Post-ZA Society Standards: What Wine Goes With Bob...?

[Iguessnot]

Funny that you mention Shed Dude.  During his conversation with Tyrese, I remember thinking he really wasn't much more than a couple of life experiences removed from the suburban next-door neighbor to whom you'd lend your lawn mower, or invite over for a barbecue, or to watch the Titans pound the Jaguars' asses on a Sunday afternoon.  He was still essentially that same personality; he'd just made a couple of steps down a fairly horrific path of personal survival in the name of pragmatism.  The scariest thing about Shed Dude was simply how accepting he was of the Terminus New World Order; he treated the cannibalistic commune like it was simply a different way of doing things, and one with which he was pretty much okay. 

 

Frankly, for the next week or so after Shed Dude's appearance, I found myself looking at some of my neighbor/acquaintances - some of whom I've known and been comfortable with for a few years - and wondering how easy it would be for some of them to make the same moral hop/skip/jump into Shed Dude's shoes.  More disturbing was the fact I saw two or three who IMHO could probably do so with a minimum of fuss.  But the actor who can make you think about such, with an access window of not much more than a half-dozen or so scenes...?  Pretty dern good.

Funny, the Weather Channel was showing a documentary on the Donner Party yesterday. I was not familar with the story and only caught the last 10 minutes or so, but I'll look out for the rerun.

[Nashville]

My, how the times have changed.

Used to be the line "Donner, party of eight" was always good for a laugh. :>

[ghoulina]

Frankly, for the next week or so after Shed Dude's appearance, I found myself looking at some of my neighbor/acquaintances - some of whom I've known and been comfortable with for a few years - and wondering how easy it would be for some of them to make the same moral hop/skip/jump into Shed Dude's shoes.  More disturbing was the fact I saw two or three who IMHO could probably do so with a minimum of fuss.  But the actor who can make you think about such, with an access window of not much more than a half-dozen or so scenes...?  Pretty dern good.

 

It really does make you ponder. We know that Gareth and his family turned into crazy cannibals because of the torture, confinement, and rape they'd been put through. Not excusing what they did, but that's why. But not everyone at Terminus went through that with them, right? How did that work, floating the idea to others - "join us or we will eat you"? How easy was that choice for others? I would have liked to see some more of that, actually. 

[qtpye]

I can not believe I am writing this, but in a cannibal society how do you know you are not the next meal?  Hello, your employment review was below average, so would you mind joining us for lunch?

 

Some people have equated killing the living with losing your humanity.  Other, people have said that killing is fine when it is to protect your loved ones, particularly  in desperate circumstances like the zombie apocalypse.  I think cannibalism, particularly hunting or trapping other human beings for food would be the line I would try never to cross, no matter how hungry I am.

[NoWillToResist]

I can not believe I am writing this, but in a cannibal society how do you know you are not the next meal?  Hello, your employment review was below average, so would you mind joining us for lunch?

 

Some people have equated killing the living with losing your humanity.  Other, people have said that killing is fine when it is to protect your loved ones, particularly  in desperate circumstances like the zombie apocalypse.  I think cannibalism, particularly hunting or trapping other human beings for food would be the line I would try never to cross, no matter how hungry I am.

 

I would have liked more information on how exactly Terminus came to be and how it functioned. Did they just eat everyone? Or did they sometimes save/recruit from a potential meal if the person had skills you deemed useful?

Maybe that's why we got a bit of explanation on the recruitment for ASZ...

Edited December 9, 2015 by NoWillToResist

[Irishmaple]

I can't imagine any circumstances under which I'd be okay with enticing people to my commune and then capturing them to use as meat. Kids, even. I wouldn't want to be lunch or dinner either. I guess I'd try to get myself shot trying to escape or something along those lines. I could only aspire to Bob's fatalistic "tainted meat" glee.

I would love to know if Aaron and Eric were aware of groups like the Wolves and this new Negan bunch, and didn't think it prudent to approach them. Enid found her own way there so I wonder who Aaron and Eric did recruit before CDB? I kinda wish we'd gotten to know Alexandria a bit better before the herd mess.

[paigow]

My, how the times have changed.

Used to be the line "Donner, party of eight" was always good for a laugh. :>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I-D8Ozc4Oc

 

Your street is definitely excluded from the Nashville Safe Zone during the next ZA...

I found myself looking at some of my neighbor/acquaintances - some of whom I've known and been comfortable with for a few years - and wondering how easy it would be for some of them to make the same moral hop/skip/jump into Shed Dude's shoes.  More disturbing was the fact I saw two or three who IMHO could probably do so with a minimum of fuss. 

[Nashville]

Responses to the following post of mine ended up starting a discussion I thought had too much good potential to let it get lost in an episode thread - so I pulled it out into a topic of its own.

We've already seen several new societal structures (Woodbury, Grady, Terminus, etc.) which represent varying twists on previously-accepted societal rules - some more twisted than others - to cope with life in the ZA. Under what circumstances are some of these changes acceptable? What presents as an acceptable rationalization for some of the more extreme elements? In this Grave New World, is there any longer such a thing as "too extreme"?

Discuss! :)

Funny that you mention Shed Dude. During his conversation with Tyrese, I remember thinking he really wasn't much more than a couple of life experiences removed from the suburban next-door neighbor to whom you'd lend your lawn mower, or invite over for a barbecue, or to watch the Titans pound the Jaguars' asses on a Sunday afternoon. He was still essentially that same personality; he'd just made a couple of steps down a fairly horrific path of personal survival in the name of pragmatism. The scariest thing about Shed Dude was simply how accepting he was of the Terminus New World Order; he treated the cannibalistic commune like it was simply a different way of doing things, and one with which he was pretty much okay.

Frankly, for the next week or so after Shed Dude's appearance, I found myself looking at some of my neighbor/acquaintances - some of whom I've known and been comfortable with for a few years - and wondering how easy it would be for some of them to make the same moral hop/skip/jump into Shed Dude's shoes. More disturbing was the fact I saw two or three who IMHO could probably do so with a minimum of fuss. But the actor who can make you think about such, with an access window of not much more than a half-dozen or so scenes...? Pretty dern good.

[HalcyonDays]

Great idea for a thread, Nashville!! And a very interesting topic. At what point do the survivors consider abandoning their "morality" and adherence to societal standards and expectations - and at what point would WE - in order to survive.

 

I'm going to move over the other posts from the Start to Finish episode thread that belong here, so we have this interesting conversation where it belongs.

[Nashville]

It really does make you ponder. We know that Gareth and his family turned into crazy cannibals because of the torture, confinement, and rape they'd been put through. Not excusing what they did, but that's why. But not everyone at Terminus went through that with them, right? How did that work, floating the idea to others - "join us or we will eat you"? How easy was that choice for others? I would have liked to see some more of that, actually.

