Fallout has always treated Deathclaws as a kind of mythical beast. They’re everywhere and unstoppable. They’re one of, if not the most recognizable monster from the franchise. Seeing one instantly invokes a sort of primal fear that can grip hardened Wastelanders.
The apex predator made their debut in episode 4 of season 2. “The Demon in the Snow” has a small yet chilling detail. Deathclaws didn’t emerge after the bombs fell because they were before the Great War.
What the Games Implied but Never Showed
The opening pre-war flashback in the episode shows Cooper Howard serving during the Battle of Alaska in the Sino-American War. Trapped in faulty power armor, a group of Chinese soldiers approach a vulnerable Cooper.
Before they can harm him, a Deathclaw appears on the battlefield and slaughters the Chinese soldiers.
Interestingly, the Deathclaw spares Cooper. Nobody knows why but it’s speculated that pre-war Deathclaws could have been trained not to attack soldiers in power armor.
The opening scene of “The Demon in the Snow” confirms something that’s been hinted at by the games. Terminals hinted at experiments while NPCs referenced their origins. Yet there wasn’t a clear indication that the U.S. military actually unleashed Deathclaws in a warzone.
Why Were Deathclaws Created?
The Deathclaws were genetically engineered by the U.S. government before the Great War. They were created using DNA from multiple species, most notably Jackson’s chameleon. The goal was to produce a fast, resilient, and lethal super soldier designed for combat.
Why would the U.S. government bother creating Deathclaws when it already had Power Armor and experimental viruses like the FEV?
The answer is specialization.
Power Armor was expensive and required trained operators. The FEV was still unstable. Deathclaws were expendable. They could be bred, deployed, and abandoned when they were no longer useful. They didn’t need supply lines, medical care, or extraction plans. You pointed them at a problem and let their instincts do the rest.
Of course, the entire program backfired. When the Great War ended civilization overnight, the Deathclaws escaped into the wild. They thrived in the wasteland as the radiation mutated them into ferocious killing machines.
What Makes Deathclaws So Dangerous?
Physically, Deathclaws are massive, usually standing nine to ten feet tall. They have dense muscle, thick reptilian hide, and claws capable of shredding most armor.
One of the more unsettling aspects of Deathclaws is that some of them are not mindless creatures. Fallout 2 introduced intelligent, talking Deathclaws created through experiments conducted by the Enclave. These Deathclaws formed communities and demonstrated human-level reasoning.
Despite their size, they are fast enough to close the distance before most people can react. In the games, meeting one is often a death sentence if you don’t have a good high-damage weapon like a rifle, missile launcher or an explosive like a Fat Man.
Deathclaws in Present-Day New Vegas
At the end of the episode, Cooper (now known as the Ghoul) and Lucy are confronted by a Deathclaw Matriarch.
Before the encounter, we see an abandoned New Vegas in ruins. There’s no sign of human life. Radiation surrounds the area housing the Lucky 38 Casino, which is now a Deathclaw nest.
We don’t know what happened, but it looks like New Vegas was (hopefully) evacuated the moment a Deathclaw was spotted in the city. Maybe we’ll learn more in episode 5, but the presence of just one Deathclaw is kind of sad.
After so much fighting, the one entity to take control of New Vegas isn’t a faction like Caesar’s Legion or the New California Republic (NCR). It’s one of Fallout’s most iconic monsters.
A prime example of how the actions of the U.S. government continues to haunt the country centuries after the first bombs dropped.
