Fallout Timeline Explained: Every Game and the TV Show in Chronological Order, From the Great War to 2296

Bethesda has confirmed remasters of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 5 is in pre-production, Obsidian is building a new Fallout game, and the Prime Video series is heading into its third season. With so many entry points into the wasteland, it is the perfect time for a complete Fallout timeline explained guide: from the alternate history that led to the Great War of 2077, through every main game in story order, to the TV show in 2296 and the controversy around Shady Sands.

Fallout’s lore is spread across more than a dozen games, terminals, holotapes and a live-action series. We stick to what the games, the show and official developer statements establish, and anything that goes beyond that is clearly marked as speculation.

⚠️ Spoiler Warning ⚠️ This article spoils the main stories of Fallout 1, 2, 3, New Vegas, 4 and 76, as well as Seasons 1 and 2 of the Fallout TV series.

🧾 Quick Facts: The Fallout Timeline at a Glance

• Point of divergence: shortly after World War II, history splits from ours into an atomic-age future
• 2052 to 2077: the Resource Wars, the New Plague and the Sino-American War
• October 23, 2077: the Great War, a global nuclear exchange that lasts about two hours
• Earliest game in the story: Fallout 76 (2102)
• Latest point in the timeline: the Fallout TV series (2296)
• Coming next: Fallout 3 and New Vegas remasters, a new Obsidian project and Fallout 5, none of them dated yet

☢️ Before the Bombs: The Alternate History Behind Fallout

Fallout takes place in an alternate history that splits from our own shortly after World War II. In this version of the world, vacuum tubes and atomic power drive progress, so the United States develops robots, energy weapons and nuclear-powered cars while its culture stays frozen in a 1950s look of diners, jingles and Cold War paranoia. The country is also reorganized into 13 commonwealths.

The road to the apocalypse begins with an energy crisis. As oil runs out, the Resource Wars break out in 2052, the United Nations falls apart that same year, and the European Commonwealth and the Middle East destroy each other in a long war over the last oil fields. In 2053, a pandemic known as the New Plague spreads across the world, and America becomes ever more paranoid, militarized and authoritarian.

In 2066, China invades Alaska, starting the Sino-American War. The United States later forcibly annexes Canada, a process that begins in 2072 and is completed in 2076. By 2077, the US has retaken Alaska and invaded mainland China.

💥 What Happened in the Great War of 2077?

On the morning of October 23, 2077, the bombs fall. The Great War is a global nuclear exchange that lasts only about two hours, but it wipes out modern civilization. Who fired first has never been settled in the games, and it remains one of the series’ deliberate mysteries.

Survivors who were caught in the radiation without dying can turn into ghouls, people with greatly extended lifespans and badly rotted bodies. Those exposed to the Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV), a pre-war government project, can become Super Mutants. Other pre-war creations, like the genetically engineered Deathclaws, escape into the wild and become apex predators.

🚪 Vault-Tec and the Vault Experiments

Decades before the war, the US government commissioned Vault-Tec to build huge underground shelters called Vaults. Hundreds of thousands would have been needed to protect the population, but only 122 were built, and most were never meant to save anyone. Only 17 were control Vaults that worked as advertised. The rest were social experiments.

• Vault 11: residents were told they had to sacrifice one person every year
• Vault 12: the door was designed not to close, exposing residents to radiation
• Vault 87: the main Vault for FEV experiments and the source of Fallout 3’s Super Mutants
• Vault 111: residents were frozen in cryogenic suspended animation, which sets up Fallout 4

The Fallout TV series takes this idea even further and shows Vault-Tec executives preparing for, and profiting from, the end of the world. More on that below.

⚔️ Who Are the Main Factions in Fallout?

Several factions shape almost every chapter of the Fallout timeline:

• The Brotherhood of Steel: founded by US Army Captain Roger Maxson, who mutinied after learning about the FEV experiments at Mariposa Military Base. His soldiers survived the war there and later moved to the Lost Hills bunker, becoming a techno-religious order that hoards pre-war technology.
• The Enclave: the secret remnant of the pre-war US government and its elite, who see themselves as the only true Americans and want to wipe out everyone tainted by mutation.
• The New California Republic (NCR): a democratic republic that grew out of the town of Shady Sands, founded by Vault 15 dwellers.
• Caesar’s Legion: a slaver army modeled on ancient Rome, founded in 2247 by Edward Sallow.
• The Institute: a secretive scientific society beneath the ruins of the Commonwealth Institute of Technology in Boston, creators of human-like androids called synths.

