Episode 151

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Dave

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Zombie Cliché Lookout:
Amputation is a pretty popular theory when it comes to surviving zombie wounds. It sort of makes sense. If you hack off the affected limb quick enough, the infection won’t have a chance to spread to the rest of the body. In The Walking Dead comic, for example, there are two scenes in which amputation was attempted to save someone who was bitten (at least as far as I know, I’m a good year behind since I wait for the hardcover books to be released). Dead Snow also makes use of this trope, to comedic effect.

100 thoughts on “Episode 151”

  1. Wow that’s the most a**hole of a nurse I’ve ever seen. And all you would need to do is amputate the infected parts. So everything.

    Hey don’t mean to get to off topic to much but xbox 360 gamertags mines james bond223. Only one space and no caps.

    • Goodness knows how many horrors she’s seen since we last saw her – I’d imagine that rubbed raw some of the “bedside manner.” And there’s always a few nurses around who hold most everyone in contempt, so who’s to say that she’s not one of them?

      For whatever reason when the talk went to amputation, I first thought of the opening of “Dances with Wolves” (which I’ve not seen in a couple of decades) and that somehow the poor sap’d survive and end up off on some frontier befriending a trickster coyote… and then the memory of mid-19th century medicine jarred loose the memory of Bones dealing with kidney failure in “The Voyage Home.” Some shocked line about the Dark Ages…

      • Barb has indeed been through a lot, which I think explains her terseness.

        I haven’t seen Dances with Wolves in ages either. I barely remember it. Perhaps I’ll have to Netflix is one of these days.

        • Gack, no. So very not worth it. It’s not “Far and Away” bad, but what little I’ve seen while substitute teaching has made me hope that films aren’t on the lesson plan most of the time.

        • Good to know. I remember kind of liking it when I saw it as a teen(?), but I liked a lot of crap back then.

        • Some dude for some inexplicable reason decides to guard a mud hut out in the middle of nowhere. Along the way some fat guy half cooks a bunch of bacon and is killed by Indians. In and out through the movie the narrator reads from a diary in a dry monotone voice for about 2 hours of the tedious 3 hour film. In the middle he falls in love with President Laura Roslin. C –

        • Oh. My. God. Actually had to watch some of “Far and Away” today while teaching. It was at least the part where Tom Cruise gets whaled on and Colm Meaney’s a badass, but still…. the horror, the horror.

        • poor Jeff’s freaking out, and I would too if I got bitten by a zombie and lose one of my limbs.

    • guy, have you actually SEEN an amputation? It’s noisy. It’s messy. It’s not worth it.
      And besides, I know how much amateur operations hurt, cause I did this one on my hand to see what made it work. The smallest nick in the skin and went running to fetch ‘band-aids (I like that word.). But I strongly reccomend it best left to professional surgeons (:D)
      I wanted to see what The Dude Person was saying about the weird purple-eyed thing on ‘PW’. It’s come for me now, and won’t stop BLINKING at me!

      • Pssh.. You just sterilize the equipment, and get to cutting. I mean sure its going to hurt and its going to get messy, but if you find something just to lob it off (An axe of some sort.. Then you kinda need some major sterilization & hope that you don’t cleave in their side).. But yeah amputation has been done for years upon years. If the average person doesn’t know how to set it up then we— Oh that’s right people don’t like learning old but new things any more.

        • Other than infection, bleeding out if a major concern.

        • That’s what fire is for.

      • Wait, you cut into your hand to see how it worked? Good lord.

        • Didn’t get very far. Didn’t do it again.

        • Hah, that’s probably a good thing, on both accounts.

      • legomiles, I’m terribly sorry about the purple-eyed blinking thing finding you!

        Don’t worry though, after a week or so of therapy, I’m almost good as new. 😉

    • “Wow that’s the most a**hole of a nurse I’ve ever seen. ”

      I call her a leader!

      And I have an idea how they can amputate….

      • Does that idea involve a chainsaw, by any chance?

        • !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

        • Please be forshadowing… Please…

        • I’m going to say yes. Please?

  2. There are two things that would save Jeff at this point:

    Death is one of them, the other would be reversing or removing whatever infection is currently causing him to change. Since they don’t yet know what causes the zomibification process, he’s basically screwed. 😀

    • There’s always a wizard.

