Fear The Walking Dead: The beginning of the end

5) A Sudden Spike In Police Shootings

At the beginning of the second episode, after Madison, Travis, and Nick flee the tunnel where Cal turned, Nick is intently flipping through radio stations, hoping to hear something about what was going on, some report or something about the infected, and what people were doing about it.

After a few seconds, Nick gets frustrated and turns off the radio, griping that no one was talking about it, or even acknowledging what was going on. The funny thing is…he was wrong.

Even though neither Nick nor the news report on the radio realized it, the news was talking about the infection. While Nick was listening, the news mentions that there’s been a “Sudden increase in police shootings in the last forty-eight hours.”

Gee? What happened forty-eight hours before Cal died?

…OH YEAH! GLORIA TURNED.

You see, I started this talking about Gloria and her two victims at the church, and how they weren’t there when Travis searched it. I do not believe this and the forty-eight hours of increased police shootings were a coincidence. I think that they got out of the church and began slowly rampaging across Los Angeles, biting anyone and everyone they could get their hands on, and those people (Though, Gloria and her first two victims could also have gotten shot by the cops after biting a few people, too) wound up getting the attention of the LAPD and getting shot for their troubles.

The news, reporting on this anomaly in the city, didn’t realize that they were warning Angelinos of an epidemic in their midst, and Nick, expecting reports on people trying to eat other, didn’t realize that those reports would be so mundane, so banal, that he could essentially hear one, and not even notice it.

So…What Does This Tell Us?

Well, what all of this tells us is that things in Los Angeles were far worse than they appeared on the surface. Even before Gloria turned, there seemed to be trouble brewing, as just one day afterwards, the staff at Temple Community Hospital seemed relatively familiar with the infected, implying that, while it was the first day after Gloria turned, it was not their first day dealing with other people who turned.

This also tells us that, even before the city went completely haywire, there were more and more people getting infected than most realized, meaning it had been going on possibly even longer, and it was only as people like Gloria suddenly turned, that the outbreak shifted into high gear, and began drawing the attention of the LAPD, who were given no choice but to use lethal force more and more frequently to try to prevent the virus from spreading like wildfire…no pun intended.

Sadly, as we all know, it was all too little, too late.

What do you think? Were there any other little details from the first two episodes of Fear The Walking Dead that you think might tell us more about the outbreak? Was there anything I missed? Let me know in the comments! And if you don’t want to miss my tips on how survive if zombies suddenly appear in your town, why not pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can also find it at Amazon here, and on iTunes here!