This is what Jenner told Rick!!!

[Deaddudewalking]

Think, zombies, dead walking and attacking, less people each day, what could possibly be worse? In the case of infectious disease there is one thing that scares every single scientist in the world...so Jenner said! "Rick there will be a time you regret this (the decision to leave), we stripped and profiled the disease's DNA and learned it's only a matter of time before it's "AIRBORNE" as a pathogen, there's no cure, there's no hope"! NOTE to READERS: This would mean all you would have to do is breathe the morning air and your now a zombie, it would pass most filters as well in buildings, it's an ELE for human kind (extinction level event)!

[bassman]

Shouldn't this thread be titled "This is what I THINK Jenner told Rick"? While they could always change it for the tv series, I subscribe to the Romero school of zombies(as does Robert Kirkman) - It's never clearly labeled as a virus.

[AcesandEights]

Shouldn't this thread be titled "This is what I THINK Jenner told Rick"? While they could always change it for the tv series, I subscribe to the Romero school of zombies(as does Robert Kirkman) - It's never clearly labeled as a virus. Though in some respects I think Deaddudewalking is correct in that I still feel the big reveal is going to be:   "We are the walking dead." Even though it's interesting that this was already mentioned in a pop-up bubble in last weeks Talking Dead, so it's not a big spoiler at this point...still, spoiler tagging it out of consideration. As far as the airborne pathogen that would kill then resurrect as a zombie...well, I think they're hinting at that as a red herring (certainly Mazzara had fun playing coy over it, anyway), though I suspect it's not actually even an intentional red herring, just something people are projecting based on speculation and Mazzara refusing to confirm or deny the possibility. It just wouldn't work within the premise of the tv show...they'd be painting themselves into a narrow, narrow corner.

[Legion2213]

The most horrific thing that could have been said was that a side effect of "the virus" is that it had rendered the human race infertile, that would make survival/living an utterly hopeless prospect (but stupid "Olive Oil" has fucked that up by being up the duff...bitch).

[Thorn]

The most horrific thing that could have been said was that a side effect of "the virus" is that it had rendered the human race infertile, that would make survival/living an utterly hopeless prospect (but stupid "Olive Oil" has fucked that up by being up the duff...bitch). Harsh?

[Legion2213]

Harsh? Possibly, but I just dislike her as a character, she annoys me more than Andrea. And it blows my cool theory out of the water as well...which sucks.

[Thorn]

Possibly, but I just dislike her as a character, she annoys me more than Andrea. And it blows my cool theory out of the water as well...which sucks. ROFL!! Fair enough!

[rightwing401]

"Everyone's infected." I would bet my bottom dollar that's what he told Rick.

[Thorn]

"Everyone's infected." I would bet my bottom dollar that's what he told Rick. This is my guess as well, though why he would keep this from the group is beyond me and as a member of the group this would piss me off.

[rightwing401]

This is my guess as well, though why he would keep this from the group is beyond me and as a member of the group this would piss me off. Morale reasons. Keep in mind, they've already had several incidents of members losing hope. Example: Lori trying to abort her unborn baby for fear of the life it will have to live/Andrea wanting to 'opt out' and whine about not being able to at several points. The group's still clinging to this belief that they can find a place where they can hunker down and wait out the living dead. How much hope are any of them going to have, knowing that whenever they, or anyone else they come across, die-for whatever reasons-are going to turn into one of those walking flesh eaters? If you noticed in the last episode, Shane pointed out that the two zombie cops they killed didn't have bites, and Rick immediately jumped to the conclusion that they had to of died from scratches. You can almost see the way Shane looks at him with a bit of scheptisism, but accepts it for the potential fear of what pushing the discussion on Rick would reveal. Sometimes it's better to live a good lie than to face a nightmarish truth. Until that truth comes around to bite you in the ass.

[Thorn]

Morale reasons. Keep in mind, they've already had several incidents of members losing hope. Example: Lori trying to abort her unborn baby for fear of the life it will have to live/Andrea wanting to 'opt out' and whine about not being able to at several points. The group's still clinging to this belief that they can find a place where they can hunker down and wait out the living dead. How much hope are any of them going to have, knowing that whenever they, or anyone else they come across, die-for whatever reasons-are going to turn into one of those walking flesh eaters? If you noticed in the last episode, Shane pointed out that the two zombie cops they killed didn't have bites, and Rick immediately jumped to the conclusion that they had to of died from scratches. You can almost see the way Shane looks at him with a bit of scheptisism, but accepts it for the potential fear of what pushing the discussion on Rick would reveal. Sometimes it's better to live a good lie than to face a nightmarish truth. Until that truth comes around to bite you in the ass. Yeah it makes sense I just would have a hard time justifying it as a member of the group, that is a key bit of information I would want to know. Rick as the leader of the group certainly is making decisions right now for the good of the group but as an individual any information about a world threatening plague I want in front of me asap especially if it keeps people safe. Scenario: I become separated from the group, I run across elderly people or terminally ill people. I do not view them as a threat because they are not bitten. They die in the night, they reanimate and kill members of the group I am with. Lives lost that could have been saved had Rick not kept this to himself.

