Fallout Maps (Revised 2024)

Fallout is one of the biggest franchises in video games, set in both an alternate timeline (where the retrofuturistic imagery of mid-20^th Century sci-fi became a reality) and a post-apocalyptic future where the world has been partially laid waste by a nuclear exchange. Eight video games in the Fallout series have been released, along with a number of spin-off mobiles games, a board game, two miniatures wargames and a tabletop roleplaying game. The most recent addition to the Fallout canon is an 8-episode TV series on Amazon Prime Video. Here follows some interesting maps based on the franchise.

Fallout Commonwealth Map Complete — A map showing the Thirteen Commonwealths of the United States of America. Please click for a larger version.

The Thirteen Commonwealths

In the alternate history of the Fallout universe, history diverged from our own shortly after the end of World War II. The transistor was not adopted for widespread electronic use, with vacuum tubes instead continuing to be the primary technology used in televisions and computers, which remained far bulkier, slower and less powerful than in our world, at least until the development of AI in the mid-21^st Century.

Politically, a major change was the unification of the American states into the Thirteen Commonwealths in 1969, an intermediary step between the US federal government and the individual states. The Commonwealths were organised as follows:

Northwest Commonwealth: Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Northern California, Alaska.
Southwest Commonwealth: Southern California, Nevada, Hawaii
Northern Commonwealth: Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota.
Four States Commonwealth: Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico.
Plains Commonwealth: Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa
Texas Commonwealth: Texas, Arkansas
Great Midwest Commonwealth: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan
East Central Commonwealth: Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky
Gulf Commonwealth: Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida
Southeast Commonwealth: Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina
Columbia: Virginia, Maryland, District of Columbia
Eastern Commonwealth: West Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey
New England: Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine

There is little information available on why and how the Commonwealths were unified, their centres of administration or how they interacted with either the States below them or the federal government above them.

The flag of the United States was adjusted after 1969 to show a single, central star representing the Columbia Commonwealth as the centre of American power and twelve other stars encircling it. In 2076 the flag was adjusted to incorporate a thirteenth external star to represent the annexed territory of Canada. However, the process of changing the flags was incomplete when the Great War took place on 23 October 2077, hence flags surviving after the war are a mixture of both types.

A map showing the known, rumoured and planned locations of Vault-Tec nuclear fallout vaults across the United States. Please click for a larger version

On the above map, note the following key is used:

Green vaults are fully canon and their location is firmly established in lore. Almost all of these are vaults you can physically visit in Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, or see in Fallout: The TV Series.
Yellow vaults appear in semi-canon sources (Fallout: Tactics, tie-in comics, cut content from the games). These can be assumed to be canon until contradicted by future Fallout franchise installments.
Pink vaults appear in non-canon sources (The Fallout Bible, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, Van Buren, the board games) and are probably not canonical at all, but have not yet been contradicted by other sources.
Blue vaults appear on the map in Fallout: The TV Series (see below). These vaults were planned for construction before the war broke out. Whether they were completed or not, or if their planned locations match the final construction location, remain unknown.

A chart showing the known information about the Vault-Tec vaults. Please click for a larger version.

The Vaults

The prospect of a global nuclear war reared its head following the detonation of the first two nuclear weapons at the end of World War II, in 1945. A lengthy cold war between the United States and the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics followed, which several times threatened to turn hot. Unlike in our timeline, the USSR did not collapse in 1991 and the prospect of a nuclear war continued to threaten into the early 21^st Century. By the late 2020s, Vault-Tec Corporation had been founded in the United States with a view to building large-scale nuclear bomb shelters, each one of which could house up to a thousand people for several decades.

