Author Topic: Fear the Walking Dead  (Read 142602 times)

Offline BillCable

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #15 on: August 25, 2015, 09:25 AM »
I just don't see how we're going to get to pandemic chaos from where they are now (short of bad writing).  We've seen the hospitals know something's going on.  That means the CDC will be involved and investigating.  Even if they don't "understand" what's happening, they'll be able to surmise pretty quickly we have venomous zombies.  In real life, controls would lock in place.  The president or the surgeon general would be on TV within a day or two saying "You know all those zombie movies?  Looks like that's what's going on.  Decapitate your dead."  And things would never get out-of-hand.  About 7,000 people die each day in the USA.  That'd be easy enough to contain.

As it stands now, there are still too many societal structures in place for it to go all apocalyptic.  There's still working communication systems...

Maybe the zombies will drop an EMP on LA.
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Offline JediJman

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #16 on: August 25, 2015, 12:04 PM »
I haven't seen the show yet, but I think you're basing that assessment as though this was a contagion.  Don't we know from TWD that everyone is already infected?  A bite accelerates the process, but any death drives the change.  If 7,000 people die every day, then that's 7,000 new zombies (minimum) across the country popping up to kill the living.  That doesn't sound easy to contain to me.  Again, haven't watched it yet, but do authorities in the new show know that brain trauma is required to kill the zombies?  I thought from TWD that it took quite a while for most people to figure that out. 
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Offline BillCable

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #17 on: August 25, 2015, 12:33 PM »
7000 per day of 320 million?  You'd only need 1 out of every 45,000 people to be a competent zombie killer.
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Offline P-Siddy

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #18 on: August 25, 2015, 02:54 PM »
Plus, as Bill mentioned earlier, wouldn't any of these characters have seen any zombie movies... or do Romero's movies not exist in TWD-verse?

Offline Scockery

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #19 on: August 25, 2015, 06:57 PM »
Again, haven't watched it yet, but do authorities in the new show know that brain trauma is required to kill the zombies?  I thought from TWD that it took quite a while for most people to figure that out.

if a teenage girl can figure out the KILLSHOT from watching a viral video of a person getting shot many times before finally going down from a headshot, then the authorities can, too.

Offline Rob

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #20 on: August 26, 2015, 11:20 AM »
Watched it last night... character development isn't terribly exciting, but it's necessary.  Definitely a little bit of a snoozer compared to the way Walking Dead started though.

Offline Matt_Fury

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #21 on: August 26, 2015, 01:07 PM »
They couldn't start this the same way as TWD....in TWD, Rick wakes up and we're in the middle of the Zombie Apocalypse.  I think it's s good thing this is going slow, the zombies creep up on you until it's too late!
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Offline Rob

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #22 on: August 26, 2015, 02:07 PM »
They couldn't start this the same way as TWD....in TWD, Rick wakes up and we're in the middle of the Zombie Apocalypse.  I think it's s good thing this is going slow, the zombies creep up on you until it's too late!

Problem is that we've all seen 4 or 5 seasons of super high quality zombie stuff from this universe, so going back to square one when the bar is already set really high and then having a 90 minute episode with very little happening is pretty much destined to result in a giant Meh.

Offline JediJman

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #23 on: August 26, 2015, 02:22 PM »
7000 per day of 320 million?  You'd only need 1 out of every 45,000 people to be a competent zombie killer.

Less than half that number died in 911 and this is the minimum number of undead rising up daily.  I'm pretty sure that would spiral out of control real quick.  You'd have to assume that the 7000 kill a fair amount of people daily, with their numbers growing exponentially.  People wouldn't instantly believe what's going on and social media would probably be flooded with as much or more inaccurate reports of how to kill the infected.  Even if people could figure it out quickly, it seemed to take the CDC time to understand the causes and the fact that anyone who died would become a zombie.  You'd likely have people killing off or abandoning others showing the slightest amount of sickness.  Public services would stop as people fear getting infected or leaving their homes, and that would just eventually lead to more death and more zombies to deal with.

I also think the majority of people would have no clue how to fight back until its too late.  Kids, elderly, the sick - they'd have no chance of fighting without help.  Think about the number of people in the process of dying who would eventually turn and kill their friends or family while they slept or in a supposedly secure location.  Others would have a hard time killing off zombies even if they were to far gone (Morgan, Governor), and then you have a significant amount of people who would just give up.  I think you're giving an uniformed and panicked population too much credit and not factoring in the growth rate potential.

Here's some food for thought.  If one zombie came into existence today and their numbers doubled daily for a month (2 tomorrow, 4 the next day, etc.), how many zombies would there be at the end of the month?  Well over a billion in just 31 days. 

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Offline BillCable

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #24 on: August 26, 2015, 02:44 PM »
You wouldn't see exponential growth, though.  You wouldn't even see linear growth.  Not if the populace has already seen how to kill the things over YouTube, and communication systems are still largely intact.

