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Well the thing that I think most zombie fiction fails to account for is the non-lethal/physical effects of a bullet. No, a bullet might not kill you, but it will tear up muscle fibers and make it difficult, if not impossible, for you to continue moving. Zombies are no more or less immune to that. Actually, zombies would be less immune, being dead they would, as a rule, be unable to regenerate damaged tissue. Even assuming they didn't decompose, they would eventually be rendered self-immobile, as even the most basic of human movements (walking, breathing, eating, etc.) causes tissue damage, its just that in a healthy human body its such minor damage that its very quickly regenerated.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
The taking out the trash scene cracked me up.

Well, like my wife, some people can sleep through anything. "What storm? What zombiepocalypse? Why is your father roaming the front yard with a wiffle bat, bottle of Bacardi, and his ZombieGames silver medal winner Tshirt and sandals on, again?"

 Frazzled wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
The taking out the trash scene cracked me up.

Well, like my wife, some people can sleep through anything. "What storm? What zombiepocalypse? Why is your father roaming the front yard with a wiffle bat, bottle of Bacardi, and his ZombieGames silver medal winner Tshirt and sandals on, again?"

I was thinking more along the lines of...they'd both put down a walker and stuffed them into the wheelie bins, and were suspiciously eyeing each other.

Hey haven't we all?

 Frazzled wrote:
Hey haven't we all?

That dripping red fluid coming out the bottom of our bin is just a broken ketchup bottle. Honest.

 Frazzled wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
"Oh good, the military is here. Everything is fine now" -said no intelligent ever in a movie/TV show

Shawn of the Dead actually. It was awesome.

Shaun of the Dead doesn't really count because it's a parody. But yes, the military does save the day in that movie... but not other zombie movies.

I thought it was an awesome episode. I'm really interested to see how what looks to be martial law will play out. If Lord Acton was correct when he said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," I have a feeling things are about to get worse.

Yea but I really don't need that. We're like days from the usual riot situation. Guard units haven't historically gone off the deep end there. PoPo, well thats a different story.

Well, we know the military doesn't make it any better based on the state of Atlanta in the main series.

We know that, but thats not relevant to the point. The Guard has literally been in LA before for riot situations. They didn't go off the deep end on personal glory trips. They did their jobs.

This would be no different, other than the job is bigger than them.

 Frazzled wrote:
We know that, but thats not relevant to the point. The Guard has literally been in LA before for riot situations. They didn't go off the deep end on personal glory trips. They did their jobs.

This would be no different, other than the job is bigger than them.

Actually, it is relevant to the point.

You're talking about a real life event, I'm talking about a TV show. You cannot sit there and say, "Because we know how this one unrelated event took place in real life happened, these fake television characters will behave the same way." We've seen that whatever the government's response to the zombie plague was, it was ineffectual. I know this is 2015 and military hero worship is the order of the day, but it wasn't too long ago that the "corrupt military men" trope was a pretty standard (remember the X-Files?). I think it's pretty clearly being set up as such. The Guard is hauling away people that have been "exposed" and part of the group already don't seem to trust the government's response. There was a teaser after the first episode that hinted at this kind of arc.

Also, the 1992 riots =\= societal breakdown caused by zombie apocalypse.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
We know that, but thats not relevant to the point. The Guard has literally been in LA before for riot situations. They didn't go off the deep end on personal glory trips. They did their jobs.

This would be no different, other than the job is bigger than them.

Actually, it is relevant to the point.

You're talking about a real life event, I'm talking about a TV show. You cannot sit there and say, "Because we know how this one unrelated event took place in real life happened, these fake television characters will behave the same way." We've seen that whatever the government's response to the zombie plague was, it was ineffectual. I know this is 2015 and military hero worship is the order of the day, but it wasn't too long ago that the "corrupt military men" trope was a pretty standard (remember the X-Files?). I think it's pretty clearly being set up as such. The Guard is hauling away people that have been "exposed" and part of the group already don't seem to trust the government's response. There was a teaser after the first episode that hinted at this kind of arc.

Also, the 1992 riots =\= societal breakdown caused by zombie apocalypse.

