Oh man. When I figured out why (near end of episode)
Rick went through the park near the end and found the bisected zombie, I felt really bad for her, and pretty much all of them. I've never felt any sort of empathy at all for zombies in stories with them.
I have a feeling he's gonna go from that, to not feeling any empathy at all towards them, to outright hating them as the story progresses
Also, if its any consolation, Costanza, the producers have said they aren't entirely sure if they'll do that particular spoiler to Rick or not. I'd almost think that they'll purposely avoid it, just to have another way to differentiate the television show from the comic.
It's kind of central to his development, though (LATER BOOK SPOILERS):
there are situations where he's forced to work around his handicap, such as the part where he tries to keep Carl from being raped by those deranged hillbillies.
They could delay it for a while, but I think it's inevitable.
I suppose - but I think they could get around it with other things (COMIC SPOILERS)
I think a broken arm could potentially work just as well as a severed hand, so far as inhibiting movement/whatnot.
I trust that Kirkman/Darabont/etc will figure it out one way or another.
Also, if its any consolation, Costanza, the producers have said they aren't entirely sure if they'll do that particular spoiler to Rick or not. I'd almost think that they'll purposely avoid it, just to have another way to differentiate the television show from the comic.
It's kind of central to his development, though (LATER BOOK SPOILERS):
there are situations where he's forced to work around his handicap, such as the part where he tries to keep Carl from being raped by those deranged hillbillies.
They could delay it for a while, but I think it's inevitable.
I suppose - but I think they could get around it with other things (COMIC SPOILERS)
I think a broken arm could potentially work just as well as a severed hand, so far as inhibiting movement/whatnot.
I trust that Kirkman/Darabont/etc will figure it out one way or another.
That already happened though (when he busts his hand beating that inmate to near-death.
Unless they skip that part, or just merge the two together. I dunno.
Fuck...there's no way they're going to get away with some of the major stuff later on.
I'm getting chills just recalling The Governor arc. If even half that stuff makes it in, I'll honestly be shocked.
I have a concern... regarding the future plot of this. Its not going to turn into a soap opera with the whole
wife/partner/main guy
is it?
Let's just say that character dilemmas/issues don't last very long in this series. To be as non-spoiler as I can, inner demons will usually just be replaced with other, nastier inner demons. Hope that's vague enough.
Also, did anyone else think that one zombie they kept zooming in on in the last act looked like Kevin Bacon?
Between what we've seen on Breaking Bad and what we saw in tonight's pilot, I think just about anything goes so far as what they can or can't show (and they can always go the Hitchcock route of showing without showing). But the Governor stuff is probably years away.
Between what we've seen on Breaking Bad and what we saw in tonight's pilot, I think just about anything goes so far as what they can or can't show (and they can always go the Hitchcock route of showing without showing). But the Governor stuff is probably years away.
I will say, though, that I will totally support the censoring of (BIGGEST FUCKING SPOILER HERE DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T KNOW)
the death of Rick's wife and newborn baby.
Even if they do an uncensored Blu Ray version, I have no desire to watch a baby turn to hamburger meat from a shotgun blast, so if they can cut away from it, just showing Rick's reaction to get the message across, I'd be okay with that.
The comic image is already burned into my mind, I don't really need to see the live action equivalent.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited November 2010
So on the one hand, this looks to be straight-up the best piece of zombie fiction I've yet seen.
However, people talking about stuff like a "downward spiral" makes me sad because it means the the series will end up unfinished and uninteresting if that's the route they take. Personally, I think this series is shit hot but there also has to be a fighting return to some sort of existence other than horrible zombies everywhere. Otherwise there is just no point in continuing the series. As much as I like it so far, there has to be something other than things just getting worse forever because that's just a lousy story.
