Major Plot hole with the lore

[DELTA]

So the hordes of freaks in this game feel like they could overwhelm the usa till you remember uncle sam has over 360 A-10 warthogs and enough ordinance to level most of the middle east so why would they be taken out by hordes of freaks that will die just as easly as a normal human.

You never really hear anything about the military, just nero and a few mentions of the other feds and national guard, so dont even see any heavy weaponary or equipment like mortars and ♥♥♥♥, just two armed vehicles in fairwell that are never seen again in the rest of the state.

people ingame talk about hordes that came in the thousands and even the millions but a 1000 strong horde vs a bomber with some white phosphors and claster bombs seems like a no brainer to me on which side will win. I mean the freaks are pack creatures and thats just an easy target.

I mean they are easy to attract with sound so just get heli's with loudspeakers on to fly low and attract manageable sized hordes out of the citys into open killzones for everything to open up on and obliterate as its pretty clear that chemical weapons, fire and bombs take freakers down like nobody's business.

Even the biggest hordes ingame we see in cutseens look like they could easly wiped out by a single A-10 gun run


Then again The feds in this world seem to be like the type that would refuse to let the full might of the US military unleash its self till its to late.

[Eclipse]

at this point, the unexplained is just that unexplained, plot holes are meant to be filled, hence being called a hole.

most likely, the easiest explanation, is that too many personnel were infected before things like that could be used.

we still need to understand why the virus isn't still spreading among humans, let alone why the military failed so quickly.

[cald123]

Near the end of game Sarah explains how fast the virus spreads so military would have been severely compromised . Looking at NERO it seems like they are what's left of CDC and military . Besides look how covid was handled then figure that the same process happened with zombie virus there really isn't much of a plot hole here more of a gamer's interpretation
of facts given in game .

The biggest plot hole is the uninfected . Are they immune or is it just a tolerance thing ? The closest answer is when Deek confronts O Brian and threatening to compromise his suit . This leads me to believe the survivors are not out of the woods as far as turning to freaks . This could have been explained better considering Deek gets his butt kicked enough by freakers that in traditional zombie lore he would have turned in to one .

[Punisher]

Same as many other zombie games, why would you surprise?

[HexeR]

Originally posted by DELTA:

So the hordes of freaks in this game feel like they could overwhelm the usa till you remember uncle sam has over 360 A-10 warthogs and enough ordinance to level most of the middle east so why would they be taken out by hordes of freaks that will die just as easly as a normal human.

You never really hear anything about the military, just nero and a few mentions of the other feds and national guard, so dont even see any heavy weaponary or equipment like mortars and ♥♥♥♥, just two armed vehicles in fairwell that are never seen again in the rest of the state.

people ingame talk about hordes that came in the thousands and even the millions but a 1000 strong horde vs a bomber with some white phosphors and claster bombs seems like a no brainer to me on which side will win. I mean the freaks are pack creatures and thats just an easy target.

I mean they are easy to attract with sound so just get heli's with loudspeakers on to fly low and attract manageable sized hordes out of the citys into open killzones for everything to open up on and obliterate as its pretty clear that chemical weapons, fire and bombs take freakers down like nobody's business.

Even the biggest hordes ingame we see in cutseens look like they could easly wiped out by a single A-10 gun run


Then again The feds in this world seem to be like the type that would refuse to let the full might of the US military unleash its self till its to late.

I think they purposely avoid going into details about the military and try to just sweep it under the rug. The military absolutely would've had outposts and bases set up though, the militia wouldn't have been nearly as powerful as they made them seem.

[76561198993212269]

exactly, freakers in this game are much less dynamic than those in dying light, l4d, etc.

but I wouldnt call it a plot hole, though.

[Ruin]

Originally posted by Punisher:

Same as many other zombie games, why would you surprise?

Because this is an extremely story driven game where a lot of attention has been paid to world building and player immersion. When a game sets those kinds of expectations the player who doesn't consider where the world building is weak is selling themselves short.

