For some reason I’ve always thought Rick was in the coma for a month. If the entire series to date really only covers 8 days, it could easily be Rick’s baby from before he was shot. This would also be a reasonable timeframe for Lori to want a pregnancy test.
Do we know how long Rick was in a coma?
Morgan tells him, when they are at the police station in the first episode of the first season, that the gas lines have been down for at least a month. That, in addition to the fact that fresh flowers don’t dry as completely as the ones in Rick’s room were shown to be that quickly (I think the last time I hung roses to dry, it took at least a month for them to dry), leads me to believe that Rick’s coma lasted a couple of months.
The amount of time between when Rick woke and when he was reunited with Lori seems like only a couple of days in the first season, but I guess my assumption is that it took him longer than that to get to Atlanta. I also figured for a couple of days unaccounted for here and there.
Those assumptions (admittedly, some extrapolation on my part), plus the fact that I doubt Lori would have requested a pregnancy test if this was her first period that was missed or late, makes me more confident that Shane is the likely father.
I am not wedded to this idea, however, and I have not read the books, which may have the answer.
The military angle is explained pretty well in World War Z – for my money, the most thorough and “logical” approach to the zombie world. In short, the military gets overwhelmed by the sheer number of zombies and the fact that conventional military tactics are woefully ineffective. Sure, a small horde can be taken out fairly easily. But when it’s* thousands* coming at you in unceasing waves, and they have no fear, can’t be discouraged or slowed much by anything except a direct blow to the head – that’s very different from conventional means of fighting an enemy. Spraying machine gun rounds into the group doesn’t stop them. Setting them on fire just makes a flaming zombie that keeps coming.
In World War Z, the military adapted their methodology, but it was too late and in some situations the number of walking dead simply was too much. There’s a particular battle that was pivotal, and reading about how the soldiers faced the hordes that just never stopped coming… it’s chilling stuff.
This description makes me think of the bug vs. Mobile Infantry scenes in the Starship Troopers film.
Great description, thanks.
Not to mention that some of the zombies may still resemble friends and family -
The Battle of Yonkers, and yea, it was really creepy. I think they moved the location for the movie.
It’s always a bit of a handwave how a military could fall to brainless zombies in an actual battle. Human wave attacks didn’t work in WWI and those guys were backed by artillery and they carried guns and grenades. A couple A-10 Warthogs could clean out downtown by themselves. A tank could just drive down the street running over zombies and all the abandoned cars.
The main reason I could see it happening would the zombie plague hitting everywhere at once, or over a region. It would take days for the military to assemble at which point it’d be too late. The logistics system that supports them would be collapsing, and maybe a lot of the units would be zombified themselves.
Not only does the military have to deal with wave after wave of zombies, but their own casualties become part of the enemy hordes–every wounded comrade they carry back who doesn’t make it, everyone bitten, everyone who dies of natural causes behind their lines. The only way to really be safe is to have an impregnable, physical barrier around your fortress and to be absolutely ruthless with your own wounded/dying.
It actually wasn’t thousands, it was millions. Yonkers was right outside New York, and New York was 95% infected at that point. They killed tens of thousands, and behind them were millions of New York residents still left.
So you haven’t read World War Z? The point about Yonkers was that military tech is designed to inflict sufficient damage to kill a human. Shrapnel doesn’t even slow down the zombies unless the brain is destroyed. Overpressure does nothing, so a thermobaric bomb simply leaves a bunch of burning zombies walking (or crawling) towards you.
An Abrams M1A1 tank has a run time of 3 1/2 hrs. from the time you start the motor until the time you run dry. That gives you about an hour and a half out and an hour and a half back and pray you do not lead a huge herd of zombies back with you because you are a stitting duck while you refuel.
Question: Were Lori and Shane having an affair before Rick’s coma and the zombie appocalypse, did it start after or was she just flinging her legs in the air so Shane would protect her and Carl? Shane seems pretty overly-committed to them, otherwise.
I think Shane has always been attracted to Lori, and been kind of like an uncle to Carl. He genuinely tried to protect Rick until the town was abandoned, and even then tried to give him a chance by blocking the door to his room (as seen in a flashback in S1).
Once he thought Rick was genuinely gone, he didn’t have to repress his feelings anymore. And now he’s stuck in this ugly situation which really wasn’t anyone’s fault.
Yes I did and there was a lot of handwaving why the hordes were basically invincible to a modern military but could be felled by the millions by guys with hunting rifles standing in a circle. Dropping bombs on zombies would turn their brains to paste or dismember them. Burning them would destroy their muscles and render them immobile and eventually they’d be a pile of bones/teeth. A couple mounted machine guns may not kill them all but they’d be cut to pieces and wouldn’t be going anywhere very quickly, black knight attitude or not. Anything else means they have adamantium skulls or they’re animated by some supernatural force (which could be true anyway, but these stories usually try not to go that far). All the other factors go in favor of the zombies (logistics, psychology, numbers, etc.) but they can’t be immune to bombs* too*.
Speaking of fire, the Walking Dead needs moar burning. Molotov cocktails, a gas trap, anything.
I’m no expert but i’ve never heard of war casualties having their brains turned to paste by a bomb. If it doesn’t destroy the brain it is not going to kill a zombie. Zombies with broken bodies are still dangerous.
Exactly. Imagine what just one mounted 50 Cal would do. Even non-headshots would rip zombie bodies apart. They might not die, but we’ve seen in this show that a legless zombie is pretty pathetic and impotent. After a short while, the zombie bodies and parts would themselves be a barrier.
And we’re talking about slow moving zombies. They would not be evasive, they would have no tactics, and they are stymied by chain link fencing. Simply speaking of the military being overrun, we’re not talking about any real need for sorties or for taking objectives. Just defense.
It also appears that the time between bite and zombiehood is quite long, so even when bitten, a given soldier will still have the opportunity to reduce enemy ranks without posing any threat to his colleagues.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m perfectly willing to buy into the premise in order to enjoy the show. I just can see no way that the zombies of the walking dead world would remotely come close to posing any threat to the military. I think they’d even struggle against a decent SWAT team.
Its simple - its all about numbers - and they got more.
From the looks of atlanta - they did do pretty good against them - of course, there is the limit of a tv budget - but there weren’t “taht many” zombies left compared to the population.
Yep, that’s what the military folks thought in World War Z, too. They were wrong.
Of course, it does depend a lot on the type of zombie you’re dealing with. Granted, the Walking Dead zombies do tend to be among the slowest, least hostile, and easily dispatched zombie types. Give them a little bit more speed and aggression, and your military might have a bigger challenge.
Sorry, but that’s doesn’t really do it. There are about 9.8 million people in Georgia, more than half around the Atlanta area.
There are about 120,000 military personnel at Ft Benning alone. Even if they were the only ones in Georgia, and assuming that the zombie population is roughly that of the state, they would need only succeed at a rate of 82 to 1.
Factoring in the military personnel around the rest of the state, and the numbers of zombies taken out by various law enforcement organizations, then numbers just aren’t in the zombies favor.
By the way, am I the only one who was dying to see a zombie trapped in its seat belt during all those scenes of the cars abandoned on the highway?
That was one of the most vivid scenes for me in World War Z – people died while belted into their car seats, then reanimated as zombies, but then they were too stupid to know how to release themselves. So you had zombies just sitting in their cars, moaning and flailing around, slowly decaying. Harmless unless you got too close, but so creepy. Damn, I wish they had found a few of those in the Walking Dead. Would have added a bit of “oh damn, that really *would *happen” to the show.
Well, given that evidence, obviously I’m talking nonsense.