The Walking Dead - "Guts"

[TheStarWarsTrek]

You know, I've read articles that talk about how in the aftermath of shootings, you'll get armchair Rambos who say "If I had been there, I would have just <insert action here>". Because from the safety of our homes, with time to ponder over things, it's easy to see ourselves in the role of an action hero. But the reality is that in life or death situations you don't know how you'd react. And in this case, it's not just one traumatizing event, it's a whole series of them, a bunch of average schmoes suddenly forced to live in an eternal war zone. So while sometimes characters can be inexcusably dumb (if you can figure out how trick zombies with smell, you should be able to figure out that armor would be a good idea), other lapses in judgement are excusable. Plus I don't think building another fence or using a phalanx would be the slam dunk solution they're presented as. A single hardware store isn't going to have enough material to build another fence, you're gonna have to go on a massive involved quest to complete this project and maybe get more people killed when you've got limited manpower. And a phalanx won't help you if you get cornered or overrun. Besides, what happens when you stab the zombie in the chest and your weapon gets stuck on its ribs, or you drop your shield since you weren't trained since 12 to carry one?

I love WWZ style stories of survivors being creative and rebuilding society, but realistically not everyone's going to be an engineer or history major.

As for Merle, yeah he's a jerkass, racist, violent crack addict . . . dosn't change the fact that being left to either starve to death or be eaten alive is a terrible fate. I'm not arguing about the morality of leaving him there. I'm just saying some ways to die are so terrible I'd feel a slight twinge of sympathy even if it was happening to the nastiest man on Earth.

[Admiral X]

Chain mail would probably work pretty well, but if you get swarmed, you could get crushed to death, or, you know, since your face would still be exposed, they'd probably end up getting you there. Plus, how many people have chain mail suits just laying around? Maybe you could find one at a scuba shop, but if you had to make one, it'd take a pretty damn long time. Leather armor? Same thing as far as taking a while to make, provided you had enough leather to cover your whole body.

Tanks? Well, it'd kill some of the swarms they ran over, but only the ones that got caught under the treads, and even then only the ones that got their heads crushed. Also, tanks are horribly fuel inefficient, and while you could hide out in the cramped interior, you'd still have to risk yourself every time you had to take a piss or a shit. Not to mention you'd need food an water and would only be able to have so much on board with you.

[Beastro]

Ince you have strong enough walls, a population working together towards common cause, and leaders who work to find niches for everyone, it's amazing how much progress can happen. They're very primitive in comparison to today's society, but they're making sure things are rebuilt enough to bypass a lot of nasty parts of civilization.

A lot of those nasty aspects of society would return because they'd either be required or caution would allow them back in. People are assholes, and some are more assholes than others for the hell of it, but many harsh things in past came from necessity, even if it was necessity living long after it's use.

The fact death would produce a living monster would create widespread factors for people to consider, something I went into a bit of detail in the other Walking Dead thread.

The Tl;dr version is society wouldn't simply become vastly more conservative, but have every reason to be. There are apparent correlations with that in the world: rates of infectious diseases seem to coincide with societal conservationism around the global.

you'd still have to risk yourself every time you had to take a piss or a shit.

You assume tankers leave a tank to go to the bathroom in times of danger.

[ProfessorDetective]

As for Merle, yeah he's a jerkass, racist, violent crack addict . . . dosn't change the fact that being left to either starve to death or be eaten alive is a terrible fate. I'm not arguing about the morality of leaving him there. I'm just saying some ways to die are so terrible I'd feel a slight twinge of sympathy even if it was happening to the nastiest man on Earth.

Yeah, that's one of those 'hand him a loaded pistol and tell him to save a round for himself' moments. No one deserves dying by dehydration and/or cannibalism.

[FaxModem1]

You know, I've read articles that talk about how in the aftermath of shootings, you'll get armchair Rambos who say "If I had been there, I would have just <insert action here>". Because from the safety of our homes, with time to ponder over things, it's easy to see ourselves in the role of an action hero. But the reality is that in life or death situations you don't know how you'd react. And in this case, it's not just one traumatizing event, it's a whole series of them, a bunch of average schmoes suddenly forced to live in an eternal war zone. So while sometimes characters can be inexcusably dumb (if you can figure out how trick zombies with smell, you should be able to figure out that armor would be a good idea), other lapses in judgement are excusable. Plus I don't think building another fence or using a phalanx would be the slam dunk solution they're presented as. A single hardware store isn't going to have enough material to build another fence, you're gonna have to go on a massive involved quest to complete this project and maybe get more people killed when you've got limited manpower. And a phalanx won't help you if you get cornered or overrun. Besides, what happens when you stab the zombie in the chest and your weapon gets stuck on its ribs, or you drop your shield since you weren't trained since 12 to carry one?

