Design your own Vault experiment!

[viking97]

A Vault with a population of 500 and consiting of 400 rooms, every month a large group of radroaches is let into the Vault, there are no weapons so the only way to survive is to enter one of the 400 rooms, but the doors are desinged to close after one person has entered the room, leaving 100 people to fend for themselves against the radroaches. After the population goes under 400 the attacks stop until the population reaches 500 again.

musical chairs vault? i likes. maybe have it so there are 50 room and it happens whenever the population reaches 100. that way the remaining 50 get epic survivor guilt.

 

[King of the Sandbox]

A Vault with a population of 500 and consiting of 400 rooms, every month a large group of radroaches is let into the Vault, there are no weapons so the only way to survive is to enter one of the 400 rooms, but the doors are desinged to close after one person has entered the room, leaving 100 people to fend for themselves against the radroaches. After the population goes under 400 the attacks stop until the population reaches 500 again.

musical chairs vault? i likes. maybe have it so there are 50 room and it happens whenever the population reaches 100. that way the remaining 50 get epic survivor guilt.

They're radroaches. I consider it beneath me to use a weapon to kill them. I would become the hero of that vault in no time, many gross bits encrusted upon my boot soles. "Praise be the Great Orkin Man!"

 

[Silva]

Except that 'climbing' is not abstract, nor is your proposition a 'puzzle'.

All you've done is place something high. Instinctually they would know they would have to climb something to get on to it, very quickly they would either climb on top of each other or dismantle the equipment around the place and build something to climb.
The idea of killing one another to form a ladder? Man, that's some fucked up shit. No healthy human being would think of that as a first response to the situation.

I just explained why they wouldn't be "healthy human beings" as part of the experiment.

And as I just explained (again) the equipment can't be dismantled.

 

[Chaza]

I'll go potentially horrific with this one.

Vault 500 would have single sphere shaped room which is completely open including all facilities, no matter how private. Twelve randomly selected people are kept in this room. Through the facilities in this room, people cannot die through aging or disease, even by choice.

There is no entertainment in this room except audio recordings activated by button press all along the wall. There is no control given over these recordings aside from being able to turn them on, and they can be any length. They are heard by everyone in the room, a little too loudly to be blocked out with hands on ears.

The walls are completely soft and nothing can be broken no matter how hard those inside try.

The only way out for all inside is to break a screen saying "BREAK ME" in the ceiling that is far beyond the reach of anything in the room, and with no way of breaking apart an object to obtain reach, it is impossible to reach this thing.

Except through the use of the other people.

If one person were to string everyone else together, having killed them all, they could reach the screen and possibly break it.

Of course, if everyone stood on each other's shoulders at the bottom, that would work too. But will they figure that out before someone has taken a step down the more savage route?

The person or people who succeed(s) will allegedly escape to a larger compound where, the Vault computers say, there are all the facilities that the Sphere Room has, plus privacy and other people who are not effected by the Sphere Room, ready to reward them with all the other kinds of entertainment otherwise forbidden.

Whether or not that story is true, I'll leave to your imagination.

On the other hand, maybe the fun will have only just started...

They would most probably work out that they have to make a human lader before killing each other. So why not put a few knives around the room just to get things going?

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Might be interesting to give a hundred people a collar that every day, at midday, either gives 10 seconds of intense pain, or a powerful orgasm. Each day, a random person is selected to choose the next day's event, knowing they'll be left out of the pain or orgasm.

I'd just be curious to see how often people would choose pain as revenge for the pain they suffered the day before, and if it would end up in an almost constant chain of agony, despite every person having the option to please every person they live with for no effort.

 

[Hookman]

Tell the vault-dwellers they can leave after 100 years. Then in year 99, tell them there's been another nucleur holocaust and they will have to stay for another 100 years. In year 199 tell them the exact same thing and keep on repeating this until the end of the universe...Or until they all slaughter each other out of desperation. Either way is fine for me!

 

[MadCapMunchkin]

Similar to Vault 92 in Fallout 3, a Vault that has the greatest metalhead musicians of all time. I'm thinking like Metallica, Pantera, Iron Maiden, Disturbed, etc. The Vault PA system constantly broadcasts a subliminal message that pushes its residents towards both physical and mental pursuits, creating the soldiers in peak mental and physical health, creating the perfect survivors for the wasteland to come out clad in leather and fighting off Deathclaws with bladed guitars...

C'mon, Bethesda, that's a jump off point for Fallout 4! Get to it!

 

[Nomanslander]

Well, I'd like to play along but the only one that strikes my interest has already been done.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_69

8)

 

[Puzzlenaut]

Vault 45: Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" is permanently played on a loop. The vault is sealed forever.

 

[CheckD3]

A vault where the inhabitant are trained in combat from the beginning. There's a month's worth supply of food, and once it runs out, a party must be made to go out into the wasteland to gather food. There are rules to the party though.

