Gamr Drivl: Fallout Antebellum

War. War never changes.

Since time immemorial, there has always been conflict in the center of human history. Man against Man. Tribe against Tribe. Nation against Nation. War about land. War about gods. War about freedom.

In the 21st Century, the conflict saw two great nations, desperate to feed their hungry infrastructures, their hungry populations, their hungry consumption, arming themselves for what would become known as the Great War. China and America. Superpower against Superpower. A war about resources.

And on October 23rd in the year 2077, the war would ignite with nuclear fire, changing the face of the world and the face of civilization forever. But even in the wastelands that remained afterward, as Man formed new Tribes, as Tribes formed new Nations, one fact remained true, and that is that war...

War never changes.

But what about what happened before the War? I expound about a new idea for the Fallout universe below the break.

The World of Fallout

A year and a half ago, I wrote a piece of Gamr Drivl about Fallout, suggesting a future installment could be set in New Orleans. Since then, Bethesda released Fallout 76 to much controversy. The earliest-set game in the Fallout canon, it is set a mere twenty years after the Great War, and follows the Vault Dwellers of Vault 76 as they emerge to reclaim Appalachia in a... largely empty map. The game has had more than its share of issues, and Bethesda got plenty of flack over it.

I'm not going to dwell too much on Fallout 76's flaws. Because at the end of the discussion, I still find Fallout's setting and the lore surrounding it fascinating. Since I don't have hours to devote to exploring the various wastelands to learn it all, I admit to watching lore videos by Oxhorn on YouTube to learn up on it all. And one thing that abundantly becomes clear as you dive into the lore is that the world was messed up in the Fallout universe, even before the bombs dropped and the world ended.

Corporate callousness and rampant greed was everywhere. Vault-Tec was a definite example. Any exploration of the Vaults and their computers will reveal they were never meant to save anyone. They were meant to be experimental spaces, to test psychological and sociological concepts. That so many of these Vaults left their dwellers dead or damaged in some way is monstrous. West Tek, a military contractor, was involved in weapons and bioscience research, the latter of which develops the Forced Evolutionary Virus, which would eventually lead to the creation of the Super Mutants. West Tek tested FEV on military prisoners at Mariposa Military Base, California, and also by adding it to the drinking water of Huntersville, West Virginia, without the residents' knowledge. Poseidon Energy was a major corporate entity as well, heavily invested in energy and fuel research, among other things, and post-War their oil rig off the West Coast would serve as the home of The Enclave.

There were plenty of political issues at home as well. Following the mid-20th Century, America created an intermediate level of government between the state and the federal level, dividing the country into thirteen commonwealths, which just created more turmoil instead of less. Not to mention America's aggressive foreign policies, which led to the annexation of Canada and the invasion of Mexico in the lead up to the Great War.

There are a number of aspects of this pre-War America that would make for interesting exploration and storytelling. But rather than do the standard first-person FPS/RPG blend that Bethesda favors with its Fallout games, I'd take it a different route.

Fallout Antebellum

There are other ways to tell a story besides the way it's been told in Fallout games. The now-defunct Telltale Games studio gave us a narrative- and character-driven structure with its popular The Walking Dead series of games, and used the same structure-- in which character choices have longer-reaching consequences ("[Character X] will remember you said that") in later chapters or installments-- in other games, based off of Back to the Future, Batman, Game of Thrones, and Borderlands.

A similar structure would allow players to explore several different parts of pre-War American society, in different parts of the country/planet, all in the weeks leading up to the day the bombs dropped. While some might argue that a pre-War Fallout game would have a foregone conclusion-- we all know the bombs fell on October 23, 2077-- there's still enough leeway that one could try to guide the characters under the player's control to a more positive end, or at least to try to see some good done even in the face of the impending apocalypse. For example, a well-meaning scientist working for one of the corrupt corporations might realize that they have no chance to make it to a bunker to ride out the bombs, but they decide to try to take out some antagonist, to make sure that at least one scumbag doesn't get to survive either.

Having the principal player-characters of Fallout Antebellum in different parts of the country doesn't mean there wouldn't be any crossover between the separate narrative strings. A decision made by our aforementioned scientist at their company in New England could mean that our average-joe citizen trying to make it through a period of civil unrest in the Midwest might find that their ration has some extra goods in it. But a bureaucrat in D.C. that fails to convince a superior that law enforcement needs federal support could lead to a cop in Los Angeles finding themselves with far less options when faced with a rioting crowd. While all the principal characters will have some backstory specifics, there's enough flexibility for the player to fill in some details in some places, and there should be some player agency in the choices that can be made while following a particular one, the choices are always aligned so they will still reflect the character, since the narratives will still be largely linear.

