@chrisjdel said:

@velvet_roses said:

I didn't know you had warehouses like that. That's good to know, in case there's a zombie apocalypse hahahah !

In any case what really annoys me the most in that show is that the only thing that is not finite seems to be the goddamned zombies. I mean, ok let's say only 1% of the population survives the initial infection. That's 3 million people for 297,000,000 zombies. If you consider other casualties (people who made friends with the Governor, or ones who ended up at the terminus, for instance), let's be pessimistic and say we have 2 million people left (in the US). If each of those people kills, I don't know, 1 zombie per 2 days, that's 182 zombies a year x 2M people... so 364M zombies are dead already after a year.

What I'm saying is, I'm not buying this crap and it's getting more and more annoying to me.

EDIT : Just in case anyone's interested, in comic book #10 it says zombies outnumber humans 5,000 to 1, so that's roughly 60K ppl for 299,940,000 zombies. By the end of season 4 in the show we had seen 253 people die. Let's suppose this is the number of deaths per state. That's roughly 13K casualties, which would leave us with 47K people after about a year of apocalypse.

If each of those 47K people kill one zombie every two days, that's 182 zombies x 47K = 8.5M zombies taken out per year. So it would take 35M years to clear them out.
However, those 13K people, before they died, have likely killed a few zombies too. By the end of S4, the average WD character had killed 47.4 zombies (the decimal is important XD ) So let's assume those 13K had each killed 24 zombies before dying (I'm being pessimistic), they would have taken out 312K zombies before they left us. Which leaves 299,628,000 zombies and really does not make much of a difference. We're screwed.

I am mind blown. Somebody should start working on this.

Wholesale warehouses are frequently located in rural areas just off the highway, along major truck routes. The real estate is cheap and they're still well placed to receive and ship out goods. These aren't places where the public goes to shop so there's no billboard announcing it, if you know the company's name you can find the facility on a map though.

We already know there are a holy shitload of zombies for every surviving human. Crazy Morgan's solution, to go out and clear them all, is ... well, crazy. But the old walkers are looking a bit worse for wear every season. They're decomposing much, much slower than a normal corpse (which would be skeletal after a few months) but they are decomposing. The walker herds roaming the countryside will eventually be gone. So the smart strategy is to do what most surviving communities have done: put up good strong walls and try to stay alive until then.

Oh, you mean those ! I misread, I thought you were actually saying the US had put up warehouses with canned goods in every other place in case of an apocalypse hahahahha !

As for surviving, yeah, I believe you're right. Still I thought (I believe it was them) the Wolves were on to something when they did that trick to attract them in that big mining pit. Could be a great idea to get rid of big numbers quickly. Also, in the comics, zombies get slowed down by the cold so I guess winter upper north would be a good time to start clearing out other areas :P

@The Midi-chlorian Count said:

@velvet_roses said:

Just in case anyone's interested, in comic book #10 it says zombies outnumber humans 5,000 to 1

Ha ha, thanks for that - that is interesting. I started a thread on here a few weeks ago recalling an old imdb discussion were someone was saying the walker numbers should start running out at some point, but didn't know that ratio!

Without expanding out into exact numbers (for simplicity), your ratio says every person has to kill 5,000 walkers.

So if all these survivors managed to hole up in walled communities and defensively took out one walker per person per day, that's going to take 5000/365 = 13.7 years before they're all gone! And that's before even looking at any attrition rate for that initial 1 in 5,000 survivors...

Absolutely, and don't forget that I've brought down my own estimation considering the fact that young kids, if they survive, or people like say, Denise, who just holed up since the beginning, don't do much on that part. It's hard to ask of a young child to kill a zombie per day, or the elderly, etc.

But yeah, I guess you put it a much simpler way. I felt like a maniac thinking those numbers yesterday XD

Still, a zombie a day keeps the doctor away !

