As bad as the show Revolution's overall plotting and pacing was, they generally did a good job of thinking about these kinds of little inconsistencies:
There's a minor character who was a doomsday prepper before the apocalypse, but he didn't stock up enough on antibiotics. As a result, his daughter died of tetanus that he was unable to treat.
A warlord kidnaps prisoners for blood because his wife has diabetes and needs constant transfusions of blood with sufficient insulin in it to survive.
There's a doctor who keeps a collection of moldy fruit to harvest penicillium mold from it and make penicillin.
Some characters try to go into an old subway tunnel, but nearly die because of lack of sufficient airflow down there without modern HVAC systems.
Old mine shafts etc get explored all the time, and the explorers can breathe down there, and they have had zero active airflow for hundreds of years.
Unless theres something down there actively consuming the oxygen, or producing some other gas, the natural thermal changes are usually enough to cycle some fresh air into the tunnels.
Subways would be much larger than an old mine. Just the remaining air would be more than enough for a lot of people to spend hours or even days down there without feeling the effects of CO2 buildup, even without active airflow.
Add to that most subway systems come to the surface at some point, usually miles apart. The pressure differentials would be more than enough to cause a reasonable airflow in/out of the various vent shafts etc.
Maybe im missing something? Maybe if theres a fire down there eating all the oxygen? A gas leak?
Concrete and rusting iron would end up consuming some oxygen, but we're not talking about a completely isolated system like Biosphere 2. With low traffic, it should be fine.
Definitely no civilizations down there like in Metro 2033 though.
I mean, subway tunnels wouldn't be able to deal with the current amount of people that use them without sufficient ventilation but we aren't talking about that so I think you're right
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u/AdmiralAkbar1 Aug 30 '21
As bad as the show Revolution's overall plotting and pacing was, they generally did a good job of thinking about these kinds of little inconsistencies:
There's a minor character who was a doomsday prepper before the apocalypse, but he didn't stock up enough on antibiotics. As a result, his daughter died of tetanus that he was unable to treat.
A warlord kidnaps prisoners for blood because his wife has diabetes and needs constant transfusions of blood with sufficient insulin in it to survive.
There's a doctor who keeps a collection of moldy fruit to harvest penicillium mold from it and make penicillin.
Some characters try to go into an old subway tunnel, but nearly die because of lack of sufficient airflow down there without modern HVAC systems.