They also didn’t lock the factory to keep her out when they left the city.
The fact that she feels like she “discovered a secret” is entirely her own projection, as suggested above.
Well…
The surplus of milk containers can’t be a global thing. If they need that drink, packing it in bottles, jars or whatever is around must be a thing. Diabate also noted the milk cartons. Is there really only those that can be used?
And the warehouse may not be locked, but it sure made for engaging tv with her skulking around with a flashlight and gasping just before the end credit.
My problem with this is that I do not really think the hive mind would do stuff in such an insidious/circumspect/convoluted way. It was played for the tv audience, not Carol. And my suspension of disbelief (which is quite large) doesn’t stretch that far. The improbably, mysterious, must be grounded in the reality of the characters of the story. This pulled me out of the story, especially as it was telegraphed in such a (IMO) ham-handed way. I kept thinking - ‘of course it’s soylent green.’ And I think that I was supposed to think that and not be surprised.
Rhea Seehorn (who I was not familiar with) does an amazing job. She’s on screen 90 per cent of the time and I can feel her frustration, anger, bewilderment and everything else. It’s quite the tour de force. I just don’t think the story matches her acting ability.
The individual that was John Cena mentioned that the contents did vary by locale, but Albuquerque and Las Vegas aren’t that far apart (576 miles, says Google) and the same types of facilities are likely available in both. If they’re using the same milk cartons in Delhi or Beijing I’d be much more suspicious.
It’s just not that kind of show. Of course it was soylent green, that wasn’t supposed to be a cliffhanger any more than whether Zosia was alive or not at the end of the previous episode. The cliffhanger is “what is Carol going to do now” “how will this affect the hive” etc.
They’ve done nothing in a convoluted or suspicious way. They’re not hiding anything. They’ll answer any question you want (other than, perhaps, how to destroy them / revert humanity) which is obviously quite reasonable. Mr. Diabate was smart enough to simply talk to them and ask and they told him, no subterfuge or deception whatsoever. Carol just never asked because she’s suspicious and stubborn (and because the plot wants to drip-feed us what the hive is up to). The sneaking around and “reveal” of the source of the food is completely the result of Carol’s personality and her mindset that they must be more evil/deceptive than they appear and the fact that she won’t ask any questions. She views herself as the last of the human resistance and the hive as a hostile alien takeover, of course she’s going to think in terms of sneaking around and revealing their evil plot instead of simply asking.
The milk carton thing is simply because the hive is ultra efficient and doesn’t care about preference or marketing. So there’s no need to ship coke bottles all across the country. Cities that have a milk carton factory will distribute their drinks with milk cartons. Places with a beer bottling factory are probably distributing it in beer bottles. Etc. They even specifically said this – that the containers would vary based on local availability and manufacturing.
Feel free to stop watching the show but I don’t think you’re correctly identifying the flaws or understanding the things that make you reject it.
Well I agree with huge holes bit. And disappointed that it was the obvious body parts. But yeah the twist was that there was no trying to hide it and no absolute horror from anyone else.
It does bother me that the other immunes don’t recognize that if the entire hive mind can’t come up with a solution then they won’t and that the only way to save the minds of all subsumed in the hive is to return to individuality. They are the drowning that need to be saved.
Is there any population level at which the unwillingness of the Joined to survive without killing any plants or animals is sustainable?
Depends on the exact restrictions of their ethics. They’re milking cows now (they referred to cows that need to be milked) but that’s handling a problem that was already created. Are they ethically okay with breeding and raising dairy cows? If animals are allowed to graze and eat natural crops and then be milked, you could probably sustain a population of tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions on that. If they’re limited long term to just gathering fallen fruit and nuts and natural dead crops, you could at least sustain a few million people on that with modern tech/transportation networks. Do their ethics allow them to plant crops that eventually die and they harvest what they could from them? It wouldn’t be optimal but it could be viable.
