Saving/Killing Larry - in hindsight (spoiler for 2nd ep of season 3 of TWD)

Corp Harland

So, I'm not sure if any of you caught the most recent episode of the tv series, "sick", the 2nd episode of season 3, dunno if it revealed a revelation of the walking dead world? Spoilers, I guess.










...So Hershel at one point stops breathing, but is given cpr a few seconds afterward, and comes to life once again. So is this proof that Lilly was right in the freezer, that Larry really could have been saved had Kenny not intruded?

Cyreen

It was meant to be ambiguous, there is no right or wrong choice. Lilly could have just as right as Kenny.

thestalkinghead

Hershel stopping breathing due to his body being weak from blood loss is different to, Larry's heart stopping because of a heart attack

Phoenix VII

People can't recover from heart attacks with CPR alone but TTG intended the scene to be ambiguous.

Hudomonkey

The CPR alone may have not been enough to save him but it could have kept him alive long enough to get the medicine
It did look like he was breathing

BlackPaladin

Hudomonkey wrote: »

The CPR alone may have not been enough to save him but it could have kept him alive long enough to get the medicine
It did look like he was breathing

....his heart stopped due to a heart attack and he wasn't breathing. Heart attacks essentially are caused by clots in your arteries which you can take medicine for to thin your blood, help break down the clot, and remove some of the pain you might feel. CPR is a temporary thing you do to artificially pump blood into the heart and brain to prevent as much tissue death as possible after a heart attack. It does not revive you. Only a defibrillator can be used to restart the heart by administoring an electrical shock to the muscles. CPR might allow you to create a slow heart rythmn that could help the defibrillator more easily restart your heart, but that's about it.

In the real world, Larry would be dead. They only made the scene ambiguous to make more tension in the group.

Logically speaking, Hershel should be dead in the show. He got his leg amputated by an unsterile axe that was only moments before used to hack apart walkers. Yet he didn't even get an infection, he only suffered blood loss. The tv show writers just wanted to show you can survive a bite through amputation, even though kirkman did it a lot better in the comics.

ThePaSch

BlackPaladin wrote: »

Only a defibrillator can be used to restart the heart by administoring an electrical shock to the muscles. CPR might allow you to create a slow heart rythmn that could help the defibrillator more easily restart your heart, but that's about it.

A defibrillator does not restart a stopped heart. It's only used in case of severe arrythmia, such as ventricular fibrillation - hence its name, defibrillator - shocking the heart, stopping the arrythmia, allowing the body's internal pacemaker to take over and normalize the rhythm. You can try to shock a stopped heart back into rhythm all you want, but it's not going to work if it indeed flatlined. A Defib does not "restart" a heart. CPR is the way to go here, since it keeps the patient alive until medical help arrives.

Rock114

Just because Larry's mouth moved doesn't mean he was alive. If TTG ever said "yes, he was alive" or, "no, he was definately dead" it would pretty much turn it into a "Good vs Evil" choice, which they are trying to avoid in the situations in this game

skepticalguy90

Hudomonkey wrote: »

The CPR alone may have not been enough to save him but it could have kept him alive long enough to get the medicine
It did look like he was breathing

No, medicine helped the guy relax, but once you have a heart attack and your heart goes off, I don't think Nitroglycerin will save you. You have to get your heart back into a stable rhythm with a defibrillator.