Robots, radio, games, lore, stories, community, just press play. Welcome to the Fallout Lorecast, the podcast that explores the boundaries of our knowledge about the world of Fallout. Wastelanders and adventurers welcome back to the Fallout Lorecast. We are digging back in this week to more of the businesses across the Fallout games and even the TV show.
This should be fun because we have quite a mix of things. We finally made it out of the bees. We're now entering the seas. Then we've got a fun mix this week, a business that is a real world company that shows up in Fallout tactics.
We have a company that is only talked about in the TV show but has a very important role in the TV show, among others. So let's get into it. All right, I got it all pulled up on my pit boy. Let's get into this.
The first company this week is Calico. Calico is a weapons manufacturer and it simply goes by the name Calico in Fallout Tactics. But this is a direct reference to a real world weapons manufacturer that's still around today. Calico, light weapons systems.
And the similarities don't stop there, just like some of the other real world companies that show up in Fallout tactics. I don't know how they did it. I don't know if they just skirted copyright issues that didn't show up because the game only sold so well. I don't know how that works or if they actually got the rights to use these names.
But they do show up. And in the game, you have Calico Liberty 100 and the 9 millimeter Calico M950. These are the two weapons that show up in the game. The Calico Liberty 100 looks more like a kind of a small rifle.
I guess you could describe it. It's almost like a, I don't know guns very well, but it is a small gun in the game. It counts as a small gun. And here's a description from the game.
It says Calico Liberty 100, an extended variation of the Calico line. The Liberty is fully automatic. It carries a ludicrous amount of ammunition. It's called the 100, but it has a capacity of 50, which maybe you want to call it the Liberty 50.
But no, it's called the 100 and it has 50 rounds in it, 9 millimeter rounds. Now this is designed very similarly to some of the other real world Calico light weapons. In fact, both the 950 and the 100 mentioned in Fallout have similar setups. They have what is called in the real world a heliocall feed system.
I'm probably mispronouncing that. You guys know, I'm not the biggest gun nut. Some of you will know what this is. A little slot that goes on top of the gun that feeds ammo in from the top on like a P-90.
You're probably more familiar with the P-90 than something like these Calico guns. Also the real world products match kind of in the names. In fact, there is a real world discontinued M-950A in the Calico lineup. And among the current products, you still have a 9 millimeter Liberty 1 and Liberty 2 rifle.
You also have an M-100 FS or M-100S-22LR rifles. So these are actually very similar in the way they look in the game. So they really pretty much pull the actual guns and put them over into Fallout tactics. And they all have that same kind of magazine feed along the top of the gun, which allows it to save space and it fits more bullets into the magazine and kind of feeds them more efficiently from the top.
I'm sure if you're a gun that you probably have thoughts on whether this is a good design or not, and if you've ever heard of these guns before, I haven't until doing research on this episode. But this company's still around. It's been sold a few times. It's moved different locations.
Currently, they operate out of Hillsborough, Oregon. And that's the real world side of it. What about the fictional side of it? What about the Fallout tactics side?
Well, we don't really get any other information other than these two guns show up. I mean, I guess there's a little bit more information because they sound like this. That was the 950 and this is the 100. It packs a little bit more of a punch, as you can tell.
So there you go. Different guns that don't show up in Fallout games outside of Fallout tactics and based on a real world company. Who knew? So you know how in the Fallout TV show there are episodes where they are at a movie studio and then there's other episodes where they are back at that location in the current time period of the show and the movie studio is all falling apart and you can see kind of the remnants of that place in the wasteland.
That movie studio is called California Crest Studios. This was a motion picture company that was, of course, one among many in Hollywood before the bombs dropped. But this was the one that worked on the movie The Man from Dead Horse. This was one of Cooper Howard's famous films.
In fact, they were in the process of filming the sequel in January of 2077. We know this from a news ticker that shows up. It says, no one's beating this dead horse. The man from Dead Horse tops box office.
A sequel is already in the works at California Crest Studios. We do get another news ticker that says this, Nuka Cola mascots bottle and capy to appear an animated film from California Crest Studios. It will be the first in a 17-picture deal between the companies, 17-picture deal. I know some of you are tired of MCU movies, 17 pictures of bottle and capy seems ridiculous.
But hey, who knows? Maybe they are huge, I mean, they are huge stars. They're part of Nuka Cola. Nuka Cola is a big important company that everybody knows about and maybe kids love watching their cartoons.
Who knows? Maybe these are cartoons more for adults, like, I don't know, Rick and Morty or something, South Park. Maybe? I don't know, but that's a lot of different deals.
