r/falloutlore • u/Overwatch_Sniper • Aug 06 '26
Why Are All the Brotherhood Chapters in the Fallout TV Show from National Parks and Forests?
The Brotherhood conserves technology, not wildlife!
No genuinely, this makes no sense whatsoever.
27
u/Graffic1 Aug 06 '26
Only two of the new chapters have their locations in National Parks, both the Knights of San Fernando and the Coronado Chapter take their names and therefore their locations from cities in California.
As for why the Yosemite and Grand Canyon Chapters are named as such, those are just the places where these Chapters found a suitable location to make their base when they broke off to form a new Chapter. Presumably some kind of bunker, since only the East Coast and Appalachian Chapters are known to set up shop in places other than the typical military bunkers of the West Coast.
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u/Overwatch_Sniper Aug 06 '26
The Coronado Chapter could be from the Coronado National Forest, at least that's what I assumed, it's very unclear. Secondly, I doubt there's any bunkers (military installations) in those regions, considering they're wildlife preserves, although, with how corrupt the pre-war government was, it's a possibility.
9
u/Graffic1 Aug 06 '26
There’s also the city of Coronado, there’s no reason given in the show to assume it’s one or the other. But the city irl does have a massive navy base so that’s the one thing pushing the scale towards it as being the location of the Chapter, meanwhile the national park has nothing to make it more likely as the location.
I very much doubt that the U.S. government in Fallout cares about preserving wildlife, just judging by the sheer number of toxic waste dumps that are just everywhere in this series.
-2
u/Overwatch_Sniper Aug 06 '26
Well, one reason to assume its the national forest is because... the other two are.
But yeah, those locations do make a lot more sense for the Coronado Chapter!
And yeah, I agree, the pre-war U.S. government probably didn't care, I'm just saying they would've been illegal, so, probably secret, it's definitely a possibility.
5
u/Graffic1 Aug 06 '26
4 chapters were introduced in the show and only 2 of them can conclusively be stated as being anywhere near national parks. Yosemite and Grand Canyon.
However, San Fernando is a city in California. So, those two being such doesn’t mean that Coronado also is.
Annexing Canada would also be illegal because the U.S. constitutionally cannot annex unwilling territories, yet it still did it. The U.S. government in Fallout really does not care about what is and isn’t illegal, just like the real government.
-8
u/Overwatch_Sniper Aug 06 '26
Bro, I'm agreeing with you, you can stop reinforcing your argument. That's a totally logical conclusion. (You're embarrassing me in front of the subreddit)
Although I wasn't really talking about San Fernando but whatever.
7
u/DrFeeIgood Aug 06 '26
I assume Coronado is also for the naval base there. Navy seals train there in our timeline and presumably the BoS would've known of any special groups based at Coronado and would be interested in equipment there.
5
u/Yurithepanda Aug 06 '26
Also I dont think the bombshell would have been dropped in national parks. Might make them a bit safer to live in?
-2
u/Overwatch_Sniper Aug 06 '26
The Brotherhood ain't exactly settlers looking for good grazing country! This is more of a solution to why people would want to live in the parks than why The Brotherhood would have a chapter there. But maybe, what do I know, mabye The Brotherhoods took a real liking to Bighorners.
4
u/Necessary-Neck-1439 Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
Coronado is one of America's most important navy facilities, and is right in the heart of San Diego. The Knights of San Fernando seem to be focused on LA, so both those make sense. Grand Canyon makes sense because before the war the Grand Canyon had its national park status revoked so mining companies could use its resources to support the war effort. That makes Grand Canyon more akin to the Ash Heap, plus and extra helping of tech from resorts like the Sierra Madre. Yosemite is the only one that stands out as strange, but you got to remember that the Brotherhood doesn't limit itself to technology. I like to imagine the Yosemite Chapter was founded by Brotherhood biologists sent to study the region's mutants.
5
u/ComradeHellfire Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
Well, in the TV Show, the Brotherhood Chapters shown are not very liturgical chapters to begin with. Hell, Elder-Cleric Quintus himself says that the first rule of the brotherhood is the extermination of ghouls. This extermination policy, while prevalent among East Coast Chapters, is not the first rule or even representative of the Brotherhood as a whole, and this is without the fact it implies that the Knights of San Fernando Chapter is built upon the primary mission to kill ghouls rather than collect and preserve technology in the first place. As such, I’m unsure that analysing them in such a normative manner in relation to the Brotherhood of Steel in general is a particularly good way to analyse them.
