Tim Cain is a man to be talked about: co-creator of Fallout, creator of Arcanum, and owner of one of the best channels on YouTube, Cain's accomplishments are too numerous to count, and his mind is filled with game design secrets we will never know. He must have a lot of secrets in his head about game design that we will never know. Thanks to Cain's recent appearance on the gaming documentary channel TKs-Mantis (via GamesRadar), we now know the secrets surrounding "Fallout": who dropped the first bomb?

Speaking extemporaneously about the moral ambiguity underlying Fallout, Cain happened to mention that "the reason [the US] got nuked was because biological weapons were illegal, and somehow China found out we were doing FEV."

FEV is the "Fallout" For those unfamiliar with "Fallout" lore, FEV stands for Forced Evolutionary Virus, the pre-war superhuman serum used to create the super mutants of "Fallout 1. Since Fallout 1, the question of who fired the nuke first, the U.S. or China, has been a source of fan debate. As it turns out, China was first. So it is. Tim Kaine's appearance on the podcast settled a 26-year debate.

Mantis quickly picked up on it." Earth-shattering, now that's a story," the host laughed, telling a surprised Cain, "Like Greedo and Solo, there's actually an argument over who shot first."

"I see," said Cain sheepishly, "Well, I don't know. It was probably some rogue state." It was indeed a perfect recovery.

To be fair, the lore of "Fallout" is entirely in Bethesda's hands these days, and the studio has done all kinds of weird things, from aliens to replicants, during its stewardship of the series. the backstory that Cain and co. settled on in the 1990s is may no longer be Bethesda's official source material.

But perhaps it is. It is generally accepted among "Fallout" fans that China is the most likely country to have fired the first shot in the apocalyptic origin story of "Fallout." Cain's immediate acknowledgement of that fact will solidify that theory as legitimate in the future.