I have read the entire comic book series. Oh that's what actually happens? Funny because there has never been a zombie apocalypse.
... In the context of a zombie apocolypse do you honestly believe death wouldn't be everywhere? Do you honestly believe that it would be realistic if there were very few deaths? Get real.
I agree with the OP. I was hoping the game wouldn't go the generic survivor/horror film route where every single non-main character (and sometimes even the main character) gets killed. I wouldn't mind if it were possible to lose all these characters but some of them should've lived or died depending on your decisions; that would've been nice.
Still a great game with emotional moments but yeah. I think Molly is the only character who can live or die depending on your actions.
... In the context of a zombie apocolypse do you honestly believe death wouldn't be everywhere? Do you honestly believe that it would be realistic if there were very few deaths? Get real.
I will say that the OP makes a fair point. Eventually you get sick of it, and move on. It becomes dull and predictable, and the reader will develop "character development fatigue". What's the point of getting attached or taking an interest in the character if you know he/she's zombie bait?
Nothing to hang on to, and you'll get tired of it and move on pretty soon.
I mean, I can understand some characters being more capable and having more survivability. But if anyone seems to have plot armor, things get dull for entirely different reasons.
... In the context of a zombie apocolypse do you honestly believe death wouldn't be everywhere? Do you honestly believe that it would be realistic if there were very few deaths? Get real.
Realistically? Odds are the death toll would actually be relatively low, atleast compared to historical plagues. Those spread as far as they did (and still do) because they're difficult to notice, either by hitching rides on tiny insects, moving invisibly through the air, or have asymptomatic carriers that can spread the disease without anyone knowing. Rotting corpses that happen to be ambulatory don't enjoy the same advantages.
There's a reason ZA fiction rarely covers how the plague actually began and spread, i.e. that stage where we go from the zombie patient zero to a dozen zombies and so on to where we finally end up with millions of them. It pretty much always automagically starts at that "millions of zombies stage".
Anywho, from a narrative perspective, killing off characters tends to be popular, simply because sadness is one of the easiest emotions for a writer to evoke.
You seem to be forgetting that zombies are effectively a walking viral weapon - that make more of themselves with each kill.
A zombie apocalypse would be catastrophic, even if it didn't go with "Romero rules".
but its the zombie apocalypse part that is hard to get to, but i guess you just have to apply a huge dose of sod's law to the entire planet and just assume every single one of the millions of situations where people could have got away or killed the zombie they failed badly and everybody died due to powerful final destination like zombie magic
Maybe it's because I'm tired, but I've read that three times and have no idea what the hell you're saying.
maybe I'm tired too sod's law or Murphy's Law is basically a law that makes the bad luck dial turn to 11 and even the smartest and bravest cant defeat bad luck.
Not really when you consider that in the Walking Dead universe, everyone is "infected". Regardless of how they die, they reanimate.
basically what i am saying is that for the zombie apocalypse to actually happen (even with everybody being infected which does give the zombies a bit of an advantage) an incredible amount of world wide bad luck would have to happen for zombies to defeat the normal population of the planet let alone the planets military, so maybe Death from final destination has a plan but this time it involves zombies (bonus crazy theory, Lee and Rick are the guys at the beginning of the film who have the premonition)
Ok, with your further description - things make a ton more sense to me
I look at it this way, if a ZA start Raccoon City style - yeah, it's containable, since you can just nuke the spot clean.
But let's say it's spread across several cities/countries/continents before it pops (pick your poison: God/Virus/Aliens/Magic/Mormons) - each victim can create additional vectors.
If, for any reason, each singular zombie creates even 1 zombie before dying - the entire mass continues to double.
Mix in the fact you'll have tons of panic, etc - things break down fast. And that's before uninfected "opportunists" make things worse.
You seem to be forgetting that zombies are effectively a walking viral weapon - that make more of themselves with each kill.
A zombie apocalypse would be catastrophic, even if it didn't go with "Romero rules".
Biting is a pretty crappy method to actually spread a plague though, that's the problem. Insects manage it by being hard to notice and/or having wings - zombies have neither of these attributes.
As thestalkinghead picked up on, realistically you're never even going to get to the "apocalypse" stage to begin with, it's a non-starter... which is why virtually no ZA fiction (the Walking Dead included) makes a serious effort to explain how the apocalypse actually began in the first place.
