Land of the Dead IS 3 years after the outbreak:

[DEAD BEAT]

i remember reading somewhere,that true dawn was weeks after night but then day was suppose to be 5 years later! anyone else read that?

[rikimaru]

if GAR had it his way day would have been 5 years into the outbreak and the curse was or at least seemed to be over at the end of the original script. but that wasent used so... (edit) im reffering to day btw

[Dommm]

This is just my personal view on the progression, NOTLD, DOTD, Day and then Land. First being the initial outbreak second being the full out war, third being the losing side of the war and finally fourth is on regroup when we start figuring out how to live and move forward. But that being said all of these IMHO are for you to take whatever socio-political movement of the time you wish. Disease, consumerism, Human greed and selfishness, etc... I think GAR just put forward the idea that our social values, morals, technology are all based on a very weak thread and would fall apart quite easily. But hay thats just my opinion.

[Deadman_Deluxe]

i remember reading somewhere,that true dawn was weeks after night but then day was suppose to be 5 years later! anyone else read that? Yeah i read that. It was scrawled in human excrement on a toilet wall and signed by "a madman"

[rikimaru]

I think GAR just put forward the idea that our social values, morals, technology are all based on a very weak thread and would fall apart quite easily. But hay thats just my opinion. i hardly think a world wide zombie outbreak shows that our way of life could fall apart quickly... you might aswell say that nukes going off everywhere would do the same thing... i think its more along the lines of if people dont work together to combat disasters well all die. just my .02

[Dommm]

i think its more along the lines of if people dont work together to combat disasters well all die. just my .02 I would put that under social implications that we all pretend to get along and work together till somthing really f***ed up happens then we all just look out for ourselves. Its also another reason to love the Movie, Make of it what you will

[TheWalkingDude]

Ok my idea on the subject is they both over lap each other. both taking place at aproxamately the same time periods........ They just happen to be hundreds of miles apart and thats why they dont know about each other...Forget make and models of cars drivin because its just the years the movies was made...If they had all been made around the same time then the cars would of all been the same..There is a thing called product placement...You see a newer Ford in Land because they got paid to put it there.....

[AssassinFromHell]

The man himself said LAND came after DAY. Topic ended

[_liam_]

if all this 3 years business is true, how come at the start it says "some time later", surely if romero knew for sure it was 3 years later he'd clean it up. i think the truth is romero doesnt concern himself with issues such as canon & timeline, and doesnt really know himself, cause it's not important, like the way the cause of the outbreak is disregarded.

[Brubaker]

if all this 3 years business is true, how come at the start it says "some time later", surely if romero knew for sure it was 3 years later he'd clean it up. i think the truth is romero doesnt concern himself with issues such as canon & timeline, and doesnt really know himself, cause it's not important, like the way the cause of the outbreak is disregarded. I look at it two ways. One is that the three years thing is a moot point. You're right about that. "Some time later" does create more questions than it answers. How long was it from the beginning of the scenes or sound bites that we see at the start of the movie, compared to the end? It seemed like quite a bit of "time" was going by during that little introduction we see before the movie kicks off. Also, is it three years from the start of the outbreak? Three years from when society started to crumble (didn't happen right away) or three years from when the undead finally took over and it became their world? It could be any of those three. The biggest gripe I have with the timeline is the movie itself. It seems like at least a couple of characters don't understand why the fireworks are called "sky flowers". Isn't this one of the questions Charlie asks Riley? My point is, after three years or even a year, you'd think that they would have already had this conversation about sky flowers by now. There isn't much else to talk about. You'd also figure that Riley or some of the other characters would have met Slack beforehand, or maybe Cholo would have. When he was walking through town, you get the impression that virtually everyone in the street knew Riley. The third thing is the military unit. There is one scene where they are showing people the set-up of the Green, discussing strategy and also talking about the fences (when the chick wastes the zombie) as if everybody had just set up shop there in the past few days. Over the course of three years, or even a year, it should have all been second nature by now. I'm aware some of these things were set up so viewers of the movie had a bit of an idea what was going on, but I'm sure the average moviegoer could have figured out "sky flowers." As for the remark about a car not having gone out of there for three years, what if nobody had permission to leave unless they were authorized to leave? All of the cars had to be somewhere. It should have been easy enough to leave but there may have been orders to shoot anybody who tried taking off without prior authorization. I could be way off on that one but I don't think that cars hadn't left in three years just because there weren't anymore running. I'd assume it was a safety measure to conserve fuel and to keep the "bad guys" out.

[Shemp]

I distinctly recall a quote in Premiere magazine (January 2005, with capsule new items on the year's upcoming movies) wherein Romero was quoted something to the effect that LAND was 3 years after the outbreak.

