In the Romero zombie movie canon… yes, that’s it. When you die, you stay dead for about fifteen minutes give or take, and then you’re a zombie.
In the first season of TWD, Dr. Jenner at the CDC in Atlanta explains that this is because of a disease; he doesn’t specify if it’s a virus or bacteria or what. We see on a wall screen what happens to a brain upon somatic death… and reanimation. Jenner was working on the disease, as were a French team, but as the power grid failed and civilization collapsed, this became futile, and Jenner winds up blowing up the building to destroy the other harmful viruses and diseases stored inside. Later, Rick says that “we’ve all got it.” The implication is that there is an airborne zombie disease, everyone is infected, but as long as your immune system fends it off, you’re fine.
When the immune system fails, or you die by some other method not involving brain damage… you reanimate as a zombie.
Human bites are nasty, and will usually get infected if not treated, but they’re not generally fatal. Zombie bites seem to be something different, as medical personnel in both shows have said that zombie bites will go septic and kill you in a short time (days?) …and then you reanimate.
I wondered about this myself. My WAG is that maybe he was just wandering in an unsafe zone and they placed him there to observe. Maybe it was before they decided to just wipe out everybody?
Liza said that the infection from bites wasn’t treatable, they had tried everything.
As for Strand saving Nick, he probably thought he’d be useful and easy to control because of his addiction, maybe Strand has some drugs stashed, and when/if he’s not useful anymore then you can always Shane him and shoot him in the knee when you need to escape a horde of Zombies.
ETA: I meant to add how all the leaving doors open shit was driving me nuts and then they finally shut a door behind them and it has a security lock. I thought,“oh yeah, that’s going to bite them in the ass and no one will ever shut a door behind them again.”
On the Talking Dead segment, the actor who plays Travis surprised me with something I hadn’t worked out for myself, but which presumably Salazar had – Travis had made a deal that if he let the soldier go, the soldier would kill Salazar. The soldier instead decided to shoot Ophelia. At that point, Travis’ viciously beating the guy to a pulp was not only vengeance for Ophelia, but was also compounded by a need to cover up his plot and to expiate his guilt.
In a previous episode, after making a scene at the main gate, Ophelia brought the soldier back to her house so Salazar the Butcher could torture him. I assume it was pay back time.
Actually, Jenner says they have no idea what it is: virus, disease, or act of god.
We have no evidence of any kind of disease. The best evidence we have is Jenner, who doesn’t have the first clue what it is, or if it’s even a disease at all.
The events in both shows are strong evidence that it’s not a communicable disease. Humanity just woke up with the condition one day, out of the blue.
I’ll give them a pass on the 1st one since telling the neighbors would take up valuable time and there’s the awkward matter of explaining that you’ve been torturing a soldier in the basement. But it was still a dick move to leave the gate open, hopefully what’s left of the USAF bombs the neighborhood before the horde hits it.
That’s a horribly cruel think to do to Liza, Madison agreed it was a fate worse than death (which is why she made Liza promise to shoot her rather let her reanimate). The best thing to do is just lie to Chris and tell them his mother shot herself. Season 2 was ordered before the pilot aired.
Yeah, that didn’t look like a sailing yacht. Plus I doubt anyone other Strand has any idea how to operate & maintain one.
He was distracting the zombie from Nick & Strand.
Looks good. I wonder if this is meant to be the airliner we saw careening out of control over LA a few epis ago. Word is one of the characters from the webisode will show up in season 2.
The medical facility where Liza was working was a field hospital put together on a community college campus. They were supposed to be evacuated to Edwards Air Force Base; I don’t think that’s fallen yet.
As for Hawaii, if this is a pathogen then everyone ends up carrying a dormant version that only activates on death. Hawaii would already be dealing zombies. Now it is possible that being a series of islands and having a lot military personnel on the ground might make it easier for the local authorities to get a handle on the crisis, but Hawaii imports most of it’s food. Things would get real ugly real fast once the supply chain breaks down. New Zealand might be a better, assuming it’s government can get the situation under control.
I had no idea Captain Cufflinks was so enamored of Strand and Nick that he’d lie perfectly still and allow a zombie to eat his leg, just to keep it busy.
I am curious about that airliner myself.
And based on online sources, Dr. Jenner at the CDC didn’t precisely know WHAT the pathogen was… but it affected his wife’s brain very much like existing pathogens. Regrettably, researching a previously unknown pathogen seems to be a lengthy process, and the apocalypse didn’t give him enough time.
I have a tough time with “one of the laws of reality has simply changed.” Hell, that’s worse than the “space probe from Venus” explanation we get in Night Of The Living Dead. However, Kirkman’s been fairly mealymouthed about it, and has indicated that he doesn’t much care, so long as he has zombies to play with…
The dead walk. One of the laws of reality has clearly changed.
Regardless of what disease, virus, pathogen or bacteria could do, it’s clearly not possible for a purely biological (as opposed to supernatural) agent to create the zombie effect.