Fallout: New Vegas - Vault 19's Strange Paranoia Experiment Explained

gamerant.com:

Vault 19 of Fallout: New Vegas features yet another one of Vault-Tec’s questionable social experiments. This time, it involves blatant deception, subliminal messaging, and pitting vault residents against each other.

Vault 19 is located west of the Whittaker Farmstead and east of Bonnie Springs on the map of Fallout: New Vegas. The player can find the entrance to the vault on the floor of a small parking lot booth.

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Vault-Tec built Vault 19 primarily to test ways of inducing paranoia through “non-violent and non-chemical means.” It’s one of the most unique vaults in the Fallout series because it has two overseers. As such, the entire facility is separated into two sections — the red sector and the blue sector. Vault residents were then segregated based on unknown parameters into these two sectors.

Reading through the terminal entries from both sectors reveals that there was some animosity between the reds and the blues. Either side was convinced that the other was up to something, whether it’s sabotaging resources, stealing supplies, or even trying to poison residents from opposite sectors. However, all this suspicion was based purely on hearsay, and it was likely exacerbated by Vault-Tec’s system in Fallout, which was built to send subliminal messages in different ways.

Some of the younger vault residents reported hearing strange, high-pitched noises coming from the vault’s intercoms — a method of subliminal suggestion similar to that of Vault 92 in Fallout 3. Sometimes, they even heard voices. However, the older vault residents told the children off, saying that they shouldn’t talk about it as it might worry the other inhabitants. Another vault resident swore that one