# The Walking Dead; 1.05 "Wildfire" (open spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 29, 2010, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234 "2010-11-29T01:05:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/61 "2010-11-30T00:28:48Z")
I like this as series as it’s about what the humanity that is left would do to deal with the stricken and not about what will the optimized response to survive be. Most movies just deal with shoot or die and be damned with the people that you loved. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/62 "2010-11-30T00:31:57Z")
I thought Andrea was going to do this hysterical denial thing when Amy revived- “She’s alive! She got better!”. The whole time ZombieAmy was struggling to bite Andrea I was screaming “You _ **RETARD!!!** _ That’s it, I can’t feel sorry for anyone that stupid getting killed, you just won the Darwin Award!” So when it turned out Andrea knew what she was doing the whole time and was ready, I was pleasantly surprised and relieved. The science of the CDC lab thing went over my head. I never presumed that whatever causes zombiefication is really what IRL we call a virus anyway. All a real virus can do is reprogram living cells, usuallly to make more virus. This is… I dunno, something like a cell mimic that can very imperfectly replace the cells in tissue. BTW: was that _brain_ tissue he was working on in the clean room? Because if he needs infected-but-still-alive tissue to research, and Jim has passed on, then he’s going to looking at the survivors as a potential source of … _ **braaaainnsss** _. I half-expected at least one of the bodies lying in front of the CDC to be a “lurker” zombie (only moves when prey is nearby). Evidently we get some long-awaited back story next episode. Yay! Another vote for the unwisdom of driving around in open or softtop jeeps. ---
**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:** [November 30, 2010, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/63 "2010-11-30T01:04:31Z")
[Here’s](https://docs.google.com/View?docID=dfxj658_75nfpzxt&revision=_latest) a favourite zombie short story of mine. IMHO the author did a pretty good job of trying to give a Romero-style “everyone who dies comes back” outbreak a scientific explanation. Of course the science behind the viral agent it is nonsense, but it’s entertaining nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/64 "2010-11-30T02:01:05Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > Instant string quartet, you mean. > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > . > (Ya mean “voila,” not “viola.” 😃 ) Not really; I just think “Viola!” is funny. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/65 "2010-11-30T02:08:43Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > \ > > Another vote for the unwisdom of driving around in open or softtop jeeps. I was wondering about that, too - there’s a handful of people left, and you need what, four or five large vehicles? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/66 "2010-11-30T02:22:47Z")
Amy’s reawakening scene was somintense, I’m probably going to have to skip it on repeat viewing. ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/67 "2010-11-30T02:25:51Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > No doubt, the science will be bad… but really, how could it be otherwise? What kind of “scientific” explanation for dead bodies rising up and becoming cannibalistic monsters COULD satisfy anyone? I’m sure that there are hard-core science people for whom it’s important, so I respect that they require more realistic science in their Zombie-calypse scenarios. Me? I’m happy if it makes a modicum of sense to my non-hard-science mind. Mira Grant’s book _Feed_ was good in this respect, since she went into some biological detail about virii and their reactions in the body, but I have not enough training in biology to know if it’s feasible or not. Therefore, for me, it worked, but I understand if others need better tech and science. > [@IvoryTowerDenizen](#): > > Of course. I certainly am not suggesting it ruins the show or it’s some big tragedy. But it can still drive me a wee bit nuts when I see it… Just like I still. need. more. African-American. zombies and survivors 🙂 > [@Sri\_Theo](#): > > I really like the episode. At the heart of most Zombie fiction is the breakdown of society, that some people fear and others secretly crave but what naturally follows from that is the recreation of a new order. Which is what I find the most appealing about post-apocalypse stories. This. There’s arbitrariness in the new rules, like Glen’s idea that “their” dead get buried, but the geeks (who are somebody’s dead, obviously, just not “their” dead) get burned. But like Lori’s character said, none of them have had any time to hold on to anything solid, to take time to process, to figure out the rules. Who was it that said “there are no rules!” when someone else said “it’s against the rules!”