What is there to see of the post-apocalyptic America, though? Might they stumble out of Georgia and learn that the rest of the US didn't notice the zombie apocalypse?
Undoubtedly, but what would be different about another Woodbury-type community? It would be nice if TWD had the budget to be global in scope, allowing us a glimpse of the wider world's fate, but then it wouldn't be TWD, it'd be World War Z (the book, not the movie). Sometimes, I imagine that TWD is just one story set in the WWZ universe. I don't think there is any inherent contradictions between the universes. Rick's band is surviving in Georgia, while the wider world is out there, fighting battles and establishing safe zones. Maybe someday the wider world will impinge on Rick's group - maybe the legitimate government or military will find them...who knows?
I remember one of the producers or writers commenting that next season the walkers would become more of a threat again. I don't know how they accomplish that unless they bring in faster walkers because everyone in the current group is accomplished at killing them even close-up. Shit, Andrea took down 3 by herself in the woods next to a tree. Rick et al take them out now even with a knife. Any conjecture on how the walkers could become more of a menance again?
I don't know how they'd make biters/walkers/lurkers/zombies more dangerous than they already are. They're really just a background threat, not really ever supposed to be the primary threat. The living are the ones that need to be feared; the dead are just background dangers. I suppose, though, since season 3 established that walkers can "starve" if they don't eat enough (they just starve really slowly), then perhaps the walkers are capable of more. If they need to eat, then they're still alive, and if they're still alive, then maybe they can learn. That'd be scary - a smart zombie. The first episodes of the first season had a walker use a rock to break a glass door down, so they have retained enough rudimentary intelligence to use tools. If only the smartest ones have "lived" through the first year after the apocalypse, I can see the smart ones being a tougher threat to the survivors, who have honed their skills on the less intelligent ones.
Let them bite someone during one of those close-quarters kills, so, they'll think twice about it, instead of acting like it's a video game? Or maybe instead of 2 or 3 coming at a person at once, make it 5 or 6.
Did they? Because they've also shown the zombies have no biological "need" other than brain activity and even then only on the most basic level. We've seen zombies who've sustained massive damage to internal organs and even some with missing lower torsos so clearly they have no biological activity or "need" to eat.
Obviously, the zombies won't be going away any time soon. No zombies means no show. The show must go on...
Not what was established in season 3. Milton determined that walkers can starve, they just do it slowly. It's probably a bone to the more scientifically literate fans, since zombies otherwise violate thermodynamics. If the zombies instead survive on some external energy, even if they don't process it the way living humans do, it's a step up from the typical zombie story.
I could see their bodies continuing to burn its own muscle/body tissue until all that's left is basically a skeleton which can't be mobile so in that sense maybe the zombie is "dead" if, however, still "active" in the mind (assuming it also isn't burned for energy.) Maybe it's better to instead say "dead' they're just not longer a real threat. But we've seen near skeletal zombies and partial bodies still posing as a threat and trying to attack and also plenty of still "healthy" sized zombies nearly a year after everything went down.
They've shown them go into a dormant state and then revive when people pass by, but I don't think they've ever shown a zombie starve to death. Although that might explain the dead bodies they've found (in cars, for example) that appear complete, but are not zombies.
In the pilot Morgan Jones wife kept returning to his house and tried to open the door. Doesn't this imply they have some basic memories? Also we see some of the zombies returning to familiar places e.g. the church and sitting in the pews.
All dead bodies that were found in cars that did not reanimate probably suffered head trauma, preventing reanimation. As for starving to death, there may not have been enough time for any walker to do so. And anyway, only active walkers would attack, so the sampling of walker demographics is biased by the dramatic needs of the show.
Which of course makes sense. The same way the turbo lifts in Trek take exactly as long as the dialgoue in them needs as well.
I always thought those people weren't infected when they died and once dead . . . couldn't be infected. This was in the early stages of the Zombie outbreak before a form of the infection somehow became airborne (or whatever) and infected the living. Yet apparently this strain doesn't turn the living but only reanimates the dead. Although even describing that idea seems absurd on so many levels . . . but . . . hey . . . its an entertainment show not Bill Nye the Science Guy.
It does seem that the Walkers have some "basic" memories but calling it a memory may be over-stating things. It's more likely they have autonomic impulses. Memory implies "I remember this, I am going to go do it," An impulse is more like breathing or your heart beating neither of which you have to consciously or remember to do. So I think with a lack of anything to eat, a noise to follow, or whatever the Walkers sort of go to some basic form what [was] normal.
Surely going to church or going home and trying the doorknob aren't autonomic impulses! Jones' wife tried to open the door, and a walker busted down a glass door with a rock to get at Rick et al. in Atlanta. These zombies are tool users. The brain is reactivated by the infection. Granted, not necessarily all of it, but what's-his-name, the CDC doctor, killed TS-19 almost immediately after reanimation. It would have been useful if he had let the scanner run on an animated corpse longer. What if the infection reactivates more of the brain later? They might increase their intelligence over time.
I would argue just the opposite. It's more likely that the recently turned have more residual brain function than zombies that have been "dead" longer.