Am I the only person who wouldn't "keep moving"? (Some spoilers)
I'm not gonna bother "tagging" spoilers in here, because I'll likely end up accidentally leaving one in there and people will get mad. Just know that there ARE some.
The thing that's always bugged me about the walking dead series, and really most zombie apocalypse things, is people find a group of people... but then never sit still with it. Why? There's no reason to keep moving. Find a town, buckle down and then clear that shit out.
In the comics, Rick tries that at one point with a prison. It ends badly for reasons I won't go into, but he still tries - It was a good idea. But clearly this isn't the only route to go by. Look at Crawford - They survived for AGES until one crazy pregnant woman went on a shooting spree through the town. And really, as long as you don't try to implement any idiotic "no children, or sick, etc" rules, thereby ensuring that your people only survive one generation, you shouldn't have this problem.
The dead have huge numbers, but beyond that they're slow and stupid. Get your group together with some bladed weapons, clear out a small patch of town (preferably somewhere with a building you can fortify that is big enough to house a lot of people, like a hospital [bonus if it still has beds and/or medicine]), and then push outwards from there. Will the dead ultimately try to push you out? Yes. But that's why you keep fighting.
I don't understand the concept of constantly moving from one place to the next. Why? The only thing that could EVER accomplish is finding new people, and let's be honest - that's not always a good thing. No, the best plan of attack in a situation like this is to REBUILD. If you die trying? Fine. At least you died taking a bunch of zombies with you. But truly, I don't think you will. If your group has at least, let's say 5 or more people with you, you should be fine for at least a while. And once you get yourself set in, people WILL find _you_. And if they don't? Send out scouts, find some. Place flyers around the place, who cares?
Anyway. That's just my rant here. Thoughts, anyone?
The thing that's always bugged me about the walking dead series, and really most zombie apocalypse things, is people find a group of people... but then never sit still with it. Why? There's no reason to keep moving. Find a town, buckle down and then clear that shit out.
In the comics, Rick tries that at one point with a prison. It ends badly for reasons I won't go into, but he still tries - It was a good idea. But clearly this isn't the only route to go by. Look at Crawford - They survived for AGES until one crazy pregnant woman went on a shooting spree through the town. And really, as long as you don't try to implement any idiotic "no children, or sick, etc" rules, thereby ensuring that your people only survive one generation, you shouldn't have this problem.
The dead have huge numbers, but beyond that they're slow and stupid. Get your group together with some bladed weapons, clear out a small patch of town (preferably somewhere with a building you can fortify that is big enough to house a lot of people, like a hospital [bonus if it still has beds and/or medicine]), and then push outwards from there. Will the dead ultimately try to push you out? Yes. But that's why you keep fighting.
I don't understand the concept of constantly moving from one place to the next. Why? The only thing that could EVER accomplish is finding new people, and let's be honest - that's not always a good thing. No, the best plan of attack in a situation like this is to REBUILD. If you die trying? Fine. At least you died taking a bunch of zombies with you. But truly, I don't think you will. If your group has at least, let's say 5 or more people with you, you should be fine for at least a while. And once you get yourself set in, people WILL find _you_. And if they don't? Send out scouts, find some. Place flyers around the place, who cares?
Anyway. That's just my rant here. Thoughts, anyone?
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Comments
I think you shouldn't worry about posting spoilers in a spoiler forum.
That said, Rebuilding should be the priority... but one person, or even a handful, can't get it done.
Anything less than a few hundred and you're just delaying the inevitable.
Medicine will run out but food and water are key to living, that would be my reason they keep moving.
I agree though, it'd be hard. That's a given. But hell, I'd prefer it over just moving everywhere pretending that this life solves anything.
Unless you have a self sustaining farm (or the equivalent) you scavenge.... and resources (of any kind) are not infinite.
Also you are wrong about Crawford. It didn't survive for "AGES" it survived barely a couple of months. Remember by Episode 4, we are still maybe only three months into the outbreak. That isn't very long.