Anyway. Only real gripe I have at this moment is seeing derelict military stuff all over the place. Armored vehicles could literally just drive over the dead all day long; they wouldn't even have to shoot. Not to mention napalm and the fact that a Ma Deuce would literally dismember whatever it hit. I would've been happier if there had been no military stuff around at all besides some tents and whatnot. It's a minor gripe, though; the military stuff sitting around is more scenery anyway, so I'm fine with that.
I'm immensely more interested in the fact that the show isn't populated by morons. And not only are they not morons, they're like actual people instead of annoying stereotypes you want to die anyway. But I'll be severely unhappy if the story is just an unending descent into people doing horrible things and nothing ever getting better. It would be a pretty huge waste of some awesome potential.
The action and drama and such is great, but the way you're describing the workings of the zombification process is ridiculous.
Is it presented the same way in the written work (i.e. people develop fevers from bites or scratches?). Because if you're already infected with the virus it makes no sense that you would magically get a fever from some other injury that kills you nigh instantaneously.
And if that were true, then there's not reason Rick's bandage at the beginning of the show wouldn't have naturally festered and somehow transformed him into a zombie while he was comatose.
If the zombies aren't transferring the 'disease' via bites and scratches, then the worst they're doing when they bite or scratch you is creating wounds full of terrible, disease-causing bacteria. When you die you don't magically get killing fingers filled with poison, ergo scratches zombifying you in a matter of hours is ridiculous.
(Yes, even in a fantasy world where animated corpses hunger for flesh. If you're going to suppose your fiction is in an alternate reality that works on the basis of this reality then you need to be consistent with our universe).
But that's all sort of ridiculous. The show is enjoyable and (like Watchman or any other written work transformed for a new media) the explanation behind the show's mechanics and personalities may be different.
Diseases and pathogens aren't a black and white one off thing. There are quite a few bacteria which are much, much more virulent in the presence of certain viruses and vice versa. If it makes you feel better, think of the zombie bite as transferring an extremely-rapidly dividing bacteria into an already colonized individual
Yeah I don't think this show will be around long enough to make it to the absolute bleakest of bleak stuff (issue 48, if I'm not mistaken). They only got like halfway through issue 1 tonight -- even if they start doing longer seasons it'd be 2020 before they got anywhere near that far through the story.
As far as the discussion about the mechanics of the world discussion that went on a few pages ago (relatively innocuous spoiler -- related to how Kirkman went about starting to write the books):
Basically, TWD was intended as a continuation of Night of the Living Dead. Kirkman wasn't too happy about Dawn of the Dead, and wanted to just continue in a long-term fashion from where NotLD left off. The mechanics of TWD are very similar to what was presented to you during Night.
Darabont mentioned a conversation he had with Kirkman in a recent interview (maybe with AICN or hitfix?) that in TWD Universe, there was no such concept as a 'zombie' (no pop culture stuff, etc) prior to the 'walker' outbreak. From that standpoint, it makes sense to me that the military could be ill prepared for that sort of enemy. For all we know, the tank we see at the end of the episode had run out of gas (both hatches open, some of the crew dead outside of it) and they had to make a break for it.
Zombie Apocalypse stories sort of fall apart if you start applying 'this wouldn't work like that because...' logic to them - best to just enjoy the story the writers are laying out for the audience, IMO.
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
Yea, the military losing to zombies, especially slow moving zombies, never ever makes any sense if you think about it. I mean... what about all the aircraft carriers and destroyers we have sailing all over the world? They certainly wouldn't be affected. Are zombies going to swim out and crawl onto the ships from the ocean? It just gets silly.
Yea, the military losing to zombies, especially slow moving zombies, never ever makes any sense if you think about it. I mean... what about all the aircraft carriers and destroyers we have sailing all over the world? They certainly wouldn't be affected. Are zombies going to swim out and crawl onto the ships from the ocean? It just gets silly.
Yeah really and what the hell is up with fantasy novels and shit?
Magic? REALLY? PUUUHHH-LEEZE...
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Hint: the worst moments in this series do not involve zombies.