My impression of Terminus' inception was something along these lines:

• Gareth&Friends originally started Terminus with the best of REALLY REALLY naïve intentions- creation of a utopian commune for post-ZA survival.
• To that end, they started putting up the signs and doing the radio broadcasts inviting everyone to Terminus - before SHTF.
• Responding to the signs and broadcasts, people started showing up at Terminus - including some not-so-nice people who took one look at the setup and decided a feudal oligarchy - with themselves as the ruling class, of course - would be a preferable alternative to communism.
• Terminus' original founders were imprisoned and used for slave labor and rape fodder - and this is totally my own supposition, with no real support, but I also strongly suspect the inception of cannibalism began with the usurpers, when their captive Termites became too damaged or incapacitated to function in their servile roles.
• The continued extremes of dehumanizing abuse to the point of death - and possibly even after - eventually drove the Termites to an inescapable conclusion: the only way to defeat these usurpers was to become even more inhuman than they ("You're either the butcher, or you're the cattle").
• An advantage presented itself to the Termites one day, and they were able to turn the tables on their captors - at which point the traumatized Termites chose to revisit upon their abusers the same torments to which they had been subjected - including the cannibalism.
• Even after their emancipation, however, the Termites were unable to recover psychologically; their thinking was now crystallized into a framework where every Outsider represented a potential threat - an encore of their horrorshow.
• Plus, moral considerations aside, there's an element in their current environment which attenuated the horrors of cannibalism - it's easy. With an existing (but dwindling) food supply already locked up in the form of their former tormentors, and more suspicious potential interlopers - and their supplies - walking right up to their door every day, why risk going outside the safety of the fences to hunt or forage?
• Thus the cattle become the butcher - and rationalize their atrocity by reducing it to a bureaucratic process.

Annnd... cue CDB.

  

I can not believe I am writing this, but in a cannibal society how do you know you are not the next meal?  Hello, your employment review was below average, so would you mind joining us for lunch?

In the "ruling crew", I doubt anyone would broach the subject - for fear of paranoid retribution. In this bunch of shell-shocked butchers, you'd have to be suicidal to suggest you're viewing any of them as cattle.

 

Some people have equated killing the living with losing your humanity.  Other, people have said that killing is fine when it is to protect your loved ones, particularly  in desperate circumstances like the zombie apocalypse.  I think cannibalism, particularly hunting or trapping other human beings for food would be the line I would try never to cross, no matter how hungry I am.

  

It's quasi-Zen in a way - stripping away layer upon layer of artificiality until you reach your immutable core.

I strongly suspect some cores are WAY thinner than others.

I would have liked more information on how exactly Terminus came to be and how it functioned. Did they just eat everyone? Or did they sometimes save/recruit from a potential meal if the person had skills you deemed useful?

Maybe that's why we got a bit of explanation on the recruitment for ASZ...

 

Considering their extreme paranoia toward Outsiders (remember the Candle Room...?), I doubt there's much in the way of recruitment. Individual arrivees, maybe; I expect the potential threat of incorporating an entire new group at once would be beyond them. We never got to see - but maybe if CDB had gone further in the entry process, there were potential signs the Termites might look for, to pose their own version of the Three Questions...?

 

I can't imagine any circumstances under which I'd be okay with enticing people to my commune and then capturing them to use as meat. Kids, even. I wouldn't want to be lunch or dinner either. I guess I'd try to get myself shot trying to escape or something along those lines. I could only aspire to Bob's fatalistic "tainted meat" glee.

Depends on how long you can go hungry, I guess.

But what if you have hungry kids...?

[Irishmaple]

The Walking Dead's world doesn't seem to be there yet. I mean at the point of mass starvation. There are still options to cannibalism. All of the other places found conventional food sources and were beginning to grow their own. Herschel's farm, the prison, Woodbury and now Alexandria were all working with scavenged supplies and were planting with a view to the long term. Even the Wolves appear to be managing without cannibalism.

My ZA kids are welcome to all the dog food they can handle. I realize there might be side effects but I wouldn't draw the line where Rick did. If all my kid has is a can of Alpo, I will open it with my teeth if I have to.

[diebartdie]

No, dont eat dog food, not even the high end kind. Dog food has bones in it, humans cant deal with that. However, we can eat cat food with no problems. I said it before and I'll say it again, the cannibalism story line was bullshit. I mean I could buy a group of survivors turning to that as a last resort, history is replete with examples of that. I can buy turning to cannibalism as a sort of ancestor worship, history has that as well. I can even buy the lone weirdo cannibal, again plenty of real world examples of that. The Termites though I just do not buy that a group THAT large with that sweet set up, with strong scouts going out every day to scavenge supplies would turn to cannibalism as a regular source of nutrition. It doesnt make any sense at all. If cannibalism was THAT easy, right here and now we would have examples of NORMAL groups of people who did that regularly inspite of abundant alternate nutrition. The group was too big to sustain that level of insanity, especially with regards to murdering and eating children. The animal instinct to protect our young ones, ESPECIALLY in a calamity like the ZA would over rule almost anything. Now that does not mean some children would represent a credible threat and would have to be taken out before they killed people (Lizzie) but it does mean protecting the little ones would be so important. I hated that story line, a mini society of cannibals was just idiotic. In the comics,

it was a much smaller band of people who were hunting and eating people, that actually made slightly more sense, they were lazy motherfuckers who found humans easier to hunt which....I mean, really?

but anyway, away from large herds of zeds, there would be plentiful game, there would still be unspoiled canned goods in houses, in stores, in hotels, in restaurants, etc. ALSO and this is really big point....in the ZA surviving humans are surrounded by walking corpses who EAT LIVING PEOPLE. If you aspired to eat human flesh, slit your throat, bleed out and go be a fucking shambler, eat as much as you can. I just dont see how a survivor could strive so hard to stay alive, stay safe from the walkers and yet decide they wanted to do the exact smae thing as the dead ones. BULL SHIT (at least bullshit for such a LARGE group of survivors)

[Nashville]

The Walking Dead's world doesn't seem to be there yet. I mean at the point of mass starvation. There are still options to cannibalism.

 

For what we would consider sane people, sure - but I'm not certain the Termites fall into that category any longer:

 

In what we would consider "normal" society, cannibalism is one of the strongest taboos still in existence; so strong, in fact, it cannot be overcome except in the most exigent of circumstances - and sometimes not even then.  Both Elizabeth Donner and her children were staving to death - but while she nourished her children with the organs of their father, Elizabeth herself still refused to eat.  A funny thing about taboos, though; once those walls collapse, they collapse completely.  Other members of the party advanced from eating the already deceased to murder for their food source - and one went so far as killing to rob, then eating the flesh of his victim.

 

In the story line presented to us, the Termites appear to have transitioned from an "all who arrive, survive" rescue commune to a cannibalism assembly line in and inordinately short time frame.  I'm of the impression their imprisonment, torture, and (sometimes) death at the hands of their captors crystallized in the Termites an "Us vs. Them at any cost" survival mentality - and if (as I suspect) their captors introduced cannibalism into the mix - either directly by eating AND feeding the Termites their own dead, or indirectly by leaving the Termites locked up in boxcars with no food source except the corpses of their own - then the Termites incorporated the practice into their revenge when persecution turned into retribution.  After a degree of time passage with the practice both before and after their ordeal, it's not outside the bounds of reality to think the practice of cannibalism might have become woven into the crystallized structure of their new societal matrix.

We saw via the Candle Room display that the "Us vs. Them" mentality survived long past their incarceration; I don't think it's necessarily a great stretch to think that once breached, the practice of cannibalism might have survived as well.

 

Even the Wolves appear to be managing without cannibalism.

 

I'm not sure about that; I took the captive Wolf's statement about the Wolves "using what is left" of their victims as a possible cannibalism reference.

