Prologue - The Full Story Of FEDRA Episode 1 | The Last of Us Lore

[Music] on september 26 2013 the cordyceps brain infection reached critical mass in the united states it ravaged the nation and the world destroying civilizations that had stood for hundreds of years in months who all desperately tried to stop it but there was no stopping cbi ultimately the only thing remaining of the us government and of the united states as a country was fedra the federal disaster response agency hey stragglers and tourists my name is the ipad get what you thought i was done with the last of us content no sir part one is in my humble opinion still the best game of all time so there is no reason to stop celebrating that this video is meant to be the first in a series of videos on fedra each video is intended to be a comprehensive source of story and lore for fedra during a particular part of their history or in a particular place except for in this first video which will act as the prologue covering the more general concepts and backstory of the faction in the end all of them will hopefully tie together to tell the full story now a disclaimer even though i've decided to call this series the full story i may miss things here and there or more likely intentionally leave them out when it comes to lore from part 1. when it comes to lore from part 2 however something that i am sadly not that versed nor interested in i have decided to mostly leave it out because the risk of me overlooking something is so great and the fact that i simply do not enjoy part 2 which makes research on it a drag isn't worth it to me if there is something from it that i absolutely think should be in the video or something i just want to include i will moving on though my goal is eventually to cover most of part one this way not just fedra and possibly some of part two depending on what i feel like in the future but as these videos take a serious amount of time and effort to make let's not get carried away i.e another way of me saying no promises but with that out of the way i see no reason to delay any further let's get on with it [Music] [Music] the origins and backstory of fedra are a bit diffuse and unclear it's a subject i've touched on and partly explored in several earlier videos of mine it is likely that this is intentional since fedra was never meant to be more than a background faction all we can do as fans is to try to piece together what little information we do have and fill in the rest with theories ourselves but before we start getting into that there's one big thing to clear up first when it comes to fedra and the military the last of us fans often times tend to use the terms interchangeably as if they were one of the same which is incorrect however this is not all that surprising considering the fact that even characters in the game do the same thing they said army's put up roadblocks on the highway well i hear the military's been wiping you guys out there's an abandoned military radio station just outside the city that alongside the fact that the word federer is never once actually spoken or heard through the entirety of part one almost makes it seem like naughty dog intended for people to confuse the two so for people that don't know fedra the federal disaster response agency is a fictional us government agency based on the real world fema fedra either legitimately but more likely through foul play took over what remained of the us federal government as the nation fell apart in wake of the cbi outbreak something that we'll get into in a bit thus they commandeered its remaining parts agencies and departments of which we only know about too for sure the us military and the center for the seize control so in strict lord terms the military is under the jurisdiction of fedra not one of the same entity though to be quite fair and possibly to make this even more confusing for all intents and purposes even lore ones they are the game never makes any super clear distinction between military and federal personnel aside from the boston qc soldiers explicitly having a tiny patch on their chest that reads army so it is actually quite possible that they are in the process of merging or perhaps already have and that the lore we do find is just outdated also funny thing i just noticed while editing this naughty dog seems to have changed the name of fedra between part 1 and 2. i mean i know they changed the seal but in part one all the seals say federal disaster response administration and in part two they say agency instead weird anyways that is a whole other discussion let's move on from semantics so what about that origin story well as mentioned to call it unclear or even unexplained would be an understatement but we have to start somewhere so i think a good place would be with its real world counterpart since it in comparison to fedra has a pretty well documented history and purpose now i'm sure my american viewers are very familiar with the federal emergency management agency what it is does and can do but for my fellow europeans and people in other parts of the world too that just think hurricane relief or maybe don't know what it is at all when they hear it let's go over some basics real quick also if anyone is wondering where i'm getting this information from it's wikipedia i'm not american so please don't kill me if i get anything wrong fema was established in the late 1970s by president jimmy carter and is today a part of the department of homeland security its purpose is to coordinate the response to disasters that overwhelm local and state authorities in other words any disaster that cannot be handled at the local level given that the governor of the state in question declares a state of emergency is a responsibility of fema furthermore fema divides the us into 10 different regions each with their own main offices from which operations are coordinated this will be interesting later we have no reason to assume that the history purpose or organization of fedra prior to that of late 2013 was any different than that of fema so armed with the information i just went over we can deduct that fedra was activated very early on during the outbreak perhaps the very same day from the first line during the intro credit scene the number