AMC's The Walking Dead Season 1 Discussion & Spoilers

[Vendikarr]

Caliburn24 wrote:

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Dumb luck works for me, except it leaves one niggling little problem. There should be thousands of people still alive all over the place. Every little solidly built farmhouse, every little remote area, people should be holed up everywhere. But instead we have almost no one alive. It is poor writing.

Well we are only following the story of Rick Grimes and his band of survivors and viewing the world through their eyes. But we did find another pocket of survivors in the episode Vatos.

if we use the comics as our guide, we will run across more survivors.

[Zombie]

Tom wrote:

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Of course the big question is how long can an active zombie last? Their skin and muscles are still decaying even if they still get signals from the brain stem. One would think a Zombie could not last more then a year before muscle tissue is to decayed to support movement. They can not metabolize food to built up tissues. Especially true if you are in a hotter environment where the sun and heat will speed up the decay. The logic would be if the survivers could hold up for about a year or so there would not be to many zombies left to be a threat. There may be newer recently dead zombies, but the original surge from the the first month would be gone.

Agreed.

In the comic it seems as if the Zombies are getting weaker as time goes on but we don't know that for sure yet.

[Zombie]

Zachary Smith wrote:

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Ya know, this ego-validating crap about how the US military is so bad-ass that there's NO WAY a zombie-apocalypse could EVER happen is kind of like complaining "Superman" is stupid because there was never any such place as Krypton and, anyway, people can't fly.

Either you allow a certain measure of suspension of disbelief and accept the basic premise as credible or you don't, in which case you should move on and look for something that WILL entertain you.

Yes.

That's all I'm saying.

[PsychoPere]

New interview online with producer Gale Anne Hurd: the show will have a writing staff next season and there is no stunt-casting zombie cameo planned.

[RJDiogenes]

Caliburn24 wrote:

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It could be something as simple as, "The anthrax vaccine all our soldiers are injected with made them susceptible to an air-born strain of zombie-ism that turned 95% of them into walkers in the first day."

That's a clever idea. I'd love to see little bits like that included to add to the verisimilitude, although it's not really necessary.

[Morpheus 02]

Caliburn24 wrote:

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Dumb luck works for me, except it leaves one niggling little problem. There should be thousands of people still alive all over the place. Every little solidly built farmhouse, every little remote area, people should be holed up everywhere. But instead we have almost no one alive. It is poor writing.

As to Zombie(it almost feels like he feels he has a personal stake in the argument, I'm sorry Mr. Darabont I take it all back, zombies will be the extinction event of mankind) if my "drivel" is so painful, skip or ignore my posts, I don't mind.

I choose not to ignore shoddy writing or use that weakest of arguments, "Its just a TV Show!" I'm a horrible human being obviously. C'est la vie.

i think it's poor interpretation. Have you thought about this:

How much gas would it take to visit all of those remote areas?

There's no guarantee that people will be there. Some, as we have seen, have already committed suicide. Others may still have a family member die anyway (such as a heart attack).

Many of the survivors may be in other areas of the country...whoch is pretty big.

Also, like they said in Vatos, there ARE survivors we haven't seen. But they're runing around in hiding, trying to TAKE rather than help. They won't be on the radio trying to HELP anyone else!


If you need a rational explanation for irrationality on the screen, you're in the right place. TrekBBS has hundreds of experts who justify the inconsistencies and unexplainables of the Trek universe. Surely we can do so here.

[SicOne]

Morpheus 02 wrote:

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If you need a rational explanation for irrationality on the screen, you're in the right place. TrekBBS has hundreds of experts who justify the inconsistencies and unexplainables of the Trek universe. Surely we can do so here.

That's my cue.

[Morpheus 02]

Ryan wrote:

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The chapter covering the Battle of Yonkers is definitely worth checking out. It's a very plausible scenario on how the military could FUBAR the whole thing up.

i just read that...and yeah, some "great" ways to explain how our forces were hurt.

i would also add a couple of other things:

overzealous/callous soldiers who who shoot bitten (but not dead) kids, and doing so in front of their loved ones.

That would make some poeple snap, and maybe blame ALL military for that killing, and then take out the soldiers unexpectedly. ("You killed my baby! She was just a little sick. What? We , eat this!")

So then while the living are taking out each other, the Walkers "sneak in" and take care of them both.


i think the TV show has given hints of how the zombies took over. For example, in Vatos, G explains how the world then and now, had manypeople who preyed on the weak. Some of them might even be bold enough to steal form soldiers.

[SicOne]

Caliburn24 wrote:

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...Complaining and critiquing are much more fun and stimulating.

