Tag Archives: Walking Dead

The little things

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It’s funny…when The Walking Dead started I said that I was more interested in how people dealt with the increasing infrastructure failure than I was with the gratuitous zombie-killing violence. I was more interested in how people coped with the loss of gasoline, electricity, communications, etc, etc. And now that TWD has hit the stage where infrastructure has failed epically I find myself not really watching the show much. But, I watched tonights episode and it reminded me of some things.

Backstory: will-they-or-wont-they couple, Carol and Daryl are walking along a trail heading back to their camp. Carol is having trouble prying open the cover on her canteen and Daryl hands her his Swiss army knife so she can use, presumably, the screwdriver blade to pry the thing open.

Later, Daryl is far from home and his motorcycle sputters to a halt. He find that the fuel hose has rotted through and torn. He scavenges some hoses from abandoned vehicles and prepares to repair his bike…and then notices he never got his Swiss army knife back. He tries to use his large fighting knives but they are too big to get into the small reaches of the bike motor. With no tools to fix his bike, he goes looking for tools until he finds a couple zombified military personnel. He dispatches them, rifles their web gear, and finds a couple Gerber multitools. With multitool in hand, he repairs his bike and can return to his camp.

The takeaways seemed to be: two is one, one is none -when he ‘lost’ his primary multitool he had nothing to back him up. Even one of those dorky keychain multitools would have helped. And although he really should have had a small basic tool kit on his bike, in a world where getting stranded can be life-or-death it might be a good idea to have spares of critical gear like multitools.

I suppose another takeaway would be that you never loan out your personal equipment to help someone else if the lack of that equipment will harm you later. Carol should have handed him back the knife after she was done with it, and he should have had presence of mind to make sure it was immediately returned to him.

I have a nice Leatherman Wave that was gifted to me about..hmmm… 15 years ago, I used to carry it around all the time but it chewed holes in my jeans at an amazing pace. But it has tremendous sentimental value so I keep it. My everyday pocket knife is one of these  which I have been extremely pleased with. But…there’s a very good reason to keep a multiool around and I need to get back into the habit of having one as an everyday carry item. Nine times out of ten, if I need a screwdriver or somerhing like that, I’d rather just grab a purpose-built tool from the tool rack and do what needs doing. But I need to remember that the whole point of survivalism is to be ready for the unexpected which often occurs at the worst time, at the worst place, under the worst conditions. Like trying to replace a fuel hose on your motorcycle as the zombies shuffle closer and closer.

Multitools have improved over the last 15 years, and they have some lighter ones that still offer a lot of useful functions without costing me a pair of new Carharts every five months. I actually have a gen1 Leatherman tool in my Bag O’Tricks. That thing really needs to be upgraded…but its better than no multitool. I suppose at some point I should go shop for new ones and see what sort of cool developments have hit the market in the last decade and a half.

But…the eipsode of TWD was thought-provoking in that it showed how a small failure…not getting the Swiss army knife back…could cascade into bigger problems in a post-apocalyptic world. So…either don’t loan out critical gear (my first choice), or make sure to get it back immediately. And, a spare isn’t a bad idea.

 

Entertainment – The Walking Dead

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I’ve gotten out of watching TWD regularly. I let the DVR record it and then watch the whole season at once. (And, lemme tell ya, several hours of non-stop post-apocalypse viewing will cure any motivational issues you may have.) Anyway… I decided to go back to watching because TWD did a ‘time jump’ which they do every few seasons. In this case, they leapt ahead six years to give us this:

An utterly adorable 8-year-old with a Colt Python (which she holds better than Rick ever did) and a sword. (And, apparently, it’s still impossible to find a holster that fits a six-inch Python properly.)

There is something a little odd about seeing a tiny kid with a Python, but rationally it makes perfect sense. There’s a scene later in the episode where Michonne has an encounter that had the potential to turn violent. When its resolved peacefully, she turns around to see the kid providing overwatch with her Python. And the kids says: “..Dad would have wanted me to have it. To protect myself and the people I love.” Lovely sentiment and pretty much the reason many of us own guns.

