Vault 13 is a retro-futuristic bunker where survivors of a 50-year-old nuclear war live in a simulated 1950s suburbia. When the vault's water chip fails, a restless dreamer leads a scout team to the surface: a quirky tech, a stern officer and an arrogant scholar. The wasteland is a hellscape of rubble and mutants. The tech dies in a raider trap, and the team is captured by Max, a survivalist who offers a water chip in exchange for Vault 13's mythical G.E.C.K. At the Hub, a crime lord and a historian reveal the vaults were a corporate doomsday scheme. The scholar betrays the group to The Master, a mutant zealot creating a sterile super-race. As the team escapes, the Overseer locks them out, revealed as the war's architect. Mutants siege Vault 13; the hero's father dies opening the door. The hero crushes the mutated scholar, kills the Master, and mercy-kills an infected Max. Leading survivors into the wastes, he activates the G.E.C.K., creating a fragile Eden with the officer at his side. War never changes—but people do.
