Today is October 23.
In my native Hungary, they’re celebrating the 68th anniversary of the failed 1956 anti-Soviet revolution, which began on this day.
Elsewhere in the world, this is Fallout Day. In the universe of the Fallout game franchise, the Great War that ended civilization began (and also concluded) on October 23, 2077.
I asked DALL-E and Midjourney both to produce an image. Midjourney created several images and I loved most of them but in the end, I am opting in favor of this DALL-E image after all. Its serenity captures the atmosphere of the game better: we are, after all, centuries after the catastrophe, in a mostly quiet, abandoned Wasteland.
Also, while the famous Power Armor may be an iconic in-game accessory, a wanderer wearing little more than a thin Vault jumpsuit better captures the vulnerability a player feels, especially when entering the Wasteland for the first time.
I hope sights like this remain firmly in the realm of computer game fiction. Well, as much as possible… some of the sights that we’ve seen from Ukraine in the past two and a half years unfortunately come close.
> celebrating the 68th anniversary of the failed 1956 anti-Soviet revolution
This part of world history I learnt only recently and sheer occasionally – by clicking “random article” while browsing Polish wikipedia.
Today I learnt the date is *celebrated* (as now I see, because Republic was declared on the anniversary of the event decades later).
Many thanks :) I have not much to think of Fallout, but as these two topics were united here, well. Perhaps it means something. People who died in 1956 never knew whether things will turn better or not some day. But they definitely had hope, very strong hope.