Chapter 34-1 It Only Takes One

[LiamKerrington]

... I need Michaels story about Randy. It was bad enough to cause Michael nightmares, yet all the other people around him dying has (seemingly) left him unaffected, WHAT DID RANDY DO?!

/randomthoughtfromseasonsago

Also, has anybody brought up the 'updated file' from Carl? Is this groundwork laid to give creedance to Michael's "These are super soldier zombies" when trying to convince Kimmet of things?

Yeah, Randy still is a mystery. And I so much hope that Michael reveals the story sooner or later. Maybe this will happen right ahead of the climax of this epic story ...
"Updated fil" from Carl - not sure about that, but I guess I remember seeing Kc mention something on the chat one or two days ago; something along the line that these updates are not as significant as it may seem ... I may be totally wrong about this ...

[IamPaul]

Do make things worse ... Do you remember Michael saying something along this line: "I gave Tanya stuff to research against my better judgement ..."

In the end I would feel very, very good if the mystery behind the zeeh-pocalypse remains a secret, because I enjoy this whole speculation thing ... I wonder if WA would be only half as much fun, if this thrill evolving around the "how did it all start?" was not there ... And the revelation of the real cause might be like ... *OMFG*facepalm*DUDE!*, you know what I mean? I could be very wrong and the revelation could be just the sugar on top ...

If you think about it in real life terms, if we all were survivors, odds of us finding out the origins of the event would be very very very very very slim. So I think in the story if we never find out, that'd be cool (and something to keep the forums alive forever with speculation and teories). That would be one of the more realistic things in the story if that happened.

[Cabbage Patch]

Assuming the humans don't panic, the situation in Boulder should start to stabilize.

• The population is locked up tight in boarded up homes and fortified public buildings, and they're armed. This means that the Inklings will have a tougher time recruiting than was the case during the initial outbreak and they're taking losses doing it. And don't forget, Datu is at large, with a pickaxe!

• Army units that were guarding the perimeter of the city will be reorganizing and converging on the city center. With the civilians indoors, anyone seen on the streets will be a target, allowing the troops to make maximum use of their firepower and making it much harder for the Inklings to turn the troops. This should slow the outward spread of the Inklings, and possibly start pushing them back. The assault force from Fort Irwin should arrive in time to reinforce this effort.

• The trick now will be to draw the Inklings into the open, where they can be effectively engaged by any available armor, artillery and helicopter gunships. This becomes particularly attractive if there is an MLRS unit in Boulder. Imagine the KODI, but on a grand scale. Let's hope that Michael shared the sweat lure idea with Boulder, that they've laid in a stock of sweat bottles, and that it works on Inklings! The athletic fields at the University of Colorado campus would make a wonderful killing ground.

[nikvoodoo]

That post looks so familiar......

[LiamKerrington]

Hi there,

@Cabbage: Your statement on the latest events is very reasonable and makes a lot of sense with the soldiers regaining some control and the people having locked themselves down.
This is supported by the fact that a "few units" were able to regain control over the HQ in Boulder. This might be a good sign; at least it was the key-element for Col. Kimmet to delay his nuke-decision - as it seems to me.
As for the people hiding in boarded up and fortified buildings: I am not so sure about that; the one guy who denied Hope and Datu access was hidden; and yet at least one Inkling made its way into his building; also Datu and Hope were attacked within a (less properly) fortified building. Therefore at least parts of the civilians are anything else but safe, because the boardings and fortifications might be to weak and only a proper match against Regulars, but not special ones.

About the sweat bombs: I think these things won't work on "Little Ones". Reason: Sweat Boulders attract Regulars, because they have a highly developed scent, but a very poor sight; also Regulars act very dumb and need to be controlled from the outside (Smart Ones, Bill Robert); we only had it once that a Regular started to act cautiously on his own, and that was when Angel and Saul secured the garage the first time (if I remember correctly). Compared with those the Little Ones act quite autonomously ever since; also they don't engage in combat 'blindly' and without hesitation like Regulars do, but they seem to observe and to understand the situation before they attack according to the situation, which will be much more the case with Little Solider-Ones, if they keep some of their skills and knowledge. Maybe they would smell the sweat bombs and notice them; but then they would observe the place and realize: there is nothing to literally chew on. I only would buy something compared with rats: One or two might fall for the trick, but somehow the rest of them would avoid it from then on - like rats don't fall for rat-poison as easily as do so many other animals ...

All the best!
Liam

[facebook.com/alexinks]

waioto.jpg

[Bullethead]

I'm curious about your research list though, what were Research attempt 1 and 3?
The ones I remeber are:
1) Lizzy's sweat experiments
2) Michael's Tag & Track
3) CJ's group going to Ground Zero - but this doesn't slow the story because we hear about it from CJ after the fact. She tells Saul and Victor that one guy had to be killed.
4) Tanya wanting to expand upon Lizzy's research
5) Saul and Victor goes to Ground Zero - This one seems to just go nowhere, like they just said, "Hey that's VERY interesting! Gotta know more." "You're right. Anyone wanna raise chickens and watch movies instead?", "Yeah, I'm in.", "Me too, lets go."

I was not getting too specific, just pointing out that all research is lost any time some good ground is made. I suppose research at the colony I was thinking along lines of

#1: 'Oh wow they have a stable living situation and a hospital going on here at the Colony' then Michael runs off with all the guns ... 3ozxjj.jpg

#3: 'Oh another stable situation and well protected tower, and they have the water plant running' then Pinstripes breaks in... 3ozxjj.jpg

Makes me wonder if there aren't a bunch of nuked cities and military installations in the Eastern US, where they could have had time to get the failsafe protocol in place before they were over-run.

