Good Wasteland Governance

Over the course of Fallout 4, the main plot inevitably falls to a single, overarching question: Which faction should rule the Commonwealth wasteland? This question is never asked explicitly, but with three of the four factions inherently and violently opposed to each other, and the faction the Sole Survivor chooses flying their flags over Diamond City when the story is completed, it’s not difficult to deduce that this is the grand conflict at play, especially once your search for your son is over and you have found him leading the Institute.

The four major factions – Minutemen, Railroad, Brotherhood of Steel, and Institute – are easy to criticize. The Minutemen are a naïve bunch of untrained, unsupplied, and unorganized dolts, the Railroad are a bunch of blind idealist with no forethought on governance, the Brotherhood are zealous genocidal fascists, and the Institute are megalomaniacal egotists with zero ethical concerns and little care for the people on the surface. All of them suck.

They leave a lot to be desired, but one must be chosen. The easy choice for players seeking a ‘good’ ending is the Minutemen – they’re the first faction the player encounters, they’re idealists with a broad perspective, their entire goal is helping the people of the Commonwealth, and they seek to provide for the common defense and the needs of the people under their watch. All in all, they seem like a good choice. Most players will end up siding with them, and it’s difficult not to.

However, they’re really not the right solution. They’re completely reliant on the player to provide for them, expand their reach, provide all the resources and materials, and supply them with arms and armor. If they don’t, they’re left with a miniature army of unarmored farmers with poor weaponry and zero technological advantage. They’re the best choice for governance, but they’re awful for defense. Similarly, other factions have advantages for all the critiques you can hurl at them. By analyzing these advantages, we can come to a conclusion on what makes a good post-apocalyptic government.

I. THE MINUTEMEN — COMMUNITY

One of the most basic elements of political theory is the social contract – that the power of the government arises from the consent of the governed. In the Minutemen questline, the social contract plays a central role. In order to get a settlement to join the Minutemen, you must convince them to ally with you. And in turn, you must provide for them and maintain the social order, especially with respect to defense. They offer to surrender their autonomy in exchange for protections within a greater community.

This sense of community is essential for a future in the irradiated, raider-infested wasteland. In order to build a strong nation, one needs to build a strong national identity and a sense of unity. The Commonwealth community that the Minutemen seek to build is a shining example of nation-building potential. It allows for the forging of a strong identity and a strong, unified people ready to defend their neighbor as they would themselves.

The importance of collective action is more important in the wasteland than in the present day. In a world where raiding farms is more incentivized than farming and the land wants to kill you about as much as the irradiated monsters and feral ghouls. There needs to be hope for a return to civilized society and rule of law. The Minutemen personify that hope. The people of the Commonwealth need to be willing to work together and build a nation. The settlements are just the start.

The parallels between the Minutemen and the American Revolution are diegetic and undeniable. They, after all, were a ragtag volunteer army which later built a nation and a shared identity on the basis of a united community. The Minutemen, for all their flaws, possess this key nation-building prerequisite. That is their great advantage, and is a necessary characteristic of good wasteland governance.

II. THE RAILROAD — SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Railroad is a paragon of ideals. Though they operate in secrecy through clever spycraft, and certainly maintain a military advantage over the Minutemen, their true great strength is in their commitment to the liberation of synths. Though this is narrow in scope, it is representative of a commitment to philosophy, ethics, social progress, and a transformation of our collective consciousness in pursuit of goals greater than mere survival.

If one would allow this author a soapbox, it is practically canon that a synth is a sapient being. When one enters the Robotics Division of the Institute, a scientist notes that a synth has experienced twitching and rapid eye movement, an indicator of dreaming. Furthermore, mind wiped synths like Paladin Danse are perfectly free thinking, even capable of bigotry against their own kind. Biologically identical to humans, they can feel pain and pleasure and all sorts of emotions. They can desire to escape. This amount and variety of ‘malfunctions’ is not possible with the technological advantage of the Institute and the advanced infiltration synths are capable of.

More than synths, social justice must be pursued for the downtrodden minorities of super mutants and ghouls. If Strong is capable of pacifism and art and Virgil is capable of keeping his scientific mind, they are capable of peace and harmony with the human race. They are capable of being productive citizens of the new society. Ghouls are no different; despite Diamond City’s discrimination against them, they thrive in Goodneighbor. A society incorporating and uplifting all the downtrodden is necessary for the wasteland in order to seek the end of its petty and primal conflicts.

The zeal of the Railroad, therefore, is admirable. Furthermore, it is a good sign that the people of the wasteland are capable of evolving in thought and action. They are capable of serving ideals greater than themselves and developing these new ideals. Capable of progressing philosophy in a new world in desperate need of progress. Progressing the very definitions of liberty and equality in order to ensure that any society that is established is a just one. Their sense of ethics must be expanded, yes, but is necessarily applied in any pursuit of good wasteland governance.