[Spectre]

Wrong, I have been in the military for over 20 years and everyone always assumes that a single plane or a platoon of well armed troops could win against this type of scenario. The truth is that humans are trained to kill other humans. Not combat creatures that are viraly altered or undead.

To truly kill a zombie it would take the complete destruction of the frontal lobe of their brain, not shooting them center mass as military is trained as a norm. So, if there is an outbreak its going to be fast... In large cities like New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta so on and so forth. By the time military interdiction would occur it would be well after the outbreak would be manageable.

Reasons why? First off all cities and states try to handle issues at the lowest municipal level possible. So not knowing what they are initially dealing with the local government handles it within their capabilities. Using local law enforcement and emergency services. These would be overtaxed and overwhelmed almost instantly considering that there are only 2.4 officers per 1,000 civilians across the entirety of the United States.

Secondly and this goes with the first point, is that everything gets up channeled through their respective command channels and to get to higher powers in government and eventually the military. What this means is that once things are already beginning to spiral out of control with the local and state services only then is it being considered at the federal levels. And by then its to late.

In order for an outbreak to be contained there would need to be 100% pacification of all infected within a specific red zone. This would need maximum lethal capabilities used against it which would need to be GBU-43/B's and mass incendiary bombing to literally burn them to ash.

These munitions are not readily available or considered normal for combating traditional combatants. So we would be trying to fight outbreaks conventionally with small arms fire with poor effect.

Yes, versus "regular" humans doing strafing runs with A10's and regular bombs would work fine. Against an opponent that is undead or viraly altered, there would be a lot of dismemberment and grievously gory wounds... Things that would be fatal to us but not necessarily zombies or zombie like creatures.

[Medik]

Originally posted by JagedTiger:

Wrong,
To truly kill a zombie it would take the complete destruction of the frontal lobe of their brain, not shooting them center mass as military is trained as a norm. So, if there is an outbreak its going to be fast... In large cities like New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta so on and so forth. By the time military interdiction would occur it would be well after the outbreak would be manageable.

So destroy the "West Point and OCS and ROTC" Part of the brain, the use AC-130s to sweep a horde. Got it. Thanks for clearing that up.

[Dinthoqaf]

Some potential spoilers here and I may be forgetting a detail or two as well; so.

From what @cald123 said, Sarah explains that by the time they realized there was even an issue, the disease was already worldwide thanks to one peckerneck who accidentally contracted the virus and then went to an Expo in an effort to whistle blow/warn people. He wasn't aware he was sick, so those people carried the virus back to their home countries and from there it spread like ♥♥♥♥♥♥ wildfire.

I do believe Deek himself mentioned that something inside of the timezone of 2 weeks we lost around half of the entire world population to the disease either by straight up dying or turning into Freaks. (That'd decimate the US Military and Governments ability to operate properly.)

Compared to how our government took the first 'confirmed' case of C19 on Dec. 31 in Wuhon and we didn't start seeing the government act in an official capacity until what? Mid-March-ish? It's totally feasible to think that the government in game sat on the issue for to long and by the time they started to act, hippo crap was already flying in all directions and we had massive holes in our infrastructure just from the deaths. That's probably not even accounting for straight out desertions where people refused to go in and wanted to protect their families.

As for the plothole with why we have survivors who aren't turning, I'm assuming they either have some sort of immunity or have somehow, by sheer miracle, managed to not get sick/bit/hurt by a Freaker. (I could be wrong here too.) But wasn't there a bit in a recorder or something that mentioned that once the infection became wide spread it was no longer airborne but was only able to be spread through Freaker transference as well? If that's the case, it would limit drastically how someone could/would get sick, so long as you stay at camp.

[Ashley]

There's millions of them even if military somehow manages to survive the outbreak and swarms you'd still have alot of military out of position as well. Even if you kill a few thousand what's that go besides make the area a bit safer. It's still just a drop in the bucket.

Eventually even if they did survive and mount defenses they'd still eventually run out of materials with the resources areas and production areas being overrun and the workers being dead.

And entire west coast was basically done in 2 days that's not even close enough time for a solid reaction.