The Walking Dead Episode 4: Combat Analysis

In the final minutes of the fourth episode of The Walking Dead, viewers were treated to what many have been hotly anticipating since the beginning, a full-blown zombie mob assault.  Thus far, we’ve been witness to the occasional engagement with a single walker or evasive measures taken by survivors in the abandoned city of Atlanta.  Finally for the survivors, there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and nothing to do but fight back.

While Rick and the rest of the extraction team try to locate the elusive and single-handed Merle (who apparently is skilled in close with a wrench) and make it back to home base, the other survivors are contending with the heat, and the instability it brings to members of the camp.  There’s an encounter with another survivor group in the city, which, although completely distinct from the comic series, I thought was executed well.  It’s no wonder, since Kirkman was the author of this episode.

Kirkman also lulls us into a deluded sense of security for the survivors.  They’re fishing, building a roaring fire, quoting The Sound and The Fury; it’s just one long camping trip.  Until it isn’t.  Zombies pinpoint the camp location and launch into a nighttime raid.  Mayhem erupts.  Survivors are bitten.  And weapons are pulled.

As to be expected, there’s a lot of gunplay in the attack scene, but there’s a fair amount of melee combat as well, since every survivor is not packing heat.   The ubiquitous baseball bat once again takes high prominence as the mid-range weapon of choice, with several zombies brained in the encounter.  There’s an interesting use of the weapon as a disengaging tool as well.  As one zombie (played by FX guru Greg Nicotero) is attacking Amy, another survivor separates the two by clubbing the ghoul in the skull – a much safer tactic than physically pulling the attacker off her.  Just be sure to aim carefully.

We also see some improvisation work from Daryl, using the butt of his shotgun as a bludgeon.  This is a tactic I did not address in The Zombie Combat Manual, and have been asked about in subsequent discussions.  My take on it is this: if you have no other choice, nothing else at your disposal, and need to execute a silent neutralization, then do what you must.  Otherwise, I personally would not risk permanently damaging my rifle unnecessarily, not to mention the cleanup afterwards.  Remember, that buttstock needs to be pressed up against your shoulder afterwards, close to your nostrils – better have the soap scrub handy.

The final point about the episode I’ll make is this: people often ask me what the big deal is about fighting a zombie.  Aren’t they slow, mindless, and easy to avoid?  The mob attack scene really illustrated well how harrowing undead combat can be.  It’s dark, you’re in the woods, with zombies creeping in from all angles.  There’s a danger of friendly fire from using your firearm, and it’s difficult to execute a flanking maneuver due to the scattered nature of your opponents.

It’s no question, zombie combat can be a bitch.

The Walking Dead Episode 3: Combat Analysis

Episode three of AMC’s The Walking Dead brought on less hand-to-hand combat action than I had hoped, but it did reveal some interesting aspects of the zombie canon to which the show is following.  Plus, we had the opportunity to see a ballistic weapon in use that wasn’t a firearm, a rarity in the world of zombie combat.

As a quick recap, Rick and the scavenger team escape Atlanta and return to home base in the Georgia hills, which looks to be a pretty decent safe area, given the elevation and the security setup in place.  Here, Rick is finally reunited with his family and his ex-partner, Shane.  You don’t have to be a fan of the comic series to know that awkward tension is waiting in the wings for both men.

No sooner do they return than they meet their first base camp invader.  The only close combat scene in this episode occurs in this scene, but they managed to insert an interesting array of weapons to bring down one walker.  We see a pitchfork, an iron bar, a bat, and the coup de grace weapon, a camp axe.  The team does a bizarre imitation of “Ring Around The Rosie” to bring down the walker, which reminded me of the scene in Shaun of the Dead in the Winchester where they beat the reanimated bar owner with pool cues.  Dale delivers the finishing blow with the axe, decapitating the creature.  We later see the eyes open and jaw begin to nash, confirming the fact that despite being separated from the body, a zombie’s head retains its biting ability.  There’s an amusing meta-nod to Romero when Daryl finished off the walker and says, “It’s gotta be the brain, don’t y’all know nuthin’?”

The close combat in this scene was, admittedly, disappointing.  Despite knowing that they needed to strike the head, the men seemed to beat on the torso for several minutes.  There was also something else that irked me, which was the fact that the zombie seemed to respond to these body blows, reeling and turtling like a human as if in pain.  I’ll try to not be too critical of the zombie minutiae, but it would have been better if the zombie stood static and threatening, until someone delivering an appropriate skull-crushing blow.  However, I admit that the biting decapitated head was cool.

The other weapon worth mentioning in this episode was, of course, Daryl’s crossbow.  When it comes to zombie defense, people often cite this weapon as a formidable and silent ballistic option.  The important detail to me was that the show positioned Daryl as a hunter with real experience using the weapon, not some shmo who looted it from a Sports Authority and suddenly became a bulls-eye marksman.  The fact that he kept retrieving and cleaning every bolt he shot was also an authentic touch, although I personally wouldn’t wipe off the gunk on my own pant leg.

The series itself continues to impress, and from what I’ve seen in episode four, the escape from Atlanta should be interesting.  Let’s hope the team tries to fly under the undead radar rather than going loud, because we saw where that got them before.

The Walking Dead Episode 2: Combat Analysis

Last week I began my analysis on how hand-to-hand zombie combat is being handled in AMC’s new series, The Walking Dead.  While the premiere was fairly limited as far as non-ballistic weapons were concerned, this week’s episode provided a satisfying variety of close-combat armaments.

A brief episode recap: Rick Grimes has entered Atlanta hoping to find an operational safe zone and reunite with  his wife and son.  What he finds are hordes of living dead, and the only safe refuge in a military tank.  This urban metropolitan setting is particularly ripe for a discussion of hand weapons because, as the survivors point out to Rick, his Wyatt Earp impression has drawn dead from all over the city to their location.

