Lee was passed out in the car for TWO DAYS?!? And, reasoning about the outbreak.

[Catedratico]

Now that Season 1 is over (man, that finale...), I think there's no harm in picking apart components of the story we may have missed before. If the actual game writers want to come in and directly answer questions about the story (like they did on that drugstore helicopter crash post), I see no harm in that either. Until that happens, feel free to muse and agree with or argue against me on my guesses, but please try to provide some sort of evidence from the game.

Anyway, I want to bring up something I noticed about Episode 1 watching other peoples' play-throughs on YouTube. If you choose to tell Clementine that “something else” (walkers) killed Sandra before you did, she says she “heard her scream two nights ago.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEO7q...y_FSZ3&index=2, at 9:52)

Let's assume that Sandra died the night of the date of the outbreak. If Lee was in the car crash on the day of the outbreak, he has to have been passed out for the rest of that day, that night, the next day, the next night, and the first part of the day he woke up on. I'm no expert, but that seems like a LONG time to be out cold...

Some people on these forums have suggested that the outbreak started days before Lee was being driven to prison. That doesn't make any sense; if that was the case, the old cop wouldn't be so nonchalant about everything coming through his radio, and the dispatcher on the police radio wouldn't refer to whatever violence started happening in Atlanta as a “riot in progress.” The order and closeness of the messages coming through the radio (first a 10-91E (“animal” bite according to http://www.policecodes.net/ten-codes/10-91e) in the area, then a medical team on it's way to Hartsfield with 10s and 20s coming in (which I assume is a police term for serious injuries), and then a riot in progress with 217s (assault with intent to murder according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_...e_Hundred_Code) directed towards all officers), suggests that local law enforcement had no clue what was going on and had to deal with multiple outbreaks all of a sudden. You can hear all of this in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDcXIIwTdkE, with the first blurb at 1:50, the second at 2:15, and the third at 2:50. Sorry if some of them are hard to hear.

Depending on how much time you look around in the car for and what you say, the spacing between a single other police car being seen on the highway, and a helicopter and SWAT team making their way towards the city, is only a few minutes. Whatever made people come back after dying and started the whole epidemic must have happened only a few minutes, or couple of hours at most, before Lee's conversation with the cop in the car. A few fatal heart attacks and car crashes later, you have walkers ready to kill (or at least bite) and turn people all over Georgia, the United States, and maybe even the world, depending on whether the phenomenon had to spread or happened everywhere at once.

If, then, the 'apocalypse' started when (or just before) Lee was in the car, and Sandra was half-eaten by walkers that night, and a day and a night later Lee meets Clementine, logically, he had to be out for two days.

The only thing weird about this is that the cop is attacked by walkers and doesn't turn until Lee goes up to him. Which means that either he was also passed out for at least a day, or he took a couple of days to turn (which doesn't make any sense).

Thoughts? Is there something obvious I'm missing? And how does Lee seem to know how long he was out for when he says “two nights ago? Yeah, that's probably what happened”? And how come the answering machine doesn't give a date, even when the first two calls are supposed to be from the day before? Okay, I'm done now.

[Kiel555]

First, I like your post. Pretty cool.

I think the outbreak was underway as Lee was on his way to prison. Lee was only passed out for a short time. The officer turned as expected..in a short amount of time.

Sandra may have been attacked two days ago as the outbreak spread and the police being used to a lot of crime just said "here we go again". I think it's safe to say that the government is slow to mobilize against any threat so increased police presence may have been in response to days of elevated crime levels.

[Ghositex]

I had thought about this before. The idea of Lee being unconscious in the Police car never crossed my mind, honestly. There was a lot of walkers in the forest when Lee was heading to Clementine's house, and I don't think that would have happened in just a few hours (though, I don't get how those walkers got there in the first place, but nevermind that). Also, the walker-cop could have just been a "lurker".

[rachellouise85]

But why would clem come out to check out the crash two days after it happened?

[Ctn04132]

I think it's pretty obvious that Lee has passed out for a day and a half, at the very least. After the cop crashes the car, Lee slips into unconsciousness and his eyes flutter open twice - the first time his eyes open the sun is still shining brightly, and the second time his eyes flutter open it is already evening / night time due to the sky being dark.

[chiefzackery]

Originally Posted by rachellouise85

But why would clem come out to check out the crash two days after it happened?

Because lee just shot a shotgun

[rachellouise85]

Oh yeah, I forgot x). After I postedI started thinking about it,I was thinking maybe she heard him smashing the window or something, but a shotgun would be louder xd

[Rock114]

The walkers were probably already in the woods when the car accident happened. Remember, the car hit a walker that actually came FROM the woods on the other side of the road. Shawn says, if you meet him during the day at least, that he hasn't: "Seen anything this gnarly since downtown Atlanta, 15 miles back". If you leave in the day, then you meet him and Chet literally JUST escaping from the main part of the city itself. He and Chet couldn't have survived two days in downtown Atlanta if the amounts of police and SWAT officers scene heading there during the car ride was any indication of the current state of things.

