there was supposed to be a scene that was going to take place 4 years later at the brother's dam, but I thought that it was pretty clear that the human race would go extinct without ellie's cure? The dam was raided by bandits. Did ellie give like a drop of her blood or something all the residents to make them immune? That don'e make any sense. I thought ellie and all of the world was supposed to die off?
shareEither the infected die off or the clean people did off
shareYou bring up a fair point, but keep in mind that the infection has already been around for 20 years. Ellie's been alive for fourteen of those. Clearly people can survive -- without a cure -- as long as they're smart about it.
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'Save me, Barry!'
They're only infected through bites or inhalation of spores from infected bodies. It isn't like The Walking Dead. And the Fireflies made it pretty clear Ellie's blood isn't enough. They need her brain to (possibly) synthesize a cure.
shareDo you really think a cure would help? The world at this point is facing more serious problems than zombies. Most states appear to be disjointed and independent with its local brand of warlords/mercenaries.
We've been shown through Joel's treatment that the Fireflies are actually no better that the Warlords we've encountered. In fact at several occasions we've been reminded that humans are no better than the zombies, in some cases they may even be worse.
While a cure would be an advantage, it wouldn't solve all the problems this new world faced.
In addition 20 years after the outbreak, it appears the humanity even without a cure have survived. Joel's brother's village is evidence that civilization hasn't been completely wiped out. Sure they are still at risk of being raided by bandits or zombies but it does look promising.
People weren't in immediate danger of extinction. You still had the military, large bands of hunters, civilians who lived in the military controlled zones, and independent survivors like the people who lived at Tommy's Dam. It seemed clear that there were still hundreds of thousands of people in the US, if not millions. People were in danger of dying or becoming infected, but there were still ways to survive. Tommy's Dam was able to keep out infected and fight off bandits, and while some inevitably would die, most would survive and be able to procreate.
PS- There's no way of knowing if a vaccine would have worked in the first place and even if it did, there was basically no way that The Fireflies could have produced it on a mass scale or distributed it to everyone. The military and the hunters and almost everybody else were paranoid and often shot on sight, especially the hunters. The only sure thing that would have happened if Ellie's surgery had gone through was that Ellie would have died. Joel's decision to save her was completely understandable.