Meat Locker Dilemma
 

I, like most players, initially sided with Lilly in trying to resuscitate Larry. In retrospect, I may have made the wrong call.

Initially, I understood Kenny’s concern about zombie Larry, but back at the motor inn, the injured body brought in did not turn undead until several minutes later. I thought I had time to save Larry. If I couldn’t save him in say, two minutes, then I would advocate using the salt lick to crush his skull, but Kenny made a rushed judgment.

However, I may have been wrong. The injured body was being treated by Katjaa. She could have prolonged the person’s life. So instead of minutes of trying to resuscitate Larry, I could have had only seconds.

I thought if Larry turned zombie that we would notice, but when Katjaa was attacked, she didn’t say afterward that the skin around his eyeballs suddenly darkened, so he looked undead. The injured body became undead without Katjaa noticing despite her close examination of him.

Assume for the sake of argument, that the injured body, was untreated by Katjaa, and became undead in two minutes.

Does that mean everyone becomes undead in two minutes? Not necessarily. That could be the minimum time or maximum time for the dead-to-undead process to occur. You don’t know. With that uncertainty, do you risk trying to resuscitate Larry? I reluctantly conclude Kenny made the right decision.

I could still be wrong because I am overlooking an important factor. If so, tell me.

Two unrelated points:

1. I will play the campaign with my initial decision of siding with Lilly.

2. Kenny is hard to please. I redid Episode 1 and Episode 2 to closer ally myself with Kenny, except for the meat locker dilemma. I helped rescue Duck, sided with Kenny in the pharmacy, gave Duck a snack, supported Kenny’s boat plan, fed both Duck and Kenny at the motor inn, and mostly agreed with him on everything else, except the argument about Lilly being a dictator (that was exaggerated and I think she was right about being called a Nazi when survival became tougher). When walking to the abandoned car, I gave him the gentlest response: he fractured the group. Despite my near constant agreement with him, in the Long Road Ahead preview, he says I never listened to him. I don’t hate Kenny, but if all my prior support isn’t reciprocated in Episode 3, I may dump him as an ally.

There's a lot of Ifs and buts. First everyone tells Lee a person becomes a zombie after they've been bitten, then he's expected to help kill someone (Duck in the pharmacy), then the only evidence we get after a person turns regardless of the manner of their death is the word of a frightened teenager, and Lee is expected to help kill someone else (Larry).

I just don't think the Lee I'm playing would be able to kill without confirming these facts with his own eyes. Seems like the game is kinda relying on you to make decisions based on your foreknowledge of zombies from pop culture.

Really think about the two possible injured people that you can bring back to camp with you. Do either of them look like they've sustained other injuries (apart from the missing leg/gun shot wound)? Do they look like they are suffering from the symptoms of a zombie bite (as compared to Irene in the motor inn, who VISIBLY looked ill)? Katjaa even clarifies that there was no bite on either of the bodies that she treated. Even if Ben's story is circumstantial evidence, it's always reasonable to err on the side of caution.

Err on the side of caution? He's about to help violently murder someone in front of children, you'd think he'd want to be absolutely 100% sure. Hey maybe the bite was on the band teacher's leg, the one Lee cuts off? Maybe the bite was small and Kat didn't notice? Maybe they were bitten and before they could develop viable symptoms they died from the gunshot/decapitation, prompting the transformation process to rapidly accelerate? I didn't see her stripping the body before declaring it unbitten.

First of all, "violently murder" implies that you were one hundred percent certain that Larry was alive at the time the salt block was dropped, which for most people he wasn't (at least not until the dev's confirmed that IF you managed to move quickly enough, that he DID slightly have his lips quiver just before the salt block made contact).

Second, err on the side of caution, for the specific purpose of regarding Ben's information, would be to assume that everyone has the potential to turn into a Walker, regardless of "bite status", until otherwise confirmed. There's a difference between giving Larry the benefit of the doubt of being alive, and still being cautious because he might come back as Zombie if he really is dead.

I was fairly certain he still had brain activity, death is not usually an instantaneous affair. I wouldn't expect Lee to risk extinguishing a human life with no more real evidence than some second-hand information from a spooked teenager. My take on the character needs more than that before he can destroy the group and traumatise a little girl for life.

While I would say that lingering Brain activity is different from guaranteeing that his heart or lungs would ever function normally again, I can't fault you for not wanting to needlessly traumatize Clementine. In hindsight, though, I think she will end up being less traumatized if you side with Kenny than if you side with Lilly, because for one, she gets warned not to watch, and it's easier to explain to her after the fact that Larry WAS dead (despite what I had actually believe, this is the approach I would take with her),then it would be to explain to her that you felt Larry could be saved and Kenny offed him anyway.

Not that you could possibly know any of that, however, so it makes it a moot point.

