10 Worst Fallout Vaults You Definitely Don’t Want To Live In

Summary Vaults in the Fallout franchise hide dark experiments on unsuspecting inhabitants by Vault-Tec.

Some Vaults, like Vault 112, resulted in sadistic experiments causing prolonged suffering.

Residents were subjected to cruel experiments, leading to violent deaths in many of the Vaults.

Fallout is seeing a resurgence in popularity thanks to the new TV series set in the franchise available on Amazon Prime. While following the characters both in the show and the games, it's easy to get absorbed in exploring the Wasteland and forget about the Vaults created by Vault-Tec under the pretense that they'd be locations meant to keep people safe from radiation. Of course, the safety they were promised isn't what many Vault Dwellers received.

Vault-Tec designed most of its Vaults with the intention of performing unethical experiments on the inhabitants without their knowledge or consent. Vaults such as the Control Vault were the luckiest ones to be in because the inhabitants were left to survive without Vault-Tec researchers interfering and making survival a challenge. However, most Vault Dwellers ended up being the unlucky test subjects in brutal experiments instead.

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10 Vault 81 Avoided A Terrible Fate

Vault 81 is one of the weirdest Vault-Tec experiments in Fallout 4, mostly because the experiment that was supposed to take place in that Vault never happened. Even when it's first encountered, Vault 81 is unique compared to other Vaults because it's still active and filled with residents who are alive and well. However, if Vault-Tec's plan went as intended, Vault 81's population would've been sickly and reduced from its original number of inhabitants.

The intended experiment for Vault 81 would've easily made it one of the worst Vaults to live in. Vault-Tec wanted to use it to create a universal cure for diseases. This meant that the inhabitants would be continuously exposed to disease and then used to make a cure before the process is repeated with a new disease. However, the Overseer assigned to the Vault didn't go through with the experiment.

9 Solitary Confinement In Vault 77

Vault 77 appears in Fallout 3, and it was one of many where a social experiment was run. The Vault was home to a single man and a bunch of puppets. Naturally, his mental state deteriorated, and the story about him became a legend that left slavers scared of the Vault because of him.

While this would be a terrible fate in an end-of-the-world situation because of the isolation, it's not the worst experiment that Vault-Tec engineered. Additionally, the odds of ending up as an inhabitant in this Vault are incredibly low, since only one man was chosen to live in Vault 77. As such, it's not as high on the list because it would be unlikely to end up as an inhabitant of Vault 77, and only one person ended up being driven to madness with puppets as his sole source of socialization for years.

8 The Lost Musical Talent Of Vault 92

Vault 92 is one of Vault-Tec's dark experiments in Fallout 3, and on the surface, it promised to be home to musicians where they'd be supplied with everything they need to continue working while locked inside. Of course, the reality was different from what Vault-Tec promised, and the goal of this Vault was to increase white noise until the inhabitants turned violent. In a way, this experiment could be considered a success.

As the white noise filtered into the Vault continued to increase, one inhabitant turned to violence, killing three other inhabitants until he was stopped. However, instead of stopping the experiment, the Overseer decided to continue increasing the amount of white noise filtered in the Vault. As seen before, the number of inhabitants who turned to violence because of the noise increased, and their actions helped contribute to the fall of Vault 92.

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7 The Spores Of Vault 22

Vault 22 is a Vault-Tec experiment from Fallout: New Vegas, and it started with good intentions, unlike many other Vaults. The goal was to create a food source from fast-growing plants that were also resilient enough to survive. However, this Vault saw problems due to the fact that it ran an experiment for the purpose of pest control: Beauvaria Mordicana, a fictional fungus.

The spores of this fictional fungus would infect pests and control their bodies to spread to other pests. Of course, the spores ended up infecting humans, killing them before using their corpses to continue spreading, just like it would with pests. While it could be argued that this was an unexpected variable, some evidence found in-game suggests that Vault-Tec might've known that humans could be infected by the spores and decided to continue with the experiment regardless.

6 Vault 94 Was Designed To Be Massacred

Vault 94 appears in Fallout 76, and it was destined to end in death. The residents were all pacifists who practiced a non-violent religion, and the Overseer even revealed the experiment to them with a request that they arm themselves to stay safe. However, the residents refused the Overseer's advice and stuck to their pacifist ways, like the original experiment design intended.

