Yes, entropy would still be functioning in the Walking Dead universe, unless all the laws of physics were thrown out the window. Fresh corpses should be more threatening than barely active ones. Intelligent walkers would be a serious threat. I'm not sure what else they could introduce to make walkers more dangerous. Disease from the rotting corpses, perhaps? More walkers-as-weapons, the way the Governor used them?
That's what I would say. As for the "memories" thing I'm still not sure calling them memories is entirely accurate. I don't think Morgan's wife said, "This place looks familiar! Morgan and Duane must be in there for me to munch on their brains. Think I'll try the door." I think it's more like, well, sleepwalking. Where things seem familiar but you can't quite grasp all of the right information to use it (and I've dealt with a sleep walker before, it's a fascinating experience.) It's like door... door looks familiar... I think this is how you open it... Which is pretty much what a sleep walker does even if the door isn't really something familiar. (Again, something I've dealt with.) I don't feel there's any active "remembering" going on just a basic sense of "familiarity" only at the most basic level.
In this regard the show has been some what inconsistent. In early episodes we saw zombies actually climbing over fences. e.g. when Rick and Glen go looking for the truck to save the group form the building. In later episodes they don't seem to have this ability any longer. And as someone noted in order to get into the clothing store a zombie wielded a stone to crack the glass.
On the fences, though, weren't they just "monkey see, monkey do", following someone who climbed a fence? The rock and the glass, yea, that's a consistency problem
Tool using mightn't be a consistency problem as much as a general degradation of the walker's abilities and mobility. Fresh zombies are more spry and lively than older ones. If the brain keeps rotting after reanimation, the zombies should get dumber. And it looks like they have.
What is it inconsistent with, though? The little girl was fresh, as was Jones' wife, and the rock-toting walker in Atlanta. So, too, were all the fence-climbing walkers...so what is "inconsistent"? That more decayed walkers aren't using tools or grabbing beloved toys?
It's perhaps a "bit" inconsistent but the zombies also seem to have a flare for the dramatic. The little girl zombie obviously new she was in the teaser for a TV series and needed to act normal in order for the tension hook to work as the scene progressed.
I'm surprised he was easily fooled by the "little girl" even that early in his "experience" with the Walkers you'd think he would know better than to automatically assume that this little girl was walking around an abandoned gas station parking lot in her pajamas.
Other theories: Those walkers couldn't get out of the cars and the heat in the cars essentially mummified them. Dehydration, if significant enough, causes severe brain damage. That brain damage may have been as significant as the kind of head trauma that normally puts down a walker. Yes to both. And perhaps larger herds.
Yeah, but we've seen and been told unless there's brain trauma the Walkers will still pursue no matter what their injury. We've seen other Walkers attack people when cars or other enclosed areas have been opened up. The bodies in the cars on the highway I just assumed died before the "disease" managed to infect everyone.
George Romeo's "zombie rules," may imply intelligent zombies are in store which IMO actually would be kewl.
In a previous thread, we speculated there are TWO things going on...the zombie "virus" which reanimates people. The second is a "bacteria" which kills people quickly, and thus activates the virus.
An interesting theory. So then the virus could be spread by contact while the bacteria needs bodily fluids (or blood contact). Although that would also mean that not everyone who dies would turn into a zombie. Just those who have had previous contact with the infected (as most of the series survivors shown could be assumed to have done). In which case future generations could easily return to normality as contact with zombies would be limited as humans rebuilt society. And assuming that certain areas had been "walled off" from the infection it would be a bigger problem for survivors caught and forced to survive (either temporarily or permanently) in the infection zone.
Why would you think that? If everyone has the virus, then everyone becomes a zombie upon death. The bacteria just explains how a simple zombie bite kills.
If by "contact," you mean fluids, bites or a scratch, then that does not apply to Randall--the prisoner Shane murdered, but reanimated after death. As far as we know, Randall never had physical contact with a walker.