OP, I'm enjoying your line of thinking. Let's see now. At the very earliest of the outbreak Deanna is detoured by the military in VA. A while later it's decided that Atlanta must be bombed so a small group including a chopper pilot are given orders to get to Atlanta to assist. With the bombing and basically fall of Atlanta, troops "might" loose contact with each other or higher ups. Atlanta was out of control, they even left a tank behind. So if you like, maybe there is a chopper pilot that did fly some if not all the choppers we've seen. It doesn't have to be the same chopper, just the same pilot who managed to survive until the Gov.

Yep, I'm reaching. But this has been a fun topic to explore. Thanks OP.

 

I think it was the military, trying to clean up. Im pretty sure there exist some kind of ghost government or whatever its called, in a bunker somewhere and that was a black ops groups sent to clean out some mess.

 

yes, and in that case there MUST be a strong military presence somewhere. no way that kind of force gets overcome by walkers unless walkers can shoot firearms.

 

Exactly! The US is a big nation with a big army. It is not like Sweden with a horribly small army.

 

This was talked about in WWZ (the book). The military would bomb hoards, but that didn't kill them. A grenade in a crowd does a lot of damage to legs, some to arms and a little to heads. They use napalm, now you've got a bunch of legless zombies on fire slowly crawling towards your positions when you run out of ammo. Unless the military knew about head-shots ,which they wouldn't in the beginning, a whole lot of amo would be wasted sawing the ever approaching herd in half at the torso.

 

Maybe I'm missing something, but the ZA threat is dual-pronged, isn't it? Sure, Zombies are easy to drop, and most military bases would have little trouble repelling the threat. But the airborne virus that almost decimated the prison would find its way on base eventually. And even if not, people all eventually die, and when they do they become zombies... and of course that'll come as a nasty surprise, and again, they're inside.

 

You can't go down this road, it's one of the things you have to forget about if you want to enjoy the show.

Obviously the military would have zero problems wiping out every last zombie walking around. Walkers can't chew through a abrams tank, a bradley, or a hummer, they would simply be run over if nothing else to get rid of them, add that to the virtually unlimited amount of ammo stock piled by the military. If Rick's group can dispatch 20 walkers by tripping them over a ravine in front of a bridge, a platoon of trained soldiers would simply walk forward and shoot every walker they find, done, over. Walkers that stumble around at the speed of a crippled 80 year old man aren't much of a match for automatic weapons, let's not even mention tanks.

The show's premise is that the military got wiped out, it's absurd, but it's no more absurd then the premise of the show that zombies are walking around. It's just something you have to not think too much about.

 

you're right. funny i never thought of it that way, and i'm always about buying into a fantasy premise too.

 

Too you have to remember this is a virus, or infection, a biological entity - not a physical threat/enemy.
The military is very large, equipped with many weapons and that is good defense against the physical- but when you can't see/understand the enemy, I speculate, its a whole different story. That's why the military bases or camps fell so fast, no one knew or was educated about how it was spread, how fast, what makes people turn, and on and on. I mean just imagine a military base at first insight of an outbreak, one guy gets bit- he goes home not realizing- thinks he is sick- family cares for him- he turns- bites family.. This cycle too cld go at rapid speed. The groups of military are no different then the groups of people cause they don't know the cause/reaction either. If the CDC didn't know, I'm sure they didn't either. Its a rapid chain reaction till they actually can figure it out thru trial and error. For example Taras grandfather- granted they were not military, normal civilians, they still didn't know he would turn. In the beginning I speculate no one knew everyone turns until after trial and error.
A virus/infection, whatever you want to call it is very different than the physical threat our military has trained for. I wld conclude it not be out of the realms of possibility large numbers of the military settled into large groups wld of been easily wiped out by this chain reaction.

 

Go back to season one, how long did it take Rick and everyone else to figure out, shoot em in the head? Something different between Rick and a person serving in the military?

Here is a radio transmission overheard on the 1st day of the outbreak from two military bases talking to each other.

