# Fear the Walking Dead: 1.04 "Not Fade Away" (open spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 20, 2015, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030 "2015-09-20T23:38:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/41 "2015-09-21T20:44:00Z")
> [@Wile\_E](#): > > I’ve been wondering how this will get so out of hand as to have these huge hordes or zombies when the military policy seems to be to shoot everyone in the head, infected or not. In FTWD, when (in which episode) did the military shoot everyone in the head, infected or not? The military shot Mrs. Tran (Asian neighbor zombie) before she could bite her husband. Guidance counselor Madison saw a pistol lying next to a head-shot body while she was walking outside the fence. In the final scenes where English teacher Travis was sitting on the roof, Travis saw light flashes from the same building his son Christopher had recorded light flashes from earlier. It sounded to me as if the flashes were accompanied by faint gunfire. Maybe not. ---
**Author:** ![gytalf2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ac91a4/32.png) [@gytalf2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gytalf2000)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/42 "2015-09-21T21:11:17Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > We’ve not watched it yet. Does the military know at this point to shoot zombies in the head? Wouldn’t they learn that pretty fast? “Oh look, bullets to the body have no effect. Let’s try a shot to the ol’ noggin… THERE! That dunnit! Can somebody write that down?” ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/43 "2015-09-21T22:21:21Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > This is a really interesting point. I like it. > > This episode was pretty good. I don’t think they skipped too far ahead. The previous episode ended with the Calvary arriving and they skipped a few days to get the busy work done. Now we get to see the effects of the Military in place. Busy work? In 9 days they went from enough normalcy that they were still putting out trash cans and coming home from the airport … to having a neighborhood street litted with corpses (some zombie and some human) and no living people for miles around. That’s a bit more than busy work. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Evil\_Prince\_Zorte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@The\_Evil\_Prince\_Zorte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Evil_Prince_Zorte)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/44 "2015-09-21T22:26:43Z")
> [@grude](#): > > So they basically skipped what we all wanted to see, and went straight to TWD territory already. Nice! It would have been interesting to see the unrest change from anger at police to fear of zombies, but it would have been harder to keep the current dynamic with the military. The soldiers came in to their neighborhood because it hadn’t yet been overtaken by zombies and there was time to fortify it. I still would have like to see more of the process of the area outside the fence becoming more empty from the perspective of their rooftops. Cars trying to leave, clusters of zombies getting taken down by soldiers on the opposite hill. Sounds of what would have been the massacre Madison found, but out of view so they can’t be sure what was happening, that it wasn’t just soldiers vs zombies. It’s hard to get the big picture of societal collapse when you are following a small group of characters. Any ordinary person only has a ground level view. There is no phone, internet, nothing on TV, the power is out. You don’t need to spend a lot of time showing those things, some dialogue is plenty. My first thought at the beginning, as a TWD viewer was “look at that thin little fence”. They may have made a few safe little pockets and maybe killed tens of thousands of zombies and people, but there are probably 5-10 million zombies spread around LA County at this point. It shouldn’t take long for them to start aggregating into herds that will slam against that fence and squirt through the hole that Madison made. The soldiers will know what is coming before the civilians, and I’m guessing they will suddenly bail while it is still possible to escape, without warning or explanation. Then the characters will experience the struggle for survival that everyone is looking for, they just didn’t have to face it as early as the rest of the city. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/45 "2015-09-21T22:30:44Z")
Coming from where? There were no zombies around. Nobody was discussing zombies. Nobody was asking about defenses against zombies. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/46 "2015-09-21T22:37:56Z")
> [@Critical1](#): > > Sooo Mom is an Alcoholic. (my guess) > And other than mom leaving the compound it was a pretty solid episode. It was certainly the one with the lowest dumb/not dumb ratio yet. > > but the one scene where mom spots the military guys coming right at her ON AN EMPTY STREET OVER A HILL and we are somehow supposed to believe that she not only sees them first but that by running over to a nearby lifted truck and scooting under it the same military guys COMING OVER A HILL with a direct line of sight at the only moving thing (mom) all manage to somehow not see her. This idiot style writing is why no one gets it when they try and convey anything on the show ever. If I had to infer what they were trying to convey here it would be that the military guys deliberately ignored her because it was so fucking obvious that there is no other explanation. > > Its a lot like the scene where Morgan ties those guys up and puts them in a car and then honks the horn to summon the zombies to the car…only for some reason we were supposed to believe that Morgan was checking to make sure it was safe for _Reasons_ Also, IMO, it would have made more sense to the story if the teenage boy who first saw the flashing lights had gone outside the fence rather than Madison. Also , it seems a bit odd that no one actually used the term ‘morse code’ in reference to the lights flashing from the building on the opposite hill… Speaking of those ‘military guys’, I had the impression they were not National Guard but paramilitaries of some kind; organized looters. They were wearing forage caps instead of helmets and some sort of scarves over their faces. Yes, they had a Humvee, but maybe they had ambushed some troops and taken it from them. ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/47 "2015-09-21T23:06:03Z")
I wanna see a third series, called “Walking Dead Jade Helm.” In it, the dead begin to rise in… say, Houston, Texas. And the national guard shows up. And very quickly, everything goes completely to hell, as enough people are certain that this is the beginning of the Obamapocalypse that crazed gunplay and mass murder becomes the order of the day. Wouldn’t have diddly for plot, but talk about nonstop action… ---
