What happened to the rest of the world in The Last of Us?

[Music] while we all know and love the Last of Us for its complex and relatable characters the relationships between those characters and the interesting and unique factions we encounter during the course of the game the world they inhabit is just as important as they are now everything we know about that world is limited to almost exclusively what happened in the United States during and after the outbreak of CBI in late 2013 but there are some minor bits and pieces of information on what happened elsewhere - hey stragglers and tourists my name is the iPad cat and what did really happen to the rest of the world in the last vs. universe well that's what we'll be going over in today's video I'll piece together what little information we have and of course as always give you my own thoughts and theories on the topic so without further ado let's get home with it what's kind of funny about a game set in an end-of-the-world scenario is that we know pretty much nothing about that end out of the total 140 collectibles in the game 85 of which are lower documents only three have any remote reference to the world outside of the US and even those are nothing more than extremely minor references aside from that the only further information in the game comes in the form of a few lines of dialogue and interactive objects in the prologue so surprisingly the majority of what we know about what happened to and the current state of the rest of the world comes from sources outside the game which consists almost entirely out of concept and promotional art I also know the odd thing has been said in interviews here and there - but since those quotes are extremely hard to find and sift through even though I personally remember what was said I will not include most of it here so let's start with the artifacts the first one is called shipping manifest and can be found during the quarantine zone chapter at the docks where Robert is hiding it's exactly what the name suggests a shipping manifest of the goods from a recent smuggler expedition the majority of it talks about how the sailors almost got arrested for smuggling but how Robert managed to sweet-talk and bribe them out of it what's interesting though is this part of the list of goods two crates of frozen meat more Canadian bison now how exactly is that relevant to the state of the rest of the world you might ask yourself well I'm not a biologist and I don't know much about bison but I dog around for a bit and didn't find any specific species of bison named Canadian bison thus my conclusion is that this refers to bison hunted in Canada which implicates a number of things firstly that this particular smuggling expedition but also perhaps the entire operation came from Canada which further suggests that there is some sort of society left there otherwise who would have hunted the Bison butchered it and frozen it to be traded with the smugglers now whether or not the country of Canada survived in some shape or form as the US did or the people there in question are just survivors or factions formed during the apocalypse we can only speculate but at least we can take away that there is some sort of organized society left in Canada from this moving on we have the second artifact called Tess's list which can be found right at the start of the outskirts chapter in Joel and Tess's safehouse it is as the name suggests another manifests of goods now like with the previous one there is not really anything extraordinary about this artifact it gives us a slight insight into the kind of supplies Joel and Tess would take into the Boston quarantine zone as part of their smuggling operation and what they would consider a bad but that's about it the only part were interested in this is this one crate Canadian whisky now the only reason I brought this up is that it's one of the extremely few places where even the name of another country is mentioned as I said the only things we find in the game are nothing more than extremely minor references of course Canadian whisky could like with the Bison referred to that this crate of whiskey did indeed originate there and implicate the same things as before but that is very unlikely in this case I mean of course it probably came from Canada 20 years ago before the outbreak but that's not really what we're talking about here we do know that JoEllen Tess's smuggling operation pretty much depended on trading supplies with Bill and Bill very rarely even leaves his town much less interacts with other people which leads us to the probable conclusion that this crate of whiskey was just something scavenged by Bill in or around Lincoln and nothing really indicating the survival of Canada finally and most interestingly we have the third and last artifact with any mention of the outside world called newspaper clipping which can be found in a dorm room in the university chapter now this one as opposed to the previous two is actually relevant and interesting in its entirety it reads US military recalls search effort by Lev Benioff field writer with the latest whu-oh report estimating that as much as 60% of the world's population is either dead or infected by the CBI pandemic the United States military has released a statement that they're recalling all of their search efforts regions of the ten miles from each quarantine zones perimeter will remain on the 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 the letter now this was likely published pretty far into the outbreak considering the infected percentage while it doesn't give us any details on specific countries or continents aside from the u.s. it gives us the only information and idea about how many people were actually affected by the fungus and from that we can easily draw the conclusion that most nations would have ceased function and most likely collapsed entirely at this point for reference pandemics in the past like the Spanish flu which only killed about 2.5 percent of the global population caused absolute chaos and the near collapse around the world thus CBI killing 60% makes it 24 times worse than one of the worst disease outbreaks in human history we also have to remember that the CBI unlike the Spanish flu doesn't only kill but also turns its victims into mindless monsters which again makes me think it's safe to say that there isn't much left of the