Thing is, there are long stretches of the show where they have days, weeks, or sometimes even months of downtime. Most of season 2 is the group farting around doing nothing, for instance. So that when a herd of zombies finally does roll by, they're caught flat footed and lose a bunch of people. You'd think they'd at least corral the cows so that they aren't fresh meals for the occasional zombie to munch on while the humans chop vegetables.

I love WWZ style stories of survivors being creative and rebuilding society, but realistically not everyone's going to be an engineer or history major.

And that's fine. But you'd think some basic precautions would be followed. When they establish a base at the prison, and finally have a fence, the work details fall apart because the people are too lazy to kill the zombies weakening the fence. You don't have to be an engineer to realize,

"Hey, maybe we should keep our perimeter safe and not let ourselves be zombie chow."

That doesn't require a big education in engineering, or time in the service. Just some forward thinking, like wearing armor. And while supplies might be hard to come by, makeshift supplies would work. Just parking every car from the local Walmart, grocery store, or local car dealership around the farm would make a good makeshift barrier.

Another thought, 9 seasons in, even with experience, that never crosses their minds, is to clear a building before they scavenge it. After dozens of deaths because of being surprised by zombies being in the next room, the only time they ever focused on clearing a place was when they cleared the prison, and stopped doing so afterwards. This was also one of the few times they were armor as well. It's almost as if the writing prevents them from improving on what they do or how they do it. This is why I loved the Kingdom, they seemed to avoid most of Rick's group 's constant errors, making you wonder why we aren't following them instead.

Once you have strong enough walls, a population working together towards common cause, and leaders who work to find niches for everyone, it's amazing how much progress can happen. They're very primitive in comparison to today's society, but they're making sure things are rebuilt enough to bypass a lot of nasty parts of civilization.

A lot of those nasty aspects of society would return because they'd either be required or caution would allow them back in. People are assholes, and some are more assholes than others for the hell of it, but many harsh things in past came from necessity, even if it was necessity living long after it's use.

The fact death would produce a living monster would create widespread factors for people to consider, something I went into a bit of detail in the other Walking Dead thread.

The Tl;dr version is society wouldn't simply become vastly more conservative, but have every reason to be. There are apparent correlations with that in the world: rates of infectious diseases seem to coincide with societal conservationism around the global.

True, but you can bypass a few things like, say, cannibalism, hunter gathering, improper farming techniques, lack of medicine , etc. You can jumpstart to at least the 17th or 18th century technological level, maybe even later if you have enough of know how and salvaged technology, and hopefully 20th century social levels if you don't disregard the accomplishments of said eras. But that Rick's group doesn't while others do just shows that were following idiots instead of those who try and institute much forward planning.

[FlynnTaggart]

Wait, 2 months!? How the fuck...?

Yeah its a bit weird ain't it. According to everything I've read online the official timeline released for TWD has Rick waking up 59 days after the outbreak. And apparently he'd been unattended in the hospital since day 14 of the outbreak making me wonder whether that old fan theory of Rick being a type of walker held some water.

Also apparently the virus had been spreading around for over a hundred days before the official outbreak.

https://walkingdead.fandom.com/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_TV_Show_Timeline

[Beastro]

True, but you can bypass a few things like, say, cannibalism, hunter gathering, improper farming techniques, lack of medicine , etc. You can jumpstart to at least the 17th or 18th century technological level, maybe even later if you have enough of know how and salvaged technology, and hopefully 20th century social levels if you don't disregard the accomplishments of said eras. But that Rick's group doesn't while others do just shows that were following idiots instead of those who try and institute much forward planning.

Things would go back to about somewhere in the 19th Century (Surprise, we're coming back to the Wild West again).

Key differences would be that things like radio technology would be easy to retain and replicate (key bit being retain), as would bolt action rifles (fully automatic could, but would be too impractical).

Medicine wise, again the retention of knowledge, and would be key over preserving medicines themselves: Germ theory being so prevalently known will guarantee less trouble over things like cuts being cleaned and people minimizing dirtiness around them.

As for 20th Century social levels, I don't know exactly how you mean, but women of child baring age aren't going to be gallivanting off where ever they like, even if much like the Old Frontier, it'll be best for them to know how to be and be very willing to be, proficient and violent with firearms.