Plus, there likely wouldn't be enough walkers all in the same place at once to be called a "riot" until, perhaps, 3-5 days into the outbreak. In the opening days, people wouldn;t have been completely chewed apart to die and come back within an hour or so. By the time Lee takes his car ride to prison, there are already sizeable amounts of undead in the city and outside it as well.

[Zeruis]

The apocalypse could have easily started in some parts more than others, like Clem's neighborhood. For all we know, Sandra could have turned even before Lee was in the police car. I took it on the fact that Lee woke up in the cop car in the afternoon of the same day.

[AnTea]

The thing is, I don't really see what's wrong. Atlanta was probably not infected yet, but it doesn't mean that it is where the infection starts. We all know now that everyone is sick, and it only needs one person to die to make him become a walker. So, we can imagine that Clem's neighboorhood was touched first because one of of the neighbor's died... I can hardly imagine that evrything would happen in just one day,like this, just because mother nature decide that everyone will die the same day...
So I don't really see the problem. Mayb e they didn't think of that, and they just wanted to put some action, but seriously, who cares? It's not a big mistake since everyone can find his own explanation.
Maybe they didn't have time to explain it, or maybe it doesn't matter at all and they want us to focus on what really matters: Clem&Lee.

[distortion]

Originally Posted by Catedratico

If the actual game writers want to come in and directly answer questions about the story (like they did on that drugstore helicopter crash post), I see no harm in that either.

Might someone please point out that thread? I'd love to read it!

[dubesor]

I think you are misunderstanding how the outbreak works. it's not like you seem to think: monday no zombies, suddenly tuesday 1AM everyone who dies suddenly is a zombie.

that's not how it works. it starts slow at first, very small amount of zombies if any, and small number of people dieing. the outbreak can easily last a couple of days before people getting aware. then the more people die the more zombies, which is a cycle that get's blown up in terms of numbers after a little while.

Lee was not in the car for 2 days... he was there for mere minutes, an hour or two maximum. the first zombies arrived long before Lee got into the car, but very few people were aware (most likely dead by that point).

edit: also further proof that you are wrong is that in the walking dead universe the corpses generally take anywhere from 3 minutes to 8 hours to reanimate. the officer only just turned when Lee approached him, thus he was passed out for a few mins or maximum 8 hours just like I assume above.
this timespan is mentioned by Dr. Jenner from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.

[DreadMagus]

I thought it was obvious Lee had been out for a couple days... as for the walkers in the woods - most likely they were from Clem's "town" or whatever and were initially drawn by the very loud car crash and shotgun spree. lol

EDIT - To the above post - minutes or hours? Doubtful, the deputy clearly got killed by walkers - but they had already headed on. Plus Lee notes the deputy has started to decay.

[Ghositex]

Originally Posted by DreadMagus

I thought it was obvious Lee had been out for a couple days... as for the walkers in the woods - most likely they were from Clem's "town" or whatever and were initially drawn by the very loud car crash and shotgun spree. lol

EDIT - To the above post - minutes or hours? Doubtful, the deputy clearly got killed by walkers - but they had already headed on. Plus Lee notes the deputy has started to decay.

Mr. Parker looked pretty... rotten(? when he grabbed Katjaa, in Episode two, and he had just died a few minutes ago.

[dubesor]

yep. they are like instantrotten once they turn. it doesn't matter if you lived 5 mins ago, your skin looks rotten, your eyes are empty, fingernails yellow etc. the virus works that way. the argument that you need to have been dead for several days to look like and smell like a zombie is not true.

[AnnaSan]

Maybe the police didn't die instantly after the crash, he was probably blacked out too o.o

[DreadMagus]

Yeah, I'd forgotten about the teacher.....

[Fiddle Diddle]

I guess that Lee, in immense pain, could've blacked out, fallen asleep, stirred sporadically to hear the police officer get pulled from the car and so on, fell asleep again, whatevs.

He missed the actual outbreak itself, that's the point.

It's a common theme in zombie movies; "The last thing I remember is falling asleep, now I wake up and the world is different." I think that it's such a common plot device for 2 reasons:

1. It'd be difficult to depict the actual outbreak itself realistically.
2. The writers get to skip over a lot of details and give the main characters a little exposition later, so that the viewer can learn with them.

[DanJ555]

Originally Posted by dubesor

Dr. Jenner from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.

If I remember correctly, Dr. Jenner and the CDC isn't in the comic, thus that is uncannon.

[Sutinen]

It makes no sense that he would suddenly fall in coma... I thought everyone knew he was passed out for an hour maybe. The zombies were in the woods all the time, that is why the police officer got eaten. And Sandra had gotten killed a couple of days ago.