I have an idea for another Vault.
In this one, we will be testing human compassion for the unknown. We will put two hundred or so people of only one race into a vault, and keep it sealed for at least three generations, or until all the first are dead. Then, we will introduce members of a race the Vault Dwellers will have never seen before, and record the reactions. Once these have been acclimated (or not), we will wait a one generation, and introduce members of another race, recording again. It would be really interesting to see the responses (and yes, members of all races included in the experiment will have never seen members of a different race before.
What if we made a Whodunit?-like Vault? Everyone would die, but it would be interesting to see how
So, this.
Or even better! Use the Gary vault, but fill it with mutant plant spores and tell the Garys that they need to sacrifice one person every now and then to survive...
It would be horrifyingly amazing - fifty veggie-zombies yelling "ha ha ha, Gaaaary!" and engaging in political/moral disputes with the veggie-zombie justice bloc!
...what have I created...
The vault is run by a council of 12, each head of a specific department (i.e. medical, education, etc.). All decisions are made by this council, and must be made unanimously. This is enforced by the Overseer, whose only job is to gather the council in the Council Chambers whenever a decision needs to be reached, sealing them inside until they arrive to a unanimous decision. Resources and supplies in the vault are limited, meaning that not all departments can be up to par with what they need (if security is fully stocked, agriculture will be severely lacking, etc.). Supplies and resources are sealed in vast storage rooms, and cannot be accessed without all 12 keycards carried by the council members (also forcing the unanimous decision). After two decades, the council members are replaced, and each of the 12 positions is filled by the most recent class to take the G.O.A.T. Up until the 20th year, only the Overseer knows this part of the plan, and again, must enforce it. If the Overseer fails to enforce any of the rules, he is told that a deadly nerve toxin will be released into the vault, killing everyone. He is sworn to secrecy, and is told that if he tells anyone, the gas wil be released anyway.
I imagine everything would go fairly smoothly, right up until the first 20 years are over. And that's the idea. Get them comfortable, get them to understand the system, give them a routine that they have slowly but surely found most efficient, then pull the rug out from under them, and hand the reigns over to a bunch of 16 year olds. That, plus the constant threat of nerve toxin looming over the Overseer could provide for a nice little touch of extra impending doom. The nerve toxin may not even exist, but does he want to risk it?
There, my dose of sadism for the day
One vault on top of another vault, with video feeds linked to the other vault. Tell each vault that the other one is an experiment, and watch as they go crazy trying to figure out what the experiment is. Hold private interviews off camera to find out what the populations think the experiment is, and the first person to get it right goes to the other vault.
As they transfer, everybody from that vault goes to the other, and it is left with one person in a vault all alone and a vault full of people all watching them, who you tell to pay close attention to the individual, as the almost ruined the experiment. Tell the individual that they are now in charge of the the experiment, and that they can leave the vault entirely or stay to fuck with the rest of the population, who will now be glued to the screens analysing his every move to figure out what the experiment was.