That's fine with me (it takes intelligence to be really horrible), but at the same time I'm not going to have any interest in a series which is largely focused on people being horrible. I also won't have any interest in a series which is centered around "worst moments". Average people in caught in war zones don't immediately turn into wild, murdering savages; most of them just want to try and live their lives normally, even after years or decades of endless warfare around them.
If the story turns into dealing with rapists and murders within the midst of the group on a constant basis, the show is going to justifiably crater fast. I wouldn't want to watch or read about a story which is just an endless tale of things getting horrible; I don't see any point to it and most people would feel the same way. So I really really hope that the show doesn't go the direction of the comic because the guys involved with the show absolutely seem to have the right stuff to make something fantastic.
As for the military versus zombies thing, I didn't really see any evidence of the military "losing" which is why I'm okay with the military gear sitting around. Aside from the one tank, it really looks more like the military just bugged out in a hurry rather than getting overrun. It's not like there are a bunch of soldier zombies around, so there's not much reason to think they all got killed somehow. Right now we don't know anything at all, so there's every chance that the military is in full force and has just pulled back from the area for the time being. It's one of those things where less is more; everything is just better if nobody really knows what the military is up to and it really just isn't ever seen much.
Because with any sort of common sense applied, you wouldn't even need active-duty military to deal with a zombie outbreak. Reservists and national guard could wipe out zombies far, far faster than zombies could infect people, much less career military who are trained in tactics to deal with the likes of suicide bombers and human wave tactics.
KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
edited November 2010
Well yeah but that's assuming your military sticks around to take care of the problem instead of looking to save their own loved ones and abandoning their posts or that not everyone who dies comes back because people are already infected with it or that I don't want to watch a zombie apocalypse show so I'm allowing some leeway as to 'what would REALLY happen'.
Yea, the military losing to zombies, especially slow moving zombies, never ever makes any sense if you think about it. I mean... what about all the aircraft carriers and destroyers we have sailing all over the world? They certainly wouldn't be affected. Are zombies going to swim out and crawl onto the ships from the ocean? It just gets silly.
Different stories each have a different rationale.
You've got the slow incubation period so the virus/bacteria/magic only transforms the victim after a certian amount of time. This would lead to things like individuals going on transatlantic flights and infecting other countries before initial cases garner media coverage; survivor camps end up with zombies internally that wreak havoc or key personnel that get infected (eventually someone steps in with some test for symptoms of infection and people know to cordon off infected, etc.).
You've got the varied speed zombies. They go from crazy running zombies with fresh muscles to barely ambulatory zombies who have torn their muscles to shreds or have decomposed and can barely move. Thus the military is overwhelmed by the shear violence, but the assorted protagonists deal with the aftermath of a world full of more numerous, but less vicious zombies.
You've got your humanitarian military/survivors that don't want to decimate the population of zombies (because they believe it to be a riot or they're hoping for a cure and so on). So they end up adopting terrible tactics for the situation and it all goes horribly wrong (clearing houses individually or using non-leathal weapons or what have you). Eventually the people get smart and they: no longer feel compassion/discover the secret to killing the zombies/band together to work as a unit/etc.
You've got your evasive military that realized there was nothing they could effectively do so they just sit back and hope the zombies decompose or they can get the ordnance to destroy the large collections of zombies (potentially running into non-zombie issues like power usurpation, resource limitations, AWOL soldiers yearning for families, etc.).
I'm sure there are an assortment of other varieties (especially of the magical zombie kind).
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited November 2010
Like I said, the less said about the military, the better. There's just no reasonable way I could ever accept that a bunch of trained, professional, volunteer soldiers with a wide variety or flesh-rending weapons could ever be overrun by a bunch of dumb, slow zombies. So the smart route is just to say nothing and avoid having to come up with any insane justifications like everyone in the military all being on land in the USA at the same time with no guns and no armor and everyone drunk and nobody has fuel and everyone being pants-wetting scared and deserting and doing all of that at the same time.
