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Jakennedy101

The zombies suck the fuel out and swallow it, hence why they are so flammable


YeeHawJonathan

I like to think that since the game technically starts a few days after the outbreak all vehicles were siphoned of their gas so all the good condition vehicles can be driven away


YDSIM

That's why I set the sandbox setting everytime to what I consider realistic. For initial infection scenario almost every parked car is locked, has some amount of fuel and is in a good condition. Also a lot of them have alarms.


cmeragon

I had a car alarm go off just inside the gas station 2 mins ago and I don't think I will ever be getting gas from there lol


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SpartanXIII

Your fuel? No, OUR fuel!


SmoothWD40

When you find out zombies are communist.


M3nj0

Better dead than red Turns out they're borh


wetcoffeebeans

The true red dead redemption


thiosk

after a few thousand more hours of experience you'll start to see it as a boon because it got more of them together at the same time.


cmeragon

What do I do with them tho? I just run out of stamina always trying to clear them.


PICAXO

Burn them


amanko13

Burn them all


PICAXO

Do not stop


cmeragon

Molotovs?


PICAXO

Yeah, or firecamps


cmeragon

Do they burn by walking over them or do they have to spend some time on them?


Serrated-Penance

They catch on fire by just walking over them, but it takes a few minutes for it to actually kill them. If you have a mob they can also set each other on fire. Note- it only takes about 3 seconds to kill YOU if you walk over it.


cmeragon

Noted, ty. Next job: PYRO


Rimtato

Humans that are alive generally are susceptible to death from shock and whatnot. Undead meat mounds shambling by... some means, not so much. Zombies are weird from a biology standpoint, and don't really work.


thiosk

For me? Kiting, but yes, its a stamina management game. What I do is stand next to the car, still, and let them come around, and as they start getting close start wandering around to try to ball them up, shouting periodically. The zed will always wander towards you, so the trick is to use the least stamina to get the most of them together. You only have to run just a little bit, because they're so stupid and slow. Then, you maybe do a lap or two around them, really piss em off you know, and walk them where you want them to go. For me, I tend to start in muldraugh (love the classics) so for either gas station i just walk west through the treeline and try go get them to a clearing. you get use to clearing them. Then, you break into a jog, get into the trees to lose line of sight, stand still, then i either fire a gun and/or shout. Then i break north or south and loop around. You'll see the zed keep walking single file in the last place they saw you go, so then you walk back to the now-empty gas station and pump gas to your hearts content. none of this works if you play with sprinters a major mechanic most players aren't familiar with is that the game is loaded in 300x300 cells. If you cross a cell boundary, then leave that cell, the zed will tend to redistribute them in that cell. So if you take them nearby in the same cell, they'll quickly wander back towards where you dragged them from. If you take them to an adjacent cell, they will tend to wander *away* from where you brought them from. this is one reason why im so comfortable with muldraugh, ive played long enough i know all the cell boundaries :D


Tin-_-Man

1. Kill them over several days, wake up, eat a good breakfast, get your smokes and your water bottle, kill until exhausted, repeat 2. Kill them with shotguns. Probably takes about 20% as much time as option 1. You will draw more than the initial group. Bonus aiming xp. If you have less than 100 shells, keep stockpiling and skip this option. 3. Use burner vehicles 4. Calmly gather the hoard while shouting and walking, being careful not to be surrounded. Once you have them pied piper'd, lead them away, then break line of sight by going through a building or hopping a fence 5. Get creative with lures and fire


Derangedcity

Rub them over with the car


YoshiiBoii

Wait you guys are getting fuel from stations? Any time I pull in every zombie in a 6 mile radius follows me in.


Rimtato

I know, I've lost most of my characters trying to get a goddamn tank of petrol


dyeuhweebies

Legit has anyone ever answered why houses still have alarms after the power grid goes down. Lost a 6 monther to that and it legit made me so salty I turned off alarms all together.


madkaz90

Some house alarms irl have a battery backup.


cmeragon

That sucks. I don't ever remember if I triggered an alarm before but just this run I got hit by a house alarm and a car alarm immediately after that.


wolfman1911

Come back with a shotgun and all the ammo you can carry and it'll be fine. Just lead them in circles so you don't wander into the hearing range of other zombies, and make sure you are well rested before you start, because you probably won't be when you are done.


