The Golden Rule Would Survive Nuclear ‘Fallout’

If things ever do go belly up, and we nuke ourselves into oblivion, I’m sure the Golden Rule will survive. 
 
Part of my certainty is thanks to the retro-futuristic, darkly absurd, post-apocalyptic TV series Fallout. As a huge fan of the role-playing video games that the series is based on, I was skeptical that the show could live up to the legacy of the games; it surpassed my expectations. Fallout is brimming with stellar performances, superb writing, and deft political commentary that is relevant without being preachy. All eight episodes of Season Two are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, which, given the series’ anti-corporate and anti-capitalist overtones, is rather strange. 
 
But if you can ignore the sad irony that a corporate, union-busting, world-destroyer like Amazon is making a killing on a TV series about billionaires nuking the world to high heaven, and if you can find a way to steal a family members’ Prime Video subscription (shout out to my mom and dad!), then you can at least enjoy a reprieve from the very real apocalypse unfolding before our eyes. Hell, you might even find yourself motivated to do something about it.

Spoilers for Seasons One and Two of Fallout follow. 

Fallout, set in the American West, alternates between two timelines: 2077 focuses on the events leading up to nuclear bombs dropping, while 2296 chronicles the aftermath. 
 
In 2077, we follow a power couple, Cooper and Barbara Howard (Walton Goggins and Frances Turner). Cooper is a combat veteran turned gunslinging actor, and Barbara is a high-level exec at Vault-Tec, an organization that builds underground “vaults” to protect the superrich from atomic vaporization. Fallout’s interpretation of 2077 looks and feels a lot like the 1950s. Whether it’s the kitschy and nationalistic ads or the intrigue and espionage synonymous with the Cold War era, the politics and aesthetics of Fallout resemble a period in America that some white Christian men have called the “Golden Age.” 
 
The drama of the 2077 period focuses on what Cooper and Barbara are willing to condone to keep their young daughter safe. From that conflict emerges one of Fallout’s core questions: If Vault-Tec and other corporations are willing to trigger a nuclear war to make their profit margins go boom, will Barbara help the corporations go nuclear in exchange for her family’s survival?

READ: The Apocalypse Isn’t All Doom and Gloom

More than 200 years later, in 2296, Cooper is still alive, but his family is missing. As a result of being exposed to significant amounts of radiation, Cooper has become a “ghoul.” The good, the bad, and the ugly: Ghouls are a mutated human race that is immortal thanks to radiation exposure. Cooper believes Barbara and his daughter might have taken shelter in a vault, but he hasn’t been able to locate them, and his search has driven him to become a villainous desperado. Cooper’s villainy is reinforced by ghouls being akin to biblical lepers; their disfigured features have pushed them to the margins, forcing them to live solitary lives as social outcasts. 
 
But Cooper’s maverick ways are suspended when he meets the “vault dweller” Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell). Lucy, who grew up in a vault, is searching for her father, Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan), to bring him to justice after she shockingly discovers he is guilty of committing crimes against humanity. Cooper’s teaming up with Lucy is utilitarian insofar as he believes Hank knows the whereabouts of his wife and daughter. 
 
Aside from Cooper and Lucy agreeing that they need to find her father, the two disagree about everything else, especially how to treat those they encounter throughout their quest. Cooper presents as a gnarly-looking, amoral cowboy. Lucy is a sheltered idealist who navigates the post-apocalyptic wasteland with the innocence of a child but the conviction of a Peace Corps volunteer. The pairing of Purnell’s zealous sincerity and deft comedic timing with Goggins’ gut-wrenching portrayal of a mad dad is a true bullseye. Consider the sharp philosophical sparring that unfolds when, while passing a dilapidated building, Lucy hears someone scream: 
 
Lucy: I think it’s coming from inside. 
 
Cooper: Empathy is like mud. You can lose your boots in that stuff. 
 
Lucy: Well, I’m not just gonna let someone die while I listen to them scream. 
 
Cooper: Folks been screaming for 200 f***ing years. 
 
Lucy: Did it ever occur to you that if you helped them, they would stop? 
 