Eventually, the Vault was raided by outsiders, and the result was that the population of Vault 94 was massacred. While this was an unfortunate ending, it was likely the intention of the experiment that the Overseer was supposed to carry out. The fate of Vault 94 is particularly sad because the Overseer broke from their assignment to try to save the population, only for the residents to ignore their advice and end up receiving a violent death.

5 The Hallucinations Of Vault 106

Vault 106 is from Fallout 3, and it was subjected to a medical experiment, which included psychoactive drugs being added to the air through the vents. The population was continuously exposed to these drugs, and the exposure led to violence. However, the final fate of the inhabitants is never revealed, and the air is still full of drugs even 200 years later.

On the one hand, these drugs could've made the death of the Vault's inhabitants less painful, since they might not have been aware of what was happening around them. But on the other hand, it could've made their fate even worse if they hadn't died. Since their fate is unknown, it's possible that some inhabitants are still alive, and they're stuck in unending hallucinations caused by the air supply until they succumb to death.

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4 The Gary Squad Of Vault 108

Vault 108 appears in Fallout 3, and the experiment involved putting terminally ill residents in positions of power so they'd die prematurely, rigging the power to fail after 20 years, and providing triple the normal amount of supplies for the armory. Also, they were not given access to any form of entertainment. On top of this experiment, Vault-Tec gave the Vault a cloning device to test what would happen if the same person was cloned repeatedly.

The downfall of Vault 108 actually came from the cloning device, which cloned Gary repeatedly. Each Gary clone ended up having more violent tendencies than the previous clone, and they all hated the inhabitants who weren't Gary clones. As a result, the clones turned to violence and killed the other inhabitants of the Vault until they were the only ones left.

3 The Unwilling Stasis Of Vault 111

Custom Image by Katarina Cimbaljevic

Vault 111 is found in Fallout 4, and like most Vaults, the inhabitants weren't aware of the experiment they'd become part of. In this case, Vault-Tec wanted to study the long-term effects of cryogenic stasis, so the inhabitants were unwillingly put into stasis. Here, the Vault actually ended up being abandoned, and a power failure that happened later resulted in the death of all but one inhabitant.

In theory, this isn't the worst fate to have as a Vault inhabitant. The real question would be if the inhabitants woke up after the power failure and then found themselves trapped and unable to avoid a slow death in their pods. At least, if they never woke up, their death was a quiet one, albeit due to the result of circumstances they never wanted to experience but were forced into.

2 The Depressing Experiment Of Vault 11

Vault 11 is found in Fallout: New Vegas, and it was part of an experiment where the residents were told they needed to sacrifice one person every year, or the entire population would be wiped out. However, if the population decided not to sacrifice anybody, then the Vault would open, and they'd be able to leave. Unaware of this, the inhabitants formed political factions to elect an Overseer every year, who would then become the sacrifice at the end of the year.

One Overseer changed the process so that a random inhabitant would be sacrificed instead, and this resulted in an uprising that killed most of the Vault's population. Eventually, the last five inhabitants decided not to make a sacrifice, and the true nature of the Vault was discovered because of this.

1 Vault 112 Is The Most Sadistic Experiment

Vault 112 is in Fallout 3, and its experiment was meant to keep the inhabitants alive in a simulation. Originally, the simulation was supposed to be a perfect world, a paradise that the inhabitants would stay in for an indefinite amount of time. However, this experiment took a dark turn when the Overseer ended up having complete control over the simulation.

The Overseer of Vault 112 was sadistic, so he turned the simulation into a cruel nightmare world for his own amusement. Inside the simulation, the Overseer would torture the Vault Dwellers, killing them and bringing them back to life over and over. By the time the Lone Wanderer finds the Vault, the inhabitants are still in the simulation, and it's estimated to have been running for over 200 years at that point. Even if it's a simulation, 200 years of torture puts Vault 112 at the top of the list of the worst Vaults to live in.

Fallout takes the genre of post-apocalyptic worlds in a different direction with the existence of Vaults. Under the guise of offering a place safe from radiation, Vault-Tec lured people into locations where it could perform unethical experiments on subjects who were unable to escape, or at least unable to easily escape. The result is horrific reminders of how one company took advantage of people's desire to live and instead tormented them in the world of Fallout.