 

The Termites though I just do not buy that a group THAT large with that sweet set up, with strong scouts going out every day to scavenge supplies would turn to cannibalism as a regular source of nutrition.

 

But did we every actually see any scavenging scouts?  I only recall perimeter scouts who never went far from the fences, except to set off fireworks to distract walker packs. 

And given that cannibalism is presented as part of the Termites' normal order of things - would would they scavenge?  They have a steady stream of food and supplies (i.e., survivors and their gear) walking in their gates on a daily or near-daily basis, after all.  Why risk sending people outside the safety of the Terminus fences for more?  Plus, this stuff is fresh.  ;)

[ghoulina]

Yea, the Termites didn't turn to cannibalism because they were hungry. It wasn't a last resort thing. It was because their imprisonment, torture, and rape turned them crazy. I'm not trying to excuse their behavior, but they went fucking nuts. I mean, realistically, they could have just turned the tables on the captors, slaughtered them all, then removed the signs and insulated themselves as best they could. But they were beyond that. They developed a state of mind where they thought they could only be strong by consuming other people. It was really nuts, but I didn't find it unbelievable at all. I actually think it was THE most interesting villain story line we ever had, and I really would have appreciated more of a backstory. I would have liked to see just HOW they got the upper hand with the dudes that were holding them hostage. I would have liked to see the first decision to eat someone, and how it progressed from there. And yes, were there individuals who they offered sanctuary to, instead of eating? 

 

I also wouldn't be surprised if, like Nashville speculated, the original captors ate some of the Termites and this planted the seed in their minds. Clipboards aside, these were not rational, functioning people. 

[nodorothyparker]

I really kind of love this thread topic.

 

I think we're supposed to see the Termites as an extreme example of what's possible once that great break in your mind happens.  All of society's taboos don't matter now because the society that made it possible to have them in the first place is gone.  All the notions and niceties that said if you set up a utopian sanctuary for all people will come and behave as they behaved before and won't it be nice failed, so how much do all those other rules even matter anyway?  And that doesn't even have to mean that they went from nice rule abiding people one day to frothing cannibals hunting people in the woods the next.  It means that once you can justify throwing off those first taboos, then it becomes the proverbial sliding scale where it gets easier and easier to flout one more and then another and another.  Til the next thing you know you're barbequing Bob and waxing philosophically about how it had to be this way.

 

Or at least that's usually how it goes in most in dystopian fiction, where cannibalism almost always eventually makes an appearance for this very reason.  Usually after the heroes have had to cross the line into doing some previously unthinkable things and need reassurance that they're not completely lost because at least they haven't resorted to eating people.

[JBody]

Certainly, they HAD to have been totally beyond regular ZA traumatization to make this even remotely believable.  It simply doesn’t hold water otherwise.  Remember the soccer team who crashed in the Andes – there were more than a few people who starved to death on principle.  Not everyone is down with the physically-survive-at-all-costs thing.  I think how it was done in the comics was more believable, and that was a big ol’ stretch too.

 

The only post-apocalyptic scenario where this makes sense to me, and is really fracking scary, is McCarthy’s The Road.  The world is dying or already dead.  Bands of cannibals makes sense.  The scene of the naked people locked in the dark basement of the farmhouse; the bloody tools and basins in the kitchen; that was bone-chillingly terrifying.  They tried to evoke that with Terminus but I just couldn’t go there beyond “ewww gross did you see the yard with body parts flash by.”  --probably because they were growing sunflowers and looting people’s shit which had to include cans of food and whatnot here and there. 

 

So it’s all about the crazies – yeah ok.  We know about Jonestown, mass psychosis, etc. but as Ghoulina pointed out above, not nearly enough time was spent developing this story.  A whole back season of buildup, and it’s summarily dealt with in 5a.  Didn’t work for me.  If they were gonna diverge so far from the comics and make the storyline far more ambitious than it deserved the execution fell flatter than a pancake in Kansas (to me).

[nodorothyparker]

I do wish they'd spent longer on the Terminus arc and skipped the silly evil cops are kidnapping people for laundry and sexual favors story.  Shoehorning them both into the same half season kept either story from being well developed or told.

[JBody]

I really kind of love this thread topic.

 

I think we're supposed to see the Termites as an extreme example of what's possible once that great break in your mind happens.  All of society's taboos don't matter now because the society that made it possible to have them in the first place is gone.  All the notions and niceties that said if you set up a utopian sanctuary for all people will come and behave as they behaved before and won't it be nice failed, so how much do all those other rules even matter anyway?  And that doesn't even have to mean that they went from nice rule abiding people one day to frothing cannibals hunting people in the woods the next.  It means that once you can justify throwing off those first taboos, then it becomes the proverbial sliding scale where it gets easier and easier to flout one more and then another and another.  Til the next thing you know you're barbequing Bob and waxing philosophically about how it had to be this way.

 

Or at least that's usually how it goes in most in dystopian fiction, where cannibalism almost always eventually makes an appearance for this very reason.  Usually after the heroes have had to cross the line into doing some previously unthinkable things and need reassurance that they're not completely lost because at least they haven't resorted to eating people.

 

Yeah and that's the old chicken and the egg thing too.  It ALWAYS crops up in PA fiction, for obvious reasons: "All of society's taboos don't matter now because the society that made it possible to have them in the first place is gone."  And that's the thing, taboos are taboos for a reason.  Some semblance of order would be restored more quickly than TPTB would care to admit (for the sake of drama).  Safety in numbers, the idea of the commonwealth -- certainly not new inventions -- group survival is necessary for individual survival.  As long as we've been human (10,000 years?) there have been rules and societal conventions and taboos for the sake of the survival of our species as a whole.  This roaming band of psychos idea is only viable at the very beginning and in a limited way.  It doesn't help that on this show, 1 day equals 8 episodes.  Time is incredibly distorted, as a viewer.  But yeah, my main peeve is PA fiction treating "society" or "government" as if it were some alien thing imposed upon them --hey, maybe it is, for the author, I dunno-- but these structures comes from them, from people and they are meant to be for their benefit. 

And I think one's take on this topic is gonna boil down to the old Lord of the Flies test:

 

Do you think humans are intrinsically good, or intrinsically evil?

 

Nice thread Nashville ;)

[nodorothyparker]

You're absolutely right that the show's screwing with time is not helping matters any.  We're 5 1/2 seasons in and have supposedly covered less than two years, with several of those seasons only covering a particular week or two.  Carl is now as tall as many of the adult members of the cast and we're on our fifth or sixth Judith, but hey, it's only been a week, right?  Right?

 

I know I've said it before on other threads about this show but I really do think we're passing the point of absurdity that we're still supposed to see attempts to rebuild society like Alexandria as some kind of outlier and roving bands of apocalyptic assholes as the norm.  Sure, you'd have some groups like Joe and claimers who either couldn't or wouldn't assimilate into in a new society, but they're going to be fewer and farther between as time moves on. It's in human nature to want to herd together for mutual aid and comfort and society.  It's necessary for anything much above subsistence level survival, which is a subject the show keeps toying with.  One of my great interests in reading PA fiction is seeing how people rebuild as the old systems die.  What parts do they keep and what do they discard?  It's generally not something most are going to have to be forced into.

