partly inspired by my own recent adventures in real estate, partly by posts I’ve seen here discussing tangential issues, I’ve been thinking about the house in Sanctuary Hills.
on the face of it (literally the name) it’s the House of Tomorrow; it’s bright and shiny, it’s got all mod cons, not to mention that handy-dandy Vault just up the hill. it’s sometimes brought up as proof that Nate and Nora are hugely privileged for being able to afford such a fancy house; but it never really struck me as that luxurious.
a) the house itself isn’t that big; probably not much more than 70-75sq m which while only slightly below average for the UK is very small in comparison to the average US house (supposedly about 250sq m). it’s going to seem spacious to some - given my background I can attest to that - but it’s not exactly a sprawling McMansion.
b) the lack of foundations and modular structure of the houses on the estate suggest quickly, cheaply-built prefabs. the level of disrepair given the distance from the detonations and the almost pristine state of more fragile structures nearby (e.g. the trailers up by the vault) support that. and given the world we’re talking about, we can pretty much assume a lax approach to building regulations.
c) there’s almost no insulation to speak of, not that I’d expect the game to render that much detail in building materials. but those radiators we all scrap as soon as we get the workshop unlocked are tiny and often affixed to exterior walls, which given the lack of insulation would make them significantly less efficient. Sole ‘n’ Spouse may be chilling at home in short sleeves in October but when a nor'easter blows in I’m willing to bet they’d be wrapped in blankets and hugging Codsworth for warmth.
d) it’s not so hot location-wise either. this is a tiny and isolated estate of small houses about as far from the city as you can get. close to a Vault, yes, but not far from such delights as the robotics dumping ground, plus the quarry at Thicket Excavations that must have had plenty of heavy goods vehicles thundering down the roads nearby. there’s no medical facility, no school, no police station; in fact there’s not a single community-oriented building. anything like that would necessitate a trip into Concord, or further afield.
e) and on that note, the Red Rocket might well sell frozen TV dinners and maybe some individually shrink-wrapped vegetables but it’s probably a trip all the way to the Super-Duper-Mart to get… well, more frozen TV dinners, but a larger variety of them at least. might be stretching it to say it’s a food desert but it’s definitely not convenient.
and f) is for finally: just because it looks good doesn’t mean it’s expensive or unnecessary. poor people don’t automatically neglect their possessions to the point of decay. assistive devices might be expensive but they can be lifesavers. that poor people can’t have nice things and that seeking convenience is a sign of indolence is a gross fallacy.
I’m probably a) missing some details b) overthinking and c) projecting wildly due to my own background but it’s my blog, I can do what I want.
any thoughts? is your Sole slumming it in Sanctuary Hills or is it the nicest place they’ve ever seen? or do you sidestep the whole thing and have them live somewhere else entirely? I’m aware that as An English I’m not the authority on American real estate so I’d be interested to hear some other perspectives.
I also assumed that Sanctuary was a cheaply made and brand new community. I’d also say it was likely Vault-Tec footed the bill to turn the area into a residential area (The location is a park in real life, commemorating a part of the American Revolution. It would make sense that the Fallout universe would do something to smother it). The people who moved in would have to provide personal information to the patsy bank that would allow Vault-Tec to choose the perfect test subjects for their vault.
Everything in Sanctuary looked brand new and shiny because it really was new and shiny. Freshly built and maintained by robots like Codsworth so people wouldn’t see the cracks forming in the veneer. Even if Vault-Tec wasn’t responsible for the inevitable doomsday (I don’t think they are, it was just a tragic inevitability) they knew that armageddon was inevitable, and they banked on it coming long before the Sanctuary residents noticed how bad their homes really were.
I also headcanon that my sole survivor Nathan was extremely poor, so being offered this deal for a perfect suburbian life was too good to pass up. Several other veterans like him were also moved into the community, and they too were part of the vault program. It wasn’t exactly a military neighborhood, but it was darn close. And just full of juicy lab rats for Vault-Tec to exploit.
