I'm the commenter you're quoting, and I think you're confusing fantasy with science fiction. There's a recent scene in Game of Thrones in which a wight (which on that show is basically a zombie) gets chopped up and the disembodied arm continues to move. Now, you might ask, how does the arm keep moving if it isn't attached to a brain anymore? And the answer is, the show is fantasy, and the wight's reanimation is a matter of magic, not science.

My comment about internal coherence has nothing to do with whether something is scientifically plausible, it has to do with whether a story sticks by the rules it sets up. If we're told a genie grants you three wishes, then it would be cheating to suddenly announce you get a fourth wish. The fact that genies granting wishes is absurd in the real world has nothing to do with it.

It's debatable whether The Walking Dead counts as science fiction or fantasy. It does attempt to provide a sort of scientific rationale for the zombies: a virus is somehow reactivating the brains of dead people so that their bodies start moving again and basically do nothing more than attempt to consume any living flesh in their path. According to this explanation, the walkers aren't truly alive, they aren't even really "eating" in the sense of doing something that provides them with usable energy, since they lack a workable digestive system. But, for some reason, their brains lead them to emulate that single instinctive activity. They're sort of the equivalent of a chicken with its head cut off: it may still move around, but it's barely "alive" in any meaningful sense.

Is it remotely plausible that something like that could happen in the real world? As far as I know, no. That's why its status as sci-fi is very tenuous, and why I'm more comfortable describing it as fantasy. The entire zombie apocalypse genre, basically invented by George Romero in the 1960s, was heavily influenced by the Richard Matheson novella "I Am Legend," which was an attempt to provide a sort of quasi-scientific explanation for the vampire legend. But at bottom, the science isn't all that important: it's just a way of trying to repackage ancient folklore with a scientific veneer. I wouldn't spend much time worrying about whether the walkers behave like real-life organisms do, because they're not real-life organisms. They're a phenonemon that only exists in this story's universe, and that's all that matters.

Duct tape. Duct. Tape.

All kidding aside, a few ideas here...

First, in The Walking Dead universe, George Romero and his conceptualization of "zombies" never happened, do not exist. That is, in part, why, of all the myriad names various communities and groups used to describe the undead, "zombie" is never once used, or even mentioned. The Walking Dead introduces its own internal logic. And, on that note...

Through the seasons, the walkers have been degrading. Walkers who've managed to survive since the beginning have broken down, as their bodily tissues are not regenerating. Even their clothes are less vivid, much more drab, rotting...that's some pretty high brow logic.

Also, walkers walk into fires, or out of windows to plummet to the ground a storey beneath, or even onto makeshift pointy-tipped barriers, because their rational capabilities are dead. The reanimation happens only at the most basic brain stem levels - they walk, and eat. That's also been fairly consistent.

Why people haven't started forest fires to wipe them out, or occupied an island off the coast of the mainland, or just created a moat of cut-down trees around their communities (extending their sight lines while creating sufficient physical barriers to impede the walkers ground speed), baffles me...BUT, I also recognize that doing so might have meant less compelling television drama for us viewers.

I needs to know...Is part of the zombie virus makes the teeth super hard. While the entire bodys are falling apart, arm and legs can be torn off with no problem, skull become like wet paper but the teeth don't fall out and become super hard.??

@Raymondoz2007 said:

I needs to know...Is part of the zombie virus makes the teeth super hard. While the entire bodys are falling apart, arm and legs can be torn off with no problem, skull become like wet paper but the teeth don't fall out and become super hard.??

I'll humour you here. Have you ever inadvertently bit your finger or your tongue or your cheek, and thought "wow, I bite really hard", and then thought about how difficult it is to actually try to bite your finger that hard deliberately? An undead without that sense of self-restraint/control is going to be biting down with all the available force it has, and that's significant.

Regarding tooth decay, well, these undead have stopped eating sugar, the single greatest cause of tooth decay; free of that, the tooth enamel is free to be what enamel is - the hardest substance in the body. Teeth remain intact with skeletons found that are thousands of years old. Tooth decay is primarily a problem for the luxuries of the modern diet - shucks, humans are the only toothed animals that brush their teeth in the first place, tooth care is not an obsession with any other creatures.