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
Like I said, the less said about the military, the better. There's just no reasonable way I could ever accept that a bunch of trained, professional, volunteer soldiers with a wide variety or flesh-rending weapons could ever be overrun by a bunch of dumb, slow zombies. So the best solution is just to not talk about the military rather than trying to apply outlandish, ludicrous rationales which never make any sense no matter how you twist them. So the smart route is just to say nothing and avoid having to come up with any insane justifications like everyone in the military all being on land in the USA at the same time with no guns and no armor and everyone drunk and nobody has fuel and everyone being pants-wetting scared and deserting and doing all of that at the same time.
The military is trained to fight in a way that is not effective against zombies. And while zombies can't exactly invade an aircraft carrier a thousand miles out to sea unless people on the boat are infected that carrier needs a lot of land-based support in terms of supplies so it's not exactly a floating safe haven with no weaknesses.
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Handsome CostanzaAsk me about 8bitdoRIP Iwata-sanRegistered Userregular
The military is trained to fight in a way that is not effective against zombies. And while zombies can't exactly invade an aircraft carrier a thousand miles out to sea unless people on the boat are infected that carrier needs a lot of land-based support in terms of supplies so it's not exactly a floating safe haven with no weaknesses.
Dude. Seriously. Just don't. The standard training for the military involves fighting in exact ways which would be effective against zombies. That's with just infantry weapons and light machine guns. The more involved the military gets, the more and more ludicrous the whole argument becomes. There is honestly just no worthwhile debate to be had here because the US military has standard tactics to deal both with suicide bombers (which would be sprinting at you in a suicidal charge) and human wave tactics (in which thousands of soldiers are sprinting at you in a suicidal charge while shooting).
The military isn't specifically trained to fight against old-school Apache warriors armed with spears, but that doesn't mean the Apaches wouldn't get chewed apart in seconds by the modern military. This whole thing is such a useless, stupid argument that there is absolutely no reasonable way to argue it.
Which is why it's objectively and infinitely better that the military is left completely out of the story rather than trying for insane reasons as to why barely mobile corpses managed to kick their asses.
KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
edited November 2010
All I'm gonna say is read World War Z and it will give you a perfectly consistent and logical reason why a modern military would fail against a zombie horde.
You know, if you aren't busy headshotting zombies with a gatling gun.
Darabont mentioned a conversation he had with Kirkman in a recent interview (maybe with AICN or hitfix?) that in TWD Universe, there was no such concept as a 'zombie' (no pop culture stuff, etc) prior to the 'walker' outbreak. From that standpoint, it makes sense to me that the military could be ill prepared for that sort of enemy. For all we know, the tank we see at the end of the episode had run out of gas (both hatches open, some of the crew dead outside of it) and they had to make a break for it.
Zombie Apocalypse stories sort of fall apart if you start applying 'this wouldn't work like that because...' logic to them - best to just enjoy the story the writers are laying out for the audience, IMO.
I seem to recall a moment in the comic where one character uses the term "zombie", which causes another to react and then comment on how weird it feels to use the term in "real life". That kind of sounds like they knew about zombies before, but whatever.
I was fine when he shot the little girl (cool opening btw).
The eviscerated woman in the hospital was kinda gross, but nothing worse than something you'd see on CSI.
The legless zombie was kinda sad, but not terrible.
The "God forgive us" thing was gratuitous, I was still dealing though.
And then... there was the horse thing at the end.
I went ahead and decided the show wasn't for me.
The bad thing is I've read a lot of the comic. I found the concept intriguing, but I just couldn't see my way to continue reading something that fucking depressing. I never even got to some of the crazy shit I've read about online. So more power to you TWD fans, I'm glad you're happy with what you got. I think I'm going to sit this one out though.
