Chapter 27- The Thirty-First Part 3

I am not going to flog a dead horse on this one. But, Datu writes that Samantha said... Kalani, writes what he remembers 20 days after it happened without feeling he had to keep notes about actions at that time.

Second, as 7odd says, we do not know if they can see or be seen. Samantha says she was taken from "them" and "they" were with me.

No reason there could not be two groups. Hell, as far as the story goes, it is a "must see" attraction.

Kalani
Samamtha and her group
Riley and Angel
Scratch and lizzy and all
Saul
Less blatant: Skittles gets there

Maybe a group of mallers is not out of the question.

Scratch also says You'll find something... Would she say that so camly if her plan to locate The Other Tower failed? We all know how cool and collected she is.

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Originally Posted by Arthur LaMarche

Careful with the linking of the rainstorms. The one at "Our" Tower occurred before Kalani got to The Other Tower. Burt, Saul and Lizzy find the convoy that got hit. It was one hell of a firefight and ~ 20 people. Kalani tells Michael and Angel that they lost a convoy of 15-20 people before they got there. I find it more likely that it rained on multiple days then a time sink.

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I agree. I have been cataloging events and although we hear one rain storm, I am willing to bet there were storms we didn't hear about. Besides, in a big city it isn't uncommon for one area to receive rain whereas other parts do not. At current, in the timeline I don't want to make this a discussion about the timeline but just some things to consider; it was raining when the convoy got hit, it was raining when team SLB finds the remains of the convoy. It could have been a long storm system. The tower was over run approximately three days after the convoy was over run. Team SLB encounter Pinstripes at the convoy remains. Did they see him only hours prior to his attempt to break in to CJ's tower? Possibly.

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Originally Posted by reaper239

COULDN'T CARE LESS DAMNIT! that is a pet peeve of mine, people say "i could care less" oh yeah, well i couldn't possibly care less, that is how little i care. but what i do care about is grammer. just like saying sneaked. "he sneaked into the building" like hell he did, what he did was, he snuck into the building, being as there is no such thing as sneaked. RAGE!!!!! over

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Ah reaper you crack me up. But, after 20 years of bulitin boards, I am burned out...

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Originally Posted by HardKor

hmm...lots of things to mull over in this one. We knew already the ol' pinstripes wasn't your average zombie but I'm guessing we've got a ways to go before we find out just how special he is. I wanna think he was the original test subject who started the outbreak, but I can't figure out how to jive that with multiple simultaneous outbreaks.

Also on a small note, it sure sounded like the other tower's fall was happening in the middle of a rain storm. The last time I can remember it raining in the show was the scene with Michael threatening to kick Kelly out of the Tower (I wanna say chapter 7?) so maybe that establish a timeline for when this all was going down.


EDIT: Make that Chapter 4.

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My thoughts exactly. There is likely to be other rain storms, but this seemed pretty heavy so, maybe we can pin the two together.

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Originally Posted by Arthur LaMarche

Ah reaper you crack me up. But, after 20 years of bulitin boards, I am burned out...

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ARGH!!!!!!!!!!! say it with me now ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!! RAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Originally Posted by reaper239

COULDN'T CARE LESS DAMNIT! that is a pet peeve of mine, people say "i could care less" oh yeah, well i couldn't possibly care less, that is how little i care. but what i do care about is grammer. just like saying sneaked. "he sneaked into the building" like hell he did, what he did was, he snuck into the building, being as there is no such thing as sneaked. RAGE!!!!! over

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Point of note: If you are going to rage about grammer, especially from someone who normally has an excellent command of the English language, make sure your punctuation is correct please. Thank-you. :)
Story ended. Back to chapter discussion

Do the zombies have a sense of self-preservation?

When CJ is cornered she takes a few of them down and they stop advancing on her. Now it’s perfectly possible that there was some non-verbal communication from a smart one but given the verbal command that came later I'm not sure about that.

So either the regular zombies made a value judgement that their life(?) was more important than a well-defended position (I'm not sure they knew she was alone?) or a smart one made a similar value judgement on their behalf. Their are interesting implications of both scenarios. Could it mean that a regular zombie wouldn’t follow an order blindly if they perceived it contrary to their best interest or why does a smart one care if a few of their less cranially endowed colleagues get slaughtered?

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Originally Posted by symon_r

Do the zombies have a sense of self-preservation?

When CJ is cornered she takes a few of them down and they stop advancing on her. Now it’s perfectly possible that there was some non-verbal communication from a smart one but given the verbal command that came later I'm not sure about that.

So either the regular zombies made a value judgement that their life(?) was more important than a well-defended position (I'm not sure they knew she was alone?) or a smart one made a similar value judgement on their behalf. Their are interesting implications of both scenarios. Could it mean that a regular zombie wouldn’t follow an order blindly if they perceived it contrary to their best interest or why does a smart one care if a few of their less cranially endowed colleagues get slaughtered?

