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Left 4 Dead/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions
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I honestly don't understand the military. Are they just wanting to screw themselves over? The carriers (The survivors from both l4d 1 and 2) have proved themselves to be zombie genociders, killing thousands of zombies in a very short time. Properly hired (take these big, shiny guns and kill as many as possible, and have this cell phone if you want evac), they could clear out cities in short amounts of time. Considering the massive pile of bodies that the survivors pointed out as carriers in The Parish, carriers are at least not too rare. Also, apparently, they also have superpowers, able to take a beating from an entire horde for a long time, resistant to bullets and explosives, and being able to take a punch from Tanks without dying. These people aren't even soldiers, we have 4 normals people fighting like apocalypses on legs, with potential for dozens of more if the military would stop shooting them.
* Except you can't leave the carriers alive. Their carriers. You can't ever let them back into society because they'll infect the general population. You can't evac them, certainly not by most conventional means because they'll infect whoever you send out flying the helicoptor or whatsit. Carriers as far as we can tell are sufficiently rare that aside from our "extra lives" we can confirm what, perhaps a dozen? The carriers we are aware of are apparently built of bad ass but it's never suggested in the games that we're making an actual dent in the zombie population.
** It already seems as thought they have special planes for carrier evac (that giant thing at the end of The Parish) and you could simply isolate them or let them live somewhere else, like how the originals are living it out in the keys. There was an enormous sprawl of corpses that the new survivors said were "carriers". Imagine every single one of those corpses have their weapon of choice from the military, dropped off into a infected hotspot and have a two word instruction: "Go nuts". Any way you look at it, 30 or so survivors with M60s, Multiple Grenade Launchers, or even simple Assault rifles are going to make a difference, or at least carve a big, bloody path for future non-immune survivors.
** TL;DR: Imagine 30 or so survivors armed with cutting edge military technology and body armor (which in-universe apparently makes you invincible from the front) with the only objective being "kill everything that moves and isn't a human" with the actual military only being needed to carry them in those massive carrier planes, occasionally dropping ammo and weapons, and finding a safe place where they can live after the entire ordeal is over. And yet the military thinks it's a good idea to not do that.
*** Would you do follow those orders once you found out that the best you could hope for after victory is being banished and its more likely someone would simply shoot you at the end to avoid the risk of someone walking up to you and shaking hands at some point and the entire situation repeating itself?
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** They look like them so it's just easier to call them a zombie, though the survivors do sometimes refer to them as the infected.
** And why would they need to bite to qualify as zombies, anyway? They're not vampires, Francis.
*** Call these freaks whatever you want.
** The characters refer to them biting, it's just not animated.
** Definitions evolve, Zombies African Voodoo roots didn't have them eating people at all. Nowadays a variation of zombie is used to describe a collective of beings whom attempt to diminish those not of their number. In the end the point of a name is so that people have an idea of what it refers to and "zombie" gets a rather good picture of what the infected are like.
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** Say it with me: "Renovation."
*** Renovation doesn't make entire walls invisible from the inside and visible from the outside.
*** First off, it's not "renovation", it's "construction". Construction is when you're building it up the first time. "Renovation" is tearing something off and putting something else or something more there. Is building a bridge renovation? No, it's construction. Tearing up your floor is and replacing it is renovation. Second, construction makes sense in Goldeneye's Bunker I and Bunker II. But they didn't finish construction on the building while you were on the darn ''roof'', now did they? [[Command
** You can only see the top couple of floors as you fly away, you went up at least three flights of stairs to reach the roof after the open area. Simples.
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***** I think his point is that you enter through the saferoom door and then barricade it behind you, stay for 5 minutes, and then leave the room behind. Any more survivor groups following the signs to an upcoming safehouse will find the door completely useless. Imagine ending the first map of No Mercy after someone's set off the car alarm, confident they can get into the safehouse in time, to find the door doesn't open. When mentioning how other survivors had used the room before, they meant that those survivors had left the door un-barricaded just in case more survivors came along; which the players do.
** The end-of-level door can block anything ''including'' a tank. He can only punch open a start-of-level door.
** Story vs. Gameplay, man. Story vs. Gameplay.
*** I've never played the game before, only seen videos, but don't all the safe room doors have little bars in them, big enough for a human hand to reach in and pull up the bar?