of confirmed deaths has passed 200. the governor has called a state of emergency which is soon followed by the line with the bureaucrats out of power we can finally take the necessary steps which is arguably the most interesting line in that segment of the game now quite a while ago at this point i made an entire video dedicated to analyzing the intro credit scene of the last of us a main point of that video was my theory that the us government did not just naturally devolve into fedra but rather as mentioned earlier in this video were overthrown by it why well it's not that complicated really the fireflies were formed as a revolutionary group calling for the return of all branches of government a return to democracy your public charter calls for the return of all branches of government something that's not only heard in the intro credits but also echoed by joel in bill's town fireflies were everywhere huh yeah they were hoping to restore the country to what it was well with a vaccine maybe they will some random official claiming the bureaucrats are out of power alongside literal revolutionaries calling for the return of the legitimate government is a dead giveaway that foul play was involved initially i just assumed that once disaster control at state level had been handed over to fedra they just ended up deposing everyone with the help of the military including whatever administration that was in office in the last of us version of 2013. but then while writing the script for this video i noticed something that i've not paid attention to before while looking up the story script for the game to more easily copy exact quotes into my script for this video i saw that the last of us wiki has the random official as i called him earlier listed as none other than president barack obama if that is indeed true and not just some clever telo fan wanting to add a name to the voice it certainly complicates things when it comes to my initial theory now personally i doubt naughty dog did intend for it to be obama or any other real politician as including actual currently relevant politicians in games without their consent or approval more often than not leads to a myriad of problems but there is a case to be made that they actually did and for the sake of the video let's explore it and what it means for the lore of fedra what is this case you ask well in the promotional material for the last of us this picture was released a newspaper front page depicting presumably the last president of the united states addressing the nation of course the face of the president is conveniently blocked out by a sticker but i'd be lying if i said i didn't think that he doesn't resemble obama i mean hell it even looks like they just took a picture of obama and put a random sticker over his face be sure to tell me what you think in the comments down below anyways if president obama or even just a fictional president was the one to claim that the bureaucrats were finally out of power it poses a very interesting question is fedra still under the command of the president and or his cabinet while unlikely it still fits with the fireflies clamoring for the return of all branches of government if congress simply doesn't exist anymore and it's just a president at the top of fedra essentially becoming its dictator it's not a democracy there are also snippets of information sprinkled throughout the game that supports this theory for example the newspaper clipping at the university it states that the us attorney general still has some responsibilities quote regions up to 10 miles from each quarantine zone's perimeter will remain under patrol for citizens attempting to enter but no further effort will be made to evacuate those potentially trapped in hard to reach areas attorney general arthur monroe made this clear in a letter unquote if the attorney general is still in office and active when 60 or more of the world's population has perished i would say that gives us a pretty good indication that the cabinet and probably the president are still alive and in control and if federer took over at the start of the outbreak well then there is no other explanation than that they are its leaders another snippet of information that supports this theory albeit more of a stretch than the last one is the mention of a central command database in this artifact from the pittsburgh chapter the existence of a central command database implies the existence of a central command and where would that central command b other than washington dc with the government the problem with that theory however is that firstly it could just be a database and nothing more but also that in this artifact a captain of the military in pittsburgh is trying to contact a colonel mckenzie in atlanta georgia for orders why would they not try washington and the would-be president central command or is central command in atlanta is the president there obviously there's no way to know but yeah it is unlikely furthermore the fact that the database artifact is most likely from just after the outbreak makes it even more of a stretch [Music] i still love the idea of a government still kind of being there in the shadows though like the last of us version of the enclave from fallout i mean who wouldn't love to see a badass fedra obama in some future game when it comes to what we actually know about the centralization slash decentralization of the different quarantine zones it's as you'd expect next to nothing but judging by that communication seems to be restricted to letters and rumors spread between people who travel between them and the fact that each zone supposedly has its own general i think it's safe to assume that fedra by 2033 is just loosely tied together by its shared history and name and that in reality each zone is pretty much independent but of course friendly toward each other there is really no other way to realistically handle the situation even if they did have other means of communication like say for example satellite phones or even the internet the fact that the overwhelming majority of the territory between each zone is a treacherous wasteland with half destroyed infrastructure full of literal monsters and not so friendly people makes it pretty much impossible to set up