Military didn't have worship during the Watts Riots or the King Riots. My point is that, yes its a TV show, but one trying to emulate a semblance of reality. Turning the military into "preGovnor" goes against that mightily. While 1992 riots are different than zombies...THEY don't know its a zombie thing. To them its rioting and civil disturbances related to a disease outbreak.

Corrupt military men is pretty standard. Its also both pretty stupid and pretty boring. If I want a retread I can watch a whole slew of shows.

 Frazzled wrote:
Military didn't have worship during the Watts Riots or the King Riots. My point is that, yes its a TV show, but one trying to emulate a semblance of reality. Turning the military into "preGovnor" goes against that mightily. While 1992 riots are different than zombies...THEY don't know its a zombie thing. To them its rioting and civil disturbances related to a disease outbreak.

Corrupt military men is pretty standard. Its also both pretty stupid and pretty boring. If I want a retread I can watch a whole slew of shows.

I'll go ahead and get this ready for you, because you're gonna need it:



Anyways, you're still trying to use real world examples of things as a precedence for a fictional TV show not set in our universe. And you don't know what the government doesn't know about the zombie plague (and according to Dr. Jenner at the CDC, the government seems to have known pretty early with what they were dealing with but had no way of stopping it). In the comic book series, the military gets overwhelmed and resorts to using lethal force of both infected and non-infected civilians in an attempt to regain control of the situation (which fails).

You also need to understand that I'm not saying that the entirety of the military is going to be the "bad guy" here, but the show is setting up LA to be under martial law. When you combine the idea that power corrupts and that there is already a couple of characters who seem distrustful of the military's grasp of the situation, you have a recipe for conflict.

1. I like chicken. Crow is too bony. Rodney will however eat a bird bones and all. Its even better if its a week old and disgusting.

2. Lets assume there have been no riots in LA. Thats not carte blanche to then have guard having Little Napoleon syndrome. Its a boring trope thats been done to death.
reading from IMBD it looks like most of the Guard actors are only in two episodes so this will be a short term thing.

If it takes all of 2 episodes for the military to collapse, then Im probably not gonna bother to continue watching the show.

chaos0xomega wrote:
If it takes all of 2 episodes for the military to collapse, then Im probably not gonna bother to continue watching the show.

Less collapse, more eaten?

If half of the LA Basin goes Zombie, imagine a herd of 9mm zombies. It would stretch for miles.

Folks, all we're going to see is how this particular group of NG deal with things, and how these families are affected. They'll tease the bigger-scale stuff, but that's it. That's because A) it's been their narrative approach to this point, and B) budgets.

 Frazzled wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
We know that, but thats not relevant to the point. The Guard has literally been in LA before for riot situations. They didn't go off the deep end on personal glory trips. They did their jobs.

This would be no different, other than the job is bigger than them.

Actually, it is relevant to the point.

You're talking about a real life event, I'm talking about a TV show. You cannot sit there and say, "Because we know how this one unrelated event took place in real life happened, these fake television characters will behave the same way." We've seen that whatever the government's response to the zombie plague was, it was ineffectual. I know this is 2015 and military hero worship is the order of the day, but it wasn't too long ago that the "corrupt military men" trope was a pretty standard (remember the X-Files?). I think it's pretty clearly being set up as such. The Guard is hauling away people that have been "exposed" and part of the group already don't seem to trust the government's response. There was a teaser after the first episode that hinted at this kind of arc.

Also, the 1992 riots =\= societal breakdown caused by zombie apocalypse.

Military didn't have worship during the Watts Riots or the King Riots. My point is that, yes its a TV show, but one trying to emulate a semblance of reality. Turning the military into "preGovnor" goes against that mightily. While 1992 riots are different than zombies...THEY don't know its a zombie thing. To them its rioting and civil disturbances related to a disease outbreak.

Corrupt military men is pretty standard. Its also both pretty stupid and pretty boring. If I want a retread I can watch a whole slew of shows.

As of episode 3, I think it's pretty clear that the military knows a great deal more about what's going on . They turn up in Hazmat gear, shoot the eldely lady neighbour on sight, get jumpy and defensive the mom approaches them to ask questions, are quarantining the exposed. By now I expect the low ranked grunts have had more than a few encounters with walkers, and the officers will have at least some idea of the situation across the country. They know this has gone way beyond civil disturbances and riots.

