Fallout 4 fan showed how to turn a supermarket shopping cart into an equivalent of power armor using Bethesda's famous game physics

Power armor in Fallout 4 is presented as the pinnacle of pre-war engineering – nuclear cores, servomotors, a dedicated entry animation. But the most reliable shield in the Commonwealth turns out to be a rusty shopping cart, one you can grab with your bare hands and hold in front of you like a Roman scutum.

A clip showing a character in nothing but a Vault suit blocking raider bullets with a shopping cart brought back a mechanic that many players don't discover until hundreds of hours in. A long press of the interact button lets you grab almost any physical object, and while it's in your hands, the physics engine treats it as real cover. Bullets and melee hits slam into the object instead of the character.

Size matters here. A shopping cart covers almost the entire silhouette, a trash can lid works like a compact buckler, while an office wastebasket only really protects your legs. The tactic is simple: hold up the shield while the enemy empties their magazine, then throw it in their face during the reload (holding the reload button is what triggers the throw) and finish them off in VATS.

This mechanic gets a second life in Fallout 4 VR, where you hold an object in your left hand and a weapon in the right. Unlike the standard version, you can angle the barrel around the edge of your cover, turning random debris scattered across a location into an actual tactical resource. One player noted that after trying this, you start scanning a room not for loot, but for a decent lid.

The second use for scavenged junk is even more absurd. Stand with your back to a wall, pick up a trash can, look down, and keep backing up – the character literally starts climbing straight up the vertical surface, turning the trash can into a pocket elevator.

The cleverest trick of all, though, involves the AI. During the Institute ending, where you have to protect the synth hacking Liberty Prime, Brotherhood of Steel soldiers need to climb staircases on both sides of the gantry to reach it. Drag a couple of shopping carts over from the nearby beach beforehand and the pathfinding breaks entirely – the soldiers won't push past the obstacle and just end up circling below, getting shredded by gunfire.

A full set of T-60 armor demands nuclear cores, a workbench, and half the resources in the Commonwealth. A shopping cart just sits there, free, outside the entrance of any looted store.