The almost childlike black-and-white morality in this thread is pretty comical, especially in the context of a survival setting.
What Shane did was not wrong, but it sucks to have to live with. Of course he’s not going to tell the story over a campfire. I in no way want to be disrespectful with this comparison, but I’ve no doubt that there are countless veterans who did nothing wrong but are loathe to discuss things they were forced to do in combat.
Plus, it should be pointed out that Otis provided a much bigger meal for the pursuing zombies to eat. That alone probably bought Shane an extra couple of seconds. Hell, they may still be there eating!
Y’all’re some cold mother f**kers! Remind me to never get stuck in a life raft with you. I have a feeling you’d resort to murder and cannibalism at the first scheduled mealtime.
Well, you could have someone warm and cuddly who would never compromise on their irrational but fervert sense of moral behavior, and let you, themselves, and a little boy die to satisfy your emotional morality if you’d prefer. I mean sure, you’d still die, but you’d at least be comforted by the fact that because no one made the cold, hard decision, you’re taking another person and an innocent little boy with you. All in the name of doing what’s right.
Reminds me of a scene in The Office where Dwight and Pam get stuck in an elevator, and within minutes Dwight is unzipping his fly to “establish a pee corner.” hehheh.
Once >90% of the human race has been zombified, it’s no longer comparable to “the first scheduled mealtime.”
Shane was concerned with Carl not Otis. How does him not shooting himself ( the guy who actually made it back and you know, saved Carl ) prove otherwise? Otis had refused his offer already to sacrifice himself. Otis may very well have wasted time trying to either stop Shane or rescue him thus again, letting Carl die. Shane had no idea how Otis would react if he tried to become zombie distraction.
It’s pretty clear to me that Otis either had to be in agreement with the plan or as it happened, be the plan. Otis wasn’t in agreement with the plan. He’d rather that all three of them die. I think he knew he couldn’t make it back alone but couldn’t face dying alone to save a child. He wanted to help Carl but not that much. In his defense, he didn’t even know the child.
In any case, he was clearly the less able one to get the medicine to Carl both physically and mentally so choosing him to die instead of the more able guy is exactly the choice you’d make if you were concerned for Carl.
The whole thing could have been avoided if they’d carried more ammo. That was a mistake. Not as big a mistake as only sending in two guys at night but still a mistake.
Personally, I find the lack of morality to be appalling. But maybe you classify me in the childish black & white corner.
You define morality as “better to let three of you die than do something distasteful to save two lives”, which I find pretty appalling. At least you can feel smug about having an innocent child bleed to death so you can feel good about yourself. You still haven’t laid out a single reason as to why this would result in any overall benefit to anyone, yet you still irrationally cling to the idea that you are morally superior to everyone who disagrees with you, just hoping that repetition will somehow mask your lack of reason. You value your ability to feel good about yourself as more important than the life of a child, and then chastise us for feeling differently.
We are all in awe of what a good person you are.
Otis wasn’t in the least bit suicidal nor did he have any desire to have Carl, Shane or himself killed. After all, when betrayed Otis fought like a caged animal against his murderer. Otis genuinely believed that he and Shane still had a chance at getting away.
Anyway, that’s it. I’m done with this particular discussion and I think we’ve beaten this zombie to death by now.
That was unnecessarily personal. I suggest you open a Pitt thread if you want to continue this line of discussion.
You accused me, and everyone else arguing on my side, as having an appaling lack of morality.
I understand why you don’t want to continue this discussion - because you have not once even tried to offer a rational argument for your position, but instead repeated your emotional reaction over and over again.
But you made this personal first by impugning my morality. And with no reason. I can defend my case with reason, you have yet failed to do so.
You’re done? You never even started. Until this post, you’ve done nothing beyond declare Shane’s act immoral. You’ve not offered a single cogent rejoinder to the proprosition that Shane’s action resulted in the least bad. The closest you’ve come is saying that Otis was fighting hard and still believed he and Shane had a chance. But, Otis’s belief is irrelevant to the reality he and Shane faced and the morality of Shane’s decision. You’re participation in this debate epitomizes half-assed.
