So where's the internet?

[Destiny]

How is it that within minutes of the zombie outbreak, the internet/phone/TV/radio/electricity/water/etc. went down? It doesn't make any sense for them all to go down so quickly. These public services are almost entirely automated and don't require humans to operate them, so why would they go down? Did the zombies attack internet service providers and destroy all of their equipment or something?

[RamblinMike]

They didn't actually lose all of that; they still had electricity and water for a good while. But you'd be surprised how much infrastructure can break down when disaster strikes. Just check out what happened during Katrina. Take out some power and phone lines, have all the workers at the electricity and sewage plants turn zombie, and shit really hits the fan. Kaplooey.

Anyhow, I think KC will eventually explain why the outbreak was so sudden and so widespread. He just hasn't gotten there yet.

[nikvoodoo]

Also want to point out that we didn't see examples of many of the things you listed trying to be used. No one tried to hop online, or make a phone call a few hours after the outbreak. We know that TV stations had enough time to mobilize to broadcast live shots of the beginning of the outbreak. And that can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 60 minutes. Lizzy said when she was DVR searching that an hour after the news report the TV was blank. Michael got a phone call while watching the coverage, so the phones still worked up until then. Beyond that, no one even tried to make a phone call so its hard to say when exactly the phone system went dead.

The Tower folks were very lucky someone stayed at the water works as long as they did. Those people did an amazing service to give survivors a real chance to make it. As for electrical, those systems require constant supervision of the computer systems to keep them running. Without a person, the grid would fail pretty quickly. And even if there was a person at the power grid supervising it, all it would take would be a few transformers to blow before the entire system would fail. But the water and electricity stayed up for an unknown amount of time. Electric went first but we don't know exactly when. It was still working for at least a week (when the first zombie attack of the tower took place). The water failed sometime after that, but we don't know exactly how long.

All we do know for certain is that before the Fourth of July all the utilities were gone. So in less than two months, nothing.

[TCM Revolver]

We really don't know about the radio. The first instance I can remember of them trying to get on the radio is when Saul, Burt and Lizzy went out looking for the tanker. that had to be a couple weeks after the outbreak. As far as the phone/cable and inet, It's all reliant on commercial power. i.e. if the main transmitting station (headend) losses power than the entire plant goes down. or just one of the "nodes" loses power than it can affect the entire area, even if YOU still have power, you may be w/o everything else. That happens in real life now, but what we do is take a generator to the point of power loss and physically insert power into the system. No offense, but if there is a zombie outbreak and one of the nodes loses power, I won't be the one out there with a generator.

[fraggot]

Yeah people tend to assume too many things, even when there is no mention of them at all.

The internet and things could have very well been working just fine for maybe a couple of days but once all hell breaks loose, you never know. Zombies could have gotten into buildings where servers were housed and destroyed a lot of the infrastructure that the internet is based on. A lot of these things would just be too much detail to go into, so you're left with vague details in certain places.

[Destiny]

The web would probably be the greatest tool for survival, other than a gun. Go on Facebook or a forum or something and be like "is anyone else alive out there?" and then hook up with other survivors. Plus if you had a lot of survivors you could run your own forum and that way people can post suggestions for the community of survivors and other people can share information on how to survive and about the zombies, how to stop them, and everything else.

[Beaumont]

They didn't actually lose all of that; they still had electricity and water for a good while. But you'd be surprised how much infrastructure can break down when disaster strikes. Just check out what happened during Katrina. Take out some power and phone lines, have all the workers at the electricity and sewage plants turn zombie, and shit really hits the fan. Kaplooey.

Anyhow, I think KC will eventually explain why the outbreak was so sudden and so widespread. He just hasn't gotten there yet.

Very true and we have no clue what actually happened it could be some sort of strategic attack that took all these things in to account before hand and planned to take out communications and utilities. I know they've said they have the ending planned out but is there any indication how many seasons they have planned on?

[nikvoodoo]

Very true and we have no clue what actually happened it could be some sort of strategic attack that took all these things in to account before hand and planned to take out communications and utilities. I know they've said they have the ending planned out but is there any indication how many seasons they have planned on?

I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure I've seen somewhere that four seasons are currently planned.

[Pandora]

I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure I've seen somewhere that four seasons are currently planned.

Yeah KC just replied to a post on FB that 4 seasons were planned. Yah!

[HaveCrowBarWillTravel]

Here's a great article on the North American Power grid and Rapid Zombification. I tripping that this guy actually answered the question.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...ctricity-fails

From what I can see, most of the LA area is run via coal and one Hydro plant.

He says power would last about 12-18 hours without a good number of non infected folk.