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This really does help show the chaos that any global disaster would bring to people. Kind of tragic really. Was the gunfire that they speak of due to zombies or just normal looting?
I also really like the depth of April’s eyes in the third panel.
Classic Zombie movie situation. The fact the Zombies are slow and easy to kill is not the point, its the fact humans are always unable to work together.
The panel showing the Supermarket “battle” for basic food and water shows this.
Sure TFZ’s mind control over the Zombies makes them more deadly, but in the end humans always fail because they cannot get along, even in the face of death.
Alex: There’s essentially nothing at all that the humans could have done to win this war. In terms of trained soldiers they were outnumbered before they even knew they were in a war basically, and by the time they could get any proper plan in the works there was already over a billion zombies probably. It’s just a numbers game. If anything like this happened for real, even WITHOUT TFZ leading them, humanity would have no chance. TFZ mostly just helped with getting EVERY LAST HUMAN, getting them ALL, which barely even came into play until there were only tens of thousands left anyway, after the war was long since over and won.
They might have been able to hold the zombies off in localized pockets without TFZ, but fighting the zombies is much like fighting an exceptionally virulent plague. If you catch it early enough (first day, or *maybe* second day) and react strongly enough (shoot any zombie on sight) then you can contain the problem.
But yeah, even without TFZ the best possible result would have had recurring flareups here and there worldwide for years that took out cities. With TFZ in charge the horde was unstoppable unless you killed TFZ.
Doubtless the argument will crop up every couple weeks for the run of the comic. Any chance you could create a FAQ page we can direct people to when it does? It would cut down on having to repeat the same arguments every time at least…
Well. We can all rest easy knowing the asshats who rampaged through the grocery store are all shuffling corpses.
Must be fun being TFZ. Like a game of checkers were your opponent just has a single king left and all you have to do is watch it jump around. I know he has a plan, but I would have played with the humans for awhile longer.
It’d be awfully boring once everyone is rotting, I think.
I disagree with Bobby entirely. Numbers don’t count for that much in warfare, a HUGE portion is equipment. The zombies would have a head start but the military wouldn’t have much difficulty killing a bunch of slow, mindless zombies, even if their numbers are in the billions.
Hell, look at Germany vs. Russia in WWI. Russia’s soldiers weren’t mindless, they did have some equipment (2:1 ratio of soldiers to rifles) but they got their asses handed to them.
At this point in Last Blood, the back story isn’t really that important but I don’t think that “the entire world failed to notice in time” really works, especially with America’s alphabet of intelligence agencies and sattelite systems.
Maybe when they are brand new the zombies aren’t so slow and stupid?
They really would be pretty hard to stop. Since the only thing that puts them down for good is a head shot it’s like fighting someone strung out on PCP. Except there are several hundred if not thousand of them, and they *never* have to rest.
And it doesn’t hurt that they can smell humans several miles away.
With a couple of basic rules the zombies as portrayed here really could take over. Avoid detection unless operating in large groups, bite as many humans as possible, protect yourself, find and help other zombies…
While I still have some issues with how fast the Horde took over I no longer argue that they could do it eventually. If humans knew what they were facing it would be different, but that lack of knowledge gives the zombies a critical first few days before anyone in power really understands what needs to be done.
I can’t wait to find out why TFZ is doing what he/it is doing. Assuing he/it has any choice in the matter.
Even if we did have more humans than zombies, every time our people would die, they would get reinforcements. It might be all right to kill off all the zombies you see pretty easily, but Bobby said you could be infected and carry it before you died, so how would you know who would become a zombie tomorrow? It would come down to the fact that they can kill more of us faster than we can even tell. Maybe we did kill their first few waves easily, but with zombies, the big issue is that they just keep coming.
But I do have to say, I think bobby’s thinking on the spread of zombiehood is a little shoddy. I mean, they started out with one zombie making a really dramatic entrance. People are gonna notice when a girl has her neck ripped out by a rotting man, especially with all the witnesses you have at a beach, and the two friends that were with her. The fact that zombies could take over the world in a month isn’t what I have an issue with. I just think he’d have to be more subtle about it first. TFZ would attract attention, people would be quarantined (maybe), but I can only see him getting two or three people before the cops showed up to figure out what the hell was going on. Those couple people wouldn’t be able to spread zombie-hood-ism over the world if the cops were keeping tabs on them.
Maybe they were in the hospital, just those couple people. How does zombiness spread? They could have infected outpatients, I suppose. And TFZ was probably shot quite a few times. Is he immortal, like a vampire? (only he rots so he wouldn’t heal the same) But if they thought he was dead and put him in the… damn… I can’t remember the word. The place where you keep dead people until they’re burried. Anyways, if he started off with some helpers from the _______ [insert name of place i can’t remember], and that girl he attacked infected people at the hospital, it might still work the way bobby said…
I believe its possble, Bobby, but just not how you’ve said. I’d hate to distract you, I know you’re working on a lot of other stuff for this comic/story/movie, but I really think you should rethink exactly how zombie-ness spread in the beginning, and how one becomes infected.
And like Brellchild said, you could maybe set up a separate page to direct people to to explain it.
Brellchild, TFZ is doing it all for revenge, so far as we’ve been told. Wanting to make the fourty (Or was it fifty…?) or so remaining Vamps starve to death due to a lack of human blood.
As for humans during the disaster… I think we’ve seen enough natural disasters over the last decade or so where the survivors get a bit manic, strike out for themselves and wind up doing things they’d regret under normal circumstances. Completely believeable in this scenario too. In fact, more so - Zombie plaugue would induce more frenzied reactions than the average natural distaster, i’m sure!
And it gives me a chuckle to see Principal Howard outside the car. “Awe, c’mon guys… let me in!”
“Russia’s soldiers weren’t mindless, they did have some equipment (2:1 ratio of soldiers to rifles) but they got their asses handed to them.”
Um, the ratio here, though, is more like 50:1, and equipment means almost NOTHING when it’s almost entirely close range fighting. It’s not like there’s a ton of zombies forming a line and running after you. No, the zombies are EVERYWHERE, surrounding you at all times, and in order to kill them you have to destroy their brain or remove their head, and they don’t get tired and need sleep like you do. I could go on and on, as I have before. It’s just silly to think the humans could have any chance.
“TFZ would attract attention, people would be quarantined (maybe), but I can only see him getting two or three people before the cops showed up to figure out what the hell was going on.”
LOL, TFZ laughs in the faces of cops. Shooting TFZ in the HEAD doesn’t even stop him, as we’ve shown in the comics already. He’s very smart and very strong and very fast and great with weapons and can even fly planes, as you’ll see him doing later, as I’ve said before. Even if a dozen cops surrounded him he wouldn’t break a sweat and he’d get out of the jam, but he wouldn’t let any cops get near him. I think you give the police too much credit on their arrival time. He bites that girl on Page 4, he then SPRINTS off the beach (maybe grabbing a hooded sweatshirt on the way), steals a car, drives to the nearest airport, goes to the international terminals, goes into all the restrooms and quietly kills people and then controls their minds, very easily getting multiple zombies onto every continent, and the war is basically over and won at that moment. But he’s not nearly done yet. He’ll make sure, and it’s so easy. There’s so many different ways he can do this and he doesn’t even need to go to an airport to make it happen, but he’d want to go there anyway since he’s a pilot and he wants to see the new planes.
A lot of the comments you get on here and Marry Me seem to be pointless arguments. I think maybe because you give doubters the time of day and respond to their comments, Mr. Crosby… but then again, someone who responds to his fans is always nice.
Wooo, hope I see you this Saturday! My break lights are both busted so it’s iffy.
While I do support the idea that the biting victims would face quarantine, it would still work if victims of the infection fell more and more under TFZ’s mental influence as the infection progressed. If this happened they would be actively avoiding containment - which would give TFZ just the edge he would need to be unstoppable.
Hmmm. Mr Crosby? Are you saying TFZ has the option of (instead of a 24 hour infection) killing people and immediately putting them under his control? THAT ability I don’t remember hearing mentioned before, but I haven’t read every comment since the strip began. It would explain the ability to explode worldwide quite nicely, however. Maybe he just didn’t use it much because it took concentrated effort on his part or weakened him somewhat.
He IS a vampire. So unless he was turned into a vampire (which I’m pretty sure bobby has said is a very unusual action) like Math, then I don’t think he could have been born in that area.
Do we have any proof other than his clothing that he has had a military background? I wouldn’t think the 50 - 60 vampires in the world would have a military… And I’m pretty sure that the military uniform he was wearing would have been way to modern for him (From what I recall -correct me if I’m wrong, though- he’s been down and out for at least hundred years. A hundred years ago they wouldn’t have been wearing those type of uniforms.)
“Are you saying TFZ has the option of (instead of a 24 hour infection) killing people and immediately putting them under his control?”
Obviously. The 24-hour thing is only if the bites wouldn’t have been normally fatal, like just a tiny bite on the hand or whatever. But in most cases when they get bitten the bites are deadly by themselves, ripping out their throats and such, and they die right away and are of course then under his influence as they instantly become zombies once they die.
“Do we know anything about him yet other than his military background and his insane hatred of vampires?”
Murdo made it clear that he was an American soldier from World War II early in the story when they were carrying his body to the dumpster. I’ve also said that he’s related to someone who we’ve already met.
“So unless he was turned into a vampire (which I’m pretty sure bobby has said is a very unusual action) like Math, then I don’t think he could have been born in that area.”
I haven’t said it’s unusual and I thought I already confirmed that TFZ was human once, but maybe not. Anyway, there’s another spoiler for you.
“And I’m pretty sure that the military uniform he was wearing would have been way to modern for him (From what I recall -correct me if I’m wrong, though- he’s been down and out for at least hundred years. A hundred years ago they wouldn’t have been wearing those type of uniforms.)”
Redrover, you gotta get your facts straight, LOL. Anyway, he’s been out for 65 years and he was in the United States military in World War II.