It wouldn't be that difficult to give players outright heroic characters to play, but given the nature of pre-War America, there should be more amoral/"gray" characters that the players control throughout a multi-episode story. While players might want to direct these characters in a more altruistic or compassionate direction, the choices available to them would be far less positive, to drive home the idea that these people aren't heroes.

It's worth noting also that the timelines for each respective narrative are not quite in synch. Some segments of one character's narrative might take place weeks or months before other characters' narratives. Generally each episode of Antebellum would take place later in the timeline for each character, with the final episode of Season 1 being set during the hours before the War began on October 23, 2077.

There could be other, minor characters that people briefly control in one segment of various episodes-- minor characters connected to our protagonists-- but there would be seven main characters that we'd follow through their respective narratives. These seven characters I've dubbed the Soldier, the Scientist, the Citizen, the Suit, the Sleuth, the Stranger, and the Snake. Below, I'll detail out some information about each of them, a few of the important characters connected to them, as well as which characters from the canon that they also interact with, most of whom are mentioned in old computer terminals.

The Soldier

Pvt. James Walton ("Jimmy" to his friends) is an Army infantryman, freshly returned from the Anchorage liberation, on leave as Antebellum starts in his hometown of Modesta, California. But Jimmy knows that he's soon to be called back to active duty, as the war continues, and he eventually gets re-assigned to the Mariposa Military Base. Jimmy's narrative shows how things are going within the rank-and-file military, as well as how some civilians view them. He's patriotic, at heart a good person, but a bit psychologically scarred by the Anchorage campaign. Players would be able to fill in some details about some of the things that happened during that battle, all of which Jimmy would try to justify as being his "doing his duty," or "following orders," even if he's aware just how hollow an excuse those are. 

Narrative arc: After arriving back in the Original 48 from the Battle of Anchorage, Jimmy enjoys a brief period of respite, being on leave, but has to deal with the rising resentment of the public against the resource depletion of the continuing war with China. When he gets assigned to Mariposa, Jimmy finds himself dealing with the madness of the military's moral deficiencies, from maniacs like Lt. Meyers being in direct control of his life, to the questionable parameters of the FEV Project. By the time the bombs drop, Jimmy is about ready to crack from it all, and has the potential to be there when Captain Roger Maxson founds what will become the Brotherhood of Steel.


Supporting characters: His wife Melissa works as a secretary in the Modesto city center, and Jimmy has other family in SoCal as well. Melissa supports her husband regardless of what he did in the name of his country, and just wants him to come home safe. Jimmy gets a lot of push back and grief from his commanding officer, Lt. Niel Meyers, a glory hound that's been stuck stateside while the Sino-American War has been raging and views Pvt. Walton with envy, since he got to see actual combat. Meyers, being an officer, looks down on the "enlisted pukes" like Pvt. Walton or Pvt. Hennesey, a comrade of Jimmy's that served alongside him in Anchorage, but who doesn't have a lot of the same moral quandaries that Jimmy does about the things they did.

Canonical links: Late in his narrative at Mariposa Military Base, Pvt. Walton transfers to the command of Capt. Roger Maxson, the second-in-command of the installation, and with whom he finds out about the experiments being conducted at the base by Robert Anderson. Anderson is developing the Forced Evolutionary Virus to serve as both an inoculation for China's biochemical weapons and as a cure for the "blue flu" disease that's broken out in some parts of the country.  Also at Mariposa is the base commander, Col. Robert Spindel, who likewise becomes aware of Anderson's experiments.

The Scientist

Dr. Samantha North works for Vault-Tec. As Antebellum begins, she works out of the Boston regional headquarters, and generally her work is centered around integrating the computer systems in the various Vaults in the Boston area into the regional network, so Vault-Tec HQ would receive data from them. Samantha ("not Sam, it's Samantha") feels this is a waste of her talents, but part of her being stuck with it is because her career was sabotaged by a fellow scientist who jumped to the management track. But by catching some flaw in the network that would have compromised the security of the Vault network, and bringing it to the company's attention by couching the problem as preventing the company from retrieving the data from the experiments, she is soon earmarked for bigger things, causing her to visit some of Vault-Tec's other facilities. Samantha still has some decency in her, despite working for Vault-Tec, something she has to be careful not to show, as compassion (or "developing too much attachment to experimental subjects") is grounds for sanction and dismissal.

