"Fallout" became a "thing" in 1954, with the test of one of the first thermonuclear weapons. Before then, no one really appreciated all the consequences of setting H-bombs off. After the Castle Bravo test, whole island villages were exposed to horrible radiation falling from the sky, their newborn children horribly deformed, their skin blistered and burned. That wasn't supposed to happen, but one of the test planners didn't read a weather report correctly, and instead of falling into open water, the radiation landed on people (one Japanese fisherman died soon after the test from radiation).
The radiation fell out of the sky, so it was called "fallout".
Ever since then, "fallout" has meant "the horrible things that happen when you do something rash you haven't thought all the way through". That's exactly the theme in this song.
The singer is talking to an immature friend who gets into horrible fights, and always loses, because the friend isn't ready for what happens after acting rashly and winds up bent over and crying - feeling the fallout.
"Fallout" became a "thing" in 1954, with the test of one of the first thermonuclear weapons. Before then, no one really appreciated all the consequences of setting H-bombs off. After the Castle Bravo test, whole island villages were exposed to horrible radiation falling from the sky, their newborn children horribly deformed, their skin blistered and burned. That wasn't supposed to happen, but one of the test planners didn't read a weather report correctly, and instead of falling into open water, the radiation landed on people (one Japanese fisherman died soon after the test from radiation).
The radiation fell out of the sky, so it was called "fallout".
Ever since then, "fallout" has meant "the horrible things that happen when you do something rash you haven't thought all the way through". That's exactly the theme in this song.
The singer is talking to an immature friend who gets into horrible fights, and always loses, because the friend isn't ready for what happens after acting rashly and winds up bent over and crying - feeling the fallout.