What Happened to the People of Sanctuary Hills? - Fallout 4 Lore 

"We don't know the names of most of our neighbors." Same here.

Husband: "The bombs are dropping" Wife: "We're all gonna die!" Husband: "You grab the yellow paint I'll get the Halloween decorations,"

“Codsworth everyone’s dead!” “FLOORS ARE CLEAN THOUGH”

Codsworth deserves a hug. For all those years he spent alone and for trying to comfort the sole survivor

War war never changes.... But it does change paint colour

Considering what happened to the Vault-Tec salesman, it seems logical that others in that area had a similar fate. They could have lived in the houses for years before turning completely feral.

I've encountered with those ferals many times, never realized they were the sole survivor's neighbors.😱

makes me wonder about the guys in power armor , I always imagine running into a feral in power armor lol

Me: codsworth everyone is dead Codsworth: did I mention the floors are clean

The F block under Shaun’s crib is Bethesda paying respects to Shaun

Lets take a moment to realise how strong terminals are like my monitor breaks in 1 punch but they survive a NUKE

Sanctuary Hills' Citizens: "Oh God, what if there's a nuclear attack? What are we going to do?" China: "So anyway, I started blasting"

Wife:Oh no the bombs dropped! Husband:Let's do what we waited for all our lives... Wife:Paint the house yellow? Husband:Yes?....

I have a theory about the houses that changed: codsworth

Anyone get goosebumps from the fallout 4 intro “war never changes”

Could you imagine how advanced the fallout universe would have been if the bombs didn't stop

Gotta love how Ghoulification and even going Feral didn't split those neighbors up!

oh my god I made a huge settlement there, I have over a 100 hours in the game, but I had no idea there was a root cellar-bunker there. Jesus.

17:30 - No, fission fuel shortages were a thing too. The lore clearly states that they were running out of Plutonium and Uranium. Fusion was the big breakthrough that would have averted The War... Had it matured just a few years earlier. I can easily see Fission-Fusion car mods being a thing among enthusiasts. In theory it should be a slightly more complicated process than switching a truck from Fossil Diesel to BioDiesel.

God this game has so many amazing details in it. Idk what people were talking about, this game is amazing

7:04 - "... Don't find much..." DUCT TAPE, Oxhorn, DUCT TAPE. Adhesive is like sticky gold in this game.

With all the Army paraphernalia (the folded flags, etc) it's safe to assume that Sanctuary Hills was a community for Veterans and families of War heroes. Communities for service families is and was an actual thing. This would explain all the well off homes and cars. Would also add context to the use of the word SANCTUARY. The war is over...for now.

“At this point The value of our car is the least of our concerns” I dunno man. I would have loved a working car on survival mode 😓😂😂

I love how you always touch on every detail, and theorize, and elaborate on the stories Bethesda laid out for us to explore, and your voice is like easy listening. I always come back to your videos.

Oxhorn: "is this foreshadowing?" Game: Let's get an F in the chat for shawn

What if the house was actually yellow, but was recently painted blue before the bombs dropped, and the explosion blew the paint off?

It should be noted that the Vault Tec Rep says he stayed in sanctuary for a year after the bombs fell. Some of the movements and adjustments around the town could have been him. Especially the ones in the workshop house where it's implied he was staying.

“Perhaps this block was foreshadowing what Shaun would become” It was just paying respects

World: *being destroyed* Oxhorn: *taking pictures of every single home in the neighborhood*

4:45 No, it's not F for Father or Foreshadowing The block is just paying respects.

Over the 210 years codsworth must have learned a lot abt the neighborhood

What Happened to the People of Sanctuary Hills? They died or become ghouls.

"How much pain were these kids in to need Med-X?" *completely ignores that a Raider could've left that within 210 years.*

This guy: "dogs are more acceptable guinea pigs than humans" The internet: "who is this guy talking to?"

You missed the two graves in one of the backyards.

For the different colors, I think they used to use a high lead based paint, and they just made a new safe paint, some things got painted over with new paint that evaporated in the blasts. Leaving the old lead paint.