Granted, I do tend to have expected that the mandibles muscles should also be deteriorating over the time from season 1 to current; however, any undead who are still animate have been eating a wholly meat diet which, while not being the best protein source diet, is still driving the primary muscular building-block physiochemistry, apparently imposing a retarding effect on the rate of tooth decay, to some degree.

Of course, having said that, a bite need not be that forceful anyway - just enough to break the skin and allow the saliva to infect the victim - notice, infrequently do the undead take real chunks out of their victims, so the screenplay has not attempted to attribute a strong bite to the undead.

And this brings me to my own challenge with The Walking Dead's logic.

Firstly, I've spent a lot of time talking about the undead eating, and realize I have never seen them drink. It's not uncommon for most carnivores to get the majority of their water intake from the animals they eat (since water makes up a large percentage of an animal); but, water from diet isn't enough for humans. So, why aren't the undead dehydrating? Well, maybe the majority of water intake for humans is to support the extraordinary brain function that differentiates humans from other animals...given most of the undead's brain activity has shut down at the point of death, and reanimation is only animating the basest neurological functioning, they don't need as much water anymore.

Of course, maybe they are dehydrating, but we're just not being shown. After all, there is going to be a long supply of bodies eligible to become undead; waves of new undead could be replacing those that just peter out without devoting screentime to figuring out how to illustrate that for the viewer. Having said that, we also don't see all kinds of things - people evacuating their waste, or other mundane things in life that have little screen value.

And, that also covers the idea that, maybe the undead do drink...but it's just not been given screenplay because it's not as visually engaging as watching them eat a horse or drag someone down into a pit.

But, moving on to the most important issue for me, we already know that "everyone is infected" already, they don't need to be bitten to be infected. So, what's the concern with a bite? How can one be infected with something they already have? It seems the show is attempting to posit that being bitten somehow kills the victim, at which point the latent infection that was already present gets a sooner opportunity to turn/reanimate them. But, why? I've yet to hear that explained on the show - now, it's true, that good science fiction stops short of any really detailed scientific explanation for things that are, at the time of writing, not yet proven or even understood (so, less science, more fiction). But, inquiring minds like ours yet muse over where we draw the line on what's plausible, what's still worthy of suspension of belief, and what's just beyond reasonable.

For some, the inconsistencies are enough to say "I'm done" and quit watching; for most (according to viewership), the inconsistencies are not enough, and people will indeed tune in to season 8 to see what's next. I remain among the latter, but I'm thinking season 8 should wrap everything up, not sure where there is to go with this entire story arc, and it'd be a shame, poor craft, to drag out a story long after most viewers lose interest.

There is some inconsistency between the way the walkers are presented in the early episodes and later on. The now-iconic opening to the entire series featured a walker girl reaching down and picking up a teddy. After those initial episodes we never see a walker performing any action that complex ever again. Indeed if I'm not mistaken the walkers never hold anything (besides the pieces of flesh they are attempting to consume) and they don't really ever do anything other than, as you put it, walking and eating. In fact the show goes out of its way to make it clear that the walkers do not contain even traces of the people they once were. Characters who come to believe they do, such as Herschel, the Governor, and Lizzie, are depicted as deluded if not crazy. The walkers are not just lacking in rational faculties, they don't appear to experience pain or even to react at all to bodily injury. The difference with those early episodes isn't just a matter of their degrading over time (since new walkers are constantly being created), it suggests a slightly different conception of the walkers by the writers as the show progressed.