If the military are being set up as antagonists, I think it'll be a result of jumpy distrustful soldiers seeing everyone as a threat and being overzealous when quarantining people. Eventually they'll start panicking as the chain of command breaks down.

Well that's a decent assumption since we saw them taking Nick away in the previews.

I don't see them as being an "evil/corrupt" antagonist. I see them being much like the zombies and being an environmental/faceless factor for character growth.

Well, if they don't go with the 'evil military' angle, they'll probably go with the alternative option (which I actually hate even more than than the evil military option): the 'inept military' angle (which is different from the 'ineffective military angle, wherein the military is utterly useless at containing the situation and falls apart itself just like everything else), wherein the military implements some sort of policy designed to contain the situation, which to us - the viewers - is alltogether reasonable and sensible, but which to the protagonists is entirely unreasonable, utterly illogical, and completely incomprehensible, the only justifiable response to which (in the minds of the protagonists) is to completely ignore and/or willfully violate/subvert, which invariably results in a failure in said policy at a critical juncture which heralds the collapse of the military intervention and spells doom for everyone... except, of course, the protagonists who go on their merry way apparently unaware that they are asshats who just ruined their best chance of survival based on some selfish agenda or self-serving myopic reasoning.

We've already seen evidence of this at the end of this past episode when the Guard shows up and they are, how can I put this politely... slightly less than cooperative in telling the truth about the events that had transpired/who was exposed, all because they are evidently more fearful of being separated in quarantine (or something) by their only hope of salvation than they are of this mysterious new illness that has been turning their friends, loved ones and neighbors into (from their perspective) mindless and semi-invincible cannibals.

Hatewatching, huh?

No, Ive only Hatewatched Gotham. This is more like 'hatechannelsurfing', I havent been following the show that closely.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Well, if they don't go with the 'evil military' angle, they'll probably go with the alternative option (which I actually hate even more than than the evil military option): the 'inept military' angle (which is different from the 'ineffective military angle, wherein the military is utterly useless at containing the situation and falls apart itself just like everything else), wherein the military implements some sort of policy designed to contain the situation, which to us - the viewers - is alltogether reasonable and sensible, but which to the protagonists is entirely unreasonable, utterly illogical, and completely incomprehensible, the only justifiable response to which (in the minds of the protagonists) is to completely ignore and/or willfully violate/subvert, which invariably results in a failure in said policy at a critical juncture which heralds the collapse of the military intervention and spells doom for everyone... except, of course, the protagonists who go on their merry way apparently unaware that they are asshats who just ruined their best chance of survival based on some selfish agenda or self-serving myopic reasoning.

We've already seen evidence of this at the end of this past episode when the Guard shows up and they are, how can I put this politely... slightly less than cooperative in telling the truth about the events that had transpired/who was exposed, all because they are evidently more fearful of being separated in quarantine (or something) by their only hope of salvation than they are of this mysterious new illness that has been turning their friends, loved ones and neighbors into (from their perspective) mindless and semi-invincible cannibals.

Except there is a chance the one who wasn't honest is one who is catching on to how it actually seems to spread. So far she has:

a) Seen a dude who was shot several times in the chest get run over by a large vehicle multiple times and not die until he got thrown far enough that his head got crushed.
b) Seen her daughters boyfriend obviously sick who had been bitten by something. So sick she's worried about her daughter and doesn't want her around him.
c) Seen her boss, who looks like he's taken a very serious wound, attack her and a student and try to eat them who only stopped with blunt force trauma to the head
d) Saw her boyfriend/husband attacked by a neighbor who took birdshot to the face from less than 10 feet and then only stopped at point blank when he took another shot that actually broke his head.
e) Has had time to register the differences because of her neighbor in the backyard and was about to do what needed doing in the only way she's seen them be stopped.

So realistically in the show she seems to be catching on. She's had blood on her from infected individuals and so has her family. None of them are sick. She knows her boss wasn't sick less than 12 hours before he turned. It's been over 12 hours since she got his blood all over her (longer actually for her son, her, and her boyfriend). And she's just seen the military execute the afflicted on site and disappear her neighbor who just had blood on him.

