of the Charles River.

In the real world, the Charles River separates Boston and Cambridge as it does in FO4, but in the former it continues west while in the later in turns and runs south.

Weird.

Anyways, taking some inaccuracies into account I used the locations of Boston, Natick (Fort Hagen), and Quincy and considered the scale to determine that the nuke which hit the Commonwealth must’ve struck somewhere around the small, somewhat rural town of Medfield, Massachusetts.

I gotta wonder why though.

How was the bomb that struck the Commonwealth delivered? Did it come from the Chinese submarine off the shore of Boston? Was it dropped via plane (there’s some references in pre-war terminal/note entries to hearing a plane fly over before the impact)? Was it fired from a silo half the world away?

Why wasn’t the actual city of Boston targeted?

Is this just due to pilot or navigation system error or was there some benefit to having it strike in the Medfield area? Perhaps it was determined that they could cause equal amounts of devastation to both Boston and Providence, Rhode Island? Or if it was delivered via plane was it safer to drop it over Medfield rather than Boston - perhaps to lessen the chances of taking AA fire or being intercepted before delivering the payload?

What do ya’ll think?

[cswiger]

Boston and Cambridge have about the highest concentration of hospitals and medical facilities anywhere in the world, so perhaps the Chinese of Fallout's alternate world chose to bomb elsewhere. Or perhaps they were expecting the Yangtze to fire its nukes upon Boston.

The Glowing Sea seems to be concentrated to the SW of Boston, which if you drew a line, passes through Providence, RI, Groton, CT, and then onto Long Island and New York City.

There's nothing of significance in Medfield. It's a small scenic New England town with good schools and libraries. But Providence and Groton have a ton of naval shipyards responsible for building most of the US submarine fleet. Nuking all of Rhode Island and the eastern part of Connecticut would come second only to nuking the Washington DC -> Norfolk Virginia locale.

[Lucus]

given the fact it was an all out nuclear attack intended to destroy the entire country i think it's reasonable that ground zero for most areas would have been somewhat random and the yangtze being in boston makes no sense unless it was tasked with nuking the general area around boston.

also worth noting with so much radiation from all out attacks you don't actually need to directly hit all of the cities radioactive fallout carried by the air is plenty lethal.

[Liquid Inc]

Originally posted by Fear2288:

Anyways, taking some inaccuracies into account I used the locations of Boston, Natick (Fort Hagen), and Quincy and considered the scale to determine that the nuke which hit the Commonwealth must’ve struck somewhere around the small, somewhat rural town of Medfield, Massachusetts.

I gotta wonder why though.

The nuke silo is there (In game), so perhaps there was more military related stuff going on there in the Fallout universe? Could have been a military staging ground, or equipment store even....
You see the remains of many a red rocket, meaning major roads, and there was rumoured to be a power station there? No idea if the last is true, it's possible it's just fan fic from these forums, which is where i saw it mentioned.

if there was a power station, there may have been a research lab or factory for building the nukes, which would have made it a prime target...
The notes in the nuke silo suggest that it's easy to get more nukes, and that would support the theory of a factory nearby. Why else would you have a power station? A tiny town would hardly warrant it's own, and the Nuke Silo has it's own power supply.

It's also possible it was just "somewhere in the south of the map", so the player didn't stumble on it 5 feet out of the tutorial.

Originally posted by Fear2288:

How was the bomb that struck the Commonwealth delivered? Did it come from the Chinese submarine off the shore of Boston? Was it dropped via plane (there’s some references in pre-war terminal/note entries to hearing a plane fly over before the impact)? Was it fired from a silo half the world away?

Personally i've never bought that theory. The Yangtze is too close to Boston to launch them, and also doesn't have enough of them to be the primary nuke carrier. It would be caught in the blast being where it is.
- Could it have been a spoofer? a fake, to make the americans launch theirs first? Most of the Yangtze's nukes are broken, but it's not said when they broke, or if they ever worked at all.

I don't think it was fired half way around the world. When one country builds something that works, others are quick to follow. If the chinese and/or russians had produced an ICBM, the americans would have been quick to follow and learn how, and vice versa. The fact the nukes in-game are short and stumpy suggests that isn't the case, or the americans never found out how to do it.
The nukes shown in the launch silo aren't ICBM's... That particular silo was still experimenting on such things, and broke many nukes doing so (Via terminal entries) and expressed surprise when they could get more of the nukes so easily. (Doesn't say where from).
Why would the silo be attempting to do this, if it's already common knowledge?

I doubt it was a plane either, they'd have needed hundreds of them, given the sheer number of nukes dropped, and if China had planes in US airspace, how'd the US silo "detect" a "Nuclear launch"? keyword being *launch*, not detonation.
The Yangtze perhaps? It detected a "launch" of some kind and fired it's own nukes in response.
It doesn't say where it fired them..

Originally posted by Fear2288:

Is this just due to pilot or navigation system error or was there some benefit to having it strike in the Medfield area? Perhaps it was determined that they could cause equal amounts of devastation to both Boston and Providence, Rhode Island? Or if it was delivered via plane was it safer to drop it over Medfield rather than Boston - perhaps to lessen the chances of taking AA fire or being intercepted before delivering the payload?

