No, it’s not.
I would shoot you to save my own life. I would NOT cut tiny pieces off of you and feed them to my dog while you watch to save my own life.
The former is normal. The latter is Lecter.
Zombies are clearly more interested in live people than corpses, so shooting Otis in the head might’ve spoiled the whole plan.
On the other hand, he could have saved the three minutes he spent wrestling with him.
Seriously, give it up.
That was NOT OKAY.
You’ve got your answer: Zombies want live-people brains. This is an example of not having to out run the bear. He beat him up because he needed the back pack.
The only reason people in this thread think Shane murdering Otis was no big deal is because Shane is one of the main characters in “our” group, while Otis was a stranger. Had the tables been turned and the group in Atlanta killed Glenn, no one here would be cheering them on.
Where did this “people become zombies through infection. Anyone who dies becomes a zombie” thing come from? It’s clearly been shown on the show that being bitten turns you into a zombie, there are plenty of dead bodies around that are just normal dead bodies.
And Sophia has a pretty large chunk taken out of her neck/shoulder. I’m not sure how people could have missed that.
This idea came from the comics which is verboten to discuss in these threads. Per the earlier comments in this thread about the title The Walking Dead, in the original material the name references the living. They are already infected and once they die, regardless of how, they will become zombies. Thus, it is natural to assume the show also follows this same pattern although they’ve not revealed it directly yet. Speculation on what the CDC doctor told Rick includes this little tidbit of information.
But we are not allowed to talk about the comics here so this response did not happen…
MeanJoe
Give us some figure then. What percentage does it have to boost the chances of his and Carl’s survival justifies 30 seconds of horrible death? If there’s a 10% chance that shooting him in the head makes the zombies less interested in Otis and they catch up to Shane and he dies, and Carl dies, is that worth making his death easier? 20%? 30%?
Edit: And to the other poster, no one was “cheering on” Shane. It’s a shitty situation with no real happy ending - his choice was a rational one to lead to the least amount of damage, or the best good to bad ratio for the outcome.
Shane did not just kill Otis by shooting him in the head because zombies do not stop and eat dead people. In order for Shane to survive and get the supplies back to the farm, he needed something to stop the zombies from pursuing them and allow him to escape. A dead Otis would not do that but a wounded Otis unable to walk would.
MeanJoe - Who now adds “Do not join a group of SDMB people to survive the zombie apocalypse” to his Zombie Survival Guide to-do list.
I don’t think anyone is saying it was “no big deal” nor is anyone defending Shane’s course of action “cheering them on”. It was a very big deal, a very difficult situation and decision and you can see in Shane’s character that he is struggling in the aftermath. What people here are saying is that it was the only remaining option and logically the only course of action if Carl was to be saved. It was and is a big giant shit sandwich of a decision but it was what had to be done if Carl was to be saved which was why they were there in the first place.
I think there is more time then we realize -
first episode - she gets lost - there is a night and a full nother day and night - then carl gets shot - then another night (otis gets shot) -
Plenty of time for the events to occur -
If it was me, I wouldn’t mind so much being eaten by the zombies. I would rate it maybe (negative) 0.5% the value of my life, maximum. So I disagree with you there. Once you kill the person, you can as well make the most out of it, even if it causes some additional pain for that person.
Exactly. Like I said, I am enjoying TWD. However, I wish they would clean up the inconsistencies.
There is also more to it than this.
Most fiction, SF or otherwise…is crap. What did that one guy say? 90% of everything is crap.
So…I start to watch your show/read your book…a part of me is wondering…are you writing crap? How am I to know?
Well…like Dingbat has said…does your story make sense in terms of how you laid it out? If it doesn’t…that MIGHT mean there is a deeper meaning going on…so large plot point in the future that will come out and surprise everyone and make your story self consistent.
…or you are just writing crap. WHich is most likely?