Like it or not on the scale we're talking about you wouldn't be able to properly quarantine the population of Los Angeles that had been afflicted. Not if you're considering anyone in contact with the fluid at some point and it's as wide spread as it has appeared so far. Logically, and the main female lead seems very logical, that people possibly infected are going to be locked in with people who could turn flesh eating crazy/undead at any minute. It's a recipe for disaster from the get go and she's already taking steps to ensure if she turns she's taken care of. We've already seen they are taking poor steps to contain. Proper steps would have been to actually go public instead of keeping it quiet. Since that didn't happen the rest won't work. People might panic and be stupid but you can probably contain it if for every person freaking out there is a person who takes the information and helps instead of spending his time not knowing what's going on.

It's a zombie show. I've read a whole 1 series on a reasonable "zombie" outbreak that reached apocalyptic levels (see John Ringo's Under a Graveyard Sky). And it still had to jump the shark a bit and involved an actual designer disease with a 2 week+ infectious but no symptoms period and wasn't actual zombies (i.e. risen dead). Things are going to have to screw up somewhere for this to get out of control. And humans are capable of extreme stupid. And to be fair for everyone to die in somewhere like LA you only need about a week of no power/water and a non-national support movement to get water into the area and poof, millions of zombies.

Either way probably not the show for you.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Well, if they don't go with the 'evil military' angle, they'll probably go with the alternative option (which I actually hate even more than than the evil military option): the 'inept military' angle (which is different from the 'ineffective military angle, wherein the military is utterly useless at containing the situation and falls apart itself just like everything else), wherein the military implements some sort of policy designed to contain the situation, which to us - the viewers - is alltogether reasonable and sensible, but which to the protagonists is entirely unreasonable, utterly illogical, and completely incomprehensible, the only justifiable response to which (in the minds of the protagonists) is to completely ignore and/or willfully violate/subvert, which invariably results in a failure in said policy at a critical juncture which heralds the collapse of the military intervention and spells doom for everyone... except, of course, the protagonists who go on their merry way apparently unaware that they are asshats who just ruined their best chance of survival based on some selfish agenda or self-serving myopic reasoning.

We've already seen evidence of this at the end of this past episode when the Guard shows up and they are, how can I put this politely... slightly less than cooperative in telling the truth about the events that had transpired/who was exposed, all because they are evidently more fearful of being separated in quarantine (or something) by their only hope of salvation than they are of this mysterious new illness that has been turning their friends, loved ones and neighbors into (from their perspective) mindless and semi-invincible cannibals.

Good points.

 Hulksmash wrote:


So realistically in the show she seems to be catching on. She's had blood on her from infected individuals and so has her family. None of them are sick. She knows her boss wasn't sick less than 12 hours before he turned. It's been over 12 hours since she got his blood all over her (longer actually for her son, her, and her boyfriend). And she's just seen the military execute the afflicted on site and disappear her neighbor who just had blood on him.

Like it or not on the scale we're talking about you wouldn't be able to properly quarantine the population of Los Angeles that had been afflicted. Not if you're considering anyone in contact with the fluid at some point and it's as wide spread as it has appeared so far. Logically, and the main female lead seems very logical, that people possibly infected are going to be locked in with people who could turn flesh eating crazy/undead at any minute. It's a recipe for disaster from the get go and she's already taking steps to ensure if she turns she's taken care of. We've already seen they are taking poor steps to contain. Proper steps would have been to actually go public instead of keeping it quiet. Since that didn't happen the rest won't work. People might panic and be stupid but you can probably contain it if for every person freaking out there is a person who takes the information and helps instead of spending his time not knowing what's going on.

We havent seen enough of the military response to know what it is they know and how they are handling it.

Also what you (and I think most fans) are quick to dismiss (if not outright forgetting about it) is that there is an actual contagious illness associated with zombieism. As in, there is some illness that affects the living infected with flu-like symptoms for some period of time prior to them dying and then reanimating. This illness is never really addressed in the show (or within the wider mythos) from what I recall. We don't really know how that spreads, only that it does spread and it doesn't necessarily require a bite (otherwise there wouldnt have been mass illness amongst the still living population well before people started going psycho cannibal). From TWD we know that everyone is theoretically infected and will reanimate on death, but we dont know why, suddenly, a large chunk of the population (but not all) suddenly and simultaneously fell ill, dropped dead, and suddenly stood back up. Beyond that, its always been a bit of a major scientific plothole that a bite is the only vector of transmission and exposure to bodily fluids isn't, particularly when the CDC research was based around blood samples from the infected which were still active viral agents. In other words, the military is correct to isolate and quarantine those who have had contact with the infected, because there is still an unexplained and unknown vector of transmission. On top of that, we can reasonably assume they have figured out that biting = infection, one would assume they would check for bites before sticking someone into quarantine and risking propagation.