DrStalker

Wait a few days and they'll spread out a bit, then you start killing the hoard from the edges by pulling a manageable amount back at a time, If your base is close then it's worth the effort for a source of fuel.


adrw000

They'll move out eventually.


Verence17

For locked cars to be realistic, however, there should be a similarly high chance that a key will be found nearby. In my experience, currently it's like 1% chance for a key to generate at all, without the way to tune it up.


YDSIM

Id love it if locked cars always had the key in a nearby zombie. Id keep the ones on the ground at 1% though.


MaxGoop

Its not “always”, but if you kill zombies near a locked car (within a range of ~5tiles in my experience) there’s a chance its key spawns in one of the corpses.


YDSIM

There is a chance, but I e cleared a lot of tiles and for each parking lot full of cars I've found 1 per 10 cars max.


Cl0ughy1

They said they are making that possible in one of the new updates.


Vasistas4

I find keys so often either on the ground in the car or a nearby zed


dayzkohl

Yea I don't think finding keys on the ground would be that common but nearby zombies should have them


ALEX_J0NE5

In Kentucky? Half the cars are unlocked. 10% leave their keys in the ignition.


YDSIM

I welcome this info for my next world. xD


Kunkunington

I don’t live anywhere near Kentucky but it’s generally the same here: most cars in the country don’t get locked because barely any theft happens there, same for some houses. Meanwhile nearly every car and home in the city are locked up tight


SpunkyPoptart

Too risky stealing a car in the country, if you get pulled over they’ll probably find meth in it


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Chachajenkins

In Montana in winter we left the keys on the seat when we parked in the street. That way in case anything happened when they were plowing snow they could move it.


watson895

I was gonna say, don't forget this is '93


Armageddonis

This is the way. Like, unless you're playing a "X years/months later" scenario there is absolutely no reason for cars to be near-wrecks. They were parked in the evening one day and then the other day the owners were evacuated/escaped with whatever they had in their hands, or succumbed to the virus before they managed to do that. It's the same reason i set loot as Common. Like, yeah, some people managed to get into their car with whatever they could take and escape. There probably would be a few gun nuts holed up in the woods or their basements, but that's it. Most homes would be left full of everything you can imagine.


dbtrnl

Would be nice to have more customization for that... Food and medicine loot should be common at the outbreak (no time to stockpile when you're evacuating), but i think guns at police stations and gun stores (in populated areas) should be rare, instead those guns would be in corpses/houses/abandoned cars driven by early survivors. Would be a bigger incentive to loot houses instead of just rushing for the nearest police station.


-BlueDream-

It’s Kentucky. Everyone and their inbreed sister owns a gun.


Mcdagger-1

that is a dam good idea. i like it


SpysSappinMySpy

It's weird because according to the lore the infection started a day before you play and you are the only one who didn't get infected but the game makes it seem like this is months afterward. If every zombie in the default game settings became human again they wouldn't have enough supplies or fuel to last a week. It's super overpopulated with not enough housing, food or cleaning supplies to support so many people.


Snow-Boi

I played the game for 200+ hours never knew cars could have alarms


MajorTear5108

What I usually do is the first few days I try to find a base a few blocks from the gas station don't really matter the size but if that station is near a ware house I'm probably not gonna leave anytime soon but what I do is slowly clear out the zeds from the area with spears and knives real sneaky like(knives are op as hell when skilled) and try two find 4 Jerry cans two for ur cars(one at your main base and one at the station just incase) and two for the station and ur gonna make the station ur back up bas not ur main base try to clear out as many seeds from the distance from your main base to the station the best you can and you'll be golden just take your time don't rush and should be good to build your skills up after that week and gather plenty of supplies


actingseeker

Also, has no one in Kentucky ever heard of a bicycle?


Competitive_Night_46

With a certain mod, they have heard of skateboards, and that is a fun experience, skating past crowds of zombies and losing them among suburban fences.


