Watch a nuke getting dropped on us in Fallout 76

Bethesda made a big deal of giving Fallout 76 players the ability to fire off nukes, but are they legitimate weapons of mass destruction? We got our answer at a recent event Bethesda held in West Virginia: yes, they are. Check out the footage embedded above or here on YouTube.

As our demo came to a close, the event organizers corralled us toward Vault 76. We fast traveled to the vault and were told, quite suspiciously, to wait. "For what?" we wondered. Well, we didn't have to wonder for long, because that was around the time we heard the nuke falling. 

It didn't go off right on top of us, thankfully, but we were close enough to see just how devastating player-operated nukes can be. The explosion sent trees whirling through the air and spawned a mushroom cloud that consumed the sky. We tried to explore the amber-tinged blast site after the dust settled, but even after popping some Rad-X and Radaway, the heavy radiation killed us in seconds. They may well be easy to avoid, but Fallout 76's nukes are not messing around. 

We saw plenty more than nukes, too. We also played for a few hours and have lots of thoughts to share. When your eyes stop burning, check out the 12 most surprising things we learned playing Fallout 76

Austin Wood
Staff writer, GamesRadar

Austin freelanced for PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and has been a full-time writer at PC Gamer's sister publication GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a staff writer is just a cover-up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news, the occasional feature, and as much Genshin Impact as he can get away with.

Latest in Fallout
Male and Female Vault Dweller holding guns and cresting a hill with ruined city in background
The New Vegas remake of the Fallout 3 that never was just got its first demo, not to be confused with the straight-up remake of the cancelled Fallout 3 or, indeed, Fallout 3
Lucy smiling while using her pip boy
Ella Purnell dreads being typecast for her 'poop finger' in Fallout: 'This finger is the bane of my life'
Fallout 76 - a player in a vault suit gives a thumbs up
Fallout 76's former project lead says it's still his favourite game he worked on, but the initial reception was demoralising: 'I got yelled at in an Apple Store, I'll never forget'
Mortimer Goth swanning around inside a New Vegas casino built inside the Sims 2
A Fallout: New Vegas fan is so fed up waiting for a remake he's decided to do it himself. The twist? He's making it in the Sims 2
Maybe I'll finally stop getting lost in Fallout: New Vegas' Bison Steve Hotel thanks to this new minimap mod
A jumpsuit-clad Lucy, played by Ella Purnell, emerges from a vault in the Fallout TV series.
Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins sure are excited for everyone to see Fallout season 2: 'No one's going to be able to predict what happens. There's some big twists this time around'
Latest in News
Key art of Kent Paul in Grand Theft Auto Vice City.
'My own voice was driving me f***ing insane': GTA Vice City actor admits even he couldn't get past his own, notoriously difficult mission
Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti graphics card
Specs for Nvidia's new RTX 5050, 5060, and 5060 Ti GPUs leak out and that 5060 might actually be half decent. If it's priced right
Pipboy holds up an open padlock.
A BIOS update could be all that's stopping you or someone else from jailbreaking your old AMD CPU
Asus's new ultrawide sucks as hard as it blows
Asus' new monitors purify 90% of airborne dust from your desktop and I've definitely seen some gnarly gaming setups that would benefit
A screenshot from Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro announcement video, showing a stylized processor against a dark background with glowing lines streaming from its edges
The AMD x Sony collab gave us FSR4 and a version will appear in PlayStation next year, too, having 'already started to implement the new neural network on PS5 Pro'
Pedro Pascal as Joel in a coat in winter looking unhappy
'Don't you know what he did?': The truth comes out in The Last of Us Season 2 trailer