Government bureaucracy is slow and inflexible. An armored cavalry troop is not. When cut loose from restraints...all the by the book crap goes away and you get down to the lean and mean business of killing people and protecting your own. A single canister round from one of our tanks could wipe out that 10,000 zombie wave and each tank can hold several dozen of those rounds. A single radio message on our tactical net tells us that only head shots work.

And I would point out that we actually do have historical records of human wave attacks of upwards of tens of thousands of fire-arm equipped, fast moving, intelligent human soldiers, aided by indirect fires support and close air support. AND THEY GOT DESTROYED by 1940s technology. We have numerous advances in weaponry today that would make human wave attacks even less effective(claymores, integral optics, assault rifles).

But then we get the counterarguments. Zombies don't stop coming until you put a bullet in their brain. Shock and Awe won't stop them. And you'll run out of bullets and your logistical situation will be screwed before the zombies run out of bodies(as if some zombie general is in the back urging his soldiers, "C'mon men, they're low on ammo, one more push!")

1) Headshots...

3) Number of bullets...Aside from vast stockpiles, reloading brass is not that difficult. I have several neighbors who make their own ammunition. It might not be a common skill set today, but it sure would be about a day after a zombie outbreak.

4) Logistics. Always a problem. But the Army's 16-ton up-armored HEMT truck which I have driven across rivers, three feet of mud(I think an ocean of zombie blood would be less taxing on the truck personally) is the standard deliverer of bullets, beans and fuel. We have more than 13,000 of these trucks, and each could run over a hundred thousand zombies on the way to deliver its cargo and be perfectly fine.

All I would like is some throw-away line about why our disorganized, in-fighting, leaderless, ill-equipped heroes have survived where an organization ideally suited to surviving has not.

It could be something as simple as, "The anthrax vaccine all our soldiers are injected with made them susceptible to an air-born strain of zombie-ism that turned 95% of them into walkers in the first day."

A line like that from the CDC doctor could easily have been tossed out there and explain everything with no need to every mention it again.

"When cut loose from restraints"...at what point does that happen? When your commanders tell you? When you decide that individually, for yourself or for your squad/platoon/troop? When the powers-that-be tell you that restraint is no longer necessary? And bear in mind that unless someone tells the Cav that what they're up against are zombies a la Romero, for all you know you're up against some very, very sick people. Americans, at that. And I can imagine the conversations that would take place at every level in the chain of command, the "WTF?" questions, the wanting to verify and re-verify before you start popping cannister rounds into hordes of American civilians. At every level in the chain of command, someone's going to want some detailed explanations before relaying those orders to fire upon the next echelon. And I know I'm not the first poster to say this, but there will be some percentage of soldiers who will not fire, who will believe that these are just very sick people, that there's gotta be another way, this is America for Christ's sake, we can't, we CANNOT blithely fire upon civs! An additional percentage may fire upon men, but not old people, women, children. Several million people inhabit the greater Atlanta metropolitan area. Even if you took every shooter in every Armored Cav unit, they'd still be way outnumbered.

No, a single cannister round would not take out 10,000 zombies. As we've seen, it requires a headshot. Cannister is not that accurate. Good at digging trenches in large groups of people, bad for fighting Zs who will just fill those trenches right back in with force of numbers. All cannister might be good for is to buy you some time to retreat. Hey, we got so-and-so on tacnet that says only headshots work. We'll get to that in a minute...

Regarding human wave attacks that were destroyed with 1940s technology; those were against regular old-fashioned non-zombied-out human beings who would succumb to blast overpressure and fragmentation wounds and the like. Zs don't have the same weaknesses, unless they catch a frag in the head (and from what we saw in the last episode, only the brain STEM appears to be re-energized by the Z virus...more on that with headshots, in a few). And look at all of the sheer firepower that could have been brought to bear during WW2, with thousands of aircraft, artillery pieces, tanks; the modern U.S. military stresses quality over quantity (though quantity has a quality all its own, as the old axiom goes), so you might have only a single MLRS battery to call upon (love the Steel Rain, but unless it's a headshot to the brain stem, the pieces attached will still come atyou) instead of massed artillery. Which may or may not even be in range, or available at all. Remember, if the "Walking Dead" takes place concurrently with history as we know it, a significant percentage of the shootin' military is currently deployed overseas and not available to defend our cities against the hordes of zombies.

Gotta go, I'll be back to discuss headshots and the rest momentarily.

[Jax]

What I want to hear is the show success will spawn a video game. I am dying for an open ended zombie genre co-op game...L4D doesn't count because its very linear and not ZOMBIES.