Their currency of choice, by the way, is the humble bottle cap, which we break down in our explainer on why bottle caps are the currency of the Fallout universe.

🌲 Fallout 76 (2102): Reclamation Day in Appalachia

Fallout 76 is the earliest game in the timeline, set just 25 years after the bombs.

Although it was released in 2018, Fallout 76 is the earliest game in the Fallout timeline. It takes place in 2102, 25 years after the Great War, in West Virginia. Vault 76 was built to house some of America’s best and brightest, and its residents emerge on Reclamation Day to recolonize the wasteland.

Appalachia is already empty when they arrive. Its survivors have been wiped out or driven away by the Scorched, humans infected by a plague, and the Scorchbeasts, giant mutated bats tied to an Enclave bioweapon. Guided by the Enclave’s AI MODUS, the player launches a nuke at the Scorchbeast nest and kills the Scorchbeast Queen. Later updates bring human settlers and raiders back to the region and, with Steel Dawn, send a Brotherhood of Steel expedition all the way from California.

💧 Fallout 1 (2161): The Vault Dweller and the Master

Back on the West Coast, Vault 15 dwellers found the town of Shady Sands in 2142, led by Aradesh and later by his daughter Tandi. The original Fallout begins in 2161 in Southern California. The water chip of Vault 13 breaks, and the Overseer sends the Vault Dweller out to find a replacement before the water runs out. The search leads through Shady Sands, Junktown and the Hub, and the chip is finally found in the ruins of Vault 12, beneath the ghoul city of Necropolis.

The real threat is bigger. Humans are being kidnapped and dipped in FEV vats at Mariposa Military Base to create an army of Super Mutants, led by a monstrous being called the Master, who wants to force all of humanity into mutant “unity”. His front organization, the Children of the Cathedral, hides his base below their cathedral. The Vault Dweller destroys the vats and stops the Master, either by killing him or by convincing him that Super Mutants are sterile and his plan is doomed. As thanks, the Overseer exiles the hero, fearing that their stories would lure other residents out of the Vault.

In the decades that follow, Shady Sands grows into the capital of the New California Republic, founded in 2186, with Tandi as its long-serving president.

🛡️ Fallout Tactics (2197): The Brotherhood in the Midwest

The spin-off Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel is set in 2197 and follows a Brotherhood chapter that ends up in the Midwest. Its canon status has long been debated by fans, but Bethesda’s Emil Pagliarulo said in 2020 that elements and lore from Tactics have been used in Bethesda’s later Fallout games.

🌱 Fallout 2 (2241): The Chosen One and the Enclave

Fallout 2 takes place in 2241, eighty years after the first game. The exiled Vault Dweller has founded the tribal village of Arroyo, which is now suffering the worst drought on record. The village elder, the Vault Dweller’s daughter, sends her child, the Chosen One, to find a Garden of Eden Creation Kit (G.E.C.K.), a device designed to rebuild civilization.

The trail leads back to Vault 13, but by the time the Chosen One returns home, Arroyo’s people have been kidnapped by the Enclave. From their base on an offshore oil rig, the Enclave plan to release an airborne version of FEV that would kill every living thing with mutated DNA, which in practice means almost everyone outside their ranks. The Chosen One frees the prisoners, kills President Dick Richardson and the cybernetic Super Mutant Frank Horrigan, and destroys the Oil Rig. With the G.E.C.K., Arroyo becomes a thriving community.

🏛️ Fallout 3 Story Explained (2277): Project Purity

The Capital Wasteland, where clean water decides the fate of an entire region.

Fallout 3 moves the series to the East Coast. In 2277, 200 years after the Great War, the player grows up in Vault 101 near Washington, D.C. After their 19th birthday, their father James (voiced by Liam Neeson) leaves the Vault without a word, and the Lone Wanderer follows him into the Capital Wasteland.

