I
love "The Walking Dead." New
episodes are pretty much the high point of the week for me. That said, I love to nitpick the show, which
makes sense—I'm a historian, and I'm nerdy enough to write a 70,000-word volume
regarding zombies. I actually think that
a lot of the fun involved in the zombie fantasy involves questioning the
actions of the on-screen protagonists.
We all have a good time thinking about what we'd do if we were in the
same situation.
And
so I've been thinking about the upcoming climax of this season, which I'm
assuming will culminate in the long-anticipated battle between the Woodburyites
and the Ricktatorshipians at the prison.
My academic nerd brain is having a hard time reconciling, however, how
it is that the Gover-nator's attack will be anything but a miserable bloodbath
for Woodbury. Think about it from the
Governor's point of view if you will (ok, if you were the Governor, presuming
you are not a sociopathic nutball like the actual Governor). You have a fortress that you have to get into
(the prison) that's defended by a smaller force of people you'd like to
kill. You have more people, and so it's
a straightforward application of numbers and bullets, right?
Wrong. Think of the prison as being essentially a
medieval castle. Castles were designed
to allow smaller groups of people to avoid being massacred by larger groups who
wanted to do the massacring. Attacking
medieval armies, if they couldn't punch a hole in the walls (and they usually
couldn't), usually had to wait to starve out the defenders. The defenders' best hope was either that
their enemies would run out of money and go home or that a relief army would
arrive and drive off the enemy.
Now
remember you're the Governor, and you have this basic military problem laid at
your feet. How to get in? You don't have heavy enough weaponry to blast
a big hole in the reinforced concrete of the prison. So you've got to launch an infantry assault against
the defenders. You could also wait them
out, trying to whittle them down through attrition or starvation.
Of
course the problem with this is that there's already a relief army on the
scene—the zombies, some of whom you actually put there yourself (opps, bummer).
Before you get to the desperate and
trapped Ricktatorshipians, you've got to cut your way through the zombies. You have to do this while being shot at by
Rick and the rest of the gang. Also,
even if you manage to get into the yard, the noise of a gun battle will surely
draw zombie reinforcements from the surrounding countryside. Behind you.
Dispersing
your forces to reduce their vulnerability to bullets makes them more vulnerable
to zombies. Bunching up for mutual
defense against the undead makes you an excellent target. Dividing your forces reduces the immediate on-the-spot
numerical advantage you need against the prison denizens, so that doesn't help
much either. Plus any force that
assaults through the breach in the prison walls on the far side of Rick's
prison is in for a nasty surprise in the dark—and they'll most likely panic and
be devoured. So that would have been a
good idea except for the zombies you didn't know about.
Considering
your "army" for a moment makes it increasingly clear why the prison
should not be attacked. Your
Woodburyite militia is a pretty milquetoast affair, if you're being honest with
yourself. Simply handing Timmy and
Grandma a rifle doesn't negate the fact that they've spent the last year living
in the 1950s. They have no experience of
warfare, against zombies or humans, and we know from a few episodes back that
even one zombie is enough to terrify them.
Since you are rational (you're not really the Governor) it seems pretty
obvious that your conscripts will have little chance of success, considering
that they've got to survive Rick's bullets while keeping one eyeball out for
the zombie relief army (yes, they want to eat everyone, but they'll start with
the closest meat, which was all grown in Woodbury).
I
am highly interested to see how the writers manage to make the army of Grandma
and Timmy produce anything other than their own massacre.
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