? The aftermath of any kind of apocalypse is the rebuilding of society, and it’s fascinating to me to see them all fumble around about it. In this respect, the leaving of Jim makes perfect sense in a nonsensical way - do they shoot one of “their” people while he’s still alive? Do they leave him one of their increasingly-valuable weapons (in fact, Rick offered, but Jim turned it down because “you’ll need it”)? Do they tie him to the tree to keep him from being a threat after he turns (that was the consensus in my living room)? > [@Sri\_Theo](#): > > This episode had opposing views - Andrea was holding on until the last so she could say goodbye to her sister, while the others were just “she’s dead”. Andrea’s desire to shoot her sister herself was telegraphed, I think, when she pulled the gun on Rick earlier in the episode as he approached her to (probably) try to convince her to go ahead and shoot Amy. She pulled the gun and said to him “I know how the safety works” (a reference to the second episode where she threatened to shoot him after he put their lives at risk in the department store run, and he told her the safety was on). I really do think that at that point, she was already planning to shoot Amy - she just needed to make sure that Amy was going to turn rather than stay dead. And she felt the need to take the responsibility herself, since she talked about not being there for her sister while they were growing up. > [@alphaboi867](#): > > Speaking of burning the dead; what the hell were they using as fuel? 😕 Wouldn’t it take a really long time to burn over a dozen corpse on an open pyre without using gas or kerosene? They can’t possibly stupid enough to waste their gas supplies burning corpses. Especially given that they were leaving anyway. I understand wanting to bury their own dead, but they should’ve just thrown all the zombies in a pile and left them to rot before leaving. Yea, this was the subject of some discussion in my living room as well. It takes a large amount of fuel and a relatively long burning time to cremate bodies, if I understand it correctly. So burning zombies would just make them stink more, and possibly release toxic (and zombifying) agents into the atmosphere, although my argument was that if the zombifying agent was airborne, everybody would already be dead and turned by now. ---
**Author:** ![drastic\_quench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e36b37/32.png) [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/68 "2010-11-30T03:14:35Z")
If there is a zombiefying agent, everyone living is already a carrier. Zombie bites and scratches don’t make you a zombie directly; they make you dead from infection. Anything that kills you but leaves your brain intact makes zombies in this world. ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/69 "2010-11-30T03:18:22Z")
> [@drastic\_quench](#): > > If there is a zombiefying agent, everyone living is already a carrier. Zombie bites and scratches don’t make you a zombie directly; they make you dead from infection. Anything that kills you but leaves your brain intact makes zombies in this world. That’s basically what the book I mentioned posited - all living things are carriers of the virus, and something (it varies) triggers the virus to become active, thus turning the carrier. I don’t know if that’s what’s happening in this show or not - they’ve been, shall we say, less than complete in their explanations. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/70 "2010-11-30T03:20:47Z")
> [@drastic\_quench](#): > > If there is a zombiefying agent, everyone living is already a carrier. Zombie bites and scratches don’t make you a zombie directly; they make you dead from infection. Anything that kills you but leaves your brain intact makes zombies in this world. So far, nothing in the show indicates anything like this. It seems to me that everyone believes that people who are infected by zombies become zombies. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/71 "2010-11-30T03:37:03Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > I was wondering about that, too - there’s a handful of people left, and you need what, four or five large vehicles? In the last episode Lori says something to the effect that they don’t have any rules. They’ve banded together but they really haven’t formed what I would call a cohesive group. The separate vehicles reflects that I think. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/72 "2010-11-30T07:46:34Z")
Why is the CDC HQ so fortified I wonder? I can’t believe the Fort Benning plan. I used to drive through the Fort Benning area all the time when I lived in Georgia. It’s heavily wooded, it’s on both sides of the highway, and it would be a terrible place to hide from zombies. Fort Benning houses tens of thousands of soldiers and their families (sometimes over 100,000- it’s freaking enormous) and is on the outskirts of Columbus, GA, a fairly densely populated metro area of 200,000. How many problems are there with this? -This isn’t a military invasion, so the army’s not really going to be a whole lot better prepared than anyone else -In the highly unlikely event that Ft. Benning magically kept out the zombies and the Zombie Causing Agent you can be sure it did so because all of its entrances are locked up tighter than Obama’s birth certificate and that anybody trying to get through the gates or over the razor wire is going to be blown away -If the military\* had\* survived you’d probably know from the planes and choppers and landcraft you’d have already seen; true, Rick saw a chopper in one ep but nobody else did and there’s a good chance he imagined it, and even if he did you can be pretty sure most of the military is screwed as the average citizen on this Generally you’d think it wise to stay out of cities altogether. If you just have to go to that general part of Georgia then go see if Jimmy Carter’s compound is available. Plains, GA is a tiny place (population 647 in the last Census and that’s spread out over miles), it’s less than 50 miles away from Ft. Benning, and the Carter compound is surrounded with fences and has a guard house. ---