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Brilliant! I like your way of thinking. I am going to put more stock in the latter notion; that a smart one made the call for them, although we can't be certain because, as you said, we didn't hear any verbal command. But who knows, the one leading them (I'm assuming it was Pinstripes) may have done something as simple as place a hand on the shoulder of the next one about to meet it's true death around that corner.

CJ lucked out though because although she dropped 4 or 5 zed heads, she would have eventually run out of full clips to load up.

Lots good has been mentioned already, but here's my main thoughts on the newest. Sorry for the length... I tried to make it as easy to scan/read as possible.


On Zombie Intelligence, Especially That Of 'Ink'
- Ok, first of all: INK, BILL ROBERTS, PINSTRIPES, "IT'S PAUL", TOWTM, ETC...... all the same zombie, who will be referred to hereafter simply as "Ink" as that is shortest.
- So at least some zombies can reason, understand language, follow commands in a chain of command
- Ink is the only talking one we know of, so I'm guessing that was him
- Angels musing about 'zombie cliques' seems to imply zombies forming social groups around a central leader
- Martin mentions about the fires in the Arena that only 1 lit the fires, while the rest (were ordered to) move them around
- Also the zombie calls of attack and retreat, given by rooftop Ink
- The mass exodus to the hospital seems to seal the deal that the local zombie tribe has formed a sort of army under Ink's leadership

Ok, nothing really new there. However,
- Some zombies are clearly either stupid or under the influence of overpowered senses (like the one who attacked the sweat-splashed wall)
- Burt theorized that the smarter they were in life, the smarter they were in death, too (so Ink was a genius serial killer ala Hannibal Lecter)
- But Ink also had difficulty entering the correct key code on our tower, even though he understood the numbers when they were given to him. He also jumped up to flee as soon as he heard the guys were out of ammo and presumably orchestrated at least two zombie-led ambushes.

Questions:
- Why is Ink in charge of this zombie tribe?
- What qualities--apart from intelligence-- qualify him for such leadership?
- Is the zombie hierarchy purely based on smarts, or other factors?

Well, I feel there is a whole lot about Ink's back story that is yet to come... Speaking of:


On Skittles Not Being Chomped
- He mentioned that he was "right there" and "they didn't look at me".
- But he had later encounters with zombies after him, like the time when he had to hide in the dumpster.

Theory: Skittles does not give off a scent to the zombies the same way that most people do. This could explain why he wasn't attacked (they didn't immediately recognize him as a target) and why he could hide in a dumpster successfully even though that other guy was found in a closet, out of sight.



On The Fate of Zombie Prisoners
- The torture games further reinforces the social behavior of the zombies. The Arena-Maulings are their version of the World Cup, I suppose.
- Martin mentioned that some prisoners were led to the center of the Arena, but he didn't know what happened to the others.

Theory: Some of the prisoners were brought to the hospital and had evil experiments done to them, to make them into Behemoths and other zombie variants. Still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding who is conducting the experiments (Ink is surely behind it) and exactly why. What is Ink's ultimate goal???



On 'Piss-Poor' Execution In The Other Tower
A little too harsh on C.J. and the gang, don't you think, guys? They had fallback positions, hidden orchards, remote weapons stashes, etc.... put Saul's crappy motor-pool modifications to shame! Certainly a lot of great planning and organization involved... no one can really dispute that. But:
- Yes, you guys are right that said the weapons stashes speaks to a lack of trust on C.J.'s part, and
- There seemed to be a small elite 'in the know' at C.J.'s tower who kept a lot of underlings in the dark, and
- Michael mentioned that the officers make the plans, but it is the NCOs who figure out how to make it work, so
- C.J.'s tower seemed to lack a committed core of NCO's to back up her plans. Also,

- The guys at our tower managed to repel a ferocious attack by the Mallers, even half-drunk and out of ammo
- The group at Michael's tower were smaller and less organized, but seemingly much closer knit
- Michael even mentioned he started thinking of them as soldiers, but then came to think of them as family
- And we will all die for our families...right?

Observation: It seems to me that C.J.'s tower, despite being physically and technologically superior, was inferior to ours in one essential aspect: heart. You could say that our guys have survived better because they came together as family, and that when TSHTF, C.J.'s group could never get beyond just thinking for themselves, thus dissolving into chaos.

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Originally Posted by litmaster

On Skittles Not Being Chomped
- He mentioned that he was "right there" and "they didn't look at me".
- But he had later encounters with zombies after him, like the time when he had to hide in the dumpster.

Theory: Skittles does not give off a scent to the zombies the same way that most people do. This could explain why he wasn't attacked (they didn't immediately recognize him as a target) and why he could hide in a dumpster successfully even though that other guy was found in a closet, out of sight.

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It could be as Skittles rather then Duncan, he gives off a different 'crazy person' scent that zombies don't associate with food. Many different hormones and reactions in your body can change the way you smell, so maybe Skittles no longer smells like food. This could link in with why animals are not a target for the chompers, they, obviously, don't smell like people/food.