By the time it gets back on TV, I doubt I will have any interest in watching it again. Firing Frank Darabont was one of the stupidest decisions in the history of TV.

I think others have explained it before as the bite from a zombie (rotting teeth/flesh) amplifies infection and kills you, then reanimate. Where as a normal cut could be clean of infection and not kill you.

I think you’re really underestamating people as a whole. Also you make it out like these people have a choice in who they’re ending up with in an apocalypse.

You wouldn’t have these units consisting of people from different backgrounds; specifically different racial, ethnic, and regional groups.

When the lights go down, people break down along the most basic bonds. This is why ethnic cleansing was so prevalent in Africa, Bosnia, pretty much all of human freaking history.

During the Black Plague, pretty much anyone who was not part of the dominate social group was either wiped out or driven away (the Jews, Moors, Christian minorities). I am always amazed how these films and TV shows depict people still in multi-cultural and racial groups when in reality, that wouldn’t happen at all. Heck… for the most part we don’t end up with that without a major social disruption event.

Oh crap…I realize I sound really racist. I swear I am not. I think I even have a white friend!

Protein diseases are becoming more and more prevalent in modern medicine. You’re probably familiar with more widespread ones like Alzheimer’s and Mad Cow, and other related diseases. The way a lot of these diseases kill people is by aggregating protein within the brain, forming cavities and clots. Certain effects such as dementia, paralysis, memory loss, cognitive impairment, and schizophrenia may be the result of such brain damaging buildups. Protein aggregates often form when misfolded proteins enter the cerebral-spinal fluid by crossing the blood brain barrier, and operate on native proteins, disrupting their structure formation and causing a proliferation of the misfolded state.

Prion proteins responsible for mad cow disease persist in contaminated meat, even after cooking. Heating a protein usually disrupts its stable, folded structure (think about cooking eggs or whipping cream). Since these proteins don’t have a stable structure to begin with, heating doesn’t really eliminate them.

If the zombie disease is a protein based disease, it gains numerous advantages over typical viral and bacterial diseases. 1) Contaminated meat can still spread the disease, which is why you can’t eat zombies.
2) Protein diseases usually don’t have specific target organisms or genomes that they can infect, unlike many viruses. They can infect ANY LIVING THING
3) There is very little that an immune response can do to combat a protein disease. Viruses and bacteria possess specific markers that can be targeted by the immune system.
4) they can pass the blood-brain barrier, immediately affecting the most important organ in the human body.

Zombies are single purpose, instinctively simple, mindless drones. Sound like something’s affecting their brain?

A possible theory about how people can be infected but not yet a zombie could be that the disease is normally tagged with a complex carbohydrate group, which causes it to be dormant. Maybe salivary enzymes cleave this carbohydrate and thus activate the protein. (Enzymes found in your mouth actually do digest carbohydrates) So, zombie bites may catalyze the activation of the zombie disease, while normal blood contact won’t.

Now I gotta get back to my real research.

1. Its loud. If the sound of gunfire draws zombies, I would think the pipes on that chopper would do the same.

2. Its unsafe. I know he’s a badass, and likes to maintain the image, but taking a tumble on that thing could mean his death. Aside from the fact that there are no more hospitals or ambulances, he never even wears a helmet.

3. It offers almost no ability to carry supplies, and only one other passenger (which only places that passenger in the same danger as mentioned in #2).

4. If he needs to plow through a horde of zombies in the road, he’s screwed. Even an old VW beetle would probably be able to run down a handful of walkers, but one clip on that motorcycle, and he’s down.

They’ve been on the run for about a year, right?. I think in that amount of time, one of the characters would’ve come to at least ONE of the realizations I’ve mentioned above, and pointed it out to Daryl. Again, I understand that the chopper compliments his badass image, but at what point should somebody trade in their rebelliousness for practicality?

I mean, if he MUST have a motorcycle, it should at least be a dirtbike of some kind – nimble and more capable of taking on rough terrain. But an chopper with ape hangers? Honestly???

The show usually does a pretty decent job of realistically depicting how people would survive and adapt in a zombie apocalypse, so every time I see him on that hog, I yell at the TV.

Ok, I’m done.