III. THE BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL — STRENGTH

It is no secret that the Brotherhood of Steel maintains the greatest degree of military superiority of any faction in the Commonwealth. Though the Institute has a technological advantage, their energy weapons and plastic armor are nothing to the gatling lasers, miniguns, vertibirds, and power armor of the Brotherhood, to mention nothing of Liberty Prime, perhaps the greatest weapon to be deployed in the wasteland since the Courier left the Divide.

With this military superiority, the Brotherhood could provide strong leadership and protection against the roving gangs of raiders, gunners, ferals, super mutants, and wasteland creatures. They could bring a criminal justice system to the Commonwealth, tame the wilds, and defend any fledgling nation from potentially expansionist neighbors as well as any organized criminal element. Peace and order are important to the evolution of civilization in the post-apocalyptic world and the resources of the Brotherhood can be used to achieve it, even if they decide not to.

Their advanced military training and tactics are also advantages to the defense of the Commonwealth. Brute force is fine if one wishes to wipe out a gang of raiders, but to wipe out the overall scourge of raiding, one needs to think like a general and manage more than just big guns and strong armor. With the supplies, training, and tactics that the Minutemen lack, the Brotherhood is capable of organizing and defending supply lines as well as structuring and defending a legitimate government.

Furthermore, though their zeal is misplaced and their fascist totalitarianism is to be feared, their organization, structure, and dedication is admirable. They show a degree of ideological resilience that adds to their military strength and would allow a new society to persevere in a harsh and unforgiving environment. For the human race, especially after its near-annihilation in nuclear war, more than law and order, the strength and resilience of the nation and its people is key to the persistence of good wasteland governance.

IV. THE INSTITUTE — TECHNOLOGY

When the player character first enters the Institute, all seems well. This vision of the Institute shows off what this faction has to bring to the Commonwealth. In an ideal world, it would be just this, but when one considers the kidnappings and murders around the Commonwealth, as well as the blatant disrespect for those who dwell on the surface, that image falls apart. Ideologically, the Institute has little to bring to the wasteland, except an optimism about the future, which the Minutemen share with less baggage.

However, the Institute has made great strides, and that is nothing to look down one’s nose at. Its bioscience division alone, with advanced hydroponics and genetics, is a shining example of the future the wasteland can see. Furthermore, facilities and advanced systems have brought civilian technologies that could revolutionize the wasteland if they’re only shared with the governed — such as teleportation and further steps in power generation. With Institute technology, settlements can be linked and expanded, as could administrative state capacity and the ability to provide for the people’s basic needs.

Even Robotics has something special to bring to the table. Synthetic human and animal life is the breakthrough of the century. If recall codes are removed and ethical measures are followed, the ability to reliably grow one’s population and supplement natural births is powerful. An opt-in Courser program could advance security. Not to mention the medical implications for limb regeneration and organ replication. This is all ignoring the cybernetics program they terminated after extending Conrad Kellogg’s life expectancy practically indefinitely and improving his reflexes and combat ability.

The nation which is to reign over this fractured America must be willing and able to rebuild. They must not just rebuild homes and walls but entire societies, which must advance. They need to be able to bring the Commonwealth back to its old state and then into the future. Without innovation, there is only stagnation, and in this fragile world stagnation is death. For all the good that technological progress will bring to the world, the Institute’s pursuit of “Mankind, redefined” is an essential component of good wasteland governance.

CONCLUSION

There is never going to be a perfect faction for the Commonwealth, or any region of the wasteland, for that matter. In the anarchic system of the wasteland, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” as Thucydides posits in the Melian Dialogue. The raiders seize chems and caps and the settlers do their best to survive. However, this was once the case in our prehistory, and, with less guidance and knowledge than the Commonwealth, we rose above it, finally thinking past tomorrow.

If the wasteland is not to remain a wasteland forever, the people of the Commonwealth must understand this. The human race cannot simply survive, it must evolve. With proper governance, the people of the wasteland can be uplifted by their new society and recover from the trauma and destruction of the Great War. The human race survived. They were not unscathed but neither were they set back completely. In the postwar war, advancement is possible.

In the Great War, the greed and foolishness of human government led to the downfall of society. Overconsumption and a lack of forethought led to resource shortages and military tension, which led to reckless posturing, aggression, and war. The society which must replace that which has been destroyed must be conscious of the errors, faults, and failings of the pre-war world, and adapt. A perfect society is not possible, but the fact that these factions show these advantages – everything you need for a successful society, means there is hope.

The people of the Commonwealth must work together and build a community under the terms of the social contract; they must incorporate the higher thinking and ideals of philosophy and ethics, they must provide strength and military superiority for the common defense, and they must be capable of pursuing well-regulated scientific progress in order to pursue a future in which human needs are met in a way that provides stable population growth to return to the prior state of humanity. In providing these four elements, they learn their lesson from the failed governments of the Great War, and may propel themselves into a bright future through good wasteland governance.