You’ve seen the blue and yellow jumpsuits. Everyone knows the Vault Boy’s wink. But if you start looking into the lore behind fallout all vaults us locations, you realize pretty quickly that these weren't actually "shelters" in any traditional sense. They were petri dishes. Vault-Tec wasn't some benevolent corporate savior trying to preserve the American way of life after the Great War of 2077. They were running a multi-generational psychological and physiological study funded by the Enclave.
Most players stumble into a vault in Fallout 4 or the TV show and think, "Oh, another dungeon to loot." But the sheer scale of the fallout all vaults us network across the wasteland reveals a much darker story about human behavior under pressure. It's messed up. Honestly, some of the experiments were so cruel they make the Master's army look almost reasonable by comparison.
The Reality of the Vault Experiment
The Project Safehouse was never meant to save anyone. That's the big lie. Out of the 122 official vaults commissioned by the United States government, only a tiny handful—like Vault 3 or Vault 76—were actually "control" vaults designed to function exactly as advertised. The rest? They were built to fail or to test specific, often horrific, stressors.
Take Vault 11 in the Mojave. It’s arguably the most depressing story in the entire franchise. The inhabitants were told they had to sacrifice one person every year or the vault would kill them all. They formed political factions, held elections, and tore each other apart over who had to die. The kicker? If they had simply refused to sacrifice anyone, the vault would have opened and congratulated them on their humanity. Only one person survived the eventual mass suicide that followed that revelation. That kind of storytelling is why people are still obsessed with the fallout all vaults us lore decades after the first game dropped.
Where the Vaults Are Hiding
If you look at the map of fallout all vaults us sites, you’ll notice they cluster around major pre-war hubs. Boston, D.C., Las Vegas, and Southern California are the big ones. But the "US" part of that search is tricky because Vault-Tec had its fingers in every state, even if we haven't seen them all in the games yet.
The Commonwealth (Fallout 4)
In the ruins of Boston, you find a mix of the absurd and the tragic.
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- Vault 111: This is where you start. The cryogenic stasis was the experiment. The staff eventually revolted because they ran out of food, leaving the "popsicles" (the residents) frozen indefinitely while the guards starved or fled.
- Vault 81: This one is a rare success story. It was supposed to be a medical lab where the residents were infected with every known disease to find a "universal cure." The first Overseer had a conscience and sabotaged the plan, allowing a secret community to thrive for 200 years.
- Vault 95: A recovery center for chem addicts. They were doing great for five years until Vault-Tec "discovered" a hidden stash of drugs just to see if the residents would relapse. Spoilers: they did. It was a bloodbath.
The Capital Wasteland (Fallout 3)
D.C. has some of the most iconic fallout all vaults us entries.
- Vault 101: "No one ever enters, and no one ever leaves." This was a test of isolationism and the role of an omnipotent Overseer.
- Vault 108: Gary. Just... Gary. This vault was testing cloning, and things went south when the clones only knew how to say their own name and became incredibly violent.
- Vault 87: This is the birthplace of the Super Mutants in the East. It wasn't a shelter; it was an FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus) laboratory.
Why Did They Do It?
You have to ask yourself: why spend billions of caps (or pre-war dollars) on these experiments if the world is ending? The Enclave—the remnants of the US government—wanted to colonize other planets. They viewed the vaults as a way to gather data on long-term isolation, social engineering, and radiation exposure. They needed to know how humans would react to being cramped in a tin can for a century before they sent them to Mars or wherever they planned to go.
It’s cynical. It’s cold. It’s quintessential Fallout.
The fallout all vaults us database isn't just a list of locations; it's a map of human depravity. Even Vault 76, the "shining hope" of the series, was just a way to ensure the Enclave and the government had a "reclamation" force to secure the nuclear silos of Appalachia. They weren't rebuilding for the people; they were rebuilding for the power structure.
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The Cultural Impact of Vault-Tec
The reason fallout all vaults us remains a top search term is that the concept of "the vault" has moved past the games. It’s a cultural shorthand for the loss of privacy and the dangers of corporate overreach. We see Vault-Tec’s influence in the Fallout TV show on Amazon, where the "Management" of Vault 31 is revealed to be the literal executives of the company kept in cryo.
The show did something brilliant by showing the "inter-vault" trade and communication between 31, 32, and 33. It added a layer of corporate bureaucracy to the apocalypse that feels terrifyingly modern.
Finding All the Vaults in Game
If you're actually trying to hunt down these locations in your playthroughs, here are the ones you absolutely cannot miss:
Vault 22 (New Vegas): The "green" vault. It was an experiment in botany and sustainable food. It worked too well. The spores turned the residents into "Spore Carriers"—basically mushroom zombies. The atmosphere here is pure horror.
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Vault 118 (Far Harbor DLC): This one is wild. It’s located under a hotel and involves a colony of Robo-brains who were formerly the ultra-wealthy elite of the area. It’s a murder mystery quest that perfectly captures the "eat the rich" vibe of the series.
Vault 34 (New Vegas): This vault was overstocked with weapons and had no locking mechanism on the armory. It created a culture of gun-nuts who eventually blew the door open and left to become the Boomers at Nellis Air Force Base.
Breaking Down the Numbers
There are supposedly 122 vaults, but we only know about a fraction of them.
- Fallout 1: Vaults 13, 15, and the Glow (Vault 12).
- Fallout 2: Vaults 8 (Vault City), 13, and 15 again.
- Fallout 3: Vaults 76 (mentioned), 87, 92, 101, 106, 108, 112.
- Fallout: New Vegas: Vaults 3, 11, 19, 21, 22, 34.
- Fallout 4: Vaults 75, 81, 88, 95, 111, 114, 118.
- Fallout 76: Vaults 51, 63, 76, 79, 94, 96.
Identifying a "True" Vault
Not everything with a gear-shaped door is a real vault. There are "pulowski preservation shelters" (those little blue tubes on the street) which are basically coffins. There are also private bunkers built by people like the Pulskis or the Hillside families. To be part of the fallout all vaults us official list, a location has to be commissioned by Vault-Tec.
One of the weirdest ones is Vault 114 in Fallout 4. It was designed for the wealthy elite of Boston, but the experiment was to force them to live in cramped, squalid conditions with a total incompetent as their Overseer. They never even got to finish it before the bombs fell, which is why Nick Valentine ends up being held there by mobsters. It’s a great example of how the lore uses environmental storytelling to explain the pre-war social tensions.
Actionable Next Steps for Vault Hunters
If you want to master the lore and gameplay of fallout all vaults us, here is how you should proceed:
- Check your Terminal Entries: Most people skip the text on the computers inside vaults. Don't. That’s where the "Experiment Logs" are. They usually reveal the exact moment things went wrong.
- Look for the "Vault-Tec Regional HQ" in Fallout 3: This building contains the location data for several vaults in the D.C. area. It's a high-level area but worth the trip for the lore.
- Play the "Vault-Tec Workshop" DLC: In Fallout 4, this allows you to become an Overseer. You can actually run your own experiments on settlers. It’s a great way to understand the mechanics of how these structures were built and managed.
- Watch for environmental clues: If you see a lot of white jumpsuits or specific toys left behind, pay attention. Vault-Tec used subtle psychological triggers (like the color of the walls or the frequency of the white noise) to influence behavior.
The vaults aren't just ruins. They are the most honest look at what the Fallout universe thinks about humanity. We are resilient, sure, but we’re also incredibly easy to manipulate when we’re scared and underground. Keep your Pip-Boy handy, because there are still plenty of vaults in the US we haven't found yet.