GRRR Can't believe I have to wait till October 2011 for season 2

[SicOne]

^ (1) Headshots. Gotta luv 'em. But as we saw in the final episode, only the brain STEM appears to be reactivated by the zombie-causing virus. That leads me to further believe that a headshot might not actually destroy one, depending upon shot placement. We see our heroes shooting their way through groups of Zs and dropping them with headshots, and I can imagine the hydrostatic shock jarring the brain stem enough to drop the Z in such a manner, but we don't linger on the scene long enough to see if the Zs who didn't suffer a traumatic brain STEM injury get back to their feet or not. That is food for thought.

And all of the sights you mentioned are most excellent. But you're firing on an erratically moving object that may or may not be moving predictably...the Z in question might have a leg or foot injury that makes it limp from side to side, or may be missing a limb that throws it off balance for a hard kill. Uninjured insurgents are a little more predictable to shoot, and a center-mass shot is sufficient for that purpose. Zs don't drop with center-mass shots. You can focus on the "healthier" Zs who don't limp or who move slower, but that doesn't deter the gimps who are homing in on you while you make the easier shots.

(3) Number of bullets...I agree that it would be a highly-sought-after skill set the day after a zombie contagion outbreak, but if you know how to handload your own ammo, odds are you're already well set-up to handle this kind of a situation, or can be in short order, and thusly your skills aren't going to be made available to the general public. And as it's been pointed out elsewhere, the gun stores and pawn shops are likely to be (1) completely empty or (2) barricaded and loaded for bear and not letting anyone else in. Well, perhaps Andrea or Lori could, ahem, "barter" for something to gain admittance, but the rest of the group would be SOL...

(4) Logistics...good idea! The HEMTT is awesome. But in addition to all of the above problems, I think you'd see guys taking HEMTTs for themselves, to go looking for their families. I think you'd see desertions; certainly you'd se significant breaks in the logistics chain at various points as areas became overrun and began looking out for themselves. A Cav unit defending Atlanta against several million Zs might be written off.

And the most important distinction of all...our disorganized, infighting, leaderless, ill-equipped heroes are all on their own, no help, no guidance, no Emergency Broadcast System instructions, little sleep, constantly on guard against walkers, just barely hanging on to their sanity and their lives. There's no government agency coming to the rescue, no one saying "Go (here) for help". We are seeing everything as it is happening to them, with no significant lapse of time in between episodes; everything that is happening, from the time Rick finds the group to the events of the CDC, appears to be in the span of 48-72 hours. It's a lot for a group of civs to overcome.

For the record, I wholeheartedly agree with you about wondering of the fate of the military. We see a lot of stopped tanks and vehicles, but not a whole helluva lot of dead soldiers. It does stand to reason, logically, that the military must have written Atlanta off and retreated to parts unknown. Benning? Perhaps. Maybe we will find out. A throwaway line explaining their abscence would go a long way towards helping the "suspension of disbelief" that is so important in the weaving of a tale like this.

But the only guy who seemed to know anything, anything at all, was Dr. Jenner, and he seemed very disinclined to talk about conditions in the outside world in any kind of great detail, whether because he did not know or did not care. For what it's worth, I can surmise that he did not know the details because it wasn't pertinent to his work in the CDC; maybe someone alive on the outside could make use of his work and maybe not, but he was too busy studying the virus and effects to be watching CNN. As a scientist, I doubt communications protocols or fixing a broken satellite dish or whatever was preventing him from reaching someone was within his skill set. And he had bigger fish to fry.

Hope this helps.

[SicOne]

PsychoPere wrote:

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Yes, they are. Take a look through the thread, you'll find lots of recommendations to check out the comics and at least a couple posts detailing the collected editions that are available. A link to a free online copy of issue #1 has also been posted a couple of times.

Image Comics has recently announced a "Walking Dead Weekly" series that reprints the entire series, week by week. Contact your local comic book store for details.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Comic Book Supermarket, at www.comicbooksupermarket.com, right here in Omaha, where new issues are 35% off and bagged and boarded for your viewing convenience. Tell Mitch that Jeff sent you.

[SicOne]

SG-17 wrote:

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Waiting to find out what Jenner whispered to Rick is going to drive me nuts until next season.

Dorian Thompson wrote:

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I'll bet a box of donuts he told Rick that they're all infected and they'll zombify when they die, bitten or not. Remember? When they asked about the blood tests Jenner didn't say they were okay. He said, "No surprises." Either that, or that he watched his buddy try to rape his wife on the security cam.

The virus was probably dumped in the water supply or something. That's how it spread and the first walkers appeared. There had to be a first zombie who wasn't bitten. It makes sense.

Tom wrote:

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If you really want to know what it is....
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Lori is pregnant!!!