PS Is it just me, or is the comic's art absolute crap after the first trade paperback? Maybe Adlard's muddy illustrations better compliment the story in some people's minds, but I couldn't stand it.
I was fine when he shot the little girl (cool opening btw).
The eviscerated woman in the hospital was kinda gross, but nothing worse than something you'd see on CSI.
The legless zombie was kinda sad, but not terrible.
The "God forgive us" thing was gratuitous, I was still dealing though.
And then... there was the horse thing at the end.
I went ahead and decided the show wasn't for me.
The bad thing is I've read a lot of the comic. I found the concept intriguing, but I just couldn't see my way to continue reading something that fucking depressing. I never even got to some of the crazy shit I've read about online. So more power to you TWD fans, I'm glad you're happy with what you got. I think I'm going to sit this one out though.
PS Is it just me, or is the comic's art absolute crap after the first trade paperback? Maybe Adlard's muddy illustrations better compliment the story in some people's minds, but I couldn't stand it.
As has been said, it's a downer series.
But the reason I'm entertained is because, as the author stated in the first TPB's introduction, he wanted to create a zombie series where you actually cared if someone died.
I mean sure, I'm always up for zombie settings where characters are basically there to serve a body count, but I much prefer being on edge because I actually want the characters to survive.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited November 2010
People are free to have the opinion that the military wouldn't shred zombies with minimal effort because of a single book which has to use convoluted reasoning to make a modern military fail. Everyone else will just continue to understand that military weapons are really awesome at wrecking things and that zombies would pose zero real threat to military short of everyone in the military falling asleep at the same time in a room with a zombie.
And the Godzilla movies are different. It's Godzilla. He's a giant radioactive lizard who spews fire and can shake off tank rounds like snowflakes. Zombies are just dead, dumb, slow people which can get torn apart by a big bullet just as easily as a live person. Godzilla versus military is fun, zombies versus military is stupid. The end. Game Over. Man.
The only way I can see the military having a problem with zombies is if it happened all at once. Just one day and BOOM zombies all over the place. No slow climb, just instant zombies everywhere. They'll get stuck with trying to contain it but it's already everywhere so it'll probably end up wearing the military down.
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
edited November 2010
Yes advanced modern military never loses to less sophisticated opponents.
I couldn't read five more pages of people not comprehending the zombification process without slamming my head in the desk. Did everybody get it sorted out?
Everybody's infected with the virus that reanimates you upon death. But this virus is not what kills you. Getting bitten by something that's rotting and dead gives you a fucking nightmare fever that you don't recover from, but is ultimately unrelated to the Zombie virus.
It's two different processes working in tandem that makes people initially think the bites are what turns people, until they start coming across people that are zombies, but were never bitten. IE, what kills you doesn't matter, whether it's a bullet or an infected wound from hell. You're still dead. But there's also this thing that makes you get back up afterwards.
If you really can't see how a dedicated, intelligent force with inferior equipment (equipment which still consists of things like high explosives and guns) can't even be remotely compared with a bunch of shambling, stupid, completely unequipped walking corpses whose entire fighting repetoire consists of "group together, shamble forward", then this whole "argument" is just a waste of text. Ah, but I suppose the zombies are also a zealous, smart fighting force capable of waging long-term guerrilla warfare against uncommitted opponents using complex strikes and equipment? Anyway, I will rest easy in the knowledge that, objectively, there is no plausible, non-stupid way for any modern military force to actively fight against zombies and somehow come out the losers and appreciate the fact that The Walking Dead doesn't seem to be concerned with explaining why the military isn't there.
Also, good point with that 120mm canister round. From what I've heard, it goes right through buildings and doesn't even leave corpses behind. A couple of those would rapidly turn a zombie horde into a zombie cloud. The mess would... incredible.
The miltary tends to favor volume of fire, so if you have zombies shambling towards you they'll get a wall of bullets thrown at them and - even if your soldiers couldn't hit the ground if they tripped - if the zombies' eviscerated remains remained standing I'm sure at least one projectile would manage to hit the zombies in the head.
