Zombie Cliche Lookout: Excitement and Fear
Okay, so we’re getting a little away from zombies here, but this is character stuff, so I’m going to argue that it still belongs (also, it’s my comic, so I’m allowed). Starting a family is an interesting thing. It’s simultaneously the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to you, and the most terrifying. At least it was for me and more than a few other dads (and prospective dads) I know.
If we really want to stick with zombies, and why wouldn’t we, one could make a similar claim about the zombie apocalypse. It’s exciting, certainly. Yes, maybe not exciting in a good way, but you’d be hard pressed to argue that surviving a zombie attack is a dull affair. And terrifying? Well if you’re not scared of being torn to bits by the reanimated remains of your family, then you’re made of sterner stuff than I.
So there, parenthood and the zombie apocalypse have more in common than you might have thought. You’re welcome.
About this Episode:
So there we have it, what everyone figured out two episodes ago is now official: Sam and his wife are pregnant. That will do us for setup stuff, and now we’re ready to get to the meat of this little flashback.
I’m not really going to address this in the strip, so to clarify, all this is happening a day or two before the comic officially started.
On a related note: it’s really hard to make minifigs look like they’re kissing.
Discussion Question: Cool but Useless
As the Simpsons have pointed out, nun-chucks are cool, but useless. With this as a jumping off point, what sort of zombie-defense weapon do you think is awesome, but likely not super effective (or dangerous)?
I’d choose either a chainsaw or a Molotov cocktail. Both are really cool in the movies, but in real life you’d be much more likely to injure yourself, hurt your other survivors, or destroy your shelter than actually taking out a horde of shambling zombies.
BOOM, totaly called it! In your face Bo- sorry. But still my brother owes me a Monster now.
Man, I don’t know how you guys can stomach those energy drinks.
well my brother thought that sarah was going to tell him about the zombies. My brother can afford this because he works at Lagoon.
I need to start betting your brother.
In my face?
Ray Charles could see where Dave was taking this story arc, no special insight required.
I think all of the “ines” in those Monsters is addling your brain.
Taurine, gaurine, caffeine. Can’t be good.
“I think all of the “ines” in those Monsters is addling your brain.”
What are “ines”? That’s a new term to me. Is it like caffines, taurines, and the like?
EDIT – And you answered my question right as I posed it.
Is this also going to explain why he went nuts in the hotel sooo very long ago that made everyone question his sanity???
Possibly.
I have a question for Dave: Is this the first time the zombie outbreak has happened in this part of your storyline, or are there earlier events that need to unfold in some storyline yet to come?
It might be interesting if you developed the primary infection story sometime soon, so your readers can get more of an understanding where these zombies actually came from, because after a while I just can’t stop myself asking questions like this all the time! 😀
Well, we already know Patient Zero was admitted to a hospital where it reanimated and started the whole thing, so that’s one piece of the puzzle.
As for where Patient Zero came from, and how they came to be infected, we’ll have to wait and see what Dave reveals in the future I suppose.
I’m not sure patient is the right term for a dead reanimated corpse. Zombie 0, maybe, but other than that I’m not sure. 😀
And for all we know, what Dave showed us is only what he wants us to believe is the start of the infection. I’m thinking he had a unique concept he wanted to try and get across but is still working the details of out. 😀
As far as showing the start of the infection, that hospital flashback is really about as much as I want to do.
I always thing that zombie stories are at their worst when they try to explain the hows and whys of the outbreak. My preference is to leave it purposely vague.
Katanas are definitely one of the “cool but useless” weapons. While they may be great at slicing, the things are fairly fragile and require a lot of skill and training to use effectively in battle, not to mention they’re a pain to maintain.
Yes, a trained user could decapitate a zed with little problem, but the average person isn’t likely to have that kind of training with one, and once the dead start to walk, finding time to train with it won’t be easy.
Sledgehammers are also cool looking but fairly useless in battle. It looks awesome to swing a 5-10 pound hammerhead through a zed’s skull and paint the immediate surroundings with it’s skull-contents, but sledges are also unwieldy and difficult to control.
Sure, you can knock of a zed head like a tee-ball, but that’s only if you don’t miss, and even if you connect, you will leave yourself wide open for attack during those precious few seconds you need to abort the hammer’s momentum and get it back into strike position, a situation made even more dire if you should happen to miss your target. You also run the very real risk of dislocating, twisting or spraining various joints or losing control and blowing out a knee or hitting an ally who is too close.