Approximately 150,000 people die every day. Consider that community epicenters will be hospitals and it will initially quietly spread from there. Even assuming the military of whatever country in question tweaks to the situation early, how willing are they going to be to obliterate a hospital? Then there is the normal human reaction to hide weakness, the bitten will deny out of fear, loved ones will hide the infected until it's too late, and in the meantime, people will continue to die and whether they are infected or not, will reanimate. By the time the powers that be are aware of the situation, I doubt they will have a military left to command, considering soldiers are people with families too.
Biting is a pretty crappy method to actually spread a plague though, that's the problem. Insects manage it by being hard to notice and/or having wings - zombies have neither of these attributes.
As thestalkinghead picked up on, realistically you're never even going to get to the "apocalypse" stage to begin with, it's a non-starter... which is why virtually no ZA fiction (the Walking Dead included) makes a serious effort to explain how the apocalypse actually began in the first place.
Disagree.
But only because there are far too many permutations.
Let's say, for example, we go with Romero's rules (which TWD uses to an extent) - then there's no stopping it. Anything dies, or gets bit, and it turns. Period.
Also if for some reason, let's say it starts on the streets of major cities among the homeless and poor and whatnot - you'll have a virtual horde before anyone DOES notice.
I think the problem here, is that you seem to be looking at the zombies as carriers of a virus. I'm looking at them as the virus.
But only because there are far too many permutations.
Let's say, for example, we go with Romero's rules (which TWD uses to an extent) - then there's no stopping it. Anything dies, or gets bit, and it turns. Period.
Also if for some reason, let's say it starts on the streets of major cities among the homeless and poor and whatnot - you'll have a virtual horde before anyone DOES notice.
I think the problem here, is that you seem to be looking at the zombies as carriers of a virus. I'm looking at them as the virus.
but i think even with panic and all the people dying that is only like 60% apocalypse, there are literally millions of military personnel on the planet and they wont all die in the initial panic, infact most wont die in the initial panic, now you have loads of zombies and a tonne of pissed off military to kill them, bites and panic just wont get past the barrier of our technology and our will to survive (without and incredibly unbelievable amount of bad luck anyway)
To be honest, I doubt the military would be that efficient.
For the main reason they're dangerous - their training... Aren't most soldiers trained to go for the center mass instead of the head on normal targets?
Now apply that to enemies who will not go down due to torso shots..... by the time people actually realize the only way to kill a zombie is with a headshot/blow - and... well... there might not be much military left.
To be honest, I doubt the military would be that efficient.
For the main reason they're dangerous - their training... Aren't most soldiers trained to go for the center mass instead of the head on normal targets?
Now apply that to enemies who will not go down due to torso shots..... by the time people actually realize the only way to kill a zombie is with a headshot/blow - and... well... there might not be much military left.
let me put it this way, why would all of the survivors in the comic, tv show and game survive where a squad of trained well equipped military personnel would die?
then add onto that, it would be planned out mission the military would be sent on not just parachuted down to random places on the planet, the military could build a city sized wall with guard post and mounted weapons in a day with the correct planning, plus overtime our technology would be developed to more efficiently kill/defend against zombies.
i'm not saying everything would be fine in a few days, but we would recover a lot of our infrastructure in a short time (key power plants tactically taken and maintained etc.)
As I said, their training would work against them.
And besides police, Military personnel would be the first to encounter groups of zombies..... survivors are usually those who watch first responders fail
Approximately 150,000 people die every day. Consider that community epicenters will be hospitals and it will initially quietly spread from there. Even assuming the military of whatever country in question tweaks to the situation early, how willing are they going to be to obliterate a hospital? Then there is the normal human reaction to hide weakness, the bitten will deny out of fear, loved ones will hide the infected until it's too late, and in the meantime, people will continue to die and whether they are infected or not, will reanimate. By the time the powers that be are aware of the situation, I doubt they will have a military left to command, considering soldiers are people with families too.
It won't spread quietly however; the idea it would is mutually exclusive with the very notion of shambling zombies that are incapable of passing for the uninfected. Being dead or being both dead and moving are both pretty damn big warning signs that something is wrong and you shouldn't get too close.
Militaries also specialize in dehumanizing people so they can get guys to kill them. It worked in the Civil War, after the Christmas truce of WWI, and worked for the Germans of WWII. And as the training has become more sophisticated, the number of troops willing to fire their weapons in anger has only gone up. Hell, there's actually plans on the books about what to do in the event of an uprising by the Girl Scouts, including dealing with the psychological aftermath of having soldiers gun down little girls.