The problem is FINDING that place that is safe. That is defendable. That's been the struggle all along in The Walking Dead. Rick's finally found a place in the comic right now, but even it isn't totally safe and it looks like it might all be crumbling.
The problem isn't the walkers. It gets to a point that you can handle them. They are a manageable threat. It's the people. In The Walking Dead universe, the tagline for Season 3 of AMC's TWD rings so very true. "Fight the dead. Fear the living."
That's what it boils down to. People are the greatest threat you will ever face in a zombie outbreak. Even if you find that safe haven, it's the PEOPLE that destroy it. You have your group, and you find a place that is somewhat safe where you are supplied and you have people to defend it. The problem is there is always a group bigger, stronger, better equipped and more ruthless out there that comes along and takes it.
!!!!SPOILERS FOR TWD GAME AND COMIC TO FOLLOW!!!!
Rick finds the prison in TWD. It's such a safe haven for everyone. They look at it as their home. They are able to deal with the walkers. It isn't until their encounter with Woodbury and the Governor that everything comes crashing down. They don't lose the prison because of walkers. They lose it because another group wanted to kill them and take what they had.
Now in the comic, we have Rick and co. at the Alexandria safe zone in Washington D.C. Since they've been there, they've been attacked a few different times, but now with Negan and his "Saviors" breathing down their necks, it seems like things are going to be destroyed again. We've seen Alexandria completely, and seemingly hopelessly over run with walkers, but they managed. They fought and killed them, and rebuilt the place. It wasn't until the run in with the Saviors that the place is truly threatened.
Now look at the game. The same thing has happened.
Lee and his group meet the Saint Johns, who offer to let them stay at their farm. They go, and look what happens. I'll spare the details, since you probably already know. It isn't the walkers that destroy the place. It's the people.
The road side motel does not seem like a safe place to stay, but they are there for a few months and obviously walkers aren't a big threat to them there. It isn't until the bandits come and attack that they are forced to leave.
In THEORY, finding a safe place to hunker down and build a life is a great idea. FINDING that place, and being able to defend it from every threat, which is beyond just walkers, is what is nearly impossible to do.
They should have see it coming, though.
You missing a point though, what you propose requires a few things.. a fantastic leader, a workable plan, resources, knowledge and a stable environment.... the bodies are just needed to make it happen.
Without all of those things, rebuilding isn't possible.
You need a leader who can keep people in line, focused and maintain morale.
You need a plan that sounds more than a pipedream in the face of the "end of the world"
It takes resources, even scavenged, to build with..... fuel, food, building materials, guns, ammo, clothing.
Knowledge is essential. You need knowledge of building, maintaining modern equipment (if you can keep it running) growing food, medicine, etc, etc.
Finally, you need a stable environment.... that means a zombie free area... that's also defensible against human enemies as well.
Also, about your point about "people stupid enough to get eaten by slow moving corpses"... keep in mind that anyone who dies becomes a walker.... and the higher the population density... the more there will be.
More walkers, in smaller cramped areas (like a city) makes for a VERY hostile environment.
But who has been doing that? In the Walking Dead that is never the case.
They are ALWAYS trying to find some place. The characters in the game haven't been just driving aimlessly with no cause. They have a plan. An awful plan, but they have a goal to where they are going.
In the comic, Rick has always made it a priority to find some place where his family is safe. A place where they can be safe and start to build some semblance of a life together.
And an awful plan is right. "Oh we'll just get on a boat". Yeah guys good idea. I'm sure this shit definitely isn't EVERYWHERE, hence the mass rescue effort. Right?
Exactly. Plus the fact that they don't have any ideas of what they are doing after they get out on the water. Where are they going? Are they just going to sail out and live on the ocean? Impossible. Are they going to just sail and try and find an island? Probably not. Are they going to just ride up the coast and look at the shore line and if they see walkers or destruction keep on moving? Well fuel is certainly a limited resource.
