Mindless Zombies

The Hodor Reveal

I have a bad feeling about this.

During season 6 of Lost, my doubts started growing that the writers could bring the series to a satisfying conclusion. And they didn't.

The show was nonetheless fantastic, but that's part of the reason that the mediocre conclusion in season 7 was all the more disappointing.

We're now in season 6 of Game of Thrones and this weekend's revelation of the origin of Hodor's name has given me that same bad feeling—I seriously doubt the series is going to have a satisfying conclusion.

The problem I've concluded is the series' split personality. On the one hand it's a character driven story in a medieval setting with political intrigue, subterfuge, alliances, and betrayals. On the other hand, it's epic fantasy with magic, dragons, ice zombies, and prophecies. In previous seasons the former has worked much better than the latter, but as season 6 has progressed we're getting more of the latter much to the detriment of the former.

The Hodor reveal is clever and poignant, but I suspect in the end will be completely irrelevant to the overall story.

And it involves time travel.

Seriously. Time travel.

And unless your story is actually about time travel, it's usually a bad idea to casually toss it in.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope at the end of the series I'm writing a blog post about the brilliance of the Hodor reveal and how it laid the groundwork for a satisfying conclusion.

But I have a bad feeling about this.

Zombie Sneak Attacks

Every zombie sneak attack in The Walking Dead reminds me of this scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Fear the Walking Dumb

One of the things I like about Aliens is that the protagonists are cocky going into their first encounter with the xenomorphs ("Is this going to be a standup fight, sir, or another bughunt?"), get schooled ("Maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events; but we just got our asses kicked, pal!"), and then quickly start making intelligent decisions ("I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."). It's a series of events that plausibly place the characters in jeopardy.

So is it too much to ask that the main characters in zombie stories aren't all Darwin Award winner wannabes? I'm not saying that the stories need to directly acknowledge and address the large body of zombie apocalypse tropes from movies, TV, comics, and books (á la Scream or The Cabin in the Woods).

But when a character is repeatedly attacked by mute, slow moving family, friends, and acquaintances, maybe it's time for that character to show some caution and foresight around people who, you know, look dead.

Just saying'.

They Weren’t Just Zombies

The first zombie, Patient Zero, was admitted to a hospital in Topeka, Kansas suffering from severe respiratory failure. He died three days later. Thirteen minutes after his death, when he reanimated, there were ninety-seven additional cases throughout North America. Seventeen hours, twenty-one zombies, and seven hundred eighty-nine cases later, the US president declared martial law and restricted travel to and from every major US city. It was already too late. In truth, there was nothing that could have been done to stop the world-wide plague.

By the time it was determined the pathogen was spread by pollen, 1.3 billion people had died. Binding the bodies of the recently deceased and burning them en masse delayed the zombie apocalypse for a short period, however, once the living fell below a critical mass, free roaming zombies were inevitable.

A small percentage of humans, the few remaining survivors, were effectively immune; only the bite of a zombie could infect them. At first, survival was all about foraging. Population collapse was slow enough that looting and hoarding were widespread. It was quick enough that there were vast stockpiles available for the taking; you just had to find them.

Lack of modern medical care was the biggest threat to the living. Zombies were just too slow and fragile to pose much of a danger. A slow-moving SUV with four wheel drive was sufficient to take out a herd of zombies. You just needed to knock one down and crush a few bones to render it harmless. Wild animals, carrion eaters, and slow decay would eventually clean up what was left.

Within a year, outdoor zombie sightings became a rarity. Any remains that had not been burned were washed into the sewers of the cities or absorbed back into the earth. The survivors, however, would soon learn a horrifying truth about the undead.

They weren’t just zombies, they were seedpods.

Zombies vs. Animals

Zombies vs. animals? The living dead wouldn’t stand a chance

Lock and Load

If you’re thinking of using a national guard armory as a one stop shopping location for all your zombie eradication needs during the coming apocalypse, you might want to revise your plans. Apparently they’re not all stocked to the brim with guns, ammunition, grenades, explosives, vehicles, survival gear, and other sundry items.

We checked out this armory on a trip to Tyler, TX and were dismayed to learn that the only weapon present was the howitzer sitting out front. Even worse, the only way we could use it to kill zombies was to push it off a roof and have it squish them.



Forewarned is forearmed. We'll be doing all our looting at Academy and Walmart.

Notes for the Zombie Apocalypse

Assumptions: zombies attracted to noise; slow-moving zombies.

High priority will be given to finding vehicles that can be used for crushing zombies. Likely candidates include Brink’s armored trucks, army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) vehicles, monster trucks, steam rollers, combine harvesters, bulldozers, and tanks.

Open areas will be cleared of zombies by attracting them with loud music and then running over them from the safety of a vehicle. Buildings will be cleared with a cautious multi-step procedure. First, external doors will be opened so that zombies can be attracted outside and crushed. Second, internal doors will be opened and the process repeated. Finally, room to room searches will be used to dispatch any remaining zombies.