It's tough, cause a lot of history did take a long long time. The "dark ages" lasted like 500-1000 years and are significant for having little to no technological advancement. Before then empires would last hundreds or thousands of years without ever developing things like electricity or using the same exact agriculture practices. Then again, as I mentioned, history after the 18th century exploded and got super condensed.

Based on how the fallout games work. It makes a lot more sense for society to rebuild quickly. They have electronic written communication and working electricity/power plants basically right off the bat. If the writers wanted to make it make sense they would have to put more work into explaining that we were sent more into the dark ages after the bombs dropped. But that just isn't true in the lore because there are well educated people that canonically survived right after the war and began rebuilding immediately.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

It makes a lot more sense for society to rebuild quickly.

The Enclave had the desire to restore their control of the entire continent and a small army of supersoldiers. They may not have had the capability to manufacture more plasma rifles and power armor, but they had the recorded knowledge needed to restore that capability and they were up against small, disorganized, and poorly armed bands of survivors. Maybe they couldn't emerge from their bunkers right away because the surface was uninhabitably radioactive, but survival on the surface became possible long before 200 years had passed.

The games are much more about the rule of cool than realism and that's not a bad thing. I'm just being pedantic.