I just had another thought regarding the mayor; are they actually going to hold an election in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, cause that would just be stupid.
Random question: Do we know what year this takes place in? I was thinking it might all be in the '80s, but the SUVs they were driving looked like recent year models.
This does remind me of Lost in that no one has the “how on earth did US cities get nuked? by whom? and how? wtf is going on?” conversation.
No, it takes place in the present.
Correct. There was a passing reference to 9/11 when the “St. Louis Cop” tried to explain his knowledge of fallout ("…after 9/11 we got a lot of training…").
I’m still sticking by the theory that this is an experiment and Hawkins is there to record the results.
Can we make Dale deputy mayor? He went out and found the train for the grocery lady, and he’s starting to grow on me.
Highly unlikely.
I had trouble with the scouts they sent out.
One guy per vehicle? I’d want a partner who had my back.
No weapons? You’re a farming community. I know there are rifles and handguns around there. Take them.
Minivans? Again, you’re a farming community. I know there are 4-wheel drive vehicles around there. You don’t know what you might need to get around or what conditions the roads might be in.
They just seemed really unprepared for it being such a big deal.
Also, the store owner lady bugged the crap outta me. “If I don’t get that shipment, I’m out of business.” Uh… hello? You’re pretty much out of business anyway, lady. And any real human wouldn’t have been worried about people not paying when people needed her stock to, you know, survive (previous episode). I’m pretty sure after a nuclear war, the dollar bill isn’t going to be worth a whole lot.
They may have had weapons…we didn’t see them, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have any in the vehicle.
What minivans? I saw two large SUVs, a Jeep Wrangler and a big 4x4 pickup truck.
Actually, I think there probably would be people in denial. The alternative is the realization that you’re pretty much being blown back to the stone age.
What I want to know is what happened to everyone else outside of town. There’s the convicts, and farmer guy saw some tanks, but everyone else has just vanished. Where’s the survivors from the planes? That train was within walking distance, someone had to be driving it. Aren’t there any other small towns closer than the major cities? Wandering refugees? FEMA or military personnel dropping by just long enough to give some clue as to what’s going on?
Lost at least is on an island. It makes sense that no one else is around to provide some answers. Unless there’s some supernatural type weirdness going on out there (and if there is, I’m out of here, I already watch Lost, thank you), it doesn’t make sense that no one from out of town has come through.
We’ll see. I may be proven wrong next week, but Hawkins seems a little too knowledgeable.
I’m totally freaked out when people are going around alone. I’m waiting for the zombies to jump out (*not a spoiler, just funny speculation)
Especially Dale. Everything he did, looked straight out of a horror movie. It was only the fact that there wasn’t any sounds except the non-horror soundtrack that kept me safe.
I think Hawkins is storing up supplies for later use. Gas and Guns.
I had a problem with the big BBQ. I would like to have seen them turn the meat into jerkey. Something storable in room temp, and still maintains its nutrients. Of course I’m thinking as if it’s a holocaust and they will need to ration food fora long time. Unlike these folks who are expecting the Chinese to come in and bring them food.
As for the reel-to-reel black box recorder. In the movie “Millenium” they listened to a FDR using the same type of reel-to-reel machine. So yes, I think they still use tape for FDRs.
Lastly, I don’t like losing contact with people. My strategy would’ve been to send 4 cars out in a chain. All 4 go together until you lose contact, then send one back to the edge of town-contact range. The three remaining go until you lose contact with him. Those three send one of theirs back to the edge of first-man contact range, and then two continue. That way, each person is always in contact with two other parties (except the last in the chain). Would this get them to the big cities they were going to?
As it is, they’ve got 3 parties out on the loose, with information about their town, which as Hawkins suggested might be a bad idea.
I think that’s because he knows what happened and who was behind it…he may have been part of it at some point, but now he just wants his family to survive it.
At this point I would be wondering if it was infact a nuclear attack.
Correct me if I’m wrong but buddy who was in the rain for 20 minutes was fine. When they used the geiger counter outside city hall it didn’t blip.
Maybe it was a conventional bomb(s), not nuclear.
As far as the prison bus, maybe there were only the 2 prisoners on it.
I’m sticking with this show just to see who the hell this Hawkins guy is. It totally looked like the barrel he was bricking-in in his basement had some kind of a explosive device on the lid.
I’ll give it a couple more weeks, I need all my brain power for “Lost” on Wednesday nights!
MtM
Maybe the writers don’t know anymore about nukes than the 24 writers know about computers or satellites. 
Absolutely impossible that it’s all faked. If nothing else, how could anyone cut off all transmissions from the nearest network affiliated TV stations without tipping off the rest of the country that something bizzare and illegal was going on.
My W.A.G.'s: Hawkins is someone in the know who relocated his family to Jericho because he had knowledge (a few weeks warning?) that something was going down sooner or later. He picked Jericho as one the comparitively safe areas of the country.
Here’s how I would write it: there was no missile or bomber attack. All the nukes went off almost simulaneously around the country; apparently they were planted. Maybe they were left over from a Cold War operation by either the USSR or China to have an instant-attack option; years later, someone got ahold of the still active detonation codes, and used them.
I think that between his mom’s store getting stripped and the profound lack of gratitude by Bitch Girl, that teen guy is going to move the goods off the train to his mom’s basement secretly and say to hell with everyone else.
So, it turns out the launch codes revealed in War Games really did work!
Here’s a spoiler
The CBS web site says the power comes back on in a day or two.
How will he keep milk and meat from going bad?
I see your point, but it’s been less than a day since the bombs went off and they aren’t thinking long term yet. The mayor actually expects to be able to turn the power back on soon. I’m guessing that there older women of Jericho will find they have skills very much in demand soon. Canning food, sewing, etc.
It’s not his mom - his mom died in Atlanta. Remember the voice mail on the message recorder? He just worked in her store.