Vault 102

Experiment
Vault 102 was meant to monitor how well the residents reacted to being constantly ordered by an authority figure. Most of the population were made out of conspiracy theorists and people with a political past, which measured the conflict between them. The goal set by Vault-Tec to the Overseers were to do whatever they could to learn about the wasteland, but not evacuate the vault into the world until they were ready. It allowed Overseers to do whatever they wanted with the population, which led to many dictatorships where the residents had no say in whatever the Overseer wanted to do.

Result
Vault 102 remained orderly for the first 100 years until a power hungry Overseer took control of the vault in 2193. He made several drastic decisions on how to further look into the wasteland, including the policy that still holds that, every month, a voting session was held to decide who should travel outside of the wasteland. Despite the voting system, however, it was truly rigged, and anyone who was sent out was typically someone the Overseer disliked. Those who were sent out were given a month to return until another was sent out. In most cases, the vault dwellers who were sent out either were killed due to not knowing the surroundings or started a new life outside in the wasteland, abandoning the restrictive life inside Vault 102.

However, not long into his rule, the Overseer was overthrown and replaced, though his system of sending scouts into the wasteland continued, with the same rigging worming its way into the system with each new reincarnation, until eventually it was permanently based into the foundations. The system of sending scouts out of the vault continued to 2281 and beyond.

One such scout was sent out in 2278, at the age of 20. His name was Logan Clarke, and went on to change much of the Virginia Wasteland.