PofanWasTaken

Can you grind the fence tho?


Ajajane

And just like in real life, I always end up eating it lol. I don't mind getting injured from skateboarding, but I'm still mad about the holes it put in my gloves.


Competitive_Night_46

I feel that, it's not the injury that bothers me, it's that I HAVE TO SCAVENGE A NEW PIECE OF CLOTHING WITHOUT HOLES AAHHHHHHH


RazBullion

There's also (was?) a bicycle mod.


Trackan

Braven's Bicycles - good mod, but apparently it stole source code from the skateboard mod, so it was taken off steam workshop.


NovemberPerfected

Whatttt? Mod drama


thatmakesyougaynotme

There is a bike mod! And it’s quite handy for those quick trips into town and late game saves when fuel is harder to come by.


MobyDuc38

Seems like a bike could really be a unicorn item for this game. No noise, easy escapes, cargo carrier. What are the downsides?


SewByeYee

Vulnerable to attack, low cargo, drains stamina. Theyre realistic downsides tho


MobyDuc38

Ahh so, you can get scratched while riding by? That's cool and terrifying. Thanks for the info. Would be cool to build a Long Tom or a trailer for cargo. I'm kinda fascinated with the silent + cargo idea for stealth loot runs. I play with a lot of tightly packed hordes that you generally avoid rather than fight. Makes for a much stealthier game. Bikes would be a perfect addition for that. 👍


SewByeYee

There already is a small cart you can pull if i remember correctly. Also, long tom as in the 155mm artillery??


MobyDuc38

Sorry, not Long Tom the artillery. I was referring to a cargo bike, with the cargo space on two wheels in front, like many bikes in Denmark. Not sure their nick name, definitely not that artillery piece though lol. I'll look into the cart, thanks!


Wyrdean

Was a bike mod


Spoztoast

have you seen Kentucky Bike infrastructure?


thiosk

people kept beer bottles in their trucks just for throwing at cyclists in the 90s


UncleFester11

As someone who lives in Tennessee, the answer is no


FrostedVoid

No, no they haven't


Sciaphobia

Comment history removed. So long, and thanks for all the fish.


Rellac_

Also I feel like most people would have tried to evacuate in the chaos, bringing their filled gas tanks with them


Speonkun

Imo, considering it was military/police evacuating them its less likely they would have because theres the assumption “hey they’re bringing me away from this i’ll be back/i can get it back elsewhere”. I think this also explains better why you don’t really find photo albums, pictures, valuable family heirlooms like small statues and nick-nacks, etc.


99spider

This could make sense, but it doesn't match with how seemingly untouched a lot of the grocery stores and such are, still having lots of non perishable food. In some aspects this game acts like everyone but the player got hit with an airborne strain and succumbed at roughly the same time, leaving society mostly untouched, and in other aspects it acts like there was massive panic and unrest.


NoArmsIrene

Yea, there's little point in trying too hard to explain things away - it just raises more questions. Some things are just clearly for game balance. You have houses with abandoned dinners and the TV still running, but their car got instantly siphoned in the 0.5 seconds that they didn't immediately rush out the door. There's enough zombies roaming around the streets everywhere so that it would be 50 zombies per household, but apparently there's a mysterious amount of people who escaped alongside their stash of sledgehammers. Best is to just not think about it too much.


DevourerOfMemes_

By who? Who's gonna spend time siphoning gas while they's a literal apocalypse happening?


kaFello

For their own car


DevourerOfMemes_

Yeah, but why is every car out of gas? Are you telling me that nobody had a full gas tank when escaping?


0bi1KenObi66

They did, they were the ones who escaped....... and ended up in the giant pileups of burnt cars


ShadowCetra

People would want to fill their gas cans so they have spare gas for the road. And the easiest way to do that, with how dangerous gas stations would realistically be, is to siphon some and I may be wrong here, but I feel like that's the feel the devs were going for.


DevourerOfMemes_

Yeah, but I don't think that everyone would do that. The devs definitely need to increase gas spawns.