[diebartdie]

And I think one's take on this topic is gonna boil down to the old Lord of the Flies test:

 

Do you think humans are intrinsically good, or intrinsically evil?

 

Nice thread Nashville ;)

Personally and in spite of how ugly things seem to be right now, I think we are intrinsically GOOD.

[NoWillToResist]

I would love to know if Aaron and Eric were aware of groups like the Wolves and this new Negan bunch, and didn't think it prudent to approach them. Enid found her own way there so I wonder who Aaron and Eric did recruit before CDB? I kinda wish we'd gotten to know Alexandria a bit better before the herd mess.

 

I think Aaron made a comment which made me believe that he'd previously seen some people whom he decided should not be invited to Alexandria. He indicated that he'd been watching CDB for a while, which makes me think that he'd previously come across some shady motherfuckers beforehand and wanted to make sure he had a good sense of CDB's modus operandi before approaching them.

 

We've already seen several new societal structures (Woodbury, Grady, Terminus, etc.) which represent varying twists on previously-accepted societal rules - some more twisted than others - to cope with life in the ZA. Under what circumstances are some of these changes acceptable? What presents as an acceptable rationalization for some of the more extreme elements? In this Grave New World, is there any longer such a thing as "too extreme"?

 

I'd like to know whether Woodbury would have carried on happily under the Governor had CDB not turned up. I don't recall any dirty underbelly of that place (other than him keeping his walker child in hiding). I'm a little surprised that CDB hasn't come across another group like themselves. It seems strange to me that the two groups of decent people they have encountered (Woodbury populace and ASZ) housed people who were utterly sheltered from the worst of the ZA. Is CDB really the only middle ground as far as people are concerned? You're either utterly useless and innocent or murderous/crazy? Is this realistic?

 

The Walking Dead's world doesn't seem to be there yet. I mean at the point of mass starvation. There are still options to cannibalism. All of the other places found conventional food sources and were beginning to grow their own. Herschel's farm, the prison, Woodbury and now Alexandria were all working with scavenged supplies and were planting with a view to the long term.

 

I remember being so happy to see that CDB was gathering books to make a library. In the absence of skill and the internet, I would raid as many bookstores and libraries as I could to gather a stockpile of information. How else will you be able to learn basic medical training, how to grow food, raise animals, build shelter, build defense/weapons, make drinkable water,  etc.?

[Ocean Chick]

What has always intrigued me was Terminus Mary's comment to Carol - "You could have been one of us".  What did she mean by that?  That if they'd captured Carol, that there was a possibility that they'd invite her to join them, seeing how strong she was?  Or that she could have turned into a cannibal eventually as well, if she'd been treated like the Termites had been by the Usurpers?  Do you think there's anything that could Carol - or Rick, or Glenn, or any of our group - into murdering cannibals?  Would Rick kill someone else in order to get meat to feed his children and keep them alive?  He has, after all, bit out the neck of a man threatening Carl harm.

 

I've read just about everything I can about the Donner party, and I've read the book about the soccer team that crashed in the Andes.  Very fascinating stuff about the human psyche and what some people will do to survive, while other people would rather die than commit some taboos. 

 

We saw at Terminus that they were growing some foodstuffs, so they weren't killing for sustenance (though we didn't see any other sources of protein).  I think they were killing merely to assure themselves that they were indeed the butchers, and never again to be the cattle.  It made them feel safe.

[qtpye]

A

nd I think one's take on this topic is gonna boil down to the old Lord of the Flies test:

    

    Do you think humans are intrinsically good, or intrinsically evil?

    

    Nice thread Nashville ;)

 

 

I think it is much more complex than that.  What is good and evil has been decided by society and society is now over.  Remember, what would have been considered acceptable 500 years ago,would totally horrify us today.

 

However, as others have mentioned cannibalism seemed to be an unifer in that is considered one of the most vile and repugnant things a person could do in almost all human societies.

 

I think we all have a need to survive and some of us will go to greater depths and darker places than others.  I have already said that this would be a line I would never cross and I am sure most of us feel this way.  However, i am making this statement in relative safety and comfort and have never been in such a desperate scenario in the first place (thank God).

 

As the Donner party shows us, there are some people that would do it to make sure their children survive, but would not indulge themselves.

 

I think the Termites have an extreme version of Rick and Carol's pragmatism in the ZA.  They have to be ruthless to survive and will kill and eat everyone who is not them.  They now can no longer afford the luxury of trust and humanity.

[nodorothyparker]

I'd like to know whether Woodbury would have carried on happily under the Governor had CDB not turned up. I don't recall any dirty underbelly of that place (other than him keeping his walker child in hiding). I'm a little surprised that CDB hasn't come across another group like themselves. It seems strange to me that the two groups of decent people they have encountered (Woodbury populace and ASZ) housed people who were utterly sheltered from the worst of the ZA. Is CDB really the only middle ground as far as people are concerned? You're either utterly useless and innocent or murderous/crazy? Is this realistic?

 

You did have that whole Guvnuh and his henchmen killing people like the military guys they came across and taking their stuff and then presenting it to the good townsfolk as scavenging after those poor people had died valiantly thing.  There were also the fish tanks full of heads implying that this was not the first time he had done this.  And they clearly would have killed Michonne on her way out if they could have found her.  But as a whole, the general population of the place was never presented as doing anything more sinister than enjoying walker fights as entertainment.  Which, hey, the cable's gone, you might as well get what amusement you can out of the end of the world.  The walkers didn't seem to mind any.

 

But fair point, the Woodburies wanted to bolt after Rick and Co. got in and accidentally let a walker or two follow them in.  They also wanted to run away and hide after the prison crew finally fired back at them, characterizing it as "a slaughter."  Once they were incorporated into the prison crew, all they did was conveniently die. Apparently they were just the warm-up act for how cowardly can we portray a town full of people hiding behind walls.

[NoWillToResist]

I think the Termites have an extreme version of Rick and Carol's pragmatism in the ZA.  They have to be ruthless to survive and will kill and eat everyone who is not them.  They now can no longer afford the luxury of trust and humanity.

 

But the Termites specifically lured people to them in order to kill and eat them (apparently). That's not even extreme pragmatism, IMO. To me, extreme pragmatism would be if the Alexandrians cooked and ate the dead Wolves who attacked them (if they needed food).

But to intentionally draw people to you, under the mantle of hospitality and safety, only to turn around and kill them is, IMO, twisted at best and evil at worst.

[nodorothyparker]

Even under the show's timeline, they're nearly two years out now.  So what's left of the canned goods to scrounge are going to be getting pretty rank.  If you don't want to do that or if you're lazy or lacking in knowledge to know how to farm or hunt, you're going to be getting pretty hungry.  And growing a few herbs or tomatoes in pots (which is all we saw of Terminus) is in no way comparable to farming enough to feed yourself or a dozen of your closest cannibal friends.

 

In my recent adventures in Thanksgiving pie making, I discovered a can of pumpkin at the back of the pantry that was one full year expired.  Because I'm curious and always thinking about things like this, I opened it to see if it would still be salvageable in a ZA sort of situation.  It smelled and looked ... really not good.  At that point if you had nothing else, and you happened to crazy, I could see how cooking up one of the neighbors might seem like a pragmatic alternative.

[Ocean Chick]

At that point if you had nothing else, and you happened to crazy, I could see how cooking up one of the neighbors might seem like a pragmatic alternative.

