AMC's The Walking Dead Season 1 Discussion & Spoilers

[Zombie]

As to listening to me complain, its your choice to read message boards, if you expect everyone to agree with your opinion you might want to find a different venue.

I don't expect everyone to agree but your whining goes beyond the show and into "how could the US military fall because that would never happen in real life".

No one wants to hear that week after week. In this show they fell. It's a TV show. It's not real life. Get over it.

As to all the Max Brooks fanboys out there pushing the, "Plausible Zombie Apocalypse" argument and citing WWZ as evidence, I'll just remind you of two things. Max has never served in the military nor have firsthand experience with it.

Government bureaucracy is slow and inflexible. An armored cavalry troop is not. When cut loose from restraints, as happens when you see one person die(trust me, saw it all the time in Iraq) 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. The entire US army now uses optics on their rifles. M68 red dot sights, EOTech holographic sights, Advanced Combat Optical Gunsights(ACOG and my personal sight). Look them up, or better yet go try one out. Headshots out to a couple hundred meters are not hard with the M4-M16 and a decent optic.

2) Who needs Shock and Awe when your opponent has no mind, and no intelligence? Don't buy into that Bush-era crap, the military is still all about killing people and breaking things. And it is the one thing we excel at(besides drinking enormous qualities of cheap booze).

3) Number of bullets. Sure in China it might be a problem. In the USA? Hell no. 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.

But again, while this argument is fun. It is also a rabbit-trail.

In the Walking Dead the government and military fell, and I have no problem with that. If that is the premise the show is operating under, great, groovy I'm down with that.

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.

SEE!

We going to have to read this drivel every week when the show comes back?

I hope just to spite you the show never ever discusses how the military fell.

You need to stop taking it as a personal insult that the show shows the US military failing. It's a show.

 

[Zombie]

Bombs don't work.

Why not? Do bombs somehow not damage the brains of the things they're dropped on anymore?

Of course they do. But when you're dropping bombs what do humans do? They run and hide.

What do Zombies do? The ones not taken out by the bomb keep walking towards your front line.

I hope you have enough bombs.

 

[Vendikarr]

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.

I can sum it up in two words - Dumb Luck.

They were late to Atlanta, and being late, managed to be kept out of the city when the dead overwhelmed the living. They found a wooded area near the city, where they were lucky enough to have a pizza delivery guy with them who knew where to find shit, and he foraged for supplies.

The fact that they lost a significant number of their group in a zombie attack they should have been prepared for shows they are not masters of survival.

The only character we have met that seems to know how to survive in this world is Morgan. If Rick hadn't met him first, he'd be dead.

 

[Corran Horn]

Bombs don't work.

Why not? Do bombs somehow not damage the brains of the things they're dropped on anymore?

Of course they do. But when you're dropping bombs what do humans do? They run and hide.

What do Zombies do? The ones not taken out by the bomb keep walking towards your front line.

I hope you have enough bombs.

At that point it's just a manufacturing and logistics issue.

 

[Caliburn24]

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.

I can sum it up in two words - Dumb Luck.

They were late to Atlanta, and being late, managed to be kept out of the city when the dead overwhelmed the living. They found a wooded area near the city, where they were lucky enough to have a pizza delivery guy with them who knew where to find shit, and he foraged for supplies.

The fact that they lost a significant number of their group in a zombie attack they should have been prepared for shows they are not masters of survival.

The only character we have met that seems to know how to survive in this world is Morgan. If Rick hadn't met him first, he'd be dead.

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.

 

[Zombie]

Why not? Do bombs somehow not damage the brains of the things they're dropped on anymore?

Of course they do. But when you're dropping bombs what do humans do? They run and hide.

What do Zombies do? The ones not taken out by the bomb keep walking towards your front line.

I hope you have enough bombs.

At that point it's just a manufacturing and logistics issue.

Let's just hope the military has enough people to guard all the factories and people.

 

[PsychoPere]

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.

Recall that the vast majority of season one took place in a very small geographic area that was not near farmhouses and remote areas. The lack of something having been shown so far that does not fit into the story told as yet does not automatically equal "poor writing." Obviously there are other survivors we have yet to meet. This was, after all, only a six-episode season. There's only so much that can be done in that timeframe, especially since the story that was told so far relates to a few specific people who have done very little traveling over the course of that season.

 

[Zachary Smith]

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.

 

[Zombie]

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.

I can sum it up in two words - Dumb Luck.

They were late to Atlanta, and being late, managed to be kept out of the city when the dead overwhelmed the living. They found a wooded area near the city, where they were lucky enough to have a pizza delivery guy with them who knew where to find shit, and he foraged for supplies.

The fact that they lost a significant number of their group in a zombie attack they should have been prepared for shows they are not masters of survival.

The only character we have met that seems to know how to survive in this world is Morgan. If Rick hadn't met him first, he'd be dead.

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.

You all need to give it time.

The first five episodes cover essentially the first four comics. I don't count the CDC episode since that wasn't in the comics.

They meet plenty of people in the future. They get better at handling Zombies and securing their "camps".

 

[Tom]

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.

 

[Vendikarr]

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]

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.

Spoiler: spoiler

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

I think World War Z plays up the scenario that the US lacked the political will to do anything in terms of a measured, reasoned military response because they were in full-on 'deny' mode well into the zombie crisis.

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]

...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