I’m sorry to say this but, Zombies (ghouls) being blood-starved vampires has actually already been thought of. Although the intelligence piece wasn’t there. Read a series when I was little about vamps and in that universe ghouls would be made when the vampire would turn someone but not give them enough blood in return. So you’d have a half-dead vampire which couldn’t be killed walking around out there just smart enough to know that it needs blood. Yays! Not exactly like yours but close enough to warrant a mention. I don’t know if you’ve answered this before but, do the zombies need blood? You’d think they would if they’re blood starved vampires. Also wouldn’t getting blood mean that TFZ would be able to heal and so-forth again? One more thing: Have you given any thought to the start of Vampires? That is (I think) the most interesting (and telling) part of any vampire story. The worst one so far has been a detailed spell (erg) the best was a quick mention that there would be a symbiotic relationship to the evolutionary speeds of the human and vampire races. Humans could adapt, vampires (very long lived humans needing blood) could make sure the race wouldn’t overspecialize and breed in weakness. It always tickled me that the shorter one was the better explanation. I think I’ve rambled. Sorry.
“I don’t know if you’ve answered this before but, do the zombies need blood? You’d think they would if they’re blood starved vampires.”
Only ONE of the zombies is a blood starved vampire. Only the First Zombie. Do they need blood in what way? How much? It doesn’t really come into this story, so I don’t know. They sure WANT blood, I can tell you that!
“Also wouldn’t getting blood mean that TFZ would be able to heal and so-forth again?”
Heal and become a regular vampire again? No, that’s over for him. Once he officially became a zombie after 65 years, there’s no turning back. Keep in mind that after just two weeks of no blood you can’t even move anymore (as a vampire) because you’re so weak, so for 65 years he was frozen in place in that coffin, and then something CLICKS and he becomes a zombie and regains all his strength. There’s no going back to a vampire for him, though, no.
“One more thing: Have you given any thought to the start of Vampires?”
My take on Zombie Plague….
It falls to how it is spread.
If it is by bite only, it really isn’t that dangerous.
The biggest problems in that senerio are that people bitten might turn at any moment, people will panic, and people don’t want to shoot other “people”. Once they’ve killed a few of the creatures and accept that they are not human, then the odds get better. Quaranteen of people who are bitten and the destruction of all bead, bitten or not, will make a major impact.
If it spreads by water, blood, or fleas…. expect something like the Black Plague… a wildly spreading menace that no-one understands or can stop.
If organicly grown food can become contaminated, then all hope is lost. Without a vaccine, the best you can do is keep small cells alive. After all, larger groups are harder to secure. And the large farms needed for prolonged survival are susseptible to weather if kept defensible against zombies.
Since he hasn’t defined all of the carrier possibilities or symptoms.. it is hard to determine if humanity could have survived on its own. or, for instance, can the disease affect one who is dead before infection. If not, the morgue and cemetaries would not be a threat. Immediate cremation of all new corpses would be effective control against its spreading. The difficulty becomes, spotting people who are dieing, or in an accident. Surgery would become useless since those who might die on the table would have to be exicuted and destroyed to prevent risk.
Of course, the master zombie does throw all the odds off balance, as it can addapt and dirrect better attacks.
“If it is by bite only, it really isn’t that dangerous.”
It’s only spread by bites and it’s still extremely dangerous, and quarantine is not possible once you get tons of these people all over the world through the international flights, and all over America quickly of course, and EVERYWHERE. It’s very easy for the First Zombie to bite/kill/control tons of people in a secluded place (like bathrooms, for example) where no one would know anything’s wrong at all until these zombies are now spread out ALL OVER THE PLACE with orders to find similar secluded places of their own and bite tons of people. It’s all very very very very very simple and there was essentially zero chance of the First Zombie’s plan not working or being stopped by anyone. Nothing anyone could do.
“Redrover, you gotta get your facts straight, LOL.”
The memory ain’t what it used to be.
..Which is rather diturbing, considering I haven’t hit middle age yet.
Great strip BTW. Owen, fantastic eyes, but April’s nose in the 2nd and 3rd panels is rather deformed. 2nd is passable, looks like just a shading malfunction.. but in the 3rd the whole nose has been skewed to fit into the panel. It looks like its been severely broken. This is postive CnC by the way - not an attack. I love the work you’ve done in the comic.
Hmm. This is of course a moot point, but barring sentient zombies like TFZ going around and turning people into zombies in highly urbanized settings and then sneaking away to other ones to repeat the act again and again, I don’t think zombies -even ones that can spread just from one bite- would actually be such a huge threat. Military units would have little trouble at all given that they have the advantages of mobility, coordination and sheer firepower. And in America, what with large areas of wilderness and widely available firearms and ammunition, things would generally be easier on humans.
I accept them being such a threat when reading this though since it has been explained that TFZ controls the zombies, can orchestrate attacks, and even equip them and have them operate advanced machinery like airplanes. Getting into a firefight with such zombies would be, well, LESS THAN PLEASANT. @_@
Just to be clear, to those of you who think it’s impossible for zombies to take over the world, you have this same problem with basically every single zombie movie/story ever made, right? In most of those stories zombies totally take over the world, or close enough, as I recall. And it makes perfect sense for them to do that.
“Military units would have little trouble at all given that they have the advantages of mobility, coordination and sheer firepower.”
Um, that hasn’t helped much in Iraq and these zombies are a much greater opponent than the insurgents there.
I guess some people just won’t get it, even when I go into massive detail, but anyway, it’s a 100 percent fact that it would be incredibly easy for the First Zombie to get his zombies all over the world very very quickly. And there’s so many different ways he could do it. Even the riskiest ways would probably be successful, but he’s not taking any risks after going through 65 years of torture for this.
I already said I accept it in this story because your explanation makes sense. It’s not just a bunch of mindless things that rip and tear people apart and are unstoppable because… well… just because, as is with the case with the majority of zombie stories.
As for your comparison to zombie movies… yeah, pretty much. Most zombie movies completely fail at making it convincing (which, I stress, is NOT the case here). They never have a discernible reason for the zombies to spread so quickly other than “they just do”. As an aside, the Iraq comparison fails because if the insurgents actually get into firefights with the military, they are almost invariably trounced. The military forces have every advantage in the book. The vast majority of casualties are from IEDs and suicide bombers. Zombies that can’t even pick up an AK-47 (like the vast majority of zombies) could hardly be expected to be able to get close enough to start biting.
“As an aside, the Iraq comparison fails because if the insurgents actually get into firefights with the military, they are almost invariably trounced. The military forces have every advantage in the book.”
If they were outnumbered 50:1, fighting against enemies that need direct brain shots (or their heads sliced off) to be stopped, no military in the world would have a chance. You have a problem with the zombies getting that 50:1 advantage in the first place, though, and I’ve already tried to explain how they would at length. I could explain a ton more, but it doesn’t matter.
“Zombies that can’t even pick up an AK-47 (like the vast majority of zombies) could hardly be expected to be able to get close enough to start biting.”
But the zombies are EVERYWHERE. It ends up mostly being a case of trying to find them all (and avoid shooting non-zombies in the process, which is very tough at times) and killing them before they turn the whole world into zombies. It’s not a case of, “Here’s 50 zombies lined up for guys with machine guns to shoot.” No, it’s a trillion times harder than that. And while the zombies don’t get tired and keep growing in numbers, the military keeps getting killed off and needing sleep. Once there are several million zombies in various places all throughout the world, the humans are doomed with absolutely no chance at victory.
I think maybe some people have a lot of trouble thinking we can be taken down by zombies because we’re taught to think of humans as the best in this world. We dominate this planet, doing whatever we’d like. Not to mention this is messing with the American mentality of being #1. And then you have the stereotypical zombie that’s just mindless and driven by its own hunger. I think in most zombie movies, they are an unorganized mass that eventually falls to the more intelligent human protagonists. But think about it… zombie-durability being utilized in an efficient manner by someone like TFZ.
And the element of surprise has always been a great asset in war, hasn’t it? It’s not like the military has been sitting around, twidling its thumbs, thinking, “What will we do in case of a zombie invasion one day?”
It is a comic. It is stupid to argue if the story is entirely logical… in the real world there are no zombies and no vampires…. i think
I do not think it would be so fast and i think ships and submarines and bunkers should last longer but most of them would die anyway without food and medical supply.
Still it’s kind of stupid to make a big discussion out of it. It’s the story… it doesn’t get better if you question every detail.
Hardly. There’s more ways to stop a threat than killing outright, even against zombies since they’re still using human anatomy (it’s physically impossible to stand with a broken pelvic girdle, for example), and there’s more to military hardware than guns. Just as the “anti-zombie” crowd can be accused of overlooking the advantages zombies would have, the “pro-zombie” crowd tends to grossly oversimplify in order to make things plausible. I mentioned mobility for a reason. There’s more to battle than simply attacking the enemy or picking a hill to make a dramatic last stand on. A unit that gets into a protracted battle against a human enemy without relief will be wiped out if they just try to fight it out in one spot. It’d be no different with zombies. A human unit that tried to slug it out with the aforementioned 50:1 ratio of zombies with just guns and no relief [i]while[/i] under constant attack would fall. A unit with heavy weapons or vehicles is much more capable of taking out larger numbers of zombies, flanking, ambushing, and making tactical withdrawals. To paraphrase the corporate saying, fight smart, not hard.
“And the element of surprise has always been a great asset in war, hasn’t it? It’s not like the military has been sitting around, twidling its thumbs, thinking, “What will we do in case of a zombie invasion one day?†”
You underestimate the imaginations of bored soldiers.
True, but as Bobby has already said… it all bottles down to numbers.
Them Soldiers on that hill are fine till a zerg of undead simply becomes too much. The zombies don’t need to sleep, all they live for is to kill and eat all those who are alive.
No army in the world can stop 1 million+ zombies marching towards them, sooner or later the ammo will run out.
The military might have been able make a difference except for three things -
Suprise. They have no idea what they are fighting, and the ‘first day’ zombies were likely actively avoiding police and military units. There would probably be hundreds before anyone really knew how to kill one for certain and thousands before the word got spread. It takes time to mobilize military assets - time they simply did not have even assuming the military believed the earliest reports.
