A potential reason behind the lack of other survivors from before the bomb dropped has been revealed by the creator of Fallout, and it's not something you'll want to know about if you're prone to any form of existential dread.
Per series creator Tim Cain, the reason that everything seems so bleak and life unaffected by radiation seems so rare is that Vault-Tec never actually finished building the faults.
In a video posted to his YouTube channel (and handily transcribed by PCGamesN), Cain explained: "Vault-Tec. They didn't build all 1,000 Vaults. They didn't even come close. I know some of the Fallout games show Vaults still under construction when the bombs fell, so you could argue they were planning to do all 1,000 and they just never made it - they never got there."
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He went on to state that he believes the company behind the Vaults built probably "far fewer" than half of the amount that they were contracted for, suggesting that an extremely small amount of people actually survived the nuclear holocaust.
"When you add in the fact that Vault-Tec probably knew they weren't going to build 1,000, and the ones they were building were really bad, you can see where the experiment idea might have come in. It's like 'Hey, we're not going to build all these, so we're not going to get a lot of people saved, so saving people obviously isn't the goal. What if we did this other thing instead?'," Cain concluded.
So when you next play a Fallout title, think about the fact that you're probably one of the last things that represents life in a pre-war America, and try to take a little more care of yourself, yeah?