Presuming it's not the bite but everyone really is infected by default (which we know to be true, and which the entire group seemed to believe at the motor inn and afterwards):

We do NOT know how long it took for the teacher to turn after he died. It's safe to presume he was still alive when Lee was helping Katjaa, and that she was checking his pulse periodically. We should also presume she called Kenny and Lee over as soon as she noticed the teacher's death, and in between that and the moment she was pounced by the teacher was around one minute. We also do not know whether he sprung into movement immediately upon being reanimated, nor do we know whether Katjaa had actually diagnosed his death correctly. Summing up, it's possible the teacher reanimated even before all his life signs died out, and in any event it's very likely the process kicked in within 2 or 3 minutes of his death.

This is something the group should've used as an indicator on Larry's reanimation in the meat locker. For all they knew based on the eventualities depicted above, Larry could've begun reanimating any second, and Kenny needed nearly half a minute to heave the salt lick over and smash it on his head, so they could've been in real trouble had they not acted asap.

People have pointed out that the fact Larry stopped breathing doesn't mean he was actually dead, and that it can take up to 5 minutes for the body to shut down after breathing has ceased. However:

1. The events in between Larry's heart attack and Lee's choice took up a good slice of those 5 minutes, and Kenny hadn't even begun preparing the salt lick yet.
2. We haven't actually received any proof you need to die in order to turn. Considering it's apparently a virus, a viable theory would also be your body fights the virus and keeps it in check as long as you're in good condition, but once your body becomes too weak to resist it, the virus takes over.

I don't believe it is ever confirmed to be a virus.

brain death has been reported at around 4-5 minutes with out oxygen so katjaa would of been unaware of the teacher dying till she had finished patching him up.

so once the brain die's the virus then takes over.. so if we say approx ten minutes minimum ?

The wiki has a lot of the information you guys are looking for in regards to the process. http://walkingdead.wikia.com/wiki/Zombies#Reanimation

This is a bit off-topic, but props to Kenny and especially Lilly's voice actors during that scene. It was really well done.

we don't like wiki pages around here. . .

It really was a great dilemma. The specifics of the situation are debatable, but essentially it's a contest of ethics vs survival, your relationship with Lilly vs your relationship with Kenny and perhaps what you may or may not want Clem to witness.

As I see it there was no clear right or wrong answer, either you do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or the wrong thing for the right reasons. In any case you and the other group members will have doubts to ponder and at times will wonder what might've been if you'd chosen differently.

I'm really loving the way the narrative is playing out so far. :)

I don't think any TWD official source has labeled the affliction as viral nor is the source of the epidemic is ever explained.

That's not true. Most people did try to save Larry and thought he could still be saved. Accept it, it's most you that believed that :P

That's why I said apparently.

Lee
 

The wiki page says if you die you are now in pre zombie mode. Ok.

The wiki page says the only reason there are truly dead bodies lying around is because brain trauma prevented them from turning. Ok.

So. Lee's parents, found dead in their office. There was never any mention of the condition of their bodies, but if the above two wiki references are true, the only reason that Lee's parents were bodies to be thrown out vs two zombies to smack down is what.... They both had brain injuries? Obviously to have a brain injury stopping zombiefication would mean they would have been unable to crawl in there and barricade themselves in. The room is most definitely barricaded.

The only other option being, what.... That the Lilly group arrived to the drug store within 2-10 minutes of their death? Although the wiki mentions that is could be as long as 8 hours, but then goes on to mention how much "life" was in them beforehand makes a difference on the time. Two old people, one severely injured (lots of blood on the floor)...

Why didn't Lee's dad, the implied injured one, turn and eat his wife? Seriously. There should have been two zombies in there, not two bodies to be thrown out.

This at least should have made the Teen's conclusion a little less unlikely. Either way. Although it may make "horrifying sense" when he says it, just because you're a little pessimistic from the zombie apocalypse, you can't assume things will get even worse.

I don't really trust anything that tries to explain the "science" of reanimation, as I think there is none. That said, the dilemma was perfect. Not only did you have to make a terrible snap judgement, you had to decide if you were willing to take an action that nothing would ever heal. Larry was an asshole and most people were against him from the start - would you do exactly what Lily would assume you would and take your first opportunity to kill him, or play the mediator? It was not only about survival versus ethics, it was also a decision of to play your character or to play your own personal feelings.

I don't have a good judgement on either decision. As I said in another thread, there's plenty of better solutions, but Kenny took them all away.

When I met the three strangers in the forest, I asked them if the trapped stranger was bitten. Ben said he was not. Ben could have lied or not known about his band teacher being bitten, but I trusted Ben.

I agree, Kaapo. The little time between death and reanimation and the time used by Lee, Kenny, and Lilly talking made the reanimation a bigger risk.

In-game, you don’t know what the wiki says. That makes the game more interesting. You have to weigh the evidence rather than have the comic creator tell you how reanimation occurs.

I am curious if the detailed arguments in this and other threads will be used by Kenny and Lilly in the future. I don’t blame Kenny or Lilly. There was too little time to carefully think about the right call and thinking about it afterward will only worsen the memory for the survivors.

It's not like there are studies on zombification in The Lancet. Brain trauma prevents turning but there could be other undiscovered biological or genetic factors to slow or even prevent turning (e.g. cowpox to smallpox, sickle cell to malaria).