Location from Fallout by Interplay / Bethesda
The birthplace and former capital of the NCR, built by Vault 15 survivors who proved civilization could be rebuilt — until a nuclear bomb erased it in 2283, proving it could be destroyed just as fast.
What remains is silence and heat shimmer. The crater radiates enough residual energy to make a Pip-Boy click angrily from a quarter mile out. The smell is ozone and scorched earth, years after the blast. Wind carries fine glass particles that catch sunlight like glitter — beautiful and lacerating. Around the perimeter, abandoned NCR military checkpoints still have their barricades up, unmanned. The refugee camps have mostly dispersed, but offerings and memorial markers ring the approach roads. For NCR citizens, this is hallowed and haunted ground — their September 11th and Hiroshima in one.
Before the bomb: adobe and salvaged-wood buildings arranged in concentric rings around a central well, with irrigated farmland stretching beyond sandstone walls. Guard towers overlooked approach roads. The town hall flew the two-headed bear flag. After 2283: a blackened crater surrounded by miles of fused glass and collapsed structures. The blast shadow of the town hall is burned into the ground. Scattered refugees' camps ring the exclusion zone, flags at half-mast or missing entirely.
Also known as: Shady Sands, NCR Capital, New Shady Sands