I can’t remember for sure now and I’ve already deleted the show with no intention of ever watching it again. Was it ever established the fallout during the rainstorm was radioactive? I got the impression it wasn’t because no radiation turned up with the geiger counter they used when they came out of hiding and IRS chick stuck her hand in some fallout apparently with no ill effects. The corn is probably safe.
I do seem to recall someone saying they’d have to scrap the earth down a couple-few feet to make it safe to use again if there had been radioactive fallout. But that could have been from an out-of-date manual from the 50’s.
As for farm-boy’s assertion about the husks, well - does anyone find him to be particularly bright? I mean, was he actually saying that, or was it the writers saying that to us, though him?
The dialog seems to indicate uncertainy. The circumstantial evidence says no. Given the total lack of attention to detail in this series, who knows.
That’s a reasonable precaution.
It seemed like the writers speaking through him. They added the “the corn was mature, so it didn’t absorb any of the ground water” line specifically to try an add authenticity.
In my limited understanding, you could put food, in, say, a ziplock bag, and leave it out to be coated in fallout, but the contents would be fine - maybe altered on some chemical level, I’m not sure. Radiation isn’t contagious - I mean, being near a radioactive thing doesn’t make other things also radioactive, right? So the food itself doesn’t become radioactive - it’s the threat of the actual radioactive particles becoming mixed in with the food. That’s where the husks come in - if they completely seal corn, and care was taken to decontaminate the shell and/or prevent the shell from contaminating the food, it seems like it would work reasonably well to me.
Well, strong magnetic fields can affect watches (which I am reminded of every time I get mine too close to the NMR.) I have a combo watch with a digital display and an analog display and every time I get the watch too close to the NMR the analog part loses time. In fact, right now it’s two seconds slow, because I haven’t fixed it since yesterday.
The writers can’t decide if there was radioactive fallout in the rain or not. Things like the Geiger counter and Stanley’s continued (non-zombie) existence argue that there wasn’t, but then there’s random dialog here and there indicating there was. In a good show, you could have characters understandably confused about it, and the writers showing us that. But it’s pretty clear here that the writers don’t know, and seem to be writing the show using a sort of “Monkeys and Hamlet” paradigm.
Ditto on the corn husk issue. Yeah, maybe in real life it actually could be safe (they do use gamma rays to make meat *safer * to eat after all), but come on. Again, in a good show, they would provide some viewer-education to support an assertion that seems downright silly on its face, if they want us to buy it. Instead, I get the feeling the writers said to themselves, “Well, there might or might not be radiation from the rain. But we want our heartwarming Amish corn harvest scene - how can we make sure viewers don’t worry that the heartwarming volunteer harvesters will turn into irradiated zombies?” In other words, why do cornhusks protect from fallout? It’s In The Script.
I looked on Rolex’s site, and found they do make some quartz watches. So, if quartz watches get blown by an EMP, that at least is plausible.
I was curious and looked it up. Apparently quartz watches have some circuitry to turn the quartz vibration into meaningful time (also for any calendar, stopwatch functions, etc) so I guess that’s plausible.
EMP doesn’t fry anything - simple DC wires will survive. Anything unshielded with any sort of integrated circuit is fried.
At the start when everyone is looking to the sky, it appeared that a nuclear explosion was taking place in the upper atmosphere. The EMP statement was made by Hawkins who would have immediately known the reason when everything stopped working.They didn’t say it was EMP right away. Hawkins was in his basement and told his family it was EMP. So there was a long enough gap for him to know what was going on. Hell, I was explaining EMP to my wife right before he said it.
My husband and I have been watching since the beginning. In fact, it was my husband who insisted we watch it. I was surprised, since he doesn’t really watch much television.
At any rate, we’re becoming rather disenchanted with the show for many of the reasons already outlined above. The cheesy schmalzt factor is really, really getting on our nerves.
Frankly, this is a small town, with no military presence or, for that matter real law enforcement presence. Additionally, several weeks (presumably) have now gone by. Let’s face it folks, in REAL life, under the circumstances shown in this show, there would be an every man for himself thing going on, with a lot more dead people. It’s basic human nature when things go that badly. History has proven it time and time again.
And, where are the other survivors from other areas? My husband laughed when I said this and said they’re all “making nice-nice” with picnic and harvest gatherings too.
We’re going to continue watching for the time being. It’s sort of fun to laugh at.