@velvet_roses said: As for surviving, yeah, I believe you're right. Still I thought (I believe it was them) the Wolves were on to something when they did that trick to attract them in that big mining pit. Could be a great idea to get rid of big numbers quickly. Also, in the comics, zombies get slowed down by the cold so I guess winter upper north would be a good time to start clearing out other areas :P

It wasn't the Wolves. People set up a camp there and used the trucks to block off entrances (presumably to keep out the dead). Aaron was talking about it at one point, saying he avoided going there because of what had happened to the poor folks staying in that camp. I don't remember the details. Their tent city got overrun in the middle of the night, something like that I think. The walkers fell over the edge in different places (some of which weren't nearly as high as the ledge Rick and Morgan went out on) and slid into the pit. After chowing down on the camp dwellers they were trapped by those trucks and couldn't get out of the quarry. Then as time went on the growing crowd of walkers made enough noise to attract more and more until the whole place was packed.

There's nothing to be gained by trying to clear large sections of territory. Migrating herds will eventually restore their numbers. You either waste your limited supply of ammo and barely make a dent, or your people fight hand to hand where the risk of getting bitten is even higher. Where's the gain in that? Hunkering down until the walkers decompose is still the best plan.

@chrisjdel said:

@velvet_roses said: As for surviving, yeah, I believe you're right. Still I thought (I believe it was them) the Wolves were on to something when they did that trick to attract them in that big mining pit. Could be a great idea to get rid of big numbers quickly. Also, in the comics, zombies get slowed down by the cold so I guess winter upper north would be a good time to start clearing out other areas :P

It wasn't the Wolves. People set up a camp there and used the trucks to block off entrances (presumably to keep out the dead). Aaron was talking about it at one point, saying he avoided going there because of what had happened to the poor folks staying in that camp. I don't remember the details. Their tent city got overrun in the middle of the night, something like that I think. The walkers fell over the edge in different places (some of which weren't nearly as high as the ledge Rick and Morgan went out on) and slid into the pit. After chowing down on the camp dwellers they were trapped by those trucks and couldn't get out of the quarry. Then as time went on the growing crowd of walkers made enough noise to attract more and more until the whole place was packed.

There's nothing to be gained by trying to clear large sections of territory. Migrating herds will eventually restore their numbers. You either waste your limited supply of ammo and barely make a dent, or your people fight hand to hand where the risk of getting bitten is even higher. Where's the gain in that? Hunkering down until the walkers decompose is still the best plan.

I disagree. I'd prefer trying to clean the most off ASAP. I suppose if you manage to get them all down a big cliff you could just way till it filled enough and then set the whole thing on fire. If you could manage it then you could clear a few thousands without losing your ammo. I says you hit repeat a few times and it could be worth it. I'm sure there are people who could devise such strategies, Im not really down for spending years behind walls with the constant fear of being attacked.

@velvet_roses said:

I disagree. I'd prefer trying to clean the most off ASAP. I suppose if you manage to get them all down a big cliff you could just way till it filled enough and then set the whole thing on fire. If you could manage it then you could clear a few thousands without losing your ammo. I says you hit repeat a few times and it could be worth it. I'm sure there are people who could devise such strategies, Im not really down for spending years behind walls with the constant fear of being attacked.

You saw in the beginning of season six what happened when a group of Alexandrians just tried to walk home. Granted if they were more experienced fewer would've died, but the walkers coming through town wasn't something anyone could have done much about. There were going to be multiple casualties no matter what. In a world where every survivor's life is incredibly valuable, you don't send people into danger on a regular basis just to whittle away at the endless hordes of undead.

It really is just statistical mumbo jumbo to talk about every remaining person killing a walker every day. That assumes a coordinated effort all across North America involving every single living human (and a nearly bottomless supply of fuel, weapons, and ammo). Many communities won't have a lot of that stuff. Most will be playing it safe. And they probably still will, even if you get on the official post-apocalypse ham radio network and send out a nationwide call to arms. In all likelihood the walkers will have decayed to immobility and brain shutdown long before you could sally forth and take them all down the hard way.

Sure, if you've got your choice of military hardware it might be possible to severely cut down the numbers of dead. Use helicopter gunships to make lots of noise, whip up megaherds and lead them hundreds of miles sweeping up all walkers in their path, then once you've converged several megaherds together in one location use large thermobarics to destroy them all. Trouble is, there will still be enough no matter what you do to pose a danger. People will still have to keep their eyes peeled in the woods. They'll still have to be super careful scouting buildings. Much of the risk will remain. Unless you can neutralize whatever's animating them, like Eugene pretended he could do, and bring down every last zombie permanently, the best thing to do is wait them out. 360 million is too damn many to kill with blades, small arms, and DIY trapping schemes. Not to mention that you're going to have your hands full growing food, raising livestock, scavenging, and dealing with other living people who want to take what you have. People can either spend their days on that sort of thing or spend them hunting walkers. One or the other.

