2 days to Manchester

[EvilNed]

This just struck me when I watched 28 Days Later again the other day. Before they leave for Manchester, Frank says he reckons it's gonna be a 2 or 3 day drive. Now, I've never been to England before, but Englands pretty small compared to the US or even Sweden. There can't be anywhere in England that's 2 or 3 days drive away from anything else. So what is it? Is Frank just a crappy driver? Are there speedbumps all the way from London to Manchester? Did the infected block off all the major roads?

[Rancid Carcass]

It's roughly 200 miles form London to Manchester so I'd imagine it was due to all the chaos when the brown and smelly stuff hit the fan - like the start of series two of The Walking Dead, cars backed up for miles etc... even though the roads were pretty clear in the film... Hmm.. now I think about it maybe Mr Garland was pulling numbers out of his ass...lol.

[EvilNed]

You can drive 200 miles in 3-4 hours!

[Rottedfreak]

Unless there's a direct route they might have detoured to avoid any towns and villages on the way.

[MinionZombie]

3 days would be a bit long, I'd think, but at the same time - taking indirect routes, fiding a way out of the city that's hopefully not over-run with the ragers, finding roads entirely blocked by traffic and general chaos, you could be faffing about for quite a time. It's hard to compare day-to-day travel with that in the post-apocalypse/disaster/virus world. Although on the other hand the road leading into Manchester in the film is entirely empty, so they weren't blocked at all, but then they also encountered road blocks ... and there is the fact that a London taxi, particularly an old one, isn't going to go anywhere particularly fast. They're designed for city driving, not motorway driving, so you'd not be able to go that fast anyway. 3 days is still a bit too long for a 200 mile journey in post-virus UK where they encounter an empty motorway, though ... I can't remember how long it actually took in the film though? Maybe Frank was just figuring there'd be a lot more trouble ahead than there actually was - he's seen all the chaos in London, what's not to say that the rest of the country is just as hard to get around?

[Neil]

This just struck me when I watched 28 Days Later again the other day. Before they leave for Manchester, Frank says he reckons it's gonna be a 2 or 3 day drive. Now, I've never been to England before, but Englands pretty small compared to the US or even Sweden. There can't be anywhere in England that's 2 or 3 days drive away from anything else. So what is it? Is Frank just a crappy driver? Are there speedbumps all the way from London to Manchester? Did the infected block off all the major roads? It's a good point. If the roads are so bad that 3-4 hours becomes days, then a 2-3 day estimate is stupid. Could just as easily reach a total impasse with roads that bad!

[AcesandEights]

So what is it? Is Frank just a crappy driver? Are there speedbumps all the way from London to Manchester? Did the infected block off all the major roads? Don't ever try and backseat drive me during the apocalypse, Ned.

[Danny]

The roads would have been chocked up with crashed cars and accidents everywhere - something they don't really touch on in the film, and that would certainly slow movement down.

[Buzzbomb]

"2 days to Manchester?" Maybe he was thinking of the taxi fare...

[EvilNed]

Don't ever try and backseat drive me during the apocalypse, Ned. I'm pretty sure I'd be the one driving, Ace. @Danny, the streets actually look kinda clean. The one actual blocked up road they do come across is the tunnel, and Frank just drives over that in a rather weird moment. We see plenty of roads throughout the film, and there's no indication that they're in any way hindered once they leave London. And once that happens, it's like 3 hours away. Especially considering there's no real speed limit to adhere too. And even so, why would Frank figure it'd take 2-3 days to begin with? I'm assuming he's driven to Manchester before, it's a big city after all, and I'm assuming he didn't need 2-3 days to do it.

[MinionZombie]

Again, two things: 1) Frank will be purely guestimating 2-3 days going on what he's seen in London - and who knows what the rest of the country is like? Turns out he needn't have worried about such a long trip ... although he shouldn't have looked up, silly bugger. 2) A London Taxi like the one in the film can't go that fast ... I doubt it could reach the national speed limit, nevermind go beyond it. Seems to be a taxi like the Austin FX4, and it seems that 60mph is the max on those things from a quick Googling ... I'm no expert on them, by any means, but also being an older one it probably wouldn't have much grunt left in it either ... so lets say 50mph, and you might want to go a bit slower in a higher gear to conserve fuel.

[EvilNed]

Ok, so a little bit of Necro. I watched the Director's Commentary last night with Alex and Danny and they actually raise this point. Alex Garland seems to be under the impression that Danny Boyle's got an explanation to why it takes 2 days to drive there, but Boyle has no idea and they both admit they just wrote it that way so that they could have a little bit of a road movie feel. At various times they point out things that "Should or ought to be" in a certain why, but just aren't. That was one of those things. One other big one is that they talk about the lack of dead bodies in London, and how that clearly should not be the case. But they just say that the film "turned out better that way" and that they're aware of the fact that it doesn't really make any sense. And they're right, of course, on both aspects. It turned out the better film because of those things. Danny Boyle also says at one point [referring to the movie] "... a horror film, zombie film or whatever you want to call it." So I'm gonna keep calling it a zombie film.