any kind of trade or larger system take the newspaper clipping example again according to that when they were still looking for survivors they only ventured 10 miles outside the qz walls that is nothing in the grand scheme of things and it's not like they're even doing that anymore anyways furthermore considering that each zone supposedly has some sort of self-sustained industry as supported by bill talking about how the military are the only ones making car batteries [Applause] alongside federer convoys going out on scavenging runs to places like lincoln i think it is safe to assume that there is no big supply network between the active zones yeah the boston zone had some smugglers that were bringing in stuff from canada by boat but that's about the extent of it there might very well at one point have existed a central command leadership for all zones but for all of the aforementioned reasons it's probably not there anymore though i wish as for the remaining active zones by the start of the last was part one remember when i said the fema regions would be interesting later well in case you don't here's your reminder now these are the capital slash main offices of those respective regions notice anything interesting all of the confirmed or very likely active qcs left by 2033 correspond to fema's quote-unquote capitals boston denver and atlanta are all the centers of their respective regions what's interesting about this though is that it also adds to or completely overtakes my theory on why certain places in the us were drastically more well prepared than others previously i've tried to explain that by discussing that the outbreak might actually have been geographically speaking a slow-moving event as supported by tommy mentioning it only being the coasts at first as well as the fact that society seems to have stayed relatively intact several years into the apocalypse if you're interested in my reasoning behind that you can watch my video on the intro credits scene anyways as i was saying slow moving event but what if that's not what happened what if the reason they got a heads up before the outbreak showed up as joel puts it was really that federer was aware of the outbreak as it spread across south america and decided that the whole country just couldn't be saved and thus they focused their efforts on where they already had their strongholds in this case their offices or slash capitals of the 10 regions this gives us hints as to where the other heavily fortified zones not even mentioned in the lore might be located take new york city for example it's never once mentioned in the game but it is a fema capital and it can be seen as an active qc in at least one piece of concept art for the game the fact that philadelphia is the capital of the third region might serve as an explanation for why the pittsburgh zone had such meager fortifications in comparison to boston because it was not the priority for federer in that region and there's nothing that tells us there wouldn't be any active zones in say chicago kansas city or oakland and so on what makes this theory not entirely waterproof though is that seattle in the last was part 2 definitely seems like it's supposed to be the capital of that federal region judging by how similar the size and fortifications are to the boston zone but if we look at the real fema city it's listed as bothell and not seattle also if the philadelphia capital zone was active why would the captain in pittsburgh from the artifact mentioned earlier contact superiors in atlanta and not the much closer ones in philly however this theory also fits in neatly with my other theory on why the military abandons zones as discussed in my qc focused video it is likely that when they abandon zones as in the case of hartford for reasons such as firefly rebellions they integrate into nearby more well-defended and supplied zones creating super qc's so to speak now logically all of fedra regardless of the state of communications would be aware of these capitals since they came from before the outbreak and for all we know it might even be protocol that they are fallback points in case of disaster now i kind of wanted to go into the specifics here on how the quarantined zones were set up what the procedures and protocols for admitting civilians there were and the firefly revolts that led up to the main part 1 story but i realized that that kind of defeats the purpose of this series this video was supposed to be more of a general backstory of fedra but all those things are specific to the places we find them in their evolved in pittsburgh for example is very integral to the federal story there not the general backstory of the faction why would i even need that episode then so yeah to summarize what we've gone over in this first episode fedra the military and the cdc are not the same the latter two are under the jurisdiction of the former fedra is the only thing remaining of the us as a country and of its government it's unclear how they assumed power but all things point toward a coup by either the president and the cabinet or by unknown federal leadership in turn causing the formation of the fireflies federer's leadership is unknown but they might still be led by the president or even obama judging by irl fema regions we can determine other possible super qc's like new york city for example anyways do you think federer is still commanded by the president and if so do you think it's obama or some fictional politician what's your take on the super qzs at fema's region capitals be sure to tell me in the comments down below and until next time which will probably be in a while but will most likely focus on boston have a great day [Music] you

Channel: TheiPadCat

Views: 167,645

Keywords: FEDRA the last of us, the military the last of us, FEDRA lore the last of us, the last of us lore, military lore the last of us, Prologue - The full story of FEDRA Episode 1 | The Last of Us Lore, the full story the last of us, the full story of fedra the last of us, the last of us FEDRA, FEDRA, FEDRA episode 1, the last of us lore episode 1, theipadcat the last of us, theipadcat, military fedra the last of us

Id: 4sOTKuFPqHU

Length: 22min 30sec (1350 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021