Lore Break: The Enclave

So once upon a time in the Fallout universe, the bombs hadn't fallen yet.  Oil supplies were running out fast and the various nation states of Earth were fighting bitterly over the remaining scraps. American society had taken on a somewhat fascist bent, obsessed with the communist menace and the imperative to ensure the survival and supremacy of the American Dream.

Most of that kind of went to shit in October 2077.  Most survivors of the Great War rode out the mess underground in Vaults, mighty bomb shelters that periodically opened (by defect or design) over the next 200 years, depositing their human descendants throughout the Wasteland.  Those people went on to found towns such as Shady Sands, the Hub and Megaton, as well as form faction organizations such as the Brotherhood of Steel, the Followers of the Apocalypse and the Unity.

And then there is the Enclave.

The Enclave just wants to be helpful.

As Fallout factions go, these guys were in a league all by themselves.  Quite literally.



The Enclave entered the Fallout story in Fallout 2, playing a major role in that game and in Fallout 3, and a minor background one in Fallout: New Vegas.  It is unknown at this time whether they will appear in the upcoming Fallout 4, though all indications are that some remnants of the Enclave survived the events of Fallout 3 and are still around on the East Coast.

These guys are the descendants of the remaining leadership from the pre-war U.S. government. Believing that nuclear war was inevitable, the Washington elites and core personnel from the armed forces created a shadow government, using their influences with Vault Tec to make plans for surviving the cataclysm to come.  When the bombs fell, they were all safely underground, biding their time and developing the technology and plans necessary for reclaiming America in the future.

Trouble is, between radiation and FEV contamination, they consider themselves to be the only remaining "true" American human beings left, everyone else corrupted beyond hope by the Wasteland.  So when they say that they plan to reclaim America for Americans, they only really mean for the Enclave.  Everyone else is a problem to be dealt with.

One more problem solved.

Fallout 2 begins with an Enclave squad opening California-based Vault 13 using an automated signal system, and then ruthlessly murdering the welcome party and kidnapping the remaining dwellers.  By the end of that game, their plans on the West Coast have been foiled and their bases (Navarro Base and the Oil Rig) ransacked and destroyed.  We learn much later (in Fallout: New Vegas) that Enclave survivors were hunted down for years in the West, the only surviving remnants staying alive by blending into the growing California societies and staying in hiding.

Not all of them stayed to fight.  In Fallout 3, we find out that a large contingent of the Enclave's core forces headed east to the Washington, D.C. area, to reform and regroup.  Much of that game covers the events leading up to and following the Enclave's emergence into the Capital Wasteland, and the mighty battle with the Brotherhood of Steel (which had also sent forces to D.C.) that resulted.

There are also some indications that following the fall of Navarro and the Oil Rig, the Enclave established bases in other places throughout the former United States.  One of these bases appear to be operating in good condition somewhere in the Chicago area.

Aside from being racist jerks, the Enclave are also known as one of only two major Fallout factions to make regular use of power armor, motorized robotic exoskeleton armor designed for combat use in radioactive environments.  

Enclave troops in Advanced Power Armor Mark II, as seen in Fallout 3.

The other power armored faction, of course, is the Brotherhood of Steel.  While the Enclave has spent the two centuries since the Great War experimenting with new armor designs and technologies, the Brotherhood suits up with salvaged pre-war armor that looks significantly different.

Brotherhood of Steel patrol in Washington, D.C., wearing T-45d power armor (Fallout 3)

Both the Enclave and the Brotherhood see themselves as the rightful inheritors of prewar technologies and civilization's future.  The difference is that the Enclave would prefer to add in a mix of mass genocide as well, while the Brotherhood's relationship with Wastelanders is generally characterized by distrust and condescension.  This philosophical conflict is one of the major themes of the entire Fallout game series.

The Enclave have been a pretty consistent bad guy throughout the Fallout story, but for that, they've also been one of the least well developed ones.  We don't know much more about them by the end of Fallout 3 than we already did.  And there's no way at the moment to know whether they will appear once again as an antagonist in Boston-set Fallout 4.

But the racist assholes are still around somewhere.  And wherever they are, they're plotting.