Alfalfa. LMAO

 

Absolutely. This whole episode was just so dumb...

 

I really like your idea of explaining their motivation. Someone can write them a letter, and Daryl can deliver it by arrow when the Whisperers return.

 

Not sure trying to explain things to a group of crazy people is going to solve anything.

You say you understand there was a blizzard and people would die but I'm not sure you do understand since you question the decision. They had no choice. You take your chances with possible death to avoid certain death

 

It would help only if the crazy people would welcome an excuse to avoid a fight.

 

I hadn't thought of that. Those kills probably are going to point right back to them. How many other people could be in that area anyway?
Maybe a message explaining why would be a good idea because the Whisperers probably would prefer not to go into an all out war with them.
On the other hand, it's as if they need to ask permission. Or ask for forgiveness.
Why should they?
But as you pointed out, what right do any of them have to mark off territories?
It's not as if they all signed a treaty together to respect certain boundaries.
Hmm. Something to think about.
In the end, they had no choice if they wanted to survive.
Dealing with Alpha's reaction to that decision is a problem for another day.

 

The way I see it is that they are nomads. According to them, they are always moving. And they apparently headed somewhere else during the storm.
That means their barriers no longer exist, as they take them with them.



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Idk.. You want the colonies to be too apologetic and submissive to The Whisperers and you're suggesting they try to reason with self-described animals, which I can't imagine going well at all.

The Whisperers are not the kind of group you try to be diplomatic with over the long term. They are a nomadic cult that at any moment can simply decide to send upon the colonies a herd of thousands. They're a threat and a danger even IF they cooperate.

Also, I am not exactly sure what you mean by seeing things from the whisperers' side? They were first introduced looking for Rosita and Eugene, presumably to kill them. Like I said, they're nomads that mark their boundaries as they move their camp to different places, but that doesn't make them right either. It just makes them rather entitled. It's the zombie apocalypse and Rosita and Eugene had every right to travel into that area to set-up relays as the Whisperers did. It's the Whisperers who decided to hunt them and then inevitably kill Jesus...

In the words of Rick, "They're screwing with the wrong people" and they screwed with them FIRST.

 

The Whisperers are nomadic people with territorial habit like a herd of animal. So, if they have moved away from this territory to another (eg some place south to spend the winter), I say they have abandoned the territory and the border becomes meaningless. You just cannot insist on having a border if you are nomadic and travel around.

 

The whisperers are a joke.
I've said this many times.
Alfa-laugh-ah is also a joke. Especially with the masochistic "hit me, beta" crap.

The one thing I took away from this episode was (Michonne?) saying "we don't know how to fight them yet!" Which is wrong.
The whisperers have to be fairly slow moving and have given up their camouflage what has to now have been weeks ago in the series.
Anyone who wants to fight them need only attend guerrilla warfare 101.
Use their primal fears (fire particularly, stills have been seen in season. Wood alcohol is much easier to make than grain alcohol. And it burns like hell) Molotov cocktails lobbed into a group of zombies behaving strangely would send most battled hardened attackers running, attempting to put out flames and screaming if burning.
Not to mention simple chemical weapons like quicklime tossed into the wind. It would blind and burn the skin of anyone unfortunate to have the powder land on them and it would be extremely horrible if it were inhaled.
Then there's the fire that went boom in the Alexandria council building. What Eugene said had mixed there was a mixture of tar/pitch and "H2O" (I'll assume the producers meant O2, H20 is water and unreactive with tar) if there is a ready source of tar it should be mined out and mixed with dried grass, straw or wood that has been reduced to fine kindling. After that it can be mixed. Tar is relatively non-volatile (it won't evaporate like alcohol or fuel oil and doesn't really have much of a smell, until it heats up) this means you can mix it with kindling, dig shallow ditches and add the mixture. When your colony is encroached upon by whisperers they need only be funneled between two ditches and then fire arrows can be used to light it.
Boiling vegetable oil or animal fat has been used for centuries to great effect too, although it is somewhat costly. It can be poured directly onto people who walk into a gatehouse through a "murder hole" though the problem would be getting people into said gatehouse.
IIRC the book given to the hilltop outlining a system for the future had things such as medieval siege engines. If you cant build a mortar, or dont have the powder charge to use one a trebuchet filled with small, sharp rocks, or wood and metal flechettes would literally rain down death on whisperers approaching a settlement.
Flechettes can be coated with toxic substances or human excrement to kill people who have received light wounds.
Then of course there is the age old spike pit.