I'm not arguing there'd be no instances of outbreaks.  Sure - someone young and healthy has a stroke in the middle of a neighborhood - some families gets wiped out.  But those kinds of stresses don't lead to societal breakdown.

Looking at my math a different way - each day right now 1 out of every 45,000 people die.  Are you saying those 44,999 other people can't handle it if that death becomes somehow contagious?  And not airborne contagious - contagious via staggering, brainless corpses?
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Offline JediJman

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #25 on: August 26, 2015, 05:09 PM »
You wouldn't see exponential growth, though.  You wouldn't even see linear growth.  Not if the populace has already seen how to kill the things over YouTube, and communication systems are still largely intact.

I'm not arguing there'd be no instances of outbreaks.  Sure - someone young and healthy has a stroke in the middle of a neighborhood - some families gets wiped out.  But those kinds of stresses don't lead to societal breakdown.

Looking at my math a different way - each day right now 1 out of every 45,000 people die.  Are you saying those 44,999 other people can't handle it if that death becomes somehow contagious?  And not airborne contagious - contagious via staggering, brainless corpses?

I think you're taking an over simplified view of what could happen.  Do you really think its more likely that people instantly grab their hammers and bats to organize a defense vs. disbelief, fear, rioting, and giving up?  Think through all of the zombie/contagion/apocalypse movies we've seen.  When this starts, the vast majority of people won't believe its real.  Would you?  It might take weeks just to convince people it's happening.  As people figure out something is wrong, they'd likely shut themselves in for fear of contamination.  You're assuming people will just fight back, but I think most people without training would freeze when confronted with a zombie, just like most due in extremely traumatic real life situations.

Either way, you can clearly count on massive work stoppage and looting.  Take the 7,000 that would have died anyway, plus the increased deaths from people that can't get their meds, health care, rioting, etc.  Who is delivering fresh groceries or manning the water treatment plant?  How about the power plants?  Take away food and power for just a few weeks and you'd see any sense of law and order fly out the window.  Add to that the killings from people who think someone is sick and could infect them, people fighting each other for resources, suicide, etc.  People also wouldn't know that zombie bites are fatal or that people dying from other causes will come back, so many would try to care for the sick and wounded only to get surprise attacked later.  Think about mass population centers where a hoard of zombies could grow fairly quickly.  It's easy to think 20 people could stop a zombie, but 20 zombies vs. one person is very different. 

Social media can spread disinformation as quickly as good information and a fair amount of people aren't getting their news from Youtube. Reference the movie Contagion.  Those that can figure out how to kill a zombie still need to be able to do it in real life.  Not as easy to kill a loved one, especially for those that think there might be some kind of cure.  Reference TWD Morgan and Hershel.  I do think there would be more of a resistance than we've seen in the shows.  There would be pockets of communities or safe houses that could band together and set up procedures to keep watch, reduce the risk of an outbreak, etc.  But there's potential for those to break down in short order as well once people start fighting over scarce resources, weapons, authority, etc.  Someone gets careless or has an unexpected death or some virus spreads without treatment.   

Anyway, I don't think we're going to convince each other.  Hopefully we'll never have to find out.   ;)
Climbed a mountain & never came back. I will not quit & I always fight back 
From this moment for all my life. What could I say? Was born to be this way. And what could I say?  Just livin' for today

Offline BillCable

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #26 on: August 26, 2015, 08:55 PM »
I guess I just have more faith in Americans.  Like it'd take a whole lot of convincing for a good portion of this country to start bashing in the skulls of anybody who looked funny.   8)
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Offline Scockery

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #27 on: August 26, 2015, 11:36 PM »
Well, at least it's not The Dawn of the Dead remake were civilization dies within 24 hours. Fast zombies...it's over so quick.

Offline Matt_Fury

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #28 on: August 27, 2015, 01:00 PM »
They couldn't start this the same way as TWD....in TWD, Rick wakes up and we're in the middle of the Zombie Apocalypse.  I think it's s good thing this is going slow, the zombies creep up on you until it's too late!

Problem is that we've all seen 4 or 5 seasons of super high quality zombie stuff from this universe, so going back to square one when the bar is already set really high and then having a 90 minute episode with very little happening is pretty much destined to result in a giant Meh.

The one thing we haven't seen is how it started.  It wasn't covered in the show or the comic.  I dunno...I appreciate FTWD for what they are doing.
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Offline JediJman

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Re: Fear the Walking Dead
« Reply #29 on: August 27, 2015, 03:17 PM »
Yeah, I'm excited to see more info on the beginning even if it is a little slow.  That was the best part about the WWZ novel - hearing about how they went from everyday life to zombie apocalypse.  I'm still not sure we're going to get the "cause" behind the event as RK has said many times he doesn't care to touch on that part of the story.  It's supposed to be more about what the characters do int he situations they are confronted with than revealing all of the origins and details behind it. 
Climbed a mountain & never came back. I will not quit & I always fight back 
From this moment for all my life. What could I say? Was born to be this way. And what could I say?  Just livin' for today