**Author:** ![The\_Evil\_Prince\_Zorte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@The\_Evil\_Prince\_Zorte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Evil_Prince_Zorte)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/48 "2015-09-21T23:06:34Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > Coming from where? There were no zombies around. Nobody was discussing zombies. Nobody was asking about defenses against zombies. The commander said they had created a 6 mile infection free zone around their neighborhood. That doesn’t mean it isn’t wall to wall zombies from downtown to Anaheim. The numbers of zombies filtering into their no-man’s land is going to increase until the patrols can’t keep up with them. I could see hundreds of thousands of zombies moving north to wash up against the San Gabriel and Santa Monica mountains, with more pouring through the pass from the San Fernando Valley, creating a huge eddy of the undead on top of their East LA safe zone. The military knows that a few hundred thousand people spread across miles isn’t exactly a crowd, but they don’t yet know that they can accumulate into massive herds. They could grow confident in their ability to clean out isolated clusters of zombies, then find themselves faced with something the size of Coachella shambling through their territory. ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/49 "2015-09-21T23:12:53Z")
> [@The\_Evil\_Prince\_Zorte](#): > > The commander said they had created a 6 mile infection free zone around their neighborhood. That doesn’t mean it isn’t wall to wall zombies from downtown to Anaheim. The numbers of zombies filtering into their no-man’s land is going to increase until the patrols can’t keep up with them. I could see hundreds of thousands of zombies moving north to wash up against the San Gabriel and Santa Monica mountains, with more pouring through the pass from the San Fernando Valley, creating a huge eddy of the undead on top of their East LA safe zone. > > The military knows that a few hundred thousand people spread across miles isn’t exactly a crowd, but they don’t yet know that they can accumulate into massive herds. They could grow confident in their ability to clean out isolated clusters of zombies, then find themselves faced with something the size of Coachella shambling through their territory. Begging the question of what the REST of the military has been up to, and how much of the greater LA area has been “pacified.” It’s already a foregone conclusion that at some point in the near future, the sol’jers are gonna bug out and abandon our civilian protagonists. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/50 "2015-09-22T00:34:00Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > Busy work? In 9 days they went from enough normalcy that they were still putting out trash cans and coming home from the airport … to having a neighborhood street litted with corpses (some zombie and some human) and no living people for miles around. > > That’s a bit more than busy work. By busy work I meant like setting up the fence and settling in etc. I think the point of the episode was that most of the people, including the Husband were so desperately for normalcy that they were ignoring what was obviously a fishy situation whereas others like the “Wife” were willing to dig deeper and were obviously right. ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/51 "2015-09-22T00:36:47Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > Also, IMO, it would have made more sense to the story if the teenage boy who first saw the flashing lights had gone outside the fence rather than Madison. Also , it seems a bit odd that no one actually used the term ‘morse code’ in reference to the lights flashing from the building on the opposite hill… > > Speaking of those ‘military guys’, I had the impression they were not National Guard but paramilitaries of some kind; organized looters. They were wearing forage caps instead of helmets and some sort of scarves over their faces. Yes, they had a Humvee, but maybe they had ambushed some troops and taken it from them. The ones that went past mom under the SUV were in NBC gear. Not sure what other soldiers you’re talking about. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/52 "2015-09-22T00:46:12Z")
Am I the only one who’s notice frequent “Crow sound” on both this and the parent series? ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/53 "2015-09-22T00:50:48Z")
> [@Lsura](#): > > She cut open the fence, right? Show of hands: who believes she did anything to secure it back once she was inside again? Shhh, you’ll spoil the surprise about “how did the zombies get in?” ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/54 "2015-09-22T01:00:24Z")
> [@Shakester](#): > > The suicide note was from the next-door lady to her husband. The neighbour that ended up shot by the troops as her husband attempted to hug her. Alicia was reading it, not writing it. Thanks, that makes a lot more sense than Alicia pining over her middle aged next door neighbor (granted it’s a less interesting backstory). > [@doorhinge](#): > > …Does the Nation Guard in California have corpsmen or medics? 3 2 Echo told Ofelia he couldn’t get medicine from the “corpsman”. Are the Marines, or Navy, supporting the NG units … AFAIK only the Navy (Marines us navel medical personnel) has corpsmen, Army, Air Force, & National Guard have medics. I think these troops are National Guard (which would make the most sense). At this point manpower shortages are probably getting pretty severe so personnel from different services are working together in ways they wouldn’t normally. ---
**Author:** ![Laggard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de053/32.png) [@Laggard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laggard)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/55 "2015-09-22T02:21:36Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > Speaking of those ‘military guys’, I had the impression they were not National Guard but paramilitaries of some kind; organized looters. They were wearing forage caps instead of helmets and some sort of scarves over their faces. Yes, they had a Humvee, but maybe they had ambushed some troops and taken it from them. They looked straight up U.S. military to me. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/56 "2015-09-22T02:24:00Z")
We only saw it tonight. Will the people they killed zombify and attack the safe zone? ---
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/57 "2015-09-22T04:30:27Z")
I thought I quoted whomever it was who quoted me and asked about the head shots. We saw the police and military trying to take down some fresh walkers and after numerous body shots they finally aimed for the head. So like someone else said there probably wouldn’t be a huge learning curve. Also, when she was looking at all the bodies, fresh and not so fresh, it looked like they had all been headshot with the exception of the one near the car but I think that was so we’d keep expected her to revive and try to eat someone. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/58 "2015-09-22T10:37:24Z")
Thanks, Wile E. ---
**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/59 "2015-09-22T13:39:08Z")
OK, let’s count the number of walkers that were in this episode. One…no…no…that was a dead lady. Um… Has there ever been a WD franchise episode without an active Zombie appearance? ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030/60 "2015-09-22T14:36:00Z")
> [@BubbaDog](#): > > OK, let’s count the number of walkers that were in this episode. > > One…no…no…that was a dead lady. > > Um… > > Has there ever been a WD franchise episode without an active Zombie appearance? I thought for sure the body next to…what’shername? while she was hiding under the car was going to attack. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fear-the-walking-dead-1-04-not-fade-away-open-spoilers/732030.md?page=4)