[quote]thethirdruffian wrote:
Potential spoiler:
I am curious if they will expound on how the zombies got out of hand in the first place. Not necessarily the infectious agent (e.g., virus, nanites), but how it spread in the first place.
I am presuming everyone still alive at this point is infected and becomes zombies: (1) if they die for any reason; (2) if they are immuno compromised or don’t have some sort of inate partial resistance; or (3) get a huge dose of the virus (or whatever) via a bite.
I suspect No. 1 is what the doctor told Rick.
No. 2 is really necessary to explain how the zombies got out of hand in the first place — even if the recently dead were to rise and stumble around, normal humans would have them outnumbered 99 to 1. You’d have some deaths, but we’d pretty quickly get ahold of the situation — it takes of lot of zombies to get the aware, and people were quickly aware.
I also note that there are a lot of “kin” survivors, which indicate a level of genetic immunity, bolstering No. 2 a bit.
But most importantly, you’d need an initial critical mass of zombies (say, 1/3 or more of the population just get infected) to have the worldwide disaster on your hands. This would take a route of infection — air borne, or perhaps contaminated flu shots — other than a bite from a zombie.[/quote]
LHT is right on about how the plague works in the books. The series, I am not so sure.
I sort of covered this earlier in the thread and linked to the Wiki for walking dead. The link is a SPOILER if you are trying to avoid any discussion of the comics.
Here is the way I see it working out. If we follow the Romero esque everyone is a zombie rules. We also have to recognize that the traditional zombie world is one where there is no zombie fiction. Otherwise this doesn’t work. None of the characters have the frame of reference to say “holy shit a zombie, shoot for the head”.
Initial Onset:
One day/night the event starts. This is not “patient zero” or even “zombie zero”, but thousands of “zombie zero’s” accross the globe. In first world countries there are going to be two major sources of “walkers”. First, any place where there are likely to be non-embalmed bodies in storage, and the general public.
So, the dead in hospitals/nursing homes/hospice start going “shambler” and bite some staff. No one knows what the fuck is going on. Pretty soon no one is dying, but they are getting tied down. HUGE issues with feral seeming patients with no vital signs but are mobile and aggressive. If it was one locus the call to the CDC would start a quarantine and even if the incinerated via MOAB it would be controlled. The issue is the CDC is getting a call from every hospital in the country. Actually, every hospital in the world.
Coinciding with this are all the “dead” who expired outside of the hospitals and turned/rose before they got carted off to a morgue. These bite/infect family members, people, and especially first responders. The fever post bite, if it would even happen with such fresh corpses, cycle people into the hospitals. Now we have a situation where police, fire, and paramedic/EMT services are dealing with large numbers of infected in their ranks and they have no protocol to handle it. The cops are still tazing/wrestling with the dead to little avail. No zombie movies, and no one is taking a headshot on fresh looking zombies who are un armed. Walkers are getting dumped into hospitals, people who manage to put down walkers are getting arrested and stuffed in cells, where they might infect others.
It builds/Civil unrest:
Quarantines and public announcements are made. People are getting fearful. There will be looting/fires/shenanigans. Martial law will be declared in some areas. Crowds doing the looting will be a source of food for any homeless turned walkers or walkers that come from other sources. At this point a dead body is not getting the Law and Order/CSI rollout. It is laying there and then getting up. People are told to stay in there homes. Curfew happens. Violence adds to the number of free walkers. Hospitals may have started to figure out that patients need to be in restraints. Walkers don’t need to eat so they can be “held” in quarantine. At this point the shamblers are still going to be “people” or “patients” legally speaking. They are not going to be being put down en mass. The medical and social systems are being taxed heavily.
Gen III problems:
Disruptions in normal order are leading to a bunch of problems. Hospitals are getting overloaded. Fear is building. There are runs on food/supplies in stores. Prescription meds are in short supply (this will be a huge source of zombies). Lack of transportation of food is a huge problem. Peoples desire to flee quarantine/affected areas coupled with martial law is creating a huge issue. The first responders are largely infected/“sick” or staying home. Military is probably supplying the man power for keeping order. Everything is under Federal control. It is apparent to government that the dead are just that, dead. They are not sick. Efforts to treat them as such is going to spur serious social issues. Heads of government flee to isolated/secure locations. The issue is that anyone who dies of natural causes is a threat, and politicians and generals tend to be old. There will be attempts to “sanitize” areas/volumes of infected. Two issues, people who see this as murder and people who see it as a sign all bets are off. Looting, rioting, every city is looking like post-Katrina New Orleans. At this point most of the damage is being done by living people.
Gen IV/Breakdown
Central control of government breaks down. The higher ups are AWOL or in secure locations (that are just a heart attack away from being nonnsecure). In The Walking Dead no nukes were used, but the military was using conventional weapons on population centers. That is the marking point for this stage. First, attacks are ordered on the population. Then no one is giving orders and the last order was “shoot anything that looks suspicious”. If you recall the hospital flashback where the National Guard was mowing down apparently alive people in hospital gowns, this is the background. Individual units are breaking up. There is no “rule of law” being enforced. People flee. Shit has gotten real. The highways are plugged up with people fleeing to wherever. Any death in a crowd is a new infection. Many of the flashbacks in the show are from this time. Between live on live murder and dead on live murder the scales tip to there being more dead than living. Nearly everyone who requires medical care to stay alive is dead at this point.
Undead World
Series opener. We are up to speed.
Regards,
Robert A