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The Walking Dead Season 5

THEN you build a transmitter & try to CONTACT anyone in any form of governing system left on this decaying heap.

The problem with that plan is that you know that as soon as the Professor completes the transmitter, Gilligan is just going to break it.
 
A much better episode. Nobody unbelievably sacrificed for drama and nice to get some real fallout. I'm beginning to think we may completely avoid Maggie
attempting suicide
in the show?

[spoiler="Comic spoilers]I wouldn't rule it out completely, although it would seem kinda weird to have both of the Greene sisters be suicidal at one point. Especially given how Maggie treated Beth when she was suicidal.[/spoiler]
 
I wonder how many living people there are left in the country at this point. We see a lot more zombies as a rule, but maybe the living are banded together in groups in hiding.
It also seems that the zombies like to hang together. They don't seem to acknowledge each other, but they amble along together instead of wandering around by themselves for the most part. Intelligence or instinct?
 
I wonder how many living people there are left in the country at this point. We see a lot more zombies as a rule, but maybe the living are banded together in groups in hiding.
It also seems that the zombies like to hang together. They don't seem to acknowledge each other, but they amble along together instead of wandering around by themselves for the most part. Intelligence or instinct?

I think it's been shown to be sort-of a "herd mentality" maybe there's some "innate" instinct to follow a leader or something. But in the past we've seen a walker shuffle to a noise along with others. Now one walker is a group of several. They arrive at the source of the noise and either devour it or get to nothing and go more-or-less inert. Not moving. Then there's another noise so now this group shuffles towards the new noise, and so may another group. Two small groups now becomes one large group. And so on.

We more or less see this demonstrated in the final episode in Season 2 when we see the progress that created the herd that took down the farm.

So it may not be so much a "leader" as they just all clump together easily based on nothing more than moving towards a source of noise, a scent or in some cases some source of light.

IIRC, the walker-to-people ratio has been said by one of the show runners to be something like 500-to-1.
 
Hmm, if we assume that's true around the world, that works out to a surviving population of maybe 10-20 million. Obviously not evenly distributed. What do you figure that means for the surviving U.S. population?
 
Hmm, if we assume that's true around the world, that works out to a surviving population of maybe 10-20 million. Obviously not evenly distributed. What do you figure that means for the surviving U.S. population?

Google give the population of the U.S. as 318.9 million people. At 500 to 1, wouldn't that leave approximately 638,000 living Americans?
 
Of course, not so evenly distributed. NYC may have a population of 20 at this point, whereas random town in Montana may have the same 1000 people they started with, give or take a few.
 
Of course, not so evenly distributed. NYC may have a population of 20 at this point, whereas random town in Montana may have the same 1000 people they started with, give or take a few.

In large cities, I always envisioned skyscrapers as great hideouts. I work in a large office building in Atlanta and if the elevator system is shut down, it's difficult to get above floor 3 without a key, because while they don't block the exit - they lock re-entry to the floor via the staircases if one doesn't have a key.

Therefore, for anyone that lived in a large skyscraper in a ZA, the remaining population could erect zip lines from building to another to fetch supplies - thereby simply flying over the zombie population.
 
Right until it catches fire, sure. Same thing that keeps you safe kills you in that instance. And you can get trapped/surrounded, so can't get out for supplies. Any humans that want to pick a fight just burn the lobby, and you cook.

Good hideouts need a couple escape/exit routes. Not sure how viable the "just erect zip lines" plan really is. Easy in a spy show, but if I asked you to do it right now, where would you start?
 
Yeah. If you need the zip line to get to the next building, how are you going to secure it to the other building in the first place? Unless you happen to have a Bat-zip line launcher lying around in your apartment/office.
 
Obviously the skyscraper scenario does kind of work. While not a skyscraper, the Atlanta PD had a decent setup at Grady Hospital (if you 86 the rape and other acts of douchebaggery) and there was the nursing home situated in Atlanta. So, we can assume if there are two buildings populated by living humans, then there are most likely more scattered about. Same with New York City.

You would think a podunk redneck town in, say, Montana or Kentucky would be an ideal place to be during any sort of apocalypse, but looking at the evidence on the show, Rick's little town didn't survive and Woodbury (besides a couple of streets) fell too. People here in the boonies freak the fuck out for no reason (case in point the recent snow here). People go full on redneck in about 5 seconds and have no common sense to boot.
 
Yeah. If you need the zip line to get to the next building, how are you going to secure it to the other building in the first place? Unless you happen to have a Bat-zip line launcher lying around in your apartment/office.

Well, I'd imagine it'd be a matter of smashing out the windows you want to use, dangling a zipline down from one building, another line down from the other building, and then sending someone out to attach them together before hauling the line back up and securing it accordingly. Probably not the easiest thing to do in the early days of an apocalypse, but after the cities emptied out of the undead it would be possible with enough cable scavenged from hardware stores or utilities warehouses. Set up one in each direction, and let gravity do the rest.

Mark
 
Of course, not so evenly distributed. NYC may have a population of 20 at this point, whereas random town in Montana may have the same 1000 people they started with, give or take a few.


i'd agree with that assessment....though DC does have the possibility of having a semi-functioning government & resources to survive, if not have a semblance of "normal" order.

Some where like Montana could have a fully functioning farm & such if properly prepared...and the Walker problem would be very manageable. And maybe even the marauders wouldn't be so keen to drive in the middle of nowhere.

Hopefully, such a safe haven will be there at the end of the series run.
 
