The Walking Dead - Why did the military fail So Fast? -More thoughts and discussion

The Walking Dead - Why did the military fail So Fast? -More thoughts and discussion
A few theory points about the fall of society in The Walking Dead.

#TheWalkingDead #TWD #RickGrimes

[TheDomTron]

It would be cool to see a spin-off called The Walking Dead: Wildfire that shows the 132-day lead up to the global outbreak.

[grandadmiralzaarin]

Served six years in the army, while I admit TWD takes the easy route of just saying "It all fell apart" and not showing much of it, there are some points I would mention that would be considerations:
1: The initial spread seems to have involved fevers that killed a lot of people, the strain that activated when you died was dormant when some were alive, but that wasn't the case for everyone as first waves weren't bite victims. Figure how many people naturally die each day, (roughly 6, 584) then multiply that by coroners, doctors, family exposed to them in that first day on a national scale, inside and out of the military and that number exponentially increases( conservatively to around 39, 504, with high end estimates doubling or tripling that number). Within a single week you have a catastrophic number of dead(Conservatively over 276, 000 and on the high end around 1, 100, 000) in all facets of society without any real pattern or area the military can secure. When you apply these numbers globally the situation becomes staggering 900, 000 conservatively on DAY ONE to potentially 1, 800, 000 high end estimate on DAY ONE.
2: The military makes up less than 1% of the population, of those, a smaller percentage are actually combat, but even those rely on complex logistical systems that would be severely impaired.
3: The military is subject to the whims of politics, much like in WWZ, the government might have tried to ignore or suppress the outbreak to avoid a panic until it was too widespread to conceal and that of course led to panic. There might even have been arguments over the constitutional applications or rights and wrongs of deploying the military against the civilian populace and the backlash that would arise from doing so from both military and civilian arenas.
4: Civilians are often armed or dangerous in panics, more so than the walkers would have been, we've seen how poorly people react to police shootings of unarmed citizens, imagine the reaction to armed soldiers mowing down or systematically executing 'sick and unarmed people' riots, secession, protests and other hostile reactions would be widespread and further disrupt the military's effectiveness.
5: Most soldiers would not listen to orders to mass murder the very people they are serving to protect, I imagine, especially within the timeframe of a single month that seeing things like Operation Cobalt and the napalming of cities would cause desertion, defiance and outright revolt.

[rleonardgreen]

The military failed because they didnt understand the new enemy or how the virus spread. They tried to contain the situation, putting thousands of people in close spaces which helped it spread and then they started killing and dropping bombs on people, not realizing that everyone comes back as a walker. In very little time, they were overwhelmed and outnumbered. Also lets not forget the walkers in the first season weren't slow. They moved pretty fast going after Rick.

[romanbilan]

The thing is: things appear to be under control in FTWD. When we're outside the wire, we don't see any walkers roaming around. Only military patrols.

[Bloodhound]

As a former active duty soldier my take is Because you only have so many troops once the vast majority of the military deserts to be with their family, loved ones leaving you with limited manpower to defend against sheer numbers of undead

[cmSaS]

I think there tends to be a lot of overly optimistic stances on the “Military would win” stuff. That said, TWD has sort of done the military dirty. The Walking Dead is a bit of a vacuum of information… but there’s probably a middle ground that’s possible where pockets of military persisted. We’ve seen squad level military survivors and numerous rag-tag bands of everyday folk. So it’s entirely reasonable to assume that there are survivor groups of military that either took to themselves after things fell apart or are a part of re-establishing … something…
Personally I think independent naval captains and marines might take it on themselves to recapture oil operations on the Texas coast to sustain their ships. Nuke powered ships are all well and good but that’s essentially only for the larger ones and there are plenty of other supplies that even carriers and subs need. Oil by itself, creates an interesting storyline of military focused settlements on the coast that may or may not interact with remnants of those oil production working communities. It IS about supply lines after all.

[notlike]

They really need to make a spinoff focused on how the military actually fell apart and how they failed to contain the virus.

[StayTunedReviews]

IMO it was the perfect storm.
1. When the Walkers first appeared, the military may not have known how to put them down and ran out of ammo as hoards took them down
2. Members of leadership may have died early on, resulting in the lower ranks going rogue
3. When local and federal govts started to break down, soldiers went AWOL and fended for themselves.
4. Terrorists with nothing to lose may have attacked the military aid in seeing the world tear itself apart
5. Sick or mortally wounded soldiers at military bases may have died, become Walkers and attacked the living.
So many to choose from

[sammyt]

It would be cool if Woody Harrelson from the planet of the apes movies was a walking dead character, in which he wants to kill all the zombies but then gets infected with the virus that the zombies have

[blackdragon]

Only logical explanation is mass desertion. At leat when it comes to the national guard. Alternatively the biggest culprit might be a breakdown in the command structure. If there's no intact leadership the military is useless, and chaotic. Having said all of that, I do think the the fast collapse of the government and military is always exaggerated in zombie stories. Usually so the writers can get to the post-apocalyptic scenario faster.

[ToastieW]

I really like the concept of the army and national guard fighting each other

[killingbreed]

I was infantry in the Marine Corps and every so often, this what if discussion came up and more than just a few guys said we would raid our armory take what we needed and make our way home to loved ones with the gear etc. So these shows depicting us as mindless drones willing to still be apart of the military and taking orders isn't really all that viable non of the guys I was with would.

[ozbej]

I always love these discussions of how society fell

[Jay-sodk]

I think it failed fast because it seems it was airborne or through food. So people dying turned and people who got bit turned which means there was no place of safety. People turned overnight by dying in their sleep which means there was no way to contain it

[jarradpuckridge]

The whole goverment system broke down just as fast, anybody that wasn't killed in the panic and confusion probably deserted to go and find and protect their families, anybody left trying to keep a semblance of order was likely cut off from everybody else and had no idea who was in charge or if the government was even still functional.

[peterwong]

I reckon we'll learn more and more about the mythology of what happened as the walking dead universe expands. Starting with the CRM. Would they be some kind of military remnant?

[danielkilby]

Most soldiers are trained to shoot the centre mass not constant headshots. The weapon that walkers use is fear.

[MrCycled]

because they all chilliing in Pearl Harbor with all they boat

[thorfinthorfin]

I imagine the supply chain fell apart pretty easy. Also we are trained to shoot center mass. Also my armory had around 170 rifles for about 800 Soilders, 4 AT4 anti-tank, 22 NVGs, the only crew weapons we had were 2 50 cals. In a panic a lot of troops do the old spraying and praying tactic blowing through tons of ammo with little effect. If the supply chain is down your gonna be running dry pretty quickly. I imagine a high number of AWOL troops also. The real question is how did Americas largest standing Army ( 18.2 million gun owners with 8.1 billion rounds of ammo in civilian hands) let the walkers take over? England or Australia, yes they would fall quickly with no Second Amendment. (Army 11 Bravo, E4, Gulf era.)

[Guitarmachine]

“No matter how big of an army you have the dead will always win”- Molly from the walking dead game