Numbers. The fact that they can turn you into a zombie right away as long as they kill you with the bite. My apologies to the author if he mentioned that before and I missed it, the ability to turn large numbers of people into zombies that fast is just beyondnasty.
The third thing is the tactical and combat skills of TFZ and the fact that he can ‘loan’ them to zombies under his control. Basic Infantry skills would be bad enough, but I am thinking more and more that TFZ was Special Forces of some sort.
There has never been a military operation in the history of the human race that went perfect, and only a perfect military response would have been able to contain the problem before it was all over the world.
I think the biggest problem here is that most of the people complaining that this could never work are thinking “this could never work against me” instead of “there is no way this could ever happen”. I know that sounds confusing so let me explain:
I am fairly sure that most of us here could identify a zombie if it came shambling toward us, but how many people in the world could, how many would just look at a zombie and think its come crack-head shambling down the street (to their own demise). How many of you honestly believe you wouldn’t be laughed at if you called your local police station and said “Help there are zombies biting people down on Main Street”.
And if it happens the way Bobby says it does (after all it IS his story) how many people would even have “zombie infestation” cross their minds? When your loved one comes shambling out of an airport bathroom looking rather bloody and near dead would you immediately think “AH A ZOMBIE!!!!!” or would you think “Oh sh*t they’ve been mugged in the bathroom and I need to help them”?
I will end my rant with this, if you think you can write the story better then by all means do, that just gives me one more comic to read every MWF.
it’s a 100 percent fact that it would be incredibly easy for the First Zombie to get his zombies all over the world very very quickly.
True enough he could get a zombie or soon to be zombie on a plane, but the second someone on a plane looks really bad (as in ill or near death) the plane gets quarantined (yes they do quarintine planes) stopping the zombie from getting out that way. And I dare say that various countries would probably start shooting down planes when they realised what was going on.
Of course if the zombie virus took more than a day, probably a day and a half mimimum to show any side effects then it could possibly get past quarintine, but that would mean the zombies take longer than a few days to take over the world.
“When your loved one comes shambling out of an airport bathroom looking rather bloody and near dead . . .”
Just want to quickly point out that they wouldn’t look rather bloody and near dead. The First Zombie’s not that stupid. He’d have them looking completely normal as they come out so they wouldn’t have any problem getting on their flights, and he could accomplish this very easily. I’ll spare myself the two minutes of explaining it and let you use your imagination.
LOL, and right as I explain that someone makes a long comment about the same subject.
“True enough he could get a zombie or soon to be zombie on a plane, but the second someone on a plane looks really bad (as in ill or near death) . . .”
They would not look really bad. When they’ve “died” just minutes earlier and when their wounds are not in conspicuous places and BLAH BLAH BLAH, and when they’re wearing the appropriate attire and when they have instructions from the First Zombie to act perfectly normal and BLAH BLAH BLAH, all of those flights land with absolutely no problem. And believe me, absolutely any complaint or argument that anyone has about ANY aspect of this will be VERY easily explained. I’ve thought about all of this at length and it’s all perfectly fine. Feel free to keep saying pointless things, though. Also, even if the flights DON’T land, it’s absolutely NO PROBLEM. It would all STILL spread just perfectly — maybe just a little slower, though. Two months instead of one to kill everyone maybe.
“A human unit that tried to slug it out with the aforementioned 50:1 ratio of zombies with just guns and no relief [i]while[/i] under constant attack would fall. A unit with heavy weapons or vehicles is much more capable of taking out larger numbers of zombies, flanking, ambushing, and making tactical withdrawals.”
You’re not grasping that there basically IS NO FIGHT. There is no place where HERE’S A BUNCH OF ZOMBIES AND HERE’S THE ARMY AND NOW YOU TWO FIGHT EACH OTHER. No, none of that, or almost none at least. The zombies are EVERYWHERE, intermixed with tons of NON-ZOMBIE HUMANS, people you don’t want to shoot. The zombies are just rapidly, as fast as possible, seeking out all the humans and turning them into zombies. They’re all over the place. The main thing the military would be doing probably is seeking out the zombies all over the place, but there’s not enough time. The entire world is the battlefield and your enemy is everywhere. While you’re trying to find and kill all the zombies, the zombies are doubling and tripling and quadroupling in numbers by the hour. Eventually, while you’re still looking for all the zombies, trying to get them all, you’re (the military) now the only humans left, but NOW you’re outnumbered over 1,000:1 and at that point sheer numbers very easily wins the day.
First of all, I’m really enjoying the comic. I’ve been reading it and the comments for a while but haven’t posted anything till now.
I don’t want to jump on the “this isn’t logical” bandwagon about the spreading of the zombies, but there is one aspect of the whole airport thing that really shouldn’t work out, and thats the bathroom thing. There are a couple international airports in my area and I play hockey with someone who works at one. The problem with the bathroom idea is that the bathrooms at international airports are only past the area where you get your ticket checked. This is done to stop people from putting bombs/etc in the bathrooms because now they have to pass through security.
First of all, I’m really enjoying the comic. I’ve been reading it and the comments for a while but haven’t posted anything till now.
I don’t want to jump on the “this isn’t logical†bandwagon about the spreading of the zombies, but there is one aspect of the whole airport thing that really shouldn’t work out, and thats the bathroom thing. There are a couple international airports in my area and I play hockey with someone who works at one. The problem with the bathroom idea is that the bathrooms at international airports are only past the area where you get your ticket checked. This is done to stop people from putting bombs/etc in the bathrooms because now they have to pass through security. How would TFZ get around this?
You’ll probably hate me, Bobby, I’m one of those people who doesn’t really understand zombie movies… And I’m sure if I took the time to read through all the comments, maybe I’d have a better idea?
I just wanted to confirm something hopefully quickly. The problem I’ve always had with movies like 28 days later is that the people turn into zombies within seconds and I never understood how they could ever get onto a plane without people realizing it. You wouldn’t get a plane of the ground with zombies running amok inside, no?
BUT– In your story, it’s possible because the zombies practice a little bit of subterfuge, right? TFZ keeps new zombies behaving naturally until they’ve gotten on a plane and over to Japan, Australia, Peru, etc? And you infiltrate places like military bases by grabbing soldiers off-base who are on leave, *poof* they’re zombified, and then you get them back in and take the base down from the inside?
I guess the problem I usually have is it’s usually easy to tell who’s the zombie, who’s not, but yours are more subtle, I’m guessing. Now that TFZ’s in control he doesn’t have to worry about subtleties
p.s. Did the vampires ever consider hitting up blood banks, like the ones they have at hospitals and such? or would those have been purposely destroyed by TFZ?
Ok, I’m glad someone brought up the friendly-fire complication.
Here’s another scenario for quick spread of zombies. If TFZ just had the first victims play possum in the morgue the first day, all the official and news attention would be on them, as some sort of bizarre unexplained crime. While police and citizens would be out looking for him, It should be easy to ditch them, after all he walked across the ocean floor. I’ll give him credit for persistence.
In the meantime, he could grab some vagrants or something from the beach area. Say 5-10 of them total, so a nice military sized squad is in the works. Then come nightfall strike in scattered suburban areas, take out whole families. If you figure a standard nuclear family, 2 parents and 2 children, and the conservative estimate that each of the ‘first day’ zombies could take out a very low ball estimate of 5 families each. that gives you 100-200 zombies in the first night. Not to mention each of them is able to further raise these numbers.
Yes, you might lose some here and there, but imagine ahow well a small zombie group (like a family) would do in a cross country trip. Only stopping for gas and to (maybe) infect the gas station attendant(s). You could have small cells in most of the North America inside of a day, two at most. Not to mention through airports. Each of these cells magnify the problem. Containment isn’t an option at this point. Especially when you consider that while you could (potentially) shoot down all air traffic, what’s to stop hordes of them from walking across the ocean like TFZ? You might be able to delay for a while, and sure, a nuclear sub already underway when this started would be safe, up until it had to resupply food anyway.
We wouldn’t be looking at simple geometric addition of numbers, it would be an exponentialgrowth factor.
I think the fact that so many people can shoot holes in your arguments which can only be patched with, “TFZ IS UBER!” or “Humans are dumb.” shows that there IS obviously some sort of problem with your backstory. I love the comic for its art, and whats actually happening on camera, but the backstory just doesn’t work, and no amount of ALL CAPS will make it anymore plausible.
And believe me, absolutely any complaint or argument that anyone has about ANY aspect of this will be VERY easily explained. I’ve thought about all of this at length and it’s all perfectly fine. Feel free to keep saying pointless things, though.
I agree you’ve thought this out very well indeed, but you don’t seem to have thought out possible vs plausability. yes things are possible, but it gets increasingly less likely that all these things could happen and then the story gets completely unbelivable and there’s no point continuing to read it.
but I guess its pointless to say that as you’ve got everything fixed in your mind of how things happened, ah well just another movie I won’t be seeing I guess. shame you started out so well.
It would be pretty hard to quarantine a plane when the zombie they spot starts killing people in bloody ways. When the passengers run out the doors screaming about bloody mayhem, 90 percent or more of guards will let them past (at least for the moment). What the guards don’t notice is the two or three normal looking zombies in the crowd who aren’t making any fuss at all. TFZ is that sneaky I think.
To put the confusion in perspective I have to use an example that some may find offensive - I do not intend to offend, only to show what the first day might be like.
Remember that shooting at Virginia Tech? Imagine that was TFZ’s initial attack. Every person killed gets up again a few minutes later as a zombie and starts helping TFZ spread. Except that not everyone is killed and turned immediately - many are bitten but left alive to run screaming out into the streets (and past whatever police containment may be in place).
Now give the attack director GENUINE military experience in what works and not works. Then give them PERFECT communication and control with their subordinates.
Imagine you are the cops facing this.
Then imagine you are watching the news that day in whatever manner you were watching the news the day Virginia Tech happened.
Now imagine what both of the above would be like if the attackers did not need to rest, were fanatically loyal to TFZ, and could only be killed by perfectly placed head shots.