Similar issue with World War Z mind you, Brad Pitt gets blood/saliva in the mouth but inexplicably doesnt turn despite exposure to the medium through which the viral agent is carried & transmitted. I thought it would turn out that he was one of the immunes, but that was not the case.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:


So realistically in the show she seems to be catching on. She's had blood on her from infected individuals and so has her family. None of them are sick. She knows her boss wasn't sick less than 12 hours before he turned. It's been over 12 hours since she got his blood all over her (longer actually for her son, her, and her boyfriend). And she's just seen the military execute the afflicted on site and disappear her neighbor who just had blood on him.

Like it or not on the scale we're talking about you wouldn't be able to properly quarantine the population of Los Angeles that had been afflicted. Not if you're considering anyone in contact with the fluid at some point and it's as wide spread as it has appeared so far. Logically, and the main female lead seems very logical, that people possibly infected are going to be locked in with people who could turn flesh eating crazy/undead at any minute. It's a recipe for disaster from the get go and she's already taking steps to ensure if she turns she's taken care of. We've already seen they are taking poor steps to contain. Proper steps would have been to actually go public instead of keeping it quiet. Since that didn't happen the rest won't work. People might panic and be stupid but you can probably contain it if for every person freaking out there is a person who takes the information and helps instead of spending his time not knowing what's going on.

We havent seen enough of the military response to know what it is they know and how they are handling it.

Also what you (and I think most fans) are quick to dismiss (if not outright forgetting about it) is that there is an actual contagious illness associated with zombieism. As in, there is some illness that affects the living infected with flu-like symptoms for some period of time prior to them dying and then reanimating. This illness is never really addressed in the show (or within the wider mythos) from what I recall. We don't really know how that spreads, only that it does spread and it doesn't necessarily require a bite (otherwise there wouldnt have been mass illness amongst the still living population well before people started going psycho cannibal). From TWD we know that everyone is theoretically infected and will reanimate on death, but we dont know why, suddenly, a large chunk of the population (but not all) suddenly and simultaneously fell ill, dropped dead, and suddenly stood back up. Beyond that, its always been a bit of a major scientific plothole that a bite is the only vector of transmission and exposure to bodily fluids isn't, particularly when the CDC research was based around blood samples from the infected which were still active viral agents. In other words, the military is correct to isolate and quarantine those who have had contact with the infected, because there is still an unexplained and unknown vector of transmission. On top of that, we can reasonably assume they have figured out that biting = infection, one would assume they would check for bites before sticking someone into quarantine and risking propagation.

Similar issue with World War Z mind you, Brad Pitt gets blood/saliva in the mouth but inexplicably doesnt turn despite exposure to the medium through which the viral agent is carried & transmitted. I thought it would turn out that he was one of the immunes, but that was not the case.

A good point about the viral disease. And one I should have addressed since it plays a part in the previously mentioned decent zombie apoc books .

I think the viral aspect is yeah, generally under discussed because it causes more problems than it solves. Easier to gloss over. No one in TWD ever mentioned someone just getting sick and then turning. Everyone talks about people dying or being bitten and coming back. So maybe there isn't an actual flu like viral outbreak in the show at all. And that if it does it's tied to weakening the immune system at the same time maybe they are hit by the normal flu. Or maybe (and most reasonable) this is the year that the contagion everyone has combined with an epically bad bird flu-esque super bug that is what is actually killing people, not the zombie disease, the zombie disease just picks up where that leaves off. It's honestly the only way any of it works when I think about it. And that's if there is an actual viral contagion at work. They are saying people are sick but are they sick like we think it or dead and risen already or hiding from the bug?