Anyway, this goes to show that they are a studio, an actual film company that is pretty diverse because they're doing these kind of gritty westerns, they're doing these Nuka Cola sort of things. In fact, it seems like this is where they're going to film some of those advertisements for Nuka Cola. So they seem in connection with these other big companies like Nuka Cola and who knows whoever else is involved with this, but it all seems like it's wrapped together. The more information we get in these flashbacks from the TV show, the more we can tell exactly how connected all of these businesses were, especially the big ones, a big studio company connected to a big soft drink company.
And that's just the beginning because at the studio they were using Mr. Handy's, so there may be some connection there to General Atomics. And who knows who's on the boards of these companies and may be connected to things going on in the enclave or the government, or Vault Tech. Vault Tech's running ads through this company.
It seems like there's probably a lot of other connections going on. And this is just one of those other businesses that we don't hear about very often, but it's probably totally connected to the rest of these groups and maybe partly to blame for the end of the world. And speaking of the end of the world, of course, Cooper comes back to this location as the ghoul later on with Lucy and you can see that he recognizes this place. In fact, you can see the logo on a broken down tour bus along the side, says California Crest Studios, all in the script that is still legible.
And there's some broken down buildings and other other things that are just kind of left around from where the studio was at the moment the bombs dropped. One fun little detail is if you go back in time and you look at the studio, then in the background, you can see a big statue, a woman who is standing on one foot, arching up, holding a wire frame sphere or globe of some sort. And when you go back to the wasteland at the current day stuff, that same statue was there, but is absolutely falling apart. It looks rusty and pieces are missing and the sphere itself is dented and dropped to the ground.
If you want to go back and rewatch it before season two, that's from the episode The Head, if you are just looking through the titles and you go watch it again and check out where California Crest Studios shows up in the TV show, but nowhere in the games, at least yet. That could always change. All right. So the next one on the list is CalPower, C-A-L-P-O-W-E-R and you might be thinking, OK, what even is that?
What if I told you it was a component or at least a business that creates a component that works in a Mr. Handy model. And the reason that we know this is because in order to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Fallout 1's launch, in September 21st of 2007, Chris Taylor, the lead designer for Fallout 1, released a document called Mr. Handy Design Document at the No Mutants Allowed during the celebration of the 10 year anniversary.
This design document details things about the Mr. Handy type of robots and the components that go together to make them, but also how they work in regards to the GURPS system. And you might be wondering what's the GURPS system because it does come up every so often, but not very commonly. GURPS stands for generic universal role playing system.
This was a design system by Steve Jackson Games that detailed how things should work mechanically. If you're going to attack something, how damage and all of that stuff works. This didn't actually work its way in to Fallout because of a licensing disagreement or whatever, but this document comes from a time before that change was made. So in the document, you have references to how many points work for whatever and how that stuff is laid out.
What's most interesting here is that it details some of the features of a Mr. Handy and how it works here. Let me just read through the beginning of this because it's interesting. The Mr.
Handy series of robots was first brought to market in 2037 as a general construction and maintenance unit by General Atomic International, primarily used in the United States in Mexico, where it was the leader in sales after the Mexico City quake of 2042. And Mr. Handy was a reliable robot, an early bug that caused interference in the operation of the multiple arms was fixed with a hardware update in 2039 with no major problem since then. A key selling feature is the nuclear power unit, a model 238B licensed from cow power and self maintenance modes.
And then it goes on and gives you more details about propulsion and how the brain works or at least the size of the brain and the communicator, the accessories, the power system, all of that kind of stuff. This is the one product or business product from a different business that is mentioned in the design of this robot. So it probably is important, you would think, why mention that in the name of a business and give a specific model? I guess it's just for details sake to make it feel more real, but we don't get cow power anywhere else.
I'm assuming California, California Power, this was a company that was probably well known by other robotics and electronic designers because they were making nuclear power units that could be used in a model like a Mr. Handy, which can go wherever and be used for whatever you want it to use it for. It's not just a stationary product. It seems like it must be safe enough to do that, although it is fall out, so who knows?
But it also needs to be mentioned that General Atomics outsourced this product from this company. General Atomics could most likely have manufactured a lot of these things themselves or gotten the components or built them. But in the case of the Mr. Handy design, it made more sense to outsource these directly from cow power.
Now they don't show up anywhere else, but that doesn't mean that they won't. Again, we've seen a number of these businesses that get these little nods, these little details in weird little corners of fandom or the lore of these games and then they show back up in like 76 because the designers of 76 have been paying attention. They're looking back at these other products and businesses and going, how do we bring those back in? How do we continue to use the full expanse of the history of this game?
