We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming with an important story from the Wasteland, inspired by the newly released Fallout TV show.

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I was supposed to start my internship with Nuka Cola when the bombs fell.

We got the call with minutes to spare. 

The bombs were decimating the country, and we were quickly shuffled into our pre-determined vaults. Vaults for when the inevitable happened. Vault 76, where my marketing career got put on hold.

I don’t remember much from the decades that followed. Only feelings of unease and strange gratitude that our vault felt…normal. We had heard rumors of other vaults not being the safe havens they were marketed as, but we always thought it was just another piece of propaganda you could safely ignore.

But one day, the world opened up. Reclamation Day. Hangover in hand after the previous night’s festivities, I wandered out into the Wasteland, looking for civilization.

Surely, there would still be someone to sell Nuka Cola to.

I made my way past the laughably non-lethal robots into the new world. I searched for civilization, but all I found were scorched raiders, gangrenous ghouls, and mutated monsters I’d never seen before.

The first day almost killed me. These white-collar fingers were made to type advertising copy. Surviving in the Wasteland wasn’t on the curriculum.

But through the stroke of a S.P.E.C.I.A.L stat, I looted a container with schematics for a camp. I didn’t sign up for murdering monsters in the post-apocalypse when I enrolled in Vault-Tec University, but I could follow instructions for a camp.

As I sulked in my camp, yearning for the society now reduced to rubble, a thought came crashing into my head with the force of a thousand Vertibirds.

This is America goddamn it! It might be an irradiated Wasteland but people still need STUFF!

So, I found blueprints for a vending machine. I started selling loot from abandoned houses. The skeletons still sleeping inside had been dead for decades, so I figured they wouldn’t miss it.

I kept all the adhesive but sold the rest of the stuff I didn’t need:

• Ammo I didn’t have guns for.
• Clothes that didn’t fit.
• And so much Blamco Mac and Cheese I could drown a raider camp in it.

But it didn’t work. My camp didn’t look like a merchant market as much as a hoarder’s paradise.

That’s when my marketing classes at Vault-Tec University came flashing back to me.

The 4 Ps of Marketing in the Appalachian Wasteland

My professor was always kind of weird.

Brilliant, but you always felt like he wasn’t telling you the whole story. He taught you the marketing techniques you needed to know, but his examples always left things out, like he wasn’t allowed to discuss them.

We chalked it up to eccentricity because he still gave us valuable, practical advice we were eager to use in our future careers.

Like the 4 Ps of Marketing.

Product

You had to sell a product that people wanted. In the old world, they’d sell you RobCo terminals, the new Grognak the Barbarian comic, or a Mr. Handy for the home. There wasn’t a zip code that didn’t have a Super Duper Mart filled with all of modern-day conveniences.

That was before the ghouls took over.

In this godforsaken Wasteland, the product that people wanted was a weapon.

So, I scoured Appalachia for the highest-quality weaponry I could find. Furious handguns, Instigating hunting rifles, and Bleeding bowie knives were in high demand.

But even a Crippling golf club would fetch a few caps from a desperate Wastelander eager to knock a ghoul’s head into a hole.

Place

If Red Rocket knew anything, it was about “Location, Location, Location.”

I knew I couldn’t have a camp on every corner like them, so I had to find somewhere people were already going. Although I could see other people traveling around, I never felt comfortable chasing them down to show them my wares. Chasing someone in the wasteland was a recipe for a V.A.T.S. hit between the eyes.

I needed a central location with built-in traffic, so I eventually settled on a patch of land in the middle of the Savage Divide. After staking out the area and taking out the Scorched, I noticed that everybody seemed to need something at the Top of the World.

More people wandering through the Top of the World meant more potential customers wandering into my camp.

Price

Caps were scarce in the Wasteland. I quickly learned that I couldn’t charge inflated prices for one-star loot.

Nobody was going to spend 5,000 caps on a ⭐ Nocturnal Rolling Pin. Plans for a Fixer, on the other hand. That could’ve fed all of Fort Defiance if it hadn’t been too late.

Sometimes, your legendary loot was a literal crapshoot. You put it all up for sale because you never knew what kind of build would come along. Junkies hopped up on Psycho. Bloodied Med-X-heads. Mutant-Slaying Juggernauts. They all had different preferences, and you wouldn’t be a good merchant if you didn’t have the right product for them at the right price.

Then you had the junk nobody wanted you had to sell at a discount, hoping to get room to load up your vending machine with higher-caliber gear.

Promotion

The fourth P of Marketing was often overlooked by other merchants.

If you want to be in business, you must tell people you are in business.

Just putting up my camp wasn’t enough. I had to advertise that I was open for business. So I painted my camp white and marked it on the map for everyone to see.

White…the universal color of peace, transformed into the sign for “Come Get Your Creature-Killing, Murder Machines Here!”

Making Caps While You Quest

Following my old Vault-Tec professor’s advice, I started making caps.

*Ka-Ching!*

My money machine chimed while I was snuffing the Scorched from the Ash Heap.

*Ka-Ching!*

I would hear over my silenced Fixer putting a ghoul out of their misery.

*Ka-Ching!*

Echoed off the cliffs of the Savage Divide behind me as I cleared West Tek Research Center yet again, grinding for another level up.

Although Vault-Tec University was not without its oddities, it made me into the marketer I am today.

I learned that in the new world of the Wasteland, there would always be a market for weapons because war…war never changes.