Dehumanizing the rotting corpses that like to eat people alive to make more of themselves wouldn't even be a challenge by comparison, hospital or not. Particularly since things like artillery mean the guy doesn't even need to see his target, to him it's just a set of coordinates on a map.
Everybody in the Walking Dead is already inflected, bite or no bite.
I'm aware, it doesn't matter much. It's played up as a big thing in-universe, but most people unsurprisingly have a natural aversion to corpses and try to stay away from them anyway... given their tendency to stink and carry diseases.
As I said, their training would work against them.
And besides police, Military personnel would be the first to encounter groups of zombies..... survivors are usually those who watch first responders fail
a lot of first responders will die, but the entire military wont be the first responders just a small amount of them, the second wave wouldn't be a zombie win it would be the start of the recovery
a lot of first responders will die, but the entire military wont be the first responders just a small amount of them, the second wave wouldn't be a zombie win it would be the start of the recovery
That unfortunately depends on how widespread it is.
If it's everywhere, the various military bodies will be spread razor thin..... which works against them as well.
That unfortunately depends on how widespread it is.
If it's everywhere, the various military bodies will be spread razor thin..... which works against them as well.
why would they be spread thin, my point is that the military, isn't just generals sending in waves of troops to die, a military plan would pass through many hands of some seriously intelligent people then handed to well trained disciplined and smart soldiers.
it wont be plan "send soldiers in and fire big guns at zombies"
To be honest, I doubt the military would be that efficient.
For the main reason they're dangerous - their training... Aren't most soldiers trained to go for the center mass instead of the head on normal targets?
Now apply that to enemies who will not go down due to torso shots..... by the time people actually realize the only way to kill a zombie is with a headshot/blow - and... well... there might not be much military left.
Yeah, we may be trained to aim center-mass (because it's the easiest, quickest target to hit) if we can make aimed shots, but it doesn't matter.
Purely by chance you're going to hit the head, particularly when you get to crew-served weapons like MGs simply by virtue of the amount of lead being thrown in the air (even leaving aside things like shrapnel for the moment)... seriously, it's not for fashion that we wear things called helmets.
It particularly doesn't matter since as-is pretty much everything else in the arsenal kills more people than a guy's rifle... seriously, it gets a lot of attention from the public for a weapon that only inflicts about 2% of the casualties in war. The rifle's primarily a pinning weapon, used to keep an enemy's head down so he can't concentrate on say, killing you. The real killers tend to be things like tanks, aircraft and artillery... none of which exactly require precision and none of which zombies can do squat against.
Just out of curiosity, how likely would those be deployed in civilian populated areas?
Most tend to be pretty close to one. With aircraft it doesn't much matter due to their speed. Given modern artillery has effective ranges of over 20 - 60 km (depending on the piece and munitions), they don't even necessarily need to be in the area to affect it. Incidentally, those tend to be the two biggest killers in wartime.
Beyond that, most cities in the U.S. have a guard depot and/or reserve center with an armory. Even my old reserve company (which wasn't particularly well-equipped) had a number of heavier weapons. Moving beyond the first world, it's important to remember that in places like the Middle East, ready access to stuff like RPG's is pretty much a given in any populated area, some countries over there maintain armories in pretty much every village so they have a ready-made insurgency in the event of an invasion - it's a policy that'll serve them just as well in this case.
Regardless, even assuming access to just rifles to begin with and that somehow no zombies get shot in the face, there's already an expectation of possibly having to call for fire and then waiting until something heavier can come along to finish the job. The difference in this case is that the enemy is slow, won't take cover, and won't shoot back. They start getting close? That's what motorized transport's for, pick up, move down the road a ways and start shooting again. At the end of the day, they're still pretty much target practice.
It won't spread quietly however; the idea it would is mutually exclusive with the very notion of shambling zombies that are incapable of passing for the uninfected. Being dead or being both dead and moving are both pretty damn big warning signs that something is wrong and you shouldn't get too close.
How readily believable will it be given the universal genre familiarity?
Despite the fact it's an ad, note that people tended to avoid them more often than not. Add in the fact actual corpses stink (to put it quite mildly), and well...
WWZ is well worth reading.
Too many cases of authorial fiat for my tastes; that, or the author genuinely doesn't seem to understand how things like modern weaponry and such actually work.
Wait, there's really a plan for a Girl Scout uprising?
Yep. It's basically filed in the same catergory as what to do in the event of alien invasion though. I see it as either plan-makers taking their job very seriously to be prepared for any eventuality, or just screwing around. Maybe a bit from Column A and a bit from Column B.