And I'm glad they're doing that because it's really cool. This one is hidden in a document that was released 10 years later. And the name of cow power doesn't show up in the games as far as I can tell anywhere. You get a Mr.
Handy, you look at the Mr. Handy box in Fallout 4, any of that stuff. You can't tell that cow power is anywhere. It's not labeled on parts or on the box that says components from these sources as well, nothing like that.
It's fairly low quality, like the smaller text you can read. So who knows? Maybe it could be there, but we can't actually see it. Anyway, cow power, another really weird one from the corner of the lore that now you won't forget because you'll be like, what powers are Mr.
Handy? Well, it's a cow power 238B nuclear power unit. So there you go. Speaking of robots and school tech companies, we need to move on to Cambridge Polymer Labs LLC.
This is a company that's referenced in Fallout 4 specifically for some interesting stuff. They have some impressive contracts with the United States military, at least did pre-war. For nanotechnology research and robotics that eventually get incorporated in to the design of liberty prime. All right.
So where do they get referenced? Well, we do have some conversations where they show up. There's one with Pam. Pam says, preliminary analysis complete.
Desdemona says, anything we need to move on. Pam responds affirmative. Codename, Patriot requires admin credentials for code defender security software. Cross-indexing CIT security administrators with 2077 Commonwealth Census records, filtering by surviving structures.
One match found. Bergman, Wilfred. Bergman, Wilfred, registered as co-owner of Cambridge Polymer Labs, estimated 81% chance of login credentials being located at this facility. SoulSurvivor says, what's at Cambridge Polymer?
Pam responds, Cambridge Polymer Labs LLC had several active military contracts, specializing in robotics. The region is currently classified as extremely dangerous. Desdemona says, after you get the password report back here with any luck, we'll have a game plan by then. So they show up in some of the dialogue, some of the quest dialogue specifically.
There's another quote where Molly says, the genesis of Cambridge Polymer Labs lies in the research of a group of brilliant graduate students, John L. Wood, Erica Woolham, and Wilfred Bergman met during their time together at CIT. This slide shows them at their graduation. Their research into nucleostrictive and piezoelectric polymers caught the attention of Colonel George Kemp in the fall of 2073.
In the spring of 2074, the company was founded with a generous grant provided by the Defense Experimental Research Project Initiative. The research produced here has resulted in several of the components used in the Liberty Prime Project that led to the successful defense of Anchorage. The company enjoys a strong relationship with the military and welcomes your addition to the research team that helps build a better America. But wait, there's more.
We know a good bit about this company because you actually get to check out this location unlike some of the businesses that keep coming up where it's like, oh, there's a sign on the building and you can't go inside. Now, with this location, you do go to. And when you check out the terminals, the story unfolds about what was actually going on here. Now, this is not one of those businesses that the bombs hit and all of a sudden the business goes under or just we never hear anything from them ever again.
Turns out there's more going on. If we start with Dr. Erica Elwood Woolham's terminal, it talks about Project Thesis. It says here, initial studies have led us to hypothesize that by taking a known piezoelectric material led as our conium tight, tight tonight, tight night, there you go, and properly applying a polymer of gold and lithium hydride that a localized conversion of ionizing radiation to electrical energy might be achieved.
This method of compact energy harvest may prove suitable for application to pre-existing power armor currently in use by the U.S. armed forces. So they weren't just working on stuff that works with Liberty Prime. They were working on other forms of technology that could even work with power armor to make it even better.
But of course, things don't go to plan. They start having some issues and setbacks and it pushes the project behind schedule. And Colonel Kemp, who was associated with these projects, became very upset and then threatened to pull funding after this didn't work out. The time frame here is just weeks before the Great War, and the team working on this spends those last few weeks trying to actually solve this problem, not knowing that the bombs were going to drop.
And before the bombs dropped, they don't solve the thermal dissipation problem. Dissipation. Dissipation is such a weird word. But things don't end there because even though the Cambridge facility takes a direct hit, the laboratory building was spared from the destruction, so they continue on.
But there is this interesting hint in one of the terminals that explains that the Colonel probably knew this was coming and actually warned the team of researchers in kind of this subtle way. In Bergman's terminal, we get this entry. Just got a very strange call from Colonel Kemp. He asked what the status on the project was, and when I explained that we were still behind schedule, he didn't seem angry like he normally would.
All he said was that it was very important that I keep the team working in the lab today and then I contact him as soon as the project is complete. It almost feels like he was trying to tell me something, but I can't imagine that. The next terminal entry says this. It was a warning.