Game: *Shows male character* Codsworth: "... Mum? ..." Me: *Visible Confusion*

I can't seem to get enough of these Fallout videos. They're so captivating and immersive, like stepping into a whole new world. The attention to detail and the storytelling in this franchise are just incredible. I could spend hours watching these videos and still not get tired of it. It's like falling in love with a game all over again, every time!

I know this is a year old but I found it VERY pleasant to find out what happened. Thank you very much! Also yes sanctuary was my main settlement all boarders were sealed off the only entrance was the bridge

Hey Ox, maybe I’m reading into it too much, but maybe the model was using stimpacks to dehydrate herself so she looks thin for modeling? Since in survival mode they dehydrate you with each use.

Oxhorn:A family terminal! Also Oxhorn:oh wait it’s just a mod

This, Sir, was magnificant! I just started FO4 today and I stumbled thru sanctuary and didn't even get a small part of the details. Even tho I played the whole Fallout series up and down, this teaches me to keep my eyes open.

Why does this make me sad? I almost cried at 33:55. WHILE AT WORK! 🤣 Yeah, I messed up my Fallout 4 files earlier so I’m here watching others play it. I’ll have to reinstall it later. 😭

Just started playing Fallout 4 on survival difficulty. I now know what pain is.

I never left Sanctuary Hills, I'm still there looking for Shaun

I'd say that the yellow paint on the blue house is probably because before the war it used to be a yellow house but they painted it blue and the detention was so powerful that it burned of the blue paint and set it back to yellow

My explanation for the blue house turning yellow, so I like to imagine that the family just couldn't face the fact that the world ended, so they tried to cary on with their plans such as Halloween and painting their house yellow. Idk this might be stupid but the idea that a family drove themselves crazy denying the apocalypse is kinda cool.

There are graves behind one of the houses on the left at the circle in the road

"Where are the bodies of the people that were standing at the fence?" 200 years of open exposure to elements and scavengers? It's more surprising to find anything at all.

Hello Oxhorn. I thoroughly enjoy your Fallout 4 videos, especially those that cover various aspects of the lore. Thank you for taking the time and bringing to light things I never would have considered or realized while playing the game. It’s people like you that keeps people like me playing a game that’s now almost 8 years old. Cheers from Australia!

6:35 you’ve mention someone uses those candle..and you also said it could be the owner of the house..well I have a theory that it might be vault Tec rep

What if the sole survivor was the “military contact” hawthorn was talking about?

The house could have been painted over and when the bombs dropped the paint scorched off. And as for the Rosa family they could have been visiting some neighbors

I really like how deep you dig into these videos. Highly entertaining. Thank you!

Wow, the first thing comes into my mind in the beginning of the video was the developers didn't mind re-create everything regarding skeletons next to the fences because it was irrelevant and mirror thing speaking from a casual player perspective and I thought it's just because of that developers didn't place mirror things how it was before the war. But after this video, I realised that developers are geniuses, that actually crafted every aspect of the game. And you Sir, author of the video I would like to thank that you investigate this every single aspect of the mirror things of the game which I find very very interesting. The reason I bought the game and started to play is just that randomly pop-ups your videos into my recommendation list and now I'm very interested in Fallout lore. Well done and very interesting lore

The ghoulified neighbors is easily my favorite random encounter. Such a great but morbid detail.

The first Fallout mentions in the opening scene that uranium was a focal point of the Resource Wars, along with petroleum. With that in consideration, I can see why Mrs. Rosa would want to convert the Corvega from a fission reactor to a fusion reactor.

