Zombie Talk: Gruesome, Gory and Grabby

[CarpeDiem54]

That article was hilarious! And made some very valid points.

I wondered about the Spoiler tag, too. Doesn't make sense and is probably keeping some brilliant minds from posting here.

Edited November 8, 2014 by CarpeDiem54

[AngelaHunter]

Love the article, Trek. Thanks.

 

ETA: I'm no brilliant mind, but the spoiler tag did keep me way. I'm allergic to spoilers.

Edited November 8, 2014 by AngelaHunter

[nodorothyparker]

I'm a total spoiler whore but I did randomly wonder about the tag too.  We're only talking about what we've seen in episodes that have already aired.  Wouldn't changing the title to reflect that it's an all-seasons discussion work?

[CarpeDiem54]

Love the article, Trek. Thanks.

 

ETA: I'm no brilliant mind, but the spoiler tag did keep me way. I'm allergic to spoilers.

Of course you're a brilliant mind or you wouldn't be posting on this forum.

[AngelaHunter]

Oh, my goodness! Thank you. I'll try to keep up!:)

[kikismom]

I understand if someone says "I worked as a janitor in the offices at AMC and I found copies of the complete scripts for episodes 5 through 16 here it is!" because that's a spoiler without a doubt.

 

But--IMHO--if someone isn't caught up with the show, every thread would have a spoiler tag. Even the haiku/limericks. How long can they make everyone else wait?

If you aren't caught up with the show, don't catch up with the forum. If you come on here when you know you are three episodes behind---not really my problem. Is it?

[mandolin]

I agree with kikismom. I don't watch until Mondays, so come 9pm Sunday night, I don't even glance in here!

[HalcyonDays]

FINE!....*sigh* You guys are killing me... Alright - spoiler tag will be removed. I will also be removing some of your posts (and mine) talking about the spoiler tag in a bit, to clean up the thread so that it's all about the walkers.

 

And no one is allowed to complain about spoilers in this thread for the next six months....

[CarpeDiem54]

Thanks! We don't want to kill you, then we'd have to stab you in the brain. ;-)

[nodorothyparker]

Or pull a Carl and shoot you in the head.  Nobody wants to be left to turn on a dirty boiler room floor.

[HalcyonDays]

And no one is allowed to complain about spoilers in this thread for the next six months....

 

Read the above very very carefully...cause I'll be pulling Michonne_with_Katana levels of whoopass on anyone who does...

 

Now get back to talking about walkers!!

[AngelaHunter]

I agree with kikismom. I don't watch until Mondays, so come 9pm Sunday night, I don't even glance in here!

 

Me too, although it damned near kills me. I like my zombies unspoiled...ah..fresh...hmm....surprising, yes, that's the word.

[CarpeDiem54]

Read the above very very carefully...cause I'll be pulling Michonne_with_Katana levels of whoopass on anyone who does...

 

Don't threaten me with a good time. ;-)

[MDKNIGHT]

Zombies of course can't exist.  Part of being dead is you stop moving so if you suspend that rule then you can suspend any rule BUT assuming that part is the only non scientific rule in TWD then it would make sense for the older zombies to get easier to defeat.  They should be rotting and seriously how long would it take for dead meat to rot in Georgia?  I don't want the show to end so of course I'm OK with the zombie apocalypse not ending but I would think that in real life it would.  The hotter climes would have accelerated rotting and after a couple of years most of the walkers would be easily disposed of mush. All the survivors would have to do would be rebuild and make sure that everybody is armed and that thier sick and elderly are locked up at night for when they die so they don't  attack any healthy people.  The trick would be re-establishing civilization and I think we could do that.   That being said I wonder how on the show they can keep the walkers as a believeable threat.  We've seen Sasha and Maggie fight off oodles.   I think the day would come where even a herd would be so slow and mushy that this gang could defeat it.

Edited November 11, 2014 by Dougal
Formatting.