That said while quarantining the population that has been exposed to the fluids may seem like a good idea my point still stands on the feasibility of proceeding with that process in a metro like LA. And knowing you're not sick and haven't been sick while being around kids who started not showing up from being sick and neither is your man who is also a teacher or the nurse/student other mom or your kids and you can see why jumping into a quarantine with people that might actually turn would be considered a bad idea. Besides, they were planning on isolating themselves anyway, the military is actually increasing their exposure to infected individuals

Also what you (and I think most fans) are quick to dismiss (if not outright forgetting about it) is that there is an actual contagious illness associated with zombieism. As in, there is some illness that affects the living infected with flu-like symptoms for some period of time prior to them dying and then reanimating. This illness is never really addressed in the show (or within the wider mythos) from what I recall.

No there isn't. We've been over this ad nauseam in the main TWD thread.

The "virus" itself is not what kills a person, it merely remains dormant until the point of death at which point it reanimates the body and takes over. We don't even know what it really is. What kills people is anything and everything BUT the "virus" - gunshots, stab wounds, mundane real world viruses, the nasty bacteria festering in the rotting mouths of walkers, starvation, dehydration, suffocation...

We don't know that the "flu-like symptoms" associated with Walker bites are anything other than sepsis (blood poisoning), the result of real world mundane but quite nasty micro-organisms such as E-Coli that you might expect to find in the festering mouths of rotting undead creatures. The author himself, Robert Kirkman, has made it explicitly clear that its not the Zombie "Virus" that kills you, its merely what reanimates you; and that they have no interest in establishing firm rules on how their interpretation of Zombieism works.

We don't really know how that spreads, only that it does spread and it doesn't necessarily require a bite (otherwise there wouldnt have been mass illness amongst the still living population well before people started going psycho cannibal). From TWD we know that everyone is theoretically infected and will reanimate on death, but we dont know why, suddenly, a large chunk of the population (but not all) suddenly and simultaneously fell ill, dropped dead, and suddenly stood back up.

My guess is that whatever this thing is, it remained dormant whilst it spread throughout the population before it began to activate en masse. Maybe it has an extremely long incubation period or something, which might explain how it spread so far before undead walkers began materializing everywhere all at once. But this is of course speculation, considering that the authors have explicitly stated that even they don't know how it works because they don't care to define it.

Beyond that, its always been a bit of a major scientific plothole that a bite is the only vector of transmission and exposure to bodily fluids isn't,

The entire show is a plot hole. We don't know how the disease originally transmitted and we never will. Everybody already has it. By the time it began to activate (by reanimating corpses) and the authorities became aware of it, it had already spread throughout pretty much the entire world population (so far as we know). Trying to come up with rational explanations for something that by the author's own admission hasn't been and never will be given a canonical rational explanation is futile speculation and jumping through mental hoops. Its like trying to come up with rational scientific explanations for how Doctor Who's Sonic Screwdriver works.

Think of the TWD zombie outbreak as a setting. Its deliberately vague and loosely defined, because its purpose is to facilitate character development.

 Hulksmash wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:


So realistically in the show she seems to be catching on. She's had blood on her from infected individuals and so has her family. None of them are sick. She knows her boss wasn't sick less than 12 hours before he turned. It's been over 12 hours since she got his blood all over her (longer actually for her son, her, and her boyfriend). And she's just seen the military execute the afflicted on site and disappear her neighbor who just had blood on him.

Like it or not on the scale we're talking about you wouldn't be able to properly quarantine the population of Los Angeles that had been afflicted. Not if you're considering anyone in contact with the fluid at some point and it's as wide spread as it has appeared so far. Logically, and the main female lead seems very logical, that people possibly infected are going to be locked in with people who could turn flesh eating crazy/undead at any minute. It's a recipe for disaster from the get go and she's already taking steps to ensure if she turns she's taken care of. We've already seen they are taking poor steps to contain. Proper steps would have been to actually go public instead of keeping it quiet. Since that didn't happen the rest won't work. People might panic and be stupid but you can probably contain it if for every person freaking out there is a person who takes the information and helps instead of spending his time not knowing what's going on.

We havent seen enough of the military response to know what it is they know and how they are handling it.

