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General information

In Fallout 3 there are no drivable vehicles. However, there are some instances where vehicles are used as a means to transport the player to a new locations. In the Broken Steel add-on, the player can visit the interior of the Brotherhood of Steel's unique vertibird. It is also possible to ride an underground subway train in the Presidential metro during the main questline. Traveling to Point Lookout is done on a ruined pre-War ferry, "the Duchess Gambit". The player is also required to use a tram cart to enter and exit The Pitt, as the tunnels are too dark and numerous to navigate on foot.

Derelict vehicles

DerelictVehicle03

Derelict vehicle exploding

Although there are no drivable vehicles in Fallout 3, there are hundreds of explosive derelict vehicles. After two hundred years of neglect their defunct nuclear reactors are highly volatile and prone to exploding if damaged. Once a vehicle catches fire an explosion is inevitable, but more damage will hasten it. The explosion will make an area of approximately 3 meters around the car radioactive for a few seconds, this can make most vehicles extremely dangerous to take cover behind as raiders and super mutants can easily blow up the vehicles with their bullets.

There are a variety of derelict vehicles dotting the roadways; most are large sedan-sized cars, though there are smaller, one person cars. Heavy semi-truck tractors also can be seen which take slightly more damage to detonate, but create an explosion slightly bigger than other cars. Buses are also encountered, and their explosions are particularly large and devastating, more than twice the size of an explosion created by two cars. Smaller vehicles like motorcycles and street cleaner machines can be shot and blown up, but they do not produce a mushroom cloud explosion. In fact, their "explosion" is extremely small and short, even smaller than a frag grenade/mine explosion. Often, vehicles in close proximity will set each other off in a chain reaction.

There are some derelict vehicles that will not explode no matter how much weapons fire is poured into them. One can discern these from the more dangerous variety by examining the trunk; if the hatch is missing and one can see an empty basin in the back, the reactor is no longer present.

Non-drivable vehicles

Vehicles serving as game locations

Other vehicles

Notes

  • It is possible to scale any bus in the game by the rear, where the signs read "No Step". There appears to be an invisible set of steps located here, running against the bus while looking up (along the narrow fin) will usually accomplish this. One may rapidly jump up the back of the bus as well to glide to the top (or side if it's flipped over). The player can walk up buses from the back regardless of if they are upright, or flipped onto their side.
  • None of the vehicles have particularly damaging explosions compared to the VB-02 Vertibird. With 85 DR and Adamantium Skeleton the player will only suffer around 40 hitpoints of damage on normal difficulty (compared to the Vertibirds 80+) from even the largest vehicle explosion (bus). All limb damage will be negligible, while smaller vehicle explosions are not dangerous at all.
  • Although it is suggested that motorcycles are not nuclear-powered by the appearance of the motorcycle gas tank in the game and the general appearance of the vehicle, it is in fact contradicted by a suicide note found next to a motorcycle, indicating that the motorcycle needs a new toroidal coil (an electrical component which produces torque about an axel).
  • The explosion animation of a car is the same as that of the mini nuke.
  • The explosion of a car leaves behind radiation. This could be due to the fact that the vehicles are nuclear powered.
  • Many of the cars resemble the Ford Nucleon.
  • In Mothership Zeta, while traveling in the garbage chute of the Maintenance Level the player can briefly glimpse a perfectly intact corvega in one of the several rooms passed by on the alien mothership.

Gallery

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