[Nashville]

Don't threaten me with a good time. ;-)

 

Story of my life, in one sentence.

[editorgrrl]

From the Talking Dead thread:

I wish the abilities of the walkers was better spelled out, because sometimes they move fast, sometimes slow.  Sometimes they seem stymied by small obstacles, sometimes not, etc.  I guess it's up to the writers if a character happens upon a fast moving walker with good reflexes and a strong grip, or if they meet up with a slow moving one who just stumbles around until the character either runs away or finishes the walker off.

 

Wasn't there something in the first season where Jim (I think it was) had been bitten and as he got closer to death he seemed to get flashes of pictures and a buzzing noise?  That led me to wonder if the show was going to go the route of the walkers forming a hive mind where each individual may not be very smart at all, but as they gathered closer together their tiny amount of brain power started giving them more intelligence.  Now that would be terrifying.  We'd be seeing the newer, more able walkers going after the people while the lesser walkers gathered close by in a circle to prevent anyone from getting away.

 

[Zahdii]

I've been toying with this idea, wondering if it has been discussed before.

 

Let's say that someone got bit by a walker but got away.  They know they're going to die, and obviously not very happy about it.  What if they're not a very nice person anyway, so they decide to take a few people with him/her.  But they don't want to just kill people outright, they want their victims to know who did this to them and spend their last few days/hours going through the same process their killer is going through.

 

The question is: can someone who's been bitten infect others even if that person hasn't died and turned yet?  Bob seemed to think so, it made him a bit happier to die thinking that he was taking his captors and eventual murderers out with him.

[CletusMusashi]

Maybe that dark gunk that they're always drooling out is the infection agent.

It's created out of melted skull tissue.

[nodorothyparker]

That's a good question and one I wish they'd made more of an effort to answer with Bob.  I know the whole "Tainted meat!" thing is from the comics but it was really kind of pointless considering everyone who ate some of Bob was killed about a half hour later so we never got a chance to see if it would cause any of them to turn.

 

Everyone back in season one initially acted as if they thought Jim was infectious, but that was back in the days when they at least took a modicum of precautions not to get zombie splatter in their eyes or mouths and before they all knew they were already infected.

[BrokenRemote]

What I think stinks is that they were obviously going somewhere, with Jim--as Zadhhi mentioned--having the flashes as he approached zombiehood, and then Shane sensing the herd moving around him and possibly seeing through their eyes as he turned, and it feels like things Darabont started have been dropped.  Witness the current black hole in everyone's memory where the CDC is concerned.  (Nobody even brought up that trip to the CDC with Abraham and Eugene?  I don't think what Jenner said necessarily made what Eugene was selling impossible, but you'd think it would have come up).  It was an interesting idea, that maybe there's some kind of collective zombie consciousness, and it was basically dropped and forgotten.

[CletusMusashi]

I marathon'd through the early episodes so quickly that I never picked up on that mass consciousness thing before. It not only makes them more interesting, but it also makes them scarier. Much harder to stay away from, for example, because while you're killing off one small group of them, the others are "seeing" you and moving in.

Maybe as the mass consciousness grows, it gets better at immediately dominating the newly turned. So instead of thinking "I'm hungry for human flesh, but aren't those my friends..?" for the first few seconds, instead you go right into feeling the combined hunger of thousands of others. 

[AngelaHunter]

Witness the current black hole in everyone's memory where the CDC is concerned.

 

Kirkman didn't approve of the CDC, so we've kind of been instructed as a jury may be that we will disregard that episode.

 

http://www.cinemablend.com/television/One-Walking-Dead-Episode-Robert-Kirkman-Regrets-68605.html

 

 

[JBody]

Seriously. I've been wondering about those zombie life flashes ever since Jim.

....and I know we'll never get closure because of *sob* Kirkman!

[CarpeDiem54]

Kirkman didn't approve of the CDC, so we've kind of been instructed as a jury may be that we will disregard that episode.

