Posters of Fallout: Pre-war Propaganda 

Fun fact, the "Loose Lips Sink Ships" example is a phrase still used pretty commonly in the US Navy today. Though it's typically used to warn sailors about posting locations of ships accidentally on social media.

My interpretation of the Mr. Pebbles poster is that, since Russia is famous for sending dogs into space (Laika, Belka, Strelka, etc), the US wanted to empathise how they sent the first CAT into space as some sort of way to one up the Russians and stealing attention away. Kinda like when world records are hyper specific and slightly different from a existing record.

Tojo wasn’t just a propaganda character made up by the Allies to sell war bonds. When these posters refer to “Tojo” they’re actually talking about General Hideki Tojo, commander of the Imperial Japanese Army during much of World War II before he was removed from his position of leadership in 1944 by the Emperor for his poor handling of the war in the Pacific against the U.S. While he obviously wasn’t a literal monster with fangs and sharp claws, he was a nasty piece of work, and was directly responsible for various atrocities against humanity during the war.

20:46 For the poster of the power armour: It could also be that that the pre war artists that drew it exaggerated the design, either wanting to make the armor more appealing, or just not caring enough to be super accurate.

"Why would the pre-war world make a big deal out of the first cat in space?" Because, cats.

The "The Walls Have Eyes" is close to an info security poster that was put up in headquarters when I was in the Army a few years ago. It was mean to tell people to watch what they put on internet

Growing up in the 80's I saw a lot of the posters from the 50's and 60's in places like pawn shops and people's homes. I fell in love with the art and Fallout's versions always make me smile. I was at the tail end of the nuclear war with the Soviets tension that had been there until 1991. The artists that created these propaganda posters are great.

I think the poster in 2:58 is also a reference to the "Have you volunteered for the Red Army?" poster from the Soviet Union, the men in both posters are in similar poses.

You forgot one! The Liberator robots in 76 can sometimes drop a readable note literally called “Propaganda Flyer”

I LOVED looking at and interpreting propaganda when I was studying modern history, so this video is super interesting and fun to me! Really well done

Now this is the kind of esoteric lore I like. You've earned a new subscriber. Also, in reference to the "Join or Die" poster, the state of Georgia was receiving supplies and troops from the English to help fight off the natives. The governor thought it best not to anger the people who were helping him

You always have great vid ideas and production. Also wasn’t expecting a lesson in real-world posters!

Join or die was drawn before Georgia made a final decision in being involed in the rebellion, and so wasn't included in the art.

Always a good morning to see another Radking video

It could be that the Gauss rifle that we got in game was reconfigured to use Micro Fusion cells while the original was using a different power source, let's say, fission battery for an example. It makes sense to think that the Chinese would develop such a weapon to combat power armor.

I like the brief mention of the number of stars on the USA flag changing, it was 14 in fo1, 13 in fo3, 13 in NV until lonesome rode update, and then 14 in fo4 again.

The first cat in space, as opposite to, the first dog in space.

17:06 i like to think that the space race went about the same, with the Soviets (or maybe the chinese) putting the first living being into orbit, that being a dog, so that dog was the first living being to be put into space, as part of the space race. So the US decided to send a cat up, so they could say that it was the "first cat in space" since the previous tests by the reds were done with dogs

The poster of the Fireman with the shovel is also inspired by a Soviet WW2 poster with the fireman in the same pose as a Soviet soldier wearing a Russian Revolutionary uniform.

I love propaganda posters for some reason. They offer an interesting glance at the society that made it.

20:42 It kinda looks like a hybrid between the T-51, T-45 and T-61. Wouldn't be a surprise that this was either a concept for T-60 or X-01 The shoulders looks like 51 but with the ridges and that hook hole of the 60, and the helmet looks like a 51 but with a change on the visor.

A couple of thoughts for the significance of the traditional Stars and Stripes in posters. The United States is somewhat abnormal in that it does not have a separate flag flown from warships compared to the national flag, as is used in every Commonwealth realm, China, Japan, both Russia and the former Soviet Union, Italy, Germany, both Koreas, Israel, several Arab countries, and many others. Perhaps when the fourteen star flag was adopted, the United States Navy retained the fifty star (or possibly 55 star if in the fallout universe the territories became states) as their naval ensign, which would then be flown by warships, displayed at naval installations, and used on navy and possibly marine corps recruiting material and propaganda.

