Fear the Walking Dead: Our hopes and dreams for the Series. (Now Spoiler Friendly).

[The Mance]

I have heard the Gloria is patient zero theory also, but I readily dismiss it. Tobias, the kid with the knife in school has been following reports from five different states about a mysterious virus, and he knows he has to arm himself. This tells me that Gloria could not have been the first to turn as the virus would have spread out from LA. 

 

I think there have already been people turning at the hospital that Nick was in.  I was just doing a rewatch with subtitles and the scene when Nick's roomie dies had an interesting exchange between the doctor and nurse:

 

Doctor: when did he go down?

Nurse:  just now, 30 seconds ago, maybe.

Doctor: if we don't get a rhythm in 60 I want him downstairs.  There's too much we don't know.

 

I missed the bolded part on my first viewing, and just assumed the downstairs bit was a reference to emergency surgery, or some other location to better treat/resuscitate the dying man.  Now I'm thinking they've got a basement full of walkers at the hospital.

[Alia of the knife]

Watching it right now. :)

Tobias.....

[Alia of the knife]

Annnnddd..the "authorities" would NEVER tell us.

[Pecan]

Ah yes, of course, those crime investigative shows do seem to be on every second day, don't they.

 

So the model has been tried and tested. Wonder if the Walking dead will follow the same route.

 

I doubt it. I think AMC would be afraid of saturation, of devaluing "The Walking Dead" brand by having more than one episode per week. But, I could be wrong about that. 

[Pecan]

Sooo, a DJ on the Lithium station was talking about how all the clues of how the virus started are there, and he made two specific references, one having to do with Gloria, Nicks girlfriend, but wouldn't divulge the other.

 

Thoughts?

 

What is the Lithium station?

[Alia of the knife]

 
What is the Lithium station?

Lol, sorry. 90's grunge music. Nirvana, Alice in Chains, etc.

[Free Northman Reborn]

I find the gradual outbreak model that we are seeing unsatisfactory in answering the one logical flaw that has bugged most fans since the beginning: How did the zombies take out the whole world?

Look at how quickly the authorities respond to and isolate things like ebola, bird flue etc.

With these isolated cases springing up all over the place with even a local hospital already having isolation wards for zombies, well, this outbreak simply could not have resulted in the kind of apocalypse we have seen.

Especially given that it only spreads via biting. So its not like one zombie is going to infect all the people in its vicinity instantly.

For this outbreak to have any chance of success you would have had to have a kind of global flu that made people comatose for a few days, and then have zombies biting the bulk of these people while they are unconscious and unable to fight back.

Then you would go from a few isolated cases to something like 80% of the population dead overnight.

This gradual spread model just doesn't seem plausible.

EDIT

The even better option being that the initial virus outbreak actually kills and transforms the majority of the population into zombies without the need of them being bitten. That would give you a critical mass of zombies that can potentially overwhelm the rest of society despite the presence of guns, tanks, gunships and nuclear bombs.

[Lord Hanna]

I find the gradual outbreak model that we are seeing unsatisfactory in answering the one logical flaw that has bugged most fans since the beginning: How did the zombies take out the whole world?

Look at how quickly the authorities respond to and isolate things like ebola, bird blue etc.

With these isolated cases springing up all over the place with even a local hospital already having isolation wards for zombies, well, this outbreak simply could not have resulted in the kind of apocalypse we have seen.

Especially given that it only spreads via biting. So its not like one zombie is going to infect all the people in its vicinity instantly.

For this outbreak to have any chance of success you would have had to have a kind of global flu that made people comatose for a few days, and then have zombies biting the bulk of these people while they are unconscious and unable to fight back.

Then you would go from a few isolated cases to something like 80% of the population dead overnight.

This gradual spread model just doesn't seem plausible.

EDIT

The even better option being that the initial virus outbreak actually kills and transforms the majority of the population into zombies without the need of them being bitten. That would give you a critical mass of zombies that can potentially overwhelm the rest of society despite the presence of guns, tanks, gunships and nuclear bombs.

Everyone that dies, turns. Bite or not.

