StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Dread Not wrote:

FSTargetDrone wrote:Actually, Walker blood appears to be quite thick and syrupy, not watery at all.

I think he means it literally looks like watery shit.

Yeah, like diarreah...from everywhere. How is a heart pumping any of that through, how are limbs getting any energy for locomotion or nutrients for maintained? I feel like the bacteria or whatever does a lot more than reanimate the brain stem, it must rework a lot of the body systems so that
a. As noted above, walkers aren't ACTUALLY decaying, but rather mutating into some brainless yet semi viable creature, and
b. walkers might actually be eating on instinct, but not need to eat at all to remain functional. I'm thinking of Darth Maul's girlfriend flopping around in the first episode with all her shit hanging out. She wouldn't be "Eating" much, it would fall out of her ruined intestines. Those two slack jawed idiots with Michonne could... I suppose be ingesting soup or oatmeal or something easy to process if Michonne was feeding them, but they could just as likely not need to eat at all, and the savage attackery of the walkers is just a leftover instinct of brain function.

So I think the disease doesn't reanimate the dead, it mutates them

Stofsk wrote:There are so many problems with the concept of Walking Dead that complaining about 'how zombies work' seems to be missing the forest from the trees.

It would be nice though if the necromancers sort of came out of hiding and went 'lol sup guys'.

Oh, I know, I'm just having some fun with it all.

Themightytom wrote:Yeah, like diarreah...from everywhere.

Gotcha.

How is a heart pumping any of that through, how are limbs getting any energy for locomotion or nutrients for maintained?

Well, Shane showed how shots to the chest don't do much to stop Walkers, so I don't think the heart isn't necessary anymore. And they don't respire, so oxygen isn't getting into the bloodstream anyway.

I feel like the bacteria or whatever does a lot more than reanimate the brain stem, it must rework a lot of the body systems so that
a. As noted above, walkers aren't ACTUALLY decaying, but rather mutating into some brainless yet semi viable creature, and
b. walkers might actually be eating on instinct, but not need to eat at all to remain functional. I'm thinking of Darth Maul's girlfriend flopping around in the first episode with all her shit hanging out. She wouldn't be "Eating" much, it would fall out of her ruined intestines.

Not to mention the still-active after being disembodied head that Daryl dispatched.

Those two slack jawed idiots with Michonne could...

Don't you mean, "Lack-jawed"? Huh? Huh?

Sorry.

I suppose be ingesting soup or oatmeal or something easy to process if Michonne was feeding them, but they could just as likely not need to eat at all, and the savage attackery of the walkers is just a leftover instinct of brain function.

So I think the disease doesn't reanimate the dead, it mutates them

I kind of wish that the series had gone with the Walkers as being horribly diseased/infected beings who are savagely violent, greatly resistant to pain and not invulnerable to anything but destruction of what remains of the brain. The whole, "collapse of society" element can be maintained, without us having to resort to what amounts to magic to even try to explain any of this.

Themightytom wrote:So I think the disease doesn't reanimate the dead, it mutates them

That would almost make sense where the bitten are concerned, however, it does not hold up where Randall (broken neck) and Shane (stabbed in the chest) are concerned. They were both clearly dead before they reanimated.

Jenner stated that no one become a zombie without first dying.

Plus it would kind of make the title a big lie. They'd have to call the show "The Walking Almost-Dead". Or "The Walking Living".

It would also push the show into Science Fiction, which Mazziara and Kirkman have said they're trying to avoid:

Hollywood Reporter wrote:
THR: Will determining the cause of the outbreak be something that the group, now that they know they're all infected, spends time on?

Mazzara: Robert has not been interested in addressing in the comic book, and I'm not interested in addressing in the show. That being said, if it leads to new story -- if there's something that's important that we get out of it -- I'll be the first one to write it. But right now the cause of the zombie outbreak seems irrelevant. I always want the show to play like a horror movie every week. If you define what caused the outbreak, that puts us in a world of science fiction, and this isn't science fiction to me, it's horror. In my mind that's two different genres, so that is an important distinction to me.