@Kylopod said:

There is some inconsistency between the way the walkers are presented in the early episodes and later on. The now-iconic opening to the entire series featured a walker girl reaching down and picking up a teddy. After those initial episodes we never see a walker performing any action that complex ever again. Indeed if I'm not mistaken the walkers never hold anything (besides the pieces of flesh they are attempting to consume) and they don't really ever do anything other than, as you put it, walking and eating. In fact the show goes out of its way to make it clear that the walkers do not contain even traces of the people they once were. Characters who come to believe they do, such as Herschel, the Governor, and Lizzie, are depicted as deluded if not crazy. The walkers are not just lacking in rational faculties, they don't appear to experience pain or even to react at all to bodily injury. The difference with those early episodes isn't just a matter of their degrading over time (since new walkers are constantly being created), it suggests a slightly different conception of the walkers by the writers as the show progressed.

Agree. The show is not perfect in consistency. Early depictions did suggest some retention - remember Morgan's wife? She didn't just wander off, but stayed around "home" and even tried the front door knob!

It's fun to pick apart what's not perfect. I'm convinced the show deliberately avoided water to not have to deal with the obvious - being on a boat, or an island, would have essentially negated all random danger from walkers. But, then, in the relative safety of an island, there'd be no show!

There's also extra drama built in that is utterly inconsequential. That entire scene where they tethered two vehicles together and mowed down a bunch of walkers, was totally stupid and created no value or advantage for them, just silly screenplay that kinda looked cool as long as we didn't think too much about what a waste of time and energy it was.

I think, though, we can all agree, the inconsistencies/stupidities are minimal enough, forgivable enough, that we still watch. I don't think any of the inconsistencies are deal-breakers yet.

@DRDMovieMusings said:

@Kylopod said:

There is some inconsistency between the way the walkers are presented in the early episodes and later on. The now-iconic opening to the entire series featured a walker girl reaching down and picking up a teddy. After those initial episodes we never see a walker performing any action that complex ever again. Indeed if I'm not mistaken the walkers never hold anything (besides the pieces of flesh they are attempting to consume) and they don't really ever do anything other than, as you put it, walking and eating. In fact the show goes out of its way to make it clear that the walkers do not contain even traces of the people they once were. Characters who come to believe they do, such as Herschel, the Governor, and Lizzie, are depicted as deluded if not crazy. The walkers are not just lacking in rational faculties, they don't appear to experience pain or even to react at all to bodily injury. The difference with those early episodes isn't just a matter of their degrading over time (since new walkers are constantly being created), it suggests a slightly different conception of the walkers by the writers as the show progressed.

Agree. The show is not perfect in consistency. Early depictions did suggest some retention - remember Morgan's wife? She didn't just wander off, but stayed around "home" and even tried the front door knob!

It's fun to pick apart what's not perfect. I'm convinced the show deliberately avoided water to not have to deal with the obvious - being on a boat, or an island, would have essentially negated all random danger from walkers. But, then, in the relative safety of an island, there'd be no show!

There's also extra drama built in that is utterly inconsequential. That entire scene where they tethered two vehicles together and mowed down a bunch of walkers, was totally stupid and created no value or advantage for them, just silly screenplay that kinda looked cool as long as we didn't think too much about what a waste of time and energy it was.

I think, though, we can all agree, the inconsistencies/stupidities are minimal enough, forgivable enough, that we still watch. I don't think any of the inconsistencies are deal-breakers yet.

Inconsistencies weren't the deal breaker for me. The poor casting and foolishness of Negan, however, was.

@LastLion said:

Inconsistencies weren't the deal breaker for me. The poor casting and foolishness of Negan, however, was.

Re poor casting - tell me more...?!

Re: Negan's foolishness - yeah, he got really annoying. And stupid. Seems to me that, had he eased up a bit, he'd have had sufficient loyalty to undermine any efforts to rise up against him. The revolt would have no legs had it not been for the Kingdom joining - Negan pushed too hard and turned Ezekiel against him.

But, I want to see him go down. And, like Rick told Gareth, and made good, I want to see Rick be the one to dispatch him.

Inconsistencies weren't the deal breaker for me. The poor casting and foolishness of Negan, however, was.

Yes, that's what I was thinking. I didn't intend any of my comments to this thread as criticism. Believe me, if I were to compile a list of my criticisms of the show, "inconsistency in zombie rules" would fall well at the bottom, assuming it showed up at all.