On the Civil Defense Administration recruiting poster, it might be possible that when you enlisted you would be sent to what branch needed manpower or you were most suited for. It could also be that the Civil Defense Administration had been put in charge or a National Guard style force who were intended to be a local defense or Rapid reaction force if they were needed. We are not given much with the poster but it does seem in the games that a large expansion of types of military or para military units were being brought up, the Secret Service had heavy duty power armor, the coast guard was much more militarized, so the Civil Defense Administration could have its own Home guard or something especially seeing as there were food riots and tons of Chinese spies on the continent

The free state symbol of a circled star brings to mind the circled star used by the US in WW2 and Korea (IIRC, the circled was done to make it more distinct when viewed from the air).

weird that i was researching propaganda posters an hour ago and then this video is out

I would imagine that some of the “smiling soldier” imagery is inspired by Starship Troopers, as that movie (can’t remember much about the book, as it’s been well over thirty years since I read it) has lots of examples of just such imagery.

This is the type of content I’m so glad I subscribed to you for. Who else is making videos about the posters dawg. I love little details like that

This makes me wonder what Chinese propaganda about the US would look like in the Fallout universe. Real-life communist propaganda had some very striking and varied imagery of how American imperialism is portrayed, especially the ones equating it with fascism.

In fallout 4 the special traits play out like cold war propaganda videos, it’s likely they would have the similar videos across the nation

My favourite Fallout poster is the one of Maynard James Keenan 😂

Three things: 1. Love your vids. Keep 'em coming. 2. The blue flag that the other soldier is presenting in the army poster is the flag of the Department of the Army. 3. The broken chain circle in the Freestaters emblem could also be a reference to, "breaking the chains that bind". The chain, representing the government, is circling around the star, encompassing it and trapping it. The link breaks, the circle breaks, and the star is no longer trapped, thus it is free to govern it's own destiny.

I love that you go into details about things like this. Stuff you’d normally just walk past in-game.

3:20 I think that's actually more of a mixture. The gear might be right, but the pose that the in-game character on the poster strikes is a 1:1 of the "ты записался добровольцем" poster of the Soviet Union

Something of note with the free staters is their use of a broken chain is not about a link and the weakness of one person but rather "Break the chains" as a statement of freedom. It was very common among anarchists/socialists and is still used. Its a statement of breaking the chains of oppression whatever form that may take, in this case it is a direct statement against the authoritarian nature of the U.S in Fallout

You done roped me into watchin a buncha your videos like crazy, keep up the good work man👍

Some parts of Massachusetts are kind of obsessed with the American Revolution. It started there with the Boston Tea Party and the battles in Lexington, Concord, and Bunker (Breed’s) Hill

All hail atom and may he strike down those who wish to use propaganda on us.

I recently watched a video on the fallout role playing game expansion winter of atom I think a few videos about the role playing game and the lore you get from it would be cool idea

Great video as always Radking. Glory to Atom Something that I'd like to see in the future is The Corporations of Fallout. Do a good breakdown and history of major corporations like Nuka Cola and Robco, but also lesser known ones such as Slocums Joe and Red Rocket

While a bit of a continuity error with the Uncle Sam poster in Fallout 3 and 4, I think it could easily be resolved by it simply being a reminder of the “good ol days” when America was in its prime. Plenty of Americans still prop up the founding fathers 247 years later (heck, during the 50s there was a massive push to prop up US history in general in the nation, so there was a lot of the beginnings of what would practically be founding father worship which fits with the whole US nationalism in the Fallout alt timeline). Wouldn’t be much of a stretch if they brought back a flat from over a century ago in their time to remind people of the America they want to still have

20:00 - I live beside the city of Kitchener (formerly Berlin) which was named after this guy. He used concentration camps during the Boer war.

Love your content...Thanks for the upload! P.S. You seem to get better and better

This was a very well researched video altogether but I have one quibble, it was Herbert Kitchener that was depicted in the "your country need you" poster not Horatio. Love the bids praise to atom

Rads turned up. Beer opened. Video started let's go

I always thought the broken chain on the freestates’ symbol was to represent breaking free of the government’s shackles

You forgot about the Civil Air Patrol that was mainly in High Point was in World War 2 when they Patrol the u.s. coastline for U-boats

Woah, woke up just in time for a new video

12:33 too late when you said that someone has already did

loved this, especially the art at the end. your friend is good

Weird fact oldest organisms in space we kinda know of are at least bacteria if not full dinosaurs from when the meteor that took out the dinosaurs hit it knocked chunks of the earth into orbit believed to be big enough to actually hold atmosphere for a few minutes

The "Courage Today, Victory Tomorrow" one also features the Old Glory - a weapon later depicted in Fallout New Vegas' Lonesome Road ( Which makes sense, since Old Glory is supposed to be a battlestandard Flag Pole)

As someone who prefers longform videos i understand exactly how difficult it is to produce them. thank you RadKing, i live for your content!