Being in a colony allows you to manufacture most or all of these things, being semi-nomadic like the whisperers means that static defences are a waste of time and siege engines are difficult to transport, especially when the enemy may have laid pitfall traps.

As for sending an envoy. That would be sending someone to their death. It would be like sending a negotiator into an asylum for the criminally insane that the lunatics have taken over a and hoping they come out okay as well as with results.

The whisperers were always coming. The communities should have set up defences when they had a chance.

 

Whoa.... I'd want you living in my community!

 

it was definitely the wrong decision but not as wrong as getting involved with lydia.
she is not our responsibility and the deaths of 10 people couldve been avoided. its all very well having noble intentions but the price paid was too high. but the way the shows plot was going it had to happen as a catalyst for the whisperer conflict.
i wasnt bothered about it until last week, but now the lydia storyline feels like a plot device to me. and crossing into whisperer territory is just another one. they couldve walked around and added just half a day to the journey. ok it would avoid further conflict at a time when they are ill eqipped to fight, physically and emotionally.
its been how many years since rick died? they couldve repaired /rebuilt the damn bridge already.

 

Things seem to be going from bad to worse for the survivors of each camp right now. War is the motivation that they need. Not only will a successful war result in spoils of war from the other side (the whisperers will definitely have a stash, put a higher rank member to the thumbscrews (so to speak) and you may get a large amount of food and supplies; they survived the storm with nothing but a nomad camp? Either they were well equipped or they will be severely weakened after the storm. Now would be the perfect time to strike. Send in a few scouts to report on their condition and of they are amputating frostbitten limbs and the like; strike while the iron is hot and either kill them all or drive them out.
If they survived the storm unscathed, grab one or two and find out how they survived. They behave like walkers and pretend to be them, so allowing them the rights of humans should be forfeit.

If the whisperers sup doing okay and information cannot be extracted, war at the very least means less mouths to feed; from a tactitian's point of view.

 

I thank you for your thoughtful post and providing some really cool facts about guerilla warfare.

However, I disagree with your overall premise that the comment "we don't know how to fight them yet" is wrong. I actually think it's a pretty accurate assessment of their situation.

Alpha showed Daryl what I assume was 100k+ walkers and since this is television, the actual number could be ridiculously inflated (for example, 1 million!).

What Daryl saw should be public knowledge to the rest of the community leaders, but they unfortunately don't know how to handle this fact. How do you approach a conflict when the other side has hundreds of thousands of disposable soldiers? Even if the Whisperers split the uber-mega herd into three herds to attack different communities they would still be way too massive.

Also, many of your points may not work. In the comics, Whisperers fight hand-to-hand combat only on small scales (same as the show) and only when they need to, but during the Whisperer War:

If they sit down for a bit and hash things out, the coalition will come up with something, but at the end of the day it's just foolish to jump into conflict with them and their 100+k herd since the sheer volume of walkers will destroy most defenses.

 

Me, too! I want you in my group!

Have you been studying warfare and defense all of your life?

 

I'm not sure why you're having this problem. I rewatched the scene and it was Carol's idea and Michonne advocated for it. Aaron even supported it.

Everyone else was silent, but you can visibly see that they know this is life or death and they don't protest. Yumiko plays devil's advocate, but Daryl then lends further support to the border crossing plan in response.

The ONLY dissenter is Ekekiel. This was discussed as a group and Michonne was the most vocal. That doesn't mean she unilaterally decided what to do and forced them to do it.