 

http://www.cinemablend.com/television/One-Walking-Dead-Episode-Robert-Kirkman-Regrets-68605.html

Kirkman can bite my tainted meat and go turn in his granny's basement, where I'm sure he lives on a diet of Mountain Dew and Cheetos.

[AngelaHunter]

where I'm sure he lives on a diet of Mountain Dew and Cheetos.

 

I don't know much about him, but he does seem to be the type, what with his tough guy badass-ery obsession/envy.

[JBody]

Yeah I knew about his annoyance with the CDC and how everyone on this show has had a memory wipe about it but feck man having Glenn mention Jim just a few episodes ago seems deliberately cruel.

[Irishmaple]

Why didn't Kirkman like the CDC story?  I know he doesn't have any interest in the Why? of zombies but the CDC gave the whole storyline a whiff of science that sat well.  There was that great visual of Jennings's wife turning zombie in the MRI machine.  I wasn't thrilled with We're All Infected given the fact that we'd all seen corpses that hadn't turned, but I got over that.  I don't know enough about Kirkman to have issues with him but if I saw it on my TV screen, it happened.

[mandolin]

Timely link I saw today:

http://www.thewalkingdead.com/robert-kirkmans-biggest-twd-regret/

[Ronin Jackson]

The talk about Jenny Jones in the Morgan thread reminded me how the zombies seem to be devolving as the series goes along.  She seemed to have some residual memory of her house and old habits.  There was also the child zombie in the very first scene that picks up the stuffed animal.  In the second episode, a zombie manages to climb a fence.  The fence zombie was a little silly, but there's something very creepy about the zombies in the pilot episode exhibiting residual human behavior.  I'd rather liked for them to have kept exploring that, especially since the zombies are getting rather old at this point, and seem less and less threatening compared to the human threats on the show.

[CarpeDiem54]

The talk about Jenny Jones in the Morgan thread reminded me how the zombies seem to be devolving as the series goes along.  She seemed to have some residual memory of her house and old habits.  There was also the child zombie in the very first scene that picks up the stuffed animal.  In the second episode, a zombie manages to climb a fence.  The fence zombie was a little silly, but there's something very creepy about the zombies in the pilot episode exhibiting residual human behavior.  I'd rather liked for them to have kept exploring that, especially since the zombies are getting rather old at this point, and seem less and less threatening compared to the human threats on the show.

Darabont = more compelling zombies with residual human reactions.

Kirkman = zombies based upon his relatives - mindless eating machines.

[kikismom]

The talk about Jenny Jones in the Morgan thread reminded me how the zombies seem to be devolving as the series goes along.  She seemed to have some residual memory of her house and old habits.  There was also the child zombie in the very first scene that picks up the stuffed animal.  In the second episode, a zombie manages to climb a fence.  The fence zombie was a little silly, but there's something very creepy about the zombies in the pilot episode exhibiting residual human behavior.  I'd rather liked for them to have kept exploring that, especially since the zombies are getting rather old at this point, and seem less and less threatening compared to the human threats on the show.

I think the dull-eyed zombies are so un-scary. Morgan's wife (aside from her mouth glub-glubbing) looking in the peephole was so creepy, and the scariest one was the guy in the Church.2 when they were searching for Sophia---he turns around in the pew and his eyes look out of that rotting face with a sort of terrible glee that fresh prey just walked in.

I'd like to see the walkers with those eyes; they could still be scary. Because you couldn't be sure they aren't getting smarter, not weaker. That's a better direction for the story.

(Viruses do mutate, and their effects change---AFAIK, there could be scientific possibility that they could be adapting as fast or faster than the humans response to the new world.)

[editorgrrl]

The question is: can someone who's been bitten infect others even if that person hasn't died and turned yet? Bob seemed to think so, it made him a bit happier to die thinking that he was taking his captors and eventual murderers out with him.

