Fallout – What are the differences between survival mode and normal game

I had the same problem as well, 70% of my people died when I closed my ipad and went out for about 15 mins. From the battery consumption I think the game didnt go into sleep mode, or it prevented the ipad to enter sleep mode, so the vault ran out of resources and dwellers died, etc. It was a vicious cycle trying to get back to normal. It took me two hours to raise the deads and stabilise my vault because the game threw all kind of catastrophes at me when I'm low on everything. Now my main power station still has a "something died in here" debuff that makes people terribly unhappy in that room. I think we need to log a bug to bethesda.

Results from the wasteland are mostly random. It is highly unlikely (but not impossible, as you have the proof in your game) that a level one dweller with wimpy stats comes across the most powerful weapon in the game in an hour of exploration. Your badass explorer with top stats and elite gear might not see that type of weapon after exploring for a week. This is how the RNG works.

Because of the randomness, there is no formula that guarantees that a dweller with X stats and Y gear explore for Z time period will come back with the best loot. What we do know is that having better SPECIAL, a higher level, and exploring for longer periods of time make it more likely that the dweller finds better gear, more caps, and earns more experience than another dweller with lower stats exploring for a shorter time period finds. You can see this at work by looking at the results after multiple explorations. Jericho may not be bringing back plasma weapons and fat men every time, but he should be reliably finding shotguns, rifles, and the like rather than rusty pistols.

The other factor that you haven't mentioned with Jericho is his level. Results in my game suggest that the level of the explorer may also factor into the quality of loot they find (although part of this is that lower level wanderers just can't survive very long). My lower level explorers tend to find mostly pistols, maybe

tl;dr

Yes it's possible. Congrats on your guided fat man. With repeated expeditions, the results should be more in line of better stats + more time = better loot, but there is no surefire way of getting the absolute best loot every time. Improve your SPECIAL, improve your level, send out for as long as possible, pray to the RNGods, and send more expeditions. Eventually you will get what you are looking for.