[djur]

The one NPC that survives is the one who gives you the series of "survival guide" sidequests which are meant to help encourage you to explore the game. What's interesting about that to me is that her quests are pretty much the only valuable (in game mechanics) thing about Megaton after the nuke quest is resolved -- and they end up letting you do them either way. It's actually cited by people as an example of the game not following through on the consequences of an evil act. But your interpretation makes more sense to me; the idea that a game has to 'punish' in-game evil by means of a mechanical penalty is itself kind of discomfiting.