By around 2045 the threat of a nuclear war between the United States and the USSR had receded, with both nations now cooperating and adopting a more friendly stance towards one another. However, this period was also marked by dwindling oil supplies, threatening the global economy. Tensions rose sharply first in 2051 when the United States staged a military intervention in Mexico to secure oil supplies across the border, which had been endangered by internal shortages. This was followed in April 2052 when the European Commonwealth (a strategic military alliance of European nation-states including at least the United Kingdom, France and Italy) mounted an invasion of the Middle East to secure their own oil supplies. This conflict was fiercely controversial and saw the collapse of the United Nations in July. In December 2053, Tel Aviv was destroyed in a nuclear strike, sparking a retaliatory nuclear exchange. This exchange was limited in scope, but saw several cities across the region reduced to radioactive craters.

The European Commonwealth itself collapsed in 2060, as oil supplies from the occupied territories only lasted a few years before running dry. Meanwhile, in the United States major concerns had been raised about the nuclear exchange. Vault-Tec was formally commissioned by the United States government in 2054 to build nuclear fallout shelters to protect the American civilian population. Project Safehouse was initiated to this end.

The initial findings of Project Safehouse were depressing. With each vault only capable of holding 1,000 people, 400,000 vaults would be needed to house the entire population of the United States (which was now in excess of 400 million). With each vault taking years to build and costing tens of billions of dollars, this was clearly untenable. The emphasis shifted to the vaults protecting the “best and brightest” of the American population. Aware this could cause discontent and panic, it was also decided that some vaults would be built to house more “ordinary” Americans, but these vaults would also have the purpose of running behavioural and sociological tests (many of a dubious moral nature) on the inhabitants, for the sinister purpose of engineering a “better society” after the war.

Vault-Tec funded its plans with grants and funding from government, but also subscriptions from regular Americans keen to “reserve” a spot in a vault. With such funding, Vault-Tec rapidly became the richest country in the United States and possibly on Earth, with a market capitalisation in the trillions. The fact that there were far more paying subscribers than could be comfortably accommodated in the maximum possible number of vaults did not seem to bother Vault-Tec in the slightest.

The project was initiated in 2054, but there was significant controversy between the federal, commonwealth and state governments over their share of the funding for the vaults. As a result of this, wide-scale construction of the vaults did not begin until the early 2060s and currently existing records show that the first vault was not open and ready for business until 2068. It also appears that budget cuts saw the original desired number of vaults slashed to just over a hundred, along with several proof-of-concept prototypes and a secret “command and control” vault in Colorado. Some states and commonwealths also seem to have been far more in favour of the project than others: states like West Virginia, Massachusetts, Nevada, California and the area surrounding Washington, DC had lots of vaults, whilst vast swathes of the country seem to have had none at all.

The above map shows the location of all confirmed vaults, where known or suspected. We know that at least 122 vaults (it is unclear if this count includes the secret Vault 0, three prototype vaults, a VR simulation vault and a secret research facility in Texas) were planned and at least 118 were completed or almost completed when the war took place. The location of 62 vaults – more than half the total – has not yet been fully 100% identified, whilst we have extremely firm information on 34 of the other vaults. There are 26 vaults where we have rumoured or unconfirmed information, of varying degrees of credibility.

The layout of the vaults is interesting and shows the dramatically differing commitment levels of different regions to Project Safehouse. Here is a breakdown of confirmed vaults by commonwealth:

Northern Commonwealth, Plains Commonwealth, East Central Commonwealth, Gulf Commonwealth, Southeast Commonwealth: 0
Northwest Commonwealth, Texas Commonwealth, Great Midwest Commonwealth: 1 each
Four States Commonwealth: 3
Eastern Commonwealth: 7
Columbia: 9
New England: 10
Southwest Commonwealth: 12

Here is a breakdown of confirmed vaults by state:

Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Alaska, Hawaii: 0
Washington: 1 (Vault 6)
Utah: 1 (Vault 70)
Texas: 1 (Vault 39)
Illinois: 1 (Vault 1)
Maine: 1 (Vault 118)
Colorado: 2 (Vaults 0 & 29)
Maryland: 2 (Vaults 92 & 108)
Washington, DC: 2 (Vaults 53 & 100)
California: 4 (Vaults 13, 15, 44 & 17)
Virginia: 4 (Vaults 87, 101, 106, & 112)
West Virginia: 7 (Vaults 51, 63, 65, 76, 79, 94 & 96)
Nevada: 8 (Vaults 3, 8, 11, 19, 21, 22, 24 & 34)
Massachusetts: 9 (Vaults 10, 75, 81, 88, 95, 111, 114, 117 & 120)

Note that this only refers to the vaults whose locations are 100% known.

The Planned Vaults

The Fallout television series, released in April 2024, features a major contribution to the Vault lore of Fallout. In a scene in the final episode, a map is drawn up showing the location of all the planned vaults in the United States. This map is not shown in exacting detail, but it does give us a lot more information than previously.

An enchanced version of the same, thanks to the detective work of Tunnelsnakesfool.

114 markers are shown on this map. However. We know from the games and even the TV series itself that some vaults are in such extreme proximity to one another (Vaults 31, 32 and 33 are so close together they might as well be one facility) that multiple vaults would fall under one marker on them map.

What the map does do is confirm the approximate locations of all or at least most of the as-yet unknown vaults in the lore (allowing for some changes to Vault-Tec’s plans or secrecy; it’s worth noting that ultra-secretive Vault 0 appears to be missing from this map).

I have updated my map with a new category of “Planned Vaults,” incorporating the icons from this TV map. Here is a breakdown of the planned vaults by state. Note that I have placed the nearest surface landmark to the planned vault where known, although a surprisingly large number of vaults seem to have been planned for relatively isolated areas of the country rather than close to large cities:

0: Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, New Hampshire, Rhode Island
1: Alabama: 1 planned
1: Arkansas: 1 planned (Little Rock)
1: Iowa: 1 planned (Des Moines)
1: Kentucky: 1 planned (Frankfort)
1: Maine: 1 confirmed (Vault 118)
1: Mississippi: 1 planned (Jackson)
1: Michigan: 1 planned (Lansing)
1: New Jersey: 1 planned (Bridgeton)
1: New Mexico: 1 planned
1: North Dakota: 1 planned
1: South Carolina: 1 planned (Columbia)
1: Vermont: 1 planned (Montpelier)
1: Wyoming: 1 planned (Cheyenne)
1: Utah: 1 confirmed (Vault 70)
2: Arizona: 2 planned (Flagstaff)
1: Florida: 2 planned (Tallahassee, Orlando)
2: Idaho: 2 planned (Boise, Idaho Falls)
2: Kansas: 2 planned (Topeka)
2: Louisiana: 2 planned (Baton Rouge, New Orleans)
2: Maryland: 2 confirmed (Vaults 92 & 108)
2: Minnesota: 2 planned (Minneapolis, Duluth)
2: Missouri: 2 planned (Jefferson City, Kansas City)
2: Montana: 2 planned (Helena, Billings)
2: New York: at least 2 planned (New York City, Albany)
2: North Carolina: 2 planned (Charlotte, Raleigh)
2: Ohio: 2 planned (Columbus, Cincinatti)
2: Oklahoma: 2 planned (Oklahoma City, Tulsa)
2: Oregon: 2 planned (Portland)
2: Tennessee: 2 planned (Nashville)
2: Washington, DC: 2 confirmed (Vaults 53 & 100)
2: Wisconsin: 2 planned (Madison)
3: Colorado: 2 confirmed (Vaults 0 & 29), 1 planned (Grand Junction)
3: Georgia: 3 planned (Atlanta, Savannah)
3: Nebraska: 3 planned (Lincoln, Omaha)
3: Pennsylvania: 3 planned (Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh)
3: South Dakota: 3 planned (Sioux Falls)
3: Washington: 1 confirmed (Vault 6), 2 planned (Seattle, Spokane)
4: Illinois: 1 confirmed (Vault 1), 3 planned (Chicago, Springfield)
5: Virginia: 4 confirmed (Vaults 87, 101, 106, & 112), 1 planned (Richmond)
7: West Virginia: 7 confirmed (Vaults 51, 63, 65, 76, 79, 94 & 96)
9: Massachusetts: 9 confirmed (Vaults 10, 75, 81, 88, 95, 111, 114, 117 & 120)
9: Nevada: 8 confirmed (Vaults 3, 8, 11, 19, 21, 22, 24 & 34), 1 planned (Reno)
10: California: 6 confirmed (Vaults 4, 13, 15, 31, 32, 33, 44 & 17), 4 planned (Sacramento, San Diego)
10: Texas: 1 confirmed (Vault 39), 9 planned (El Paso, Dallas, Austin, 4 in the Houston area, San Antonio, Corpus Christi)

