And it was more that a scratch, the zombie ripped it's own hand off to get out of the chains and broke off part of it's forearm so essentially it was using it's fractured bone line a knife covered in it's own blood.

My theory... there are two viruses/bacteria or venom at play over here. There is whatever that infects you and makes you turn into a zombie. Apparently being a zombie also makes something separate which just kills you. It could be a venom/poison, bacteria, or virus. Infectious enough to be transferred through a bite like rabies but having blood and guts splatter on you has a miniscule chance of infection, like hiv... Tiny seemed to be all right compared to others who were bitten... so I don't know if it's actually confirmed that he was infected.

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Brotherhood of the Monkey @( !.! )@
To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. ~Steve Prefontaine
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

He seems alright for, what, 2 minutes he was alive after being scraped by a broken-off arm clotted with gore? I don't think we can determine his state from such a short a time.

Speaking of which, what was that walker doing looking down at its shackled hands before ripping one arm free? Have we seen very much of that sort of hesitant behavior?

The swamp walker that killed Dale seemed confused as to why it couldn't go after Carl back when it was still caught in the bog. It looked down around its legs trying to figure it out.

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Dear Lord, the gods have been good to me. As an offering, I present these milk and cookies. If you wish me to eat them instead, please give me no sign whatsoever *pauses* Thy will be done *munch munch munch*. - Homer Simpson

I just hope the series lasts long enough that we get to the point where the walkers aren't the main threat anymore. I mean even when .

I finally watched it, and it was good. We got a rough estimate of how long the whole thing has been going on, since one of the prisoners mentioned that they were in the cafeteria for ten months after things started going to shit.

Among the two surviving prisoners, something about the wimpy mustachioed guy screams, "Pedophile/serial killer".

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"You can't hammer tin into iron, no matter how hard you beat it, but that doesn't mean that tin is worthless."
-Jon Snow, A Game of Thrones

"I prefer my history dead. The dead sort is written in ink, the living in blood."
-Rodrik Greyjoy, A Song of Ice and Fire

He alluded to substance abuse problems, but I can see what you're getting at.

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lol, opsec doesn't apply to fanfiction. -Aaron

PRFYNAFBTFC
CAPTAIN OF MFS SAMMY HAGAR

I think he's supposed to be modeled after Axel from the comics, but then again he may be .

So they aren't going in a big new direction with The Governor. Good.

He and his cronies should be dead though. That may have been the lamest way to portray trained soldiers reacting to an ambush in a situation where they should've been on heightened alert I've ever seen.

On The Walking Dead Wiki, a timeline of events has been put together. It says that at the start of Season 3, about 292 days have elapsed since the outbreak began. That fits within the 10 months.

However, it also claims that Shane barricaded Rick's hospital room door 14 days after the outbreak and that Rick woke up in the hospital 60 days after the outbreak. Which means he was without food or water (other than the IV fluid bag attached to his arm) for well over a month...

My conclusion? Rick is actually unconscious and is dreaming everything.

The Governor is going to make an interesting villain.

Some of the back story is interesting. That town took time to fortify and they still have problems with incursions. I wonder how often they pick up new recruits. And why exactly did they kill the soldiers? It seems the Governor wants gunmen that are loyal just to him and will do anything he asks. But couldn't those soldiers still be kept purely on defensive duties and even integrated as laborers?

Anyway, it was nice to see a little history on the military units. That national guard unit had set up a defensive perimeter and decided to hunker down. Did reasonably well. Though the discussion about how people panicked over a single bit soldier was unrealistic. They have been dealing with zombies for 10 months. That shouldn't happen anymore.

Well we don't know how sheltered those people were, either. They may not have really had to deal with walkers. As far as the unit getting ambushed, they were distracted and worried about walkers, not guys with M-16's ambushing them.

The way you handle both is the same. Sentries don't stand on their feet in the middle of a field skylining themselves.

I think their position favored visibility so that walkers wouldn't surprise them which screwed them when the Governor had snipers in position. They were focused on the Governor himself at first, and didn't figure out where and who was trying to kill them fast enough, I mean you're fighting zombies for months right? It's easy to be unprepared when ONE guy walks up under a white flag and attacks for no reason. For all they knew there were walkers nearby and the gun fire was directed towards them, also at this point we have to conclude that everyone in the WD universe is suffering from some kind of cognitive impairment, relative to our own, there's just...way too much stupid. We'll call it severe PTSD.

the Governor wasn't going to tolerate any threat to is authority, he can't accept a six or seven man unit trained, disciplined and loyal to each other, into his 73 person town. He seems to have a personal knowledge of everyone we've seen and is developing a cult of personality. having a tenth of his population with conflicting loyalties to each other undermines him.

I am glad to see Merl back, the jury is still out on whether it was him stalking Carol while she practicd her C section.

Michonne is MORE eager to leave the town then to help Andrea recover. Good instincts. She figured out that her weapon is a trophy to the governor and that's NOT a good sign at all. Andrea is letting herself be wooed.

She's slipping though, I don't know why she bothered killing her zombies instead of just backing off and running.

...and btw the Governor's a player, he's got his lady sleeping in his bed while he goes to check out his collection. Personally, I think he's hiding his name because his name would be recognized for some heinous thing but I haven't read the comics so idk.