I’m 200% here for the Vault-Tec conspiracy theory tbh. market them as ‘affordable housing’, target veterans and/or young families, get both test subjects and a regular flow of income.
and that fatalistic view of ‘well the world’s not going to last that long so who even cares about the longevity of our building projects’ is a great addition. I mean… awful, but great. I grew up near a load of post-war prefabs that were built in a more hopeful ‘I’m sure we won’t need these for long!’ way but were still there 50 years later, leaking and disintegrating. really gives that an interesting twist.
The thing I find most interesting about Sanctuary Hills? Historical
accuracy. Those types of houses actually existed. They were built in the
late Forties/early Fifties by the Lustron Corporation as a solution to
the post-WW2 housing boom, caused at least in part by returning GIs who
needed homes for themselves and their families.
Lustron Corporation promotional material - note the metal accents near the porch, a unique feature of the homes which you can see in Fallout 4 too.
Lustron houses (the
brainchild of entrepreneur Carl Strandlund) looked pretty much the same
as the ones in Sanctuary Hills. They were prefabricated steel homes
with enamel tile cladding, designed to withstand natural hazards like
fire, lightning, rodent infestation, rust, decay, etc and were said to require very little (if
any) painting or other maintenance.
A happy homeowner hosing down her low-maintenance Lustron Home (house color: Surf Blue).
Sources vary somewhat regarding price (I’ve seen them listed as starting at $6,000 to $8,000 toward the beginning of the construction period) but a two-bedroom, one-bathroom home
like the one the Sole Survivor owned
would probably have cost something in the region of $10,000 to $12,000 by 1950… although that price would no doubt have
escalated quite considerably by 2077, in line with the insane levels of hyperinflation evident in Pre-War society.
Pre-War Sanctuary Hills - Sole Survivor’s house shown center.
The house colors we see in
Sanctuary Hills are also accurate - the original Lustron homes came in
Surf Blue, Maize Yellow, Dove Gray, and Desert Tan (some sources also
say pink was available, although I haven’t seen any evidence to that
effect). The metal roofs, pocket doors, tripartite windows and built-in
shelves that you see in Sanctuary Hills were present in the originals
too. Each house also had its own unique serial number on a metal plate
in the laundry room, although sadly we don’t see any evidence of those
in-game!
An example of the 2-bed Westchester Deluxe model, similar to the one the Sole Survivor and family would have lived in - the Westchester Deluxe was the only floor plan with a bay window in the living room.
A Lustron Home kit came in about 3,000 parts and was
usually constructed on a concrete slab foundation, with methods that we
can see in evidence in the West Everett Estates project in Fallout 4 - a
stroll around the neighborhood (carefully avoiding the Super Mutant
residents) shows that several of the homes were still under construction
at the time the bombs dropped on the Commonwealth.
A Lustron house with parts laid out for display - some assembly required!
Unfortunately
the Lustron Homes were a short-lived project, partly due to expense
(construction costs were greater than those of traditional wood-frame
houses), a large backlog in orders, and additional pressure from
Congress and trade unions, and the Lustron Corporation only got to make
the houses for a short period before it was forced to declare bankruptcy
in 1950.
However, many of the houses built in the Midwest and East Coast
still exist today, and some have even withstood hurricanes and other
natural disasters…
This one was hit pretty heavily by extreme weather - it survived! (Just!)
… so it’s not too surprising that a few of them managed
to hold out against the ravages of time and nuclear warfare either!
Not too bad for a community of prefabricated Pre-War homes. Sanctuary Hills might not have been a perfect Pre-War community, isolated as it was from the more immediate horrors of Boston, 2077 (food rationing, riots and martial law, not to mention military checkpoints, internment camps and other grim reminders that the country was anticipating nuclear war at any moment), but the houses themselves held up pretty well over the centuries. All in all, I’d say it was a pretty good investment on the part of Sole and their family.
(Vault-Tec, well, that’s another story. They probably should have asked Vault-Tec Guy about the money-back guarantee, or at least some sort of complaints policy.)
A video of an IRL Lustron House here for the curious, courtesy of the Ohio Historical Society:
I’m just looking at that pic of the parts laid out thinking I WANT TO BUILD THE THING. I’ve got a couple of allen keys and a hammer, that’s got to be enough, right?