But the argument most zombie media use to circumvent the military is by making their firepower useless via edict or forcing the military to initially fulfill a role that's more humanitarian in nature (...and would likely get shouldered on the National Guard and not the actual military). That is "don't destroy civilian buildings," "don't attack until you're attacked," "protect civilians from the crazies" stuff. And then they try to use that to wear down the military's morale and materiel until they no longer have abundant ammo and fuel.
Although we'd like to think the military is incredibly unresponsive, I don't see that attitude surviving long enough to completely sack the military unless you have something with a highly variable incubation time that's very difficult to detect and ridiculously easy to contract. That's like an aerosol Ebola-Herpes-Influenza mixed with some common cold. Even then, the American military is designed to favor fluid operation at lower command levels so individual groups of soldiers would eventually form coherent, well-operating groups regardless.
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Haha.
Nope.
I suppose - but I think they could get around it with other things (COMIC SPOILERS)
I trust that Kirkman/Darabont/etc will figure it out one way or another.
Unless they skip that part, or just merge the two together. I dunno.
Fuck...there's no way they're going to get away with some of the major stuff later on.
I'm getting chills just recalling The Governor arc. If even half that stuff makes it in, I'll honestly be shocked.
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I thought William Defoe
I will say, though, that I will totally support the censoring of (BIGGEST FUCKING SPOILER HERE DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T KNOW)
Even if they do an uncensored Blu Ray version, I have no desire to watch a baby turn to hamburger meat from a shotgun blast, so if they can cut away from it, just showing Rick's reaction to get the message across, I'd be okay with that.
The comic image is already burned into my mind, I don't really need to see the live action equivalent.
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However, people talking about stuff like a "downward spiral" makes me sad because it means the the series will end up unfinished and uninteresting if that's the route they take. Personally, I think this series is shit hot but there also has to be a fighting return to some sort of existence other than horrible zombies everywhere. Otherwise there is just no point in continuing the series. As much as I like it so far, there has to be something other than things just getting worse forever because that's just a lousy story.
Anyway. Only real gripe I have at this moment is seeing derelict military stuff all over the place. Armored vehicles could literally just drive over the dead all day long; they wouldn't even have to shoot. Not to mention napalm and the fact that a Ma Deuce would literally dismember whatever it hit. I would've been happier if there had been no military stuff around at all besides some tents and whatnot. It's a minor gripe, though; the military stuff sitting around is more scenery anyway, so I'm fine with that.
I'm immensely more interested in the fact that the show isn't populated by morons. And not only are they not morons, they're like actual people instead of annoying stereotypes you want to die anyway. But I'll be severely unhappy if the story is just an unending descent into people doing horrible things and nothing ever getting better. It would be a pretty huge waste of some awesome potential.
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As far as the discussion about the mechanics of the world discussion that went on a few pages ago (relatively innocuous spoiler -- related to how Kirkman went about starting to write the books):
Zombie Apocalypse stories sort of fall apart if you start applying 'this wouldn't work like that because...' logic to them - best to just enjoy the story the writers are laying out for the audience, IMO.
That one did.
You know the one.
Or something. Look it's a zombie show just fucking go with it sheesh. :P
The pilot was better than the Giants.
The pilot was better than your moms vagina.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
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Yeah really and what the hell is up with fantasy novels and shit?
Magic? REALLY? PUUUHHH-LEEZE...
That's fine with me (it takes intelligence to be really horrible), but at the same time I'm not going to have any interest in a series which is largely focused on people being horrible. I also won't have any interest in a series which is centered around "worst moments". Average people in caught in war zones don't immediately turn into wild, murdering savages; most of them just want to try and live their lives normally, even after years or decades of endless warfare around them.