Anyone else recall that Hollywood bank fiasco from a few years back where the bank robbers had body armor and endless ammo? That’s what trying to kill one of these guys is like.
i want my fiiiiiiiiiiixxx!!! neeeeeeed it! where is the new comic its my birthday and i want my comic!!! (its not really my birthday, that was sunday, Im just being whiny) I think this page should be forwarded to all Noobs, I think moost noobs questions have been rehashed and reanswered here XD fun to read though!
I show up to read this AWESOMELY TERRIFIC COMIC and you’re late.
Sorry about being a stickler before, it’s just much more… Much easier to conceptualize when you take a rundown like that, the heading straight for the airport thing. Even if that isn’t exactly how he did it, the fact that it is physically possible to be done is all we need to know. Sometimes you just gotta give the slower people a real rundown before they get it.
[ x.x i guess i’m one of the slow people now
Ironhead: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the backstory and it’s rather amazing that people complain so much about it when my story is somewhere around a TRILLION TIMES MORE PLAUSIBLE THAN ANY OTHER ZOMBIE STORY/MOVIE, and yet people have such a problem with this one. It’s my opinion that even though almost all zombie movies are horrible, even the ones WITHOUT A MAGICAL TFZ make sense on the level of how zombies take over and how simple that would be. But WITH TFZ, it’s child’s play.
“yes things are possible, but it gets increasingly less likely that all these things could happen and then the story gets completely unbelivable and there’s no point continuing to read it.”
LOL. And how does it get “increasingly less likely”? What causes that? These things are not only POSSIBLE — they’re extremely easy. Bye!
Nara: Happy birthday!
Courtney: Thanks! Now that’s the proper, adult response when you question something and think you’re right and then it’s explained away properly, unlike Colt and Ironhead who simply refuse to see the obvious truth because they can’t admit they’re wrong.
Nara and Courtney: New page within seven hours or so probably!
You think 28 Days Later is a rubbish movie? *GASP* D:
Meh… I’m sure you have perfectly good reasons why you don’t like it. I enjoyed it though…. but anyway.
Don’t listen to all the whiners complaining about the ‘discrepancies’ of your scenario, since considering how you’ve developed the story, it seems very plausible (even though vampires and zombies don’t exist in reality). Even when considering military strength, once the number of zombies exceed a certain number (which they did very quickly), humanity quickly becomes screwed. Bullets can do a lot of damage, but considering how zombies are pretty much already dead and are extremely resilient, if they surround you, there’s no hope for you, since they’ll just keep on coming, getting closer and closer until you run out of ammo or they just get close enough to get in a bite or two. Zombies don’t get tired, they don’t NEED to eat (though they just want to anyway), whereas humans need food and rest, and a relatively fragile in comparison. With zombies, the numbers game works, because even if you arm a group of people to the teeth, its only a matter of time before they run out of ammo, or become too fatigued to continue to fight (let alone insane or suicidal). So all in all, this comic is just fine.
1. How long is the zombie incubation time/symptoms?
2. Is TFZ super-intelligent?
A remark about the zombies breaking down any force with sheer numbers. No. One tank could plow through zombies without even stopping. Try pulling a tank apart with your bare hands, it really doesn’t work, so without intelligent zombies, there would be a lot of military survivors. A tank can travel 60 mph, and getting caught under the tread would turn a zombie into essentially a liquid. Not to mention NAPALM dropped from a plane. This would be ridiculously effective, dead flesh already holds a fire, but with napalm, the fire sticks to the target. Considering zombies feel no pain, they’d see no reason to put it out. It could take an hour and smell really bad, but eventually they’d be a blackened skeleton.
However, as I take it, TFZ has some sort of “bee queen” thing going on where he can control all zombies as a single part of the same organism.
Though I don’t see how you can get bent out of shape about criticism, since you’re more than willing to criticize “almost everything” and say it’s bad.
I’m not getting bent out of shape about criticism AT ALL — I’m merely RESPONDING to people who are saying incorrect things and I’m saying what the actual situation is. It is annoying when people refuse to believe obvious things, though.
“1. How long is the zombie incubation time/symptoms?”
I think I’ve answered this 2,000 times. If the bites/injuries you sustain from a zombie wouldn’t normally kill you (meaning if a regular human hurt you in the same manner), you die within 24 hours, even from just a tiny scrape of teeth on your arm that draws a little blood. And if you did just have a simple bite like that, you progressively get worse over the 24 hours. In the first few hours you probably look totally normal still, but just feel sick. 12 hours in you probably just look super sick, but nowhere near like a zombie yet, and it’s probably not until maybe 20 hours in that you start looking REALLY WEIRD.
“2. Is TFZ super-intelligent?”
No, just a regular smart guy.
“A remark about the zombies breaking down any force with sheer numbers. No. One tank could plow through zombies without even stopping.”
So what? They have billions to plow through, so many that the tank would get stuck over the 10 foot high pile of dead zombies that it makes, but the zombies wouldn’t even care since they have so many left after that. If you drop literally 1,000 people on top of a tank, everyone in that tank will be dead very soon after that. But even if they WEREN’T, there’s no problem. The First Zombie also uses weapons, as I’ve said many times before, and he uses bombs.
“Not to mention NAPALM dropped from a plane. This would be ridiculously effective, dead flesh already holds a fire, but with napalm, the fire sticks to the target.”
Once again, the zombies are EVERYWHERE, though, and they’re out in all the houses in the fucking world getting to absolutely everyone, totally spread out, everywhere. It’s not like they’re all in a big group for you to drop napalm on, and killing them all is only a secondary concern to KILLING THEM ALL BEFORE THEY KILL 99.9999% OF THE WORLD. It’s a mad dash to try to kill them all and there’s no time. Eventually, as I said recently, it would be just the military (mostly) and the zombies left on the planet, and then when there’s five billion zombies against the MAYBE 100,000 soldiers or so left on Earth by that point, it’s just a matter of picking them all off, swarming them, going all over the place. Wouldn’t take long.
“I’m sure I could name lots of other movies that I hate that you’d be even more shocked by! I hate almost everything, in movies and in general.”
Fair enough… if its a habit of yours to hate everything, then go for it. Just makes you more interesting (well, as long as you hate everything for a reason… otherwise its just lame).
Oh, and Ted, a tank may be a formidable vehicle, but it takes PEOPLE to drive the tank. One tank team may be able to hold off and kill many zombies for a while, but its only a matter of time before fatigue/hunger/thirst starts setting in. Plus a tank has limited ammunition and fuel. All an armoured vehicle will be able to do is last a little bit longer than the ground troops. Planes will require the bases to be defended before they can take off, so a relentless assault by zombies will put them out of use. Zombies don’t have morale, fatigue, so taking them on is damn hard. You can’t just isolate yourself in a easy to defend passage, because zombies aren’t like humans in nature. They don’t care if they die. They see a human, they will do their hardest to get a bite out of that human. The military is geared around taking out other people… not zombies, and though modern weapons can be very effective at killing, when up against a million zombies, it becomes whole different scenario.
That’s what I’m saying, without a super intelligent first zombie, I don’t really understand who the zombies can do anything more than one thing at a time. Imagine having to give orders to a gigantic, mindless horde. Thought doesn’t work at instantly, some people think very slowly. To fly a plane would probably take all the First Zombie’s focus. “OK pull this switch… press that button.” I can understand something like “Kill all humans.” Simple, to the point, need only be said once.
That brings up of course, how intelligent is each individual zombie and do they have any recollection of their past life? Shaun of the Dead they had some extremely vague memories, but only the most basic possible. NOTLD had zombies being too dumb to even open a door using the handle.
Somehow didn’t notice this last comment by Ted until now.
“Imagine having to give orders to a gigantic, mindless horde.”
That mindless horde all wants “braaaiiiins” and they don’t need a leader to go get 99.9999% of the brains on Earth. After that it’s just a case of picking off the remaining humans, which is what TFZ mostly helps with, due to his ability to smell blood and other strengths, like flying planes and dropping bombs.
“To fly a plane would probably take all the First Zombie’s focus. ‘OK pull this switch… press that button.’ ”
He flies the plane himself, although he could probably get others to fly planes as well on suicide missions and such. He doesn’t really need others to fly planes, though.
“That brings up of course, how intelligent is each individual zombie and do they have any recollection of their past life?”
April 24th, 2007 at 12:14 am
TFZ - Bringing total social breakdown in days.
This really does help show the chaos that any global disaster would bring to people. Kind of tragic really. Was the gunfire that they speak of due to zombies or just normal looting?
I also really like the depth of April’s eyes in the third panel.
April 24th, 2007 at 12:29 am
Gunfire = trying to shoot a million zombies.
April 24th, 2007 at 3:17 am
Classic Zombie movie situation. The fact the Zombies are slow and easy to kill is not the point, its the fact humans are always unable to work together.
The panel showing the Supermarket “battle” for basic food and water shows this.
Sure TFZ’s mind control over the Zombies makes them more deadly, but in the end humans always fail because they cannot get along, even in the face of death.
April 24th, 2007 at 3:17 am
Is it just me or does Mac look a little like Addison Payne? Maybe I just havent had enough coffee yet.
April 24th, 2007 at 3:28 am
Alex: There’s essentially nothing at all that the humans could have done to win this war. In terms of trained soldiers they were outnumbered before they even knew they were in a war basically, and by the time they could get any proper plan in the works there was already over a billion zombies probably. It’s just a numbers game. If anything like this happened for real, even WITHOUT TFZ leading them, humanity would have no chance. TFZ mostly just helped with getting EVERY LAST HUMAN, getting them ALL, which barely even came into play until there were only tens of thousands left anyway, after the war was long since over and won.
April 24th, 2007 at 4:36 am
Wow. Spet 29TH. That’s my Dad’s birthday…..and 5 days after mine….
April 24th, 2007 at 7:41 am
They might have been able to hold the zombies off in localized pockets without TFZ, but fighting the zombies is much like fighting an exceptionally virulent plague. If you catch it early enough (first day, or *maybe* second day) and react strongly enough (shoot any zombie on sight) then you can contain the problem.
But yeah, even without TFZ the best possible result would have had recurring flareups here and there worldwide for years that took out cities. With TFZ in charge the horde was unstoppable unless you killed TFZ.
