Chapter 39-2 Chemical Reactions

[cupcakezombie]

Did quick research here on Keratin 18. It is associated with fibrosis tissue and scar tissue, such as might be found when someone has liver cirrhosis. It will greatly thicken and toughen the tissue.

[pmchawk]

Teaches me for attempting to post right before going into meeting and it fail..

1st I think I'm going to predict that Saul's levels are actually dropping.

2nd my post that I lost was about the bottles. Micheal tried to read it and he believes it was "Fo...." I'm thinking it is actually "Fe..." Such as FeSO4. Fe is the element Iron. Iron is important to your health, something I don't recall and COGNITIVE(sp?) Function.

Perhaps a shot of Iron helps them retain their smarts or even improve them after they were changed.

Another thing I found was (no idea if it is relevant) K18 was that it was associated with the color red in a couple articles that were well above my head. Iron is also important for your red blood cells (saw that somewhere too).

And another article I found talked about K18 which I think Could be relivent, though it too was over my head, was K18 being tied to liver disfunction. What happens when you have a bad liver? The whites of your eyes turn yellow. Perhaps the heightened K18 effects your liver in a way that causes the eyes to go cloudy.

[pmchawk]

Did quick research here on Keratin 18. It is associated with fibrosis tissue and scar tissue, such as might be found when someone has liver cirrhosis. It will greatly thicken and toughen the tissue.

Nice find

[UndeadSweeper]

Teaches me for attempting to post right before going into meeting and it fail..

1st I think I'm going to predict that Saul's levels are actually dropping.

2nd my post that I lost was about the bottles. Micheal tried to read it and he believes it was "Fo...." I'm thinking it is actually "Fe..." Such as FeSO4. Fe is the element Iron. Iron is important to your health, something I don't recall and COGNITIVE(sp?) Function.

Perhaps a shot of Iron helps them retain their smarts or even improve them after they were changed.

Another thing I found was (no idea if it is relevant) K18 was that it was associated with the color red in a couple articles that were well above my head. Iron is also important for your red blood cells (saw that somewhere too).

And another article I found talked about K18 which I think Could be relivent, though it too was over my head, was K18 being tied to liver disfunction. What happens when you have a bad liver? The whites of your eyes turn yellow. Perhaps the heightened K18 effects your liver in a way that causes the eyes to go cloudy.

Going out on a limb, but are the zombies eat the living to regain their iron? I think you have something here. Maybe Randy was on a mission to get TOWM more iron. So the zombie are slowing dying from the increase in K18 and need iron to keep the count down.

Does this sound far-fetched?

[Witch_Doctor]

I find it strange that Tanya says the woman is not turning fast or slow at the 22 minute mark. While we learned from season 1 that people were changing in a couple of minutes. This would indicate that one of the first changes is behavioral. Since Wendy was knocked out, we do not observe these mental changes.

It's the behavioral change that has me the most intrigued. Good call about that being one of the first changes. The chloroform factor jumps out, as it was mentioned one of the soldiers. Even though Tanya says that it doesn't matter, it wasn't what she was looking for. There was also concern that Saul would turn while he was unconscious.

Perhaps this could explain the idea behind slow turners. If the physical changes take place slower than the mental changes then how might that affect the contagious nature of the disease? When Tonya tests the blood at time intervals the K-18 levels where elevating and peaked at around 1300, at which point she declares Wendy to have turned. Would her blood have been more contagious with each increase K18 level? If so, and Tanya was exposed to someone who was not fully turned then perhaps she did not get enough exposure to a fast turning. As for Saul, this case is not so similar. He seems to have been exposed after Tommy had turned (Which seems to have taken a long time). This isn't a new idea but the new evidence may support it better.

However, if we go back to the start of Season 4, Amy gets scratched and is able to go to the hospital and hang out for a long while. Two people from the colony, two people taking a hell of a long tie to change compared to regular people in Season 1.

But they weren't the only ones to take time to turn. The slow turner (James?), the man at check point #2 at Fort Irwin (he was exposed, stood in the examination queue and made it all of the way to the medical tent before turning), and Tommy (His behavior started to change slightly towards hostility before completely freaking out.)

Amy and medical-tent-guy were both attacked by either an Inkling or an Inklette (n-th generation Inkling).

What I keep asking myself is how "normal" is anybody anymore? Are they the new normal or was there something special about them right from the beginning? They are from the colony, but a colony of what?

I can't even begin to guess this one. Other than there seems to be and open-ended number of factors that could influence turning.

[scbubba]

First things first.... I LOVED this episode. Even though I feel like I've been whipsawed around a county fair ride, it was awesome.

Tanya's data and possible findings - this is how I tend to think when solving problems: what do i know about what is going on and work back from there like following a spotty trail. I was wondering why she was being so circumspect about sharing the info, then....