Narrative arc: From her early work in the narrative, Samantha must walk a fine line between holding to her remaining compassion and fulfilling the objectives of a monstrous company like Vault-Tec, trying to guide her new colleague Dr. Ng and appease the sleazebag of a manager that she reports to. As the apocalypse approaches, Samantha becomes aware that the end is approaching, and swings toward wanting to atone for not doing enough to help or save people, and shifts toward wanting to make sure that some of the monsters don't get to evade total atomic annihilation.

Supporting characters: Oscar Hartwood, the aforementioned coworker-turned-manager that sabotaged her career. Hartwood (who ascribes the title of "doctor" to himself despite not having a degree) hopes to use his position in Boston Regional HQ to springboard himself to Corporate HQ in Los Angeles. Doctor Ng is a more fresh-faced colleague that Samantha looks at as "just like me, when I started working here." The two are very much supposed to be like the "devil and angel on the shoulder" for Samantha, with Hartwood being the one arguing for more cold decision making, and Ng still being fresh enough to have a good soul to still argue for compassionate actions, which Samantha would try to correct, albeit gently. She'll also have some interactions in later episodes with The Suit, who she sees as what Hartwood aspires to be and appropriately doesn't like him, but has to stay polite as he's got the power to make her life much more difficult.

Canonical links: Early in her narrative, Samantha interacts with Valery Barstow, a scientist who would later become the Overseer of Vault 88 (from Fallout 4 Vault Workshop), and who Samantha views as what she could turn into if she subscribes too much to the Vault-Tec philosophy. During a visit to Vault-Tec's Boston regional HQ, she could briefly bump into the Vault-Tec representative, but likely wouldn't have a deep interaction with him. She'd be more likely to meet Dr. Martin Reid, another Vault-Tec scientist that grew suspicious of the company's intentions, whom Samantha could either dismiss or encourage to dig deeper. And then there's Frank Davidson, the regional manager of Vault-Tec, an office tyrant with a ferocious temper.

The Citizen

Joe Haller, like the moniker implies, is an average citizen, even somewhat jokingly calling himself "an average Joe." (You don't think I chose that name by accident, do you?) He does factory work for RobCo in the northern Virginia area, helping keep the machinery going that builds the Pip-Boys, which will get shipped to the Vaults around the country. However, with inflation getting worse, Joe has to find extra work where he can, and even that isn't easy to come by. Like Pvt. Walton, Joe has a family to think of, and desperation may drive him to make hard decisions. Especially as he's sneaked some components out of the factory and sold them on the black market. Joe isn't management at the factory, but he's been doing some supervisor work here and there, and tries to take care of "the boys" on shift as best he can as well. Despite not being a head honcho, he does get told that his taking on extra work has been noticed by some of the higher-ups.

Narrative arc: Joe shows life at the average citizen's level, from having to work extra shifts or jobs in order to feed his family, and the desperate choices he makes as the situation deteriorates on the global level. He makes the questionable decision to steal from RobCo, and later gets roped into being the inside man on a larger-scale robbery, coming to realize that he's gotten into a far more serious situation, facing the fact that he may be committing treason. As the apocalypse approaches, Joe must move to try to stop the people behind the robbery from meeting their goals.

Supporting characters: Joe's family-- his wife Elaine and his children Diane & Joe Junior-- are his number one priority, and he always tries to look out for them. Elaine is a housewife, Diane is on the verge of starting junior high, and little Joe Junior loves watching The Adventures of Captain Cosmos on TV, and hopes his Dad can get them tickets to the Captain Cosmos Live! tour, which is coming to D.C. in December. At the factory, Joe often has to deal with his boss, Mr. Parsons, who is gruff but generally fair, and is like Joe stuck between a rock and a hard place, having to make quota, but having to deal with payroll issues that make it hard to meet said quota. And then there's Dickinson, the black marketeer that Joe's dealt with, who wants to get "the real goods" out of the factory and has designs on using Joe as the inside man for a robbery. Later in the narrative, he crosses paths with The Snake, since they're behind the robbery scheme that Dickinson wants to put forward.