Doubtless the argument will crop up every couple weeks for the run of the comic. Any chance you could create a FAQ page we can direct people to when it does? It would cut down on having to repeat the same arguments every time at least…
April 24th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Well. We can all rest easy knowing the asshats who rampaged through the grocery store are all shuffling corpses.
Must be fun being TFZ. Like a game of checkers were your opponent just has a single king left and all you have to do is watch it jump around. I know he has a plan, but I would have played with the humans for awhile longer.
It’d be awfully boring once everyone is rotting, I think.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:10 am
I disagree with Bobby entirely. Numbers don’t count for that much in warfare, a HUGE portion is equipment. The zombies would have a head start but the military wouldn’t have much difficulty killing a bunch of slow, mindless zombies, even if their numbers are in the billions.
Hell, look at Germany vs. Russia in WWI. Russia’s soldiers weren’t mindless, they did have some equipment (2:1 ratio of soldiers to rifles) but they got their asses handed to them.
At this point in Last Blood, the back story isn’t really that important but I don’t think that “the entire world failed to notice in time” really works, especially with America’s alphabet of intelligence agencies and sattelite systems.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Note: Russia had waaaaaay more soldiers. I should have made that clear.
April 24th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Maybe when they are brand new the zombies aren’t so slow and stupid?
They really would be pretty hard to stop. Since the only thing that puts them down for good is a head shot it’s like fighting someone strung out on PCP. Except there are several hundred if not thousand of them, and they *never* have to rest.
And it doesn’t hurt that they can smell humans several miles away.
With a couple of basic rules the zombies as portrayed here really could take over. Avoid detection unless operating in large groups, bite as many humans as possible, protect yourself, find and help other zombies…
While I still have some issues with how fast the Horde took over I no longer argue that they could do it eventually. If humans knew what they were facing it would be different, but that lack of knowledge gives the zombies a critical first few days before anyone in power really understands what needs to be done.
I can’t wait to find out why TFZ is doing what he/it is doing. Assuing he/it has any choice in the matter.
April 24th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Even if we did have more humans than zombies, every time our people would die, they would get reinforcements. It might be all right to kill off all the zombies you see pretty easily, but Bobby said you could be infected and carry it before you died, so how would you know who would become a zombie tomorrow? It would come down to the fact that they can kill more of us faster than we can even tell. Maybe we did kill their first few waves easily, but with zombies, the big issue is that they just keep coming.
But I do have to say, I think bobby’s thinking on the spread of zombiehood is a little shoddy. I mean, they started out with one zombie making a really dramatic entrance. People are gonna notice when a girl has her neck ripped out by a rotting man, especially with all the witnesses you have at a beach, and the two friends that were with her. The fact that zombies could take over the world in a month isn’t what I have an issue with. I just think he’d have to be more subtle about it first. TFZ would attract attention, people would be quarantined (maybe), but I can only see him getting two or three people before the cops showed up to figure out what the hell was going on. Those couple people wouldn’t be able to spread zombie-hood-ism over the world if the cops were keeping tabs on them.
Maybe they were in the hospital, just those couple people. How does zombiness spread? They could have infected outpatients, I suppose. And TFZ was probably shot quite a few times. Is he immortal, like a vampire? (only he rots so he wouldn’t heal the same) But if they thought he was dead and put him in the… damn… I can’t remember the word. The place where you keep dead people until they’re burried. Anyways, if he started off with some helpers from the _______ [insert name of place i can’t remember], and that girl he attacked infected people at the hospital, it might still work the way bobby said…
I believe its possble, Bobby, but just not how you’ve said. I’d hate to distract you, I know you’re working on a lot of other stuff for this comic/story/movie, but I really think you should rethink exactly how zombie-ness spread in the beginning, and how one becomes infected.
And like Brellchild said, you could maybe set up a separate page to direct people to to explain it.
April 24th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Brellchild, TFZ is doing it all for revenge, so far as we’ve been told. Wanting to make the fourty (Or was it fifty…?) or so remaining Vamps starve to death due to a lack of human blood.
As for humans during the disaster… I think we’ve seen enough natural disasters over the last decade or so where the survivors get a bit manic, strike out for themselves and wind up doing things they’d regret under normal circumstances. Completely believeable in this scenario too. In fact, more so - Zombie plaugue would induce more frenzied reactions than the average natural distaster, i’m sure!
And it gives me a chuckle to see Principal Howard outside the car. “Awe, c’mon guys… let me in!”
April 24th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Courtney and Nick are wrong, plain and simple.
“Russia’s soldiers weren’t mindless, they did have some equipment (2:1 ratio of soldiers to rifles) but they got their asses handed to them.”
Um, the ratio here, though, is more like 50:1, and equipment means almost NOTHING when it’s almost entirely close range fighting. It’s not like there’s a ton of zombies forming a line and running after you. No, the zombies are EVERYWHERE, surrounding you at all times, and in order to kill them you have to destroy their brain or remove their head, and they don’t get tired and need sleep like you do. I could go on and on, as I have before. It’s just silly to think the humans could have any chance.
“TFZ would attract attention, people would be quarantined (maybe), but I can only see him getting two or three people before the cops showed up to figure out what the hell was going on.”
LOL, TFZ laughs in the faces of cops. Shooting TFZ in the HEAD doesn’t even stop him, as we’ve shown in the comics already. He’s very smart and very strong and very fast and great with weapons and can even fly planes, as you’ll see him doing later, as I’ve said before. Even if a dozen cops surrounded him he wouldn’t break a sweat and he’d get out of the jam, but he wouldn’t let any cops get near him. I think you give the police too much credit on their arrival time. He bites that girl on Page 4, he then SPRINTS off the beach (maybe grabbing a hooded sweatshirt on the way), steals a car, drives to the nearest airport, goes to the international terminals, goes into all the restrooms and quietly kills people and then controls their minds, very easily getting multiple zombies onto every continent, and the war is basically over and won at that moment. But he’s not nearly done yet. He’ll make sure, and it’s so easy. There’s so many different ways he can do this and he doesn’t even need to go to an airport to make it happen, but he’d want to go there anyway since he’s a pilot and he wants to see the new planes.
April 24th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
A lot of the comments you get on here and Marry Me seem to be pointless arguments. I think maybe because you give doubters the time of day and respond to their comments, Mr. Crosby… but then again, someone who responds to his fans is always nice.
Wooo, hope I see you this Saturday! My break lights are both busted so it’s iffy.
April 24th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
I respond to everyone no matter what, good or bad. Just my style. And it’s May 5th!
April 24th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
While I do support the idea that the biting victims would face quarantine, it would still work if victims of the infection fell more and more under TFZ’s mental influence as the infection progressed. If this happened they would be actively avoiding containment - which would give TFZ just the edge he would need to be unstoppable.
Hmmm. Mr Crosby? Are you saying TFZ has the option of (instead of a 24 hour infection) killing people and immediately putting them under his control? THAT ability I don’t remember hearing mentioned before, but I haven’t read every comment since the strip began. It would explain the ability to explode worldwide quite nicely, however. Maybe he just didn’t use it much because it took concentrated effort on his part or weakened him somewhat.
April 24th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Heh. all we really need now is to find out TFZ was born in this area. Wouldn’t that be a wierd little plot twist…
Do we know anything about him yet other than his military background and his insane hatred of vampires?
April 24th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
He IS a vampire. So unless he was turned into a vampire (which I’m pretty sure bobby has said is a very unusual action) like Math, then I don’t think he could have been born in that area.
Do we have any proof other than his clothing that he has had a military background? I wouldn’t think the 50 - 60 vampires in the world would have a military… And I’m pretty sure that the military uniform he was wearing would have been way to modern for him (From what I recall -correct me if I’m wrong, though- he’s been down and out for at least hundred years. A hundred years ago they wouldn’t have been wearing those type of uniforms.)
April 24th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
“Are you saying TFZ has the option of (instead of a 24 hour infection) killing people and immediately putting them under his control?”
Obviously. The 24-hour thing is only if the bites wouldn’t have been normally fatal, like just a tiny bite on the hand or whatever. But in most cases when they get bitten the bites are deadly by themselves, ripping out their throats and such, and they die right away and are of course then under his influence as they instantly become zombies once they die.
“Do we know anything about him yet other than his military background and his insane hatred of vampires?”
Murdo made it clear that he was an American soldier from World War II early in the story when they were carrying his body to the dumpster. I’ve also said that he’s related to someone who we’ve already met.
“So unless he was turned into a vampire (which I’m pretty sure bobby has said is a very unusual action) like Math, then I don’t think he could have been born in that area.”
I haven’t said it’s unusual and I thought I already confirmed that TFZ was human once, but maybe not. Anyway, there’s another spoiler for you.
“And I’m pretty sure that the military uniform he was wearing would have been way to modern for him (From what I recall -correct me if I’m wrong, though- he’s been down and out for at least hundred years. A hundred years ago they wouldn’t have been wearing those type of uniforms.)”
Redrover, you gotta get your facts straight, LOL. Anyway, he’s been out for 65 years and he was in the United States military in World War II.
April 24th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
I’m sorry to say this but, Zombies (ghouls) being blood-starved vampires has actually already been thought of. Although the intelligence piece wasn’t there. Read a series when I was little about vamps and in that universe ghouls would be made when the vampire would turn someone but not give them enough blood in return. So you’d have a half-dead vampire which couldn’t be killed walking around out there just smart enough to know that it needs blood. Yays! Not exactly like yours but close enough to warrant a mention. I don’t know if you’ve answered this before but, do the zombies need blood? You’d think they would if they’re blood starved vampires. Also wouldn’t getting blood mean that TFZ would be able to heal and so-forth again? One more thing: Have you given any thought to the start of Vampires? That is (I think) the most interesting (and telling) part of any vampire story. The worst one so far has been a detailed spell (erg) the best was a quick mention that there would be a symbiotic relationship to the evolutionary speeds of the human and vampire races. Humans could adapt, vampires (very long lived humans needing blood) could make sure the race wouldn’t overspecialize and breed in weakness. It always tickled me that the shorter one was the better explanation. I think I’ve rambled. Sorry.
