Players of Fallout 4 will likely remember Vault 95 as the place where they have to take Cait for her personal quest. There, they’ll need to blast through Gunners to reach the clean room, where Cait can undergo a special treatment to cure her of her chem addiction.
However, like all Fallout 4 vaults, this one was the venue of a twisted experiment. Reading through the available terminal entries reveal why Vault 95 even had a clean room, and what befell the former vault residents. It isn’t pretty.
The Chem Rehabilitation Program in Vault 95
Vault 95 was built to house a total of 72 inhabitants, all of whom were suffering from some form of chem addiction. Vault-Tec had arranged a full-fledged chem rehabilitation program for the future inhabitants of Vault 95, which is why requirements for entry were so specific. In late October of the year 2077, the chosen vault residents entered the facility, and their road to recovery began.
Though similar to most vaults, Vault 95 had a unique method of choosing their Overseer, which required the residents to elect one. According to the manifest in the Overseer’s terminal, it was their job to run the daily meetings and ensure that everyone followed the rules specified in the Vault-Tec Rehabilitation Program. It also specified that, unlike other vaults, the Overseer did not hold a position of power but instead one of support and servitude. Moreover, the vault residents would elect a new Overseer every year on October 30.
There isn’t much firsthand information on how the vault residents reacted to their rehabilitation process. However, the program seemed to have been effective as stated by a man named Randall Gutierrez in his terminal entries. Five years after first entering the vault, he writes that the program and its methods were a success. Despite a few challenges, particularly withdrawals, all of his fellow inhabitants managed to overcome their chem addiction and cope with their new life in Vault 95. He writes, “Our hypothesis was correct, when there is simply no other alternative an individual can recover.”
Randall says “our hypothesis” because he isn’t actually a chem addict. He’s a Vault-Tec representative who was tasked with blending in and observing his fellow inhabitants’ progress. Later in his terminal entry, he notes that the absence of chems has no doubt been useful in the rehabilitation process. This is where things start to go downhill.
The Vault-Tec Agent, Randall Gutierrez
In a terminal entry entitled “Your Orders,” it’s revealed that Randall’s identity and history are fake. Vault-Tec ordered him to work with the Overseer to ensure that everyone in the vault complies with the rehabilitation methods. Finally, after five years, “Randall” is to open a hidden compartment within the facility, which is filled with chems. He must do so in secret and wait for the other vault residents to find the chem stash themselves. Then, “Randall” must document the community’s response to the discovery.
The last known Overseer of Vault 95 was a woman named Jane Myers. In her terminal entry for October 23, 2082 — exactly five years after the residents entered the vault — she listed the most salient points brought up during the inhabitants’ meeting. Note that the stash had not been found yet as “Randall” intended to uncover it on that night.
During the meeting, one of the other vault residents suggested lessening the number of rehabilitation meetings since chem addiction was no longer an issue. However, “Randall” argued against this notion, stating that Vault-Tec required the inhabitants of Vault 95 to continue the rehabilitation program. Additionally, he stated the possibility that they might acquire a new addiction after they terminated the program. That last bit is some dark foreshadowing for what was to come.
By the end of the meeting, all the vault residents agreed to continue with the rehabilitation program, and on that night, “Randall” snuck out of his room and opened the hidden chem compartment. It wasn’t long before chaos broke out. One terminal, owned by a person named J. Scott, recounts what happened after the inhabitants found the chems.
Scott’s terminal entries are imbued with their disdain for Vault-Tec. “They knew what they were doing. They weren’t trying to help us,” they write. According to the entries, the compartment contained a lifetime supply of chems, and many of the “clean” residents snapped at the sight of them. There was also a lot of fighting as Scott writes that there were gunshots. Eventually, they crack too, and take some of the chems for themself.
Perhaps even worse than the anger is the dejection in Scott’s entries. They express how they were happy to have been given a chance to start over and that they felt a familial bond with the other inhabitants. “It may have been the end of the world for most, but for we lost souls, it was a new beginning,” Scott writes. Then Vault-Tec put an end to it.
Vault 95 in Fallout 4
By the time Cait and the player arrive in Vault 95, the place has been overrun by Gunners. The former vault dwellers are but skeletons lying on the floor. After fighting through hordes of Gunner goons and their robots, the player must then initiate the clean room treatment on Cait. After going through it, Cait will report that everything is much clearer and that her old chem cravings are gone.
This is interesting to note as it means that even the clean room treatment wasn’t enough to stave off the chem addiction from the residents of Vault 95 — all of whom had stayed “clean” for five years. Many would think that such an advanced procedure would wipe out the addiction as well as the desire to use chems again. However, this wasn’t the case.
Regardless, Vault-Tec’s plan for Vault 95 is yet another unethical experiment to add to their belt. It’s also one of the most heartbreaking, especially knowing that these people, at one point, treated each other like family. The bombs dropping signaled a second chance for the residents of Vault 95, but to Vault-Tec, these people were just another set of test subjects.
Fallout 4 is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.