He was trying to warn me. It's with a nuke. The lab was built to withstand nearly anything but a direct hit, but the EMP has blown out all the external communications. I told the team that there are training maneuvers going on around town, and I don't know how long they're going to buy that.
I need to find a way to get ahold of Colonel Kemp to see if they can extract us to a safe location. Even if I can find a working phone somewhere, I'll never be able to get through. Maybe if I can get ahold of a ham radio, I can try to reach him on an open channel? Things don't appear so good though because John Elwood's entry says this.
We have to finish the project. There are looters everywhere and people fighting in the streets. I managed to find a radio in some supplies, but caught a stray bullet in the shoulder on my way back. Between that and the radiation sickness, the past 36 hours have been held.
I finally managed to find the right frequency and get through to a military liaison, but he said that Kemp had left orders that they could only spare an extraction team for assets vital to war effort. If we try to have them get us without the project completed, he'll have us executed for treason. I have to keep them in the lab. We have to finish the project.
So that's what they do. They try to finish the project because the project will ensure their safety and ability to extract, or at least that's what they're hoping. The next entry says this, can't hold out much longer. There's been a problem with the reactor.
The shockwave from the initial blast must have cracked the containment lining, because there is a growing leak showing up on the detectors in the lab. To make matters worse, Will has been trying to hack into the administrative controls. I've been working to keep him out, but I think the wound in my shoulder may be going septic, and I don't know how much longer I can hold out. So the team at this point is scrambling to try to finish the project, maybe use this as a way to get out of the situation, but things continue to fall apart.
So when Bergman realizes that radiation is leaking into the lab, he seals it off, but then he cuts off part of the team, he traps Mary Goodman, another member of this group, inside this chamber. And then as things continue to heat up, Bergman tries to hack into the system to take control from Elwood. Elwood has been trying to maintain the system going and everybody doing what they need to do. But of course, Bergman panics tries to take over.
And in order to try to get out, he triggers the facility's defense system to just kind of fight his way out. Now Bergman is the only one with any combat training. None of the scientists have this, and this is going to be a terrible idea, so they need to stop him. Erica Woolham's entry tells us how close they actually were and how this kind of went down.
It's titled We're So Close. We've been unable to gather the samples needed to try the new dosing pattern. Elwood has locked himself in one of the labs and has been attempting to hack into the administrative systems. When we tried to get the U-238, we need from the isotope containment, he locked it down, leaving Mary stranded inside.
He said he is going to set the facility defense system so that it looks like the lab has been breached. This will unlock the clean room, but will also activate the automated defenses which will see us as attackers. He means to fight his way out, but that's suicide. He's the only one in the lab with military training, and we don't even have real weapons.
I've tried to tell him that we can complete the project, that we have the answer now, but he refuses to see reason and doesn't believe John will actually let us out. Quick side note, that's John Elwood, the other of the three that I mentioned before. We've managed to pull down part of the ceiling in C1, which will get us into the utility crawl space. It can't get us out, but it should be able to get us above the lab.
Will has barricaded himself in. I don't like it, but we have to get the drop on him. So she's planning to sneak attack him while he's in his office before all of this goes down. Now, like so many things, and follow it.
It doesn't play out well. Everybody ends up, well, dead or, or goolified or whatever. John has this infected gunshot wound and, well, he turns into a feral ghoul. Eric attempts to take Bergman out in his office, but is killed by a rigged gun that Bergman set up as self-defense.
Basically, everybody dies. They get radiation poisoning. A character named Tom Franklin chooses to commit suicide, so as not to die by radiation poisoning. But what really happens here is Bergman's plan fails.
He tries to set off the defenses, the lockdown maintains, and then nobody gets out. Everyone is trapped. And most of the rest of the group that is there is turned into feral ghouls. This includes both John Elwood, as I mentioned before, but then also Wilfred Wilfred, Wilfred.
I've got to get names right. Wilfred Bergman, also goolified. So of the three main characters that were behind this lab, Elwood, goolified. Bergman, goolified.
And Willem tried to attack Bergman and died of a gunshot, and then everyone else is goolified as well. And the only other person I've mentioned in the story so far is the Colonel, Colonel Kemp. Now, we don't have a conclusion for him. We don't know what happens.
Chances are he was deployed somewhere and had to fight or got blown up due to the bombs. But we do have one other little message from Colonel Kemp. This little scrap of paper, which states, you stupid maggots, first your sergeant tells me you were caught drinking on base. Then I find out a tank has gone missing.
If that tank isn't backed by 0600 tomorrow morning, spit shined so I can see my face in it. I will kick your asses up between your ears before I throw you in the brig for the duration. Colonel Kemp. Now, this is, we don't know when this was written probably before the events of the bombs dropping and everything else going on, but we do know that the plan was actually a really cool idea.