rest of the world the u.s. is in many aspects unique in comparison to the rest of the world it's the biggest economic powerhouse in the world and has by far the most powerful military now consider how incredibly hard it was hit by the CBI and what state it's in 20 years after the outbreak the most powerful country in the world barely survived and hangs on by a thread at the time of the main game I mean take a country like Sweden my home our military is tiny and we have some of the strictest gun laws in the world if a killer fungus comes around that not only wipes out the majority of our population but also turns a lot of them into vicious monsters further spreading the sickness yeah I don't think there'd be much left save for maybe small groups of survivors and perhaps the old military hold out at basis way up north where nobody lives and I think that would be the case for 90% of the world's countries except for the biggest superpowers the thing is 60% is actually not even the real percentage I know that's what it says in the article in the game but the real numbers are way worse yes I said I would exclude most of what's been said in interviews but this is too important to leave out according to nodded of themselves the actual percentage of deaths / infected caused by the CBI is 90% which only further reinforces my previous points the source for this is one of the now really old factions multiplayer streams that frequently had the Naughty Dog devs on them as guests but I couldn't find the specific one if any of you managed to find it you're welcome to post a link to it in the comments down below anyways the reason why we don't see this percentage in the game is that once it got that bad there was nobody left to actually measure the numbers and publish them I mean the fact that the w-h-o was still active when 60% of the entire world had either died or become mindless creatures that continue to spread it is almost a plot hole in my mind I mean just look at the chaos that's going on in the world by now and that's from a virus that's only killed a few thousand people so far 60% of the world population now that is 4.2 billion people how could any institution function after that anyway is the takeaway from this newspaper clipping is that the world at the point of its publication was in deep that was getting worse fast and that most nations had probably collapsed moving on we have the clues from the prologue of the game the first one being the newspaper in the bathroom of Joel and Sarah's house it reads admittance spikes at area hospitals 300% increase due to mist infection FDA expands lists of contaminated crops massive recalls anticipated the Food and Drug Administration's investigation of crops potentially tainted with mold continues across the country initial lists distributed to vendors nationwide warned against crops imported from South America but now the scope has extended to include Central America and Mexico several companies have already voluntarily recalled their food products from store shelves the FDA is expected to release an expanded list of foods under their end quote now most of you probably know about this newspaper since it's one of the very first things you can interact with in the game but I'm going to bring it up here anyway since it's one of the most important pieces of lore in the last of us period this is because it gives us the only clue of the origin and cause of the CBI tainted crops from South America though we're not here to discuss the CBI itself but the fact that we get details on its origin and initial spread from South America then to Central America and Mexico and finally the u.s. gives us an idea of what might have happened to those parts of the world I mentioned this in my video of the last of us as intro credit scene which we'll get to in a bit that those areas of the world could probably have been in the process of collapsing before it even reached the u.s. this because everything we know about the outbreak period points toward it being a fairly slow event if you're wondering how I came to that conclusion I strongly recommend that you watch the video I just mentioned that and the fact that pandemics usually hit their places of origin their epicenter the hardest makes me believe that there's not much left of those areas by the time of the main game I mean they certainly couldn't have gotten a heads-up like some places in the US did if it started there and since they would have been the first to deal with the infected they were the ones to make all the mistakes in how to react to and fight them before and at least somewhat effective strategy could be created they'd stumble around in the dark the longest and thus take the most damage moving on we have the second and final reference to the outside world in the prologue this time from the intro credits scene where one of the lines of dialogue is this panic spread worldwide after a leaked report from the World Health Organization showed that the latest vaccination tests have failed this again like with many of the previous things I brought up is nothing more than a minor reference but given the very scarce amount of even as much as a minor reference to the rest of the world I included it anyway it's a world ending pandemic so of course the vaccination tests failed and cause a panic it doesn't really give us a lot of insight into what was going on except maybe for that the individual countries of the world weren't trying to cure the CBI on their own and instead put all of their eggs into the basket of the whu-oh which ended up failing them all it could be that that was the point when things started to collapse in the rest of the world for real if all of them were looking to the whu-oh to save them they obviously didn't have any better plans of their own otherwise it wouldn't have caused this panic but that's all a pure speculation on my part moving on we have the artwork left this as I mentioned previously is where the bulk of information on what happened to the rest of the world comes from now if I'm honest I'm not quite sure if it's all canon since it was all done as part of promoting the game but I have no reason to assume it's not the first picture is this newspaper front page which gives us quite a bit of information the first thing you'll notice is probably the big headline that looks exactly like the logo for the game which if I