Now on the precipice of its seventh season, The Walking Dead is no
longer about zombies; it's about human dynamics and how far the living
will go to survive. The most poignant deaths are those that come at the
hand of another live person, whether it be Carol or Negan delivering the
final blow. Sill, it's shocking how little time the characters spend
talking about how or why the world is now a vast wasteland of walkers.
The only times the origin of the virus or the possibility of stopping it
have come up was in the first season, when the group makes it to the
CDC (fruitless), and when Eugene asserts that if he makes it to
Washington DC, he can stop the spread. As we know now, Eugene is full of
sh*t, so who knows whether the virus can be stopped. For now, let's review what we DO know about it.
Everyone Has the Virus
Like in most zombie movies, if you get bit by a walker, you're going
to die and come back as a walker. However, if you die from any other
cause, you're still going to come back as a walker because the virus is
already lying dormant in everyone. The time period for reanimation is
anywhere between three minutes and eight hours, though sometimes it
feels much quicker. The only way to "kill" a walker is by destroying its
brain. Once someone's body dies, the virus becomes active in their
brain and the only way to shut down their body is to shoot through or
crush their brain. The virus itself could be in the water or airborne,
it's not clear. However . . .
Fear the Walking Dead May Have Hinted at the Cause
Last year, about the first episode of
The Walking Dead's
spinoff: there's water everywhere. "In the cold open when Nick wakes
up, there are three shots where the jug of water on the side of the is
dead center frame," he wrote. "Three shots, three different angles . . .
The second time is when Nick meets Calvin at the diner. Calvin is
drinking water and they make sure to get that glass in the shot quite a
few times, at least enough for me to notice and register that he was
drinking water."
We'll Probably Never Know the Truth
In a 2012 interview with
The Hollywood Reporter, then-showrunner
that we might get to the bottom of this mystery: "Robert [Kirkman] has
not been interested in addressing in the comic book, and I'm not
interested in addressing in the show," he said. "That being said, if it
leads to new story — if there's something that's important that we get
out of it — I'll be the first one to write it. But right now the cause
of the zombie outbreak seems irrelevant. I always want the show to play
like a horror movie every week. If you define what caused the outbreak,
that puts us in a world of science fiction, and this isn't science
fiction to me, it's horror. In my mind that's two different genres, so
that is an important distinction to me."
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