Fear the Walking Dead

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by ikalugin

Knowing how our security/law enforcement works (that and how all commieblock appartment buildings are zombie proof with added tendency of population to sit in those commieblock appartments) I think that we would just slide into totalitarism.

After all, we had gopnick appocalypse and somehow we are still here.

In World War Z, Russia...well, I'll take it from the zombie wiki:

Russia was badly affected by the zombie outbreak. Owing to the country's size, the Russians were forced to contend with roaming zombie hordes from Eastern Europe, China, and the countries of Central Asia. The Russian military, despite being a significant military power in the world, fared little better than the U.S. and Chinese militaries, and eventually it erupted into rebellion, in response to which the Ministry of Defense instituted a policy of Decimation. The Russian military retreated to a Safe Zone in Siberia, abandoning their territory west of the Ural Mountains, which due to its high population was heavily infected (combined with bordering the zombie hordes from other populous countries in Western Europe). The only real advantage Russia had was the mountains of weapons and ammunition left over from the Soviet Union. While this meant that the Russian military could continue to function even after most of their industrial base for producing new weapons was overwhelmed, it also meant that many units were sent into battle with nothing but WWII-vintage Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifles . Such primitive weapons and the sheer size of Russian territory made it impossible to use the tactics employed in many other parts of the world, particularly luring zombie hordes toward reinforced squares. Instead, the fighting was characterized as a close-quarters brawl with massive casualties. Russia did have a second "advantage" of a sort in its old ally "General Winter": even the massive zombie hordes pressing north from China would be slowed by the colder temperatures of Siberia. Even so, after their massive losses in the first year of the war, the Russians had to resort to walling off their remaining cities so they coulld be cleared incrementally. The Russian population was so drastically reduced that even within the small remaining population, only a tiny handful of fertile women managed to survive through the end of the war, without succumbing to combat, malnutrition, abuse, drugs, or sexually transmitted diseases. With fertile women now considered a precious and finite resource, many volunteered for government breeding programs to serve as broodmares to attempt to make up for the drastic population loss. Ironically, while Siberia served as Russia's Safe Zone during the war - while zombie hordes from Western Europe battered the mountain passes in the Urals - Siberia itself was never fully cleared of zombies. Inherently, isolated zombies that froze solid in the vast unguarded wastes of Sibera would go unnoticed for years, so it is still technically a "White Zone" even a decade after the official end of the war. The United States and international task force offered to help clear Siberia, as it was doing in other parts of the world such as Canada and Finland, but the Russians refused to let foreign troops inside of its borders.



Russia was eventually replaced by an expansionist theocracy known as the Holy Russian Empire. It is mentioned that they have regained several ex-Soviet states through conquest, including Belarus (though many of them had been so depopulated by the zombies that the Russians simply "liberated" them from the undead).

[ikalugin]

I have read WWZ, thanks. And (more or less) every point they make is wrong.

[mako88sb]

Originally Posted by Betonov

Mafia vs zombies

You may want to patent that because I'm honestly convinced that would be the most bad ass series ever

I would be very surprised to find out somebody hasn't thought about combining 2 hits like The Sopranos and The Walking Dead.

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by mako88sb

I would be very surprised to find out somebody hasn't thought about combining 2 hits like The Sopranos and The Walking Dead.

The Sopranos did when Christopher wrote a script for a movie when a mobster comes back to life as a zombie and starts killing those that betrayed him.

[Betonov]

Oh, some reading for you all
http://www.cracked.com/article_18683...l-quickly.html

[ikalugin]

Yes, when discussing zombies one has to answer those questions:
- are they biodegradable?
- what is their animation source?

The first one is farily straight forward. If zombies are biodegradable (and or edible), then depending on the enviroment it takes a very short period of time for them to die out naturally, though such process, should we assume that zombie appocalypse did occur, would lead to spread of regular deseases in affected areas.

The second one is less obvious. For example - how is zombie mobility affected by broken bones and/or tissue loss? How is their situational awareness affected by the loss of sensory organs? Obviously an immobile and sensory deprived zombie is not a threat.

The general problem with zombie scenarios is that their zombies (WWZ included) ignore (known) laws of nature selectively. Ie they can move endlessly without any energy inputs, while animative power goes out if their central nerveous system is taken out. Which is why I prefer 28 days/weeks later zombies, as they sort of make sense (the only problem I have with those is the small ammount of time required for infection to take over).

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Oberon

My take on the two episodes so far.

