Pascal Marc Wagner (*1993) is a cognitive and cultural linguist (M.A.), English and law scholar (B.A.). and legal scholar (B.A.). On his website languageatplay.de and as an author and editor of game studies books, most recently ‘#GameStudies: 20 Jahre Forschungsfantasie’ published by Büchner-Verlag, he conducts research at the interface of linguistics and video games. He works as an editor for GamesMarkt the B2B magazine for the German and European gaming industry.
Linguistics of the Post-Apocalypse – Atomic Semiotics and its Application in Fallout 3, New Vegas, 4 and 76
FROG 2024 – Talk
In 1981, a group of linguists, anthropologists, nuclear physicists, science fiction authors and behavioural scientists called the Human Interference Tast Force (HITF) met in the USA to take precautions in the event that the Cold War escalated under the lead of semiotician Thomas Sebeok. The brief: to work out a way to forever prevent people from entering nuclear-contaminated sites, even if these future generations don’t understand any current language.
The ideas included images that drew on human biology – such as screaming or melting faces – or the transformation of entire landscapes above repositories into pseudo-religious places of worship that must not be desecrated, concrete-barrelled bulwarks, ‘atomic priesthood’ and many more ideas from the architectural over sociology to bioengineering.
None of the various proposals were ever put into actual practice. What is fascinating, however, is that a considerable amount of the ideas from this discipline can be found in the games of the Fallout series, whether in direct form or satirised.
The talk shows the influence of the discipline on the setting design and the character factions of the Fallout series under development by Bethesda. After a brief cultural history of atomic semiotics, concrete examples from the Fallout games will be affiliated with the HITF’s ideas found in the task force’s declassified military report from 1984: from the atomic priesthood design in the Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave and the Children of the Atom to the clever usage of the HITF’s findings in game design to turn deterrence into interest through monumental bulwarks in quest locations of Fallout 3, 4, New Vegas and 76.
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