Talking The Dead to Death:
My In-Depth Analysis of The Walking Dead - Season One
Part 2 of 3
by Dianthrax
(*Note: This article contains mature subject matter, some language, and my twisted sense of humor. Reader discretion is advised.*)
(Editor's Note: Continuing from yesterday's Talking The Dead to Death Part 1, which can be found here.)
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Group shot of the cast on a porch. |
Activity At Camp:
So this is the part where I wonder how people back at camp spend their time, what the Hell they are thinking, and why I have such a problem with it because I think it's stupid.
Problem 1) Do I actually see a woman ironing clothes? Straight up on an ironing board working out wrinkles in peoples clothes? I don't even iron my clothes now and you can be sure I wouldn't be worried about ironing if the dead got up and started eating people! How about instead you cut the cord off of it and put that iron in a pillow case or sack so that the next time a walker shows up you can knock is f*%$ing head off!
Also, did anyone else find it odd that Carol totally klepto'ed a grenade?? It's like "Oh here- you had this grenade on you when you got to camp and so I took it and kept it in my purse after I went into your tent and got your clothes. I thought that would be better than giving it back to you." So random!
Problem 2) what's with all these bitches who just run around screaming and panicking with no weapon at all when walkers show up?? First, all of them should at least learn how to use the different guns. I know they can't exactly practice shooting but they could be familiar with all of them and how they work, how to re-load them, what the kickback is like, how close they should be before they try to use them, etc.
I think it's a huge dereliction of duty on both Shane and Rick's part that both are law enforcement officers and neither one bothered to take the time to say to the whole camp "Look- you need to at least be familiar with guns and know some self defense strategies so that you can protect yourselves if you have to. Here's what you should do..." And you would think both of them would want Lori to be armed and know how to handle herself just in case they aren't there to save her! The same notion applies to teaching the kids the basics of using the guns. If it gets knocked out of your hand and lands in front of your kid while there's a walker bearing down on him, wouldn't you want him to know to pick up the damn thing and save his own life rather than scream and stand there and get eaten??
I'm not saying teach the little ones to be trained killers; I'm just saying that if it were me and my kid I'd want him to know what to do with a weapon so that if it came down to it he could use it if he had to. And I would be damn sure that I knew what to do with one so that I can do everything possible in order to prevent that kind of situation from ever coming up!
Second, there is no excuse for anyone at camp walking around unarmed, ever. You should always have a weapon with you, just in case, and everyone should know how to use them.
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Blondes do NOT have more fun |
Now I know there aren't enough guns and that knives would do you little good unless it's the size of a machete, but when that one walker showed up to munch on Daryl's deer a whole bunch of men-folk showed up with axes and shovels and pickaxes and other objects for striking and beat the thing to the ground. Shovels and axes made for decent weapons- so would a bat or club or lance. And what are these things usually made of? That's right! They're made of wood. And where are the survivors camped out? Right next to a freaking forest!! With trees!! Trees made of wood!! Did none of them put this together and think that maybe they ought to have something to do when they're attacked other than scream and die?
Problem 3) Cans on strings. That's their big safety measure; cans on strings to rattle as an early warning system in case of walkers coming at them from the woods. I'm no military expert, I wasn't even a boy scout, but even I can think of a few things I'd do to try and be a little more secure. Like make sure the ground surrounding the camp & extending outward was covered with crisp, dry leaves and twigs so that walking on it, let alone doing the zombie-shuffle, was good and noisy. How about digging a trench? It won't stop them but it may slow them down. Or you could fill that with some duff so you'd hear the stomping around. It's not like you have much else to do but make weapons and try to think of these things since apparently Daryl is the only one hunting. You'd also think someone would be on watch at all times, especially at night, so that you don't get caught unawares while obliviously talking and drinking beers around the fire.
Individual Survival Techniques:
There's plenty I see that could be done in order for someone to be more "survival ready", by which I mean better prepared to hide, fight, fortify, or flee.
Example 1: when everyone was all focused on Jim dying a run had to be made to a nearby gas station because the motor-home thing had broken down. They were somewhat in the middle of nowhere so I would think it's less likely that gas station was looted like the stores in the cities, and obviously it ended up having the part they needed since they were able to move along. My point is that gas stations usually have a little building with the register and such, which usually has items for sale that travelers need. Why didn't they take every single thing they could from that gas station?? If you have a vehicle what's the problem? I'd have taken things like oil, coolant, filters, rope, batteries, jumper cables, tools; anything car-maintenance related.
