In The Last of Us, Joel travels to Wyoming with Ellie and reunites with his brother, Tommy, in a town called Jackson, a thriving place in the world full of the infected.
After getting lost somewhere near Wyoming, Joel and Ellie are advised by an old couple living in the middle of nowhere to go back east because the west is full of dead bodies of humans and the infected. Whatever or whoever lives there isn’t exactly going to be friendly.
Determined to find Tommy, Joel and Ellie muster up the courage to walk west and eventually arrive near the River of Death, the place the old couple warned them about, where they are confronted by a group of armed people on horses.
Maria from the group recognizes Joel and takes him and Ellie to Jackson, where Joel finds Tommy, who is now part of this small community.
Welcome to Jackson
Jackson is quite a remote community. Surrounded by walls, it’s a developing place that has rebuilt life back to how it was before the outbreak. Joel and Ellie notice that the people of Jackson are still working to make this place better while also celebrating festivals like Christmas.
Joel and Ellie are later served a proper meal after a very long time. Then Tommy introduces Maria as his wife, who volunteers to give Joel and Ellie a tour of Jackson.
Maria and a handful of people settled in Jackson seven years ago. Since they already had a gate, they decided to build a wall around it to stop the raiders or the infected from coming in.
To this day, the raiders have often come and gone to Jackson. The people of Jackson killed the ones who challenged them and left their bodies out in the cold.
Many outsiders have seen these bodies and have stayed away from the place. The look of the area around Jackson, filled with dead bodies, has given this place a bad reputation. The people of Jackson don’t mind having a bad reputation as long as it keeps them safe.
When it comes to the infected, Jackson is mostly surrounded by smaller colonies of them. These infected have wandered off from the city, and having them in the open gives the community an advantage. They can headshot them from half a mile away.
The people of Jackson have further managed to keep the place quiet by staying low. They are already in the middle of nowhere, which has helped them. They don’t advertise what they have and try to stay off the radio.
Joel later deduces that this is the reason Tommy stopped contacting him. Even Tommy likes to think that this place is good, and all they ask for is to follow their simple rules.
How Jackson is thriving?
Apart from keeping the place safe, over the years, Jackson has managed to create a normal life with what they have. There is a school and a laundry, and the old bank is being used as a jail.
The place also has electricity. There is a dam near Jackson; Joel and Ellie saw it on their way here. Two years ago, Jackson started using the dam to draw power to produce electricity.
Ellie wonders if Maria is the one who runs the place. It turns out that no one is in charge here. There is a council that decides things here, and Maria is a part of it. The council serves around 300 people, including children.
All of them pitch. They rotate patrols, food preparations, repairs, hunting, harvesting, greenhouses, and livestock. They all share everything. When Joel mentions communism, Maria admits that they are communists.
Also Read: How did the Cordyceps outbreak begin in The Last of Us?