They could have just dropped it into the sea off the coast if this was the case, the entire of boston would be an irradiated ocean, if not flattened by the resulting radioactive tsunami...

[DouglasGrave]

A number of things turned out differently in Fallout's alternate timeline, and rivers do shift course during history, so I guess that's just another change. The world is similar enough to be familiar, but not identical, and of course the compressed scale of the world adds its own level of obfuscation.

As for the nuke target, it's hard to say without knowing what was there, but it may be significant that the sentinel site is in the same region. Whether the strike was off-target or aimed at something important nearby (accidentally or not), aiming in the area of an enemy's nuclear stockpile seems reasonable.

I assume Boston was a target and the attack simply failed for one reason or another. It may or may not have been the intended target for the warhead that failed to launch from the Yangtze (as mentioned by Captain Zao).

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Liquid Inc:

Personally i've never bought that theory. The Yangtze is too close to Boston to launch them, and also doesn't have enough of them to be the primary nuke carrier. It would be caught in the blast being where it is.

Captain Zao says that the Yangtze took shelter in the harbour after running into a mine, suggesting that it would have launched its nukes from further out to sea.

The wiki suggests the Yangtze carried six strategic nukes and an unknown number of tactical nuclear weapons, so I guess it's a question of whether five strategic nukes plus some extras would be significant enough.

[wtiger27]

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

Originally posted by Liquid Inc:

Personally i've never bought that theory. The Yangtze is too close to Boston to launch them, and also doesn't have enough of them to be the primary nuke carrier. It would be caught in the blast being where it is.

Captain Zao says that the Yangtze took shelter in the harbour after running into a mine, suggesting that it would have launched its nukes from further out to sea.

The wiki suggests the Yangtze carried six strategic nukes and an unknown number of tactical nuclear weapons, so I guess it's a question of whether five strategic nukes plus some extras would be significant enough.

The fact it could get in close to the city in the harbor undetected is amazing. Of course, we are talking about a science fiction world. Where reality and fiction cross paths. :p

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by wtiger27:

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

Captain Zao says that the Yangtze took shelter in the harbour after running into a mine, suggesting that it would have launched its nukes from further out to sea.

The wiki suggests the Yangtze carried six strategic nukes and an unknown number of tactical nuclear weapons, so I guess it's a question of whether five strategic nukes plus some extras would be significant enough.

The fact it could get in close to the city in the harbor undetected is amazing. Of course, we are talking about a science fiction world. Where reality and fiction cross paths. :p

Well, the city was already in ruins by the time it reached the harbour, and it's unclear exactly how far it managed to limp after hitting the mine. I'm guessing that there weren't a lot of people still left watching by the time it arrived.

[Fear2288]

Isn’t there some theory that Vault-Tec was actually responsible for some of the initial detonations - essentially causing a false flag situation where the US assumed it was China, launched nukes at China, and China fired back in response?

I can’t remember if there’s actually substance to that theory or if that’s just fan fiction - perhaps written for some FO4 mod (maybe one of the Thuggyverse ones).

It’s odd that there doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer about how the bomb was delivered. If they didn’t have long range, ICBM-type missiles then it would’ve had to come from a plane or the submarine.

I’m fairly certain a terminal entry you can find in that neighborhood/Super Mutant camp south of Malden (West Everett Estates or something like that) mentions hearing “planes” flying overhead before the detonation.

@Lucus

While it’s true that perhaps a large scale nuclear strike may warrant a bit of imprecision I’d think the Chinese would still understand that such an attack wouldn’t kill everyone and destroy everything. It may be enough to devastate the country and collapse the government, but if your objective is to annihilate your enemy and leave them with absolutely no way to recover or mount a counter-attack you’d target major population centers, industrial areas, and military installations to cause the highest possible amount of casualties and obliterate any/all means of manufacturing or locations which serve as military stockpiles and staging areas.

[Ihateeverybody]

Originally posted by Liquid Inc:

You see the remains of many a red rocket, meaning major roads, and there was rumoured to be a power station there? No idea if the last is true, it's possible it's just fan fic from these forums, which is where i saw it mentioned.

if there was a power station, there may have been a research lab or factory for building the nukes, which would have made it a prime target...
The notes in the nuke silo suggest that it's easy to get more nukes, and that would support the theory of a factory nearby. Why else would you have a power station? A tiny town would hardly warrant it's own, and the Nuke Silo has it's own power supply.

It's also possible it was just "somewhere in the south of the map", so the player didn't stumble on it 5 feet out of the tutorial.

If were are talking the Glowing sea there is definately the Remains of a Nuclear Power Plant there. It should be directly North of Virgils Cave and west of the Children of Atom Crater . Its now a Deathclaw Lair.

SPECULATION: There might have been plans for a COA Faction early in devolopment that went the way of all things. Away. You find COA Bodies in many places in the glowing sea that hint at quests that aren't there.