**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/73 "2010-11-30T11:22:13Z")
> [@Kolga](#): > > I really do think that at that point, she was already planning to shoot Amy - she just needed to make sure that Amy was going to turn rather than stay dead. And she felt the need to take the responsibility herself, since she talked about not being there for her sister while they were growing up. I think that she wanted to apologize and say goodbye to her sister, and hoping there was even a bit of her left in the zombie. And that this was her plan from the start. ---
**Author:** ![Yodalicious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yodalicious/32/8195_2.png) [@Yodalicious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yodalicious)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/74 "2010-11-30T13:17:15Z")
The CDC building took me out of the story, because I live close to it, and it’s actually the [Cobb Energy Center](http://www.cobbenergycentre.com/). I love that one of my favorite shows is filmed in my home town, and in this case, 10 minutes from my house. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/75 "2010-11-30T14:22:10Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Why is the CDC HQ so fortified I wonder? It’s got a lab full of all sorts of nasty stuff including smallpox. While the lab in the show isn’t actually the CDC -thank you **Daddypants** for letting us know what building it is- I would think the show would justify it being so fortified because of that. I bet the military was there to protect the building from people who were coming to the CDC for a cure or as refugees. > [@](#): > > I can’t believe the Fort Benning plan. I certainly can. If I’m trying to figure out what areas are most likely to have some remnant of civilization I would guess a military base would be a decent place to start. They have a lot of people with weapons and supplies and the training to use them and a hierarchical structure built in place. I’d probably choose it over other areas. Then again I really have to suspend my disbelief when it comes to Romero style zombies winning a war. I can imagine short term problems as we say in the original _Night of the Living Dead_ but once people figure out how to put down the walkers it’s going to be a short fight. They don’t really think and can only use the most rudimentary of tools. Humans win hands down. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/76 "2010-11-30T16:11:52Z")
Re. military bases: doesn’t the military have contingency plans for a biowar/pandemic scenerio? So if a “wildfire” was declared, wouldn’t there be a response in place? ---
**Author:** ![lisacurl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/41988e/32.png) [@lisacurl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisacurl)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/77 "2010-11-30T16:51:49Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Why is the CDC HQ so fortified I wonder? The CDC in Atlanta includes a Level 4 Biosafety lab, so they have stocks of Ebola, Marburg, and other infectious agents for which there is no cure or treatment. ---
**Author:** ![DianaG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ab992/32.png) [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/78 "2010-11-30T17:12:56Z")
Exactly. It’s fortified to keep stuff IN, not out. ---
**Author:** ![EllisDee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellisdee/32/4531_2.png) [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/79 "2010-11-30T17:28:53Z")
Ha! Sure, the Department of Homeland Security has zero interest in keeping terrorists away from level 4 Biohazards. Just walk right in for a tour Mr. Bin Laden, the Ebola is over here… ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234/80 "2010-11-30T17:38:00Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > Then again I really have to suspend my disbelief when it comes to Romero style zombies winning a war. I can imagine short term problems as we say in the original _Night of the Living Dead_ but once people figure out how to put down the walkers it’s going to be a short fight. They don’t really think and can only use the most rudimentary of tools. Humans win hands down. I agree. The Z’s are really susceptible to entrapment and slaughter in prepared positions. If a group of people (say, a Company of infantry) armored the bottom two floors of windows, they could turn alleyways or other streets into kill zones. The Zs could then be methodically picked off by marksmen in the third floor windows. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-walking-dead-1-05-wildfire-open-spoilers/562234.md?page=5)