If we’re arguing what makes the most sense in the new Zombie World Order, wouldn’t that be both of them trying to get out alive (even if that meant Carl dying), rather than sacrificing one for the other over a kid that’s probably going to be more of a liability than anything else? I mean if we’re going strictly for survival here then sure, give trying to save Carl your best, but ultimately it’s more important to have a strong, healthy male who knows military type stuff and the guy who is an EMT around rather than a kid who needs to be looked after, is now weak and a long way from successfully contributing positively to the group. Right?
It’s not what Shane did, it is how he did it.
Hell, they could have said,“Either only one of us makes it or none of us are going to make it and we have to save Carl. Rock-paper-scissors?”
I think Shane would shoot someone if the dilema was “only one can of Spam and two of us, what do we do?”
That dichotomy doesn’t really exist. It’s not like the weight of the respirator was what was stopping them. If both of them come back, Carl lives, but the situation was clearly designed to make that possibility look to be slim. There was no way for Shane to save Otis short of sacrificing himself - which he offered to do.
I like that method better, only make it realistic. Have Shane and Otis argue about who should go and who should stay, finally ending up in a game of rock paper scissors. The first time they both pick rock. Damn. Second time they both pick paper. Damn. Third time… and then zombies start eating them. End the episode with Carl Junior slowly bleeding to death.
Then we can all feel good that Shane gave Otis a fair chance.
Rapish? 
(I agree with you, anyway - he’s obviously not made a habit of raping all the women in the group.)
SenorBeef and Odesio, you’re making an interesting point with your very argument - this whole issue seems to be very much logic versus emotions. I’m about 75/25 on logic versus emotions in the scenario of “The Walking Dead” world - you need logic to survive and do what you have to do, but if you completely revert to savages, is there a point to surviving?
Shane genuinely believed that he and Otis had no chance of both getting away and that Carl was dead if they tried. He acted on that thought and acted morally appropriate to that belief.
How is minimizing the suffering is a situation reverting to savages? An enlightened man can rationally make that decision - and be morally and logically correct - and in no way be a savage.
If I offer you the hypothetical - either one person dies or a thousand dies, your choice, and you have no way of saving everyone, and if you do nothing, a thosuand people do. You of course pick saving the thousand lives… Does that make you a savage by choosing the one person to die?
It was a shitty situation with no happy ending. Shane knew someone would have to die to save the other two. He offered to be that sacrifice. Is that the act of a savage killer who’s just looking for a reason to shoot people? The other guy wouldn’t recognize the situation and comply. So he was left with two options - die along with Otis and Carl, or only having Otis die.
This isn’t even a complex moral decision. The fact that people can see it as abhorrent shows a complete dominance of emotion over reason. Hence the result of someone feeling as though they’re somehow moral in letting three people die when only one had to. It doesn’t make sense.
Is Shane becoming a savage at this point though? Would a savage not have killed Dale? What use does Dale serve for Shane? He’s old and doesn’t do anything no one else can do. He does serve in fact as a threat and it’s not like everybody would assume he did anything if Dale disappeared in the woods. It’s zombie world after all. A savage would have eliminated the threat then and there. Shane used logic to scare Dale ( actually warning him how if he had been a savage how stupid confronting him was going again with the theme of having to smarten up if they want to survive ) then let it go. Tough but not savage.
Shane is probably going to become a savage because this is television but at this point he’s hurt no one except Otis and that was justified.
As to my own feelings, saying that Shane is capable of making the “hard decisions” reminds me of folks that only claim to “tell it like it is.” The reason they do that is for their own benefit and not because anyone else truly needs their brand of “truth.”
I see Shane as self-serving more than anything else. Trying to save Carl was a dick move to get back into Lori’s good graces and confronted with his own mortality, he made the “hard decision” that he’d rather someone else die than him.
Ultimately, I wouldn’t want to be trapped in WWZ with him because who knows when his reasoning would decide again that a hard choice would have to be made and he’d be the sole arbiter of that? And again, as has been said previously, what if that mentality meant the end of your kid, then your spouse and finally, you? Before long, he could almost wipe out an entire group due to just his personal whims, that could hinge on things other than just survivability.
I wonder who got to make him God like that and how often he gets to play at it.