The Walking Dead: The outbreak through the lens of season 1

1) Outbreak And Panic

I figured it best to tackle what we know of the outbreak, or, at least, what we learn about it in season one, by starting chronologically.

Now, we learn from Dr. Edwin Jenner as he tries to transmit his findings to other doctors in the very fifth episode of The Walking Dead, “Wildfire”, that, at the time of his recording (And, about two days after Rick woke up), that it had been one hundred and ninety-four days since the first instances of the zombie virus, code named “Wildfire”, began appearing.

How far back that goes into the earliest points we see in the show is undetermined. Earlier this week, I wrote a Walking Dead Theory questioning whether or not the car thieves Rick winds up shot by may have stolen the car to get away from a walker. It isn’t enough for me to say it absolutely, but, I think I made a pretty good case.

Barring that, at no point in The Walking Dead do we see any hint of the outbreak as it was happening, so, our next closest thing is the earliest event in the outbreak recounted to Rick, which was the panic.

When Rick meets Morgan, he explains that the government told everyone in the area to head for Atlanta, and that he, his wife, Jenny, and his son, Duane, were heading there when Jenny fell ill, forcing them to take refuge inside Rick’s abandoned neighborhood.

Furthermore, before parting ways at the King County Sheriff’s office, Morgan tells Rick that “The streets weren’t fit to be on”. Whether he means people were driving dangerously erratic or that the roads were so crowded as to be impassable, he doesn’t specify.

However, as Rick makes his way into Atlanta, we seem to get some clarification as to that question, as the outbound side of Interstate 85 is clogged with traffic, and, at least two cars can be seen having collided with one another, suggesting that Morgan meant both: The streets were crowded to the point of impassability and people were driving dangerously erratic.

Additionally, we learn from Guillermo of the Vatos that, as things progressed, the rest of the staff (Aside from him and his friend, Felipe) of the Atlanta Nursing Home abandoned the elderly patients to whatever their fate would be. Meanwhile, Dr. Jenner informs the group that, as the outbreak got worse, many of his colleagues at the Center for Disease Control fled the facility in hopes of reaching their families, a sign of just how bad the disease was seen by not just the general public, but also, by some of the keenest medical minds in the world.

Sadly, things only got worse from there…