What I’m going to find fascinating to watch is that this character will have absolutely zero normalcy bias. This kid will have been living in zombieland her entire life.. so itwill be interesting to see if they show that in her behavior, relational skills, pragmatism,emotional maturity, etc.

Certainly, what I’ve seen so far is a lot less annoying than Coral* ever was.

From a temporal standpoint, it is my understanding we are now six-years past Ricks last appearance, and Judith was about two when when that happened, so I’m saying it’s about eight years on at this point. And, from the looks of things, ammo is getting scarcer since virtually no one, except the eight-year-old, seems to be throwing bullets around.

*=For the humor-challenged who don’t get the joke, Rick always seems to pronounce Carl as ‘Coral’.

Walking Dead – metaphors

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Remember the last season episode where right before our crew of intrepid survivors walks into the setup at Terminus Rick is showing Carl how to make a snare to trap game? He explains how the animal is funneled into the trap and is caught before it knows its even in jeopardy. Remember that?

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So look at the metaphor in tonights show. The horse has been running around during this crisis and has been surviving just fine. And then…someone tries to reintroduce it to civilization, and once its in the pen behind the fence it gets swarmed and killed by zombies. It was safer outside the confines of the pen, taking its chances with everyone else.

Foreshadow much?

Walking Dead – Shane Was Right Edition

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My wife pointed out, after last weeks episode of TWD, that Rick has become Shane. Shane was all about how they needed to do whatever was necessary, that this would not all blow over in a few months, and that the world was going to be a completely different place with different rules and different morals.

And, now, it appears that in Season Five Rick has become what Shane was in Season Two.

Interesting.

fullshaneNow, you could argue that Rick has never killed innocents for the sake of the group, as Shane did when he shot Otis, but in this most recent episode of TWD we see Rick casually saying that if it becomes necessary they’ll just “take” their new sanctuary from its owners. And Rick has, in the past, been less-than-reluctant to let strangers meet a gory demise without helping (which, yes, is not the same as killing them).

But it appears that ol’ Shane may have been ahead of his time in regards to his outlook and attitude.

Walking Dead – Episode 511

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Man, I know the apocalypse can be a rough neighborhood….what with crazy one-eyed bossmen, colonies of cannibals, and just the general this-doesn’t-look-good crowd of dangerous survivors….but, geez….Rick and Co. are now just as bad as any post-apocalyptic gang of scumbags? Rick coldcocks a guy, takes his gear, takes his food, and threatens to kill him…and all the guy did was, unfortunately, use some language that was somewhat similar to what the folks at Terminus said. “Community for all” and “Stronger with you than without you” and all that jazz.

On the bright side, this episode was at least a somewhat better episode than the last couple that seemed to focus on experimental direction and storytelling.

Clearly, the end of the world is going to be rife with trust issues. Especially 18 months after the world flushes itself and you’ve spent the last year and a half being hunted, hounded, hungry, hurt and hopeless. But still….that was pretty thuggish behavior. I suppose it’s to show how the character of Rick has changed over time, or something like that.

Slightly better tactics than usual with a 2-man rule being shown, and more finger-off-the-trigger discipline than I’ve seen in a while. Thus far, these first three episodes of the new season seem pretty lame. I think I could have skipped the last three episodes and felt like I haven’t missed anything.

Oh, and probably more than anything else, the blogosphere will be burning up with much teeth-gnashing over the showing of a pair of gay guys kissing. You can show heads being impaled, limbs being ripped off, and cars literally covered in blood, but two guys kissing…thats objectionable. I kinda like the idea of them introducing a couple gay characters…(Everyone forget that there’s already a gay character in the group? Tara.) ..makes things seem a little more real and certainly opens up some previously unexplored story lines. When the end of the world rolls around there’s gonna be all sortsa folks running around trying to survive…men, women, blacks, whites, religious, non-religious, etc, etc. Stands to reason that there’s gonna be some gay folks and couples out there as well. I’d worry less about ‘what’ folks are and more about whether they’re ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

All in all, probably the strongest episode of the season in terms of story and plot development. Now that the ‘Alexandria Safe Zone’ storyline from the comics has been picked up I look forward to seeing how it develops.