If the story turns into dealing with rapists and murders within the midst of the group on a constant basis, the show is going to justifiably crater fast. I wouldn't want to watch or read about a story which is just an endless tale of things getting horrible; I don't see any point to it and most people would feel the same way. So I really really hope that the show doesn't go the direction of the comic because the guys involved with the show absolutely seem to have the right stuff to make something fantastic.
As for the military versus zombies thing, I didn't really see any evidence of the military "losing" which is why I'm okay with the military gear sitting around. Aside from the one tank, it really looks more like the military just bugged out in a hurry rather than getting overrun. It's not like there are a bunch of soldier zombies around, so there's not much reason to think they all got killed somehow. Right now we don't know anything at all, so there's every chance that the military is in full force and has just pulled back from the area for the time being. It's one of those things where less is more; everything is just better if nobody really knows what the military is up to and it really just isn't ever seen much.
Because with any sort of common sense applied, you wouldn't even need active-duty military to deal with a zombie outbreak. Reservists and national guard could wipe out zombies far, far faster than zombies could infect people, much less career military who are trained in tactics to deal with the likes of suicide bombers and human wave tactics.
Different stories each have a different rationale.
You've got the slow incubation period so the virus/bacteria/magic only transforms the victim after a certian amount of time. This would lead to things like individuals going on transatlantic flights and infecting other countries before initial cases garner media coverage; survivor camps end up with zombies internally that wreak havoc or key personnel that get infected (eventually someone steps in with some test for symptoms of infection and people know to cordon off infected, etc.).
You've got the varied speed zombies. They go from crazy running zombies with fresh muscles to barely ambulatory zombies who have torn their muscles to shreds or have decomposed and can barely move. Thus the military is overwhelmed by the shear violence, but the assorted protagonists deal with the aftermath of a world full of more numerous, but less vicious zombies.
You've got your humanitarian military/survivors that don't want to decimate the population of zombies (because they believe it to be a riot or they're hoping for a cure and so on). So they end up adopting terrible tactics for the situation and it all goes horribly wrong (clearing houses individually or using non-leathal weapons or what have you). Eventually the people get smart and they: no longer feel compassion/discover the secret to killing the zombies/band together to work as a unit/etc.
You've got your evasive military that realized there was nothing they could effectively do so they just sit back and hope the zombies decompose or they can get the ordnance to destroy the large collections of zombies (potentially running into non-zombie issues like power usurpation, resource limitations, AWOL soldiers yearning for families, etc.).
I'm sure there are an assortment of other varieties (especially of the magical zombie kind).
The military is trained to fight in a way that is not effective against zombies. And while zombies can't exactly invade an aircraft carrier a thousand miles out to sea unless people on the boat are infected that carrier needs a lot of land-based support in terms of supplies so it's not exactly a floating safe haven with no weaknesses.
You would you rate your mom that low?
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Dude. Seriously. Just don't. The standard training for the military involves fighting in exact ways which would be effective against zombies. That's with just infantry weapons and light machine guns. The more involved the military gets, the more and more ludicrous the whole argument becomes. There is honestly just no worthwhile debate to be had here because the US military has standard tactics to deal both with suicide bombers (which would be sprinting at you in a suicidal charge) and human wave tactics (in which thousands of soldiers are sprinting at you in a suicidal charge while shooting).
The military isn't specifically trained to fight against old-school Apache warriors armed with spears, but that doesn't mean the Apaches wouldn't get chewed apart in seconds by the modern military. This whole thing is such a useless, stupid argument that there is absolutely no reasonable way to argue it.
Which is why it's objectively and infinitely better that the military is left completely out of the story rather than trying for insane reasons as to why barely mobile corpses managed to kick their asses.
You know, if you aren't busy headshotting zombies with a gatling gun.
I seem to recall a moment in the comic where one character uses the term "zombie", which causes another to react and then comment on how weird it feels to use the term in "real life". That kind of sounds like they knew about zombies before, but whatever.
