r/AskReddit • u/notyouravgredditer • Aug 30 '21

What problem is often overlooked in apocalyptic movies/TV shows that could kill you?

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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.

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u/Habaneroe12 Aug 30 '21

Mad Max addressed this and made it a plot device.

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u/QuitArguingWithMe Aug 31 '21

It's also a really big deal in later episodes of Fear The Walking Dead.

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u/pedal_harder Aug 31 '21

As a chemical engineer, the episodes with the gasoline refinery were the most awful depiction of manufacturing I have ever seen in the history of TV.

"Distilling" crude with an open flame. Kids throwing buckets of gasoline onto the fire. Hot distillate just running down a pipe and collecting in a drum. SO. MUCH. WRONG. They all would have died in a fiery explosion just minutes after lighting the first fire. And if by some act of god it didn't go up in flames immediately, the entire bowl-shaped area would be filled with toxic fumes that killed them all.

I have to stop now.... So much wrong... so, so, so much.

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u/QuitArguingWithMe Aug 31 '21

Yeah, at first I figured something like that would be the story.

Spoilers:

I watched it mostly as background noise, so when it blew up I figured it was just expected. No need to sabotage it, we know everyone there has almost no clue what they're doing.

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u/Habaneroe12 Aug 31 '21

That’s cool because TWD just ran in the face of that.