@chrisjdel said: Actually stored gas should already be unusable at this point but that's something TWD has so far chosen to ignore. In all fairness it's pretty typical of post-apocalyptic movies and shows that fuel, ammo, and working vehicles seem to be around even decades after the fall of civilization.

Well, if you find it early enough (within a year) you should be able to preserve with a chemical product called STA-BIL. But this finding a car that has been sitting for 2 years and they going up and hot wiring it with no issues is pure horsesh!t.

@movie_nazi said:

@chrisjdel said: Actually stored gas should already be unusable at this point but that's something TWD has so far chosen to ignore. In all fairness it's pretty typical of post-apocalyptic movies and shows that fuel, ammo, and working vehicles seem to be around even decades after the fall of civilization.

Well, if you find it early enough (within a year) you should be able to preserve with a chemical product called STA-BIL. But this finding a car that has been sitting for 2 years and they going up and hot wiring it with no issues is pure horsesh!t.

Even if the gas was usable, the battery would be completely drained. You'd have to jump it.

@chrisjdel said:

Even if the gas was usable, the battery would be completely drained. You'd have to jump it.

I guess you can argue on both counts that the ones they show them jumping haven't been sitting around since the beginning. Perhaps other survivors had them and recently abandon them for some reason.

@chrisjdel said:

You saw in the beginning of season six what happened when a group of Alexandrians just tried to walk home. Granted if they were more experienced fewer would've died, but the walkers coming through town wasn't something anyone could have done much about. There were going to be multiple casualties no matter what. In a world where every survivor's life is incredibly valuable, you don't send people into danger on a regular basis just to whittle away at the endless hordes of undead.

It really is just statistical mumbo jumbo to talk about every remaining person killing a walker every day. That assumes a coordinated effort all across North America involving every single living human (and a nearly bottomless supply of fuel, weapons, and ammo). Many communities won't have a lot of that stuff. Most will be playing it safe. And they probably still will, even if you get on the official post-apocalypse ham radio network and send out a nationwide call to arms. In all likelihood the walkers will have decayed to immobility and brain shutdown long before you could sally forth and take them all down the hard way.

Sure, if you've got your choice of military hardware it might be possible to severely cut down the numbers of dead. Use helicopter gunships to make lots of noise, whip up megaherds and lead them hundreds of miles sweeping up all walkers in their path, then once you've converged several megaherds together in one location use large thermobarics to destroy them all. Trouble is, there will still be enough no matter what you do to pose a danger. People will still have to keep their eyes peeled in the woods. They'll still have to be super careful scouting buildings. Much of the risk will remain. Unless you can neutralize whatever's animating them, like Eugene pretended he could do, and bring down every last zombie permanently, the best thing to do is wait them out. 360 million is too damn many to kill with blades, small arms, and DIY trapping schemes. Not to mention that you're going to have your hands full growing food, raising livestock, scavenging, and dealing with other living people who want to take what you have. People can either spend their days on that sort of thing or spend them hunting walkers. One or the other.

I saw unprepared people getting in trouble by getting ambushed by unexpected zombies. I also saw more prepared people lure herds without much difficulty on several occasions. The mine pit I was referring to, at some point, had a truck blasting some music to attract zombies into the hole. That may be a DYI trap, but it was quite efficient and it proved that you certainly don't need heavy military artillery to lure big herds to where you want them. You just need to find the right location to bring them. And then, sure, why not set the whole thing on fire as I said ? I'm pretty sure there must be at least one person in the bunch of survivors that can find a recipe for napalm or something of the sort. Also lately in the show the saviors had been setting up a trip line. Seems simple enough to me. You dig a big ditch, set up a trip line and blow some sort of horn or siren. Once they're all piled on top of one another, you shove a spear or something through their brains one at a time. Don't forget that with time those guys get weaker and weaker and more and more rotten hence more likely to not be able to get back up once they fall.