 

 

There's always a caveat, isn't there?  :D

 

I don't know if I'd eat another human being.  I'd like to think not, but I hope I never have to find out where my own limits are.  Hopefully I'd find a good book on foraging for wild edibles and be able to get by that way.  But then, I also know how to grow a good bit of my own food.  As long as I have someone watching my back for random walkers while I farm.

[JBody]

A

 

I think it is much more complex than that.  What is good and evil has been decided by society and society is now over.  Remember, what would have been considered acceptable 500 years ago,would totally horrify us today.

 

However, as others have mentioned cannibalism seemed to be an unifer in that is considered one of the most vile and repugnant things a person could do in almost all human societies.

 

I think we all have a need to survive and some of us will go to greater depths and darker places than others.  I have already said that this would be a line I would never cross and I am sure most of us feel this way.  However, i am making this statement in relative safety and comfort and have never been in such a desperate scenario in the first place (thank God).

 

As the Donner party shows us, there are some people that would do it to make sure their children survive, but would not indulge themselves.

 

I think the Termites have an extreme version of Rick and Carol's pragmatism in the ZA.  They have to be ruthless to survive and will kill and eat everyone who is not them.  They now can no longer afford the luxury of trust and humanity.

 

Yeah, I dig historicism for sure.  My point was that Terminus is unbelievable by historical standards and even by post-apocalyptic fictional standards, if you want to judge it by the rules of its own universe.  Which is appropriate....  But the comics explained it away as the cannibals simply being lazy and not skilled at getting their own food.  Ok.  TV version explains it away as them being crazy beyond crazy.  Ok.  I wonder what prompted them to take this direction on the show. 

[AwesomO4000]

Even under the show's timeline, they're nearly two years out now.  So what's left of the canned goods to scrounge are going to be getting pretty rank.  If you don't want to do that or if you're lazy or lacking in knowledge to know how to farm or hunt, you're going to be getting pretty hungry.  And growing a few herbs or tomatoes in pots (which is all we saw of Terminus) is in no way comparable to farming enough to feed yourself or a dozen of your closest cannibal friends.

 

In my recent adventures in Thanksgiving pie making, I discovered a can of pumpkin at the back of the pantry that was one full year expired.  Because I'm curious and always thinking about things like this, I opened it to see if it would still be salvageable in a ZA sort of situation.  It smelled and looked ... really not good.  At that point if you had nothing else, and you happened to crazy, I could see how cooking up one of the neighbors might seem like a pragmatic alternative.

 

Interesting about the canned pumpkin. I would've thought it would've held out. However, at two years, there is likely still some stuff that's okay. Canned goods that were new for example, since many are often good for at least two years when canned. Next on the list for me would be dry goods. Cereal, which Carl was shown to go after - smart kid - in "After" (I love that episode) would be an example. Even past date cereal would more likely just be stale, but probably still edible, I'm guessing. Same with dried pasta, flour, oatmeal, sugar, cornmeal, crackers, cookies, breakfast and granola bars, etc. But at this point, in my opinion, someone should be thinking of raiding a store that has seeds and picking some up. As I postulated in another thread, that would be one of the first things I would do. Seeds are lightweight and so wouldn't take up much weight or room in my pack, and I would never know when I might use them. I'm also pretty good at knowing what things I can get seeds back from to grow more and what things you only have to grow one plant to get a bunch of. Things like winter squash and peppers, for example - one squash plant or pepper plant can get you a bunch of fruit , and one fruit can give you a buttload of seeds for your next planting - but something like tomatoes - which you'd need more starting seeds - is tougher to get seeds from for next year (so I generally just buy plants) - and they are also sometimes wimpy. For Georgia (where I live) - some garden plants are notoriously fickle (and tomatoes are one of them - not like Indiana where growing tomatoes was easy), so I'd stick to the "hearty" stuff.

 

I'm also surprised there isn't more blackberry picking on this show, because they grow in Georgia wild all over the place, and there are enough varieties that they grow at various times of the spring and summer. Any "civilization" spot picked in Georgia, should in my opinion, contain a blackberry patch. It will take care of itself and multiply.

[Nashville]

But the Termites specifically lured people to them in order to kill and eat them (apparently). That's not even extreme pragmatism, IMO. To me, extreme pragmatism would be if the Alexandrians cooked and ate the dead Wolves who attacked them (if they needed food).

But to intentionally draw people to you, under the mantle of hospitality and safety, only to turn around and kill them is, IMO, twisted at best and evil at worst.

Yea, the Termites didn't turn to cannibalism because they were hungry. It wasn't a last resort thing. It was because their imprisonment, torture, and rape turned them crazy. I'm not trying to excuse their behavior, but they went fucking nuts. I mean, realistically, they could have just turned the tables on the captors, slaughtered them all, then removed the signs and insulated themselves as best they could. But they were beyond that. They developed a state of mind where they thought they could only be strong by consuming other people.

There's an old military saying: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the baddest motherfucker in the goddamn valley." I think this may parallel where the Termites took their "You're either the butcher, or you're the cattle" mentality.

The Termites set their minds they are cattle no more, but they know they aren't the only butchers around - heck, they just escaped imprisonment by one bunch. So if they are going to survive - to thrive, even - they better have the biggest cleaver around, to deal with the competition. It's not enough to be strong - they must always, ALWAYS be stronger, else they're liable to end up back in their own boxcars again.

It was really nuts, but I didn't find it unbelievable at all. I actually think it was THE most interesting villain story line we ever had, and I really would have appreciated more of a backstory. I would have liked to see just HOW they got the upper hand with the dudes that were holding them hostage. I would have liked to see the first decision to eat someone, and how it progressed from there. And yes, were there individuals who they offered sanctuary to, instead of eating?

I also wouldn't be surprised if, like Nashville speculated, the original captors ate some of the Termites and this planted the seed in their minds. Clipboards aside, these were not rational, functioning people.

I would have loved to see much more background on the de-evolution of Terminus as well:

• Did their captors initiate the practice of cannibalism?
• If not, what was its impetus? Rage? Revenge? Starvation?
• A biggie for me: What was their normal process for new arrivals?. We never really got to see that. Glenn's crew went from Mary saying "Welcome!" to being locked up in a boxcar; Rick's crew short-circuited whatever the Termites' normal process was, when Rick spotted Termites with Prison body armor and other items they could only have gotten from the other half of CDB. Was there normally a meal, with maybe a sit-down conversation involved? Did the Termites have their own version of the Three Questions, to vet potential recruits for their cannibalistic commune? Any kind of sales pitch?

Certainly, they HAD to have been totally beyond regular ZA traumatization to make this even remotely believable. It simply doesn’t hold water otherwise. Remember the soccer team who crashed in the Andes – there were more than a few people who starved to death on principle.

Yeah - and by definition they're all dead, so I doubt they're in much of a position to kick up that much of a fuss about the New World Order.

Another thing which tends to invalidate the soccer team parallel is that eventually, they were rescued and returned to a world where the old rules still applied. There was no such rescue for the Termites, and no society to return to - just the shattered remnants of what they themselves had built, which had been trashed by their invaders.

Yeah and that's the old chicken and the egg thing too. It ALWAYS crops up in PA fiction, for obvious reasons: "All of society's taboos don't matter now because the society that made it possible to have them in the first place is gone."