The idea here, the thing that they were trying to finish that they were hoping was going to get them pulled out of this location because it would be so beneficial to the military, was the research project to use these nucleostrictive and piezoelectric polymers in order to improve power armor. But what does that do? Well, it would have improved the power armor's lining to convert ionizing radiation into electrical electricity to power the suit's batteries. The idea would be that you could take some of the radiation that would be out in the world in order to maintain power on these suits so that they don't have to replace their batteries, which means the uptime would have been incredibly extended during times of war, times of necessity, wouldn't have to back out of the conflict in order to swap out a battery or something like that, which sounds really cool, but it never was actually solved.
It didn't come to fruition. So that's Cambridge Polymer Labs LLC. This is another one of those little businesses you will only hear about every so often, but it's very interesting. So one last note about this before we move on.
Both this company Cambridge Polymer Labs and CalPower reference the number 238. CalPower's the nuclear power unit is called the 238B nuclear power unit. And discussion around 238 shows up in the Polymer Labs stuff because they're talking about they need to get a U238 sample for the isotope containment. Why is 238?
Well, U238 is uranium. This is a natural uranium isotope that is able to undergo fission, which means it can be converted to a fizzile material, which means it can sustain a nuclear chain reaction. So there you go. I thought that was pretty cool and kind of a cool connection between those two businesses.
I know we didn't get through a ton of businesses today, but this last one was super dense and interesting. So I hope you enjoyed that. It's time for a quick break before we go. Thank our patrons and wrap up the show.
So don't go anywhere. I'll be right back. If you have any questions about nuclear. So I've got a fun new feature.
I'm rolling out for the show and you're not going to want to miss this. If you go to voiceline.app slash fallout, you can leave me a message, record a message, get it on the show. If you've got questions or comments, something you want me to respond to, please send it in their voiceline.app slash fallout. If you try to keep it below about two minutes, just for the sake of brevity and who knows, maybe we'll get on a future episode of the show.
I can't guarantee every single one of these will make it into an episode, but if it does, then you'll get featured. I'll play it on the show and then I'll respond and I'd love to hear your thoughts or questions or whatever. So send it over there and let me know what you're thinking. Also, I have to shout out our newest patron, Young.
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This is on Apple Podcast. So this is the only place I can see in American Apple Podcasts, but if you do leave this for other zones or whatever, that's extremely helpful. This one comes from scatter 2,400. Great Fallout Podcast.
This is a great Fallout lore podcast. I've listened to every episode in order up to date in the last couple months at work. I love Fallout and the lore. I'd like to make a suggestion on future episodes.
Could you do in-depth with all the companions from Fallout 4, New Vegas and Fallout 3, maybe the other fallouts as well. That's what you already did with a few companions from Fallout 4 was great. Love listening to their backstories. Keep up the awesome work.
Well, thanks. I have considered going back and doing more of the companions. This is one of those topics I find interesting when I'm really in the mood to talk about them, and I feel like having something novel and interesting to say about them. So I'll definitely keep that in mind.
This is something that I often think about and come back to, in fact, every so often I'll add another one in here or there, and there are definitely other companions to talk about for sure. It just depends on if I feel like I have something really relevant to say about them, because especially with some of the most popular ones from New Vegas, I feel like everyone already talks a lot about them online, but I'm sure I can dig some stuff up. So thank you for that recommendation. I'll definitely keep that in mind.
This one comes from Uncle Banjo. Uncle Banjo, that's a good name. Trying to catch up. My friend and I started playing TTRPG based on some write-ups and modifications done by one of them that is set in the fall universe.
I got my first taste to Fallout with three, then my system died, and I didn't really go back to gaming for years. With only a little bit of knowledge from the way back when and watching the TV show, I needed something more. And boy, howdy, did I find it. This podcast is great.
I'm learning so much. Now I want to buy the games and get into them again. Thanks for the great show. R0B0TS.
I guess that's me. P.S. Up to 29 of 356, but it's only been three weeks. I'm trying to catch up.
Don't worry. You've got plenty of time. Thank you for everybody support and for all of those comments and sharing with your friends, playing games with your friends and bringing up all of that kind of stuff. I really do appreciate that.
And the recommendations. Hey, I'd like more of this kind of episode absolutely helps with planning things out for the future. There you go. That's going to do it this weekend until next time.
Stay safe out there. And if you are working in a laboratory and they tell you not to leave, maybe don't leave because bumps fell and things are crazy. All right. Have a wonderful week.
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