How Did The Walking Dead’s Zombie Virus Start?

This put up accommodates spoilers for the “Strolling Lifeless” franchise.

Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore’s “The Strolling Lifeless” comedian e book sequence begins within the coronary heart of chaos. Rick Grimes, a deputy shot in the line of duty, wakes up from a coma and finds himself in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. This shock of witnessing the world on the point of collapse is outmoded by the urge to outlive, which leads Rick to a gaggle of survivors. One would assume that reuniting with one’s household can be a cheerful event, however a nation overrun with zombies proves to be the reason for unimaginable grief and heartbreak. Certainly, after Rick reunites together with his spouse and son, a sequence of on a regular basis obstacles and ethical dilemmas await him, without end altering the person he was once when he wakened from his coma.

Kirkman, nonetheless, doesn’t inform us how the zombie apocalypse got here to be. There are chunks of lore, hypothesis, and dealing theories fleshed out now and again, however the focus is solely on the aftermath of such a horrible disaster. How do folks cope when their family members rework proper in entrance of them? And the way do they let go of grief whereas looking for causes to dwell and love once more? These questions haunt AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” because the sequence will get the chance to dive deeper into what makes Rick Grimes tick, together with the numerous survivors he encounters over time. That mentioned, the TV present at all times evaded the thriller surrounding the outbreak’s origin, which, to be frank, would not negatively influence the story. In any case, “The Strolling Lifeless” has at all times been about evolving morality and its penalties.

Quick-forward to 2020’s “The Strolling Lifeless: World Past.” The spin-off sequence not solely facilities on a brand-new group of younger survivors, however it additionally solves this 10-year-old thriller after we least count on it. Truly, the second season’s post-credits scene contains a zombie outbreak origin story that’s value dissecting. With out additional ado, let’s take a better look.

In “The Strolling Lifeless: World Past,” we study {that a} biomedical facility in France was the supply of the franchise’s worldwide zombie outbreak. It’s insinuated that one thing actually unhealthy occurred right here, which the researchers had been unable to forestall or include. Nonetheless, a scientist is seen returning to the deserted facility, believing that clues for a remedy lie right here. She runs right into a survivor, to whom she declares her intentions to finish the zombie apocalypse gripping the world at massive. “Finish this? You began this,” the survivor replies, earlier than viciously killing her and mutating right into a sooner, extra aggressive zombie. The France origin story is also confirmed in “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon,” the place we get glimpses of the earliest days of the outbreak and study that some scientific experiments made the scenario worse by inadvertently creating artificial and acidic zombie variants.

So, we all know the place the outbreak began, however what do we all know concerning the pressure of viral illness liable for the scenario? Fortunately, “The Strolling Lifeless” and its spin-offs do clarify this facet in nice element. Wildfire is the viral illness liable for resurrecting contaminated hosts, which corrupts a residing mind sufficient to change the host’s evolutionary features. These infected hosts — zombies, if you will — attack other living organisms on intuition and search to unfold a secondary an infection. To make issues worse, preliminary bouts of Wildfire are asymptomatic, that means that there is no surefire technique to decide whether or not somebody is contaminated in the event that they select to hide it. Signs surrounding a secondary an infection embody delirium, chills, nausea, and finally, full organ failure when host our bodies turn into zombified.

This unprecedented chain of infections finally led to complete societal collapse. Fringe teams of survivors are seen doing their finest to maintain the spirit of the human race alive, however the overlapping notions of human greed, battle, resilience, and pure choice paint a hopeful however extraordinarily dire image.

Whereas these lore drops are serviceable, what did Kirkman need to say concerning the origin story? In any case, the unique “Strolling Lifeless” comics and TV present intentionally averted revealing how the an infection started, as their creatives felt that it could demystify an integral facet of the franchise. Kirkman additionally teased completely different origin tales in now-deleted social posts, together with one which concerned alien area spores (by way of Forbes), however none of those statements have been established as canon. For now, we must keep on with the France biomedical facility outbreak fiasco because the canon outbreak origin, given the way it hyperlinks disparate character views and maps an overview of how humanity is now on the verge of extinction.

The one factor that this origin story helps set up is a coherent timeline, with Day 1 marking the outbreak on the facility and Day 628 marking the end of the Negan war, with Rick’s post-coma journey beginning on Day 59. That is simply the slender scope of occasions that span the “Strolling Lifeless” franchise, and as soon as we account for the linked spin-off arcs, issues begin getting complicated.

Furthermore, if we re-examine each arc that makes “The Strolling Lifeless” a compelling survival horror story by the lens of the France origin story, nothing truly hampers or alters our understanding of the property. It is because the stakes at all times lie in interpersonal dynamics that continually maintain altering in a post-apocalyptic world, together with the prospect of affection or betrayal blooming within the unlikeliest of locations. Generally, the feelings evoked are usually not as drastic or intense, because the quiet, tender empathy shared between two strangers conveys rather more than any overblown zombie-killing sequence. That mentioned, dramatic, exaggerated motion lies on the core of the franchise, continually pushing our notion of how the average person is forced to become a hardened survivor. The choice, in spite of everything, is to succumb to Wildfire and lose one’s sense of self without end.