Also, just saying, this is pretty much what Rick says in the comics after they find the hilltop. You mentionned that people can either spend their days farming and stuff or spend their day clearing off the area... that's not necessarily true. Especially in the winter when you can't really grow anything. You can set up a big trap and just go back to check on it every few days to clear it off. You could think of the prison too, when the horn blew in early season 3, how many zombies were attracted. You open the gates, lure them inside and close the gate on them. Then you can clear them from the outside.

In the show we have seen at least 3 communities that "are not Negan". We can assume there are more known to our characters. There is no reason why those communities could not assign a few people to clearing, and while the Negan folks might not want to work WITH those communities, there is nothing preventing them from clearing off their own parts, since they definitely gain at it. And they are already doing it by setting up the trip line with explosives, there could be other stuff they do that we don't know.

As for having to watch out in the woods and buildings, of course. But the more you clear out, the more you can identify as safe zones and maybe fence, even if it's just a little.

@velvet_roses said:

I saw unprepared people getting in trouble by getting ambushed by unexpected zombies. I also saw more prepared people lure herds without much difficulty on several occasions. The mine pit I was referring to, at some point, had a truck blasting some music to attract zombies into the hole. That may be a DYI trap, but it was quite efficient and it proved that you certainly don't need heavy military artillery to lure big herds to where you want them. You just need to find the right location to bring them. And then, sure, why not set the whole thing on fire as I said ? I'm pretty sure there must be at least one person in the bunch of survivors that can find a recipe for napalm or something of the sort. Also lately in the show the saviors had been setting up a trip line. Seems simple enough to me. You dig a big ditch, set up a trip line and blow some sort of horn or siren. Once they're all piled on top of one another, you shove a spear or something through their brains one at a time. Don't forget that with time those guys get weaker and weaker and more and more rotten hence more likely to not be able to get back up once they fall.

Also, just saying, this is pretty much what Rick says in the comics after they find the hilltop. You mentionned that people can either spend their days farming and stuff or spend their day clearing off the area... that's not necessarily true. Especially in the winter when you can't really grow anything. You can set up a big trap and just go back to check on it every few days to clear it off. You could think of the prison too, when the horn blew in early season 3, how many zombies were attracted. You open the gates, lure them inside and close the gate on them. Then you can clear them from the outside.

In the show we have seen at least 3 communities that "are not Negan". We can assume there are more known to our characters. There is no reason why those communities could not assign a few people to clearing, and while the Negan folks might not want to work WITH those communities, there is nothing preventing them from clearing off their own parts, since they definitely gain at it. And they are already doing it by setting up the trip line with explosives, there could be other stuff they do that we don't know.

As for having to watch out in the woods and buildings, of course. But the more you clear out, the more you can identify as safe zones and maybe fence, even if it's just a little.

These kinds of methods are a drop in the bucket to the 360 million or so walkers roaming North America. Their constant random migration means you could clear a large area completely and months later there'd be a growing number of them around once again. Alexandria lies in a part of the country where mass evacuations (to who knows where) cleared out the population. Remember Deanna said that for a while there was hardly anyone around, living or dead? Good scouting and herd management would be essential to make sure a megaherd didn't blunder into your community without warning. You redirect them whenever possible, destroy them when you must. But nothing short of a widespread coordinated effort with the kind of resources I mentioned before could hope to clear the whole damn country. Your community and a small number of others in your area sure as hell couldn't do it. They're going to decompose all by themselves. Unless you have a brilliant idea that's going to get rid of them all a whole lot faster, it's not worth the risk. Let them rot. Keep your people alive.

@krashd said:

I don't take my eyes off cantaloupes, I don't trust any fruit that grows below waist level.

LMAO!

@chrisjdel said:

These kinds of methods are a drop in the bucket to the 360 million or so walkers roaming North America. Their constant random migration means you could clear a large area completely and months later there'd be a growing number of them around once again. Alexandria lies in a part of the country where mass evacuations (to who knows where) cleared out the population. Remember Deanna said that for a while there was hardly anyone around, living or dead? Good scouting and herd management would be essential to make sure a megaherd didn't blunder into your community without warning. You redirect them whenever possible, destroy them when you must. But nothing short of a widespread coordinated effort with the kind of resources I mentioned before could hope to clear the whole damn country. Your community and a small number of others in your area sure as hell couldn't do it. They're going to decompose all by themselves. Unless you have a brilliant idea that's going to get rid of them all a whole lot faster, it's not worth the risk. Let them rot. Keep your people alive.

