#because raiders arent a seperate class who all look down on anyone who doesnt do crime

[corvidexoskeleton]

@rockshortage there's a post on here written by someone much smarter than I who explained why people turn to raiding historically, what kinds of things drive them to it, and the sustainability of the lifestyle. I'm sure I've also said some of my thoughts on the matter, but not in any coherent way

The gist of it being that people don't turn to the raider lifestyle just because they're bad people or wanna be bad. It's a lot more complicated that

I mean, it's a post apocalyptic setting where people are impoverished and don't have the kinds of security and comfort they did before the war. Scarcity creates desperation, and desperation makes people do things they maybe wouldn't have otherwise

Think of the way that I described how Butch's gang started out and how it changed over time: they started out as a group of people who stuck together to try and survive, which is how I think most raider gangs start out as. Raiders would be, for the most part, a bunch of people who don't have the best lot in life and turn to less acceptable ways to get by, be it stealing from farmers, attacking caravans to steal their shit, or setting up checkpoints on the road to extort money and goods out of travelers

Think of the way crime works in our modern day. A lot of people just have some shit luck in life and will turn to less legal paths when nothing else seems to work. And then if they get too entrenched in it, it can be hard to get back out, especially if your society doesn't allow for any kind of rehabilitation and just throws you in jail, or if you've had to live that way for so long that you don't have the skills to work outside of what you do

But like modern crime, it's not always about desperation or bad luck, some people do genuinely turn to crime because they can, only difference is not all crime is the same, and not everyone post-war has to resort to raiding in order to make a not-so-honest living, like illicit trade, or drug and weapons dealing. I think that sort of crime is most evident in new vegas, where you have all these gangs in and around the strip who fight with each other and do all kind of shady things. These guys and their kind of crime would be more like organized crime, like the mafia or yakuza, in modern day

But once a gang gets large or powerful enough, then they're gonna have to either make adjustments to how they do things, or grit their teeth and accept the path they've chosen

I think it's fair to say that a lot of raiders aren't gonna be part of the big organized groups. A lot of them really are just people who made some bad decisions or had shitty luck in life, but like criminals in jail today, it can be hard to break out of it once you've been in it long enough. If a gang gets by by attacking farms and caravans, it's not gonna matter to the people they attacked if they just did it because they were hungry, they'll be hated and shunned all the same, especially if any of them get caught. As time goes on, it'll be harder and harder to stop because they've dug themselves into that hole, and as the gang grows bigger and they need to attack more people, they just keep digging deeper and deeper

And this is where Butch's gang starts to differ, as I've mentioned before. Because they didn't start out attacking all the nearby people to steal their supplies, they were able to slowly evolve as the gang got bigger. Once they had the means to, they were able to start growing their own food, raising their own cattle, and do some trading, which meant that eventually they became more of a town than a gang

Alternatively, you have groups like the raiders over at Libertalia, who iirc started raiding out of desperation, but because they kept doing it, they developed a reputation as bad people. People you should avoid. People you don't want to associate with. People you can't trust. So even if they were eventually able to find a way to be self sufficient, they'd still be shunned

I think the nuka world raiders are the best example ingame for how far they can go in that extreme, because the main gangs have reached the point where they're so big and have such a reputation that they start to become more like an organized crime group. I genuinely don't believe that the pack or disciples started out like that, although I feel that the disciples had a more cult-like, "ingroup" beginning than the others. The operators, on the other hand, are led by a pair of spoiled rich kids who ran away from home and turned to crime to get what they wanted, so even if some of the people who joined them did so out of necessity, it still strikes me as very much a group that cares more about making money and getting what they want than they care about survival. I mean, they do also care about survival, but I don't think that was the goal that Mags and Will had in mind

Anyways. This is all just a lead up so I can say that I think a lot of the "real raider" attitude present ingame is, ultimately, bullshit. Granted, that's not to say that I think it's not present entirely, but that that kind of attitude is something you'd only see in larger, more powerful gangs who've past the point of no return. Mostly

Why do I think this? Becuase ingame, the way they present this "real raider" shit makes it feel like they tried to make the raiders as a whole their own seperate class in the hierarchy. Especially when you dig through notes and terminal entries and holotapes in nuka world that talk about Mags and Will, even Nisha a little bit. There's talk about how they weren't "born into" the raider life but still know how to act like "real raiders" as if one would have to be born to raider parents in order to resort to petty theft and murder

And also? Being a raider doesn't exactly seem like the healthiest lifestyle. If not for the violence, or the drug addiction, then because of their perceived lack of ability to take care of themselves outside of stealing food and supplies. If anything, I think having children would be a motivator to stop raiding, not keep doing it, because, well, even if they turned to a life of crime, they're still people. A lot of them are still gonna want to do good by their kids, or at least recognize tbat they're not in a good position to be rasing any

Of course there are gonna be exceptions. There's always going to be exceptions, because it's a complicated situation, not a cut-and-dry lifestyle that shitty and unintelligent people are born into and never leave, because that's not true