Bingley,

In The Walking Dead's America (and world), there is no law.

There are no rights.

These survivors of the apocalypse - of which there seem to be very, very few - are fighting nearly every moment of every day simply not to be eaten. The other few moments they are trying to find something to eat.

If we get into a discussion of property rights in our actual real world, this thread will quickly go off the rails into the land of the political.

That would be a discussion in which zzzzzzz is for boring.


As to the whole barn/zombie slaughter thing: Rick/Shayne, et.al. couldn't very well stay on the farm with those predators still shuffling around in the barn (I can barely sleep after just watching the show!) and they can't stay now that they've slaughtered them.

So, yay!! We'll be on the road again come February. Bye, bye Hershel (love that actor, by the way).

Where would you go from Atlanta/Hershel's farm?

It's absurd to stay anywhere near Atlanta or any other significantly populated area. Which means: bye, bye eastern America. Gotta go west.

Someplace very sparsely populated,

Where you could grow food (and raise livestock, if you can find some breeding stock that zombies haven't gotten to yet).

Snowy winters -- it'd be easier to spot zombies approaching in the snow. And surely they'd have a hard time shuffling through the snow. Zombies don't seem capable of picking up their legs to get through deep snow, let alone putting on snowshoes.

Can't do California - population 40,000,000 of which 39,990,000 probably are now zombies. And that's not counting the illegal zombies....

I'm thinking Idaho -- away from Boise. Lightly populated to begin with. I'm fond of potatoes. There are probably a number of super-rich survivalists around Sun Valley who retreated there early in the zombie crisis. They're lonely now and would welcome some company, I think.

While the character discussions here are great there was this earlier question put forth. My response: one of these.

Fuel may be more readily found in the tanks of abandoned big rigs, construction equipment, etc. than gasoline. Plus you could start making biodiesel.

I'm a little surprised that finding weapons seemed difficult. They should be littering the highways as the armed living run out of ammo and become zombie meals. Do persons without ammo become MRE's for zombies? (man-ready-to-eat)

Wonder if .22LR is an effective caliber for zombie dispatching? Could carry lots more rounds and probably easier to find at the local Walmart. Hit men have been using .22's for years.

Could all the food stores, distribution hubs, etc. be out of food a month into the event if the population that's not eating each other is rapidly diminishing?

Anyway, interesting take on the zombie metaphor.

So there will be a place for K Street lobbyists in the zombie apocalypse.

Good to know. ;-)

The fantasy world of The Walking Dead means something to us because it speaks to the issues of the real world. A show about a fantasy world that means absolutely nothing to us will not attract any audience, because we simply will not be able to relate to it in any way. We will be bored by it. Instead, we want to see things from our lives play out in new ways that are not possible in the real world.

Now I respect the forum's stance on avoiding politics, and I think there is a way to talk about the show and its greater cultural significance without actually talking about politics. To do that, we will have to stick to the show as a laboratory space in which the elements familiar to us in the real world can interact, be tested, etc. For example, if we take your observations (no law, no rights) to their logical conclusion, then what the show implies is that notions such as property and individual rights have become for us ethical rather than institutional. Why, even in such a world of no laws, Hershel's wishes still seem to carry power (with people like Rick and Dale) because he is the property owner.

I guess the larger relevance to the tenor of our forum is that even in such a lawless situation, there may still be ethics, as long as there are people, and ethics may be shaped by our prior acquaintance of the law.

Provided it can be fueled, that could indeed be the ultimate ZSV (Zombie Survival Vehicle) - very nice find! Those zombies would be hardly noticeable under that tire tread.

Agree on the weapon scarcity. Makes no sense, especially in the southeastern U.S. And truth be told, early in the zombie emergence, between the gang bangers and NRA members -- the Southeast should have been a Zombie-Free Zone pretty quickly.

Especially if .22 caliber bullets are zombie-killers.

But the law-abiding gun owners may have been stymied because the legislature never got around to making it legal to kill a zombie. By the time a legislator introduced the Zombies Aren't People Act, there was no longer a quorum of un-dead to enact it.

Plus the social stigma that probably lingered against shooting things that used to be people, perhaps could be people again or may simply be misunderstood people with grievances and bad skin.

Food warehouse: You'd think there might be a lot of Vienna sausages and SPAM left. Pretty sure I'd lose my appetite for meat soon after the zombie outbreak.

The show probably has different appeals to different people. I, for one, could do with less gore, but there is obviously an audience for maximum zombie gore.

I relate to survival situations, no matter the impetus.

You're right about personal ethics. How much of that is shaped by the legal system in the pre-zombie world and how much is upbringing in family situations that stress morality or personal adherence to, say, the Ten Commandments, would be an interminable debate.

Most people don't commit murder and other heinous violent crimes because that is not in their nature, not because to do so would be illegal.

Though I might have mowed down a couple jaywalkers if that were legal....

The Zombie Scenario takes survival to a whole different level. It's one thing to worry about starving, freezing, dehydration or being shot.

It is quite another to be faced with being eaten alive, and not by mosquitoes.

Except they don't seem to have the necessary skills or background and farming seems like the type of thing you'd need to know a thing or two about to be successful (like discussed here, for example).

Save Daryl, they all appear to be urbanites whose skill set doesn't appear to include agriculture (cops, a pizza delivery boy, a lawyer, housewives, ???). And while Daryl may know about hunting, who knows how much, if anything, he knows about farming.

Seems like the type of group that wouldn't make it through the first winter if they attempted to strike it out on their own and live off the land.

My guess is they will end up falling back on their original plan, and Shane's preference, of trying to make it to the Army base in the hopes the government is still intact and will look after them. Somehow I don't think that will work out for them .


However, this is a group who in their current state can't seem to play nice with others. Unless getting the boot from the farm (if that's what happens) teaches them the importance of building community and respecting the owner of the home they're in, I wouldn't hold high hopes for them successfully integrating with an established community or group.

Does this mean I'm not the only one who blocks the screen or looks away during the icky parts?

You're not alone in that Denis.