Great video concept man keep it up

3:17 I'm fairly certain this poster is actually a reference to a Soviet propaganda poster with a similar purpose, which read «Ты записался добровольцем?» Or «Are you among the volunteers?»

15:16 technically first "organism in space" would be the bacteria attached to the first spacecraft. Also can't believe they removed laika from fallout timeline. So sad.

When I first saw the broken chain, I thought it was a reference to the rallying cry “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains!” which is from the Communist Manifesto.

Anti propaganda is pretty funny especially recently anti American propaganda by the Chinese always makes it look really cool

22:48 looks like he’s carrying a Type 56/Chinese variant of a Russian SKS. I’m not surprised, as it’s a decent rifle, and this is on brand for China to take a foreign weapon, slightly modify it for a lower caliber, and give it a new name.

The big billboard with "Stop the red menace. Enlist " is inspired by a ultra right-wing 1950's book "Is this tomorrow? America under communism".

Think you misspoke when talking about the French octopus poster. You said the spread of communism from Soviet Russia in the 19th century. In the 19th century Russia was still ruled by Czar/Tsar's. Around the end of the 19th century it would have been Alexander III or Nicholas II.

A true love of the old world from this man

Interesting fact about power armor: currently I playing New Vegas, doing personal quest for Veronica to search rare technologies. One of them is impulse pistol that super effective against power armor electric systems. And with that she said that this technology is pre-war made as an countermeasure for Chinese power armor development. That means that China in Fallout at some point tried to make their own models of power armor, but since impulse pistol remained at prototype stage, that means China didn't made it by beginning of the great war.

Given that the transistor isn't invented until the late 2060s early 2070s in the fallout timeline perhaps the space race didn't happen until the 2060s.

The Civil Defense Authority logo's presence on recruitment posters may have an official explanation - of sorts. Bethesda's new official sourcebook, "Winter of Atom" greatly expands upon the lore and beliefs of the Children of Atom. Early in the campaign, a character named Brother Landen tells your party about a great prophet gathering Atomites in the Glowing Sea. However, his necklace is the real point of interest here. The necklace bears a symbol - a triangle containing a thick circle, bisected by a vertical bar. Landen claims he created the symbol and hopes the prophet will adopt it. Late in the campaign, the party learns of a military installation headed by one General John Whateley. In the General's office is a unique weapon called the Magnumnomicon that can raise the dead. It has many symbols carved into it, including a triangle found at occult sites throughout the Fallout world. The facility itself is the Whateley Research Facility, home of a top-secret military chemical weapons test program. It's suggested Vault-Tec was involved, and other government-funded programs were also likely involved. Accessing the general's compupter allows the party to see a number of prophetic images, and the characters are later placed under the spell of the Black Star who Dreams Beneath - the particular eldrich god worshipped by Whateley and inspired by Lovecraft's Dreamer. Tying all of this together, it is likely that the Civil Defense Authority was recruiting, but perhaps for military research and not an active combat branch. Those foolish enough to sign up ended up under Whateley's control where he experimented upon them. Fast forward to a year before Fallout 4, and the last descendant of general Whakeley is conducting genetic experiments and raising an army of mutants and Atomites. People come to him from all over the Wasteland, being drawn by visions, while others are enthralled and forced to serve. One such pilgrim is Brother Landen, who made the CDA icon into a pendant, thinking it was his idea when he'd actually seen it in a vision, probably of the facility. Of course, the sourcebook is very careful to keep things somewhat mysterious, so this theory may be wrong. However, it does seem odd that a story revolving around the Children of Atom (and possibly further explaining its origins) would have a symbol that seems identical to the Civil Defense Authority logo, and that both seem to have ties to the prewar military that don't make sense on their own.

I always change the name of mr.pebbles with the lettering to mr.killaman, I have him on the wall in my base in 76 for the world to see as well

the rifle at 22:46 couldve been based off a late war mauser rifle/arisaka mish mash, just a guess

That was vertibird VB-02 on the Fallout 76 poster? (the one on the T-51)

8:53 Possible explanation for the flag oddity is that maybe the newer flag design wasn't very popular, and may have co-existed with the traditional state-numbered-star flags in an unofficial capacity. As such, the poster may have used the 50-star flag in an attempt to leverage iconography that was more popular with the public. 12:14 That car looks far smaller than the designs we usually see in the Fallout setting, and seems to be different to the cars on either side of it. I wonder if this was an intersection between anti-communists and the automobile industry? Perhaps these small cars were newer, and potentially more efficient than older models, and were being made by newer companies. But the older, established companies didn't like the competition, and so used their influence to have this propaganda poster made, associating these newer car models with communism to discourage people from buying them.