Another things: I'd see things stabilize and expand out from near lying islands, like those in the Great Lakes, the barrier islands of the Eastern Seaboard and those of the Puget Sound and Georgia Strait simply because the hordes of zombies on the continent would be too unpredictable in number to begin to build out from a place like Georgia for some time.

[clearspira]

True, but you can bypass a few things like, say, cannibalism, hunter gathering, improper farming techniques, lack of medicine , etc. You can jumpstart to at least the 17th or 18th century technological level, maybe even later if you have enough of know how and salvaged technology, and hopefully 20th century social levels if you don't disregard the accomplishments of said eras. But that Rick's group doesn't while others do just shows that were following idiots instead of those who try and institute much forward planning.

Things would go back to about somewhere in the 19th Century (Surprise, we're coming back to the Wild West again).

Key differences would be that things like radio technology would be easy to retain and replicate (key bit being retain), as would bolt action rifles (fully automatic could, but would be too impractical).

Medicine wise, again the retention of knowledge, and would be key over preserving medicines themselves: Germ theory being so prevalently known will guarantee less trouble over things like cuts being cleaned and people minimizing dirtiness around them.

As for 20th Century social levels, I don't know exactly how you mean, but women of child baring age aren't going to be gallivanting off where ever they like, even if much like the Old Frontier, it'll be best for them to know how to be and be very willing to be, proficient and violent with firearms.

Another things: I'd see things stabilize and expand out from near lying islands, like those in the Great Lakes, the barrier islands of the Eastern Seaboard and those of the Puget Sound and Georgia Strait simply because the hordes of zombies on the continent would be too unpredictable in number to begin to build out from a place like Georgia for some time.

The most important people in any society are women of childbearing age because it only takes 1 man to impregnate 10 women. You can decimate your male population and still survive comfortably, and we know this from the likes of the Ancient empires that did just that every few years. Women will be forced back into home and logistical roles for the same reason they were up until the 20th century: No women, no settlement.

As for tech, 1900-1950 would be a good long term target because quite simply most modern technologies would be beyond your reach. Who here could genuinely build a microchip from scratch? We would be back to Fallout style transistors and such.

[FaxModem1]

True, but you can bypass a few things like, say, cannibalism, hunter gathering, improper farming techniques, lack of medicine , etc. You can jumpstart to at least the 17th or 18th century technological level, maybe even later if you have enough of know how and salvaged technology, and hopefully 20th century social levels if you don't disregard the accomplishments of said eras. But that Rick's group doesn't while others do just shows that were following idiots instead of those who try and institute much forward planning.

Things would go back to about somewhere in the 19th Century (Surprise, we're coming back to the Wild West again).

Key differences would be that things like radio technology would be easy to retain and replicate (key bit being retain), as would bolt action rifles (fully automatic could, but would be too impractical).

Medicine wise, again the retention of knowledge, and would be key over preserving medicines themselves: Germ theory being so prevalently known will guarantee less trouble over things like cuts being cleaned and people minimizing dirtiness around them.

As for 20th Century social levels, I don't know exactly how you mean, but women of child baring age aren't going to be gallivanting off where ever they like, even if much like the Old Frontier, it'll be best for them to know how to be and be very willing to be, proficient and violent with firearms.

Another things: I'd see things stabilize and expand out from near lying islands, like those in the Great Lakes, the barrier islands of the Eastern Seaboard and those of the Puget Sound and Georgia Strait simply because the hordes of zombies on the continent would be too unpredictable in number to begin to build out from a place like Georgia for some time.

The most important people in any society are women of childbearing age because it only takes 1 man to impregnate 10 women. You can decimate your male population and still survive comfortably, and we know this from the likes of the Ancient empires that did just that every few years. Women will be forced back into home and logistical roles for the same reason they were up until the 20th century: No women, no settlement.

As for tech, 1900-1950 would be a good long term target because quite simply most modern technologies would be beyond your reach. Who here could genuinely build a microchip from scratch? We would be back to Fallout style transistors and such.

Well that explains the movie Fido.

[Sir Will]

Wait, 2 months!? How the fuck...?

Yeah its a bit weird ain't it. According to everything I've read online the official timeline released for TWD has Rick waking up 59 days after the outbreak. And apparently he'd been unattended in the hospital since day 14 of the outbreak making me wonder whether that old fan theory of Rick being a type of walker held some water.

Also apparently the virus had been spreading around for over a hundred days before the official outbreak.

https://walkingdead.fandom.com/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_TV_Show_Timeline

So they clearly have no idea how biology works, got it. I mean, zombies don't make sense but suspension of disbelief. But you can't live for 45 days without food and water even setting aside the fact that he should have been eaten.