Actually that whole "all the walls come down at once" mentality irritates me a good bit, because I consider it a drastic oversimplification - that, or evidence of really lazy writing. :)

I think many taboos MAY collapse - but individually, and for specific reasons in each case.

And that's the thing, taboos are taboos for a reason. Some semblance of order would be restored more quickly than TPTB would care to admit (for the sake of drama). Safety in numbers, the idea of the commonwealth -- certainly not new inventions -- group survival is necessary for individual survival. As long as we've been human (10,000 years?) there have been rules and societal conventions and taboos for the sake of the survival of our species as a whole.

But when there is no communication with the species as a whole - when you are hiding behind walls, and your view of the only "group" or "commonwealth" which matters shrinks down to those behind the walls with you...?

Also: most taboos are the result of societal pressure - and the more people, the more pressure. Smaller groups such as the Termites are inherently less stable and more malleable, because they lack the inertia of a large population mass to resist change.

I think one's take on this topic is gonna boil down to the old Lord of the Flies test:

Do you think humans are intrinsically good, or intrinsically evil?

Nice thread Nashville ;)

You're welcome. :) And man, we could go on about THAT one for days.

Intrinsically good, or intrinsically evil? My answer would probably be - neither.

I think humans are intrinsically selfish; they are motivated to act initially in terms of what promotes their own survival, and - once the basic requirements of survival are met - subsequently in terms of what motivates their own prosperity.

As to good or evil...?

YMMV, but I consider survival to be an amoral concept - which, to a moralist, would probably translate as "evil". ;)

Edited December 10, 2015 by Nashville

[Nashville]

But the Termites specifically lured people to them in order to kill and eat them (apparently). That's not even extreme pragmatism, IMO. To me, extreme pragmatism would be if the Alexandrians cooked and ate the dead Wolves who attacked them (if they needed food).

But to intentionally draw people to you, under the mantle of hospitality and safety, only to turn around and kill them is, IMO, twisted at best and evil at worst.

Ah, I see where we're diverging here. You think the entire Terminus invitation setup - signs, maps, radio broadcasts, etc. - was from start to finish part of a cannibalistic honey pot.

My perception is different. I think they started out with the best of naive intentions to create a true refuge for survivors. It wasn't until after they were overthrown and basically driven insane that their altruistic efforts were warped into something far darker - at which point the Termites used what had originally been set up to help people to support their new personal survival agenda.

Edited December 10, 2015 by Nashville

[rab01]

Ahhhhh, this is a thread right that could keep going through the entire hiatus and beyond.  A couple throat clearing-ish things before getting to cannibalism. The hospital storyline was potentially FASCINATING to me as the first time we saw a legitimately gray from top-to-bottom society being created post-ZA. Woodbury was just a bunch of ASZhats with a stronger (albeit evil) leader and some soldiers. Grady was a story with potential to explore about the trade-offs people are willing to make for security in the post-ZA (the residents/serfs) or the prices people would extract for taking on extra risks (the cops). Unfortunately, they derailed the story into Beth, Beth and more Beth and focused on some murky power struggle between the cops, rather than the serfs -- who were given pretty much NO dialogue. Terminus was also potentially fascinating.

 

Neither of those societies was in the comics and I think that's kind of telling. Kirkman doesn't really do world-building. He sets up scenes and dilemmas and hard choices and sometimes really sad results but his world building is very murky. So, it makes sense to me that two interesting set-ups had no real peg to the comics and were then burned off quickly to get back to the main arc of the show.

 

On to cannibalism and whether Terminus' adoption of it was at all believable. I don't want to bury the lead so I'll start with what would normally have been my last point -- cannibalism hasn't always been considered a particularly uncrossable line in modern society. We all talk about the Donner Party but in the 1700s and 1800s there was a minor rash of shipwreck cases where the crew ate each other (or some of each other) in order to survive until rescue. There's some speculation that ship construction of the time played a part in it because there were more mid-sea wrecks that were survivable for months but without the ability to count on being able to make it to shore. In one famous case that ended up being tried before the British Courts and explored in a book called Cannibalism and the Common Law, a British Navy Captain was shipwrecked in a lifeboat with a few members of his crew. After many days at sea, the cabin boy fell ill from having drunk sea water and they decided to kill and eat him. The Captain's defense was that they were following the "Law of the Sea" and some of the argument at the time was whether it would have been better if they had held a lottery instead. How does that apply to the discussion in the post-ZA world? There are times and circumstances where some very respectable and, in their lights, moral people will decide that cannibalism is the correct course of action. There are also some choices that people may make in those circumstances that can be immoral even if you grant the possibility that eating people may not be automatically immoral.

 

As for how it started at Terminus, I bet those guys were fed people while they were captured by their oppressors who weren't willing to waste any other resources on them other than their own selves. Once they broke free, I'm sure they first killed all of the oppressors that they could find. At that point, they probably thought of it as either fitting or simply wasteful to not eat the corpses.

 

What was really immoral to me about their set-up afterwards was leaving up all the old signs and then robbing and killing everyone who came in. What they did with the dead bodies afterwards was way less evil, just icky.

[Nashville]

Ahhhhh, this is a thread right that could keep going through the entire hiatus and beyond. A couple throat clearing-ish things before getting to cannibalism. The hospital storyline was potentially FASCINATING to me as the first time we saw a legitimately gray from top-to-bottom society being created post-ZA. Woodbury was just a bunch of ASZhats with a stronger (albeit evil) leader and some soldiers. Grady was a story with potential to explore about the trade-offs people are willing to make for security in the post-ZA (the residents/serfs) or the prices people would extract for taking on extra risks (the cops). Unfortunately, they derailed the story into Beth, Beth and more Beth and focused on some murky power struggle between the cops, rather than the serfs -- who were given pretty much NO dialogue. Terminus was also potentially fascinating.

Personally, I saw more parallels between Terminus and Grady than I did between Terminus and Woodbury:

• Institutionalization. Terminus was institutionalized cannibalism, Grady was institutionalized servitude. Society at Woodbury seemed pretty clearly segregated between "administration" (the Governor and his henchmen) and "residents" (the townsfolk); of these two, only the administration was truly institutionalized to any degree.
• Scope. At both Terminus and Grady, the organizational and operational structures were very transparent; everybody knew what was going on and who was doing it, even if they didn't like the arrangement, or their position in it. At Woodbury most of the residents had no clue about what was going on, other than that of which the administration chose to inform (or disinform) them.

IMHO Woodbury was half Grady/half ASZ.

On to cannibalism and whether Terminus' adoption of it was at all believable. I don't want to bury the lead so I'll start with what would normally have been my last point -- cannibalism hasn't always been considered a particularly uncrossable line in modern society.

You don't even have to go back that far; among the Foré of New Guinea, cannibalism wasn't even illegal until the 1950s.

And before someone attempts to draw a line between ritual cannibalism vs. straightforward cannibalism - I'd hazard a guess most ritual cannibalism started out as the straightforward variety, after which ritual was developed as a social rationalization.