James and his late wife Catherine once worked on Project Purity, a giant water purifier inside the Jefferson Memorial that could clean the irradiated water of the Potomac. James wants to finish it, but the Enclave storms the memorial under Colonel Augustus Autumn, and James dies protecting the project. The Lone Wanderer allies with the local Brotherhood of Steel, retrieves a G.E.C.K. from Vault 87 and is captured and taken to Raven Rock, where the Enclave’s leader, President John Henry Eden, turns out to be an artificial intelligence. Eden wants the purifier spiked with a modified FEV virus that would kill every mutated being who drinks the water.

With the giant robot Liberty Prime leading the charge, the Brotherhood retakes the memorial. The purifier must be activated by hand in a room flooded with radiation, so either the Lone Wanderer or Sentinel Sarah Lyons sacrifices themselves, with the option to add Eden’s virus. The Broken Steel add-on later lets the player survive and continue the story.

🎰 Fallout: New Vegas Story Explained (2281): Hoover Dam

By 2281, the NCR has pushed east into the Mojave, and its flag flies over Hoover Dam.

Fallout: New Vegas, developed by Obsidian, is set in 2281 in the Mojave Wasteland around Las Vegas. It is not a direct sequel to Fallout 3, but it is the direct continuation of the West Coast story of Fallout 1 and 2. A Courier carrying a mysterious Platinum Chip is ambushed by the casino boss Benny, shot in the head and left in a shallow grave. The Securitron Victor digs the Courier out, and Doc Mitchell in Goodsprings patches them up.

The hunt for Benny pulls the Courier into a three-way struggle for the region. The NCR has expanded east and holds Hoover Dam. Caesar’s Legion wants to take it and conquer the Mojave. And Mr. House, the pre-war RobCo tycoon who survived for centuries in a life-support chamber inside the Lucky 38 casino, rules the New Vegas Strip with his Securitron robots. The Platinum Chip turns out to be the key to upgrading his robot army.

Everything comes down to the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. The Courier can help the NCR, the Legion, or Mr. House win the region, or take over the Securitrons with the reprogrammed robot Yes Man and make New Vegas independent. The game never declares one ending canon.

❄️ Fallout 4 Story Explained (2287): Vault 111 and the Institute

Vault 111 froze its residents for centuries, and only one walked out again.

Fallout 4 is the only main game that shows the day the bombs fell. On October 23, 2077, the player, their spouse and their baby son Shaun reach Vault 111 near Boston just in time, only to be frozen in cryo pods. At one point they are briefly woken and watch the mercenary Conrad Kellogg kill their spouse and take Shaun. When the pods finally fail, the Sole Survivor steps out into the Commonwealth in 2287, 210 years after the war and ten years after Fallout 3.

The Commonwealth lives in fear of the Institute, which replaces people with synths. After tracking down Kellogg, the Sole Survivor builds a teleporter into the Institute and learns the big twist: Shaun was taken 60 years earlier, not recently, and is now the Institute’s elderly director, known as Father. The player then picks a side in the war for the Commonwealth: the Institute, the Brotherhood of Steel under Elder Arthur Maxson, who arrives from the Capital Wasteland on the airship Prydwen, the settlement militia of the Minutemen led by Preston Garvey, or the Railroad, an underground group that frees synths.

📺 Where Does the Fallout TV Show Fit in the Timeline?

The Prime Video series, created and run by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner with Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy as executive producers, is canon to the games. Its main story is set in 2296, the furthest point in the Fallout timeline so far, nine years after Fallout 4 and 15 years after New Vegas. Flashbacks also show the years before the Great War.

Season 1 (April 2024) follows Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), who leaves Vault 33 to rescue her father Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), the ghoul bounty hunter The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), who was once the pre-war actor Cooper Howard, and the Brotherhood squire Maximus. The finale reveals that Vault-Tec executives, including Cooper’s wife Barb, planned to drop the bombs themselves, that Vault 31 holds frozen Vault-Tec managers, and that Hank was the one who destroyed Shady Sands, the NCR’s capital. It ends with Lee Moldaver activating a cold fusion reactor and Hank escaping toward New Vegas.

Season 2 (December 2025 to February 2026) brings Lucy and the Ghoul to the Mojave. The NCR is broken, Caesar’s Legion has split into rival factions after Caesar’s death, and Robert House (Justin Theroux) appears in pre-war flashbacks working on mind-control chips. The finale sees the Legion moving on New Vegas, Hank losing his memory to his own control chip, and the Ghoul finding his family’s cryo pods empty, with a clue pointing to Colorado. A post-credits scene teases Liberty Prime.