Remember Jenner did blood tests, and he only told Rick this. If it were something zombie related he would have told the others also. Yes, he did tell Rick earlier that there were no big surprises with the blood tests, but that is when he was planning to kill everyone, after he decides to let them go he then tells Rick.

I don't know how to the little "spoiler alert" bar, so I just gotta say it.

*************** SPOILER ALERT****************

Yes, I believe Jenner discovered Lori was pregnant. She was pregnant in the comic book series, and it was all up in the air whether or not the baby was Rick's or Shane's (for that matter, we don't know even in the comic series, much less the AMC show, if Lori and Shane were screwing even before the Rise so it could date from then...we do know that Lori and Rick were having some issues before he was shot) before it all became a moot point for the gang.

But I would hazard a guess that (1) Jenner told Rick that Lori was pregnant and (2) that he saw Shane get nasty with Lori on a video circuit; being a smart guy, he put two and two together even if he didn't have the sound turned up on that particular camera. I would even go so far as to venture that Andrea might also be pregnant with Dale's child. In the comic series they are an item, though she does not conceive. Jenner might even have told Andrea she was pregnant, thus causing the in-shower crying jag we witnessed; then again, she might just have been crying with the stress of all she had been through, now that she was in a position of relative safety and able to let loose.

[Morpheus 02]

SicOne wrote:

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I don't know how to the little "spoiler alert" bar, so I just gotta say it.

*************** SPOILER ALERT****************

Yes, I believe Jenner discovered Lori was pregnant. She was pregnant in the comic book series, and it was all up in the air whether or not the baby was Rick's or Shane's (for that matter, we don't know even in the comic series, much less the AMC show, if Lori and Shane were screwing even before the Rise so it could date from then...we do know that Lori and Rick were having some issues before he was shot) before it all became a moot point for the gang.

But I would hazard a guess that (1) Jenner told Rick that Lori was pregnant and (2) that he saw Shane get nasty with Lori on a video circuit; being a smart guy, he put two and two together even if he didn't have the sound turned up on that particular camera. I would even go so far as to venture that Andrea might also be pregnant with Dale's child. In the comic series they are an item, though she does not conceive. Jenner might even have told Andrea she was pregnant, thus causing the in-shower crying jag we witnessed; then again, she might just have been crying with the stress of all she had been through, now that she was in a position of relative safety and able to let loose.

i am also thinking Andrea as well who was pregnant (my wife is just finishing her morning sickness ) ...but it would be kinda creepy if Dale was the father, as he seems more like a father to the WHOLE group, especially to Andrea & her sister.

Perhpas we'll see a flahs back for Andrea regarding the baby?

[SicOne]

McCoy wrote:

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Maybe the reason they took the show characters to the CDC is because it didn't happen in the comic, and people were wondering why. I mean, really, Rick made a ton of sense thinking that the CDC might still be up and running and have answers. It is their raison d'etre after all.

I have issues 1-6 which have letters columns, but issues 7-24 I only have in trade paperback format, which does not include the letters columns...but I would imagine people asked Kirkman, "Hey! Why didn't your peeps go to the CDC?" Perhaps they are retconning a missing development from the comic series. I know if I were in Rick's spot, I'd think a recon of the CDC would be a worthwhile trip before leaving Atlanta behind forever. Don't know if I would have taken the whole group just in case it turned out to be a dry hole, but I would have snooped-and-pooped across town to see for myself. He did see the helicopter when he arrived in the city, so SOMEONE was organized, and it stood to reason it might have been the CDC, which would certainly have taken the lead in this whole zombie apocalypse thing.

Zombie wrote:

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That's a good point.

I chalk it up to the craziness going on at the time. When they first showed the troops you could hear them say, "check them" before shooting. I'm thinking since they were right next to that door the troops panicked and thought they were going to be future Zombies and shot them. Notice after they shot them the real Zombies opened the door and said, "SURPRISE!" and ate the troops. Well they said it as well as a Zombie could which is more like "grrrrrrrrrr"

During the hospital scene you could see nurses and people moving with the military. They weren't all being lined up and shot. The hospital probably got attacked, the troops panicked, and then people just started shooting.

You could also hear them say, "fall back" over the radio. I think they were getting overwhelmed.

What's interesting is where are all the bodies when Rick woke up? Should have been a lot more in those hallways.

See how I rationalized it? Shane probably did the same thing.

I would imagine that whoever was giving the orders at that point, as well as the troops carrying them out, were scared shitless, several of their buddies had already gotten snacked upon, and they started shooting everyone who looked all bloody...including doctors and nurses wearing bloodstained scrubs from treating victims.

Or they just started opening fire when startled by the Zs coming in right behind them and devouring them...