1. The party must contain at least 3 people, but can not contain more than 7 people.
2. The number of people in party who can use guns follow, 1/3, 1/4, 2/5, 3/6, 3/7
3. The party members able to carry guns can hold any number, but can not let anyone who is not allowed to hold them to come in physical contact w/ the guns.
4. The supplies brought back can not be any part of a human being, no consuming any part taken by a party member from a body
5. Killing is not recommended, however, if someone initiates contact, violence is allowed. The party is not able to start with violence, and leader is to use judgement on threat of any hostile parties
6. The party, upon setting foot outside the vault, must select a leader between the members, and talk can only take place outside of the vault. The leader chooses destination, whether or not hostile groups are dangerous enough to start violence, and what can be or can not be taken. The leader has absolute control after being chosen by group. Upon stepping into Vault, leader loses all powers, however, actions outside of Vault can not be spoken of inside of the Vault, and all decisions made can not be held against them inside of the Vault if there is no evidence of their wrongdoings inside of the Vault

 

[theheroofaction]

3000 people enter the vault. there are 70 toilets scattered throughout the vault, there are also 6 wells, but each only has a big enough opening to have 3 people at it at a time. Peeing in the wells is punishable by death. The objective is to see if people are willing to wait A long time to use the well, or if they would drink from the place people pee. For more general purposes, this is to test how long people will endure to use a commodity.
Another result would be if people could pee in places other than the toilets to ensure that they're safe to drink, this would tell how much people would do things differently for a commodity

 

[Wintermoot]

a vault without any weapons (not even police batons) but with allot of gold, equipped with a GECK thus forcing to trade to survive
designed to stay closed for 100 years

 

[alrekr]

A vault with no hierarchy, I don't really know how that would remain as some sort of hierarchy would form, but oh well, just another technicality.

Well if there's no hierarchy that would be true communism in play.

 

[soulblade06]

a vault without any weapons (not even police batons) but with allot of gold, equipped with a GECK thus forcing to trade to survive
designed to stay closed for 100 years

That idea just makes no sense at all. 1st, in a post-apocalyptic world, a soft yellow metal won't be valuable just because it's shiny (I doubt jewlry will be too common). 2nd, if you're making the vault to see how well people can trade why is the place going to be closed for 100 years? That's decades of wasted potential for test data!

 

[Wintermoot]

a vault without any weapons (not even police batons) but with allot of gold, equipped with a GECK thus forcing to trade to survive
designed to stay closed for 100 years

That idea just makes no sense at all. 1st, in a post-apocalyptic world, a soft yellow metal won't be valuable just because it's shiny (I doubt jewlry will be too common). 2nd, if you're making the vault to see how well people can trade why is the place going to be closed for 100 years? That's decades of wasted potential for test data!

gold has some scientific properties (it,s used as a conductor and in a world where spare parts are rare a metal like that would be valuable since there is no way of making more like with bottle caps)

 

[soulblade06]

One more idea:

A vault where the participants have all their needs fulfilled, as well as a computer with internet access. The inhabitants of this vault will be tasked with posting on a forum about ideas for scientific experiments that could be carried out in other vaults. The inhabitants will be brought in well before any potential conflict is noticed, and will be sealed in for all eternity to prevent their deranged madness from polluting the future of mankind.

 

[Byere]

A vault whereby the population is taught that the only way to survive is by making a blood sacrifice to an artificial God-like entity in the form of a vampire monkey robot (Only seen as a statue in a large church chamber). All residents would also be taught that the wasteland is crawling with these creatures and any who dared to venture out of the vault would become prey to massive packs of them.
Once a month, each dweller would be told to give up 1 pint of blood to be offered in a shamanistic ritual, lest the statue come to life and slaughter them all. Of course, this is all hooey as it wouldn't actually ever come to life, but whenever the dwellers start questioning the prospect of it not happening, it would be switched on and start walking (Frankenstein-style) around the vault for all to see.
The given blood would be used, a little part of it for the show of the ritual but the most part would be packaged and shipped out of the vault through secret underground tunnels and distributed at random around the wasteland.

And that's why there are so many blood packs in weird places...

 

[kane.malakos]

A vault where any mention of religions like Christianity or Islam would be punishable by death. Instead, all religious texts expound the wonders of the scientific method and technology in general. Also include plenty of laboratories, scientific equipment, etc. I'm thinking cybernetics would become pretty popular...

 

[Silva]

They would most probably work out that they have to make a human lader before killing each other. So why not put a few knives around the room just to get things going?

If it makes you happy, sure.

 

[Tibs]

I would fill a vault with 1 person with acces to everything he could ever want, but not a single living life form to interact with. Just himself...alone...forever.

(No he cannot want internet acces or anything that would allow him to interect with a living being outside of bacteria and the like)