"Alpha tango come in"
"This is alpha tango, go ahead."
"Hey, we got some issues here, seems guys are dying for no reason, but then they come back to life.."
"Yep, we got that too..."
"What's your take on it?"
"Seems anybody who dies turns into a zombie."
"Yep, roger that."
"Another thing, looks like if those zombies bite one of our men, they shortly die and come back as a zombie."
"Yep, roger that, we got the same situation."
"Command says, best thing to do is not get bit."
"Roger, copy that."
"Hey, you guys figure out that shooting them in the body doesn't kill em?"
"Yep, figured that out in about 30 seconds. Just shoot em in the head."
"Roger that, out."
"Roger, looks like you guys know everything we know now."
"Out"

 

...and then they clear a facility, 100% zombie free, move in and feel safe, some dude dies of natural causes, they put him in a cooler, he reanimates and kills the first person to come make a salad and they wipe out the whole facility from the inside before anybody knows what's going on.

 

How does one or two zombies wipe out an entire facility of armed trained soldiers?

Soldier one "Hey, how did this zombie get in here?
Solider two "Who cares shoot it in the head"
Bang.
Done.
Soldier two "Now, grab me a moon pie while you're in there."

Rick and his group have done this a thousand times, why would the military, who is armed, trained and on alert to the problem suddenly become totally incompetent and incapable of pulling a trigger?

I don't get how anyone thinks an ex cop, a red neck and a couple of housewives are the only ones who can figure out how to kill a walker and everyone in the military would be incompetent and clueless to something as simple?

 

Pretty easy when you think the threat is "out there", all your attention is focused on the entry points. No one inside is bitten, you have no idea everybody turns upon death. No one guards an infirmary when there is a threat at your walls. And it's not one or two zombies; it's one, then two, then four, then eight... exponential growth is mighty hard to get ahead of. And again, it seems folks have forgotten about the virus that darn near wiped out our friends in the prison. M16s aren't much good against an airborne virus.

 

I think the main problem with a major apocalyptic catastrophe when it comes to Military and other public servants, is desertion. A lot of people would only take so much before they skipped out to find their family. There comes a point where family comes first. Now a lot probably wouldn't under any circumstances, but a lot would.

The next problem would be internal power struggles. If they lose contact with people up the chain of command and are trying to figure out what to do - infighting and disagreements about what to do next would become problematic. More desertion.

All the while there are continuing threats from the zombies that are increasing, and the rioting, looting community all trying to find safety and evacuation.

Oh also the big one would be because it would be so widespread, literally everywhere - it would mean that their personnel would essentially be stretched very thin. Skeleton crews in many areas just trying to quell and direct everything - which could also explain how they could get overpowered easily.

 

I've read elsewhere that in the TWD universe they have no concept of zombies. They've never heard of them, they don't know about head shots. Without ever coming across such a determined adversary, I think that the army would become confused pretty quickly. Thats why they shot the doctors and nurses at Ricks hospital, they weren't even infected. Clear orders don't always filter down to the grunts on the front line. Plus they've got armed citizens looting and trying to upgrade their weapons. So they are fighting a battle on two fronts.
In our world, where we are familiar with Zombies, we know the best cause of action. My mum, she watches TWD, she'll survive, She's 70. My dad thinks it nonsense and wouldn't have a clue.

 

Sounds like a problem once those zombies figure out how to open the infirmary doors and sneak around killing everyone while everyone else stands there and lets them.

Or... they are trapped in the infirmary and Hank tells Bob to go shoot them all, and make it snappy cause The Amazing Race is coming on.

In the US military the ratio is 12:1 or 12 people in the rear for every 1 person who fights. Lots and lots of people with their attention everywhere but on your 'entry points'.

Gomer the cook and 11 others are not near the 'entry points'.

Gomer "Frank, G-damn it! There is another zombie in the hallway."
Frank "I killed the last one, tell Pete to do it, I'm on the phone here."
Gomer "Pete!"
Peter "Stop yelling, I already got it."

 

Wow, you're right! This show is idiotic, I'll never watch it again... hope you're happy.

 

It's not idiotic, it's just a choice Kirkman made and the show follows it. There are many suspensions of disbelief to enjoy science fiction, in TWD the whole military wiped out is one of them. Some people simply acknowledge this and go with it others for some reason have to try to make the illogical logical through illogical explanations.

There are hundreds of illogical inconsistencies to the show, such as the amazing head shot shooting ability of everybody on the show. Anyone with firearms experience knows how totally unrealistic their shooting abilities are, but you just acknowledge it and realize it's part of the show. Car batteries that are able to start vehicles after 2 years. Cars able to drive around on 2 year old gasoline that would be spoiled by now...