 

That's how they take over the world. Every murder, car accident, hospital terminal ward, etc....

 

It's been mentioned in the main series and comic.

[Howdyphillip]

Everyone that dies, turns. Bite or not.

 

That's how they take over the world. Every murder, car accident, hospital terminal ward, etc....

 

It's been mentioned in the main series and comic.

Yes, I suspect that we will see some military interaction that may cause some serious damage in the dense population of LA.  

[MercenaryChef]

I would imagine massive military and police occupation of cities. In the beginning you would have looting, violence and skirmishes with people who were having the truth hidden from them.

Not too hard to foresee a national guard unit turning their guns on civilians. Boom, lots of zombies.

Say a bus overturns, a couple folKS die, others are trapped and bitten, voila small pack of walkers.

A train stuck in a subway tunnel could be the zombie express in no time at all.

Outbreaks at nursing homes would be quick. Poor miss Adams passes in the night and infects the whole floor before staff realize anything is going on.

Since I was a kid I have imagined scenarios that the dead could take the earth after romero never explained it.

[Free Northman Reborn]

I would imagine massive military and police occupation of cities. In the beginning you would have looting, violence and skirmishes with people who were having the truth hidden from them.

Not too hard to foresee a national guard unit turning their guns on civilians. Boom, lots of zombies.

Say a bus overturns, a couple folKS die, others are trapped and bitten, voila small pack of walkers.

A train stuck in a subway tunnel could be the zombie express in no time at all.

Outbreaks at nursing homes would be quick. Poor miss Adams passes in the night and infects the whole floor before staff realize anything is going on.

Since I was a kid I have imagined scenarios that the dead could take the earth after romero never explained it.

 

Sure, but that only works while people don't realise that the dead turn into walkers. Clearly the hospital staff already know this - hence moving recently deceased patients to the basement. And that is very early in the outbreak. News of the dead turning into walkers will spread very, very quickly, and then people would start taking action to prevent this from happening.

 

Unless you have a situation where thousands of people turn into walkers instantaneously you will always have more living people around to kill off the slow lumbering walkers that arise from a bus crash, or a old age home or whatever.

 

The outbreak has to be such that you have millions of walkers almost overnight to be really effective. Or else you need secondary disasters like a mass outbreak of disease that kills millions off people very quickly, or civil war or something to create an environment where the dead cannot be neutralized in an organized manner.

[MercenaryChef]

Have you read world war z? It actually has a slow outbreak scenario that works well.

Certainly there has to be a suspension of disbelief to accept most fiction, zombie tales are more difficult.

They are so big in our culture we know to destroy the brain and can't fathom a situation where someone doesn't.

[Free Northman Reborn]

Have you read world war z? It actually has a slow outbreak scenario that works well.

Certainly there has to be a suspension of disbelief to accept most fiction, zombie tales are more difficult.

They are so big in our culture we know to destroy the brain and can't fathom a situation where someone doesn't.

 

Sure. I'm just trying to figure out the most plausible way to get from Episode 1 of Fear the Walking Dead to Episode 1 of the main series. It's nice speculation.

 

Of course the big difference between the Walking Dead and World War Z is the fast vs slow moving zombie. I much prefer the slow moving version. But it also then requires a different mechanism for the initial outbreak to bring down civilization completely. What you really need is something that will kill the majority of the world's population almost instantly, thus giving you an instant zombie majority. Like a secondary virus or something that kills the majority of people very quickly.

[Lord Syv Aldlark]

1. The World War Z book didn't have fast zombies.

 

2. While we may say in our heads just kill them all it's actually not as easy to hit headshot after headshot when most armed people are trained to shoot center mass. Head shots are hard.

 

3. Even if most people in our culture know our culture we also protect our families. It may be easier for someone else to shoot your sister or brother but it will much harder for you to do even if you know they are zombies. Which we might now know at first. Most people would try and keep them tied up or in a room or something until a cure was found rather than just shooting them. We figure most of the old people dying and random deaths would be found by friends or family first who would quickly get bit and become victims.