Actually, the fact the GI in the enlistment poster is smiling makes a lot of sense as most Militaries, especially the US, wanted and still want to dispel the misconception that joining up is some kind of comical Hell where you get shoved into an ill fitting uniform, yelled at by a psychopath with a set of stripes on his sleeve and forced to do nothing but peel potatoes all day so an average Soldier showing enlisted life can be something to smile about makes sense.

I love your content bro, I put it on every night to sleep to. Keep up the good work and thank you for making amazing content

Its interesting how we used to have these colourful, brashly worded posters. It seems people got wise to being manipulated by these messages and propaganda had to take more subtle approaches.

Mr. Pebbles probably died like early space dogs.

Fun fact: Even in our timeline cats have been to space. Félicette was a female stray cat that was sent on a suborbital spaceflight by France in October of 1963.

This is a seriously in-depth and interesting video, I loved that you gave context to every poster, glad to know I’m not the only one who plays these games to have a look at the walls 😂

Thank you, Russell, for the suggestion! Rad, thank _you_ for the great discussion of the posters of the series! I'll keep taking on rads in preparation for the next video. 👍 - _checks PIP-Boy, sees I'm at 600 rads_ Well... shit. Just ran out of RadAway. King, I like ya, but I also like livin' , boss...

22:54 The rifle this soldier is depicted with appears to be a bolt-action rifle, and if I had to site real-world weapons that it resembles, I must say that it bears a striking resemblance to the Lee-Enfield family of rifles, though it could also be inspired by the Mauser or Mosin-Nagant rifles too. It should be noted that historically, the Chinese military often copied and replicated the designs of popular foreign weapons, a good example being the plethora of Mauser pistol and AK pattern rifle knockoffs.

The Chinese poster with the bolt action rifle appears to be an Arisaka rifle. Since it’s highly stylized it’s hard to tell, but that would make sense since the Arisaka was used by a lot of the Asian countries after World War Two due to the mass disarmament of the Japanese Army (which ceased to exist after WWII) and is a common rifle found throughout the fifties and sixties. It also could be an infantry Mosin Nagant rifle but I don’t think it looks like that and looks more like a Type-99 with the layout of its bolt and the muzzle cap.

The red eye poster looks to me to be a reference to a certain 1984 cover art but I may be mistaken

Aren't the Explosive skill books a reference to the short film duck and cover?

THE POSTER WITH GUY LIFTING THE FLAG ON THE PILE OF BODIES MAY NOT HAVE A REAL LIFE MATCH, BUT IT DID REMIND ME OF THE STATUE LIFTING THE FLAG IN WASHINGTON D.C.

Can we get a video on Vualt Tec propaganda. Hard work is happy work.

the free state star is very similar to the anarchist-communist (normally shortened to anco) symbol which is the exact same but with red instead of blue, whereas (ftom what i know) anarchists typically just use the flag alone

14:55 Soviet Russia got the first dog in space IRL. Her name was Laika.

Guys,I am sad,I decided to download the progress I made in NV but doing that deleted all my progress before the Come Fly With Me quest and now I have to redo all the quests and get to Boulder City,Hoover Dam,Golf,Mccarran,and Forlone Hope but looking at the bright side now I know more efficients ways to get to those places (and avoid the cazadores)

22:40 gun looks like an Arisaka type 99, which is a japanese rifle.

28:54 - He's got Zaku-pipes!

The civil defence seam To be also inspired from a communist russian civil war poster

it would be cool to see one of your fallout 5 videos set in china, just to see what it could be like

YEAH BUDDY ONE MY FAVORITE PARTS OF FALLOUT

16:22 Who had two Computer Animated movies in 2010 and 2014 and a Animated TV Series...and rule34 made of them.

Interesting research

Pebbles the space cat has my heart

Great video

The "walls have eyes" poster could also be an easter egg to George Orwell' 1984, some issues of the book have a cover resembling an eye on a red background. It is also an anti-comunist work of fiction.

The power armor poster with enlist under it to me the guy looks like the default Nate in fallout 4.

Mr Pebbles, The Face of Patriotism and Space Tech Development

17:50 If I had to site a possible inspiration for this poster, I'd say it could be inspired by a real-world photo from World War II called 'Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima', which shows a group of American soldiers raising the American flag over the battlefield at Iwo Jima. Here's the Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_on_Iwo_Jima

4:00 the poster is from an old meme "I will beat your ___ with this ____ shovel." If you know, you know.

The courage today poster is a parody of the planting the flag at iwo jima

Mr. Pebbles, Delta IX rocket, plus the widespread use of bombers, continues to suggest that rocketry in Fallout lagged greatly behind the in our universe and likely ICBMs were relatively recent inventions