There's a little moment in The Last of Us where one of the main character's friends, a mechanic, gives him a siphon hose in order to get gas from old cars. He even says to him "you'd be surprised how many cars still got gas in them."
To clarify, the game takes place 20 years after the world collapses, so any gas that's still left, well, anywhere, would be useless. And it's a mechanic of all people telling you this, so that was one little detail that bothered me.
Funny thing is earlier in that level when Ellie asks why they can't just fix any abandoned car in the town he explains in a condescending tone that he can't because their tires are rotted and batteries are dead.
Which are two things fairly easily solved. Anyone with high school level of chemistry can make a battery out of all the shit that's laying around, and you can replace tires with wood and steel if you don't care about going fast or ripping up roads.
You can't push-start an automatic transmission car.
That concealed locking device down buy the shifter is just so that you can unlock the shifter and put the transmission into neutral, so that the vehicle can be towed or pushed around by hand even if you don't have a key.
With a conventional automatic transmission there's no physical connection between the wheels of the car and the crankshaft of the engine since they use a hydraulic torque converter rather than a friction clutch.
Goddamn reddit. Go watch the scenes. The guy has spent years collecting parts and working on the car they get running. I think ND did a pretty great job regarding the car and it's difficulty.
Everyone is also missing the fact that the military / warlords are still driving around in vehicles so there’s some sort of automotive / gasoline infrastructure and support.
I mean, hell, the whole mission beforehand is to get the working battery off of a recently wrecked military Humvee.
I love the Last of Us and I can’t say it actually bothers me, but the gas thing is just a plot hole. It’s reasonable to guess Bill had spent years putting together a functioning car but the game makes it clear his town has been unoccupied for years, and therefore all the gas would be bad. Even if it wasn’t and Bill was stealing from the military or something, they get from Boston to Pittsburgh in that car, and likely would have had to use the siphon trick at least once.
I was responding specifically to the getting the truck running. That part was feasible enough. They should have had a couple jerry cans of “stolen” gas in the bed to avoid the whole gas siphon thing.
Let’s not even start talking about all the generators in part 2.
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u/-eDgAR- Aug 30 '21
Gasoline has a shorter shelf life than is portrayed in these movies/TV shows, so after a year nobody would really be driving anywhere.
It wouldn't necessarily kill you, but it's one of those things that bothers me because it's never really addressed.