I just can't see the validity in this plan that Kenny is so adamant about. They have no goal other than "finding a boat and getting out on the water." After that... what? Success? Good job, there are no more threats? The walker threat and having no supplies just goes away?
I would disagree here, how many parks are safe enough to plant crops in and be sustainable with water? What region of the world are we in? Does it rain, is it mostly dry? I see alot of issues with middle city life, yes I'd take what seeds were left and fruits and veggies in hopes of planting new crops, but in a city?? Not on your life or mine.
Now if we are talking about moving to the outskirts of a city yes, I'd fortify a place and plant...again the climate and region would dictate where I settle down for numerous reasons. You would not find me in a city after I made it out.
1. Its already fortified (probably some holes to fill, but most of the work is done)
2. They were the biggest bandit threat in the region, its likely they wiped out any other major threats in the region, so not many people to worry about.
3. Its already filled with supplies (even if the armory is empty, there should be guns lying around on dead bodies everywhere, + plenty of gas and working cars)
As for why do people keep moving, it depends on the situation, a lot of the time people have objectives, like Resident Evil, theres always some sinister time limit or someone is in danger and you have to get to them ASAP. In the living dead series, people actually hunker down as much as possible, like the original Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead. In Night of the Living Dead, the radio and TV announcements urges people to get to safe zones and out of their homes, thats why they wanted to move.
Generally theres 3 main reasons:
1. Finding loved ones.
2. Getting to somewhere safer.
3. Raiding supplies from town to town.
Now, in the game so far, you were at Hershel's farm with nowhere to go, so you went to Macon where your family is. You find out their fate and hunker down. Ep.2 you find a potentially safer area with more food, so you check it out. In Ep.3 your sanctuary is destroyed, so you have to leave.
In the short term, you could just find another area to settle in, but what about in 5 years when all your canned goods expire? Youre going to need to produce more food, thats why getting to an island gives you freedom to hunt, fish and plant new crops (assuming you find an island large enough). I think thats the idea with that.
In the case of where you are right now in the game, settling down in the house in Savannah is illogical, as theres no supplies there and even though its fortified, that house certainly isnt impenetrable.
Savannah - 4 (Chuck, Kenny, Lee, Ben)
While moving - 2 (Carley, Katjaa, Lilly leaves the group)
St.Johns farm - 2 (Mark, Larry)
Motel - 1 (Duck fatally wounded)
Drug Store- 1 (Doug)
Its pretty evident in hindsight that the 3 months or so spent at the motel was the groups peak, 3 casualties compared to 7 outside of that time. The walker threat is almost non existent during that time and thats despite the motel not being the best defended fort the worlds ever seen. Bunkering down somewhere is clearly the way to go or you'll die out pretty quickly if you have to constantly adapt to a new area.
There are two big issues to combat, namely the supplies and the living. Unfortunately one of the first things i'd do once we'd fortified our home base is plan out thoroughly exactly we're going to go and how we're going to get there when we are inevitably forced to leave. That's the problem with getting the boat and going to the city in the game, its rushed and badly planned, over the three months i'd have done a lot of scouting. Find somewhere reasonably far away, prepare for it and move there when the time comes, rinse and repeat.
People talking about years from now when the canned food and such goes off in 5 years or so, well thats a problem to think about if we're still alive in 4. Its hard to predict how well the walkers and bandits would still be surviving that far into the future.
I would probably find a place where you can only get to by a ladder (I know the perfect place) and is inside a larger building. Put up a sleeping place up there and you're fine. Also, the area around it needs to be big, clear of objects, and have an exit outside nearby (This place also has it)
Walkers can't get up and if you're in some trouble, you could run outside easily.
She probably was killed, but took down several guards as well. It's more likely Crawford did not know that you turn when dead if the brain is intact, and were taken by surprise when the corpses they piled up assaulted them from behind.