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Yummy pizza and an even yummier Steven Yuen. |
Then I'd go for anything edible/drinkable- hopefully some Powerbars and Gatorade or something- and gum. (Chewing gum stimulates your salivary glands and keeps your mouth moist which makes you feel less thirsty. Plus I'm sure everyone's breath could stand to be fresher.) Next would be anything first-aid or hygiene related, check for lighters/lighter fluid, matchbooks, any alcohol or smoking products- particularly cigars since smell is one way they find you, and make sure there isn't a gun behind the counter.
Every chance I had to search places and take things that could possibly be useful I'd be all over.
I would be the biggest hoarder of random shit & the freaking MacGyver of The Walking Dead universe.
Example 2: Why is it you see nearly all the men in pants and closed-toe shoes and the women in things like shorts and dresses and little strappy sandals? Because men on tv don't look nearly as sexy in shorts and it's really hard to take them seriously while they're strutting around on hairy chicken legs. But if that was a real situation I'd be in pants and boots no matter how hot it was or how smelly and not-sexy it made me. I say the less skin you have just out there with nothing protecting it, the better. Boots are a must because they come up over your ankle and are tough to bite through but good to stomp with.
If you're going hiking and know there are rattlesnakes in the area do you wear sandals or something because you want your feet to be cool and comfortable? Hell no! You wear something that protects your foot and ankle because that's what's most vulnerable to a snake bite.
I'd want some nice steel-toe boots that could really do some damage if needed. Plus I don't want to worry about my shoe's durability if I'm going to axe-kick some walker through the head (which I'll totally do.)
So this would be some of my own gear/ensemble in TWD world if I had my way-
I'd probably carry a backpack- one of those single strap across the chest ones, plus what would be a super-dorky fanny pack if it wasn't filled with things like a lighters and matches, gloves, a squirt bottle of kerosene, pliers, and firecrackers- that sort of thing. In the backpack would be bigger items like duct tape, crowbar, towel, first aid kit, rope, canteen, machete, etc. I'd also have a bunch of stuff clipped to my belt, like a couple of knives and extra clips of ammo, etc. I'd wear an adjustable horizontal muzzle-up double shoulder holster since those tend to work best for a wearer that actually has boobs. Then probably one of those upside-down holster at the small of my back-like a Gould and Goodrich Gold Line, and another on my left hip, probably a belt holster but the kind with the spring, not the strap. These hold all different kinds and sizes of guns but I'd say ideally I'd want nothing smaller than a .38. I'd also want a 12 gauge shotgun that I'd find a way to saw off for portability reasons, though I'm pretty sure the kick on that sucker would dislocate my freaking arm!
I'd also plan to somehow acquire a katana (You know- the Japanese sword. Think Kill Bill.) That would be a highly effective and efficient weapon once you knew how to use it properly. It's excellent for dismemberment while utterly silent. This would have to be kept at my side, though, since I'd be wearing a pair of steel arrows on my back. I'm thinking they'd be rigged somehow to my bra straps or the holster but with the dull end sticking up slightly so they could be drawn and thrust with in a manner similar to a rapier. These would of course be for emergency stabbings to the head. I feel like one can never have enough things you can use to stab people in the head with.
Hidden on me would be a knife in each boot and an asp in one. I'd tie or tape one of those really thin slide-type box cutters to the inside of my leg so that I could get to it from a hole in my pocket, and create some innocuous-looking jewelry with small compartments to put shit in. I don't know exactly what I'd put in them at this particular moment, but I'd still have them. Maybe to keep an emergency cyanide capsule in so that I could avoid death by blunt human teeth? Or to put in someone's drink should they piss me off? I'm sure I could think of something.
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Trekking through the woods. |
Another place I'd make a point to raid every time I came across one would be sporting goods stores, but more importantly, REI type camping/hiking stores. Not only are they likely to have weapons and all kinds of knives, but also things like dehydrated foods & energy chews/gels/pills/tablets to give you vitamins and nutrients along with canteens and water treatments with large water storage units. Not to mention portable stoves and ovens binoculars/night-vision binoculars, blade sharpeners, polarized sunglasses/goggles, all kinds of portable tools, flashlights/lanterns/glow sticks and led lights, batteries, solar chargers and an array of solar powered items. I'd pick up some camping furniture you can pack and unpack for comfort like hammocks & cots, shelters, chairs, stools, tables, tarps, insect nets, sleeping pads and pillows. Make sure to get some flint, waterproof matches, sunscreen and insect repellants, water-less shampoo/wipes/shaving creams, waterless toothpaste, quick-dry towels, camping showers, clothing specifically designed for travel or activity, thermal blankets and warmers, and they have some really nicely packed survival and first aid kits you can just snatch if you're in a hurry, and on and on...so yeah, an outdoor activity supply place would basically be a goldmine.
