Welcome to Fallout-UE.com
Let me introduce myself. My name is Matt. I'm the creator of this website, and your host though most of the writing within it. This is the "about" section of the site, so I'll start telling you about myself, the site, and everyone involved.
I'll start off with why I became interested in Urban Exploring. I guess it's in some people's nature to want to know what's left in that old abandoned factory on the outskirts of town. I just actually act on that curiosity and find out for myself. I think I have always been like this: Not satisfied until I know.
What actually spurred my interest in this, as a hobby, was my boredom. I usually hang out with my girlfriend(now wife) Keti every day. One day she had made some plans with her friend Booker. I of course had no choice but to break into places. Well actually it wasn't exactly like that. I had been developing an interest in checking out abandoned buildings for about a year prior to that now that I think about it.
Shortly after my diving into this hobby Keti became interested in it as well. We decided to make a website to chronicle our adventures. At first we were rather immobile by our own means. Keti didn't have a license yet and mine was suspended. Luckily my friend Greg could be bought off as driver-by-bribe. The usual price was some gas money and brownies; occasionally lasagna was put on the table.
In the beginning the site consisted of a few decent locations, but mostly un-impressive places like a metal shack/barn down the street from Keti's old house, a graveyard of no significance other than it's name was kinda funny (Resurrection Cemetery), and a barn killed by mother nature, attached to a now unoccupied house owned by the state. There were three pretty cool places though; Empire Industries, an in town old factory, the old Wrentham State School, and of course Metropolitan State Hospital.
We started trying to fill in the lack of content really fast throughout the first month. Greg was really helpful in this by driving us around to all of these places despite his very obvious opinions that this hobby was ridiculous and stupid. By the end of the month we thought we had enough content to start a "dot com" website. We decided on the name Fallout because many of the places we were researching and trying to 'infiltrate' had old fallout shelters in them. We bought the Domain www.fallout-ue.com and borrowed some web space from Greg. Within a few days the first version of Fallout was up and ready for the Internet to see.
Two of Keti's friends from school were really helpful in both finding us new places to check out, and promoting the web site, Chas Jette and Lucas Callahan, though Lucas kind of disapeared after a while, Chas has been around exploring with us for years now all over the northeast, never once taking a picture. He's just happy to be there.
Shortly after getting into the Urbex forum scene we befriended A guy named Jason Bettencourt(Salt) who took us to Danvers State Hospital for our first trip, helped us set up our first and second urbex forum, and was generally just a really great guy
About a year later we met Travis Burton(MovingUnit) Who invited us to see Norwich with him, and has pretty much been in our our lives every day since then, one of the coolest guys I've ever met, always puts others first, and he's always there when we need him. Additionally he's taught me nearly everything I know about how to use a camera.
No too long after that my long time friend Keith Daley started coming along with us again for the first time since my first trip to Met State in 2003, and has been joining us for trips here and there as much as he possibly can since then
About Fallout Members
The current members of Fallout are Matt Fallout(myself), Keti Plante, Travis Burton, Keith Daley, Chas Jette, and Jason Bettencourt. Former Member Include Greg Dumas, and Lucas Callihan.
Despite popular believe amoung many people in Urban Exploring forums, Fallout isn't a super exclusive club of elitist explorers, It's just a group of friends that share common interests one of which is UE. We all hang out outside of the hobby and have regular lives. I get many emails every month asking to join Fallout and become a part of what we do. Though we do explore with other people all of the time we're not an organization accepting meberships, just a group of best friends.
About this site
What goes into the production of the site? Mostly it's a lot of research and networking with people who do this in all areas. We seek out historic, abandoned, condemned, decaying, or simply interesting man made structures. Research and networking actually consumes a lot of our time in this hobby.
I code all of the html and scripts manually in a text editor, usually Metapad or Notepad. This site is(or at least should be) IE/Opera and Netscape/Mozilla compatible. With the new photo gallery system using Simple Viewer you will need Flash Player installed to see photos.
Photos on the site are taken by myself, Keti, and some were by Greg using a combination of film and digital point and shoot and SLR cameras.
Camera List
We've gone thought quite a few camera's thoughout our adventures over the years. Most of these cameras have been destroyed in some way or another from exploring.
- Point and Shoot
- Fujifim A210
- Fujifilm A200
- Fujifilm 2650
- Kodak DX3600
- Kodak Advantix
- Nikon L18
- Sub-SLR
- Fujifilm S5000
- Fujifilm S5100
- Fujifilm S3100
- SLR
- Canon EOS 20D
- Nikon d50
- Canon EOS ELAN
- Canon Rebel Xti
- Camcorders
What camera's do we currently use?
Right Now I am Shooting with a Canon Rebel Xti body loaned to me by a photographer by the name of Brandon Donovan, and an 18-55mm kit lens donated to me by David Simione. Alternately I use, either my old Nikon D50 with a Quantaray 18-55mm, or Nikon L18 point and shoot, If keti isn't using them that is! Travis Shoots With a Nikon D50, most often with a Tokina 12-24mm super wide angle lens, but occationally I see him shooting with a 28-80 nikkor lens. Keith shoots with a kit Pentax *st and also has a 28-80 lens which i've never really seen him use, his dog has probably eaten both the camera and lenses by now.
Additional Info
If you know of a place you think we'd like check out, tell us. We'd love to hear about any new places. Use the contact page to get ahold of us.
If you'd like to link to us feel free. Spreading the word about our site is always a plus for us. I usually link back to people that have established long term websites, for a while I just added everyone who linked to me and I had to go in and edit the links page on a weekly basis to remove bad links, sorry if I dont add you back. It's not personal at all.
If you'd like to donate money to help keep this website running. Maybe because we've helped you out or you just absolutely love our site, or for any reason at all, I've set up a paypal account where you can donate. It's seen zero dollars donated since I first put it up on the site in 2005, it's 2009 now! You all suck.
Matt Fallout