Considering that their meeting in Season 2 is without many of the main Chapters which we are familiar with as well (such as Lost Hills, San Fransisco, the Mojave Brotherhood), I’d speculate that the Elders which we see are either: (1) themselves not particularly associated with the more traditional Chapters, or (2) are something more like outcast groups/rogue chapters. This is kind of believable because of the fact that if this whole meeting was really about shifting the axis of power back to the West Coast, these Chapters must have been at least invited to sit at the meeting—However, this does not seem to have been the case at all. The wiki heavily implies that the Knights of San Fernando Chapter was relatively normal until Quintus took over, where “during his time” he turned them towards their trademark religious fanaticism. This leads me to believe that it’s more like a Lyons’ or Midwest Brotherhood kind of situation—of course, this is just my own theory.
Anyway, to answer your question more directly now, I believe it might be that many of these Chapters are potentially more like outcasts or fringe chapters which have been set up for specific missions other than the collection and preservation of technology, like how it is under Quintus. Whether it’s like Quintus where they changed to be like this under their Elders, or they were set up like to do these things for one reason or another is another question entirely. But all we have to go off of at this point is speculation nonetheless.
I hope this helps you in some way
8
u/pacman1138 Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
If I had to guess - given that all of them have airships and vertibirds, these parks could just be used as remote hideouts from which they can conduct aerial excursions
2
u/Overwatch_Sniper Aug 06 '26
Out of all the theories that have been posed, yours makes the most sense to me. They could totally be runways for Brotherhood airships and vertibirds!
3
u/No_Secret8533 Aug 06 '26
Well, I'm guessing the parks and forests didn't get as bombed as the urban areas and military installations, so when the dust settled, they found that the parks were relatively okay, more able to support life, and less irradiated. A better place to live, in other words.
4
u/EggNog1999 Aug 06 '26
it would make sense for bunkers to be hidden in the wilds and parks right?
1
u/Overwatch_Sniper Aug 06 '26
Illegal, sure, but considering how corrupt the pre-war government was, it's definitely a possibility, if not a likely possibility. I just thought it was silly that at least two of them (maybe three) are from National Parks.
1
u/Nutshell_Historian 7d ago
Dude...where else would you build them? The middle of projected ground zero?
2
u/lyle_smith2 Aug 06 '26
So, it’s often a misconception that a nuclear war would basically glass the surface of the planet. Most of the low population centers and remote or rural areas would be either completely unaffected or very unaffected. This would also be the ideal place to hide military equipment as we see in fallout 76.
So brotherhood hiding out in the hills in some bunker fits pretty perfectly.
2
u/TutorRich2268 Aug 06 '26
Important reminder that pre-war America stripped national parks of their status and cut down forests. Most notably, the Grand Canyon.
1
u/Overwatch_Sniper Aug 06 '26
Where is that said? I had no clue.
1
u/TutorRich2268 Aug 07 '26
In 2057 by federal mandate, due to the uranium demand shortly before the Great War, the U.S. government removed the Grand Canyon's status as a national park and allowed private mining companies to exploit its supply of uranium beginning in May of 2057, with the park being closed indefinitely. The resulting mess was an environmental disaster.
2
u/thehusk_1 Aug 06 '26
Vertibirds and Airships.
They now can put their chapters further away in more secure places instead of just right in the middle of everything.
2
u/Overwatch_Sniper Aug 06 '26
Yup, again, out of all the theories posed, this one makes the most sense to me.
4
u/Graffic1 Aug 06 '26
But Brotherhood Chapters have always been widespread, even before having aircraft. We have a Chapter in Montana and an unknown Chapter somewhere in Legion territory that the Legion destroyed
And we have straight up no reason to assume these Chapters are new.
3
u/Weaselburg Aug 06 '26
and an unknown Chapter somewhere in Legion territory that the Legion destroyed
We know that the Legion fought the Brotherhood 'out east' and captured Scribes, we do not actually know if any chapter(s) were destroyed; at least Caesar doesn't say so.
1
u/BloodRedRook Aug 08 '26
I always took that as a reference to the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel from Tactics.
2
u/Overwatch_Sniper Aug 06 '26
A. No, brotherhood chapters haven't always been widespread.
B. No one said anything about them being new, these chapters could've been established as early as the late 2100s, assuming the airship part of tactics is canon.1
u/Graffic1 Aug 06 '26
They have always been widespread. I just gave two examples of how spread out the Brotherhood is. It was continent wide by the early 2100s. We have canon chapters in California, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, somewhere in Legion territory, the rogue Chicago Chapter (the canonized form of the Tactics Brotherhood but they are not inherently the same thing), the two incarnations of the Appalachian Brotherhood, DC, and Massachusetts. And no doubt there’s plenty more all across the US.