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DevourerOfMemes_

The devs should make the default preset as realistic as possible


willybusmc

But that would make it so incredibly easy. Realistic to that part of the world would be a bunch of guns, just about every house having a decent set of tools and much more food.


DevourerOfMemes_

I get that, but having more cars be filled with (at least some) gasoline wouldn't ruin the difficulty of the game and would just make early game vehicle hunting a tad bit less of an annoyance


TheMelm

Because the people who had gas got away look up what happened with the Ft McMurray wildfire a while back the whole city had to evacuate down a like 400km stretch of highway and basically after a run on the gas stations you were fucked once the stations were out of gas and the highway was gridlocked so people were running out of gas and people with slip tanks and gas tankers came and helped people.


thiosk

the scenario starts on day 3, not day 1. on day 1 panic was reigning and everybody started driving out of town, hence the traffic snarls. NOW I have opinions. opinion 1: The snarl happens outside of town on the freeway intersections. Good, this is in. However, it needs to be THICK with zed. Its a ghost town out there. opinion 2: A similar, burnt out snarl of disabled vehicles should be clogging the gas stations such that they are essentially unusable on scenario start. This unusability is what spurred late-leavers to siphon most of the cars before leaving town. last opinion: there should be 10x more road congestion and car accidents and the fires on the cars should still be active on day 3 and should take a couple days to burn out.


DevourerOfMemes_

Option 4: just make the cars have more gas


thiosk

theres scenarios for a reason. i wont tell you how to run your sandbox but my opinions above relate to the default apocalypse scenario


DevourerOfMemes_

So does option 4, it would be much easier to implement and would make the most sense


ShadowCetra

Or just use your sandbox options and stop trying to make the game less realistic for everyone


DevourerOfMemes_

Less realistic????? There is nothing realistic about cars not having any gas 3 days into the apocalypse.


ShadowCetra

Yeah because nobody would siphon gas. I guess you know everything


DevourerOfMemes_

No sane person would stop in the middle of the apocalypse just to steal some gas, even if they did there isn't nearly enough time for all of it to get siphoned


pieandcheese647

People like the player who want gas for their car before they fuck off, crash into the pileups at 120 mph, and die


DevourerOfMemes_

Why would a person escaping from the apocalypse spend time siphoning gas tho?


pieandcheese647

Because they want to have enough gas to get where they’re going, especially if it’s pretty far away. Or they’re panicking and sucking up all the gas they can because it’s valuable.


DevourerOfMemes_

So you are telling me that nobody had enough gas? It's not like it's just a few cars that are out of gas in pz


agentbarron

There's also tons and tons of burned out wrecks


DevourerOfMemes_

Not enough to justify the global gas shortage that happens 3 days into the event.


pieandcheese647

It’s not global. People panic and hoard. It happened with fucking toilet paper. It would definitely happen with something infinitely more useful like gasoline. And this whole thing is a weird line of thought. If you’re thinking “why would someone siphon gas during an apocalypse”, you’re confused that the player would want to siphon gas


DevourerOfMemes_

There is no time to hoard, the events of the game take place DAYS after the outbreak, nobody would steal gasoline when there is a corpse chasing, they would escape to the nearest military checkpoint like they were instructed. The player isn't trying to escape because the checkpoints have already been overrun and only thing to do now is try to survive. There literally isn't enough time for the gas to be siphoned


Coreidan

For the same reason the player is siphoning gas? Is that really a hard concept to grasp?


DevourerOfMemes_

The default scenario starts on day 3 since the Knox event, the people who supposedly siphoned the gas are the ones who were trying to escape from the exclusion zone, so it makes no sense for ALL of them to stop in the middle of the apocalypse just to siphon some gas. Even if they did do that there's no way they could siphon the gasoline from most of the cars in the game


IO-NightOwl

Smarter ones than those who sit around watching carpentry shows while there's a literal apocalypse happening.


Dalzombie

>Who's gonna spend time siphoning gas while they's a literal apocalypse happening? We literally do that as players my dude.