Canonical links: As Joe works for RobCo, this means in a broad sense he works for Robert House, and the hard work that Joe puts in to the company doesn't go unnoticed, leading to a brief crossing of paths between Joe and Mr. House when the latter briefly visits the D.C. area to meet with the U.S. government. Otherwise, as an average citizen, he's much too low on the social ladder to interact with a lot of the more well-known canonical characters.

The Suit

Meet Wesley Gilchrist, a Vault-Tec junior executive and part of their corporate security branch. Of our Antebellum seven, he's the first one to really delve into the darker side of the Fallout universe. He's amoral and doesn't really care about people. He buys into the Vault-Tec philosophy completely, not caring that the Vaults aren't meant to save anyone, and he's primarily interested in protecting the company's interests at all costs. Gilchrist's player-choices don't have a positive outcome in any situation; whatever the player chooses, someone is going to get screwed over. Gilchrist is smug as hell, but his position in Vault-Tec corporate security means that few people are willing to confront him over his better-than-you attitude. He doesn't like to get his hands dirty, but he has the right connections to see to it that the dirty work gets done. His position in the company also means that he's in a unique place to meet some of the other seven, or have his decisions impact them indirectly.

Narrative arc: Gilchrist is culpable in a lot of bad stuff. He ruins people's lives through his machinations, justifying it always as being in the company's best interests. He doesn't care whether the people in the company are psychopaths or corrupt, as long as it doesn't compromise Vault-Tec itself. He starts out his narrative sniffing out a possible whistleblower, and silences them, a case that brings him to the Board of Directors' attention, and gets him traveling to various Vault-Tec locations across the country, from Boston to D.C. to L.A. to Vegas, tracking down other threats to the company. When he learns that the bombs may, in fact, be dropping on a particular day, he assumes that he'll have proven his worth and be welcomed into the secret Vault that was built to protect Vault-Tec's best and brightest.

Supporting characters: Gilchrist is quite demanding of his secretary, Grace, who responds with remarkable aplomb, though I could see her being the subject of a minor scene, where her anger at him shows. She follows Gilchrist everywhere, given his job takes him to various Vault-Tec facilities. If Gilchrist needs dirty work done, he calls up his "problem solver" Hammond, a man who cheerfully does the job, because Vault-Tec pays well. Gilchrist takes his marching orders, as it were, from the Vault-Tec Board of Directors, specifically from the Director of Security, Andrew Rook. As noted above, Gilchrist does end up interacting with The Scientist and also with Oscar Hartwood, a lower-mid-level manager in the company, as well as trying to track down The Stranger, among others.

Canonical links: As with The Scientist, Gilchrist will interact with Vault-Tec notables like the Vault-Tec representative and Frank Davidson in the Boston regional HQ. By virtue of his work and getting acknowledged by Andrew Rook, he would meet other high-ranking executives like Giles Wolstencroft (Assistant CEO) and Joanne Strausser (Public Relations), and then only to assure them that none of his work will cause blowback on the company.

The Sleuth

Here's where things could get interesting, as we'll bring back canonical companion Detective Nick Valentine in as The Sleuth. Yes, you read that right, Fallout 4 companion Nick Valentine would be in Antebellum. But, given FO4's Valentine is a early-model synth (i.e., an android) with a mere copy of a mind, Antebellum's Valentine is the original man himself, a police detective from Chicago brought to Boston Police Department to spearhead Operation Winter's End, a law enforcement drive to take down crime kingpin Eddie Winter. Valentine's narrative would actually begin in early October 2077, following the closing of Operation Winter's End, with the detective forced to watch as Eddie Winter gets to walk away, granted immunity due to his deal with the BADTFL (Bureau of Alcohol, Drugs, Tobacco, Firearms and Lasers) to testify against his associates. And Valentine is left a wreck by the fact that all his work was "for nothing," especially given Winter had his fiancee murdered. To help him cope with the PTSD from the whole fiasco, he's ordered to seek treatment at C.I.T.

Narrative arc: Valentine's experimental treatment-- which I see as happening over the course of multiple visits (once per episode, maybe)-- involves Valentine sitting in a chair designed to help him relive memories, ostensibly to "come to terms" with traumatic events. This chair would be an early version of the "memory chairs" in the Memory Den in Goodneighbor, a place familiar to players of FO4. The memories would then be flashback sequences to Valentine arriving in Boston and his participation in Operation Winter's End, piecing together the evidence and connections that would enable the BPD/BADTFL to arrest him. Outside of the flashbacks, Valentine could get involved in simple police actions as a way to "fill the hours," even if this ends up being him trying to find some other way to "get" Winter himself. As the apocalypse approaches, and Winter escapes from Valentine, the detective must instead deal with Winter's fixers, the same crew that killed his fiancee.