      • If they’re not a Microsoft wizard, Jeff might be saved. Otherwise, he’s still screwed! 😀

      • One thing on the 100% bite=zombie thing: Must it always be so? There are always people in real life who sometimes get resistant to infections, I would imagine the same principle could theoretically apply to infected people once in 1,000,000 or so! 😀

        This wouldn’t be a major thing you’d expect to happen to just anybody, maybe Jeff gets lucky and is the one guy who happens to get a once-off reprieve from the webcomic creator! 🙂

        • I think the “bite = 100% chance of infection” is important for slow zombies. There’s no get out of jail free card, and there’s no author intervening to save a popular character (seems like a lot of people like Jeff, which is cool). They get bitten and they’re dead.

    • There’s a Larry Niven short story with some sort of zombies-on-a-wartorn-alien-world conceit. The protagonist has some sort of omni-healing spray to help him through the skirmish which ends up able to destroy the zombies by “healing” the zombie infection.

      But the world of this comic is the same as ours, save for the whole zombie thing. Would a massive dose of penicillin do the trick? I kind of doubt it…

      • Doctors have been warning us about abusing antibiotics for years now. Perhaps zombyism is the reason?

        • somebody is hiding something. I am sure of it.

        • So less a superbug and more a superhappyfuncorpse?

  3. She might as well kill Jeff now!

    • Right on time too. This about killed my buffer (been doing various construction projects the last couple of weekend) so now I need to rebuild.

  4. Yay! New episode 😀

  5. Come on, Jeff, resign yourself to your fate!

    • Hah. Just accept the awful hand fate has dealt you already.

  6. aaaaah….THAT’s why my Gravi wasn’t working…

    • Wrong email?

      • yep. I missed out an “a”. Can’t believe it took me so long to work it out. Besides, I need a gravi to stop my getting confused with gu–oh wait I changed my name. :/

  7. He should go down fighting. Send him on a killing spree. Let him have his last request(and meal if available).

    • He’ll probably want a cigarette too.

    • Yeah but what if they say

      “OK Jeff what do you want as your last meal?”
      “Um… maybe some-AAGK… Brains!”
      “OK i’ll just pop to the shop and get some- wait, what!?”

      • Hah, I love it.

  8. Totally unrelated to this episode, but does anyone out there have Dead Island, a firm command of the English language, and a hankering to do a guest review?

    • You going to buy this Dave?

      • I might at some point, but only if the reviews are great and the price drops a bit.

        I don’t buy a lot of games, and I rarely buy stuff close to launch. I like to pick up stuff after the price goes down and a few patches have been released.

        • Yeah that’s exactly how I buy games too. MSRP for some reason doesn’t hold any value for a games after a few months. This and the new Dragon Age are the only games I really want right now but I am pretty far out of the loop.

        • I think the last game I bought close to launch was Fallout 3. Before that it was Civilization 4. Not a big patter of cutting edge gaming here.

        • PS3 or 360?

        • I’ve got a PS3. We use it primarily for DVDs, BluRays, and Netflix. Although I’ve been playing the shit out of RDR again lately.

        • When all is said and done…trade ya RDR for Vegas if we’re both up for it whenever.

        • Not permanent I mean….like 6 months or something.

        • If/when I get Vegas, I’ll probably pick it up for the PC. I ended up re-buying FO3 on Steam when it was on a really good sale (and Game of the Year) and I really like the controls better.

          If you haven’t played it yet, I couldn’t recommend RDR highly enough. Don’t just get Undead Nightmare though. I mean, that’s a lot of fun, but the full game is incredible. I’m thinking about doing a full replay, which is something I don’t tend to do.

        • hah….going for $16 used on amazon right now. Yeah nevermind. Wow thats crazy.

        • Nice! Buy that sucker up!

        • Wait….full nighmare?

          You mean buy the game and the $10 add-ons right?

        • Yeah, buy the full game (Red Dead Redemption), and then buy the add-ons (Undead Nightmare, and then there are others that add minor functionality and a bunch of multiplayer stuff) seperately if you want them. I believe there’s package that includes all the add-ons, but I don’t recall the price.

        • Cool…I’ll just buy the downloads. $16 used I am sure the code inserts are used.

        • Code inserts?

        • Well you said package that include add-ons so I am assuming you mean the slips of paper that have codes on them that you use for the PS-Store to get the add-ons for free? Thats how some games work now. Like Vegas came with some codes to get some free armor and a few other things. If you bought a game used I am sure the previous owner would have used them.

        • Oh, no. I don’t believe the game includes free downloads (mine didn’t, at any rate). The add-ons are separate purchases.

        • gotcha!

        • I’m probably going to get RDR at some point as well, I’ve recently read about it and apparently it plays as an open-world game (my favorite genre). Undead Nightmare is interesting to me just because different age zombie apocalypses appeal to me. I mean, I’ve never heard anyone suggest a medeival zombie outbreak. It’d just be very interesting.