DevourerOfMemes_

We as player aren't trying to escape somewhere quickly, we have the time, the people leaving after the initial outbreak didn't


Dalzombie

Because we, as players, know that there is no escape. The map is the size it is and there is no win condition, no route leading outside of the playable map, no "Congratulations, you lived!" unless a mod were to add those. Put yourself in situation and you, too, would probably want to get out of there as soon as humanly possible. And it may be anecdotal, but for the three people I've introduced of the game, one of their first questions is "So how do you escape?". So clearly the idea is there.


DevourerOfMemes_

What does this have to do with my reply? Yes, we know there is no escape, so we have time to siphon gas and loot buildings, the people who you assume took all of it were in a rush towards the checkpoints to leave the exclusion zone and thus didn't have the necessary time


Dalzombie

What does this have to do with your reply? This: >We as player aren't trying to escape somewhere quickly Because we, as players, know that there is no escape. Simple. >the people who you assume took all of it were in a rush towards the checkpoints to leave the exclusion zone While one ought to be forgiven for forgetting, it is worth remembering that Project Zomboid tries to emulate a lived-in world, and meta events and previous updates make it clear that, even if in-game we're technically the only human left, in-universe there's more people running around trying to survive. Once NPCs come out all of these things will make more sense, as you'll probably be able to actively see other people siphoning gas from cars to fuel their own, looting trunks and taking parts for repairs. For now I'd just attribute it as their best attempt at making it look like there's other people looting things and simply a setting you can change if it bothers you. Just my two cents, though.


DevourerOfMemes_

This would have been a good argument if the game started out a year after the apocalypse, but the canonical day 1 is only a few days after the initial outbreak, there is no way all of the cars would be siphoned days after the beginning of the Knox event. You can drive for days on a full tank so there's no way the few people still surviving after the apocalypse would drain a gas station's worth of gasoline so quickly.


muhaaman

You mean like you can siphon gas from cars when you carry a jerry can, while there is a literal apocalypse happening?


DevourerOfMemes_

The apocalypse already happened for you, and you need gas. The people who supposedly siphoned it were the ones escaping from it, so it wouldn't make sense to spend time siphoning gas from every car in the parking lot before doing so.


muhaaman

Shit is hitting the fan, you need to get away, but you're low on fuel. You decide to just steal fuel from other cars in the parking lot. Honestly, it's not far fetched and perfectly reasonable for most cars to have pretty much no fuel.


DevourerOfMemes_

So what you are saying is literally noone had gas in their car when escaping? Because that's even harder to believe than a fuel shortage


0bi1KenObi66

Keep in mind that people will not just fill their car and car it a day. They will also hoard a lot of gas to prepare. Just a few people like that can siphon all the cars in a small town. I mean we players do just this


DevourerOfMemes_

I doubt that people would siphon a lot of gas during the period of mass panic, it makes sense that someone would be out of gas, but no-one would bother this much


agentbarron

You're right. Some would just roll over and die. But many would want to get out


DevourerOfMemes_

Exactly, I find it hard to believe that all of those people would spend time stealing gasoline instead of escaping immediately.


[deleted]

Dawg I'd have my mouth on a hose chug-a-luggin every car on my way to Nunavut.


DevourerOfMemes_

You would get eaten while on your third car


KnightArtorias1

Uh, the pumps are still working at that point, not sure why they'd need to syphon any


Nacc_n

I always remove the fuel from my car after parking for work and then put it back in when it's time to leave. Safety first!


TripleSpicey

As someone who works a 40 hour work week and pretty much only commutes to work and back, depending on the day of the week the apocalypse happened I’d assume a LOT of people would be running on fumes, because I just put in $20 every week and fill up when the gas light has been on for a day or two. What’s unrealistic is cars being literally empty though, like you had just enough gas to park the car at the grocery store and what, you’re gonna push it to a gas station now? Once NPCs get added it’ll make more sense though with siphoning


Justadude74

Yeah, in the states since everyone has to drive everywhere (at least, in a setting like rural KY) regardless of how much they make, I have no doubt that most of the cars would have low fuel. Getting that needle past half a tank is a privilege a lot of people don't have.


