In the year 2277, 36 years after the setting of Fallout 2 and 200 years after the nuclear apocalypse that devastated the game’s world in a future where international conflicts culminated in a Sino-American war in the second half of the 21st century. An inhabitant of Vault 101, a survival shelter the size of a village, designed to protect a small number of humans from the nuclear fallout, is forced to escape from the Vault and journey into the ruins of Washington D.C. to track his father who disappeared under mysterious circumstances.