Cooper: You wanna know what I was like before the war? I was just like you. Stupid. 
 
Cooper and Lucy decide to enter the building, which feels less like a shelter and more like a bone temple, its skeletons still on display. “Waste of time,” Cooper gripes to Lucy. “Doing the right thing is never a waste of time,” Lucy retorts as she walks ahead, searching for a Golden Rule opportunity. 
 
The duo survives this little side quest, and Lucy even manages to find the screaming woman. Lucy, always the Good Samaritan, agrees to take the woman back to the community where she came from. Cooper stays behind to lick his wounds. 
 
But in the wasteland, no good deed goes unpunished. It turns out the woman whom Lucy rescued belongs to the Legion, a brutal band of raiders who style themselves as the continuation of the Roman Empire. And in true Roman form, they set out to crucify the Golden Rule follower. Lucy, bound and tied to a makeshift cross, appeals to her captors. “Excuse me, this isn’t Rome, okay? This is America!”  

The soldier, Lacerta (played by the underrated Macaulay Culkin), reminds me a bit of Stephen Miller: a whiny goon with a god complex. “All that remains of America is the overwhelming evidence of its failures,” says Lacerta, insisting that the Legion is making America, and all of Western civilization with it, great again. Yet as Lucy tells him: If you think everyone else is the bad guy and you’re the good guy, chances are you’re probably the bad guy. “But ‘good’ is not a meaningful vector in history,” Lacerta replies self-assuredly. “Only strength.” 
 
Someone needs to show this scene to Hilary Rodham Clinton. Clinton recently wrote an essay for The Atlantic where she argued that “Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves and help those in need. ‘Do this and you will live,’ he says.” Not quite. Jesus certainly tells his followers to live by the Golden Rule, but he emphasized, both in word and deed, that embodying the Golden Rule ultimately meant exhibiting a willingness to lose one’s life. Just as it is in the Bible and Fallout, so it is in reality: The path of the Golden Rule is scattered with crucifixions.

Jesus certainly tells his followers to live by the Golden Rule, but he emphasized, both in word and deed, that embodying the Golden Rule ultimately meant exhibiting a willingness to lose one’s life.

But that’s not to say trying to be an ethical person, both in Fallout and in reality, is a total drag. Much to his own and Lucy’s surprise, Cooper finds her and takes her down from the cross.  
 
To recover from her injuries, Lucy is put on “Buffout,” which is a highly addictive steroid. Lucy makes a full recovery but the catch is that she has become addicted to drugs. And while there is nothing funny about addiction in real life, there is something extremely funny about watching Purnell pretend to be addicted to a pretend drug.  
 
“Well, then I… hereby quit drugs,” Lucy says, trying to convince herself. But she almost instantly realizes she’s still addicted. “What do I do?” she asks Cooper. Cooper tells her there are two options. One option is to quit cold turkey and be miserable, which will result in them losing time that they could use to track Lucy’s dad. The second is Cooper’s preferred option: “Do more drugs.” Lucy then launches into what is, as far as I’m concerned, the most hilariously cockamamie defense of drug use to ever take inspiration from the Golden Rule: “Fudge. Well, I know this isn’t good for me, but stopping my dad from doing whatever he’s doing is for the greater good, so even though I want it, I’m mostly doing it for other people, so that’s what I’d want others to do for me. So, give me the drugs.” 
 
See, abiding by the Golden Rule isn’t always a giant bummer. Sometimes, folks, following the Golden Rule affords you opportunities to do drugs for the greater good.  
 
Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait at least another year for Season Three to check up on our post-apocalyptic, Golden Rule warriors. And for fans of the video game franchise, I fear we’ll have to wait somewhere between a decade and a century before Fallout 5 is released. I’m being hyperbolic, but for fans of this franchise, there is real existential dread that we might not live to see the continuation of the TV series, let alone a fifth installment of the game. The reason? Well, I don’t know how you see the world every day, but to me, it seems as though we’re a hair’s breadth away from utter annihilation. Luckily, there’s a remedy to prevent that, which will also guarantee that we’ll survive to see more of what the world of Fallout has to show us: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.