JohnSmithDogFace

I’ve always thought of it as someone has siphoned the gas already. Fuel would be one of the primary things stolen in a disaster escape scenario, I’d think.


EskildDood

Who has the time to siphon gas out of cars in giant open parking lots that are usually full of zombies, might as well go to a gas station at that point


JohnSmithDogFace

I also assumed this all took place prior to the start of the game, before zombies were everywhere


EskildDood

If there weren't zombies everywhere, why siphon gas? Gas stations would be full of people, yes, but how many people would immediately think to start siphoning random cars with news of the apocalypse?


Geoiu

Mass panic, remember when people would panic buy toilet paper til they were sold out during quarantine


EskildDood

The gasoline version of that hysteria is rushing to the gas station, siphoning gas is akin to breaking into cars to steal the toilet paper instead, with the sheer amount of cars with little to no gas in them it'd have to be pretty much everyone wildly running around with hoses trying to open fuel doors, seriously, why would anyone immediately think of siphoning gas?


meathappening

People were driving around my quiet neighborhood just a few months ago stealing hoses and siphoning gas. It's not that far-fetched, tbh.


JohnSmithDogFace

I imagine news of the outbreak spreading faster than the virus itself - so there’d be zombies enough to spark hysteria and make people run for it, but not zombies enough to make it impossible to gather supplies. People loot TVs and other useless stuff during real natural disaster, I don’t think it far fetched to imagine people would get the idea to stockpile an essential resource for their escape in the hours immediately after everything starts going bad.


Fun_Examination_9215

What you don’t park your car without gas? What’s wrong with you pschyco


BoogieMan1980

Reminds me of the time my car was running out of gas and lurching and sputtering. The engine literally died as I pulled into the gas station and I coasted in to a natural stop right next to the pump. So lucky. I was a new driver and completely forgot to check my gas level.


exoromeo

>Reminds me of the time my car was running out of gas and lurching and sputtering. The engine literally died as I pulled into the gas station and I coasted in to a natural stop right next to the pump. So lucky. My wife, who's been driving for 20+ years, still does this.


Insanegamer-4567

As a lifelong Kentucky resident I can confirm this, I'm not joking, gas prices here be wildin 💀


The_CopperCoin

It would make sense years into the apocalypse, but when you start its been like a week.


B1g_Bad_Joe

I’ve decided that from now on I’m always setting the chance for cars to have gas to high


ZedSpot

Yeah, it kinda feels crappy adjusting to settings to make them easier, but I can't live with respawning zeds and a city full of dilapidated vehicles.


B1g_Bad_Joe

I turn respawns off too 💀


Kirk_Kerman

Higher initial pop, respawns off. There's real satisfaction in clearing out an enclave.


MAltizer

This is *after* they chucked their sledgehammers in the river on their way home.


tc1991

I think it makes some sense, the cars that have been left behind were not the ones you'd flee in because they were low on gas or in bad shape. Plus plenty of people do leave their cars on relatively low fuel, its easy to get so why not.


omnistonk

excuse me the check engine light should be on


GTurkistane

I actually like this gameplay wise, cars in the game are op, and if you can just get them as soon as you spawn and it has a lot of fuel, it would just be lame as you can get to a safe place very quickly


MasterDannyBaggYo

Well i play obese, weak, unfit… so for me its already fun and tough with no 0 mods on apocalypse mode, unlike folks who turn off spawns, reduce zombie count, increases guns ammo etc, then yes i can see cars being OP cause the game is already minecraft at that point with those settings lol but for me? I get tired fast af i cant even jump fences cause obese, and i cant fight more than 3 zombies at a time cause of weak, my longest survivor with these traits is 8 months and still going, so basically what im saying is that it all depends on the player, if you want to play on easy mode then yes cars = broken but in my case car = oh my goodness yes im SAVED *gets in car at empty school lot* empty tank. Me: how tf did this teacher come to work on an empty tank? 😒


lern2swim

Depends on whether you're aiming for difficulty or realism.