Just a thought, what if the "Kaboom" back in episode 1 was someone panicking and hitting a failsafe? Maybe ground Zero is a Failsafe just spitballing.

[fridginators]

@Nik several pages back, I don't want Kelly to die before she gets laid.

Witch Doctor also needs to stop making such good posts. I can't give him any more rep.

And to whomever it was posting maaaaaany pages back - yeah I think it was my comment that was referred to on WND a couple of months ago, pertaining to Lizzy's pregnancy, about how essentially the forum, as fun as it is, often leaves in a quite anti-climactic state of mind when big story-changing elements are introduced... simply because we've predicted many of them thanks to KC's breadcrumbs.

Very excited for 34-2. Season 3 has panned out very differently to Season 2. Season 2's endgame ran from Chapters 20-24, with the process of finding Lizzy, getting the choppers and the resulting part two of the war with the Mallers taking up those chapters. With Season 3 we've seen a much different dynamic - essentially it's played out over two different arenas, with a lot of stage-setting and explanations - which was fair enough, after such a climax the show needed to recalibrate itself, which it did in Chapter 29. Chapters 25-28 were essentially winding down the previous seasons, whereas in Season 2 the show took a one chapter break in Chapter 14 before launching right into the Michael/Pegs/Kelly exploration team and the Angel/Kalani sideplot (on a sidenote, I wonder if that boat that Michael and Pegs found will ever be of any consequence, or was just simply characterising their exploration - also hasn't it been nice to see how Skittle's initial warnings about the little ones have panned out, you know, with the imminent destruction of mankind and all?). I don't think we're going to see too much interaction between CJ's team and Michael's team yet. It may come to pass in Chapter 36, but I wouldn't be surprised if KC left it to the last few minutes for a glorious cliffhanger.


I must protest however if we see nothing of either Ink or Skittles this season. Really? No "it's Paul" or crazy stuttering? Jeez!

[Cabbage Patch]

Hey Liam,

Thanks for the thoughtful analysis. Here’s a little bit of my thought process, keeping in mind that the bottom line here is that your guess is as good as mine.

As for the people hiding in boarded up and fortified buildings: I am not so sure about that; the one guy who denied Hope and Datu access was hidden; and yet at least one Inkling made its way into his building; also Datu and Hope were attacked within a (less properly) fortified building. Therefore at least parts of the civilians are anything else but safe, because the boardings and fortifications might be to weak and only a proper match against Regulars, but not special ones.

There’s a certain cold-blooded logic to the concept of having the civilians shelter in place, and it isn’t necessarily to keep them safe.

First, it gets the civilians off the streets, where they’re easy targets for the zombies to turn and recruit. During the initial outbreak there were large, panicked crowds on the streets that provided rapid, massive reinforcement for the zombies and allowed them to spread rapidly in overwhelming numbers.

Second, it forces the zombies to spend extra time breaking into individual houses to find humans to turn. This means they’re “recruiting” in ones or twos, and they’re taking losses doing it. The zombies lose momentum, their progress slows and the troops won’t have to face as many.

Third, it makes it easier and safer for the troops who respond. The greatest advantage the human troops have is their ability to kill zombies at a distance, before the zombies can get close enough to kill or turn them. With the civilians indoors the troops are free to shoot anything they encounter, shooting first and asking questions later.

About the sweat bombs: I think these things won't work on "Little Ones". Reason: Sweat attract Regulars, because they have a highly developed scent, but a very poor sight; also Regulars act very dumb and need to be controlled from the outside...Little Ones act quite autonomously ever since; also they don't engage in combat 'blindly' and without hesitation like Regulars do, but they seem to observe and to understand the situation before they attack according to the situation...Maybe they would smell the sweat bombs and notice them; but then they would observe the place and realize: there is nothing to literally chew on.

We know the Little Ones/Inklings/Soldier Zombies are faster, stronger, tougher and craftier than the standard biters, and we suspect that they may retain some knowledge from their past life. But what we’ve seen so far of their actions in Boulder don’t strike me as being dramatically different from what we saw from normal biters during the initial outbreak. How much of their attack is thought out on the spot, and how much follows a pre-programmed script? My thought is that they’re doing the same thing biters would have, just faster and more efficiently.

We don’t know that they’d have the same response to the sweat bottles that the normal biters do, but there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t. It’s worth a try, and if the sweat doesn’t do the trick there are other ways to lure a mass of Inklings into kill-zones. Of course, with the Inklings there’s a good chance that tricks won’t work more than once, so the Army is going to have to make it count.

[LiamKerrington]

CabbagePatch: Thank you, you are awesome. I see the 'weak spots' in my ideas. And granted: The heroes need to deploy the sweat bombs - at least in order to learn how the LOs react to it.
And you are right: The Little Ones in Boulder act more like Regulars up until now. That struck me already the first time I listened to 34-1, but I failed to realize it properly. Compared to any other activity they had on the complete show it is a different behavior - for whatever reason. Maybe, because they are out of control or have encountered less resistance, since their number is high (several hundred infected within Boulder's walls). Compared with any other time, at which LOs were only few (one to two encountered simultaneously) and were very cautious in engaging armed humans (exception: the one that attacked the car with Briggs, Tardust and Lizzy in it; but that LO was controlled and directly commanded by Bill Roberts/ Pinstripes/ Ink), the LOs in in Boulder are in a frenzy and on a rampage.
The "cold blooded" strategy makes a lot of sense; never thought of it that way. But naturaly this is the way to deal with any real threat - why risk the lives of many, if you can at least try to put some leverage against the zombies with means of passive resistance ...

All the best!
Liam