Intriguingly, both Canada and Mexico seem to sport at least one vault apiece. Canada was annexed by the United States during the war, so this makes sense; Mexico was partially annexed, but its status by the time of the Great War was unclear. Presumably that area of Baja California was considered stable enough to invest time and funds in building a vault there. Alternatively, a Mexican businessman or ally of Vault-Tec was able to leverage support to have a vault built in Mexico.

Note on other possible vault locations

At different times, Bethesda, Black Isle and Obsidian have considered making Fallout games set in New York and San Francisco, suggesting that both of those cities have vaults in their vicinity. There have been many other rumoured but never-confirmed locations for Fallout games over the years, ranging from Florida to Louisiana, where vaults could probably be located. Given the density of vaults in previously-explored areas (such as Virginia and West Virginia, Nevada, around Washington, DC and Boston), it is likely that those areas where there are only a few vaults may have more nearby. Texas, Colorado, Washington and California may therefore all have more vaults then the relatively small numbers we’ve seen so far. The TV map seems to support this.

The concentrated number of vaults in set locations and a presumed tally of ~122 vaults in total means that there are inevitably vast regions of the United States with no vaults at all.

Note on Sources

Remarkably, given that the Fallout franchise has been worked on by several hundred programmers, writers and developers across twenty-seven years, not to mention being owned by two different companies, there has not been a major canon clash to date given the numbering or location of the vaults (i.e. we’ve never had two sources putting the same vault in different locations). The vault numbering system has remained consistent over the years.

Primary Sources: Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3 (and DLC), Fallout: New Vegas (and DLC), Fallout 4 (and DLC), Fallout 76 (and updates), Fallout: The TV Series

These are considered fully canonical sources.

Other Sources: Fallout Tactics, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, Fallout Bible, One Man and a Crate of Puppets

The attitude towards these sources seems to vary over time, but Bethesda has not outright contradicted any information in them and has still employed them recently; Fallout 76 has several moments when it seems to still be drawing on lore from the Fallout Bible, an internal Black Isle document designed in the late 1990s and early 2000s to maintain consistency between the various games. As such, adopting a “probably canon until Bethesda says it’s not” attitude is best.

One Man and a Crate of Puppets is a short comic created as a marketing tie-in for Fallout 3; how much it is considered canon by Bethesda is unclear.

Unmade Games: Van Buren, Fallout Extreme, Fallout Tactics 2, Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2, Fallout: New Vegas 2

These games were never made, so ergo are not canon, but they in turn drew from information in things like the Fallout Bible and in some cases ideas from them did resurface later on or impacted on other choices. As such, this material should not be considered remotely canon, but again nothing in them has been outright contradicted (aside from some Van Buren elements which were upgraded for New Vegas, which was based on some of the same ideas). As such, their ideas can be considered interesting, but will likely be contradicted in the future.

Edited to Add:

Tunnelsnakesfool has a good video which has a more precise way of geolocating the vaults, which is making me reconsider some of my locations.

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