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An armored Deathclaw from the video game Fallout 76 stands next to a sign with Ohio in big letters and then Welcome to Ohio under that.
A “Deathclaw” from the video game Fallout 76 welcomes you to Ohio. [Courtesy of Bethesda]

A post-apocalyptic version of southeast Ohio will be featured in an update to the Fallout 76 video game

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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — If you’ve ever wondered what your hometown might look like as part of a nuclear wasteland, the popular video game series Fallout may soon give you the chance.

Game publisher Bethesda on Wednesday announced it will add parts of Appalachian Ohio to the expanding map of its online action role-playing game Fallout 76 as part of the Burning Springs update.

“Set in the southeastern region of rural Ohio, Burning Springs’ arid landscape brims with new places to explore, questlines to follow and new events to partake in,” the announcement said.

The world of the six main Fallout games is set in an alternate timeline where nuclear power ushered in an atomic age post World War II with a retrofuturistic aesthetic. A war between nations in the year 2077 results in the launch of nuclear bombs that almost completely destroys the world.

In Fallout 76, a prequel to the previous five games, you play as a character that survived the blasts in one of the many vaults built across the country. Hand-selected by the previous U.S. government, your task is to find out how Appalachia has been altered by nuclear radiation 25 years after the bombs fell from your starting point in Vault 76 located in West Virginia. You face monsters created after years of radiation exposure, try to solve disputes between rival factions of fellow survivors and construct a home in your own part of the wasteland.

Since the games’ release in 2018, which was critically panned for being an incomplete game and pay-to-play elements but has since improved its reputation with more content, the map has been expanded to include locations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

A screenshot from the video game Fallout 76 shows a sign for the City of Athens with a piece of wood nailed to it, which reads "Turn Back or Die"
A post-apocalypse Athens will be featured in the Fallout 76 video game. [Nuka Knights | YouTube]
According to the game’s developers, Appalachian Ohio is called the Burning Springs in the world of Fallout. The main hook of the expansion is adding bounty hunting featuring “The Ghoul” character played by Walton Goggins in Amazon’s “Fallout” TV show. Also a new storyline for the game kicks off after players enter Ohio across the Silver Bridge connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia, to whatever the developers have decided to call Gallipolis in their world.

“Burning Springs, a region of southeastern Ohio rocked not only by the nuclear destruction of the bombs dropping, but also the environmental poisoning from the local Abraxodyne Chemical plant,” according to release notes for the new expansion. “The area is now a desolate and barren wasteland with poisonous water, and a dust storm coating everything in a toxin known as Rust.”

Athens is set to be prominently featured.

“If you happen to travel to Athens, it’s going to kick off a quest called ‘Dirty Laundry,’ said the game’s production director Bill LaCoste. The quest involves collecting items to receive a special weapon for your character to use.

The world of Fallout is not a one-to-one of the real world, so it’s not clear what other southeast Ohio locations will be featured. It’s also not clear what they will be called. The university located in Athens in this alternate timeline is Hocking University, according to players who have tested the new expansion, rather than Ohio University.

Burning Springs is set to be released in December, with more information about the expansion coming from Bethesda in the coming months.