According to Robert Kirkman, someone who's been bitten but not yet turned cannot infect others. Nor is eating tainted meat dangerous.

Someone wrote in to the Letter Hacks section of The Walking Dead #134 recently and asked if someone infected by a zombie bite would then pass on the disease to someone else by having sex with them. Here’s how Kirkman explained it.

If you had a septic wound that was infecting your blood stream, would you pass that infection through sex? No. So…having sex with someone after they’ve been bitten…much like eating a living human’s flesh after they’ve been bitten (show reference…to a thing that happened years ago in the comic) has no effect on you.

Edited December 7, 2014 by editorgrrl

[HalcyonDays]

I'm kinda confused about this explanation. First, the question should really be - is this a blood borne virus? Is it a body fluid based virus. Does it reside in the saliva only? It must be saliva only then, considering that the only way that a person gets the virus is from a Walker bite. But the Walkers are dead, - their saliva glands no longer function.

 

We know that the virus inhabits the brain stem, and we know that people who get infected can get infected from bite wounds on other parts of their body. So either it's blood borne or some type of virus that travels around the lymphatic system possibly. Kirkman's explanation makes no sense.

[CletusMusashi]

Maybe there's two different pathogens.

Type A is the "They bite you and you turn" kind. It can travel through the bloodstream for a short period, but quickly settles in or near the mouth. Whether it's in the mouth lining itself, or whether it manifests as a sort of zombie-inducing tooth plaque, or something else entirely, is still undefined. But it can't live for long away from the mouth area, so if you get their guts splattered on you not only does the actual virus count in there tend to be pretty low, but they tend to be weak and dying from being stuck in the belly or whatever for too long.

Type B is a mutated version of Type A. It lives permanently in the bloodstream, spreads easily, and only turns you into a zombie after something else kills you. It may even have beneficial side effects, like helping to fight off most other diseases.

But it also has extremely non-beneficial side effects, like dramatically softening parts of your skull. Some very advanced cases, like Carl and Tyreese, have developed such soft skulls that they can only keep their brain in its proper shape by wearing a hat at all times.

Type A infections became obvious before Type B was as widespread as it is now. That's why, early on, you could still see lots of people who'd stayed dead.

There's also a Type C, which has no effect on humans but dramatically slows down the growth of most forms of grass.

Edited December 8, 2014 by CletusMusashi

[CletusMusashi]

Type A might even have a life cycle where injection into the blood causes it to change and adapt itself to the brain, where upon nearing maturity it then dribbles down into the mouth. Because perhaps when it's in infectious mode it requires more oxygen? A snarling mouth tends to aerate itself better than a skull does.

Edited December 10, 2014 by CletusMusashi

[ghoulina]

I marathon'd through the early episodes so quickly that I never picked up on that mass consciousness thing before. It not only makes them more interesting, but it also makes them scarier. Much harder to stay away from, for example, because while you're killing off one small group of them, the others are "seeing" you and moving in.

Maybe as the mass consciousness grows, it gets better at immediately dominating the newly turned. So instead of thinking "I'm hungry for human flesh, but aren't those my friends..?" for the first few seconds, instead you go right into feeling the combined hunger of thousands of others.

 

Totally agree. I thought they were starting to do a lot of things with the zombies in the early seasons that were very creepy and interesting....but it seems to have never gone anywhere. For instance, the big herds of them forming up and travelling - I thought there would be more to that. I mean, from what we've been told, Zombies tend to stay in one place unless something stimulates them. Okay, so all of those zombies that ended up on Hershel's farm, were they really simply attracted to the helicopter and just kept walking long after it was gone? It's not just the inconsistency that is annoying, but the lack of fleshing out the flesh-eaters. I want more, I want them trying to figure out the walkers and getting proactive about dealing with them. Even Milton's little foray into seeing if you could reach them after they turned was interesting. 