        • speaking of Netflix streaming…Breaking Bad seasons 1 – 3 hit today..

        • Hey im a little late to this conversation… But Fallout 3 is my favorite game of all time. 😀

      • I guess I need to read about Undead Nightmare …seems everyone knows about it but me

        • The Cliffs Notes Version: An undead plague strikes the area in which the game is set, and you have to put a stop to it. There are zombies everywhere, including zombified animals. There aren’t any stores, so ammo is at a premium. There are also a bunch of other weird things in the game, like Bigfoot. It’s a hell of a lot of fun.

        • What in the hell….why was I not informed of this sooner?!

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dead_Redemption:_Undead_Nightmare

        • That’s a very good question.

        • We did have a long discussion about it a couple tens of strips back…

        • Yeah, it really wasn’t even that long ago!

        • : (

        • No need to cry, son.

  9. Well there is one way to cure the infection…it’s a simple equation: Chainsaw + Jeff’s head = Cure

    • That’s a pretty hardcore cure.

  10. Ah, that moment in Dead Snow… I remember watching that when it was in the theaters. Everyone went “Oh!” at the same time. Also, I tried Dead Island. It’s kinda like a game version of 28 Days Later, but on an island. You should try it.

    • I really need to rewatch Dead Snow again one of these days.

  11. Well they have a chainsaw a gun a possible light saber (if you dont get the joke go back a few pages when shes in the closet) and a hammer. they can at least look for a doctor. But she wants to kill him. (they dont know theres no cure. Thats the only reason Ime

  12. I wouldnt mind do a review of dead island when I beat it.

    • What are your initial thoughts? I’ve read it’s pretty buggy.

      • Well not really on xbox

      • Well not really on xbox.

  13. Oh wait that’s not a chainsaw it’s a leaf blower with a chain on the back.

  14. Hah, she’s not the doctor? How about the surgeon? That who you’d really need for an amputation.

    All the “rational” people who just say amputation can be done by anybody, and has been done for years since the middle ages and before, etc. I really disagree. (The survival rate in those times was extremely low, anyway.) My thoughts are all jumbled due to fatigue at the moment, but I think that even if you could hold Jeff still and talk him into an amputation, it would most certainly be difficult to stop the bleeding. Infection (by normal diseases), as has been said, is still a problem as well.

    Anyway, it makes for a good topic for discussion. Nice episode, Dave! Although something about the nurse’s cold rationalism is upsetting… not that I am emotionally disturbed by thought that she isn’t willing to even try to save Jeff, but I feel that she’s almost operating too perfectly as a rational human machine, when humans can, in fact, be very emotional creatures.

    Of course, she IS a nurse who most likely has years of experience dealing with people in dire medical situations, and I AM incredibly tired – but at the same time, I can’t help but feel that her character seems kind of flat. Good episode, anyway!

    (And I’m still hoping to see some chainsaw action soon. 🙂 )

    • My idea for the nurse here is that she’s more than a little shell shocked, and the way she’s reacting to that is to be extremely cold and self-serving. She wants out of the hospital, and she’s not going to let anyone drag her into staying longer than necessary. Of course, she’d rather stay in the relative safety of a group, so she’s not going to run out on her own unless it’s absolutely necessary.

    • “And I’m still hoping to see some chainsaw action soon.”

      Look who’s getting all flirty with me!

      *swishes sun dress side to side*

      • *bats eyelashes*

        So wait… agreeing with someone counts as flirting, these days? Wow, then I must be quite the flirtatious young lad!

        Either that, or you must not agree with women very much… 😉

  15. Hey what’s the schedule for this comic?

    • Currently:

      Monday – New Comic
      Tuesday – New Review
      Wednesday – New Comic
      Thursday – Zombie creation of the Week
      Friday – Special Feature comic

  16. IT’S MY BIRTHDAY TOMMORROW!!!! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

    • Happy birthday. How old?

      • Dave! I should think you would know better than to ask a zombie its age!

        *tsk tsk*

    • Happy Birthday, Nekrospike!
      (Depending on what timezone your in, Happy Early Birthday!)

      May you celebrate the day of your birth many more times before the outbreak is upon us! 😉

  17. Cool. Send me a slice of cake.

    • And me

      • I’ll buy you a second cake.(Just kidding sorry)But I’ll give you a tribute sometime…somewhere…

        • think of me on your honeymoon

      • Mutts I just puked because of you.

        • I do my best

        • Hilarious

  18. Well in my case you did your worst for me.