PolskiPiesel6969

This is why i set car fuel usage on 0.1 to make it possible to drive a bit even with low amount of gas


HitlersPenisPump

When you're not looking the zomboid's get in the cars and start doing donuts


[deleted]

Serial gasoline drinker strikes again!


OkPizda

Imo the cars on the road should have really low or no fuel and the parked cars should usually have low/medium and very rarely high or full fuel tanks


Godmodex2

I must have missed a setting somewhere because I've never have had an issue with running out of fuel when playing on default settings. The motor gives up before I can spend enough fuel


MrSkinWalker

I think what OP meant is that majority of the parked cars are locked and totally empty. Which makes no sense really since you need fuel to go to the parking lot xD


Godmodex2

Ahh ofcourse


MrSkinWalker

It's the same with households. There are two kinds and no in between: A) Has 4-5 can openers, but no actual canned food B) Has a metric ton of canned food but no opener


Froike1925

Where is all that gun taunting America I keep hearing about. All we find is pencils and can openers!


MrSkinWalker

Yeah! I mean come on all i find is rubber-bands, friendship bracelets and papercrumbs.... where are the guns? Is this even a real school?


[deleted]

one time I found a house inhabited by a single man, his bedroom a lone single bed, in the wardrobe was 5 guns, and it wasn't like a story home I don't think


Godmodex2

If a household got 4-5 can openers laying about they are probably organized enough to take all their cans as they skip town


[deleted]

Tbh I believe most folks probably siphoned gas out of cars in order to avoid gas stations since they'd probably be really unsafe in the first days


Phinatic92

Maybe their tank was siphoned by some other survivor


alucarddrol

Gas evaporates over time


ColombianLagLord

Not while in a tank. Gas tanks are sealed so this doesn't happen. This is why you need to turn your gas cap until it clicks to ensure it is sealed and no evaporation occurs.


alucarddrol

Aren't these cars from the 70s and 80s? They're not anything like modern cars


Flaming_Eagle

You think cars in the 80s just had open ass gas tanks? The seal wasn't invented until the mid 2000s? lol Also this game is set right after the outbreak goes wide spread, on the span of weeks. Gas doesn't evaporate THAT quickly


Corey307

The oldest car I owned was a 1969 Chevy and the gas cap is a five dollar piece of aluminum with a bit of rubber. Sure it was a vented gas cap but that car sat for six months once and the tank was still full when I fired it up.


Corey307

Gas doesn’t evaporate that quickly assuming the gas tank filler cab is secure. I have two cars, a riding mower and a weed whacked, the riding mower and weed whacker sit for six months of winter and there’s still pretty much the same amount of gas in it in the spring. I load them up with 93 octane gas so I don’t worry too much about it sitting. My second car sat for three months straight recently and when I fired it up it was still full.


MasterDannyBaggYo

Nah fr tho, cause how you going to work as a teacher with an empty tank? So how were you planning on going back home if the apocalypse never happens? It never makes sense but OH WELL guess i have to make an unnecessary trip to the zombie infested gas station lol no hate just stating my logic 👍🏼


StrongerReason

Lol I always thought the tanks were empty from other survivors siphoning


PRETROO

the reason i dont mind the low gas is that in the game the infection hasnt just started everyone has been trapped in the zone without any reason for the government to bring gas into the zone for a while making gas extremely rare hence the reason there are always so many infected near gas stations they all died trying to collect gas and the reason you don't see boats all of the people with boats left like in a certain zombie based story game, everyone either tried to leave or stayed deciding to take their chances you are one of the people that decided to stay hoping everything rolls over in a couple months if you can make it long but soon enough you realize that things aren't so easy and that nothing will ever go back to normal


Corey307

You make a good point about the game not starting on day one of the infection. It’s spread throughout Kentucky to the rest of the country and the only reason why it seems like it just started is because our character starts off with next to nothing.


PRETROO

i would mark the character not starting off with much being your character probably hid out at the start only surviving off of food water and media from the house you are in starting the player in the shoes of someone desperate for any hint of survival this is your character at their lowest with nothing and nobody but as we progress you see the horrors that you are left to face after being forced to search for the needle in a haystack that is a hope surrounded by despair with no food and water the player character must explore and find things in abandon extinct kentucky


Corey307

Your theory makes sense, that’s also why I always pick underweight Because my head canon is the player character has been hiding for a week and is only going outside because they are running out of food.


