Connecting The Walking Dead: ‘Brave’

Portland

One of the other things we learned in World Beyond is that Campus Colony is part of “The Alliance Of The Three”, consisting of Omaha Safe Zone, The Civic Republic, and Portland Safe Zone, in Portland, Oregon.

When I heard people talking about Portland, I immediately became curious, because, while we haven’t seen Portland in The Walking Dead universe yet, we have heard about it before.

Way back in season two of Fear The Walking Dead, Madison Clark and Travis Manawa met the family of George Geary, a park ranger living at a wildlife reserve on Catrina Island off the coast of California. While talking with Travis, George reveals that, through his network of contacts among other park rangers living up and down the west coast, most of the major cities along said coast were firebombed in the military’s Operation: Cobalt, in an attempt to destroy as many of the walkers as possible. One of the cities George specifically named as being hit was…Portland.

How did it survive? We didn’t see any designated “safe zones” in Atlanta at any point in The Walking Dead. Yes, the CDC headquarters survived, and Grady Memorial Hospital survived, but, you’d think, with survivors still populating both places that, if such a “safe zone” existed in the city, wouldn’t they have known about it? Sure, Rick’s group may have met Dr. Jenner at the CDC too early for such a place to have been created yet, but, how come the police officers at Grady Memorial Hospital hadn’t stumbled upon one? They were going on patrols all the time! They didn’t find anything?!

Ultimately, my point is this: If Portland got hit with Cobalt, how come it was intact enough to have a safe zone when all the major east coast cities we’ve seen thus far in The Walking Dead couldn’t? Or, is Portland Safe Zone a place that was set up the same way as Alexandria? With some member of the government left in charge of a walled off portion of the city (Or surrounding suburbs) and it just developed from there?