I think the idea to keep moving is better, unless you can find an area like the Alexandria Safe-Zone in the comics. Supplies are not endless, and staying in one area will deplete them eventually. It will not matter if your fort is impregnable if all the walkers have to do is starve you out. Farms could work, but not everyone knows how to farm, and i assume farming isn't so simple that anyone can just plant seeds and instantly be successful.
You would probably need at least a fairly large group to start taking back areas, and you'd also need ammunition for weapons, which is also not an unlimited supply. Survivors could switch to melee of course, but that poses a constant threat and could cost lives every time the walkers are cleared out. Everyone makes mistakes, and even the smallest may cost you your life in this scenario.
There is also the human threat, of course. If your perfect sanctuary happens to live next to a large bandit encampment, then you're going to have problems.
***Comic spoilers ahead***
The biggest problems to staying in one place are the lack of supplies and opposing human threats. It's just safer to be on the move, at least initially.
I'd also like to add that an entire community of selfish assholes were probably quick to turn on each other the second something went wrong. I'm pretty sure that one woman didn't cause the entire fall of Crawford so much as probably triggered a chain reaction of similar events that led to them all killing each other.
Crawford himself was hanging by his fucking neck in the bell tower. Clearly there was some kind of insurrection or uprising that ended badly for everyone. Considering what Molly said about Crawford's "system", the people of Crawford had probably become complacent and the first sign of trouble sent them into a frenzy.
The biggest problem with the motor inn is that it wasn't self sufficient. Even without the bandits, the motor inn was not a long term solution. Macon was becoming increasingly dangerous to get whatever supplies is left, and episode two seems to suggest that there wasn't a lot of game to hunt in the woods either.
So the ideal place would offer at least some source of food, like animals or fish. If it has some suitable land for cultivation, even better but that takes know how and supplies. It won't be easy, but it's not impossible considering we all basically descended from hunter-gatherer societies. What makes it very hard to settle down is the walkers and other survivors that would cause problems. That's why the most remote place that could be fortified would be useful. But a lot of this requires luck and there's no guarantee things would stay the same. Like Carley said, the motor inn was safe but it could change at any moment. That's why I think stories in TWD involve a lot of moving around.
So Kenny's right in that the group would have to move on sooner or later, and Lilly probably adopted too much of a fortress mentality with the motor inn. If Kenny didn't smashed Larry's head in, maybe there could've been room for compromise. Before Lilly went nuts, she wasn't entirely an unthinking person.
At a motel?
Let's review... it's on the edge of a large town and surrounded by woods... they have no means to support themselves except for scavenging said town (which got pretty slim come the three month mark)
If they'd had stayed at the motel - the only thing they'd have ended up building are burial plots.
Ditto, as the saying goes, there's no ideal spot in survival. The motel had two of the biggest things; water and shelter. Hell, the area did have food, it's just that the group evidently sucked at hunting and didn't even seem to bother with trapping, atleast judging by Episode 2... by the end of that episode, the St. Johns Dairy was also another potential source of food (what with the corn fields) that they could've returned to.
Scavenging isn't a long-term solution, period. The low-hanging fruit in that regard is going to be gone within the first six months to a year, if that. Nobody's making deliveries and restocking store shelves, and every still-living person is after the same stuff.
The motel was never breached by walkers, the bandits were the real threat if not for them who knows how long they would have lasted. But im not saying the motel was where they could live forever but it was the best option at the time,better then heading to the unknown in Savannah. But in the long run the group would have to find a better place,maybe somewhere like the ST Johns in the countryside.
I doubt they would have lasted very long after ep. 2 even if the bandits weren't there. They were already starving and possibly the only reason they survived was because they found the station wagon full of food. The surrounding area in the Motor Inn was picked clean, so staying there in ep.3 would most likely just result in the group being forced to live on scraps until they starve(or leave), which they were already doing in ep. 2.
