Rant 290 / A Brief Tour of Fallout 3's Washington DC

Went travelling in the DC area last night. Took some photos and here they are.


It took some heavy fighting before I reached this area. Apparently it's the battleground for two or three factions: the Talon Company Mercs, the Super Mutants and maybe the Enclave (not sure about this last faction because they may be there due to my main quest which involved them invading the DC area).

The Lincoln Monument. Had to kill the Slavers (and brought the escaped slaves here to build their shelter for some good Karma) to get here. Lincoln didn't have his head until the escaped slaves arrived and reattached it.

The National Archives. I haven't been inside yet since I don't have any reason to.

The Washington Monument. I could have gone up to the top and taken a photo there but it was too cramped and I couldn't get a good angle. There was too much radio equipment from the nearby Galaxy News Radio station.

The Pentagon, or what's left of it. Over twenty years before I arrived, the Brotherhood of Steel swept this place clean and made this their HQ for the DC area. For all Fallout 3 players, this picture may be the least interesting of all since visiting this place is compulsory.

The most important place to go to and the hardest to reach in the whole map. This is what is left of the White House in the Fallout world. This, according to the backstory from Fallout 2, is Ground Zero, where the first nukes landed when China attacked the US at full force.

Highly radioactive, it took a combination of this Power Armour which gives me some radiation resistance, a Rad-X pill (dramatically increases radiation resistance) and over 60 points in Med skill (which further increases the potency of the Rad-X) to reduce the radiation I receive to 1 rad/sec.

I had to take the Utility Tunnel to this point where I am standing in this picture just so that I can have a closer view. This is the closest I can get. The rest of the area was walled off by rubble and blockades.

According to the Fallout Wiki, I can get a better view by cheating through the console and flying above. However it is currently pointless since there is only unfinished terrain in the crater.

Anyway, the backstory is that when the nukes landed in 2077, the US President and the Enclave (the remnants of the US Government) were already safely hidden around the globe. Therefore there is probably not going to be any quests that involve entering the White House to search the underground bunker.







After years of screwing with my sleep cycles, I have confirmed that eating a light meal will wake you up whether it is your normal sleeping hours or not, for at least half an hour. Two butter-and-ham sandwiches can wake me up for an hour at night. Milk doesn't do shit for me. Nothing I eat makes me sleepy, unless it's a sleeping pill or cough syrup.