April 24th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
“I don’t know if you’ve answered this before but, do the zombies need blood? You’d think they would if they’re blood starved vampires.”
Only ONE of the zombies is a blood starved vampire. Only the First Zombie. Do they need blood in what way? How much? It doesn’t really come into this story, so I don’t know. They sure WANT blood, I can tell you that!
“Also wouldn’t getting blood mean that TFZ would be able to heal and so-forth again?”
Heal and become a regular vampire again? No, that’s over for him. Once he officially became a zombie after 65 years, there’s no turning back. Keep in mind that after just two weeks of no blood you can’t even move anymore (as a vampire) because you’re so weak, so for 65 years he was frozen in place in that coffin, and then something CLICKS and he becomes a zombie and regains all his strength. There’s no going back to a vampire for him, though, no.
“One more thing: Have you given any thought to the start of Vampires?”
I haven’t, no. Doesn’t come into play here.
April 24th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
“I respond to everyone no matter what, good or bad. Just my style. And it’s May 5th!”
Yeah, I checked my calendar. DAMN. >_
April 24th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
My take on Zombie Plague….
It falls to how it is spread.
If it is by bite only, it really isn’t that dangerous.
The biggest problems in that senerio are that people bitten might turn at any moment, people will panic, and people don’t want to shoot other “people”. Once they’ve killed a few of the creatures and accept that they are not human, then the odds get better. Quaranteen of people who are bitten and the destruction of all bead, bitten or not, will make a major impact.
If it spreads by water, blood, or fleas…. expect something like the Black Plague… a wildly spreading menace that no-one understands or can stop.
If organicly grown food can become contaminated, then all hope is lost. Without a vaccine, the best you can do is keep small cells alive. After all, larger groups are harder to secure. And the large farms needed for prolonged survival are susseptible to weather if kept defensible against zombies.
Since he hasn’t defined all of the carrier possibilities or symptoms.. it is hard to determine if humanity could have survived on its own. or, for instance, can the disease affect one who is dead before infection. If not, the morgue and cemetaries would not be a threat. Immediate cremation of all new corpses would be effective control against its spreading. The difficulty becomes, spotting people who are dieing, or in an accident. Surgery would become useless since those who might die on the table would have to be exicuted and destroyed to prevent risk.
Of course, the master zombie does throw all the odds off balance, as it can addapt and dirrect better attacks.
Aw crud… rambling…
April 24th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
“If it is by bite only, it really isn’t that dangerous.”
It’s only spread by bites and it’s still extremely dangerous, and quarantine is not possible once you get tons of these people all over the world through the international flights, and all over America quickly of course, and EVERYWHERE. It’s very easy for the First Zombie to bite/kill/control tons of people in a secluded place (like bathrooms, for example) where no one would know anything’s wrong at all until these zombies are now spread out ALL OVER THE PLACE with orders to find similar secluded places of their own and bite tons of people. It’s all very very very very very simple and there was essentially zero chance of the First Zombie’s plan not working or being stopped by anyone. Nothing anyone could do.
April 25th, 2007 at 1:04 am
“Redrover, you gotta get your facts straight, LOL.”
The memory ain’t what it used to be.
..Which is rather diturbing, considering I haven’t hit middle age yet.
Great strip BTW. Owen, fantastic eyes, but April’s nose in the 2nd and 3rd panels is rather deformed. 2nd is passable, looks like just a shading malfunction.. but in the 3rd the whole nose has been skewed to fit into the panel. It looks like its been severely broken. This is postive CnC by the way - not an attack. I love the work you’ve done in the comic.
April 25th, 2007 at 1:08 am
Hmm. This is of course a moot point, but barring sentient zombies like TFZ going around and turning people into zombies in highly urbanized settings and then sneaking away to other ones to repeat the act again and again, I don’t think zombies -even ones that can spread just from one bite- would actually be such a huge threat. Military units would have little trouble at all given that they have the advantages of mobility, coordination and sheer firepower. And in America, what with large areas of wilderness and widely available firearms and ammunition, things would generally be easier on humans.
I accept them being such a threat when reading this though since it has been explained that TFZ controls the zombies, can orchestrate attacks, and even equip them and have them operate advanced machinery like airplanes. Getting into a firefight with such zombies would be, well, LESS THAN PLEASANT. @_@
April 25th, 2007 at 1:15 am
Just to be clear, to those of you who think it’s impossible for zombies to take over the world, you have this same problem with basically every single zombie movie/story ever made, right? In most of those stories zombies totally take over the world, or close enough, as I recall. And it makes perfect sense for them to do that.
“Military units would have little trouble at all given that they have the advantages of mobility, coordination and sheer firepower.”
Um, that hasn’t helped much in Iraq and these zombies are a much greater opponent than the insurgents there.
I guess some people just won’t get it, even when I go into massive detail, but anyway, it’s a 100 percent fact that it would be incredibly easy for the First Zombie to get his zombies all over the world very very quickly. And there’s so many different ways he could do it. Even the riskiest ways would probably be successful, but he’s not taking any risks after going through 65 years of torture for this.
April 25th, 2007 at 1:32 am
I already said I accept it in this story because your explanation makes sense. It’s not just a bunch of mindless things that rip and tear people apart and are unstoppable because… well… just because, as is with the case with the majority of zombie stories.
As for your comparison to zombie movies… yeah, pretty much. Most zombie movies completely fail at making it convincing (which, I stress, is NOT the case here). They never have a discernible reason for the zombies to spread so quickly other than “they just do”. As an aside, the Iraq comparison fails because if the insurgents actually get into firefights with the military, they are almost invariably trounced. The military forces have every advantage in the book. The vast majority of casualties are from IEDs and suicide bombers. Zombies that can’t even pick up an AK-47 (like the vast majority of zombies) could hardly be expected to be able to get close enough to start biting.
April 25th, 2007 at 1:42 am
“As an aside, the Iraq comparison fails because if the insurgents actually get into firefights with the military, they are almost invariably trounced. The military forces have every advantage in the book.”
If they were outnumbered 50:1, fighting against enemies that need direct brain shots (or their heads sliced off) to be stopped, no military in the world would have a chance. You have a problem with the zombies getting that 50:1 advantage in the first place, though, and I’ve already tried to explain how they would at length. I could explain a ton more, but it doesn’t matter.
“Zombies that can’t even pick up an AK-47 (like the vast majority of zombies) could hardly be expected to be able to get close enough to start biting.”
But the zombies are EVERYWHERE. It ends up mostly being a case of trying to find them all (and avoid shooting non-zombies in the process, which is very tough at times) and killing them before they turn the whole world into zombies. It’s not a case of, “Here’s 50 zombies lined up for guys with machine guns to shoot.” No, it’s a trillion times harder than that. And while the zombies don’t get tired and keep growing in numbers, the military keeps getting killed off and needing sleep. Once there are several million zombies in various places all throughout the world, the humans are doomed with absolutely no chance at victory.
April 25th, 2007 at 1:55 am
I think maybe some people have a lot of trouble thinking we can be taken down by zombies because we’re taught to think of humans as the best in this world. We dominate this planet, doing whatever we’d like. Not to mention this is messing with the American mentality of being #1. And then you have the stereotypical zombie that’s just mindless and driven by its own hunger. I think in most zombie movies, they are an unorganized mass that eventually falls to the more intelligent human protagonists. But think about it… zombie-durability being utilized in an efficient manner by someone like TFZ.
And the element of surprise has always been a great asset in war, hasn’t it? It’s not like the military has been sitting around, twidling its thumbs, thinking, “What will we do in case of a zombie invasion one day?”
April 25th, 2007 at 2:25 am
It is a comic. It is stupid to argue if the story is entirely logical… in the real world there are no zombies and no vampires…. i think
I do not think it would be so fast and i think ships and submarines and bunkers should last longer but most of them would die anyway without food and medical supply.
Still it’s kind of stupid to make a big discussion out of it. It’s the story… it doesn’t get better if you question every detail.
April 25th, 2007 at 2:35 am
Hardly. There’s more ways to stop a threat than killing outright, even against zombies since they’re still using human anatomy (it’s physically impossible to stand with a broken pelvic girdle, for example), and there’s more to military hardware than guns. Just as the “anti-zombie” crowd can be accused of overlooking the advantages zombies would have, the “pro-zombie” crowd tends to grossly oversimplify in order to make things plausible. I mentioned mobility for a reason. There’s more to battle than simply attacking the enemy or picking a hill to make a dramatic last stand on. A unit that gets into a protracted battle against a human enemy without relief will be wiped out if they just try to fight it out in one spot. It’d be no different with zombies. A human unit that tried to slug it out with the aforementioned 50:1 ratio of zombies with just guns and no relief [i]while[/i] under constant attack would fall. A unit with heavy weapons or vehicles is much more capable of taking out larger numbers of zombies, flanking, ambushing, and making tactical withdrawals. To paraphrase the corporate saying, fight smart, not hard.
“And the element of surprise has always been a great asset in war, hasn’t it? It’s not like the military has been sitting around, twidling its thumbs, thinking, “What will we do in case of a zombie invasion one day?†”
You underestimate the imaginations of bored soldiers.
April 25th, 2007 at 2:54 am
True, but as Bobby has already said… it all bottles down to numbers.
Them Soldiers on that hill are fine till a zerg of undead simply becomes too much. The zombies don’t need to sleep, all they live for is to kill and eat all those who are alive.
No army in the world can stop 1 million+ zombies marching towards them, sooner or later the ammo will run out.
April 25th, 2007 at 3:21 am
I just noticed I’d failed to comment among all the Lore-Arguments here.
*Comments*
…
Tell Owen meluvhimlawngtimesuckysucky5dolla for the new picture.
April 25th, 2007 at 3:28 am
The military might have been able make a difference except for three things -
Suprise. They have no idea what they are fighting, and the ‘first day’ zombies were likely actively avoiding police and military units. There would probably be hundreds before anyone really knew how to kill one for certain and thousands before the word got spread. It takes time to mobilize military assets - time they simply did not have even assuming the military believed the earliest reports.