With regards to the larger issues of zombie infection discussed above, forget zombie infection, the governor's poking cadavors with his fingers, everyones getting soaked in gore, and carol, mehhhh why bother with gloves that are in every medical kit, it's just Herschel bleading all over the place, with his axe severed leg to prevent zombie infection in a neglected prison full of rotting corpses, unemptied trash etc. We're gonna start losing people to Hepatitis O.o

Not going to lie, I thought that was a pretty piss-poor episode. I wanted to give Michonne a chance, but I was not impressed. I'm getting serious Mary Sue vibes from her, especially since the Governor's Chaotic Stupid massacre only seems to exist to vindicate Michonne's Paranoid Snowflake issues. It seems to me that if this episode is indicative of a trend, the show is suffering from pretty severe confusion: Is it a gritty speculative depiction of a group of survivors trying to keep it together, or is it a goofy comic-book story about katanas, zombies, and dumb villains? The show's comic book origins certainly aren't helping matters.

Can they stop with the seasonal trends of "Andrea as a bad judge of character"? Everyone else got smarter between seasons 2 and 3 - hell T-Dog was useful. Andrea I maintain is the most butchered character from the comics - and the actress is not helping.

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-A.L.
"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence...Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." - Calvin Coolidge

"If you're falling off a cliff you may as well try to fly, you've got nothing to lose." - John Sheridan (Babylon 5)

"Sometimes you got to roll the hard six." - William Adama (Battlestar Galactica)

The slaughter of the soldiers was extremely silly. Why where they all standing around in a group? A few of them even continued to look on dumbly as their fellows were shot down. Those soldiers died stupidly.

The Governor strikes me as a anti-government militia-type, but clearly some of his men seem uncomfortable with the shooting. Even Merle seemed a bit put off by it.

I don't buy that this mass killing and any others that came before haven't been "leaked" to the rest of Woodbury's residents. The governor has a dozen or so men and they all keep quiet about it?

The Governor's little head collection seemed to disturb even himself a bit, but right now he seems like nothing more than the stereotypical smooth-talking crazy guy who runs things.

I've never read the comic and don't have a hard on for the Governor as a character, or for that matter Michonne, but whatever. The only part about this episode that I found interesting was how long the small band of surviving guardsmen had lasted (until that goofy trap) and the study of the walkers by that guy whose name I can't remember. The idea that the walkers have some sort of memory of their past lives was (possibly) demonstrated in the pilot episode: the walker girl who bent down to pick up a stuffed toy from the ground before being shot by Rick. The same with Morgan's wife attempting to peer through the peephole before turning the doorknob at the house Morgan and his son were hiding out in with Rick and more recently, the walker that looked down at its handcuffs before attacking Big Tiny, as well as a few other incidents where walkers appeared to be aware of their environment. Most of the walkers appear to act mechanically, aimlessly stumbling around until spotting live people and then pushing through whatever barrier is in their way to get at them. The ones that don't act that way exclusively suggest more is going on than simple "instinctive" behavior.

(Edited for clarity.)

If they've been in a compound they've probably had to fight off human marauders at some point just for resources. Also, react to contact drills state you spread into a skirmish line as soon as you see the car come riding up, that's even if you don't think there's a threat, because you just never know. That's assuming they don't just put guys up in trees to watch for walkers, which is really the smart thing to do that people seem to avoid for no reason at all. I mean I don't get why they don't just add more guys to the Governor's men and have them take a couple losses and just overwhelm them through firepower, that at least makes sense and gives a hint to Michonne that she's right.

"Never waste a bullet."

After expending how many rounds to shoot the soldiers? Why not attempt to get some of the soldiers as part of Woodbury and build up the numbers of trained defenders for the town? Surely some of those men would gladly abandon what was left of their forces for the comforts of the town. It seemed just malevolent for the sake of being malevolent. And that's boring.

And by killing the soldiers, will the Governor know where the original encampment was? That has the potential to be a treasure trove of supplies.

I doubt they have the budget for that, sadly. It would definately have been more interesting for the NG guys to lead them back to their settlement, with the governor and his people having gained their trust before then mowing them down. But then again the NG guys may have taken all the supplies with them.

According to the pilot they abandoned their post and fled in a hurry once things started going really bad, so there was probably a lot of stuff left behind.

Did Merle ever see Carol back in season 1? Don't think it will or can be him spying as he was asking questions and suspicious of Andrea, if he saw other survivors he should be more optimistic about finding Daryl or getting revenge. The soldier scene was ridiculous and a super cheesy way to make the Governor seem bad ass, soldiers toppling over "artfully" without taking cover or even raising weapons. They couldn't extend that scene to setup a more believable scenario?

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Phil Ken Sebben: Birdman, this is Dvd, our new efficiency expert.
Harvey Birdman: Interesting name. Norweg...?
Dvd: Was "David". I eliminated the vowels to save time.
Phil Ken Sebben: Brllnt!

Merle probably knows who Carol is. She and her then-living husband were at the same camp with everyone else, along with Amy. Amy and Merle never appeared onscreen together, but he knew her. I don't think it was Merle watching Carol at the prison, however.

And speaking of Darryl and Merle possibly looking to get revenge on Rick, it will be very interesting to see how things go with the 3 of them, assuming they actually meet up with Merle. I very much doubt Darryl will go along with any plans of revenge his brother hopes to carry out. Darryl could have killed Rick any number of times since he found out it was Rick who handcuffed Merle, but Darryl has also not shown any signs of animosity towards Rick since they went back to try and rescue Merle. Darryl is generally supportive of Rick's plans and has saved his life more than once. He's not the same guy he was at their first meeting. Darryl has shown himself to be trustworthy and dependable. If he turns on Rick or the group, it will be a big surprise to me.