Vault Scouts

Origins
As well as helping with the war effort with scrap collecting drives, promoting war bonds and recruitment, The Boy scouts of America were the inspiration for the development of future special operatives skilled in actions behind enemy lines and surviving the wasteland. The Vault Scouts program was a Micro Vault experimental vocational skills program for timed deployment of highly trained troops to prepare the area for reclamation by a local Enclave base.

The only known Vault in Vermont was a trial base, partnered to another experimental Vault, 89.

Due to situations beyond the scope of the planning, an AI whose role was to Overseer Vault 89 was trapped within the ruins of the Prometheus Coal building when the high speed data cable connected to the Vault was severed in the explosion of the nuclear reactor when Skywise Flight 305 crashed into Maple St.

MicroVault 14
The MicroVaults were a specialised program outside of  Project Safehouse and managed by Vault-Tec Industries, implemented through a subsidy of Poseidon Energy, Prometheus Coal. They used their mining activities as a cover for their excavations for Vault 89 but they kept the MV deep beneath their midcity offices.

Rangers of Tomorrow!
The Boy Scouts has always had military undertones to encourage good skills and abilities in potential soldiers, and Vault-Tec took this a step further to developing sleeper cells of spec ops that could be called into play when the need arose.

The proposal that people saw was a Government initative where it took the best applicants from orphaned  Eagle Scouts between the ages of 13-16, to be part of an accelerated vocational training program which promised a University education by their 18th birthday. In an uncharacteristicly progressive move it even accepted girls from similar organisations when it was required.

Curiously, all the successful applicants came from a Government scholarship program that had only been set up a few years before to encourage scouting amongst disadvantaged kids.

Training program
Unfortunately, the program worked inveresly to the promised outcome.

The program consisted of cryogenic stasis, interrupted with subliminal training and controlled ageing, with heavy doses of cold war propaganda. They were hoping for the fawning acquiesesance of a child, the enthusiasm of a well trained zealot and the physical body in its prime.

The education program was an automated system of Autofiche which played text to speech from the thousands of entries, which alongside  computer controlled audio visual learning aids and feedback and support from robot teachers was presented to sleeping students in a unconscious but mentally susceptible state. Applicants were cryogenically frozen for decades, then ‘thawed out, and juiced up with drugs used for interrogations and whose muscles are kept in shape with electrical stimulus. After a period of dumping information, they are re-frozen until they are required for deployment

Originally set up in a cyclical pattern where they always had 2 applicants ‘on ice’ in case of war, it could have as many as 6 if the atomic clock was too close to midnight

The Scientists involved reffered to this process as ‘cooking’ where their ‘pupsicles’ were kept in prime condition till they were required.

Skills learnt subliminally are not the best for of training, so skill levels cannot go higher than your INT x 5 (x 8 if you have an AI or human supervision) Skills to be taught are based on an applicants Goat test, or by the necessary skills required by the specific role he is being groomed for.

Scout classes
The loadout for the Vermont Microvault was designed to cater for the needs of the ascension of Vault 89, and its deployment was three stages over 200 years. This included 3 pairs of scouts, usually a lead Eagle scout and an appropriate support class.

While Vault 89 was never designed to be a reclamation Vault, the Scouts were given the task to do so purely for experimental purposes. They did so in the following manner

50 years after the bombs - Pathfinder & science class
This was a fact finding mission, to gather data to make an initial assessment of the wasteland so further considerations could be made for future missions. Scouts were mastered in recon, observation, scientific data collection, mapmaking and living off the land. Their investigations would provide the data for calculations that cold These were the least likely to survive

==== 150 years - Pioneer & Civics ==== This mission was designed to set the stage for developing an environment suited to the establishment of a reclaimed American community.

Skills in negotiating, politics, civics, diplomacy, economics, anthropological and psychology were required to help encourage communities to become good citizens for an Enclave empire. Trade routes, military training, and the gift of a GECK was all designed to encourage a stable community after 50 years

Skill package

200 years - Patriots
This was the last deployment before the Vault doors would be opened for repopulating the land. They were expected to finalise details with special quests (awards) to prepare the land for the needs of the Vault land reclaimers.

Skill package

 

Society
Vault Scouts were groomed on the premise that service was good for the soul. Kids minds in adults bodies could create a lot of problems (as we have already seen) but the boffins banked on simple subservience of a child before they reached the disruptive influence of individuality and Rock and Roll. Vault scouts aren’t a thought out ideology on its own, its a part of something larger, seeking validation and acceptance based on their own specific ideals