🔥 What Happened to Shady Sands? Is New Vegas Still Canon?

The biggest timeline controversy around the show is the fall of Shady Sands. In Season 1, a chalkboard in Vault 4 dates the fall of Shady Sands to 2277, four years before New Vegas, a game in which the city is still the thriving capital of the NCR. Many fans feared the show had erased New Vegas.

Bethesda pushed back right away. Design director Emil Pagliarulo answered the question of whether New Vegas is still canon with “Of course it is.” Todd Howard told IGN that everything in the previous games, including New Vegas, happened, and that the fall mentioned on the chalkboard refers to something before the nuke itself.

Season 2 then showed the attack in a flashback: a man controlled by a brain chip smuggles a nuclear bomb into Shady Sands on a caravan, young Maximus survives in a refrigerator, and Hank receives the confirmation on his Pip-Boy. Since Shady Sands is still standing in 2281, the attack must come after New Vegas. Fan wikis estimate it at around 2283, but treat that exact year as an estimate rather than a confirmed date.

🔮 What Comes Next for the Fallout Timeline (Speculation)

The confirmed facts first. In July 2026, Bethesda Game Studios confirmed that it is working on remasters of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, without release dates, that Fallout 5 is in pre-production, and that Obsidian is working on a new Fallout project with Bethesda. Walton Goggins has also shot his final scenes for Season 3 of the show, as we covered in our report on the Ghoul’s Season 3 goodbye, and no release date has been announced yet. Everything below goes beyond what has been confirmed.

• Colorado and the Enclave: the Season 2 finale points the Ghoul toward Colorado and confirms Hank’s Enclave ties, so many fans expect Season 3 to explore the Enclave’s surviving power base. Nothing about its setting is official.
• A canon New Vegas ending: the show’s broken NCR and fractured Legion hint at what happened after 2281, but no ending of New Vegas has been officially declared canon.
• Obsidian’s new game: fans hope for a return to the West Coast storyline, but its setting and timeframe have not been announced.

🎮 Fallout Games in Chronological Order

If you want to experience the Fallout timeline in story order rather than release order, this is the sequence of the main games and the show:

1. Fallout 76 (2102)
2. Fallout (2161)
3. Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel (2197)
4. Fallout 2 (2241)
5. Fallout 3 (2277)
6. Fallout: New Vegas (2281)
7. Fallout 4 (2287, with a prologue in 2077)
8. Fallout TV series (2296, with flashbacks to 2077 and earlier)

Each game tells a mostly self-contained story, so you can start anywhere. Newcomers usually have the easiest time with Fallout 4 or the show, while New Vegas rewards players who know the West Coast history of Fallout 1 and 2.

❓ Quick Questions About the Fallout Timeline

When did the bombs drop in Fallout?
On October 23, 2077. The Great War lasted only about two hours.

Which Fallout game comes first in the timeline?
Fallout 76, set in 2102. The original Fallout follows in 2161.

Is the Fallout TV show canon?
Yes. Bethesda worked on the series, and it is set in 2296, after every game.

Is Fallout: New Vegas still canon?
Yes. Both Emil Pagliarulo and Todd Howard have confirmed that the events of New Vegas happened.

Who destroyed Shady Sands?
In the TV series, Hank MacLean of Vault-Tec is responsible. The bomb is smuggled into the city by a man controlled through a brain chip.

Final Words

From a two-hour war in 2077 to a broken Mojave in 2296, the Fallout timeline tells the story of a world that keeps rebuilding while the same old powers keep pulling it back toward ruin. With Fallout 3 and New Vegas returning as remasters and the show heading into Season 3, there has never been a better time to catch up. Want another timeline next? Read our Mass Effect timeline explained or the GTA timeline explained.

Keep the adventure going! Check out more Gaming News on Gamersuniverse.

Picture Source: Bethesda Softworks (Fallout 76 on Steam), Bethesda Softworks (Fallout 3 on Steam), Bethesda Softworks (Fallout: New Vegas on Steam), Bethesda Softworks (Fallout 4 on Steam)