These inconsistencies are an example of what TV Tropes calls Early Installment Weirdness, where you go back to the early episodes of a show you've been faithfully watching for years and you're struck by how some of the things you most associate with the show were very different in the beginning, from plot and character details to stylistic matters.

The walkers in the early episodes of TWD, much like Romero's zombies, pick up objects and appear to retain trace memories of the people they once were. After that, they become more limited. This never bothered me, because I never thought the show was really about the walkers. The walkers are a MacGuffin, while the show's true focal point is survival in a post-apocalyptic world. As such, the question of how "human" the zombies are was really a distraction, and the show was right to avoid it. To that end I found that the subplots involving the delusions of Herschel, the Governor, and Lizzie helped clarify the show's cynical realist perspective.

You are right..but it still bothers me that walkers just walk into fire.

@DRDMovieMusings said:

All kidding aside, a few ideas here...

First, in The Walking Dead universe, George Romero and his conceptualization of "zombies" never happened, do not exist. That is, in part, why, of all the myriad names various communities and groups used to describe the undead, "zombie" is never once used, or even mentioned. The Walking Dead introduces its own internal logic. And, on that note...

Through the seasons, the walkers have been degrading. Walkers who've managed to survive since the beginning have broken down, as their bodily tissues are not regenerating. Even their clothes are less vivid, much more drab, rotting...that's some pretty high brow logic.

Also, walkers walk into fires, or out of windows to plummet to the ground a storey beneath, or even onto makeshift pointy-tipped barriers, because their rational capabilities are dead. The reanimation happens only at the most basic brain stem levels - they walk, and eat. That's also been fairly consistent.

Why people haven't started forest fires to wipe them out, or occupied an island off the coast of the mainland, or just created a moat of cut-down trees around their communities (extending their sight lines while creating sufficient physical barriers to impede the walkers ground speed), baffles me...BUT, I also recognize that doing so might have meant less compelling television drama for us viewers.

*Why people haven't started forest fires to wipe them out, or occupied an island off the coast of the mainland, or just created a moat of cut-down trees around their communities (extending their sight lines while creating sufficient physical barriers to impede the walkers ground speed), baffles me...BUT, I also recognize that doing so might have meant less compelling television drama for us viewers. * Starting fires without the means of controlling them would be foolish. As dry as we see the countryside , that is a mistake. Also, inhabiting an island may be trouble, because as we have seen the infected can either walk or at least navigate through bodies of water.

@Kylopod said:

There is some inconsistency between the way the walkers are presented in the early episodes and later on. The now-iconic opening to the entire series featured a walker girl reaching down and picking up a teddy. After those initial episodes we never see a walker performing any action that complex ever again. Indeed if I'm not mistaken the walkers never hold anything (besides the pieces of flesh they are attempting to consume) and they don't really ever do anything other than, as you put it, walking and eating. In fact the show goes out of its way to make it clear that the walkers do not contain even traces of the people they once were. Characters who come to believe they do, such as Herschel, the Governor, and Lizzie, are depicted as deluded if not crazy. The walkers are not just lacking in rational faculties, they don't appear to experience pain or even to react at all to bodily injury. The difference with those early episodes isn't just a matter of their degrading over time (since new walkers are constantly being created), it suggests a slightly different conception of the walkers by the writers as the show progressed.

Yes, a different conception of the infected as the show goes on. In the early seasons, walkers were much faster moving. Case in point, Shane and that Otis guy , go to get medical supplies for Carl. The walkers were moving very fast.

Why the bite kills??? Many posters have said its like the Kamodo dragon...the saliva is so nasty and toxic it kiils you through infection. Ok I can live with that maby. We have seen if you get bit in your lower limbs and if they are cut off fast enough you can live. Question" If and its going tp be a big "if"....If you are near a modern medical facility and you are bit can they stop the infection? I ask this becuase they can stop the kamodo dragon bite pretty easly.

@Raymondoz2007 said:

You are right..but it still bothers me that walkers just walk into fire.

Moths arguably have more intelligence than walkers, and they fly right into flames. It's not unprecedented in nature.