Tanya and Saul's K18 Keratin levels - I'm a little leery of jumping on the wagon that the two of them have started to turn because they have levels in the low-mid 300's after hearing "normal" is near 200. Normal for some people could be in the 300's, so it's not proof that they are slow turners or "stopped" turners. Either way, the scene between Saul and Tanya was one of the best of the entire show to date. I like that she had a personal reason to want to keep the info from everyone else.

Tanya will be a more permanent resident of Dunbar - I see/predict and exodus of people from the Colony. As I said about last episode, Pegs, Datu, and Hope (maybe Glenn counts too) are the only ones still there at the time of this episodes ending. And with the fuel and ammo shortage and regular absence of the military guys... I see bad things happening at the Colony. And soon...

Michael and Pegs - awwwwww, how sweet. And we learn that Michael and Pegs both see CJ as overbearing and possibly hard to work with. This is even emphasized by....

Datu the Resourceful, Slayer of Little Ones, Royal Engineer - He and Glenn chime in a good it about the "CJ Oppression". That is, when they aren't talking about what will become the weapon that levels the playing field with the Little Ones. Call it a Mata-gun or call it LO-Mofo-gun. It sounds like it's pretty close to being a good replacement for .50 cal and minigun at taken down LOs. Man portable and multiple shots on target. Boom baby!

Back to Saul and Tanya for a moment. Like I mentioned before, this isn't proof that either of them is infected or turning. Tanya has only seen one real example of the elevated K18 levels in a turning individual (that we know of) and we don't know what sort of controls there are to test against because I'm assuming that neither of them knows what their K18 levels were before Z-day. But it brings up a few interesting items.
- IF Saul was infected and started turning, when did it happen? As someone else earlier in this thread pointed out there were multiple opportunities for Saul to catch the junk - In the hybrid, shot by Burt, at Ground Zero. If it was when he caught Burt's bullet or earlier, then that means he may have been in the turning process when he and Lizzie got their freak on (Bow chicka wow wow). What would that mean for Nicholas/Saul Jr/Adam Z?
- Who is going to find out about this and jump to the conclusion that Tanya wants to avoid? I think there is a good chance that this will come up because let's face it, as bad as most of the characters are at sharing info/intel, this is the kind of thing that someone will slip about and it'll spread like wild fire.
- Are there any natural causes for elevated levels of K18 Keratin in the blood stream? What about in creatures other than humans?
- Who will be going back to Ground Zero and how long will we have to wait for that to happen?

Well, that's as much as I can dig out of my brain after a single listen. Damn all this work from keeping me from digging in deeper right now.

Keep it going, y'all!

[Cabbage Patch]

I loved the confirmation that Saul and Tanya have both have elevated Keratin 18 levels, but I don't think we can draw any conclusions yet. I'm not sure how often Tanya has been testing herself, but her baseline for Saul is fairly old. Hopefully she'll be able to run new tests soon, and we'll see that their K18 levels have remained steady or decrease. I'd love to know if their K18 level might have been naturally high, and if that might be a factor in their potential immunity.

I suspect that Saul and Lizzie conceived the baby before Saul was (possibly) infected, so Lizzie's normal K18 level might be a bit of a red herring.

[Witch_Doctor]

Back to Saul and Tanya for a moment. Like I mentioned before, this isn't proof that either of them is infected or turning. Tanya has only seen one real example of the elevated K18 levels in a turning individual (that we know of) and we don't know what sort of controls there are to test against because I'm assuming that neither of them knows what their K18 levels were before Z-day.

Correlation =/= Causation

I loved the confirmation that Saul and Tanya have both have elevated Keratin 18 levels, but I don't think we can draw any conclusions yet. I'm not sure how often Tanya has been testing herself, but her baseline for Saul is fairly old. Hopefully she'll be able to run new tests soon, and we'll see that their K18 levels have remained steady or decrease. I'd love to know if their K18 level might have been naturally high, and if that might be a factor in their potential immunity.

I suspect that Saul and Lizzie conceived the baby before Saul was (possibly) infected, so Lizzie's normal K18 level might be a bit of a red herring.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

Very good points, yet I feel that the as a work of fiction things might be as straight forward as they appear.

[cupcakezombie]

Also, forgot to add, thanks Victor for being the voice of the people. To paraphrase "We are dying here Tanya (replace that with Kc), tell us something, tell us anything"

[Grognaurd]

Good point Withdoctor, I probably should not have inluded Amy. She may have been scratched by an inkling. We know tht the inkling infections are consistently much longer than what we observed for biters 1.0. Wendy was most likely bitten by a 1.0 with the ease with which it was killed.