I just realized I don’t understand how the infection could have spread into the Western Hemisphere. It would have had to come by plane or boat, yet both of those take too long. A plane would have crashed as its occupants became zombies. A boat would have gone out of control, and though it could have released infected zombies once it hit the shore somewhere, the film doesn’t show the infection spreading from the shores, but instead, from major population centers.
If it really all came from a single guy in SE Asia, I don’t see how it could have gotten to Philadelphia the way it did.
I am not sure the timeframe was specified, but I could be wrong.
About the policy, it wasn’t that he had to “do” the opposite, but that he had to make the best arguments he could “assuming” the opposite. That doesn’t seem manifestly foolish to me.
Do we have any idea what sort of ailment the soldier in South Korea had that made the zombies ignore him? The final solution was to contract a sufficiently strong and debilitating disease to camoflauge, but he seemed to just have a sprained ankle or something. Anything stronger that would fit the bill?
That was pretty awesome. You’re all set to see where they are going with this quirky egghead playing against Pitt’s Hemingwayesque world-weary survivor competence and the SEALs’ ultimate badassery, and then - slip, fall, blam, that’s it.
Yup. They could have gotten around this by having the period between infection and turning be hours in Korea and became faster as time went on. It would also fit into the whole ‘virus doesn’t compel attacks on terminally ill people’. Why not? heck 10 minutes, 12 seconds, even DAYS who cares they can still turn. No biggie. However, if the virus evolved over time where infection before turning time was months or even weeks this could make sense. They could have even showed that it wasn’t discovered because the turning period was longer and they became violent while still alive and so were killed/removed from society. When the virus was turning people in 12 seconds it didn’t ‘know’ that and was behaving as if it had a much longer time to turn.
10 minutes versus 12 seconds doesn’t do though.
…and what you just said…how does it get to the Americas? Or any island? In the book the zombies cross water but I don’t see how that could happen so fast as in the movie.
The other is how can there be a ‘vaccine’ that makes you terminally ill? They handwaved that.
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The other is how can there be a ‘vaccine’ that makes you terminally ill? They handwaved that.
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Well, sort of. They were saying that you could be given an infectious disease that WOULD be terminal, except we can either treat or cure that infection…and that while you have the disease, the zombies basically won’t attack you, because they want a healthy host. It’s a bit silly, but I suppose no more so than the zombies themselves.
One of the major flaws in the movie was how rapidly people would become zombies. Something that quick would almost certainly be isolated early on and stopped right there…if nothing else by the expedient of dropping a nuke or other large bomb on the infected area. I certainly don’t see it spreading out of control as it did in the movie in real life…by the time it became clear this was happening in India or where ever someone would simply start taking drastic measures and nuking or bombing the crap out of any potential outbreaks. It’s not like you could think that possibly healthy people are possibly infected…if they don’t manifest symptoms in 10 seconds they are obviously good.
Still, there is a certain level of setting logic and reason aside in all of these types of movies, so you need to suspend your disbelief and skepticism and simply go with the flow.
We’ve been discussion exactly this for dozens of posts, and it makes sense when you factor in that the early zombies took days to manifest their illness. Thus the line, “the airlines were the perfect transmitter”.
I must have missed in the movie where the early ones took days. I thought one of the early ones was the doctor in Korea bitten by the patient who turned almost instantly. But yes, if in fact the early cases took days to manifest you could potentially have someone bitten who doesn’t know there is an issue, flying somewhere else and then turning and infecting more. That’s the same model for doomsday scenarios for wildly infectious diseases with potential high mortality rates coupled with modern travel.
Sorry if I missed the byplay on this as well, sort of posting on the run from my iPad so don’t always see every post.
Totally missed that then. I thought he got bitten by the guy strapped to the gurney, turned, then attacked everyone in the room, all of who also turned except for the guy with the bad leg who was untouched because presumably he had some sort of terminal illness that was never defined.
Guess I’ll have to watch the movie again when it comes out on DvD so I can catch some of the stuff I missed or misunderheard.
In case anyone is curious, here is the original ending before it was rewritten. It is a much darker, downer non ending.
The gist:
The plane out of Israel crashes in Russia. Russia is conscripting people against their will to fight Zombies. Gerry gets conscripted into this service and loses his phone so he has no contact with the UN or his Family.
Months pass and Gerry continues fighting Zombies in Russia. He eventually recovers his phone and calls his wife. He learns she is in a refugee camp in Florida trading sex for safety for her and their kids.
Gerry vows to get her and the movie ends with him and a group of his Russian fighters storming a beach in Oregon beginning his quest to reach Florida.
I would have hated that ending. Glad they changed it.
Sure, assigning someone to argue the opposite side as best as possible is fine. But apparently either this guy successfully argued the rest of the leadership into believing in the coming zombie apocalypse (before there was solid evidence for it since they then had time to build a wall) or he was simply granted the power to take defensive action based on him having been put in Opposite Day Camp and so he rushed through a hundreds-feet tall wall around Jerusalem.
Anyway, hate to see what the guy assigned to believe in leprechauns (since none of the other leadership does) implemented in the treasury department on the assumption they’d soon be getting pots of gold.
And building your wall around Jerusalem instead of Tel Aviv or one of the other coastal towns seems shortsighted when doing something so farsighted.
That was my impression as well. There were reports, most dismissed it, but this guy as the one tasked with the contrarian view, that he didn’t initially believe himself, looked into it and found it was true and so convinced the others to take action.
As to Jerusalem, I can see that, even though it might not be the most logical choice. It’s the emotional choice I would expect Israel to make, however…and to get by in from the other people in the region to go along with.
Besides, in the book at least, water isn’t a major impediment, so if they made it on the coast and only fortified the land side they might still have zombies coming in. Of course, in the book, walls ARE a pretty good defense against the zombies, so I guess it’s uncharted territory.
IIRC in the book, the Israeli Civil War occured in part because they left Jerusalem outside the sealed boarders and the utlra-consevatives were pissed at that abandonment.
I have the same complaint about most movies these days, too - slow down and pull the camera back, dammit! Let me look at a whole scene without constantly cutting back and forth and rotating the cameras around and going from one tight close-up of a face to the next.
