yeah, i it was a poison gas attack. yes, subways are extremely vulnerable to gas attacks. methane or hydrogen would be incredibly destructive if you could get it to fill enough of the space then detonate it at the edges, a whole city would have huge swathes collapsed.

anyway, yeah, what happens, is based on the power structure and keeping people ignorant of the nature of power is the first task they have. everything else is just auxilliary to that goal.

what changes the situation can only be where either the whole thing collapses (which is going to happen when the oceans wash everything away) or some people who know these things, show up with far superior firepower and run a process of adjudicating evidence of crime that this crime scene earth has, and putting all of the perpetrators, and their accomplices one place, and the rest of us, to a new place prepared for us. preferably that already had the disaster cycle just pass.

outside of those two scenarios, there is simply to just be small and unimportant and live on the edge of that road network where it's improbable there will be any strategic value to fucking with your life.