 

I get that now the point is kind of - humans are the more dangerous ones, zombies are just a nuisance. But I still think they could try and make the walkers, themselves more interesting, instead of trying to ratchet up the walker KILLS every season, taking things to incredibly unbelievable levels while they're at it. And I do miss a lot of the human touches to the walkers. I WANT to remember they were real people, someone's wife, sister, son, etc. I don't watch this show just for the zombies, but I want them to be more than just scenery. 

 

Kirkman can bite my tainted meat and go turn in his granny's basement, where I'm sure he lives on a diet of Mountain Dew and Cheetos.

 

So Leah of Teen Mom fame is his mother? She actually looks old enough.....

[Bongo Fury]

I watched Land of the Dead over the weekend to satisfy my zombie itch. Overall, I thought it was weak. I don't like the semi-intelligent zombies at all, I think it's stupid and ruins the entire zombie premise. Although one touch that I like very much (and it has appeared in most of Romero's Dead flicks) is the varied dress of the zombies. Walking Dead zombies are all the same, a bland dirty gray brown color. While Romero zombies are dressed as cheerleaders, Nuns, Hari Krishnas, all sorts of funny, yet normal human attire. The variety is quite refreshing and it is a stark reminder of the human origins of the monsters.

[Bruinsfan]

And I do miss a lot of the human touches to the walkers. I WANT to remember they were real people, someone's wife, sister, son, etc. I don't watch this show just for the zombies, but I want them to be more than just scenery.

There have actually been several notable zombies that got that human touch this season: the mother and child zombies that Carol and Daryl encountered in the shelter, that woman with the cross necklace that so horrified Father Gabriel in the episode before last, and the parishoner with horn-rimmed glasses that he had the photo of. It's not a lot of plot focus, but a far cry from the usual MO of treating them like environmental hazards.

[ghoulina]

That's true. I did really like the mother and child in the shelter. 

[Nashville]

Don't forget the gasping zombie lady Morgan found at the school. She's the first walker I've felt bad for in a long time.

[BrokenRemote]

I think we felt sorry for the woman at the school because Morgan obviously felt sorry for her. His compassion stood out in a time where most humans seem to have forgotten--or at least gotten over-- the fact that the Walkers were once human. To me it was both touching and a sign that maybe Morgan hasn't located all of his missing sanity.

[Zahdii]

Random thought that just crossed my mind regarding the possible hints in the early seasons that the walkers were attempting to develop a 'hive mind'. 

 

There was Jim who seemed to be 'phasing in' as he slowly died of a walker bite, to the point that he asked to be left by the side of the road instead of asking that he not be allowed to turn.  Walkers were the worst thing that humans could run across at that time, why not ask that he be allowed to die in the sun and then have Daryl put a bolt in his brain before it could fire back up in full walker mode?

 

Then there were the 'firing sequence activated' visuals as Shane came back from the dead.  And the times that one walker would see prey and it seemed that other walkers who were moving away would suddenly turn toward the prey that the first walker had honed in on. 

 

Then there was crazy Lizzie, who was always 'strange' according to her sister.  Lizzie had an affinity for walkers that was truly frightening.  She insisted she understood them, and developed (at least in her mind) a working relationship with them.  She crept down at night to feed them through the fence and felt she knew them, giving them names and thinking of Walker Nick as her friend and confidant.  Lizzie really had the "can't we all just get along" thing going on.  She was the Walker Whisperer.  She was able to lead a walker away from a gravely ill man like a kindly human coaxing a wild animal.  The girl was happily playing tag with one and became enraged when Carol killed the walker, thus ending the 'game'.  We all know what happened next, as Lizzie killed her own sister in an attempt to prove that 'Walkers are people too'.

 

Makes me wonder if Lizzie was born with one foot in Walkerville.  What did her parents do for a living?  Was her mom some kind of scientist studying prion diseases and had unknowingly become infected with one?  Then while pregnant with Lizzie she was exposed to some wierd combo pig/bird flu and they all mixed together to create a child who would grow up to try to lead the living to the embrace of the Walking Dead? 