Supporting characters/Canonical links: Most of the major figures in Valentine's narrative are already canon characters, beginning with BPD Captain Jonathan Widmark, Valentine's superior during Operation Winter's End. A man trying to juggle a lot of work-- the aftermath of the failed case, plus all the other assorted policework that comes along-- Widmark still looks after the welfare of his men, which includes Valentine. Dr. Young (non-canon) is the C.I.T. specialist that Valentine meets for his treatment, who strikes a weird balance between being driven by science and trying to help their experimental subjects. Eddie Winter is Valentine's personal nemesis, a smug and well-connected crime boss that had Valentine's fiancee killed to try to get him to back off. BADTFL Captain Conners (non-canon) is involved as well, being the one who cut a deal with Winter, something for which Valentine isn't likely to forgive Conners for. And most importantly in Valentine's flashbacks is Jennifer Lands, his fiancee.

The Stranger

Sorry, no, this is not the Mysterious Stranger familiar to Fallout players, who with the right perk would randomly show up to dispatch enemies before vanishing without a trace. No, we're talking instead about Brenda Miles, a femme fatale that dabbles in con artistry, thievery, and blackmail to bankroll her life. "Brenda Miles" is just the latest name that she's used in a series of them. She's swindled and schemed her way down the West Coast before heading east to Las Vegas, where she hopes to be able to make some big score, and also to try to disappear among the crowds, to avoid retribution from her last job, which had been a little corporate espionage work, which had compromised Vault-Tec. While in Vegas, however, she attracts some powerful attention and has to play things by ear in order to hopefully escape incarceration or worse. Much more morally ambiguous than the more positively-aligned types (The Soldier, The Citizen, The Sleuth) but potentially not quite as dark as the negatively-aligned ones (The Suit, The Snake) depending on player choice. There's the potential to develop a backstory in Brenda's flashbacks to provide a sort of justification or explanation for why she chose to turn to a life of crime, but by the time the narrative starts, she's gotten in too deep and she doesn't have any real way out anymore. At the time of Antebellum, it's up to the players to decide if Brenda wants to try to keep using her original justifications, or if she's turned a corner and is now living the life of crime because she enjoys it too much.

Narrative arc: From her early manipulations of a high roller and a casino manager, Brenda is just trying to get some money together to find a way to evade the heat that's after her following her most recent score, even as she starts working out some way to pull off a bigger score. This, however, brings her to the attention of a very powerful figure in Las Vegas, and leads to her shifting her priorities and even her worldview. From there, she must struggle with following through on her plans or abandoning them, while the heat that followed her from L.A. closes in.

Supporting characters: The victim of Brenda's last scam, Mark Levins, is a Vault-Tec mid-level manager based in L.A., and apart from taking him for a lot of money, she stole some holo-tapes with proprietary information, which she'd sold on the black market. Levins, despite getting burned by Brenda, still has some conflicting feelings about the whole situation, since she'd successfully gotten him to fall for her, and fall hard. But because of her actions, Levins got in hot water with Vault-Tec, and that in turn brings The Suit after her, though he more arranges to have more of his "problem solvers" come after her. After arriving in Vegas, Brenda starts to get her hooks into William Reynolds, aka Million Dollar Bill, a champion poker player and high roller on the Vegas Strip, as well as a casino manager at the Lucky 38, Fred Walsh. She intends to use Million Dollar Bill as a "sugar daddy" to support a more lavish lifestyle, and plays Walsh so she can hopefully find some way to rob the Lucky 38 Casino. (Initially not a full heist, but a lesser robbery.)

Canonical links: It is Brenda's manipulations of Million Dollar Bill and Walsh that eventually brings her to the attention of none other than Robert House himself, but the relationship that develops between Brenda and Mr. House is different. He has no interest in her feminine wiles, alternating between being impressed with her intelligence and tendency toward pragmatism, to being dismissive of her "petty" aims and what he sees as a lack of vision. For her part, Brenda is likewise alternately scared of Mr. House-- a powerful man that she can't manipulate at will-- and slightly drawn to him, as the fact that he has zero interest in her means that she feels she can actually let her guard down with him at times.