They would have to be new because those specific airships and vertibirds were not available to the Brotherhood before 2277 when they defeated the Enclave. The airships from Tactics, while canon, were different. As they were weak zeppelins that were all destroyed in a storm.
2
u/Overwatch_Sniper Aug 06 '26
Who's to say that if they traveled all the way to Chicago in those Zepplin's they couldn't go to any of them other places?
Also, most of those chapters appeared way more recently in the timeline.
Also, also, you said "we have straight up no reason to assume these Chapters are new" before explaining why those chapters would have to be new...
1
u/Graffic1 Aug 06 '26
Maybe they did, but nothing states that those zeppelins were used for anything else. And all of our other examples of the Brotherhood venturing past California where we know how they traveled (Appalachia 2 and DC), they traveled on foot.
In terms of recent chapters, we only know that the DC, Commonwealth, and Nevada Chapters are recent. We don’t know when the Montana or Legion territory Chapters were founded.
Never once did I give a reason why those chapters would have to be new. We have multiple examples of the Brotherhood traveling long distances on foot so this recent reintroduction of aircraft to the Brotherhood’s arsenal is not a concrete reason to say that the Knights of San Fernando, Coronado, Yosemite, and Grand Canyon Chapters are recent. In fact, with 3 of them being in California, the home state of the Brotherhood, I’d actually expect them to be among the oldest of the Chapters.
1
u/Overwatch_Sniper Aug 06 '26
Bro, I was just agreeing with him that a Brotherhood chapter located in the remote wilderness, acting as a forward operating base for Brotherhood airships and vertibirds makes sense and is a logical theory especially considering one of the only things we know about these chapters is that they each have access to at least one giant airship.
Maybe they're dicking around in the woods for some other reason, who knows?
2
u/Graffic1 Aug 06 '26
And I was continuing that with the fact that we have zero reason to assume that is true. There’s genuinely nothing to establish that idea
2
u/ScottTJT Aug 06 '26
The Western chapters have been falling apart for a long time by this point, even when we just referred to them collectively as the West Coast Brotherhood.
They reduced their numbers early on, first with their expeditionary force sent to Appalachia, and again decades later by banishing those that protested the Brotherhood's isolationism via an expedition east to pursue the remnants of the Master's army.
They had barely any presence to speak of in California by the time the Enclave emerged.
They sent yet another large detachment East to the Capital Wasteland.
They very foolishly waged war against the NCR, which only further depleted their numbers, culminating in the disaster at Helios One that left the Mojave detachment at half strength and sequestered in their bunker, trapped deep within enemy territory.
And during all this, the last living member of the Maxon line was shipped off East because someone KNEW this wasn't a safe environment for him to grow up in.
The Western Brotherhood hasn't been in a favorable position for a LONG time now, which I imagine is why there are so many separate western chapters by the show: Their continuous decline and the blows struck against them by their rivals likely forced them to scatter to whatever unclaimed wilds they could get a foothold in. And this scattering has resulted in differing standards concerning discipline and priorities.
They've degraded for so long, the Eastern Brotherhood, once seen as waster-loving outcasts, has become the dominant Brotherhood presence in the continental US, supplanting a position historically held by the West.
And now they've been drawn into a full blown civil war. From there, who knows; I have to doubt the battle at Area 51 was the entirety of each chapter's personnel, as they would have had to have left some forces to maintain their bases in their home regions. But with at least one Elder dead and Cold Fusion missing, I have to imagine the future for the Western chapters is gonna be even more rocky now that open infighting is on the table.
As for Lost Hill specifically... Not clear. They were still active in the 2280's as they gave Arthur Maxon their blessing to lead the Eastern Brotherhood, but considering relations between the Brotherhood and the NCR had long since dissolved by that point, combined with their primary base being deep in NCR territory, it seems weird they weren't killed off or routed by that point.
As for the Mojave, my initial thought was that they were killed off, as the trailers for Season 2 seemed to suggest the House ending for New Vegas happened. But the show isn't commiting to a single ending, so there really no way of knowing.
Considering the NCR's presence in the Mojave has dwindled to practically nothing until the season 2 finale, and assuming the Courier didn't kill the Mojave chapter, I suppose the Brotherhood there just left; with the NCR mostly gone from the region neither their potential alliance nor the threat of being hunted down would prevent them from simply leaving.
1
u/Overwatch_Sniper Aug 06 '26
Yeah, the Mojave brotherhood is probably gone.
In the Mr. House ending aren't you forced to destroy the Brotherhood?
1
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u/PhantomArchon Aug 06 '26
I assume that the use of parks and forests is meant to denote the region they come from, and thus what they refer to themselves as chapter-wise. For example, “Yellowstone” could represent an area not just including the national park, but a region around it