I'd follow the idea of settling down in an area until all of its food supply has been exhausted, then pick up and move elsewhere. Rinse and repeat until we find someone who knows how to farm or learn it ourselves.
It seems very unlikely to me that the people of Crawford didn't know that people turned upon death. The undead barricade was atleast partly made up of Crawford's "burdens", Crawford was killing their own prior to its fall... I doubt they would've failed to put two and two together when the wall of bodies started moving. Likewise, Vernon's reaction to a potentially dead Omid (shouting at Christa to stay away from him) would suggest the Crawford residents should've known, particularly considering they killed the other members of Vernon's group.
They had the St. Johns' Dairy and its corn fields as a source of food after Ep. 2. It's obviously within walking distance of the motel, and even though it had been overrun, the zombies would probably leave eventually, the fields were big enough and the zombies dumb enough that even if they did stick around, you could lead them to other parts of the property or away from it entirely while the rest of the group gathered what was needed or wanted.
No.
The real threat was disease, infection and lack of food/water.
Which by episode 2 they were lacking. When half an apple, some jerky and some cheese and crackers... 4 food items for a group that large.... represents one whole day's rations..... you've got one foot in the grave already.
You mean the dairy that was overrun by a very large horde of walkers that DO NOT leave an area unless lured by something?
And which farmer, in the group, is going to maintain those fields?
Even if you have a farm, if you don't know how to run it... it's as useful as a parking lot once all the food is gone.
I can recall one brief line from Molly that hints at the barricade being Crawford remnants, but i don't think it's directly stated that they kill the people. Rather, they simply force them to leave(evidenced by the Anna Correa video), and they die on their own by starvation/walkers/etc. Since they throw out anyone who is too young, too old, has an illness, is pregnant or anything that could potentially make them weak, it seems unlikely they would see death within their own community. Also, they could assume that the zombified people they previously exiled were merely bitten by other walkers, and didn't turn on their own.
I'm not sure how long Vernon and his group had been away from Crawford, but they could have learned it themselves while down in the sewers. Since walkers are already down there maybe they watched people come down there trying to hide, then die and turn. Or the people tried to force their way into the hideout and Vernon shot and killed them in the torso or other non-brain area, and witnessed them turning.
Since it took Lee's group 3 months to learn this, it doesn't seem like it would be common knowledge to everyone.
That really sounds a lot easier than it really is. How long does it take for crops to grow? Can you conserve them if you get a lot? How many square meters of field do you need per person? How dependent will you be on the crops? If someone loots your crops, will you die then? What will you do during the winter?
Move around and loot to survive is a good option until you have so much stockpiled you can afford to take a risk staying.
First, Molly tells us that Walkers will move back into an area when she lures them away with bells, so they'll move on their own. Further, walkers are dumb enough to be lured by damn near anything, they could've left the farm the instant they saw lightning on the horizon. Hell, this is why I included the possibility of needing to do it.
And considering agriculture is pretty much one of the oldest human technologies, I'm pretty sure one of them can figure it out. Even if people didn't do useful things like say, write information down in books.
We know scavenging isn't a long-term solution of any sort. Savannah had already been picked clean by the time the group got there.
Vernon talks about how the Crawford residents rounded up members of his support group and killed them before he and the other survivors left. Brie even says that shooting Lee in the head would be more than anybody from Crawford ever did for them, etc. Vernon says showing up at Crawford with Omid would be the same as throwing a noose around his neck.
Lee's group is actually probably the anomaly in that they didn't know (all of the deaths their group sustained up to that point involved walkers). Ben's group knew, Vernon's group apparently knew... considering Crawford's people killed their own, I don't see how they wouldn't have known.
No - they move when they see "or" hear something that triggers their "interest". That is established setting lore. And they keep moving until something stops them or distracts them.
That's how you end up with herds that follow trains for miles and miles and miles... even when they can't see or hear said train anymore.
Assumption.