[JDP]

Day certainly looks more desolate than Land, but they did mention that they lost comunication with other outposts. Zombies in FL would likely decay faster than in PA. The original script for Day was set 5 years after the outbreak, but the only reference to time in the film was Sarah telling Logan he was advancing theories advanced months ago. This is indeed a key piece of evidence why Day happens after Land. And it is not just the decay seen on the zombies themselves, but the decay and desolation seen in everything! The world in Land is still reasonably in better shape, thus pointing to its closer time to when things were still maintained by humans, while the world of Day looks like a wasteland, thus pointing to its farther away time to when things were still maintained by humans. The communication issue in Day is also interesting because it shows that even the government itself seems to be "gone", these guys holed up in the bunker can't contact anyone anymore, not even their bosses in Washington. In Land even privately run ventures like that of Kauffman are still going on strong. As bad as it is, there is still obvious hope for humanity in Land. The human population is in fact still quite high, enough to man entire cities, nothing like the proportions calculated by Dr. Logan in Day, where surviving humans are vastly outnumbered by zombies and the future looks quite bleak for humanity indeed. Additionally, some of the characters in Land seem to be quite ignorant about the zombies and things associated with them that by force anyone who has lived long enough in this nightmare scenario would be very familiar with. For example, Slack has no friggin' idea how long it takes for a bitten person to die and come back as a zombie (the answer to this issue that is clearly implied in Land is in itself a great nitpick, as it contradicts previously established things in Dawn.) Ignorance of this issue is something that only happens very early on during the series, like in Dawn, when Peter has to inform the other characters about it. No one in his right mind will dispute that Dawn happens much earlier than Land. In Day no one is unaware of this issue, though. They are all perfectly familiar with the process. When you pay attention to all such details, it becomes clearer that Land cannot have taken place after Day. Whether Romero intended the opposite or not is besides the point. The fact is that the way he made both movies it implies that the world of Day has to be further away in time from the early days of the zombie disaster than the world of Land. As for the people who are trying to argue that "there is no timeline" in Romero's Dead movies, think again. No one in his right mind will dispute that Night happens earlier than Dawn (and I don't mean the chronological order in which the movies themselves were made, I mean within the context of the movies.) No one will try to dispute that Diary and Survival also happen during the early days of the zombie outbreak, also before Dawn. And no one in his right mind will try to dispute that Dawn also happens before both Land and Day. The only problem, then, comes between Day and Land, where things are less clearly deduced as to which one happened earlier.

[EvilNed]

I disagree with some of your points but in the end, I think it can be viewed in both ways. I think it's meant to be viewed as Land taking place after Day. That's how I view it. In Day, it's pretty obvious to me that they're no more than a year at most into it. The key to it is the scene where McDermott tells the soldiers off of how bad it's gotten out there. The soldiers don't seem to have fully realized that the world out there is gone and it won't be coming back. In Land it seems as if people have realizes this - and a long time ago - and after that realization decided to rebuild. The societal development in Land is a sign to me that they're further into the apocalypse. They've HAD time to rebuild, something that they haven't in Day.

[JDP]

I disagree with some of your points but in the end, I think it can be viewed in both ways. I think it's meant to be viewed as Land taking place after Day. That's how I view it. In Day, it's pretty obvious to me that they're no more than a year at most into it. The key to it is the scene where McDermott tells the soldiers off of how bad it's gotten out there. The soldiers don't seem to have fully realized that the world out there is gone and it won't be coming back. In Land it seems as if people have realizes this - and a long time ago - and after that realization decided to rebuild. The societal development in Land is a sign to me that they're further into the apocalypse. They've HAD time to rebuild, something that they haven't in Day. McDermott was just making a wisecrack to the soldiers' "find anything?" simple question. Nothing else can be derived from it. Everyone in that bunker seems quite well aware of how bad things have gotten. The reason why we see no societal development in Day is simply because most people are in fact actually dead. Dr. Logan gives us his calculation of how uneven the odds are between zombies and humans. This is quite different from the world of Land where there's plenty of people around even to be able to man entire cities. Thus Land happens at an earlier time when the odds between zombies and humans were not as disproportionate.

[EvilNed]

McDermott was just making a wisecrack to the soldiers' "find anything?" simple question. Nothing else can be derived from it. Everyone in that bunker seems quite well aware of how bad things have gotten. The reason why we see no societal development in Day is simply because most people are in fact actually dead. Dr. Logan gives us his calculation of how uneven the odds are between zombies and humans. This is quite different from the world of Land where there's plenty of people around even to be able to man entire cities. Thus Land happens at an earlier time when the odds between zombies and humans were not as disproportionate. I disagree on both points. To Logan's knowledge, nobody is alive. But that knowledge is guesswork based on McDermotts unreliable information.