Hmmm... I'll have to do some research on that. :)

ETA: correcting DAMN AUTOCORRECT

Edited December 10, 2015 by Nashville

[diebartdie]

Even under the show's timeline, they're nearly two years out now.  So what's left of the canned goods to scrounge are going to be getting pretty rank.  <SNIP>

In my recent adventures in Thanksgiving pie making, I discovered a can of pumpkin at the back of the pantry that was one full year expired.  Because I'm curious and always thinking about things like this, I opened it to see if it would still be salvageable in a ZA sort of situation.  It smelled and looked ... really not good.

It may not look good but it is still edible.

[FierceCritter]

Just another note on cannibalism. Bob wasn't talking out his ass. Eating the flesh of someone with a disease or illness can pass it on to the diner. There are also prion diseases similar to mad cow disease which are contracted from parts of a diseased person, including kuru.

The only PA movie I have seen portray this in any manner was The Book of Eli.

It would be I my personal way to factually argue my moral stance against going cannibal were it to be seriously considered in any group with whom I am associated.

[Nashville]

Just another note on cannibalism. Bob wasn't talking out his ass. Eating the flesh of someone with a disease or illness can pass it on to the diner. There are also prion diseases similar to mad cow disease which are contracted from parts of a diseased person, including kuru.

If nothing else, this tends to reinforce the notion of cannibalism as being a persistent part of society through the ages - taboo or not.

How long and how much do you think people had to be eating each other, for a disease to evolve to take advantage of it? :)

[iRarelyWatchTV36]

What Wine Goes With Bob...?

 

 

Well, I think the answer to this is obvious, isn't it??

[NoWillToResist]

But at this point, in my opinion, someone should be thinking of raiding a store that has seeds and picking some up. As I postulated in another thread, that would be one of the first things I would do. Seeds are lightweight and so wouldn't take up much weight or room in my pack, and I would never know when I might use them.

 

I think part of the problem is that one has to stay in one place for a while before getting to the 'plant stuff' stage. I can't remember if Woodbury had crops, but every other settlement had started 'crops' in some way (prison, Terminus, ASZ). I find that realistic. I didn't hold it against people when they were wanderers...no point planting anything if you're moving on.

 

 

Ah, I see where we're diverging here. You think the entire Terminus invitation setup - signs, maps, radio broadcasts, etc. - was from start to finish part of a cannibalistic honey pot.

My perception is different. I think they started out with the best of naive intentions to create a true refuge for survivors. It wasn't until after they were overthrown and basically driven insane that their altruistic efforts were warped into something far darker - at which point the Termites used what had originally been set up to help people to support their new personal survival agenda.

 

Oh, I'm sure the signs were originally legitimate with good intentions, but when they moved to their new world order, they still lured people in (we saw them continue with the signs and radio broadcasts). I have trouble believing that ALL the people in Terminus were ones who had been driven insane by their tormentors; there must have been some new to the place, no? So these people, with full cognizance of what they were doing and what would happen to the people they lure in, continued their attempts to - heh - bring in fresh meat...

[ghoulina]

The hospital storyline was potentially FASCINATING to me as the first time we saw a legitimately gray from top-to-bottom society being created post-ZA. Woodbury was just a bunch of ASZhats with a stronger (albeit evil) leader and some soldiers. Grady was a story with potential to explore about the trade-offs people are willing to make for security in the post-ZA (the residents/serfs) or the prices people would extract for taking on extra risks (the cops). Unfortunately, they derailed the story into Beth, Beth and more Beth and focused on some murky power struggle between the cops, rather than the serfs -- who were given pretty much NO dialogue.

 

I thought the hospital could have been really interesting too. Not just for the reasons you mentioned, but I remember over the break between season 4 and season 5 we were all speculating about experiments and forcing women to have babies, etc. That could have been VERY interesting. What if there were people, like Milton or Jenner, who were determined to find out what this was, how to stop it or reverse it, etc. BUT they were going to figure this out at any cost. Screw volunteers! We'll just take people, make them get bit, watch the process and experiment during it, etc

 

Or what if there was a group hell bent on repopulating already. I seriously thought maybe Beth had been nabbed because they needed young, healthy women for a baby farm of some sort. 

 

But what we were given wasn't interesting at all. Even as you said, the whole trade-off for security thing could be interesting, but it just wasn't. None of the characters in the Grady plot (save Noah) were compelling, and a lot of the acting was flat out awful  as well. The backstory wasn't fleshed out and even what was currently going on was at times confusing or just plain stupid. 

 

As for how it started at Terminus, I bet those guys were fed people while they were captured by their oppressors who weren't willing to waste any other resources on them other than their own selves. Once they broke free, I'm sure they first killed all of the oppressors that they could find. At that point, they probably thought of it as either fitting or simply wasteful to not eat the corpses.

 

That's an interesting thought. Is cannibalism potentially addictive? As in, once they get a taste for it, they don't want to go back to regular eating?

[diebartdie]

 a lot of the acting was flat out awful  as well.

I hate to say this BUT I honestly think a lot of actors know TWD is a HUGE media sensation with a GIANT fan base so they want to be on it for the exposure however they just can't be bothered to understand the show is more realistic horror so they dont bring their "realism game" to the table, they sort of play it a bit tongue in cheek. Sort of the difference between Night of the Living Dead vs Return of the Living Dead. "Night" was realistic, compelling, everyone was playing it straight (except maybe Karl Hardman who played Harry but it's hard for me to tell due to the era it was filmed). "Return" was far more campy and goofed out. So if you have a cast where everyone is playing it straight and you add guest stars who are playing it with a wink and a smile to the audience, we the audience dont see the wink (we're looking for the grimace), we see bad shitty acting. Sorry to diverge from the cannibalism as viable nutrition, carry on <WINK>

[Dr.Jacoby]

That's an interesting thought. Is cannibalism potentially addictive? As in, once they get a taste for it, they don't want to go back to regular eating?

Ooh is that the 'wendigo' concept? I may be wrong- all my knowledge about the addiction to cannibalism comes from the excellent film 'Ravenous' (can't recommend that film highly enough!)

Yes to the whole fear of disease from ingesting human meat being a primary concern- the BSE crisis here was scary enough (and-OT, sorry- I'm pretty sure we uk people still aren't allowed to donate blood abroad because of it,so yeh- scary!)

[NoWillToResist]

That's an interesting thought. Is cannibalism potentially addictive? As in, once they get a taste for it, they don't want to go back to regular eating?

 

Once you go human, you can't go back to other animals? ;)

Edited December 11, 2015 by NoWillToResist

[morgankobi]

All I know about cannibalism addiction I learned from It's Always Sunny...

 

 

Once you go hominid, you never go back again?

Edited December 11, 2015 by morgankobi

[rab01]

That's an interesting thought. Is cannibalism potentially addictive? As in, once they get a taste for it, they don't want to go back to regular eating?

Other than movies and TV, all I know of cannibalism is from studying Cannibalism and the Common Law in college (and more briefly in law school), reports of the aboriginal tribes Nashville mentioned and the ritual cannibalism of the Eucharist. But, of the stories from Western Europe and America of it happening in the past few hundred years, the people who were forced into it by extreme circumstances like shipwrecks or airplane disasters never went back to it. They managed to lead normal lives afterwards. I would guess that even if you might develop a taste for "long pig", you don't become a depraved murderer willing to act on it.

