The Great War

In the Fallout series the Great War is the global nuclear exchange between the United States and China on the morning of October 23, 2077. It followed a resource war in which American forces, backed by Power Armor, retook Alaska and invaded mainland China; that success prompted a last-ditch nuclear attack lasting about two hours that destroyed most of modern civilization, leaving behind irradiated ghouls and the people sheltering in the Vault network. In the years after the war the United States became the depopulated, decaying post-apocalyptic landscape known as the Wasteland, and groups such as the Brotherhood of Steel formed in its ruins. The in-game date is observed outside the games too: a Fallout cookbook was published on October 23, 2018 to coincide with it and with the release of Fallout 76.