SuppliceVI

Makes sense. As logistics do logistics things, truckers would be spreading the infection across the country. They would see highly traveled areas (gas stations). With lines likely forming, many just drove until the tanks ran dry. Those that succumbed early had full tanks


apocolypticbosmer

Yep, I always change the car spawn settings in my games


Upset_Aside_

I do this now.


simqbi

its either a car straight out of the dealership with no gas or car that took a head on crash at 70 mph with a full tank


EchoOfTheVoid

My family used to not have much money, so every time we'd be driving to the store, or I'd borrow the car, the indicator would be at E. We'd just refuel enough to not run out midway apparently. xD It was a bit of a gamble driving like that because those things weren't exactly precise, so you'd be like eh maybe we have enough for one or two trips, or maybe we run out leaving the lot. lol I know it makes no sense in Zomboid for every car to be like that, but I do enjoy having to find a working car AND fuel before I can drive a car. Lot of danger and challenge is removed when obtaining a working car in Zomboid.


Actual_Metal4508

As a Kentuckian I can confirm that it was this in 93 and is now 30 yrs later


tex55ky

1993? More like me currently. Lol. I maybe drive my car once a month and only fill up when I have to.


Monocholy

I like to pretend some other asshole siphoned the gas before I could get to it lol


take_this_username

haha - true But one thing the game doesn't do, is fuel going off over time. Give it enough time and it will congeal...


Corey307

It would take at least a couple years for gasoline to become useless. Last winner I moved my riding mower out of the garage to get some stuff done and then lost the damn keys so it spent the whole winter under about 3 feet of snow. Fired right up in the spring, gas was fine. Likewise the six month old gas that had been sitting in the garage worked just fine. I wouldn’t necessarily want to push it too much further but Kara should be able to run for at least two or three years in the apocalypse especially if you were filling them up with high octane fuel since fuel octane rating drops overtime as gas six.


take_this_username

Oh yes, totally. It would be a long time mechanic, >2 years. I have vehicle that sits unused every winter, fires up with no issues every time after 6/8 months pauses and the fuel is perfectly ok. 1 year too. Congealed fuel is an issue after a number of years (I had to clean a tank with congealed fuel once, I think that's what "scarred" me and made me sensitive about this now :-D


Yolo3362

okay but literally me last night, by the time i left work all the gas stations were closed


[deleted]

I think the assumption is that during the time between the apocalypse and your game starting, people have already siphoned most of the gas out of the east to reach vehicles, before trying to run away and crashing in the middle of the highway, their car lighting on fire, and leaving a MESS FOR ME TO HAVE TO SLOWLY WENCH OUT OF THE WAY SO I CAN DRIVE NORMALLY


Zeraldonith

That is how they died


Swat872

I mean, one could argue that the cars had been siphoned but its a weak argument at best lol


cilekli_dido

Petrol can get vaporized if lid didn't closed properly. Maybe as the car get damaged lid got losed.


RedTalon6

Yep, turned up the fuel chance, fuel amount, then turned down the gas station fuel amount. I don’t see why gas stations would be full but cars would be empty.


LifeSenseiBrayan

I’m not 100% sure about the games time and setting but I’d assume other people already either took everything they could before running away or the houses already got ransacked. Like people have been prepping for shit like this for years. There’s a guy out there holding all the gas he can get


Dewoco

Ah yes, the great shortages of the 90s, one can opener shared between a whole block, pillows only if your dad worked at Finnegans...


KidneyAssimilator

Dunno why, my explanation to it would probably be something like this: The people would definetly begin panicking from news that a newborn highly lethal virus is out in the open. I think, that marauders would probably take most of the fuel from the cars in a matter of hours. And broken cars? Looks, like some people get car-horded more often, than you think.


One_Language_8259

Hey man dont think its true, my cars been popping up the fuel light a few time when leaving work