I think it’s human nature to try to duck a bite, though, no matter who or what is trying to do the biting [sup]*[/sup].
And I think that their thought process when someone IS bitten is something along the lines of: Bite = Quicker death = becoming a zombie. If I can avoid becoming a zombie sooner by losing a leg, I’ll certainly take that chance. Who wants to turn into a zombie? It’s like the real world and death. I know I’m gonna die one day, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to try to expedite the process.
[sup]*Actually, there was this one girl I used to “pal around” with…Ashley…she was into biting[/sup]
I’m not talking about them trying to avoid bites, of course they would. I mean they act like if anyone gets bit, thats it they are a goner. They treated the guy they left with a pistol in the first season like this, and even Bob.
I’m not sure it’s consistent. It seemed back at the prison people were getting bitten and turning very quickly. It kinda has to work that way for all hell to break loose.
My suspension of disbelief really has to work overtime in this series. Like so many of the contrary details identified in these threads, the problem of “getting bitten” seems to have been poorly thought out. I’m sure the whole “everybody has the virus” thing was intended to serve some plot device that may or may not ever be directly revealed, but it sure makes it tough in the meantime. If everybody has the virus, then what is it about a bite that turns a normal person into a dead person, then swiftly into a reanimated person? If the virus was transmitted by bites, like an infection, this would make sense. You get bit, you get very rapidly sick, then dead. Then the little beasties work overtime and reanimate your corpse. Easy – peasy. It also would explain the idea of swift amputation stopping the spread of infection in its tracks.
But this makes no sense at all in a world where everyone already has the virus. It lives in us in some benign form. In such a world, you should die (whether from natural or traumatic causes) then you reanimate. So bites would only turn you into a zombie if they actually killed you from shock and blood loss.
Or maybe the bite triggers something in the already-virus-infected but otherwise normal person. A switch is flipped, and transmogrification begins. Maybe it travels from site of bite to the brain, so it could be eliminated by quick work with the ax. But if this were the case, I wouldn’t expect the person to go through the intermediate step of actually getting dead. I’d expect bite --> wave pulse of transmogrification --> zombie. But we know that instead, people die, stay dead for some (often brief but always measurable) interval, then reanimate. These scenarios are mutually contradictory.
I like my sci-fi to offer me some rationalization for all the “stretchers” (thanks to Huck Finn for that lovely word!) I have to swallow to enjoy the story. I can swallow some huge stretchers, including full blown fantasy or magic, as long as some mention is made of the operators. And I don’t mind if the rationalization is that things just work differently in this world. But I do mind internal inconsistencies. They’re evidence of sloppy thinking. And sadly, Walking Dead is full of them. It detracts from my enjoyment of the story.
Maybe the “virus” (or whatever) in a live person is there, but dormant, or can’t reproduce, etc. A walker is swarming with active pathogen, and direct transfer of the active pathogen into a living person is very, very bad. Causes rapid sickness and a head-start on the reanimation process.
That’s my guess. Everyone has the walker virus. If you die, you reanimate, unless you die from a brain injury.
What’s the difference between a walker bite and a gunshot wound? Or knife wound? Or a fall from a ladder? I assume the average walker mouth is teeming with bacteria, similar to the toxic mix living in the mouth of a komodo dragon. A walker bite accelerates the victims death. Or not.
Before he is interrupted, Jenner, the CDC guy says, “It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal…” He then allows that the wrath of god is possibility as well.
I am going to go with some sort of a parasite.
The parasite triggers only under certain conditions–one of which being exposure to members of it’s own kind who are in the next stage of development.
Get bit. Older zombisites get into you.
The presence of the older zombisites triggers the existing younger zombisites to start reproducing and developing.
This leads to death, which also triggers the immature zombisites’s development cycle.
With w/e contributing factors are necessary to keep the theory inline with the plot as it unfolds.
Ok, I can buy that as a reasonable rationale. I have sufficient imagination to think up a couple of my own that would serve just as well. And that’s without going much further down the “magic” or the “parallel universe” rabbit holes. My complaint isn’t that no one can dream up a superficially reasonable explanation. My complaint is that the WRITERS seemingly cannot.
If they came up with explanation, it would undoubtedly still have holes in it.
What’s more, the explanation wouldn’t really add that much to the show.
If it were set in the same universe, and a science fiction story, and we were following an intrepid group of scientists and their attempts to survive, thrive, and study the zombi-itis…
Then it may be worth the trouble of coming up with a backstory for the zombi-itis.
They’ve seen everyone who gets bitten get a fever and eventually die. There isn’t really an explanation, but it’s been clear for a number of seasons. Everyone has the zombie virus, and a zombie bite will get a really bad infection and make you die. For the latter, it happened a number of times including Woodbury and the farm. They (and the audience) knows from experience.
It’s easy to explain away antibiotics since even in the real world there are antibiotic resistant bacteria. It could also be that it’s not a regular infection but a combination of things from the bite.
There are plenty of things to complain about on the show, but I don’t think this is one of them.
Since our intrepid group(s) have been left to fend for themselves, the discovery of an effective infectious disease treatment will either come from a still functioning lab, or by medieval trial and error. Will it be antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, antiprotozoals, antihelminthics, Listerine, or good olde fashion amputation, which worked for Hop-a-long Hershel? Amputation didn’t work for Tyreese, but that could be a delayed treatment issue, or Tyreese’s lacking a strong enough will to live.
The writers may yet explain the phenomena during the “Fear of The Walking Dead” series, which begins during the time Rick was unconscious in the hospital.
I understand how the zombification has been portrayed. And you are of course most welcome to your own comfort level in suspension of disbelief. We all enjoy the show for our own reasons. I personally see a serious contradiction between “everybody has the virus” and “getting bitten gives you a really bad infection with inevitable zombie result”.
Either everybody doesn’t have the virus, so getting bitten gives you the (fatal and transmogrifying) infection. Or everybody has something, but requires some additional trigger that can only be provided by an actual zombie bite (not any other trauma even when accompanied by dripping zombie gore). The inconsistency bothers me.
Especially since it could be overcome with a casual line or two of dialog, along the lines of the pseudo-explanations offered upthread. Even if the characters were making speculations rather than a report from the CDC, just paying attention to the obvious glaring discrepancy would be enough to comfort my overworked suspension of disbelief. But of course that’s just me.
