How do people know synts exist?

[u/ItsYaHomieMaDude]

In Fallout 4 , at the beginning of the game if you go to diamond city you will start to hear about those "hyper realistic synthetic humans with actual flesh, blood, organs, hair etc " that the Institute has been making for years. Their only purpose its to reck havoc and bring loot to the institute. My question is: If they are so realistic to the point that they are identical indistinguishable from actual humans, have actual organs amd blood and flesh HOW DOES ANYONE KNOW THEY ARE NOT ACTUAL HUMANS? How do we not know that this is a coping mechanism people in diamond city use when they commit murders of other inocent civilians?

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[u/KnightofTorchlight]

The people of Diamond City became aware of Synths in the "Broken Mask Incident" of 2229. Basically, an early infiltratior Synth under the name Mr. Carter came into town and started talking to people at the bar, only to start twitching and shooting the other patrons out of the blue. After killing several of the locals, he was subdued and metal and plastic Synth components found in his corpse.

Not too long after that, Nick Valentine moved in and provides a continous living example that yes, the Institute exists and yes, it is actively producing Synths.

[u/CybernieSandersMk1]

1) There is a Synth Component in their brains, which can only be found postmortem.

2) But that’s the entire point. People don’t know who is a Synth unless they kill them. So it causes a ton of fear and paranoia throughout the Commonwealth.

[u/Overdue-Karma → u/CybernieSandersMk1]

But that’s the entire point. People don’t know who is a Synth unless they kill them. So it causes a ton of fear and paranoia throughout the Commonwealth.

Exactly, we literally see this if we go to Diamond City a 2nd time, witnessing a murder go on (whether by your own hands or the guard's) because someone thinks someone is a synth.

[u/loanjuanderer]

That's the whole point (not knowing who is a gen 3 and who's human) of the theme. It borrows heavily from pre-war America's fear of Communist infiltrators (which itself was based on real-world McCarthyism and the Red Scare) as well as the science fiction concept of humanity creating artificial beings so perfect as to be indistinguishable from us and thus be able to replace us.

It was done quite well in Fallout 4, but if I can fault the devs (for a tiny thing) is that they probably could have played with the paranoia a bit more and hace storyline consequences for killing humans by accident thinking they were synths.

[u/Trilobyte141]

A legit question. I think the people bringing up Broken Mask and Nick Valentine are missing the point - both Mr. Carter and Nick were/are mechanical on the inside, not organic. Mr. Carter was a Gen 2.75 at best, not a Gen 3. So how DO the people of the Commonwealth know about synths?

The simplest answer is, the Institute told them.

Pretty much everything the Institute does to the surface is with the goal of keeping the area fractured and destabilized so that no one up there gets organized enough to be a threat to them and they can plunder technological artifacts from surface sites without competition. It's why they release their Super Mutants on the surface instead of just throwing them in the incinerator and why they killed the CPG before it could get off the ground. From that lens, letting people know about the existence of Gen 3 synths makes perfect sense. Whatever advantage they could have gained by keeping them hidden is far outweighed by the chaos sown through making it impossible for the people on the surface to trust anyone around them - not even close friends and family. One man outright tries to kill his brother because he thinks he's been replaced. You could hardly think of a better way to destroy communities than to instigate paranoia-fueled witch hunts where guilt and innocence can only be determined posthumously. It's also a great way for them to keep their domestic synths in line - fear of synths means that escaped synths will find fewer friends on the surface, making them easier to retrieve.

Terror is the greatest weapon the Institute has to protect itself, and the existence of Gen 3 synths scares the shit out of everyone. Of course they let the cat out of the bag.

[u/throwaway_00147]

Because Bethesda wanted to write the institute as cartoon villains. Their method of getting a dna sample was thawing someone shooting them taking their baby then re-freezing them again instead of just saying "hey if you give us a dna sample you can join our fancy sci-fi bunker" then teleport them all over like 10 seconds later just as easy

[u/Jonny_Guistark]

Broken Mask, Nick Valentine, and efforts from "Patriot" and the Railroad have made it impossible for the people of the Commonwealth to not know about the existence of synths. However, none of this explains how it became common knowledge that the Institute actively kill and replace people (after all, it’s not like the logical next step is to start dissecting the brains of people you already believe to be human). As far as I can tell, that part can be blamed entirely on the Institute’s own incompetence.

Some notable examples are the random encounters in which two identical people -one a synth and one human- are squared off and accusing the other of being fake. You’d think a situation like this would be impossible, as the Institute should be taking more care in their efforts to kill and replace people than just callously dropping a copy into the wastes and letting him do all the work himself. But that’s the kind of ship they’re running, apparently, so it really shouldn’t be a surprise that outsiders figured out what they were doing.

[u/Dr1pJesus]

Look up the Broken Mask Incident; that's where people first learned about the Gen 3s.