Comments
Still a great game with emotional moments but yeah. I think Molly is the only character who can live or die depending on your actions.
I'm going to assume you're being intentionally obtuse.
It's a genre, at this point, and this is what happens IN THIS GENRE.
Yeah not that many deaths
Nothing to hang on to, and you'll get tired of it and move on pretty soon.
I mean, I can understand some characters being more capable and having more survivability. But if anyone seems to have plot armor, things get dull for entirely different reasons.
Realistically? Odds are the death toll would actually be relatively low, atleast compared to historical plagues. Those spread as far as they did (and still do) because they're difficult to notice, either by hitching rides on tiny insects, moving invisibly through the air, or have asymptomatic carriers that can spread the disease without anyone knowing. Rotting corpses that happen to be ambulatory don't enjoy the same advantages.
There's a reason ZA fiction rarely covers how the plague actually began and spread, i.e. that stage where we go from the zombie patient zero to a dozen zombies and so on to where we finally end up with millions of them. It pretty much always automagically starts at that "millions of zombies stage".
Anywho, from a narrative perspective, killing off characters tends to be popular, simply because sadness is one of the easiest emotions for a writer to evoke.
You seem to be forgetting that zombies are effectively a walking viral weapon - that make more of themselves with each kill.
A zombie apocalypse would be catastrophic, even if it didn't go with "Romero rules".
but its the zombie apocalypse part that is hard to get to, but i guess you just have to apply a huge dose of sod's law to the entire planet and just assume every single one of the millions of situations where people could have got away or killed the zombie they failed badly and everybody died due to powerful final destination like zombie magic
Not really when you consider that in the Walking Dead universe, everyone is "infected". Regardless of how they die, they reanimate.
The attachment to some characters is a direct result of their untimely demise.
maybe I'm tired too
basically what i am saying is that for the zombie apocalypse to actually happen (even with everybody being infected which does give the zombies a bit of an advantage) an incredible amount of world wide bad luck would have to happen for zombies to defeat the normal population of the planet let alone the planets military, so maybe Death from final destination has a plan but this time it involves zombies (bonus crazy theory, Lee and Rick are the guys at the beginning of the film who have the premonition)
I look at it this way, if a ZA start Raccoon City style - yeah, it's containable, since you can just nuke the spot clean.
But let's say it's spread across several cities/countries/continents before it pops (pick your poison: God/Virus/Aliens/Magic/Mormons) - each victim can create additional vectors.
If, for any reason, each singular zombie creates even 1 zombie before dying - the entire mass continues to double.
Mix in the fact you'll have tons of panic, etc - things break down fast. And that's before uninfected "opportunists" make things worse.
Biting is a pretty crappy method to actually spread a plague though, that's the problem. Insects manage it by being hard to notice and/or having wings - zombies have neither of these attributes.
As thestalkinghead picked up on, realistically you're never even going to get to the "apocalypse" stage to begin with, it's a non-starter... which is why virtually no ZA fiction (the Walking Dead included) makes a serious effort to explain how the apocalypse actually began in the first place.
Everybody in the Walking Dead is already inflected, bite or no bite.
Disagree.
But only because there are far too many permutations.
Let's say, for example, we go with Romero's rules (which TWD uses to an extent) - then there's no stopping it. Anything dies, or gets bit, and it turns. Period.
Also if for some reason, let's say it starts on the streets of major cities among the homeless and poor and whatnot - you'll have a virtual horde before anyone DOES notice.
I think the problem here, is that you seem to be looking at the zombies as carriers of a virus. I'm looking at them as the virus.
but i think even with panic and all the people dying that is only like 60% apocalypse, there are literally millions of military personnel on the planet and they wont all die in the initial panic, infact most wont die in the initial panic, now you have loads of zombies and a tonne of pissed off military to kill them, bites and panic just wont get past the barrier of our technology and our will to survive (without and incredibly unbelievable amount of bad luck anyway)
For the main reason they're dangerous - their training... Aren't most soldiers trained to go for the center mass instead of the head on normal targets?
Now apply that to enemies who will not go down due to torso shots..... by the time people actually realize the only way to kill a zombie is with a headshot/blow - and... well... there might not be much military left.
let me put it this way, why would all of the survivors in the comic, tv show and game survive where a squad of trained well equipped military personnel would die?
then add onto that, it would be planned out mission the military would be sent on not just parachuted down to random places on the planet, the military could build a city sized wall with guard post and mounted weapons in a day with the correct planning, plus overtime our technology would be developed to more efficiently kill/defend against zombies.
i'm not saying everything would be fine in a few days, but we would recover a lot of our infrastructure in a short time (key power plants tactically taken and maintained etc.)
