In the basement of a Massachusetts middle school, Vault-Tec created Vault 75 to help keep people safe during the end of the world in a well-known video game-turned-TV show called “Fallout.”
But it didn’t stay safe for long — at least in the video game — as players are required to clear the vault of raiders.
Although all the vaults are fictional, as the video game has transitioned into a new TV show on Prime Video, fans have been able to dig into what the virtual vaults look like and their histories. The TV show debuted April 10.
Nikki, called @Tunnelsnakefool on X, formerly known as Twitter, plotted out all the fictional U.S. vaults in a photo seen on the show. The content creator explained the map in a video on YouTube and shared a file on Discord that adds the map to Google Earth for people to explore. She wanted to let other fans explore if there’s a vault near you — even if they only live in the world of Fallout.
“Massachusetts went hard, of course,” Nikki said in the video. The video game “Fallout 4″ takes place in a post-apocalyptic Boston.
According to Nikki’s map, which comes from the TV show, there are four fictional vaults in Massachusetts, including one in the ocean. There are also one in Rhode Island, one in Vermont and one in Maine. There aren’t any virtual vaults in Connecticut or New Hampshire.
Another blog post notes there are nine vaults in Massachusetts, from all of the games and the TV show.
For those who haven’t already been sucked into the game or show, “Fallout” is a series of action role-playing games where players are launched into a post-apocalyptic world. The TV show is described as a “story of haves and have-nots in a world in which there’s almost nothing left to have.”
”200 years after the apocalypse, the gentle denizens of luxury fallout shelters are forced to return to the incredibly complex, gleefully weird and highly violent universe waiting for them above,” Amazon teases the show.
Here’s what we know about some of the virtual vaults in Massachusetts. Spoilers may be included.
Vault 75:
Vault 75 is found in the on-screen basement of Malden Middle School, according to IGN’s “Fallout 4″ guide. The guide states that the vault is already filled with raiders by the time the player gets to this point of the game.
Fans of “Fallout,” especially those who have finished the TV series’ first season, know many of the vaults had experiments inside of them. In Vault 75, children from Malden Middle School and their parents were allowed into the virtual vault. But once they were inside, the students’ parents were executed by vault security, according to GameRant.
Vault 81:
According to IGN’s guide, there are still vault dwellers, people who have lived inside the vaults, when your player arrives to Vault 81 in the game. It is located south of Oberland Station (a fictitious farming area in Western Mass.) and west of Chestnut Hillock Reservoir (a fictitious area in northern Central Mass.) along the train tracks. The player is required to steal things, which upsets the people living there.
But Vault 81 has a secret.
“ ... you’ll find that a child was bitten by a molerat carrying a deadly disease,” IGN wrote. “Through this you’ll learn of a hidden passage to a different vault built to monitor Vault 81 by Vault Tec scientists, who planned to study the effects of diseases and cures cultivated through molerats.”
But the molerats escaped and overwhelmed the staff, according to the news outlet. Only a robot named Curie survived and continued her work.
Vault 88:
This vault is said to be located east of the game’s Suffolk County Charter House and North of Wilson Atomatoys Factory (loosely near Quincy), according to IGN.
However, the vault wasn’t completed before the bombs fell, and only two people, the Overseer and her Security Chief, survived the blasts, according to The Gamer.
Vault 95:
This vault is located south of the game’s Edge of the Glowing Sea, and to west of Somerville Place, according to the guide.
According to IGN, the vault was designed to house people addicted to drugs. By not giving them any drugs in the vault, they’d be able to recover.
However, a stash of drugs was found in the vault and it “fell into chaos, with fighting and killing breaking out as the rest of the inhabitants succumbed to their former addictions,” IGN reported.
Vault 111:
Vault 111′s experiment wasn’t known to those who went inside. IGN’s guide states they were unknowingly “frozen in cryogenic stasis, as Vault-Tec wished to study the effects of cryogenic hibernation on unsuspecting participants.”
Vault 114:
This vault is inside the Boston Metro at the game’s Park Street Station and was intended to house Boston’s elite, according to the guide. But it wasn’t finished in time.
Vault 120:
This vault appears to be in the ocean off of Cape Cod.
More about Vault 120 was going to appear in “Fallout 4,” according to Bethesda Game Studios Director Todd Howard. But it was cut.
Howard said it was a Bioshock-style Vault “with massive sentient octopus living outside it.”