They weren't. We did, however, put a Nazi fighter ace in change of the NATO military committee in the 70s.

I use the conelrad mod for new Vegas and that playlist has some of the most rancid vibes imaginable. About 50/50 "song about getting nuked" and "song about getting nuked (racist)". Plus a couple pro Vietnam war songs which I think are the most rancid of the bunch.

They've retconned that a bit I think. Last I checked it wasn't that the transistor was never invented it was that the transitor was invented like a decade before the bombs fell and that's how things like the pipboy work

Honestly that's probably more down to differences in art direction between Bethesda and interplay/obsidian. The world building isn't particularly consistent between the two coasts. But in both of them there's not really that much that suggests it's just a fad

Massive growth*

Now, there are cities like Austin that have relatively architecturally homogeneous skylines, but that's because of maybe growth that took it from a small city to one of the largest in the country over about 20 years. I have a hard time believing that could apply to somewhere like Boston

You can see this most clearly in the Boston skyline I think. There are two types of building here: historical and 50s retro future. A skyline like this wouldn't be built all at once in a city as big as Boston, so it's safe to assume buildings have been built like this for a while

Eh I dunno, it's all pretty consistently 50s. If it was a fad you'd expect older buildings to have stuff that wasn't 50s, but instead it's all pretty uniform unless the building is older than the 50s. Either most of the buildings were built around 2077 or it's been like this for a while

I mean the British government once created it's own market bubble with a scam trading company it used to get rid of it's debt, so it's not unheard of

Nah you gotta use regular water for that. If you hit that thing with saltwater the whole thing will rust