Numbers. The fact that they can turn you into a zombie right away as long as they kill you with the bite. My apologies to the author if he mentioned that before and I missed it, the ability to turn large numbers of people into zombies that fast is just beyondnasty.
The third thing is the tactical and combat skills of TFZ and the fact that he can ‘loan’ them to zombies under his control. Basic Infantry skills would be bad enough, but I am thinking more and more that TFZ was Special Forces of some sort.
There has never been a military operation in the history of the human race that went perfect, and only a perfect military response would have been able to contain the problem before it was all over the world.
April 25th, 2007 at 3:53 am
I think the biggest problem here is that most of the people complaining that this could never work are thinking “this could never work against me” instead of “there is no way this could ever happen”. I know that sounds confusing so let me explain:
I am fairly sure that most of us here could identify a zombie if it came shambling toward us, but how many people in the world could, how many would just look at a zombie and think its come crack-head shambling down the street (to their own demise). How many of you honestly believe you wouldn’t be laughed at if you called your local police station and said “Help there are zombies biting people down on Main Street”.
And if it happens the way Bobby says it does (after all it IS his story) how many people would even have “zombie infestation” cross their minds? When your loved one comes shambling out of an airport bathroom looking rather bloody and near dead would you immediately think “AH A ZOMBIE!!!!!” or would you think “Oh sh*t they’ve been mugged in the bathroom and I need to help them”?
I will end my rant with this, if you think you can write the story better then by all means do, that just gives me one more comic to read every MWF.
April 25th, 2007 at 3:54 am
Wow that was a lot longer than I thought it was going to be.
April 25th, 2007 at 4:09 am
it’s a 100 percent fact that it would be incredibly easy for the First Zombie to get his zombies all over the world very very quickly.
True enough he could get a zombie or soon to be zombie on a plane, but the second someone on a plane looks really bad (as in ill or near death) the plane gets quarantined (yes they do quarintine planes) stopping the zombie from getting out that way. And I dare say that various countries would probably start shooting down planes when they realised what was going on.
Of course if the zombie virus took more than a day, probably a day and a half mimimum to show any side effects then it could possibly get past quarintine, but that would mean the zombies take longer than a few days to take over the world.
April 25th, 2007 at 4:09 am
“When your loved one comes shambling out of an airport bathroom looking rather bloody and near dead . . .”
Just want to quickly point out that they wouldn’t look rather bloody and near dead. The First Zombie’s not that stupid. He’d have them looking completely normal as they come out so they wouldn’t have any problem getting on their flights, and he could accomplish this very easily. I’ll spare myself the two minutes of explaining it and let you use your imagination.
April 25th, 2007 at 4:14 am
LOL, and right as I explain that someone makes a long comment about the same subject.
“True enough he could get a zombie or soon to be zombie on a plane, but the second someone on a plane looks really bad (as in ill or near death) . . .”
They would not look really bad. When they’ve “died” just minutes earlier and when their wounds are not in conspicuous places and BLAH BLAH BLAH, and when they’re wearing the appropriate attire and when they have instructions from the First Zombie to act perfectly normal and BLAH BLAH BLAH, all of those flights land with absolutely no problem. And believe me, absolutely any complaint or argument that anyone has about ANY aspect of this will be VERY easily explained. I’ve thought about all of this at length and it’s all perfectly fine. Feel free to keep saying pointless things, though. Also, even if the flights DON’T land, it’s absolutely NO PROBLEM. It would all STILL spread just perfectly — maybe just a little slower, though. Two months instead of one to kill everyone maybe.
April 25th, 2007 at 4:23 am
“A human unit that tried to slug it out with the aforementioned 50:1 ratio of zombies with just guns and no relief [i]while[/i] under constant attack would fall. A unit with heavy weapons or vehicles is much more capable of taking out larger numbers of zombies, flanking, ambushing, and making tactical withdrawals.”
You’re not grasping that there basically IS NO FIGHT. There is no place where HERE’S A BUNCH OF ZOMBIES AND HERE’S THE ARMY AND NOW YOU TWO FIGHT EACH OTHER. No, none of that, or almost none at least. The zombies are EVERYWHERE, intermixed with tons of NON-ZOMBIE HUMANS, people you don’t want to shoot. The zombies are just rapidly, as fast as possible, seeking out all the humans and turning them into zombies. They’re all over the place. The main thing the military would be doing probably is seeking out the zombies all over the place, but there’s not enough time. The entire world is the battlefield and your enemy is everywhere. While you’re trying to find and kill all the zombies, the zombies are doubling and tripling and quadroupling in numbers by the hour. Eventually, while you’re still looking for all the zombies, trying to get them all, you’re (the military) now the only humans left, but NOW you’re outnumbered over 1,000:1 and at that point sheer numbers very easily wins the day.
April 25th, 2007 at 5:58 am
First of all, I’m really enjoying the comic. I’ve been reading it and the comments for a while but haven’t posted anything till now.
I don’t want to jump on the “this isn’t logical” bandwagon about the spreading of the zombies, but there is one aspect of the whole airport thing that really shouldn’t work out, and thats the bathroom thing. There are a couple international airports in my area and I play hockey with someone who works at one. The problem with the bathroom idea is that the bathrooms at international airports are only past the area where you get your ticket checked. This is done to stop people from putting bombs/etc in the bathrooms because now they have to pass through security.
April 25th, 2007 at 8:44 am
First of all, I’m really enjoying the comic. I’ve been reading it and the comments for a while but haven’t posted anything till now.
I don’t want to jump on the “this isn’t logical†bandwagon about the spreading of the zombies, but there is one aspect of the whole airport thing that really shouldn’t work out, and thats the bathroom thing. There are a couple international airports in my area and I play hockey with someone who works at one. The problem with the bathroom idea is that the bathrooms at international airports are only past the area where you get your ticket checked. This is done to stop people from putting bombs/etc in the bathrooms because now they have to pass through security. How would TFZ get around this?
April 25th, 2007 at 10:43 am
You’ll probably hate me, Bobby, I’m one of those people who doesn’t really understand zombie movies… And I’m sure if I took the time to read through all the comments, maybe I’d have a better idea?
I just wanted to confirm something hopefully quickly. The problem I’ve always had with movies like 28 days later is that the people turn into zombies within seconds and I never understood how they could ever get onto a plane without people realizing it. You wouldn’t get a plane of the ground with zombies running amok inside, no?
BUT– In your story, it’s possible because the zombies practice a little bit of subterfuge, right? TFZ keeps new zombies behaving naturally until they’ve gotten on a plane and over to Japan, Australia, Peru, etc? And you infiltrate places like military bases by grabbing soldiers off-base who are on leave, *poof* they’re zombified, and then you get them back in and take the base down from the inside?
I guess the problem I usually have is it’s usually easy to tell who’s the zombie, who’s not, but yours are more subtle, I’m guessing. Now that TFZ’s in control he doesn’t have to worry about subtleties
April 25th, 2007 at 11:12 am
p.s. Did the vampires ever consider hitting up blood banks, like the ones they have at hospitals and such? or would those have been purposely destroyed by TFZ?
April 25th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Ok, I’m glad someone brought up the friendly-fire complication.
Here’s another scenario for quick spread of zombies. If TFZ just had the first victims play possum in the morgue the first day, all the official and news attention would be on them, as some sort of bizarre unexplained crime. While police and citizens would be out looking for him, It should be easy to ditch them, after all he walked across the ocean floor. I’ll give him credit for persistence.
In the meantime, he could grab some vagrants or something from the beach area. Say 5-10 of them total, so a nice military sized squad is in the works. Then come nightfall strike in scattered suburban areas, take out whole families. If you figure a standard nuclear family, 2 parents and 2 children, and the conservative estimate that each of the ‘first day’ zombies could take out a very low ball estimate of 5 families each. that gives you 100-200 zombies in the first night. Not to mention each of them is able to further raise these numbers.
Yes, you might lose some here and there, but imagine ahow well a small zombie group (like a family) would do in a cross country trip. Only stopping for gas and to (maybe) infect the gas station attendant(s). You could have small cells in most of the North America inside of a day, two at most. Not to mention through airports. Each of these cells magnify the problem. Containment isn’t an option at this point. Especially when you consider that while you could (potentially) shoot down all air traffic, what’s to stop hordes of them from walking across the ocean like TFZ? You might be able to delay for a while, and sure, a nuclear sub already underway when this started would be safe, up until it had to resupply food anyway.
We wouldn’t be looking at simple geometric addition of numbers, it would be an exponentialgrowth factor.
April 25th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Mr. Crosby, I love your stuff no matter what any one else says! XD
April 25th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
“You’ll probably hate me, Bobby, I’m one of those people who doesn’t really understand zombie movies…”
Um, I hate almost all zombie movies. Only one I’ve ever remotely enjoyed was “Shaun of the Dead.”
“The problem I’ve always had with movies like 28 days later is that the people turn into zombies within seconds . . .”
“28 Days Later” is one of the worst movies of all time.
“The problem with the bathroom idea is that the bathrooms at international airports are only past the area where you get your ticket checked.”
He certainly doesn’t need to use the bathrooms. There’s a million ways for him to get the job done. A million.
Thanks, Lydia!
April 25th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I think the fact that so many people can shoot holes in your arguments which can only be patched with, “TFZ IS UBER!” or “Humans are dumb.” shows that there IS obviously some sort of problem with your backstory. I love the comic for its art, and whats actually happening on camera, but the backstory just doesn’t work, and no amount of ALL CAPS will make it anymore plausible.
April 25th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
And believe me, absolutely any complaint or argument that anyone has about ANY aspect of this will be VERY easily explained. I’ve thought about all of this at length and it’s all perfectly fine. Feel free to keep saying pointless things, though.
I agree you’ve thought this out very well indeed, but you don’t seem to have thought out possible vs plausability. yes things are possible, but it gets increasingly less likely that all these things could happen and then the story gets completely unbelivable and there’s no point continuing to read it.
but I guess its pointless to say that as you’ve got everything fixed in your mind of how things happened, ah well just another movie I won’t be seeing I guess. shame you started out so well.