 

Here's how I think they became cannibals at Terminus (and why I never wanted to see more of the backstory than we were shown):

A few weeks after they've been captured and are still being abused daily (say the time of the flashback), the lumps of charred meat that they've been getting to eat stop being possums, squirrels and raccoons (but the food is not identified to them before or after the change). A few days later, Gareth asks about someone who was removed from the cell and the guard is all too happy to tell them that "Fred" is who/what they've been eating for the past few meals. Everyone stops eating. Fast forward a couple days and people are starting to weaken and the frailer or more abused prisoners are becoming dangerously ill. Gareth forces one of them (maybe his mom) to eat some of the food that is still being left for them. Within another couple days, Gareth still hasn't eaten any of it but one of the people he wants to eat won't do it unless Gareth does it too (to keep his strength up) ... which he does.

 

After this, the fight goes out (or appears to go out) of the prisoners. They stop even screaming when called out to be raped. The captors start using them more and more often to do work around Terminus. All the while, Gareth is secretly organizing the prisoners to kill their captors.  One night, they rise up. They don't have much supplies so they eat their former captors while making plans to start foraging and planting. But, the next day or within a couple days, someone comes up to the gate seeking sanctuary but is shot by a scared guard. Gareth is upset about it but realizes that he never would have let the guy in and never would have let an armed leave alive either so ... After that, the candle room is made and everyone pledges to the "new way it has to be."

 

Now for the reason I never want to see that backstory -- first, show me where in that chain of events Rick or Carol anyone in CDB would have behaved differently and second, I'm sure the show would have just turned it into the Governor episodes redux.

Edited December 11, 2015 by rab01

[Ocean Chick]

I think part of the problem is that one has to stay in one place for a while before getting to the 'plant stuff' stage. I can't remember if Woodbury had crops, but every other settlement had started 'crops' in some way (prison, Terminus, ASZ). I find that realistic. I didn't hold it against people when they were wanderers...no point planting anything if you're moving on.

 

 

Woodbury had food-type plants growing in planter boxes in the middle of the main street, I recall.  And Grady had crops on the roof that we saw when Dr. Edwards took Beth up there to see the walkers.

 

And as to the question of what wine goes with Bob, I'd think you'd have to make a determination whether he was dark meat or white.  If humans are considered by the South Pacific Islander cannibals to be "long pig", does that mean we're the "other white meat"?  In which case you'd have to go with white wine.  But legs (which is what Gareth et al were eating) are well used muscles, which tend to be classified as dark meat, in which case you'd want something like "a nice Chianti".  Of course my own rule of thumb is, drink what you want with what you want - I don't stand on ceremony.  :D

[nodorothyparker]

The prison came the closest to showing anything bordering realistic in growing crops to feed a lot of people.  Most of what we've seen have been a few random pots or planters, which while nice to look at and perfectly suitable if you're just growing a few herbs or tomatoes to supplement your diet wouldn't begin to come close to feeding a community.  Feeding even a few dozen people would be labor intensive and require a certain amount of acreage.

 

To put it into perspective, my parents were farmers in the homesteading sense and bought very little of what we ate.  To feed a family of five, my mom farmed a more than half-acre garden plot along with several long rows of berries, grapes, and apple and pear trees running the length of it.  They also kept chickens and cows and the random hog or two, which they then had to raise additional corn, alfalfa, and hay to feed.  It was a full time job for all of us for several months every year and required several acres devoted to just that.  Now multiply that by at least six or seven times if you want to feed what we've been told is roughly the population of combined CBD and Alexandria.  If they're lucky, their efforts won't be wiped out by drought or infestation and they'll figure out what they're doing quickly enough that they won't accidentally kill or waste a lot of what they're trying to raise.

 

This usually ends up being addressed in PA fiction that goes on beyond the initial catastrophe by consigning a lot of B-list survivors to be feudalistic field hands.  It can be interesting to read but probably wouldn't be very good TV on a show where a lot of the audience is tuning in to see new and inventive ways of exploding walker heads each week.

Edited December 11, 2015 by nodorothyparker

[Nashville]

The prison came the closest to showing anything bordering realistic in growing crops to feed a lot of people. Most of what we've seen have been a few random pots or planters, which while nice to look at and perfectly suitable if you're just growing a few herbs or tomatoes to supplement your diet wouldn't begin to come close to feeding a community. Feeding even a few dozen people would be labor intensive and require a certain amount of acreage.

To put it into perspective, my parents were farmers in the homesteading sense and bought very little of what we ate. To feed a family of five, my mom farmed a more than half-acre garden plot along with several long rows of berries, grapes, and apple and pear trees running the length of it. They also kept chickens and cows and the random hog or two, which they then had to raise additional corn, alfalfa, and hay to feed. It was a full time job for all of us for several months every year and required several acres devoted to just that. Now multiply that by at least six or seven times if you want to feed what we've been told is roughly the population of combined CBD and Alexandria. If they're lucky, their efforts won't be wiped out by drought or infestation and they'll figure out what they're doing quickly enough that they won't accidentally kill or waste a lot of what they're trying to raise.

This usually ends up being addressed in PA fiction that goes on beyond the initial catastrophe by consigning a lot of B-list survivors to be feudalistic field hands. It can be interesting to read but probably wouldn't be very good TV on a show where a lot of the audience is tuning in to see new and inventive ways of exploding walker heads each week.

I'm glad you hit on this, because it's always been a sore subject with me. Rick's little hobby garden at the prison wasn't of sufficient size to provide much more than a little occasional flavor variety in their diets every now and then, in season. Beyond that, not much.

Unless it was Rick's intention to hoard the produce for him and Carl and Judith alone, and tell everybody else to go hang....

[nodorothyparker]

Yeah, people like to crap all over industrial farming, and it certainly does have its issues, but there's a reason why the world population remained comparatively low throughout most of recorded history.  It takes a lot of food to maintain and grow a population and a lot of effort to get that food.  Rick had a nice start at the prison, but without considerable help and modern farming equipment he was still likely years away from being able to adequately feed everyone living there even if the mystery flu and the fence situation hadn't cost him his pigs and the Guvnuh hadn't driven a tank through his pea patch.  IIRC, they never managed electricity at the prison, so they also would have had to figure out food drying and curing and storage.

 

See, now this thread has me wondering about food storage at Terminus, which should probably disturb me more than it does.  They were using an electric saw to dismember previous kills when they had Rick and Co. lined up the trough, so between the apparent electricity and the number of kills they were doing at one time I'm thinking they'd figured out something for cold storage.  And I should probably really stop thinking about that now.

[Irishmaple]

Can we twist the topic a bit to cover hygiene in the ZA? I often see my fellow posters here talk about the characters needing to shower and improve their hygiene before getting lucky. Even Rick!

When I was a kid we bathed on Saturday night for Mass the next day and that was it. And we were poor so we bathed in dish detergent! My parents and grandparents grew up with outhouses. There was a sink but no tub or shower, Out of school, I started training as a dental nurse andI lived in a rural area with no knowledge of preventative dentistry. I saw mouths that make the zombies in this show look good and all of those mouths were married with families. I'm very fond of my toothbrush, my shower and my deodorant, but I remember when these things were novelties (and I swear I'm not 100 years old) I wouldn't like to go back to the standards of my childhood but I think I could adapt.

What's the bottom line when it comes to acceptable hygiene levels if the species is to continue?

[paigow]

Hygiene for newborns is more pressing....Clean water for bathing / laundry etc...or the next generation is doomed anyway....