 

Good, the gradual decline is handled quite well, although there appears to be a disturbing lack of people watching televisions and the national media outlets seem to be slow to pick up on the spate of shootings, considering how quickly Ferguson flooded the airways.
The kid at the school was probably the most accurate of todays interconnected society, he saw it coming and wanted to prepare. If anything he was perhaps the closest to a 'prepper' so far. Unfortunately, I suspect that we will not see him again, except perhaps as a roving corpse. Prepping is one thing, surviving is quite another.
The ignorance before the storm is a nice touch though, and something that hasn't really changed in over a hundred years. When Wells wrote The War of the Worlds, he commented on how the area around the initial landing point was completely oblivious to the fact that a hundred odd people had been burnt to death by a deadly alien weapon during the night.
The cast are...well they tick the demographic boxes, but I can see them beginning to grate a little, Lori style. I guess this will make it all the more satisfying when one of them gets shot or eaten...because let's face it, you know it'll happen.
It's an interesting choice to put a drug addict in the middle of it, that's a bit of maintenance that you've got to upkeep in making sure he goes through the withdrawal process authentically. They might just get fed up of this and get him eaten at some point.

The problem I think that this series will face is that at some point they're going to end up treading the same path as TWD. TWD opened a few weeks into the event, with a couple of flashbacks to it. At some point, FTWD is going to reach that time-zone and it'll either continue as a separate series to TWD, or stop. I guess it depends on what focus they want to make it, of the downfall of mankind, or another zombie survival genre.

Also...just one last thing. LA was sure hesitant to get in the National Guard, weren't they? I was expecting to see more Apache and Cobra gunships in the air, not to mention Chinooks and Huey evacuation teams for hospitals and the like. Maybe that'll come next episode.
Would be nice if they pulled out all the stops and gave us an LA version of 'Yonkers'.

Good summary. I hope you are right about the upcoming episodes featuring

 

military engagement. I don't know what the budget for this show is, but it would be awesome to have tanks and Apaches engaging like you said.

Originally Posted by Catfish

What do you mean, fear the walking dead?
It took 10 minutes until the 'screen' came up (in my bath mirror, this morning), and i sure looked dead, but no one has to fear me

A screen cap from my favorite scene in ep2, imaging being caught in that traffic as the zombie hordes hit

[Eichhörnchen]

This is a great comedy with Woody Harrelson, but if you want a taste of what it might really be like to walk among the living dead (apart from visiting one of the country's many Spa Towns) then there are bags of games featuring the peckish undead you can play on PC, such as Left 4 Dead, STALKER, Shade and Hell Forces, to name a few. There can be no guilt in blowing a zombie's head off, but a good game will allow you to get in on the action without any danger of being eaten alive yourself.

"Hell Forces"... meet your chums for num-nums

[Onkel Neal]

Episode 3 tonight. I won't be able to watch it until tomorrow afternoon, but feel free to discuss. I won't peek until tomorrow.

[STEED]

Not my cup of tea, as pointed out on here zombies work in B-Movies but a series..Nah.


Years ago I watched the BBC series Survivors about a outbreak of a bio flu virus that near on wiped out the human race. Set in England tells the story how the very few survivors struggle to remain alive, series one was good and so was the start of series two but the series fell in to decline. As for the final third....

BBC Survivors intro 1975


Survivors (1975 TV series)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(1975_TV_series)


The BBC tried to revamp the series with a updated 2008 version which lasted only two seasons and was cancelled due to low ratings.

Survivors (2008 TV series)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(2008_TV_series)


Just to throw one more in the mix..Day of the Triffids.

[Onkel Neal]

Blast, no episode last night.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Blast, no episode last night.

Here's me searching my usual location for watching this to no avail. What's the deal with holding back on us like that? It's not as if it's a very long first season.

[Onkel Neal]

I know, man. And one would think they would want to keep the momentum up. Skipping a week after the first two episodes?

[Betonov]

You had labor day.

[Onkel Neal]

Episode 3, finally got time to watch it. Not bad, I like the twist at the end,

 

Do you really want to spoil this?

where they were set to leave,

 

then saw the neighbor husband returning home to the zombified wife. Ok, so they have to stop and...whoop, the National Guard in on the scene. I guess next week we will have a few NG as characters. That's fine, I just hope they don't repeat the lame Walking Dead trope of fighting for control of the group, constantly saying "I can keep you safe".

Have you ever seen so many helpless people in one family. They have to steal a shotgun from the neighbor, fumbling the shells all over the place. Good grief. Can't there be one character in a TV show like this who knows a little about handing himself? Where's that kid with the steak knife? I bet by the time the show comes back to him, he'll be the leader of a band of survivors.