Also what you (and I think most fans) are quick to dismiss (if not outright forgetting about it) is that there is an actual contagious illness associated with zombieism. As in, there is some illness that affects the living infected with flu-like symptoms for some period of time prior to them dying and then reanimating. This illness is never really addressed in the show (or within the wider mythos) from what I recall. We don't really know how that spreads, only that it does spread and it doesn't necessarily require a bite (otherwise there wouldnt have been mass illness amongst the still living population well before people started going psycho cannibal). From TWD we know that everyone is theoretically infected and will reanimate on death, but we dont know why, suddenly, a large chunk of the population (but not all) suddenly and simultaneously fell ill, dropped dead, and suddenly stood back up. Beyond that, its always been a bit of a major scientific plothole that a bite is the only vector of transmission and exposure to bodily fluids isn't, particularly when the CDC research was based around blood samples from the infected which were still active viral agents. In other words, the military is correct to isolate and quarantine those who have had contact with the infected, because there is still an unexplained and unknown vector of transmission. On top of that, we can reasonably assume they have figured out that biting = infection, one would assume they would check for bites before sticking someone into quarantine and risking propagation.

Similar issue with World War Z mind you, Brad Pitt gets blood/saliva in the mouth but inexplicably doesnt turn despite exposure to the medium through which the viral agent is carried & transmitted. I thought it would turn out that he was one of the immunes, but that was not the case.

A good point about the viral disease. And one I should have addressed since it plays a part in the previously mentioned decent zombie apoc books .

I think the viral aspect is yeah, generally under discussed because it causes more problems than it solves. Easier to gloss over. No one in TWD ever mentioned someone just getting sick and then turning. Everyone talks about people dying or being bitten and coming back. So maybe there isn't an actual flu like viral outbreak in the show at all. And that if it does it's tied to weakening the immune system at the same time maybe they are hit by the normal flu. Or maybe (and most reasonable) this is the year that the contagion everyone has combined with an epically bad bird flu-esque super bug that is what is actually killing people, not the zombie disease, the zombie disease just picks up where that leaves off. It's honestly the only way any of it works when I think about it. And that's if there is an actual viral contagion at work. They are saying people are sick but are they sick like we think it or dead and risen already or hiding from the bug?

That said while quarantining the population that has been exposed to the fluids may seem like a good idea my point still stands on the feasibility of proceeding with that process in a metro like LA. And knowing you're not sick and haven't been sick while being around kids who started not showing up from being sick and neither is your man who is also a teacher or the nurse/student other mom or your kids and you can see why jumping into a quarantine with people that might actually turn would be considered a bad idea. Besides, they were planning on isolating themselves anyway, the military is actually increasing their exposure to infected individuals

Interesting.
1. The flu everyone is getting maybe the bug. We haven't seen anyone die from that alone have we? Maybe you get the flu, then if you die/bit it activates, which explains why it hasn't occurred before.
2. What we have seen is someone being bitten complaining of the flu. Maybe all the people with the bug were actually bitten?

Maybe they were all bitten by zombie insects? lol Big bites suck. Regardless though, if people are dying from a pandemic bloodborne disease that causes flu like symptoms but is otherwise unrelated to the zombie situation (except that it kills you thereby allowing you to reanimate), the military is still right to quarantine people whove had contact with the bodily fluids of the deceased, if nothing else it decreases the chance of continued spread of a disease that is evidently highly contagious as well as lethal, and I would imagine that the high rate of coincidence between what are ostensibly two separate diseases (which Im still not convinced of, as many bite victims in TWD display the same flulike symptoms before dying) would be cause for alarm as well as an avenue of medical research towards finding an antiviral (or as I understand it an antifungal) or a vaccine, if not a cure.

BTW, correct me if Im wrong, but I dont remember zombies ever going after non-human organisms in TWD. From what I recall, in more than a couple instances, there were dogs around and the walkers completely ignored them? or am I thinking of something else?

chaos0xomega wrote:
BTW, correct me if Im wrong, but I dont remember zombies ever going after non-human organisms in TWD.

Not entirely wrong. Walkers have gone after cattle and horses but they've also ignored dogs so who knows.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Think of the TWD zombie outbreak as a setting. Its deliberately vague and loosely defined, because its purpose is to facilitate character development.

This is the correct answer.

yeah it doesnt even have to be a virus...

the only fact that is known for sure in TWD universe, is that when you die, when anyone dies, for any reason, they come back.


Personally Im of the "when hell is full" interpretation as that is a tip to romero.

Well, TWD (the show) explained that it was a fungal spore infection or whatever that had affected every living human on earth, so theres that...