The Snake

Like the moniker implies, Amy King is untrustworthy, but is very capable of hiding it, since she's a Chinese spy named Ting Chen Ai. Half-Caucasian through her mother, Amy only vaguely looks Asian, making it easier for her to avoid being rounded up to be sent to internment camps like other Chinese-Americans. She was born in the Yukon, Canada, near to the Alaskan border, before their family emigrated to northern California, and was later recruited by Chinese agents, traveling to mainland China, where she was trained in spycraft. Now Amy's task is to gather intel on American technology and help other agents in America. As Antebellum begins, her narrative establishes her cover as a marketing manager at Mama Dolce's in Washington, D.C., a job which allows her to travel and visit other companies to try to build the business. Like The Suit, Amy is not the most sympathetic of characters, though as her narrative is generally from her perspective, she believes in her mission and thinks that overthrowing the American government would be in The People's best interest, a point in the Fallout universe that may be somewhat hard to argue. However "altruistic" her motivations, however, she has no issue with torturing or killing people to get the information she wants, or to remove inconvenient obstacles to her mission. Her flashback segments would show her family life growing up near the Alaskan theater of war, and then her time in China, where some realities about the American campaign in the mainland might be seen, but which should also show that China itself isn't as blameless either, though she would probably see the People's Republic as more "in the right" than America was.

Narrative arc: Amy's narrative at least starts off showing her in her cover life before revealing the truth about her real job. She is always working to try to crack into computer systems at the companies she visits, hoping to find data that could be of use to her superiors, and she works with mercenary types and other biddable people to acquire proprietary technology, and to make some people disappear if they stand in the way of the mission. As the apocalypse looms, she becomes aware of a massive military project, which she decides she must sabotage before it can be deployed against China.

Supporting characters: Amy's direct supervisor within the People's Liberation Army is Mister Chang, whom she mostly communicates with via secure radio transmissions or by pay phones, as he is located at the Fujiniya Intelligence Base in Appalachia. As part of her operations, she deals with Dickinson, a black marketeer, to try to get her hands on American technology, and is often leaning on Dickinson to get her newer stuff, so the Chinese can study it. This leads Dickinson to start planning a bigger robbery of the RobCo factory in northern Virginia, and leads to Amy crossing paths with The Citizen, Dickinson's somewhat reluctant inside man. She is also trying to get more information on Vault-Tec and the Vaults, and so meets with Oscar Hartwood to ostensibly market Mama Dolce's to Vault-Tec, so their products may be used to stockpile the Vaults, and so could cross paths with The Scientist or The Suit.

Canonical links: As part of her cover, Amy "reports to" Robert Whiteman at Mama Dolce's in D.C., as he is the nominal manager there, although Whiteman is just a communist sympathizer and defers to Amy, who technically outranks him. She would also meet with "Sweet Sarah," the voice of the People's Republic of America Radio station, who does pirate propaganda broadcasts in America. (The PRA Radio Station is canonical, though the recorded DJ on that station is not named in canon.) A trip to the Fujiniya Intelligence Base beneath Mama Dolce's processing plant in West Virginia would lead to Amy coming into contact (via radio) with Captain Zao, the commander of the Yangtze-31 submarine that would later launch its nukes on Boston when the War kicks off. And toward the end, she even comes face to face with the not-yet-fully functional Liberty Prime itself.

The End is Nigh

The general arcs of all seven narratives cross over in various ways, sometimes only tangentially. All of their stories are guaranteed to end in some sort of tragedy, given that there is no way to avert the impending apocalypse. All of them have a sort of endgame in place, although none of them are realistically in a place to prevent the apocalypse from happening, if they become aware of its inevitability. Instead, their endgames are more centered around either getting themselves (and/or their families) to safety, or trying to see that an antagonist in their narrative gets what's coming to them. It's very possible that some of the seven principal characters will not survive the apocalypse itself.

If "season one" is successful, it's always possible that "season two" could pick up in the near-immediate aftermath of the Great War, as any surviving characters try to piece together what remains of their lives, and find out if anyone they know managed to make it out alive. New principal characters would likely be necessary to fill the gaps. Other narrative arcs would likely be centered around finding some safe place to settle in the new wastelands, and protecting themselves from new dangers like mutated wildlife and raiders.

But one thing will remain true in such a scenario, and it's something that's rung true throughout the Fallout ages. And that's that War...

War never changes.