Never noticed the lesbian sportscar drivers. I love them, and miss them now :(

Thanks for making this video and tell us what happened to the residents. I know it's been a while since you posted it, but this is the first time I've found it. I never had the random encounter with the residences while wandering the Boston, but it makes for a very sad end to those people.

i feel dumb, after all my playthrought, i never saw that fallout shelter behind the house with the bag on the roof o.o

I don't understand why everyone gets so upset about typos in terminal entries. Typos in the game, yeah it is kind of irritating. However, typos in a terminal entry written by a human being is just immersive. It's incredibly unimmersive that every single human being in this world spells everything perfectly or they spend the time to edit every single one of their terminal entries, even the personal ones that no one cares about. I don't even like it when random post-war terminals have perfect spelling in them when logically the people would have had very limited educations. I think with the dogs and the xcell it's the fact that it boosts all of your stats by 2, making the dogs more dangerous. I think that's the issue he takes. "You guys want to do drugs, I can supply you, but don't give dangerous drugs to your dogs so that they become a danger to the entire neighborhood. You take drugs and die, I have to live with that. You give drugs to your dogs and they kill children in the neighborhood, we all have to live with that."

God i love the atompunk aesthetic.

Nuclear Bomb: *destroys everything Comic Books: “Allow us to introduce ourselves”

Nuke:uses emp Terminals:still work Nuke:am I joke to you

OMG thats WHO those ghouls are!? I've always encountered them in different places in Boston but couldn't understand where they came from. Thanks once again to Oxhorn for uncovering this mystery. I hope you do another video on Far Harbor, love the music there

it scares me he knows all of the car's official names. watched this 2 years ago and now rewatching this because i miss Fallout 4 lore; there might be none to cover, but i still miss it.

BoS: can fix Vertibirds, and can build giant robots. Also BoS: bro wtf is a car.

Thanks for touching on the lore of the Sanctuary residents. I find that lore from the prewar era of Fallout 4 very interesting.

The Rosa family came from another house because the little boy was probably at his friends when the bombs dropped 👬

Can’t help but notice the houses you find enemies in are the ones with Halloween decor up

Shaun is also a Sanctuary survivor. It never made sense to me why Nate is called the Sole Survivor. There are other pre-war Sanctuary residents wether they be a 60+ year old man or feral ghouls.

It's so sad that a lot of the neighbors went feral. Wonder if they all went feral immediately upon ghoulifaction. They all stuck together even after 210 years, so it's possible they didn't, but stayed together as a group, because they were all each other had and even as ferals they just flocked together. It would have been crazy had the sole survivor came out of the vault and all of their neighbors were still living in sanctuary as non feral ghouls. I can't imagine that they would be happy to seem them simply because they would still be as youthful and healthy as the day they went in the vault. And the fact they they even got in the vault. Sure, they all would have died had they made it in like the other residents did, but I doubt they would give the sole survivor a chance to explain any of that or believe them. They very likely would have been extremely bitter.

...and then painted their house yellow.

Im currently playing Fall Out 4 & i love the lure back stories in your videos. (Jan. 19th 2021) I'm at the part of the game i have to build a teleportation machine to reach " The Institute" meanwhile playing numerous side quest. Great read bro !

Great narrator voice!!! I now know the whole story lore of Sanctuary Hills. Thank you!!

Very well done on this one, Oxhorn! The bit about the Ghoul random encounter was especially hard hitting. I recognized the Rosa name (and thus concluded they must all be from Sanctuary Hills) but never made any connection with the others. Makes that whole thing so much more... somber. Also never noticed Codsworth's line about the "Halloween costume" before.

Yes yes yes a fallout 4 video

My favorite line was “the value of our car is least of our worries” lol amazing.

Thought it was all recap until the very end. Kudos for uncovering the mystery and for the game creators for following through like that!

I did what I could to build up Sanctuary to become a small city with 4-5 story buildings everywhere. This was an interesting video, especially after spending a small chunk of my life meticulously building there. This game and location holds a special meaning to me and it helped give me extra hope for the future.