Take a current example. Terra Nova. This is the story about the future 150 years from now where Earth is in trouble ecologically and they find a crack in time to 80 million BC. They send a probe back designed to last that amount of time and never find it. Current theory from the show is that by going back, you create a new timeline…so the ‘current’ future is not that new timelines future.
FINE AND GOOD!
However, they have multiple colonization waves…hmmmmmmm…if each going back creates their own timeline…how can wave 2 show up in the future of wave 1? They keep talking to the year 2150…but that future is supposedly in a different timeline! How can they be talking?
Just 2 examples…and it is POSSIBLE that what we currently know from the show is wrong. Maybe something deeper is afoot!
Or maybe the writers are frackin idiots.
How to know? well…look at what they do? Ohhh…a dinosaur from the Jurassic…more than 100 million years earlier…shows up. Well, now…that means the writers really didn’t check their facts and/or are just lazy/careless…so what does that mean for the big mysteries above?
Most likely Terra Nova is crap…and I shouldn’t waste my time. The writers probably don’t even KNOW about the inconsistencies!
Now…TWD has the comics to go on. I have been reading them from even before season 1. So I KNOW that he has issues with consistency…but I also know that he can write a story so I can relax and enjoy the show.
If the comics didn’t exist, I would not know that and so would be wondering if it was just going to be crap.
I might agree with you that Shane was a monster and made an evil selfish choice had Shane not offered to be the distraction first but he did. He knew the score at the school but Otis wouldn’t leave him. By the time he shot Otis there was no time for a lengthy discussion on the issue and he already knew Otis would not leave him otherwise and probably not even then. Otis already felt like crap for shooting the boy. He was not going to leave Shane behind
Shane didn’t suddenly come up with the distraction plan and off Otis. In my mind, that clears Shane on that issue.
And maybe some day you comic boosters will get over it. 
I think more time has passed, too, just based on the injuries of Carl and Daryl - those were serious, almost-deadly injuries - you don’t get up and walk around like nothing happened after a day or two.
The genre itself. The original Romero zombie apocalypse was of the latter variety, where all dead reanimate as zombies. Subsequent additions to the genre added the flavor that you have to be bitten to be zombified. Those are the only two options, really, and both are valid within the genre. It’s only natural to speculate which rules apply to any given zombie story.
Infection stories are bad but can be overcome. When all dead reanimate, you are facing an insurmountable, literal apocalypse with no hope for recovery of the human race.
Because it makes survival that much harder. It’s not enought to lock your group behind a big wall away from the zombies and strip search, skin check, & quaratine anyone who comes in from outside. You can’t keep the plauge out. Think about it, could you go to sleep in the same room (or bed) as someone knowing that they could die in their sleep, reanimate, & bite you while you’re asleep and completely defenceless? Or that you could do that to your partner or child?
The infection model is an attempt to make zombies slightly less implausible than Romero’s zombies. Stories using it will have a definate biological cause. Romero had the right idea; he never revealed why the dead were reanimating, he just had characters speculating (everything from radiation from space to divine wrath) without anything being confirmed. Dramatically it didn’t matter why the dead were reanimating; it was all about who the survivors were dealing with it.
Actually, I’ve done a timeline and Carl gets shot the day after she goes missing, and Otis that same night. I think she went missing somewhat early in the day, say 10am, and Carl was shot at, say 5pm (the lighting looks like evening), making it around 30 hours or more.
There was no blood in the house though, so maybe she got bit the second day or during the night. She would have had to reanimate quick and Otis find her soon after though. I bet we get a flashback sometime this season to clear up what happened to her.
I think this part keeps getting overlooked. Shane offered himself to be the distraction first and was willing to die so that Carl may live. Otis refused. I suppose Shane could have gone one step further and shot himself in the belly or something but even then there’s no telling if Otis would leave him. Shane made the right call all around in that situation. He could have turned and finished off Otis with a remaining round if he had it.
And THIS is why I love the Dope…
I know. I was here when that all happened the first time.