Alexandria does not lie in a part of the country where mass evacuations cleared out the population. What happened is that when the initial infection took place, people went to the bigger cities because the government thought it would be easier to protect them this way, so most suburban and country places have been pretty much cleared. In any case this argument is hardly defendable if you're going to bring up the random migrations right after.

Anyways, I think this is all far better explained in the comics, where they actually manage to clear out rather large areas after a while.

@velvet_roses said: Alexandria does not lie in a part of the country where mass evacuations cleared out the population. What happened is that when the initial infection took place, people went to the bigger cities because the government thought it would be easier to protect them this way, so most suburban and country places have been pretty much cleared. In any case this argument is hardly defendable if you're going to bring up the random migrations right after.

Anyways, I think this is all far better explained in the comics, where they actually manage to clear out rather large areas after a while.

Deanna told Rick when they first met that northern Virginia had been evacuated, for a long time there was hardly anyone around - living or dead. Those were pretty close to her exact words. We saw the same thing in FTWD where LA residents who weren't in the fenced safe area were evacuated to ... well, they never really said. I'm guessing there were massive refugee camps in various parts of the country, which were mostly overrun after a time or abandoned, the people left to fend for themselves. The migration of both large herds and individual walkers (who keep going until they have a reason to stop) effectively re-distributes the zombie population. If you make a hole somewhere it eventually fills in, so to speak. Cleared areas don't stay clear indefinitely unless they're walled off.

@chrisjdel said:

@velvet_roses said: Alexandria does not lie in a part of the country where mass evacuations cleared out the population. What happened is that when the initial infection took place, people went to the bigger cities because the government thought it would be easier to protect them this way, so most suburban and country places have been pretty much cleared. In any case this argument is hardly defendable if you're going to bring up the random migrations right after.

Anyways, I think this is all far better explained in the comics, where they actually manage to clear out rather large areas after a while.

Deanna told Rick when they first met that northern Virginia had been evacuated, for a long time there was hardly anyone around - living or dead. Those were pretty close to her exact words. We saw the same thing in FTWD where LA residents who weren't in the fenced safe area were evacuated to ... well, they never really said. I'm guessing there were massive refugee camps in various parts of the country, which were mostly overrun after a time or abandoned, the people left to fend for themselves. The migration of both large herds and individual walkers (who keep going until they have a reason to stop) effectively re-distributes the zombie population. If you make a hole somewhere it eventually fills in, so to speak. Cleared areas don't stay clear indefinitely unless they're walled off.

That's weird. I don't remember that. I'll have to rewatch the previous seasons anyways.

But as I said they successfully maintain a relatively large area cleared for about two years so far in the comics. They set up patrols with a given area to keep clear. If a herd comes their way they redirect it, although there's no telling if they stop there.

@velvet_roses said: That's weird. I don't remember that. I'll have to rewatch the previous seasons anyways.

But as I said they successfully maintain a relatively large area cleared for about two years so far in the comics. They set up patrols with a given area to keep clear. If a herd comes their way they redirect it, although there's no telling if they stop there.

It's the episode where they first arrive in Alexandria and Deanna is interviewing Rick.

If you have to patrol the area to keep it clear, it's not really clear. You still have to keep your eyes open in the woods. You still have to be careful going through buildings. And you still have to scout for herds so you can redirect them. Herds seem to stop only when they reach an obstacle they can't push their way through, or when they find food. A feeding frenzy that gathers a large enough crowd will stop the herd. For example Hershel's livestock almost certainly stopped the herd from season 2 at his farm for an extended period. Once halted they basically mill around the area aimlessly, never going far, until something else grabs their attention and stirs up movement in that direction. Call it the law of walker inertia: walkers in motion tend to stay in motion, and walkers at rest tend to stay at rest, until some stimulus gets them to do the opposite.