Yet here are our survivors, stuck in a Department store they went to in order to get "supplies", and the only person who took anything was Andrea and it was a stupid fugly mermaid necklace! Even then she was all reluctant to do it because there was a "cop standing right there" and actually asked if it was considered looting. Um, if 99% of the world is dead whose goods exactly are you pillaging? Even if it is looting- who freaking cares?! Like I said, I'd be looking for and grabbing anything and everything that could be useful because who knows when they'll have another chance to get things like socks, shoes, undershirts, bras, clothing, and underwear? Or clothes for the kids, Carl in particular, who will soon outgrow the stuff they have on now (hopefully since that would mean they live long enough to get bigger.) Maybe the others took some stuff and we just didn't see it. Maybe that's what was in everyone's bags. Still, I'd have a Hell of a lot more stuff than just a few backpack sized bags! I bet that store had a Home and Garden section with some pretty nice tools- not to mention cookware. What about the Sporting Goods section? It's the South (I live in CA so to me everything in that area is the South, ok?) so there might still be guns & amo left, or things like Daryl's crossbow and extra arrows. There could be some of the camping/backpacking stuff I listed, and at the very least there should be baseball bats and hockey sticks- and helmets could be good since some have clear plastic face guards. Weren't they using bats to beat down the walkers outside the door when Glenn rescued Rick? Why didn't they take those? And those full on body suit things and thick rubber gloves used in the episode "Guts" would certainly have been useful when moving/disposing of bodies. Why didn't anyone snatch some of those to take? Epic Fail survivors.
Walkers- Non-Zombie Zombies:
I know that at some point I'm going to forget to say "geek" or "walker" and just say "zombie" so I figure I'll just call a spade a spade and you all can deal with it.
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Walker from Episode 1. |
So I have some issues with the abilities of these zombie people and certain specifics that were given as well as demonstrated at the CDC with Test Subject 19 about what happens during their re-animation. First lets bypass all the make-believe technology and pretend that it actually does show real brain activity and all of that- kamikaze doctor guy illustrates that the area of the brain that holds all of your memories and thoughts and "everything you ever were" goes dark during death and doesn't reactivate when the virus turns you into a walker. If that's true then why does the mom in the first episode keep returning to that same house where her husband and son are holed up and trying to get inside?
We're told she died there and later when the boy Dwayne saw her he said "she's here" but not like he was shocked; more like he was dreading it and then it happened. Obviously from his reaction she's come back before, and she seems to be the only walker who goes up to the door of a dark, quiet house and tries to stroll in the front door. This seems like the behavior of a creature who recognizes something familiar, which isn't supposed to be possible.
They seem to be more intelligent than they should be with only an active brain stem, possessing problem-solving skills and the ability to mimic human behavior, as well.
For instance, when they began climbing up the ladder from the street in order to pursue Rick and Glenn they were using logic and mimicking Rick and Glenn's actions in order to solve a problem: how to get to the food. An even more impressive example is the one walker who was hitting the glass doors of the department store with a large rock in his hands while the others used only their bare hands and fists. They want inside and to get there the glass has to break and the rock is more effective for that than a bare fist. This not only shows a logical chain of thoughts reaching a conclusion, but also that he understands the benefits of the use of tools. Granted it's a rock and he's hitting a door with it, but even so he shouldn't be able to do any of that at all if he's just a "mindless shell."
Also; why aren't the zombies super-strong?
A human being can like, lift cars and shit when in fight-or-flight mode so they don't feel pain and have no restraint. Afterwards their muscles and tendons are all torn up and they have to recover, which is why these types of acts are brief and in intense emergency situations. But you can see that the human body, when using all it's force, can do some serious damage. Walkers, being dead, don't feel pain and aren't concerned with pulling a muscle or destroying their joints. In fact the area of the brain that prevents us from destroying ourselves that way is supposedly no longer active in them. They have no restraint when it comes to gorging themselves; so why wouldn't they just automatically use their human body's full strength in everything? They should be literally tearing people limb from limb. A dead teenage girl should be able to take down a linebacker.