 

4. We can only quarantine viruses now because most of these viruses have really obvious symptoms and start points. Ebola for instance was contained to a small area at first and that made it easy to track anyone going to that area. In TWD since everyone is effectively infected there is literally no quarantine. Roughly 6-7k die everyday in the United States... If thsoe 6-7k are getting back up and attacking one person then that's 12-14k a day. So not only is the virus spreading through bites as people die but it's also just people dying of everyday causes.

 

12-14k day 1, then another 6-7k die the next day but the first round can also bite someone, so day 2 could have 36-56k.. etc.. etc..

 

And this is happening all over the place. Which would stretch military and law enforcement thin. Instead of just having to respond to violent calls, police would have to respond to every call because a death= a zombie.

 

Urban areas would be hit hardest.

[The Fallen]

The basement room for zombies is speculation.

 

Stannis' son's drug-dealing friend wasn't bitten. He died of a gunshot and turned. So it seems that the virus has already entered humans, where it lays dormant until the body dies. It's impossible for the authorities to keep track of every human that dies. Hence how the virus can easily spread.

 

I was also curious about the old guy at the hospital. Maybe it comes into play in episode 2.

[Free Northman Reborn]

The basement room for zombies is speculation.

 

Stannis' son's drug-dealing friend wasn't bitten. He died of a gunshot and turned. So it seems that the virus has already entered humans, where it lays dormant until the body dies. It's impossible for the authorities to keep track of every human that dies. Hence how the virus can easily spread.

 

I was also curious about the old guy at the hospital. Maybe it comes into play in episode 2.

 

I'm pretty sure that if not all, then at least the majority of people, have the virus already. My point is that I don't think that the small number of people dying every day are sufficient to create enough zombies to cause the collapse of society. You need another cause of mass death - like maybe a secondary virus or something.

[Dr. Pepper]

I would guess the second cause will be what it always is - regular people.  The whackadoos like libertarians and survivalists who flip their shit because the government tries to implement safety measures to stop the spread.  Regular civilians who maybe don't care for the police to be shooting at them.  Assholes who decide to use the confusion to loot and/or attempt to create their own little economies and shit.  All of this moves attention away from dealing with the disease to dealing with social order leading to more deaths and more zombies which in turn leads to more deaths and zombies.  

[Free Northman Reborn]

I would guess the second cause will be what it always is - regular people.  The whackadoos like libertarians and survivalists who flip their shit because the government tries to implement safety measures to stop the spread.  Regular civilians who maybe don't care for the police to be shooting at them.  Assholes who decide to use the confusion to loot and/or attempt to create their own little economies and shit.  All of this moves attention away from dealing with the disease to dealing with social order leading to more deaths and more zombies which in turn leads to more deaths and zombies.  

 

Remember though that whatever causes the collapse must apply to the entire world - including far more authoritarian nations like China for example, where you don't have the survivalist types you have in the USA, and where they will take out whole communities in a heartbeat if it helps to contain the outbreak. But yeah, your idea is plausible. Most of the fun of the new series is to see exactly how they show this gradual descent into the apocalypse.

[Dr. Pepper]

Both the show and the comics seem to pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist.  There hasn't been even so much as a small boat or a large ship from the outside that has stumbled upon the shores.  Which is something one would expect in a fictional apocalyptic world unless the authors just don't care about what's happening outside of the main group.  

[Free Northman Reborn]

Both the show and the comics seem to pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist.  There hasn't been even so much as a small boat or a large ship from the outside that has stumbled upon the shores.  Which is something one would expect in a fictional apocalyptic world unless the authors just don't care about what's happening outside of the main group.  

 

Well to be fair, our group has barely seen what's going on beyond their immediate environment, let alone on the coasts of the continent.

 

But in any case, your idea got me wondering. Maybe the clue is in the title of the new series itself. "Fear" the Walking Dead. Maybe this fear turns into a full scale panic, where people start murdering any suspected infected persons, only for these murdered people to turn into zombies, making the fearful survivors murder even more suspects, and so on and so forth. I suspect not everyone will learn early on that you need a headshot to kill the zombies for good.