I've been playing Fallout 3 some lately, which is basically set in the D.C. area roughly 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse. Pretty neat game. Looks sharp and there are some very interesting (and horrifying) things to see or do.

So, your character has grown up in this underground vault where his descendents, among others, have lived since the bombs start falling. Then for reasons having to do with megalomania you have to split and survive in the wastes. A potentially early stop is the city of Megaton, a makeshift burg built around the crater created by an unexploded atomic bomb. Which people worship. It's called the Church of the Atom.

My character's first quest (other than "don't be murdered by the guys who want to murder you") was to disarm the bomb, but sitting around in the town is the villainous Mr. Burke who wanted me to rig it to go off. Because, you know, some old guy thinks the town is an eyesore. And it totally is. Naturally I told him that he was a douche and might find breathing water a fulfilling way to spend his time and went and disarmed the bomb. No, I don't know why my sheltered vault-dwelling guy knew how to disarm a 200-year-old Chinese nuke (oh, did I mention the nuclear holocaust was between China and the US? The nuclear holocaust was between China and the US. Topical!), I just rolled with it, got a nice reward (a house!) for doing it, and went happily along my way.

In Japan the option to detonate the bomb was removed. It makes sense to me that this should be so (the same way with the renaming of the Fat Man weapon, which shoots - in an act of unfettered awesomeness - mini-nukes) but I do wonder how many Japanese people still find the dropping of the nukes an immediately painful subject matter. Granted, it was only 60 years ago and so there are probably still more than a few people who were alive then, and it is terrible in a sort of general sense what with the 150,000 people who lost their lives, but... I can't think of a way to end that sentence. I mean, more people died in the firebombing of Dresden, and while this isn't some sort of mortality contest I don't know of any games that have had incendiary weapons removed specifically for a German release.

Anyway, it's just something I was wondering.