Given as how over 200 years people forgot what baseball was, I theorize its possible that people 100 some years later forgot what Halloween was and put them up as a deterrent for raiders. Quite possibly thinking the decorations had powers to repel evil not dissimilar to halloweens real world origins

I also found two graves behind a ruined house in Sancuary. Nobody is going to read this, but I just needed to say it.

rosa's is always my primary spot. i usually put all the workbenches in the car port and build a bedroom with a bobblehead rack and magazine racks in what used to be the kitchen at rosa's. sanctuary has that river which usually gets 6 - 8 water purifiers. i'll build shops in the houses and the foundations of the ruined houses are great for new buildings. i like to built my own "institute" usually at coastal cottage, because it's a crappy spot to build a regular settlement. this consists of a big concrete bunker that is completely inaccessible except by fast travel. i'll keep all my fancy power armors and really cool/rare weapons/armor there, but sanctuary is almost always where i keep all my regular stuff and do all my crafting.

What I'm interested in: Where is the military car and the vertibird/ the soldiers (especially the ones in Power Armor) later? The bombs were also EMPs I think that made cars basically useless. So where are they?

Strange things happen due to radiation like bigger mutant animal mutated humans and colour changing buildings

"and painted the house yellow." lol love it.

1:11 high noon with the flashlight on outside the neighbors house. "Youre a madman Oxhorn, a MADMAN!!!"

I turned sanctuary into a city with elevators, tons of shops, houses, hotels, offices, great guarded walls and towers, almost 200 points of electricty and still building onto it, i made a little central market area which is 4 giant walled platforms stacked on top of eachother, complete with shops, bars, and all sorts of decorations as well as little houses here and there around the platforms with elevators and walkways + catwalks surrounding the entire thing. Even put up a little outside area on the top floor complete with chairs, and a camping van i turned into a shack home.

What if the vault tec rep or codsworth put up the decorations And if I remember correctly the rep even says that he stayed at sanctuary for a while and that he finds codsworth annoying

I just love it when he says Pick-R-Up Truck lol

I have always wondered who those named ghouls were. Thanks for doing all this detective work for us and slaking our curiosity.

Hey Ox, the issue with fissible material in the FO universe is that it was also becoming really scarce. The US was the only country implementing fusion technology and didn't want to share it with the rest of the world, Especially not with China which was still dependend of fossil fuels and uranium. The decline of aiding China with fusion tech was the last drop which led to the ressource war. Pre War US produced more energy than they could ever use up. Thanks to fusion tech. But most civilians still used cars using petrol or fission.

I think I said this before but after this (I never made the connection with the ghouls) I'm even more sure Vault Tec and the Military had something to do with who lived in Sanctuary Hills and got into Vault 111. Think about it there is a lot of evidence that many of the people who lived there were veterans or their families (I have a feeling Mrs. Rosa was a war widow and the people who were likely the Parkers lived in the house with the barricade almost certainly were) or professionals Dr's, Lawyers etc. and that their genetic background was somehow known to the Government and Vault Tec. If you look at the Pre-war Sanctuary it looks brand new. None of the trees have matured much and it doesn't have a lot of the things you'd expect from a long established community. There is much more to the people and events at sanctuary than meets the eye.

Fleeing Sanctuary by car / bike wouldn’t end well as you’d end up heading towards the bomb detonation.

I think the blue house was once yellow but it got painted over. The blast knocked the blue right off.

All the inconsistencies could be chalked up to the "sole surviver is a synth with implanted memories" theory.

Very well done. It didn't occur to me that about the feral ghoul herd were former sanctuary residents.

Holy shit. There is some crazy fuckin lore for the mom and son who rebuilt the car.

In two different runs I ran into the Rosas, and other Sanctuary Hill residents as Feral Ghouls in the ruins of Boston or its suburbs. Once was in the neighborhood across the lake from Vault 81 and the other time was in that two story shop between Lexington and Cambridge south of the Corvega Plant. Both times I sent them to their final rest, I viewed those killings as mercy killings. Living on as a brain fried feral ghoul is no life.

The discrepencies between the colors of houses and decorations, etc., between the pre-war Sanctuary and the post-war ruins could be taken as proof that Dima is right. Nate/Nora is actually a synth given memories of the day of the bombs but the Institute didn't do their research and got details wrong.