I totally get that that is why THEY don't define it, but they aren't defining it because that let's us do exactly what we have been doing for the last page, trying to envision explanations of our own, talking about the show and generally keeping our interest alive, even after the show has gone on hiatus. Remember how the title "Lost" pretty much referred to "lost time"? Walking Dead= Interest stumbling onwards long after the topic should be dead. if I were a producer I would create an entire franchise entitled "The Fourth Wall" in which characters shamelessly narrate gimmicks they are employing to keep their audience engaged, kind of like the Muppet Show meets jersey Shore :-p

Torben wrote:

Themightytom wrote:So I think the disease doesn't reanimate the dead, it mutates them

That would almost make sense where the bitten are concerned, however, it does not hold up where Randall (broken neck) and Shane (stabbed in the chest) are concerned. They were both clearly dead before they reanimated.

Unless they discovered that the capacity to endure major injury is present in EVERYONE, but as long as the brain is still active, it is redundantly maintaining systems on instinct. If the autonomic systems aren't interrupted, the heart beats whether it needs to or not right? People still feel hunger, the brain still process pain etc. What if Merle in the process of sawing off his hand realized that he wasn't ACTUALLY in pain, he had just expected to be? He would probably tie the stub off for convenience, preserving blood flow to his brain, and he wouldn't forgo eating just because his body didn't REALLY need to, and as long as his brain was still working, the mutation doesn't call the shots.

That would actually explain how several of the death scenes have been so drawn out. The guy in the RV had a zombie chewing into his neck before we cut over to Rick and Carl climbing down from the RV, moseying on over to the front, and noticing he was still screaming and thrashing. The older daughter was getting torn to shreds and still screaming a few minutes into it. They don't actually "die" until the brain FULLY shuts down, and resets at it's minimal Walker level. The mutation could give the body to animate, without the brain ever really becoming aware of it.

Guardsman Bass wrote:It would also push the show into Science Fiction, which Mazziara and Kirkman have said they're trying to avoid:

Is there anyone in the group even remotely qualified to figure out what the hell it is, anyway? Herschel is the only one with even any qualifications that are tangentially related to figuring out how zombieism works.

Well I used to think that they were going to run into whoever Jenner was reporting to. His video messages had the word 'Transmission' in them, and he kept wondering if there was anyone out there even reading/listening to his reports on the infection. I thought the thing he whispered to Rick was that there might be someone in authority out there that he was ordered to send his reports to. I thought they would eventually run into whoever that was and learn more about the plague/infection from them.

They don't even need a living person to work it out. All they need is an abandoned research facility with a bunch of recordings from a doctor studying the infection (just as Jenner was) that they playback, and that spells out exactly what it is and maybe where it came from. Maybe a military bioweapons doctor who guiltily admits in a video recording that the weapon they developed has gotten out of hand and mutated, so that their cure/antivirus whatever no longer works. That would hardly make the show science fiction. I mean if it was done well, it could add to the horror atmosphere of the series. Itchy, tasty!

Akhlut wrote:

Guardsman Bass wrote:It would also push the show into Science Fiction, which Mazziara and Kirkman have said they're trying to avoid:

Is there anyone in the group even remotely qualified to figure out what the hell it is, anyway? Herschel is the only one with even any qualifications that are tangentially related to figuring out how zombieism works.

Yes, I agree with you. And even Herschel might be at a disadvantage with figuring out the zombie virus due to the fact that he is a veterinarian, rather than a biologist or physician. Can't wait for season 3! My wife and I enjoy this show immensely.

Thought occured to me as I was pondering the show, and how Jenner mentioned the French held out the longest. I wonder if Medieval style castles would be a good way to keep out zombie hordes. I can't imagine it would have been that hard for a group of survivors to hole up in one of those castles and reinforce the walls to keep the hordes out.

irishmick79 wrote:Thought occured to me as I was pondering the show, and how Jenner mentioned the French held out the longest. I wonder if Medieval style castles would be a good way to keep out zombie hordes. I can't imagine it would have been that hard for a group of survivors to hole up in one of those castles and reinforce the walls to keep the hordes out.

I think he meant the government; though if the government took over a large castle and had actual soldiers defending it, I should think they could hold out as long as they had food and water. After all, a lot of those castles withstood actual armies using actual siege equipment, not just a bunch of guys throwing themselves at the walls.

Well the same could be said for any most modern prisons and bunkers. The problem probably was early on they likely did not know that everyone has the virus. One guy has a heart attack or falls and breaks his neck, starts attacking the prison from the inside.