Someone put it quite well earlier: treating Fallout as a realistic survival RPG is a mistake. It's not, never has been. It's an RPG set in what a stereotyped 1950s thought that a post-apocalyptic world would be like. Complaining about it being illogical and overblown is like leveling the same complaints at Mad Max or like the people who whine about difficulty and low carry weight in STALKER games, it's rather missing the point. There's a lot that Bethesda mucks up, but this is one point where I think they've hit it spot on.
The thing is... Wasteland is even WORSE off then Fallout 4 by far. Mad Max actually justifies its setting by not only making it almost unlivable but also by continuously moving the setting with the implication that yes people sometimes did recover once Max himself left.
Fallout 4 the issue isn't realism the issue is flat out world building. The world is flat and lifeless.
Wasteland 2 shames Fallout 4 not because "Ohh it is so much more realistic" but because it actually bothered to do some world building. In the first few minutes of the game, not even at the hour mark, I was more invested in the world of Wasteland then the entirety of Fallout 4.
Yet even IF we accept Fallout 4 is just copying the idea of post apoc... The setting is still advancing, we see people farming and yet there isn't much on that (nor any explanation for how their dirt farming is so effective...). Honestly Fallout 4 is a new game about settling the wasteland... why not work with it?