Bullwhips also fall into this category. Going all Indiana Jones on a living opponent is one thing – nothing looks cooler than disarming your opponent from five feet away, but that’s about all whips are good for besides tricks.
Unless you have it weighted with something, the end of a whip is more of a cutting edge than a bludgeon, and even then it doesn’t cut very deep, making it more of a disabling weapon than a lethal weapon. Additionally, an inexperienced whip user is just as much of a danger to themselves and their compatriots as they are to an enemy, and that danger increases with a weighted end.
Nice list, Darg!
The katana is an excellent example, and it’s what I was thinking about when I came up with the question. I’ve ragged on Katanas quite a bit though, so I picked some different examples.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bullwhip touted as an effective zombie weapon – has someone actually done this?
I have to partially disagree on the sledgehammer thing. Sure, swinging it in a wide arc is a horrible idea, but that’s true of any weapon. And total overkill in this situation – swung like that a sledge will go clean through a brick wall, way more than you need to take out a zombie. I think that a small sledgehammer wielded with a nice wide grip would be able to be used much more effectively than that, even if it still isn’t ideal.
Anybody ever picked up a Viking or medevil war hammer? Ive never held one but Ive seen photos and the are generally a lot smaller then the depictions you see in movies and video games. I agree on the sledgehammer point, but I wonder if a real “war hammer” might be a lot more usefull.
I’ve never picked one up, but it stands to reason that they’d be suited to the task. Movies and games tend to exaggerate things, after all.
I’ll think it’ll be a fragmentation grenade very dangerous to humans but zombies not so much.
Oh I completely agree.
Hey Dave, is this how you felt when you found out you were going to be a dad?
It didn’t hit me until exactly a week after my kid was born. I sat on the bed looking at him and realized that I didn’t have a receipt and could not return him. I think I’d worked retail a bit too long at that point. lol
This is absolutely how I felt. I’m basically recreating my experiences here. Well, in these three episodes anyway. After this, things are going in a different direction.
“I sat on the bed looking at him and realized that I didn’t have a receipt and could not return him”
Hah!
Oh how well I remember that feeling! Joy and incredible excitement followed by the slow decent into panic and abject terror. My big meltdown came on the day we took him home. The hospital was safe and full of helpful nurses who were glad to walk new parents though all the necessary routines. I dont think that Ive ever felt more lost, clueless and out of my depth then driving that baby home.
Oh yeah, getting home, away from the nurses… the terror.
i dont know about you guys but i think that the safest spot that you can be in the apocalypse, is a unit storage. Feedback?
There are usually big fences, and I doubt there’d be many people there. Food, water, and sanitation would be an issue though.
i dont know, if you bought a storage garage and filled it with food and whatever drinks that you want, and even until the apocalypse, you and some buds can hang out there, it rocks to an IQ of 104
The downside is that those places are often in the suburbs, which means lots of people, which means lots of zombies eventually.
theres nothing wrong with the subs, i’d actually sugest going there, if theres too many survivors, then they’re all going to go to the country. Oh and i changed my username. just so everyone noticed
The population density would be lower than the city, but it’s still pretty high. Getting around would be tough too, since you’d largely be at the mercy of the roads, and they’d probably be clogged with wrecks and abandoned vehicles very early on.
Most useless zombie apocalypse weapons: a bat or board with nails in it, a machete, 99% of swords, whether “real” or not, .22 caliber firearms smaller than 5.56/.223 (regardless of magazine capacity), and the gimmicky ones Dave mentioned, especially homemade explosives/accelerants.
Machetes and the board/bat with nails in it have the same problem. They’re likely to hang up or snag in the cutting medium. Machetes are too thin to chop meat effectively. Swords, as Darg mentioned, require too much practice on the front end for the average zombie survivor. If you want to use a sword in a zombie outbreak you’d better find a good salle now.
As for the .22 that everyone seems to love, it does not have a lot of penetration. Unless one can consistently put them in the eyeball of a moving target, forget about it.
Well said. I’ve always loved the machete as an anti-zombie weapon in movies and games. In real life, it’d get stuck almost immediately. I clear a lot of brush with machetes at home, and there’s no way I’d depend on it as a zombie-defense weapon unless it’s the only thing I had.