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The eviscerated woman in the hospital was kinda gross, but nothing worse than something you'd see on CSI.
The legless zombie was kinda sad, but not terrible.
The "God forgive us" thing was gratuitous, I was still dealing though.
And then... there was the horse thing at the end.
I went ahead and decided the show wasn't for me.
PS Is it just me, or is the comic's art absolute crap after the first trade paperback? Maybe Adlard's muddy illustrations better compliment the story in some people's minds, but I couldn't stand it.
As an aside, Snarl, did you have this same core problem with the Godzilla movies?
As has been said, it's a downer series.
But the reason I'm entertained is because, as the author stated in the first TPB's introduction, he wanted to create a zombie series where you actually cared if someone died.
I mean sure, I'm always up for zombie settings where characters are basically there to serve a body count, but I much prefer being on edge because I actually want the characters to survive.
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And the Godzilla movies are different. It's Godzilla. He's a giant radioactive lizard who spews fire and can shake off tank rounds like snowflakes. Zombies are just dead, dumb, slow people which can get torn apart by a big bullet just as easily as a live person. Godzilla versus military is fun, zombies versus military is stupid. The end. Game Over. Man.
You know the military has a 120mm version of one.
The only way I can see the military having a problem with zombies is if it happened all at once. Just one day and BOOM zombies all over the place. No slow climb, just instant zombies everywhere. They'll get stuck with trying to contain it but it's already everywhere so it'll probably end up wearing the military down.
EVER.
It's two different processes working in tandem that makes people initially think the bites are what turns people, until they start coming across people that are zombies, but were never bitten. IE, what kills you doesn't matter, whether it's a bullet or an infected wound from hell. You're still dead. But there's also this thing that makes you get back up afterwards.
Have we all got it now?
Zombies don't.
Machine guns and high explosives don't really work well when needing to destroy the brain.
But I'm not really into debating the realities of fictional monsters either so whatevs.
If you really can't see how a dedicated, intelligent force with inferior equipment (equipment which still consists of things like high explosives and guns) can't even be remotely compared with a bunch of shambling, stupid, completely unequipped walking corpses whose entire fighting repetoire consists of "group together, shamble forward", then this whole "argument" is just a waste of text. Ah, but I suppose the zombies are also a zealous, smart fighting force capable of waging long-term guerrilla warfare against uncommitted opponents using complex strikes and equipment? Anyway, I will rest easy in the knowledge that, objectively, there is no plausible, non-stupid way for any modern military force to actively fight against zombies and somehow come out the losers and appreciate the fact that The Walking Dead doesn't seem to be concerned with explaining why the military isn't there.
Also, good point with that 120mm canister round. From what I've heard, it goes right through buildings and doesn't even leave corpses behind. A couple of those would rapidly turn a zombie horde into a zombie cloud. The mess would... incredible.
The miltary tends to favor volume of fire, so if you have zombies shambling towards you they'll get a wall of bullets thrown at them and - even if your soldiers couldn't hit the ground if they tripped - if the zombies' eviscerated remains remained standing I'm sure at least one projectile would manage to hit the zombies in the head.
But the argument most zombie media use to circumvent the military is by making their firepower useless via edict or forcing the military to initially fulfill a role that's more humanitarian in nature (...and would likely get shouldered on the National Guard and not the actual military). That is "don't destroy civilian buildings," "don't attack until you're attacked," "protect civilians from the crazies" stuff. And then they try to use that to wear down the military's morale and materiel until they no longer have abundant ammo and fuel.
Although we'd like to think the military is incredibly unresponsive, I don't see that attitude surviving long enough to completely sack the military unless you have something with a highly variable incubation time that's very difficult to detect and ridiculously easy to contract. That's like an aerosol Ebola-Herpes-Influenza mixed with some common cold. Even then, the American military is designed to favor fluid operation at lower command levels so individual groups of soldiers would eventually form coherent, well-operating groups regardless.