Fallout shelter
A fallout shelter is an enclosed space designed to protect its occupants from radioactive fallout that is the result of nuclear weapons. Some are simple shelters designed for one household; more extensive complexes can accommodate a community.
Many fallout shelters were built during the Cold War and found their way into popular culture including games (Fallout 3) and films (Blast from the Past).
Vault
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This page was originally sporked from The Vault Wiki. |
A Vault is a type of a subterranean installation designed by Vault-Tec. Officially, they were designed for the sole purpose of sheltering up to one thousand dwellers from a nuclear holocaust. But, they were actually used as an experiment for the government. It has impenetrable walls protecting it from the disasters of the post-apocalyptic world.
Coruscanti Vaults
Unlike their Fallout counterparts, all Coruscanti vaults are compliant with public expectations and designed to protect and shelter their inhabitants from the effects of not only nuclear attacks, but also biological and chemical attacks. Rural vaults typically were designed to hold 1,000 occupants, whereas the more urbanized vaults are integrated into the city's underground (similar to Toronto's PATH) and designed to hold 10,000 occupants in each section of a city's residential zones. City vaults use blast doors in place of the iconic "gear" doors at each of the entrances along with a redundant system in the event a blast door fails.
The most famous of the Coruscanti City Vaults is the network of interconnected vaults that lies underneath New Port City with connections to underground malls, pedestrian walkways, etc. along with a blast/fallout door at each of the main entrances to the underground city. The network features a "last resort" backup vault door in the event the underground city suffers a breach from a ground-detonated atomic bomb.
History
The Coruscanti Vaults were not originally intended to be fallout shelters due to the fact that the Republic of Coruscant had never been hit by an atomic bomb. The Vaults started out within metropolitan areas as underground cities with reinforced ceilings for dual use as public spaces (malls, etc) and bomb shelters in times of war, similar in principle to the London Underground during the Blitz in World War II.
In the post-9/11 world, fallout shelters were deemed necessary to protect entire populations in an urbanized metropolitan area from fallout in an event of a nuclear holocaust.
Fun Facts
Both CivGeneral and Stylesrj used Vault 112 in their comics. Whereas CivGeneral used it as a stand-in for a Coruscanti vault, Stylesrj used it as an Enclave remnant base.