However, instead of this logical conclusion about what would be regular human abilities, we are given the completely illogical and inexplicable "Zombies Have Super-Smelling Powers" fact that we are supposed to just accept and then not think about too much.
Well that doesn't work for me. As I said, I think about everything too much.
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Walkers in the median. |
You're telling me that walkers can sniff out a living person over the scent of not just their own decay but also that of hundreds of other dead bodies? One of the most potent and distinctive smells extant and with scent molecules that attach and cling to freaking everything so that it's also one of the most difficult smells to remove/over-power, yet walkers can follow their nose and find the 1 or 2 living people in the crowd of corpses?? So this virus also transforms you that when you rise you have super-smelling abilities; even though the part of your brain that understands smells is supposedly not active according to TS-19.
This must be why it was so easy the dead-people smell to wash off of Glenn and Rick, who despite having feet and ribcages and intestines hanging off of their chunky, sloppy guts outfits and the fact that one of them was wearing a hat, returned to smelling like regular living folk after being hit with a full blast from a fireman's hose.
No wait; it after the tiniest bit of rain started coming down on them, not a fireman's hose! So silly of me to get that part all confused!
And are there no former-smoker zombies? Smoking will dull your sense of smell over time and we all know the stats on the number of Americans who smoke. So where are the walking dead smokers with their crappy senses of smell, wandering off in the opposite direction of the rest of the zombie hoard??
It doesn't seem fair to me that the people who took good care of their bodies in life are just as effective as the people who smoked and drank and didn't do anything to care for themselves, now that both types of people are living-dead monstrosities.
Then there's a whole separate level of questions for those of us who wonder about walker physiology. Like what happens to walkers who don't eat. Will they starve to "death" at some point? Is that what happened to the ones that are more shriveled and dried out looking? And if so, would they plump back up if they got to eat? Digestion couldn't even possible with no bodily functions and without an active medulla oblongata. So wouldn't meat just sit in the stomach- or if they were gorging themselves- just fill the stomach until it literally burst since they don't have that part of the brain that tells us to stop eating when we are full? Even if they could somehow digest the food they still can't get any real nutrition from eating, just like they can't get any real oxygen from breathing, because that requires a beating heart to circulate blood to all the different organs in order to deliver said nutrients and gasses. That would mean the brain would be starving, even with the infection keeping part of it active, and it would rot away- including the brain stem. Is that when the walkers "die"? Doesn't that mean that all of them have a limited span before their brains turn to mush and they stop walking around? Maybe it takes a really long time but isn't that what would eventually happen unless the disease was somehow also helping to preserve the remaining active part of the brain?
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First Look at Walker Woman. |
Let's try another question- Why do the walkers breathe?
Personally, I think it's similar to the explanation given in several books I've read about why vampires breathe. Both creatures are animated dead bodies with no heartbeat, yet are ambulatory and crave sustenance. The human body has to draw in breath in order to speak or make sounds, as well as smell the environment. Walkers and vampires do both, though with vampires it's more of a conscience decision because they have the brain function to understand and control it while the walkers do it automatically out of habit and because its an autonomic function (like swallowing) controlled by the brain stem, which is supposed to be active in walkers.
Though here is where I rain all over everyone's make-believe parade with my obnoxious education and stupid facts-
Walkers couldn't possibly do all that they can do with only an active brain stem. As nice as it was to have an scientific-sounding explanation and a cool looking visual of that black brain with red sparks, Dr. Jenner doesn't know what he's talking about. (No wonder he didn't make any progress towards a cure- the guys a freaking moron!)
Certain functions: sight, smell, motion, balance, etc. require other parts of the brain than just the stem. For instance, the fact that noise attracts them, their ability to see and recognize what they're seeing, their ability to move voluntarily and control those movements, and the all-important walker super-sense of smell all require the use of different and specific parts of the cerebral cortex. So while it is true that the brain stem controls the most basic of functions, walkers would need more than that just to stand up and do the zombie-shuffle. Sorry people.
Neither White Meat Nor Dark Meat,
-Dianthrax
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Photo Sources: http://www.amctv.com/shows/the-walking-dead and http://www.yfrog.com/user/wwwbigbaldhead/photos
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