I don’t exactly know how to answer this one, because everything I like as a weapon are things that are practical and useful. I guess the best I got is a wood axe, and those are relatively good for chopping through completely. I admit they would wear any -normal- (relevant to the lack of endurance of the average US citizen) person down. So yeah there’s that! Need the stamina to use the weapon I find to be a bit more appealing.
Chopping wood is hard work. Chopping zombies is probably harder still. Wood doesn’t try to eat you, after all.
My friend says whips would be the cool but useless. I have to agree, and I think it’s the most unique so far.
They certainly wouldn’t be very effective on zombies.
Poor Sam… all excited to be a dad and now we see how he’s possibly lost both wife and kid.
Cool but useless…. I imagine a lot of slicing weapons could end up useless. You’d want something that could be swung readily enough for blunt trauma. Especially if the only way to permanently stop a zed is with head blows. And that’s assuming reality shows we end up with anything like movie zeds.
Poor Sam indeed.
It would have to be some sort of self sustaining weapon tho. Gas for chainsaws etc will run out and actually will spoil before it gets a chance to sun out. Firearms are nice but HAVE to be a last resort to ration ammo, which WILL run out. If you are not skilled with sword fighting, I feel the best weapon would be some sort axe/hatchet. Or perhaps a cricket bat….Casey Jones any body?
I’d love to see a Casey Jones zombie flick.
I guarantee the zombies will run out long before my ammunition does.
This is the only question I have with regard to logistics: Are they Romero zombies, or not? If they are, then we’ll need a bit more ammunition, since we’ll have to factor in every recently dead person. For the others, though, no worries.
“I guarantee the zombies will run out long before my ammunition does”
Either you have a lot of ammo, or you are in a very remote area away from cities and the like…. maybe a combo of both?
Or maybe being in lil old New Zealand i dont realise how much ammo is actually in circulation in the USA.
Around here a thousand rounds is chump change.
“Or maybe being in lil old New Zealand i dont realise how much ammo is actually in circulation in the USA.”
I think this is part of it. People who stockpile ammo tend to stockpile a lot of ammo. And many also reload.
The weapon that would be absolutely awesome would probably be a minigun, with the spinning barrels and the bullet belt, it it hard to feel more macho than while you are holding one. They may seem awesome, bu they are over 200 lbs. I don’t know about you but I can’t lift that much. And, furthermore, they are way too rare and the ammo for one gets chewed up pretty fast.
Like Ol’Painless in Predator? Heck yeah!
That’s a shit-ton of 7.62x51mm. 😀
Give me that ammunition and I can run three M14S rifles for-ev-er.
No shit. Let’s say you have around 10k rounds. That’ll last you all of five seconds in a minigun. And that’s one set to ‘slow’. Set it to ‘fast’ and you’d be lucky to get two seconds out of it. I think I’d take the rifles too…
Hmmmm, cool but useless.
A suit of armour… yeah it’s not a weapon, but wouldn’t it be cool rocking around in a bite proof suit of armour, stomping and punching your way through a mob… like a human tank 🙂
Useless because…. visibility and mobility are severly limited, you would cook/dehydrate in it, getting it on and off isn’t very practical, the mob would overpower you and eventually pry open the metal and tuck in.
So, cool idea… but really you would just turn yourself into a moving can of Zombie chow.
Love the suit of armor idea. Fits perfectly.
It’s totally a myth that wearing armour makes you half-blind and unable to get up. If you’re not used to moving about with over 30 pounds of weight though, you’ll have some nasty stamina problems. There wouldn’t be much point either, since zombie bites are only going to have a tiny fraction of the penetrating power of steel weapons.
I just thought of another: throwing knives and ninja stars. Both cool, both totally useless.
i know someone who’s not going to survive the apocalypse, theres this kid i know who said that he wants a gun that shoots ak-47’s, and that after a while, that the zombies would just eat themselves. thats almost as dumb as the invention of WWE wreseling, because the people on the stage aren’t even hitting each other, they’re just changing the camera veiw, which is lame.
I hate to break it to you, but no actor on stage ever really hits the other. Nor do they on TV and film sets…
I KNEW IT
Nice job; only a handful of people saw it coming.