[Wyldwraith]

A spin-off of the "Infertility Theory"... Newborns, absent developed immune systems exposed gradually to minute amounts of the whatever-it-is making corpses into zombies, promptly go into severe Anaphylactic Shock within minutes of being born. NOT saying this IS so, or even SHOULD be so...just that physically, it's a more viable/believable circumstance than the PHENOMENAL COINCIDENCE of the SAME pathogen/microbe/whatever that creates zombies ALSO destroying some key aspect of the conception/pregnancy process. Besides, children are already more susceptible (at least temporarily) to a wider array of potential allergens than teens/adults. This was a worry that was depicted very effectively in The Stand. (Though in that case it was a matter of the offspring of the immune not necessarily inheriting said immunity.) The other problem with the "Everyone's A Carrier" plot device is that, logically speaking, if a microbe/other single-celled life form is responsible for causing the dead to rise...and assuming everyone is a carrier of said microbe, a % of individuals would be naturally immune and ANOTHER % of individuals would remain asymptomatic carriers (though quite possibly infectious carriers, as the "Typhoid Mary" case demonstrates.) Of course the Walkers, having eaten a large % of humanity, would (logically speaking) have unknowingly consumed a proportionate % of the Immune and Permanent/Semi-Permanent Asymptomatic Carriers. (Which COULD neatly explain the corpses which have remained corpses.) Whatever one favors theory-wise, if they're going to depict corpses that show no sign of ever having reanimated post-death on a regular basis it would be GREAT if they went ahead and introduced an explanation for such corpses. Incidentally, regarding the image of TS-21's (Jenner's late wife) reanimation: Wouldn't the CDC's earliest investigative efforts have been able to determine a) The GENERAL nature of the "Mystery Agent" responsible for the reactivation of the brain-stem (If any)? I mean, the worst epidemiologist ever hired by the CDC couldn't HELP but determine if the brain-stem was being somehow altered by a chemical process or non-native cellular construct present and somehow active in the brain-stem during a reactivation occurring so swiftly it could be displayed happening in real-time, right? Not talking so much about Jenner's single-man efforts so much as the initial researching done while the CDC was still fully staffed, with access to the entire medical community. It would seem to be little more than a high-tech round of "Which of these things do not belong?"

[rightwing401]

I think if was more of a problem of timing rather than having the facilities. It probably would have taken at least two days before people started realizing that this wasn't some kind of mass act of violence and was the result of some kind of epidemic. How long it took the scientists to accept that these people are really 'dead' is another matter. Judging by how long that would take would determine how long it would be before they started to push in the right direction. Then there's also the matter of getting the right specimens that can reveal exactly what the hell's happening. Keep in mind, the timeline states that in just about 2 1/2 weeks everything was going to hell. So with that stated, it stands to reason a lot of the staff, if their families weren't already transported to the CDC, wouldn't be really focused on their jobs while the world falls apart outside. I'm sure a lot would have bugged out to find their families before choosing to stay on and work for a 'greater good'.

[Wyldwraith]

All right, However, if the "No Comprehensible Cause" school of thought concerning why the dead are reanimating and attacking the living is right, then random (or at least seemingly random) corpses would've reanimated wherever freshly dead bodies could be found. Ie: Morgues, Mortuaries and ERs. The nature of the locations, and the now-undead bodies in question would've blown the doors off the old standby theories of Mob Violence & Mass Hysteria. For there to be initial denial about whether the "deranged attackers" were alive or dead, early reports would have been coming in from here, there, and everywhere. INSTEAD, at sometime BEFORE (or at best VERY SHORTLY thereafter) Shane fled the hospital because soldiers were shooting everything moving or in a hospital bed as Walkers overwhelmed said hospital, SOMEONE chained the doors to the Morgue, because in their mind they had good reason to chain said doors and spraypaint: "DON'T OPEN! DEAD INSIDE! Combined with Rick being greeted by neat rows of shrouded corpses, all with bloodstains indicative of systematically-perpetrated penetrating head trauma...it's clear that the hospital staff, police or military personnel stationed there were QUITE CLEAR on the nature of the Infected...and that was small town Georgia during one of our earliest looks at the Zombie Apocalypse.

[rickgrimesbig]

I think its that everyone who dies becomes a walker weather they were bitten or not. Thats why Rick shot the fat guy in the bar in the head even though he was already dead. He wanted to stop him from becomming a walker.