Once again, we witness the ubiquitous Louisville Slugger in action, this time brandished by two survivors decked out in riot protection gear.  TWD continues to impress me in the use of this weapon, as both the first and second episodes have depicted an attack using the baseball bat to be fairly tedious, requiring at least several blows to fell your opponent.  I also enjoy the fact that the show continues to emphasize the vulnerable occipital region of the back of the skull as a prime target for this weapon.

We also encounter several other melee range weapons in this episode.  Upon exiting the tank, Rick picks up an entrenching tool from the interior of the vehicle and uses it to slice open a walker’s cheek and send it tumbling to the ground.  The shovel makes for a very effective mid-range weapon, and has been used for combat as well as functional purposes by military forces around the world,  the most famous of which is the former Soviet Union’s Spetsnaz unit.

As Rick and Glenn try to make it past the shambling dead in their gore jackets, they are armed with two melee weapons: a crowbar and a fire axe.  The crowbar sees some very brief action as the men have to hightail it towards a fence once the undead jig is up.  The fire axe has its moment in the sun, however, as Rick uses it to brain the first zombie who senses their presence:

Here’s where the melee action gets interesting.  As you can see from the production still above, Rick doesn’t use the blade of the axe to take out his opponent, but the opposite spiked end.  I thought this to be an excellent combat decision.  The characters just experienced a rain shower, soaking everything and everyone from head to toe.   Swinging a wet axe down upon the rain-slicked head of a zombie may cause the blade to careen off the skull, or weaken your grip.  A much better choice is to use the pointed end and drive it quickly into the head, as Rick demonstrates.  My only suggestion would be to have Rick choose a thinner boned area, like the temporal region, rather than the thick crown of the skull.  Still, he got the deed done and didn’t have the weapon wrenched from his hands.  Nice job, officer.

Overall, a great episode for zombie close combat.  Here’s hoping for more silent but deadly action in Episode Three, when the team returns to rescue Merle.

The Walking Dead Premiere: The Zombie Combat Club Perspective

Last Sunday saw the AMC premiere of a event that fans of the undead never thought they would see - a television series based on the zombie apocalypse.  Ever better is the fact that the show is based on Robert Kirkman’s excellent comic book serial - The Walking Dead.

There are plenty of web sites that will conduct a thorough review of the show itself, which is, in a word, outstanding.  Rather than comment on the series, I thought it would be more interesting to examine The Walking Dead from the Zombie Combat Club perspective - that is, how is hand-to-hand combat depicted in the show.  In the comic series, Kirkman includes a considerable amount of close quarters zombie combat with all types of weapons - swords, hammers, ice picks, and axes.  It will be interesting to see how the show translates the brutality of non-ballistic zombie combat for television.  Each week, I’ll review the episode’s use of hand-held weapons if presented in the show.

The first episode’s use of hand-based weapons was limited, but extremely accurate.  Rick, the show’s main protagonist, takes out a “walker” using the ever-popular baseball bat.  The scene depicts not only the difficulty of using such a weapon, but also the physical exhaustion such an effort exacts on the body.  From the angle of his strikes, Rick is targeting the most resilient areas of the skull, the frontal and parietal regions of the head.  Rick takes not one or two, but five blows to completely neutralize his opponent.   The finishing blow seems to occur after the zombie is already down, and Rick strikes the occipital region of the skull - a primary target area detailed in The Zombie Combat Manual.  At the end of the engagement, Rick is left breathless and completely spent.  While some of this is attributable to his healing wound, it was interesting to see the significant physical toll of taking out just a single zombie.

In a show about fighting off zombie hordes, it is inevitable that the combat focus is going to be based on firearms.  The show, however, has already set the stage for the importance of using non-ballistic weapons: the fact that the noise of the gun’s report will draw more dead to your location.

I’m looking forward to seeing more creative uses of silent, but deadly hand weapons in the show.

ZomBcon 2010: The Aftermath

ZomBcon 2010 is in the record books, and now that the suitcase has been emptied and the pictures downloaded, I have time to recap this first event of its kind - a 3-day all-zombie fest.

I was lucky to be an invited guest to this convention, but if I wasn’t, as a fan I would have found a way, by hook or by crook, to get to Seattle.  The organizers did a great job of not only gathering some premier guests for the attendees, but providing extraordinary access to those guests.  It wasn’t like a typical Con, where an MC bellows into a mic “And here’s Mr. Film Celebrity!” and said celebrity bounds on stage, waves, and bounds off into the recesses of the convention hall, never to be seen again.  At ZomBcon, not only did fans see the guests on stage and in panels, they chatted with them in the hallways, they ate with them at brunch, they drank with them at the bar.

As a speaker, I thoroughly enjoyed how the attendees were intensely into my Zombie Combat presentation.  No strange looks or awkward silences here.  When I learned I would be following a lecture by Max Brooks, and thought to myself, “This is not good - I have to play cleanup to a legend in zombie literature and a man funny enough to write for SNL.”  Luckily, the attendees appreciated my presentation as much as they did his.

Who knows what surprises are in store for this event in 2011, but for those of you who wondered if it was worth it to attend this year, Let me answer that for you now.  Yes.

Here are some selected pictures from the weekend:

Nate “Rock” Quarry, Ultimate Fighter/Zombie

Don Roff, author of “Zombies: A Record of The Year of Infection” and S.G. Browne, author of “Breathers”

Scott Kenemore, author of “The Art of Zombie Warfare”

Dr. Steve Schlozman, author of the forthcoming “The Zombie Autopsies”

The awesome Ted Raimi

Terry Alexander, John the pilot from Day of the Dead

This man needs no introduction

See you at ZomBcon 2011!