 

Yeah, that's it.  Lizzie was Patient Zero.  One day she threw up her anti-psychotic meds and realized that there was a whole other realm out there that no one else seemed to notice.  Did they say how Lizzie's mother died?  Maybe she was the first to be turned.  Lizzie probably gave her a cute little going away bite as her mom prepared to board a plane to a conference in another country and giggled the whole time as she felt more and more walkers signing onto The Walker Zone.  Then Lizzie crept out at night and bit all the passed-out drunks and druggies she could find, and sat back to revel in the increased expansion of this new world as each of her unwilling recruits succumbed to walkerhood and attacked others in kind. 

 

Lizzie was able to let the two world coexist for a while, but as her connection with the walkers grew stronger she lost patience with the remaining intransigent humans and decided to become more proactive in her approach.  She seemed like she was OK with the humans who were still around, as long as they didn't harm the Walkers, but did she ever say anything about how the Walkers would happily eat alive any human they came across?  I wonder what would have happened if Lizzie was cornered by Walkers.

[BrokenRemote]

Really cool theory! Only problem I can see is Mika was younger; it'd seem that she'd be infected in Mom's Zombie Womb, too.

[Zahdii]

Well, either mom didn't get sick with a weird flu virus during her next pregnancy, or Mika was adopted.  Or the whole thing affected her differently and she was actually immune to the whole zombie virus.

[CletusMusashi]

Mika was the only person immune to the virus. She could have saved the world if she'd been with them when they visited the CDC.

[kikismom]

Mika was the only person immune to the virus. She could have saved the world if she'd been with them when they visited the CDC.

Mika asked Patrick if he was going to story-time. She could have saved the prison if she'd left the library and taken a shower with him.

[CletusMusashi]

And a thousand slash fictions were born...

[Tippi Blevins]

I always think it's weird when the freshly dead instantly look gaunt and bony. Amy looked normal except for her eyes but Merle and Shane popped up looking like they were already rotted.

 

Why does being bitten cause them to turn if they're all already infected? Is it just more of a viral load than the immune system can handle at one time? 

 

And why does shooting them or smashing them anywhere in the head kill them when it's the brain stem that's active? The rest of the brain was already dead and turning into treacle, so what difference is an arrow going to make?

 

I'm always kind of impressed when I see a lady zombie still shuffling along in her nice flats. My shoes fall off all the time and I'm consciously trying to keep them on.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Tippi Blevins

[kikismom]

I always think it's weird when the freshly dead instantly look gaunt and bony. Amy looked normal except for her eyes but Merle and Shane popped up looking like they were already rotted.

 

Why does being bitten cause them to turn if they're all already infected? Is it just more of a viral load than the immune system can handle at one time? 

 

And why does shooting them or smashing them anywhere in the head kill them when it's the brain stem that's active? The rest of the brain was already dead and turning into treacle, so what difference is an arrow going to make?

 

I'm always kind of impressed when I see a lady zombie still shuffling along in her nice flats. My shoes fall off all the time and I'm consciously trying to keep them on.

The Gov.'s daughter Penny had some bad teeth and funky eyes, but other than that she looked pretty good. Had more pink in her cheeks than I do. She also got

turned on by a bowl of ground round...after we'd already established at the farm that the well walker wouldn't take a canned ham because  canned ham wasn't screaming and didn't have a pulse.

Shane shot Otis in the leg, instead of leaving him behind dead because walker bait must still be warm and have a little life---again confirmed by Carol shooting Terminus Mary in the thigh and The Grady Bunch rushing to dump the dying patients down the elevator shaft before they were cold.

[CletusMusashi]

Maybe he heated her food up for her a little bit. Or, maybe it was freshly cut from somebody who he thought was was plotting against him. We don't really know how many secret dungeons the Gov actually had.