remember correctly is what inspired the design in the first place the phrase the Last of Us is also mentioned in an excerpt from the unnamed last president of the Last of Us universe which reads our union remains strong the military is making large games and securing additional teams owns this followed by something I can't quite make out turning-point we are not and will not be the last of us mankind will prevail which is pretty cool but unrelated to the topic of this video we also see the headline the president addresses a panicked nation as millions more are feared dead or infected which probably means this newspaper was one of the last issues to be published before things broke down completely but it doesn't tell us much more than that we also have this other headline reading Texas New Mexico quarantine fails which I'm kinda mad I didn't notice earlier because it actually confirms one of my theories from my quarantine zone video that being that Austin and Texas as a whole was hit first and hardest in the US which made whatever efforts the military had going on there fail forcing Joel and Tommy to flee the state you can watch that video here if you're interested anyways that still doesn't tell us much about the rest of the world though there is one headline here that does and it's this one England latest to declare martial law which implicates a number of things firstly it suggests that other countries have done so before England which means they could have acted fast enough to be able to preserve some semblance of society like the u.s. though which countries that could be there is no way of knowing and secondly it could mean one of two things for England either since they did introduce martial law they could have survived in some capacity or it could mean that they are one of the countries that collapsed and disappeared since this was so far into the outbreak and they didn't do anything until that millions more are feared dead or infected it sounds a lot like it could be too little too late moving on we have a ton of art that was made by Naughty Dog artists to promote the game depicting cities across the world and what they look like twenty years after the CBI outbreak I'll have most of them roll in the background here as I talk about it while not all of them gives us any clues about any potentially surviving societies in their respective countries all of them looked amazing and some of them certainly sparked my imagination as to what might have gone down and what the situation is like there now especially the one depicting my hometown Stockholm but that's only really because I live here however there are two that are quite interesting from a lore perspective those being the Battersea Power Station in London and the Kremlin in Moscow which are the only two that we can see for sure haven't been abandoned both of them are located close to their respective countries seats of power which leads me to believe that their governments were at least fedra equivalents maybe intact and holed up there there aren't really any signs or flags to indicate as much though which makes it impossible to say for all we know it could also be former QC equivalents taken over by hunter Firefly or WLF style groups but at least in the case of the Moscow one it looks very militarized and orderly which at least makes a potential government slash federal-style faction surviving they're more likely many of the other ones could also still be inhabited but since they are all depicted during daytime and without people in them it's impossible to tell I'll leave the link to the gallery of all these pictures in the description so you can have a look for yourself and maybe tell me your theories about it in the comments anyway is to summarize we have very little information on what happened to and the current state of the rest of the world in the last uh versus universe we know that there has to be some sort of civilization left in Canada due to the meet the Boston QC smugglers brought from there the fact that the CBI was such a severe pandemic indicates that the absolute majority of the world's nation's most likely didn't survive and collapsed into nothing but minor group and factions of survivors judging by the numbers in the newspaper clipping artifact South America Central America and Mexico were most likely hit the hardest by the CBI since the outbreak started and first spread there as we learned from the newspaper in Joel and Sara's bathroom there's a good chance most of the nations of the world puts all of their faith for a vaccine in the w-h-o which ultimately failed which we heard from a reporter during the game's intro credits scene England implemented martial law as the latest of many unknown countries quite far into the outbreak as indicated by this newspaper from page they either succeeded in preserving some sort of society as supported by the promotional art of the Battersea Power Station or their efforts fell short used them taking action too late some sort of faction inhabits the Kremlin in Moscow Russia more than likely a government slash military remnant as indicated by the promotional destroyed series art and finally the destroyed cities promotional art indicates that many other countries survived at least for a while but there's no way of knowing for sure if they're still going hopefully part two and maybe even the new HBO show will give us additional insight into what happened to the world during those 20 years and maybe even its current state but for that we'll just have to wait however those are just my findings theories and thoughts on the rest of the world in the last amatis universe what do you think do you agree with my points disagree did I miss anything and what do you think happened to the rest of the world tell me in the comments down below and let's talk about it and after that why not continue the discussion on my discord server and until next time have a great day [Music] you

Channel: TheiPadCat

Views: 301,208

Keywords: The rest of the world the last of us, what happened to the rest of the world the last of us, The Last of us world, What happened to the world in the last of us, the last of us the rest of the world, the last of us what happened to the world, TheiPadCat, the world the last of us, the last of us world

Id: PludjWvY6sg

Length: 21min 48sec (1308 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 13 2020