And besides police, Military personnel would be the first to encounter groups of zombies..... survivors are usually those who watch first responders fail
It won't spread quietly however; the idea it would is mutually exclusive with the very notion of shambling zombies that are incapable of passing for the uninfected. Being dead or being both dead and moving are both pretty damn big warning signs that something is wrong and you shouldn't get too close.
Militaries also specialize in dehumanizing people so they can get guys to kill them. It worked in the Civil War, after the Christmas truce of WWI, and worked for the Germans of WWII. And as the training has become more sophisticated, the number of troops willing to fire their weapons in anger has only gone up. Hell, there's actually plans on the books about what to do in the event of an uprising by the Girl Scouts, including dealing with the psychological aftermath of having soldiers gun down little girls.
Dehumanizing the rotting corpses that like to eat people alive to make more of themselves wouldn't even be a challenge by comparison, hospital or not. Particularly since things like artillery mean the guy doesn't even need to see his target, to him it's just a set of coordinates on a map.
I'm aware, it doesn't matter much. It's played up as a big thing in-universe, but most people unsurprisingly have a natural aversion to corpses and try to stay away from them anyway... given their tendency to stink and carry diseases.
a lot of first responders will die, but the entire military wont be the first responders just a small amount of them, the second wave wouldn't be a zombie win it would be the start of the recovery
That unfortunately depends on how widespread it is.
If it's everywhere, the various military bodies will be spread razor thin..... which works against them as well.
why would they be spread thin, my point is that the military, isn't just generals sending in waves of troops to die, a military plan would pass through many hands of some seriously intelligent people then handed to well trained disciplined and smart soldiers.
it wont be plan "send soldiers in and fire big guns at zombies"
Yeah, we may be trained to aim center-mass (because it's the easiest, quickest target to hit) if we can make aimed shots, but it doesn't matter.
Purely by chance you're going to hit the head, particularly when you get to crew-served weapons like MGs simply by virtue of the amount of lead being thrown in the air (even leaving aside things like shrapnel for the moment)... seriously, it's not for fashion that we wear things called helmets.
It particularly doesn't matter since as-is pretty much everything else in the arsenal kills more people than a guy's rifle... seriously, it gets a lot of attention from the public for a weapon that only inflicts about 2% of the casualties in war. The rifle's primarily a pinning weapon, used to keep an enemy's head down so he can't concentrate on say, killing you. The real killers tend to be things like tanks, aircraft and artillery... none of which exactly require precision and none of which zombies can do squat against.
Most tend to be pretty close to one. With aircraft it doesn't much matter due to their speed. Given modern artillery has effective ranges of over 20 - 60 km (depending on the piece and munitions), they don't even necessarily need to be in the area to affect it. Incidentally, those tend to be the two biggest killers in wartime.
Beyond that, most cities in the U.S. have a guard depot and/or reserve center with an armory. Even my old reserve company (which wasn't particularly well-equipped) had a number of heavier weapons. Moving beyond the first world, it's important to remember that in places like the Middle East, ready access to stuff like RPG's is pretty much a given in any populated area, some countries over there maintain armories in pretty much every village so they have a ready-made insurgency in the event of an invasion - it's a policy that'll serve them just as well in this case.
Regardless, even assuming access to just rifles to begin with and that somehow no zombies get shot in the face, there's already an expectation of possibly having to call for fire and then waiting until something heavier can come along to finish the job. The difference in this case is that the enemy is slow, won't take cover, and won't shoot back. They start getting close? That's what motorized transport's for, pick up, move down the road a ways and start shooting again. At the end of the day, they're still pretty much target practice.
...I'd kinda like to see a ZA style movie/book/game where the living actually won.
Shaun of the Dead actually does that. Just one more reason I love that movie.
And yet... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHPMocTmC08
How readily believable will it be given the universal genre familiarity?
WWZ is well worth reading.
Despite the fact it's an ad, note that people tended to avoid them more often than not. Add in the fact actual corpses stink (to put it quite mildly), and well...
Too many cases of authorial fiat for my tastes; that, or the author genuinely doesn't seem to understand how things like modern weaponry and such actually work.
Yep. It's basically filed in the same catergory as what to do in the event of alien invasion though. I see it as either plan-makers taking their job very seriously to be prepared for any eventuality, or just screwing around. Maybe a bit from Column A and a bit from Column B.