The Walking Dead (comics)/Headscratchers

Major spoilers, you've been warned.


 * So, uh...why did society collapse so hard? Rick's out for, what, a month, but by the time he wakes up, everybody's gone back to the stone ages. Nobody even bothers looking for battery-run computers/digital watches? I mean, what, did the vague cataclysmic event also destroy all electronic devices? And, putting that aside, was mass amnesia another effect? Everyone seems to forget the date, for no good reason.
 * The simple answer for not seeking out battery-operated devices is that they're simply too hard to come by. Even if the devices themselves were abundant, the batteries would have been one of the first things looted due to society's dependence on portable electronics. People still thought of the plague as a short event at the beginning that would be over soon, so they wouldn't give a second thought to aimlessly depleting batteries.
 * Granted it happened a bit fast but without a reason to know the exact date it would be quickly forgotten. In Zombie Land you don't get the weekend off, there is no President's Day or Veterans day. Currently these people are back to hunter-gatherer status so there isn't even a harvest. Considering how long watches seem to live it's hard to believe that nobody had a watch on when this all started but over all it makes sense.
 * Forgetting the date isn't unexpected, since there's no reason to really remember dates on account of the complete collapse of society. When the odds of surviving to see the next sunrise are so uncertain, you tend to stop caring about trivial things like what day on the calender it is compared to avoiding death by zombie. As for why nobody has watches, people probably do have them in their luggage but don't see the point in keeping track of time because again, with societies breakdown there's very little reason to need to know the exact time of day. Granted things like coordinating meeting spots would be better served with a watch.
 * Except enough people own watches, and enough cars have calendars built right in that it's a tad absurd that nobody seems to know the exact date. I can level with them simply not giving a shit but not with not knowing.
 * The only person with a watch was Dale, who kept the mechanical watch his father gave him. For the car calenders, none of the cars they use would have had them.
 * What bugged me the most--nay, what utterly pissed me off--was Tyreese's death. So, Rick doesn't do anything to prevent Tyreese being beheaded in front of him, supposedly because if they try to stop the Governor he'll kill Michonne too. Except here's Rick going on the word of the Governor, who already blatantly lied to them once before trying to kill them. Why would he be so sure that Michonne was actually a captive? (Of course, she wasn't but that's just Dramatic Irony for you.) Likewise, so much effort is made to make Rick look like this calculating and careful character, who's capable of being cold and merciless if it's beneficial to the group overall. So why would he value Michonne, who had only showed up a month or so before and was currently elsewhere with only the word of Rick's greatest enemy that she was in danger, over Tyreese, who Rick had known almost since the beginning of the plague and had proved to be one of the most capable and helpful members of the group? Likewise, it was just the Governor and one other guy against six or seven people from Rick's group. If they'd acted then they could have killed the Governor and his right-hand man, which would have made a huge dent in the morale of the Woodburians and made them think twice about attacking Rick's group. This would have saved Tyreese, and Michonne was out of danger anyway at that point. And anyway, even if Rick's careful risk/reward planning failed him for once, plain old human nature would have spurred him to help his best friend. It's like he was temporarily superglued to the Idiot Ball to give the writers an excuse for Woodbury to show up later and kill off 80% of the main characters. Needless to say, I thought Lori's reaction upon hearing about Tyreese's death was completely reasonable.
 * Between that, surviving Michonne's payback, and a few other places, it felt like the Governor practically had Joker Immunity. Hell, it took Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies to kill him off.
 * I won't disagree that the whole event pissed me off, but it made sense from Rick's standpoint. The Governor had Michonne's katana, which lent some credibility to his claim that he had her. He was
 * How exactly was Ben supposed to be presented? A burgeoning psychopath, or just a little boy with a poor comprehension of death as it relates to the zombie infection? I mean, he, but his reasoning was that he thought he'd come back.
 * I think it was supposed to be left intentionally ambiguous in order to let the readers decide whether or not


 * How come nobody is afraid of natural deaths? They all know you come back irrespective of how you die, so shouldn't you be weary of old people dying in their sleep or younger people having heart attacks, all just to devour your sleeping ass? Now that they are in this Washington "paradise", why is it no action is taken to account for this?
 * They probably do have a plan to deal with it. It's just not shown to us. Aside from that, also keep in mind that nobody in Washington has died of natural death yet.