Summary

• The Fallout 76 Mothman Equinox event offers players unique rewards and plans tied to real-life locations and events in West Virginia.
• The Wise Mothman, a giant purple-eyed bug, appears during this limited-time event where players complete tasks and emote to summon it.
• The Mothman legend originated in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the 1960s, and it was associated with sightings of a terrifying winged creature.

With the success of the Fallout TV series, more people are revisiting Seasonal events like Invaders From Beyond, regular updates, and patches are now being presented to a whole new audience of players, and one of the most recent seasonal events also happens to have ties to real-life events.

Fallout 76 has many ties to real-life places. Even the location where it's set in Appalachia is inspired by the same area in West Virginia, albeit in its own Fallout-themed timeline and universe — which differs from our own history drastically at times. That said, many locations in the game reflect real-life locations in West Virginia, including Morgantown, Harper's Ferry, and one town that's the birthplace of one of the most well-recognized cryptids in history.

The Mothman Equinox Is A Fan-Favorite Limited Time Event

The Mothman Equinox Event Is Live Now

The Mothman Equinox is a limited-time Fallout 76 event that occurred quite recently in April but is being brought back to servers for at least a week starting on May 14 (though typically seasonal events run for at least two weeks). Due to a duplicate rewards bug that prevented players from getting duplicate plans, as posted by Ghostly_Rich on Reddit, the event was brought back again so players could enjoy the feared Mothman in May.

The Mothman Equinox event also comes with a host of unique rewards and plans, including different Cultist clothing, Mothman Bug Zapper & Tomes, as well as a 1-Star Legendary Item if they managed to keep all Pyres standing during the event.

Every hour, the Mothman Equinox event will start at the top of Point Pleasant, where players will need to speak with Interpreter Clarence, who will task them with destroying infested vines and totems that will spawn in the area, along with a few other tasks. Once the tasks are completed, players must emote 30 times to summon what is called the Wise Mothman, a giant purple-eyed bug. The event is run by an occultist ring that worships the strange creature, and it might surprise many to learn that the interesting limited-time event actually has several ties to reality.

The Mothman's Real-Life Origins

A Popular Cryptid From The 1960s

The Mothman legend started in the 1960s in the same location where the Mothman event occurrs in Fallout 76, Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The night was November 15, 1966, when the first sighting of the terrifying winged creature emerged. Linda and Roger Scarberry and Steve and Marry Mallette spotted the creature while driving down State Route 62, and according to the couples, the giant, six- to seven-foot flying creature with shining red eyes rose up into the sky with large leathery wings, keeping up with their vehicle which was going 100 miles per hour.

In Fallout 76, the Mothman was released as part of a December 2021 update called Night of the Moth.

Eventually, sightings of the Mothman in the area would increase as more people in the area would claim to see the flying beast. Although commonly falsely associated with a disaster called the Silver Bridge Collapse, which sadly took the lives of 46 people when Silver Bridge failed during heavy rush-hour traffic, it really had no connection to the Mothman whatsoever. In reality, that event was caused by a small crack that eventually grew in size and caused the bridge to fail.

Sometimes described as a giant fly-like creature, while other times depicted with a more owl-like face, like many cryptids, s for the exact appearance of the creature varied. The Silver Bridge Collapse occurred over a year after the first sighting on December 15, 1967, but rumors of the Mothman in the local area and the heightened notoriety of the mystical creature led many to associate that disaster with the legend. The 2002 The Mothman Prophecies film also centered around similar themes, which likely only bolster the association to this day.

The Mothman Museum Is A Real Location

Point Pleasant, Appalachia

The Mothman event in Fallout 76 isn't the only tie that the event has with real-life history. The Mothman Museum, the unmarked location in Point Pleasent, is a real location that holds Mothman-related memorabilia and historical artifacts in our own world. The museum, located in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, also holds an annual Mothman festival, which hosts crowds of up to 15,000 people every year.

Typically, the Mothman event coincides with the Summer Solstice, but in 2024, that would be June 20, so the Fallout 76 event was a few months early.

Although it's not entirely certain what led to the Followers of the Winged One or The Enlightened becoming such devout followers of the giant winged creature, it's safe to say that their headquarters of the Mothman Museum certainly fueled some of their more interesting rituals and behaviors in the Fallout universe. In fact, it could be a bigger message about humankind's tendency toward fanaticism, or it could just be a cool nod to an interesting story. Among all the strange and fascinating places where Fallout 76 derives inspiration, the Mothman legend is perhaps one of the most interesting.

Source: Ghostly_Rich/Reddit