Fallout explained - Amazon's TV show dissected in less time than it takes for the nuke to drop in Fallout 4's intro

Warning: Major spoilers for series one of Amazon's Fallout TV show lie ahead.

Ok, so most of us have all had a little bit of time to watch Amazon's Fallout TV show now.

But what if you maybe watched it in bits, rather than all in one go, or felt like certain things weren't quite made clear enough? What if you want an explanation of what it is you just watched, and which bits of what happened to its trio of main characters you should have been paying the most attention to, instead of geeking out over, I don't know, the fact that Lucy was eating some actual YumYum Deviled Eggs?

What if you just wanted to see if it was possible to outline all of that, in about the time it takes the bomb to drop at the start of Fallout 4? Well, we've got you covered. All you've got to do is be ok with us using bold to outline what's going on as the Sole Survivor makes their way to Vault 111.

The steam from the bathroom mirror clears, and Nate's face comes into view. "War never changes," he mutters.

Ok, here we go.

Fallout kicks off with Walton Goggins’ character, Cooper Howard - no relation - performing at a party in 2077 when boom, LA gets nuked. Now, 219-ish years later, in 2296, Lucy Mcclane - no relation - is a young lady living in Vault 33, one of a bunch of massive underground shelters where lucky folks got to survive the whole nuclear apocalypse thing. She’s gonna get married to someone from another vault that hers is linked to, but boom, one sex scene later, it turns out the folks from the other vault are lying.

I confirm I'd like to play as generic Nate and leave the mirror.

They’ve come from the surface to kidnap Lucy’s dad, who’s raised her himself since her mum mysteriously disappeared, and they do just that. Then there’s Maximus, he’s in the Brotherhood of Steel, who’re descended from the US military and want to keep dangerous tech out of the hands of the masses, to avoid another apocalypse, because they blame people having too much access to dangerous tech for the one that's actually happened.

All Maximus does though is clean loos, until he’s given his friend’s promotion after they have a mysterious accident that he may be responsible for. Oh, and Cooper Howard’s a ghoul now, which basically means he’s been exposed to so much radiation it now doesn’t affect him and he’s got no skin. He’s dug up and given a bounty to hunt.

I'm mingling in the kitchen, and Codsworth's just told me to enjoy my morning coffee. My baby starts crying.

Lucy escapes from her Vault and heads off into the wasteland to find her dad. Maximus heads off to find the same person as the ghoul, lugging the bag of a knight who’s wearing a big suit of nuclear fusion-powered armour that’s very tough. Maximus really wants to try it out, and gets to when he lets the knight die, assumes his identity, and decides to find the target himself so the brotherhood won’t kill him for letting his comrade die when he brings it back to them.

The target he’s after is an escaped doctor from the Enclave, a group descended from the pre-war government who think they’re the only ones who can restore America to its pre-war state, who’s sneakily injected some useful tech he’d been working on into his neck. They all meet up in a town called Filly, the ghoul tries to capture the doctor, shooting his foot off. Lucy and Maximus end up intervening, which leads to Lucy taking off with the doctor, who wants to get to the same person who kidnapped Lucy’s dad - a woman called Moldaver.

I'm not sure Codsworth is going to be able to calm this baby.

Lucy ends up having to cut off the doctor’s head with the tech in, since his leg means he won’t make it, but then she ends up losing it to a giant mutated salamander called a Gulper. The Ghoul tries to get it back, but fails, and ends up taking off with her as his prisoner.

Maximus has been sent a new trainee, known as a squire, from the Brotherhood and he’s convinced everyone he’s the knight he let die. Those two manage to get the doctor’s head from the Gulper. Back in Vault 33, things seem suspicious, Lucy’s brother finds Vault 32 - where the baddies got in via - is full of dead residents, he’s wary of Vault 33’s leadership.

The Vault-Tec Rep has just told me how happy he is to finally have managed to speak to me.

The Ghoul tries to sell Lucy to organ harvesters for some medicine that’ll stop him from losing his mind and turning into a feral monster, but it backfires and she escapes. Maximus comes clean to his squire that he’s not the knight, they fight, he gets trapped in his powerless power armour, and the squire leaves him to take the head to the brotherhood.

All this time, we’ve been learning about the ghoul’s life as an actor before the war, he starts doing ads for vault-tec, the corporation that makes the vaults, and his wife ends up working for them, he’s not sold on trusting them.

I skip some dialogue, so I can fit in telling the rep no at least once, instead of giving in straight away, as would be quicker.

Lucy rescues Maximus, they agree to work together, head off to go get the head back and go save Lucy’s dad. Her brother discovers that all of Vault 33’s leaders always come from Vault 31, one of the other vaults it’s linked to. Lucy and Maximus discover that Shady Sands, the former capital of the New California Republic - the group that grew in and controlled California a lot like a pre-war democratic government in the years after the war - has been blown up. It's just a big hole in the ground. The pair of them soon end up getting trapped in a nearby Vault, where a DNA-splicing experiment that created the Gulpers had been going on and where the residents behave a bit like a cult.

The rep departs, thank the lord.

The Ghoul learns the location of Moldaver, and it turns out she was working on cold nuclear fusion tech before the war, whichmight have prevented the fighting over resources that led to the bomb being dropped, but Vault-Tec stopped her. She asks Howard to spy on his wife to learn more about vault-tec.

Lucy and Maximus are let go from Vault after discovering what was going on there. Maximus tells Lucy his real identity after she asks him to live with her in her vault, she forgives him for lying, and they head off to get the head back. Vault 33 gets a new overseer who’s ex-vault 31 and she sends some of the dwellers to live in 32, which has been mysteriously repaired.

I have to go and try and get Shaun to stop crying.

Maximus and Lucy get the head back from the squire, he runs off, the Brotherhood arrives, and Maximus decides to try and trick them with wrong head while Lucy escapes to deliver the real one. Maximus ends up getting the Brotherhood on side by finally showing some courage, and they head for observatory where Moldaver is located.

Codsworth tells me and Nora we should come and see something.

Lucy delivers the head, Moldaver uses its tech to prep a cold fusion core, but needs an access code from Lucy’s dad. It turns out Lucy’s dad is actually a pre-war Vault-Tec employee who was frozen along with the rest of their management in Vault 31 and reactivated to lead 33. He blew up Shady Sands after Lucy’s mum ran off there with the kids, which is why turns out Lucy’s mum is a feral ghoul that's sitting right next to her. He’s forced to give up the activation code for the cold fusion, which is only known by Vault-Tec people since they bought the rights to it.

The air raid siren goes off and we begin to run to Vault 111.

Before the war, Cooper Howard discovers it was Vault-Tec who dropped the bombs, in order to ensure they’d be able to control the future by having everyone in their vaults, and having everything else be destroyed. A big battle ensues between the arriving Brotherhood and Moldaver’s force, revealed to be the remains of the NCR from Shady Sands. The Brotherhood wins, but the cold fusion is activated, providing free electrical power for LA, which is why everyone wanted it, because that's really useful in a world where everything's been destroyed. Lucy’s dad escapes and heads for New Vegas, they all follow.

We arrive on the Vault platform, and seconds later, the world ends.

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