Fallout: Post-apocalyptic food and drinks

Have you ever wondered, while roaming the radioactive wasteland, how people live in the vaults? What do they do, when they do not come out into the daylight? How do they spend their time, what do they eat? You can read about all this in “The Vault Dweller’s Official Cookbook” from the world of Fallout. Yeah, there are not only recipes in it! Vault-Tec Corporation provides the residents of its vaults with food, and also reminds them that it is important to receive guests, organize parties, and even large gatherings! Of course, everything has to be done according to the rules because there is not much space, resources are limited, and the snouts around you are the same. But there’s no need to scratch your head over what to cook for your guests because this book contains more than 70 different recipes for food and drinks from everything that can be found in the storage facilities of the vaults.

This book is also valuable because it contains notes by an experienced dweller of the vaults, who will tell you how to catch a radioactive chicken or a radgull, what dish to use a mole rat in, how useful the death claw can be (it is edible, and its eggs are too!), why the brahmins are dangerous, and will tell you a lot of funny and sometimes even informative fables about dishes and ingredients. For example, did you know that the most expensive dish in the book is made of… potatoes?

And with this book, you can bring a little bit of the Fallout atmosphere right home, because it contains dishes that you’ve seen in the game, such as BlamCo Mac and Cheese, InstaMash almost exactly like the one in the blue and white package, and Joe’s Meatballs.

And, of course, a lot of sweet treats! Dandy Boy Apples — as fresh as ever. The Perfectly Preserved Pie looks like it just came out of a portable lunch machine. Fancy Lads Snack Cakes, Slocum’s Buzzbites… Go find them all!

The most difficult part of this cookbook translation, as well as other game worlds (for example, The Elder Scrolls), is to convey the realities of the game, especially if the game does not have an official Ukrainian localization. But this is also the most interesting part because here the translator can be free and create! That’s how we came up with пан Мастак (Mister Handy), антирад (Rad-X), радогін (RadAway), топля, радолені and радчайки, and many other names and terms. We even trespassed the boundaries of the sacred, and Nuca-Cola turned into a «ядер-кола».

The real challenge for us was to adapt S.P.E.C.I.A.L., the name of the characteristics because it is both an abbreviation (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck) and a word. We spent a long time wrapping our heads around this problem, involved the entire SBT Localization in brainstorming, and finally found it.

This variant didn’t make it into the final version of the book – you’ll see S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and the usual names of skills there — but we’re proud to have tried and solved this “extra credit question”.

So, enjoy your post-apocalyptic meals and make sure that the mole rats do not cause you any harm.

Iryna Adrieieva

translated by Anna Chyrva

15.12.23