April 25th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
It would be pretty hard to quarantine a plane when the zombie they spot starts killing people in bloody ways. When the passengers run out the doors screaming about bloody mayhem, 90 percent or more of guards will let them past (at least for the moment). What the guards don’t notice is the two or three normal looking zombies in the crowd who aren’t making any fuss at all. TFZ is that sneaky I think.
To put the confusion in perspective I have to use an example that some may find offensive - I do not intend to offend, only to show what the first day might be like.
Remember that shooting at Virginia Tech? Imagine that was TFZ’s initial attack. Every person killed gets up again a few minutes later as a zombie and starts helping TFZ spread. Except that not everyone is killed and turned immediately - many are bitten but left alive to run screaming out into the streets (and past whatever police containment may be in place).
Now give the attack director GENUINE military experience in what works and not works. Then give them PERFECT communication and control with their subordinates.
Imagine you are the cops facing this.
Then imagine you are watching the news that day in whatever manner you were watching the news the day Virginia Tech happened.
Now imagine what both of the above would be like if the attackers did not need to rest, were fanatically loyal to TFZ, and could only be killed by perfectly placed head shots.
Anyone else recall that Hollywood bank fiasco from a few years back where the bank robbers had body armor and endless ammo? That’s what trying to kill one of these guys is like.
April 25th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
i want my fiiiiiiiiiiixxx!!! neeeeeeed it! where is the new comic its my birthday and i want my comic!!! (its not really my birthday, that was sunday, Im just being whiny) I think this page should be forwarded to all Noobs, I think moost noobs questions have been rehashed and reanswered here XD fun to read though!
April 25th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
I show up to read this AWESOMELY TERRIFIC COMIC and you’re late.
Sorry about being a stickler before, it’s just much more… Much easier to conceptualize when you take a rundown like that, the heading straight for the airport thing. Even if that isn’t exactly how he did it, the fact that it is physically possible to be done is all we need to know. Sometimes you just gotta give the slower people a real rundown before they get it.
[ x.x i guess i’m one of the slow people now
April 25th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Ironhead: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the backstory and it’s rather amazing that people complain so much about it when my story is somewhere around a TRILLION TIMES MORE PLAUSIBLE THAN ANY OTHER ZOMBIE STORY/MOVIE, and yet people have such a problem with this one. It’s my opinion that even though almost all zombie movies are horrible, even the ones WITHOUT A MAGICAL TFZ make sense on the level of how zombies take over and how simple that would be. But WITH TFZ, it’s child’s play.
“yes things are possible, but it gets increasingly less likely that all these things could happen and then the story gets completely unbelivable and there’s no point continuing to read it.”
LOL. And how does it get “increasingly less likely”? What causes that? These things are not only POSSIBLE — they’re extremely easy. Bye!
Nara: Happy birthday!
Courtney: Thanks! Now that’s the proper, adult response when you question something and think you’re right and then it’s explained away properly, unlike Colt and Ironhead who simply refuse to see the obvious truth because they can’t admit they’re wrong.
Nara and Courtney: New page within seven hours or so probably!
April 25th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Yay!!! I love backstory pages the best so Im really anticiapting the new page
April 25th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
The new page actually doesn’t have any more backstory! But it does have more MAC!
April 25th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
You think 28 Days Later is a rubbish movie? *GASP* D:
Meh… I’m sure you have perfectly good reasons why you don’t like it. I enjoyed it though…. but anyway.
Don’t listen to all the whiners complaining about the ‘discrepancies’ of your scenario, since considering how you’ve developed the story, it seems very plausible (even though vampires and zombies don’t exist in reality). Even when considering military strength, once the number of zombies exceed a certain number (which they did very quickly), humanity quickly becomes screwed. Bullets can do a lot of damage, but considering how zombies are pretty much already dead and are extremely resilient, if they surround you, there’s no hope for you, since they’ll just keep on coming, getting closer and closer until you run out of ammo or they just get close enough to get in a bite or two. Zombies don’t get tired, they don’t NEED to eat (though they just want to anyway), whereas humans need food and rest, and a relatively fragile in comparison. With zombies, the numbers game works, because even if you arm a group of people to the teeth, its only a matter of time before they run out of ammo, or become too fatigued to continue to fight (let alone insane or suicidal). So all in all, this comic is just fine.
So keep up the good work! ^_^
April 25th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
“You think 28 Days Later is a rubbish movie? *GASP* D:”
I’m sure I could name lots of other movies that I hate that you’d be even more shocked by! I hate almost everything, in movies and in general.
April 25th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
I’ve got a couple questions.
1. How long is the zombie incubation time/symptoms?
2. Is TFZ super-intelligent?
A remark about the zombies breaking down any force with sheer numbers. No. One tank could plow through zombies without even stopping. Try pulling a tank apart with your bare hands, it really doesn’t work, so without intelligent zombies, there would be a lot of military survivors. A tank can travel 60 mph, and getting caught under the tread would turn a zombie into essentially a liquid. Not to mention NAPALM dropped from a plane. This would be ridiculously effective, dead flesh already holds a fire, but with napalm, the fire sticks to the target. Considering zombies feel no pain, they’d see no reason to put it out. It could take an hour and smell really bad, but eventually they’d be a blackened skeleton.
However, as I take it, TFZ has some sort of “bee queen” thing going on where he can control all zombies as a single part of the same organism.
Though I don’t see how you can get bent out of shape about criticism, since you’re more than willing to criticize “almost everything” and say it’s bad.
April 25th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
I’m not getting bent out of shape about criticism AT ALL — I’m merely RESPONDING to people who are saying incorrect things and I’m saying what the actual situation is. It is annoying when people refuse to believe obvious things, though.
“1. How long is the zombie incubation time/symptoms?”
I think I’ve answered this 2,000 times. If the bites/injuries you sustain from a zombie wouldn’t normally kill you (meaning if a regular human hurt you in the same manner), you die within 24 hours, even from just a tiny scrape of teeth on your arm that draws a little blood. And if you did just have a simple bite like that, you progressively get worse over the 24 hours. In the first few hours you probably look totally normal still, but just feel sick. 12 hours in you probably just look super sick, but nowhere near like a zombie yet, and it’s probably not until maybe 20 hours in that you start looking REALLY WEIRD.
“2. Is TFZ super-intelligent?”
No, just a regular smart guy.
“A remark about the zombies breaking down any force with sheer numbers. No. One tank could plow through zombies without even stopping.”
So what? They have billions to plow through, so many that the tank would get stuck over the 10 foot high pile of dead zombies that it makes, but the zombies wouldn’t even care since they have so many left after that. If you drop literally 1,000 people on top of a tank, everyone in that tank will be dead very soon after that. But even if they WEREN’T, there’s no problem. The First Zombie also uses weapons, as I’ve said many times before, and he uses bombs.
“Not to mention NAPALM dropped from a plane. This would be ridiculously effective, dead flesh already holds a fire, but with napalm, the fire sticks to the target.”
Once again, the zombies are EVERYWHERE, though, and they’re out in all the houses in the fucking world getting to absolutely everyone, totally spread out, everywhere. It’s not like they’re all in a big group for you to drop napalm on, and killing them all is only a secondary concern to KILLING THEM ALL BEFORE THEY KILL 99.9999% OF THE WORLD. It’s a mad dash to try to kill them all and there’s no time. Eventually, as I said recently, it would be just the military (mostly) and the zombies left on the planet, and then when there’s five billion zombies against the MAYBE 100,000 soldiers or so left on Earth by that point, it’s just a matter of picking them all off, swarming them, going all over the place. Wouldn’t take long.
April 25th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
“I’m sure I could name lots of other movies that I hate that you’d be even more shocked by! I hate almost everything, in movies and in general.”
Fair enough… if its a habit of yours to hate everything, then go for it. Just makes you more interesting (well, as long as you hate everything for a reason… otherwise its just lame).
Oh, and Ted, a tank may be a formidable vehicle, but it takes PEOPLE to drive the tank. One tank team may be able to hold off and kill many zombies for a while, but its only a matter of time before fatigue/hunger/thirst starts setting in. Plus a tank has limited ammunition and fuel. All an armoured vehicle will be able to do is last a little bit longer than the ground troops. Planes will require the bases to be defended before they can take off, so a relentless assault by zombies will put them out of use. Zombies don’t have morale, fatigue, so taking them on is damn hard. You can’t just isolate yourself in a easy to defend passage, because zombies aren’t like humans in nature. They don’t care if they die. They see a human, they will do their hardest to get a bite out of that human. The military is geared around taking out other people… not zombies, and though modern weapons can be very effective at killing, when up against a million zombies, it becomes whole different scenario.
April 26th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
That’s what I’m saying, without a super intelligent first zombie, I don’t really understand who the zombies can do anything more than one thing at a time. Imagine having to give orders to a gigantic, mindless horde. Thought doesn’t work at instantly, some people think very slowly. To fly a plane would probably take all the First Zombie’s focus. “OK pull this switch… press that button.” I can understand something like “Kill all humans.” Simple, to the point, need only be said once.
That brings up of course, how intelligent is each individual zombie and do they have any recollection of their past life? Shaun of the Dead they had some extremely vague memories, but only the most basic possible. NOTLD had zombies being too dumb to even open a door using the handle.
May 20th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Somehow didn’t notice this last comment by Ted until now.
“Imagine having to give orders to a gigantic, mindless horde.”
That mindless horde all wants “braaaiiiins” and they don’t need a leader to go get 99.9999% of the brains on Earth. After that it’s just a case of picking off the remaining humans, which is what TFZ mostly helps with, due to his ability to smell blood and other strengths, like flying planes and dropping bombs.
“To fly a plane would probably take all the First Zombie’s focus. ‘OK pull this switch… press that button.’ ”
He flies the plane himself, although he could probably get others to fly planes as well on suicide missions and such. He doesn’t really need others to fly planes, though.
“That brings up of course, how intelligent is each individual zombie and do they have any recollection of their past life?”
No recollection, very dumb.
June 13th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Hahahaha, what’s with that fellow from the IT Crowd hidden in the Addison Payne pin-up? The comedian actor fellow, what’s his name… jolly good!
December 10th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
THIS IS THE BEST PAGE SO FAR!