Why are Bottle Caps the Currency of Fallout?

Bottle

caps

are the standard form of

currency

in the post-war world of Fallout and are used throughout North America. The Fallout franchise itself has many unique iconic themes, from its Vault boy mascot to the Nuka Cola knockoff coke, however,

bottle

caps

do. seems to be the element that most brings the image of Fallout to mind for fans of the series in 2015, one fan even paid Bethesda 5 kilograms in

bottle

caps in exchange for the newly released Fallout 4. In this video, we will have an Investigate how and why bottle caps became the most common

currency

in the world of Fallout after the war.

When the dust settled and the fires died out following the devastation of the Great War, many survivors of the Wasteland struggled to survive. In the ruins of the world, what was once the richest nation on Earth was reduced to the smoking rubble of mutated disease and violence. The US dollar became worth the same as the paper it was printed on or perhaps even less, since it really couldn't. Burning the paper for warmth initially, the Wasteland residents' focus was only on survival until the next day, not giving much thought to the loss of wealth after the Great War, however, as crowds of people began to form The currency of organized groups began to take shape once again.

At first, the barter system was reintroduced throughout society. If a person knew a brahmana, he could exchange his milk with another settler in exchange for some of his crops of dumb fruits, although there were some mutually beneficial systems. disadvantages, but one there was no universal common measure of value between the goods exchanged. Secondly, if a person were rich in Brahman milk, he could not easily carry it with him at all times to exchange it for goods and also for a person. They could be lactose intolerant or maybe they just didn't want to drink the milk of a two-headed cow.

Wasteland is needed to be able to exchange goods and services throughout the Wasteland. They needed something lightweight, portable and accessible through the waist, but. Not too abundantly, in 2093 The Hub, the largest trading city on the West Coast, standardized bottle caps as the new currency of the Wasteland. The reason for doing so was mainly based on three factors: the bottle caps were durable, easy to transport, and accessible throughout the Wasteland. The cats were an exceptionally ideal item as the paint and metal type of the bottle caps were very specific, limiting the bead's chances of entering the market.

The technology to create new bottle caps had virtually been lost in the years following the Great War, although some bottle cap production factories still existed, they were few and far between the new California Republic in the subsidiary The Mercantile Companies of The nation have reclaimed all known bottle cap factories and thereby control the flow of caps into the Wasteland by limiting the amount of caps that can enter the Wasteland markets can protect against cap inflation and ultimately the caps may have been backed by something other than metal. The Hub's water merchants were able to standardize a certain number. of caps for a standard measure of water, meaning they were able to have a value-based system on an even more valuable Wasteland resource outside of this, from a pure developer standpoint, bottle caps had made more sense as post-apocalyptic currency when asked what Scott Campbell had said.

I remember my fellow Fallout designer asking how much something would cost in a store. I remember thinking what our in-game currency was. We went over some ideas, a pure barter system, no, that would be difficult for the player to understand the value of anything, for example, two more fights over a cup of coffee is that good bullets are the currency. I have to admit that bullets are definitely useful in Wasteland, but the idea was shot down when we realized that people would be very hesitant. using things like machine guns as each shot would directly reduce your bank accounts, that level of financial restriction wouldn't be pleasant and lastly credit cards, just the hard plastic cards of course but most of them would probably have melted in the nuclear firestorm, so I thought about what size shiny token you would find scattered among the piles of trash, common but not common enough to be everywhere.

Bottle caps, of course, and I like the idea of ​​Stringer caps on a cord that jingles when people take them out. The above is why cats were universally found to be the currency of the Wasteland, even from coast to coast, while it may seem like a lazy stroll, it makes just as much sense that the Wasteland capital would settle on bottle caps as its standard currency. from the East Coast, albeit severely. Lacking civil infrastructure and commercial enterprises from the West, East Coast communities were able to use bottle caps as they were commonly available, easily recognizable, and much more durable than pre-war government paper notes, canonically the east coast had started using bottles. tapas as money around the same time as the Hub, as seen in the events of Fallout 76 set in 2096.

This eventually occurred as a happy accident between the nuka-cola corporation and the White Springs Resort in their attempt to promote nuka-cola Quantum. White Springs' robots were programmed to accept bottle caps as a form of currency in what was intended to be a limited-time offer. Other money has been seen in the Universe before, with the NCR dollar even challenging bottle cap supremacy on the West Coast. For a time, in an effort to decrease dependence on cups, the NCR used its gold reserves to mint coins that were used to back its paper money, similar to the US of yesteryear;

However, once these gold reserves were destroyed in the Brotherhood War, the citizens of the NCR panicked. They rushed to transfer their paper money to the remaining gold reserves, then discovered it was worth much less than it had previously caused extreme financial losses. The NCR government had responded by completely eliminating the gold standard and establishing a fiat currency, but the outcome of the Brotherhood raids meant that many citizens distrusted their own government's money and preferred to sell bottle caps, and this sentiment persists even decades into the future as NCR citizens in Fallout New Vegas lament the fact that one bottle cap is worth two and a half Republic dollars, it had even been speculated that this was not a purely random occurrence, as the Hub Merchants conspired to reintroduce the bottle cap as currency, both out of contempt for the NCR currency crisis and also to retain their control of merchant power.

It has been seen on in-game Legion coins or Brotherhood scripts as an example, however, bottle caps still retain their dominance in purchasing power throughout the Wasteland and this is largely due to the fact that the cap is a neutral form of money, the NCR dollar would be worthless. in Legion territory and very few NCR merchants would be willing to accept Legion coins to pay for goods, only in places like New Vegas where all coins are accepted and this is essentially because Mr. House doesn't care where the money comes whenever he gets the legioncoin bag and NCR dollars are therefore mainly used within their own nations but limits can be used throughout the Wasteland.

Both nations are considered to pay outside contractors and limits such as the Crimson Caravan paying The Courier for services or the Kaiser's Legion Slave Bureau paying Genie May for selling Carla Boone into slavery, as this type of Bottle caps are seen throughout the Wasteland, not least because from a developer's point of view it is much easier to reuse them than to introduce a new currency in each game, their supply is finite. difficult to reproduce as well as to transport and much more durable than most surviving pre-war coins, from the Boneyard to the distant port. Bottle caps are considered the ideal token of value for wasteland dwellers to purchase goods and services in every corner of the old United States and while we can laugh at the nonsense of a soda cap being the strongest currency in the known world.

It is important to note that approximately 92 percent of our real-world money is not tangibly real, the numbers in your bank account do not physically exist and if one day the world's digital banking collapses as a result of the Great War, The person with a bucket full of bottle caps will start, so next time you enjoy a beer or soft drink maybe keep the bottle cap, you never know when it might come in handy.