I would think they’d be able to engineer/breed crops that would naturally release their fruit/seeds/whatever that they’d feel like they were able to ethically consume, but you’re still probably talking about losing billions in the transition.
It’s hard to imagine an ethical system that wouldn’t allow them to pick ripe fruit from a plant, though. The plants “want” that fruit to be picked, it’s part of their lifecycle. It doesn’t harm them.
I don’t think that’s true. The hive is extremely limited in what they can do, the million obvious solutions are just not applicable to them. The survivors are trying to think of what they can do that the hive CAN’T. There’s really too few of them to do anything realistically, but they are not trying to outthink the hive.
Theoretically, can’t most necessary nutrients be synthesized from fossil fuels? Their current situation is dire, but it isn’t a forgone conclusion the “do no harm” ethos is necessarily a dead end for humanity even if still numbered in the billions.
They won’t be able to depend on human derived protein (HDP) for long. According to XKCD, a human contains 100,000 calories and the average person consumes 2,500 calories per day. John Cena said that their food is 8-12% HDP. So, at 10%, their daily supplements include 250 calories from humans. That is only 400 days of food from one body. The 1 billion that died will only be able to sustain the remaining 7 billion for approximately 2 months.
In a “there can be only one” scenario, XKCD concluded that eating 100% humans would only be sustainable for 33 months.
So they’ll give the Immune any type of lethal weapon, including nukes, they ask for, but can’t build agricultural robots even if it would yake an Immune to press the start button? 
I guess this means that they can’t actually make any weapons either. Also how plausible is the shelf stable universal nutritional solution? Wouldn’t the others still need fiber?
No, I was wondering whether there was a population level sustainable with their ethical restrictions without depending on human-derived protein.
I can’t imagine extracting fossil fuels is on the table given their inability to harm even plants.
Perhaps the hive mind is finally able to produce workable fusion power and then a Star Trek-style replicator?
I don’t follow. How does does extracting fossil fuels harm plants or animals? They won’t be burning it. Aren’t oil rigs and such on concrete platforms or already denuded ground?
I don’t know why I was thinking brand new wells instead of using current oil rigs, I guess that would work.
Releasing their seed is the natural state of plants. Having all the seeds fall directly below the plant in one clump is a bad thing. So plants evolve ways to spread them about. Having seeds in structures eaten by animals (with seeds tough enough to survive). Seeds that are blown by the wind. Seeds (or fruits) that float away on water. Many types of seeds are “spring loaded”, with structures that build tension as they dry out, eventually popping and flinging the seeds away. Plants that keep their seeds clustered together as they dry out is a maladaption created by seoective breeding by humans (mostly thousands of years ago) because picking clusters of seeds from the plant is much, much more effective and productive than trying to scrounge for seeds spread far and wide across the ground. Corn/maze, for example, can’t continue without humans because the seed-filled cob wrapped in tight husks would simply rot without spreading seeds as nature intended. And fruit? Some kinds fall off the plant all at once and at a useful stage but think of all the fruits that don’t fall off until they are rotting, or are too close to it for transportation/storage. Think about waiting for tomatoes to fall off the plant, for instance. Breeding fruits/seeds that don’t fall naturally is one of the ways humanity was able to exponentially grow its population. Getting rid of that would mean probably one to two (or three) orders of magnitude more effort/power consumption needed to collect enough food, especially since you are doing away with all crops that involve eating the bodies of plants: no potatoes, cassava, taro, etc. The system John Cena described is simply not survivable, and will end in much less than 10 years.
Did you ever see The Leftovers? Same creator as Lost, but a concise three seasons and fantastic storytelling. Check it out.
I stalled out on that one a couple of episodes in. It seemed well made and earnest, but I found it slow and sort of…gloomily melancholic. I don’t mind some bleakness and despair, but non-stop morose sorta tires me out. But I did take a liking to Carrie Coon after season three of Fargo, so I should probably make another run at it. I might have just been in a mood.