IIRC, the walker-to-people ratio has been said by one of the show runners to be something like 500-to-1.
Wow. That's only about a million people scattered about N. America
You would think a podunk redneck town in, say, Montana or Kentucky would be an ideal place to be during any sort of apocalypse, but looking at the evidence on the show, Rick's little town didn't survive and Woodbury (besides a couple of streets) fell too.
We still really don't know the specifics of the plague's origin, but what we do know is that it somehow has had an effect on everyone, such that they all are carriers, throughout both rural & urban areas alike. People die naturally in both these areas daily, which is all it would take to begin an outbreak of walkers infecting the unsuspecting. So by that measure, I figure no place was fully immune. Everyone lost similar numbers somewhat equally.
 
Obviously the skyscraper scenario does kind of work. While not a skyscraper, the Atlanta PD had a decent setup at Grady Hospital (if you 86 the rape and other acts of douchebaggery) and there was the nursing home situated in Atlanta. So, we can assume if there are two buildings populated by living humans, then there are most likely more scattered about. Same with New York City.

You would think a podunk redneck town in, say, Montana or Kentucky would be an ideal place to be during any sort of apocalypse, but looking at the evidence on the show, Rick's little town didn't survive and Woodbury (besides a couple of streets) fell too. People here in the boonies freak the fuck out for no reason (case in point the recent snow here). People go full on redneck in about 5 seconds and have no common sense to boot.

Rick's town & Woodbury were suburbs, so a little more densely populated, so easy for problems to happen, as well as places to fight over supplies.

The Montana scenario has miles and miles in between places. If it's farmland, they might be able to be self sufficient. Selfish/mean survivors probably wouldn't want to stay there.

IIRC, the walker-to-people ratio has been said by one of the show runners to be something like 500-to-1.
Wow. That's only about a million people scattered about N. America
You would think a podunk redneck town in, say, Montana or Kentucky would be an ideal place to be during any sort of apocalypse, but looking at the evidence on the show, Rick's little town didn't survive and Woodbury (besides a couple of streets) fell too.
We still really don't know the specifics of the plague's origin, but what we do know is that it somehow has had an effect on everyone, such that they all are carriers, throughout both rural & urban areas alike. People die naturally in both these areas daily, which is all it would take to begin an outbreak of walkers infecting the unsuspecting. So by that measure, I figure no place was fully immune. Everyone lost similar numbers somewhat equally.

The thing is...big cities have MANY people, so many that could come out of nowhere and bite you. With the rural...if they kept in good health, they might not die so fast naturally, and not many walkers (or even marauders) coming to get you.
 
Double checking, I was way off on the walker-to-people ratio.

Sorry about that, I was off by a factor of 10.

It's been said, behind the scenes, the walker-to-people ratio is 5000:1.
 
It's just the mass of zombies you're trying to avoid. Rick's area fell because it was a suburb of a major city. Thus lots of zombies wandering around.

You can't have thousands of walkers wandering east bumfuck, Montana if there weren't thousands of living people there in the first place. If an entire town falls, still not that many. And LOTS of space between them and the next town, so while you might get a random pack wander through occasionally, it's bound to be more quiet. And not a big target for looters, no point walking there, etc. Some defenses put up, can be more self-sufficient pretty easy. And more like to have been self-sufficient to begin with.
 
It's been a few years now. That's plenty of time for massive herds to wander out of the city and start roaming the countryside like locusts. Having a farm out in the middle of nowhere may seem easy to manage if you're only dealing with a few dozen at a time, but when a herd of ten thousand comes shuffling through, you're pretty much fucked. Even if you survive in a bunker or fortified structure until the herd passes, your crops will be ruined.

Probably the best option is somewhere that has thick, high concrete walls, a large flat roof or courtyard for crops and a reliable source of fresh water. A stadium would probably be the ideal choice so long as you can block off the entrances and exits, but water would be a problem in the long term. In any urban environment, unless there's a large river close by, you'd essentially be reduced to collecting and storing rainwater, which needless to say would be a problem if there's a dry spell.
 
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Instead of heading to DC, maybe they should have looked for an Amish farm to fortify. If they could defend against others (living and dead), the Amish should be well suited for this world.
 
It's been a few years now. That's plenty of time for massive herds to wander out of the city and start roaming the countryside like locusts. Having a farm out in the middle of nowhere may seem easy to manage if you're only dealing with a few dozen at a time, but when a herd of ten thousand comes shuffling through, you're pretty much fucked.

We did see that one large herd out at some random rural farm in the episode this season where the Abraham/Glenn group ran out of steam at the end of their journey to get Professor Pants On Fire to DC.

But out in the middle of Montana, it's safe to assume that there are no huge herds. It's not like the population of Chicago or Minneapolis would wander off to the Dakotas or anywhere else in the northern plains.

And if there is a large herd somewhere in Montana or South Dakota or wherever, there's likely only going to be one. If you run into them, you can just go 50 miles away and feel relatively safe.

The problem with going too far north though is the winters. They don't have the luxury of storing up food over the summer to prepare for winter. Iowa/Nebraska/Indiana/rural Ohio or Illinois still sounds like the best bet to me. Actually forget even rural Illinois or Indiana. The further west the better. Find some nice big wide open farmland where you can see for miles. The further west the better. Keep going until the walker numbers noticably decrease.

Just at random, I looked up populations in Kansas ranked by county, and there are counties out there with less than 2000 people. If our group can take a prison, they can clear 1500 (less actually, since many would be beyond the point of reanimation) walkers to claim an 800 square mile county. Or hell, go one state north and there are a bunch of counties in Nebraska with less than 1000 people. Head to the places where the population density is less than 1 person per square mile.


Though it does seem logical to assume that isolated households in the middle of nowhere would be rather survivable compared to city dwellers.
 
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