Man, that is AWESOME!
I haven't had that happen to me but there's been some strange things happen at times such as when I was playing Shadow of Chernobyl with the Oblivion Lost mod - every single time I went to the Freedom camp, the camp would get attacked by a Controller and I had to kill the damned thing just to keep the Freedomers alive.

I introduced one of the guys I work with to Call of Pripyat. In his first few hours on the first map, he wandered around, got to the bridge near the Ranger's Station and then he stopped. Completely stopped.
He spent hours with his character stuck on a rock because it was night and he couldn't see anything at all. He got surrounded by Blind Dogs and he was too afraid to get down from the rock.

i got so sick of being stalked by bloodsuckers by the second playthrough that for the third i decided to stock up on grenades before going on that mission. put enough ordinance into that building to put the NPP into orbit and dumped a mag from an AK into each corpse just to be sure.

I've had STALKER sessions like that. That series of games really nailed the post-apoc atmosphere.

Community-created modding is a wonderful thing. I went back to the STALKER games years later when I realised how much modded content had been created. I've just started playing Skyrim again because of all the new modded adventures and new lands that have been created. I have a premium membership with the Nexus sites. Awesome.

Oh yeah, have definitely had those moments in the game. The atmosphere is scarily good. I also loved how the AI interacted. I've been saved a couples times by sprinting my ammo-less ass to the 'ol Shevchenko tanker and having my Stalker buddies spray whatever comes behind me!

Heck, even the now genre cliche Zombies managed to make my skin crawl, shambling after me with their AKs, telling me they wanted to go home...yeesh.

Figured I would bump this due to the new TV show.

I am 6 episodes in and there are some great post apoc ideas and visuals.

Also since it a fungal spore, Gas masks work.

That third episode was some downright excellent storytelling. The show itself is pretty damned good compared to most other post-apocalypse tv that's out there. I don't know how near peer shows like Walking Dead are going to compete.

As for mechanics, there's enough zombie supplements for T2k out there - I think a Last of Us port would be pretty straight forward to execute.

I read somewhere that they had to change the way the infection spreads in the HBO show because it wouldn't work to have actors' faces obscured and voices muffled by gas masks most of the time.

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Gas masks blow to try to talk or do any activity in.

One of the after-episode talks also mentions how the spores don't really make sense in real life as described in the game. As in, if the spores are airborne and can cause infection via inhalation, they wouldn't exactly stay put in particular locations - everyone would already be infected. Between that and the clear conflict of interest with actors having to cover their faces, the change seems reasonable.

Krakow Vibes
 

I caved and subscribed to HBO Max. I've only watched the first episode of The Last of Us, but the Boston of its 2023 is reminiscent of T2k's Krakow. A military junta of some sort rules the city. Refugees work crap jobs for ration chits. Contact with the outside world is limited. Smugglers use hit songs to broadcast coded messages in the clear over FM radio. I'm liking what I've seen so far.

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