Yahoo Autos The Last Of Us Doesn't Understand How Gasoline Degrades
Imagine, if you will, the apocalypse. A mushroom gets a little out of hand, and suddenly everyone is zombies. Twenty years later, no one’s manning the gas pumps or working the refineries, but suddenly you’re tasked with driving some magic child across the country. How are you going to do that?
This, of course, is the question that lies before Pedro Pascal’s Joel in HBO’s The Last Of Us, as well as Troy Baker’s Joel in Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us on which it’s based. But the show, out of the two, gives us an explanation for how a cross-country road trip is supposed to go when the world’s gas has broken down into non-flammable waste. The problem is, its explanation makes no sense.
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Gas Station Scene | The Last of Us Episode 4
In the early minutes of The Last Of Us’s fourth episode, we see Joel siphoning fuel out of a moss-covered car. He tells Ellie that all gasoline has decayed to nearly water, and they’ll have to stop every hour to siphon “fresh” gas from parked cars. Some quick Googling tells us that the pair’s 2001 Chevy S10 gets, depending on drivetrain options, a maximum of 25 miles per gallon — if they’re averaging 60 miles an hour through the vast expanses of middle America, stopping every hour means stopping every 2.4 gallons of fuel. So, Joel’s 5.3-gallon jerry can is more than up to the task of their constant stops. Bonus points to the production team for using a period-correct, pre-safety-spout gas can.
But the problem comes with the fuel itself. Joel is right — gasoline breaks down over time, and it breaks down far more quickly than you might imagine. Regular gasoline takes three to six months to decay, according to JD Power, but American gasoline contains an ethanol blend. Ethanol breaks down even faster, taking just one to three months before turning into an unusable mess.