*** Only the start-of-level doors. End-of-level doors only have a tiny slit for one to see out of.
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***** A safe able to survive damage from regular infected wouldn't be much heavier than the propane tanks survivors can carry round anyway, imagine you have a carryable safe with a smoke alarm which can be turned on and off with a remote in game, it's suddenly alot easier since hordes can be handled, the idles which normally slow you down can be taken out in one fell swoop, it's basically an infinite bile bomb. Doesn't matter if specials are immune, they are weak without the horde to make up the bulk of their attacking force. Tanks would become the only real threat, and they aren't as bad without everything else to wear you down first. But theres so many ways the idea can be implemented that criticizing just the incidental flaws of a certain implementation is a bit daft. The point is there's bound to be a massive use for high pitched sounds, a way to permanently distract the horde, far more than just a pipe bomb, how did the military, despite all their resources not invent one?
***** Those propane tanks don't get lugged around to the degree you want your safe to be. Plus, you're defending your idea purely based on game mechanics. In a 'realistic' situation, you wouldn't be living through a tank's punch, let alone Spitter goo or a Hunter slashing your intestines out. Finally, the military didn't invent one because they're busy killing the Horde rather than faffing around with Tropers' pet theories on safes and smoke alarms.
****** I think their ability to take damage was explained by being Carrier's for realism
****** Bile Bombs are manufactured by CEDA, so why wouldn't the military try other methods of distraction?
******* CEDA didn't manufacture Bile Bombs, they collected samples of Boomer bile to study, which the Survivors choose to use as bombs.
****** OH I know players who would carry a Propane Tank to the end of the earth, heck, loads chose to do that with the Gnome which was supposedly heavier. But this is getting silly, your still criticising a point based on the examples produced rather than the point itself. And I must say the criticisms are getting daft as well, defending an idea using game mechanics as a referance doesn't stop it from being a Just Bugs Me. While "the military didn't invent one because they're busy killing the Horde rather than faffing around with Tropers' pet theories on safes and smoke alarms." misses the point of Just Bugs Me s in general. If my "pet theory" turns out to solve the entire zombie issue without investing billions in explosives, it's well worth "faffing" around with it, it doesn't neccessarily involve smoke alarms and safes, and it's not rocket science, anyone should be able to look at a pipe bomb and say "surely we could do more with this concept?"
****** Safes that can be carried don't exist - one of the safety measures of a safe is the inability to carry it away barehanded. If someone wants to take it, they're gonna need some sort of mechanical assistance or multiple people. Which is also why safes are usually installed via bolts and things that would require a lot more equipment than can be subtle. As far as high pitched sounds, it's possibility... but the main reason I see this being impossible at the time of the games is the rapid rate of infection. There's just no time to built such things (that would be effective in the long run) when it's more important to simply gather people up and ensure a defensible position is possible.
****** Uh. There are [i]several[/i] things wrong with your statement. Firstly- There are a LOT of different kinds of safes, including portable safes. A gun safe, for example. All he's saying is put the alarm in another, harder-to-destroy object to protect it. Second-Rapid rate of infection? based on what, exactly? The only clues we have for infection is that Church Guy turned, but we have no idea how long it had been since he was bitten. Both helicopter pilots turned, but again, no idea how long, but we can assume turning time is at least an hour or so- the helicopter rides got them pretty far away, plus time to be bitten, etc. My problem with the alarm-safe combo is actually effectiveness. How loud would the alarm be? Both car alarms and pipe-bombs have clear areas with which to sound. The short wavelength of high pitched sounds wouldn't travel well through any kind of dense material.
******* ...A gun safe is about the size of a fridge. Just FYI. Anyway, you have to realize that "rate of infection" doesn't refer to how fast symptoms show, it's how fast the infection spreads, and the opening cinematic 'does' give us an idea of what that's like- about 99% of humanity became infected in two weeks after the first case.
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== Destruction Levels ==
* The level of destruction seen in most of the levels is often inadequately justified- why has every passage ever had at least one ceiling collapse every hundred feet?
** The military probably brought out some explosives at one point or another. That, and a few months of constant conflict would probably help. Oh, and some tanks probably got a little wild once the number of uninfected to kill dropped to low enough levels.
** It's not a few months, its two weeks. But consider that it's two weeks of wild rioting, uncontrolled fires, gas leaks, shootouts, plane crashes, and [[Memetic Badass|Chicago Ted.]]
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** Ooh, good one. That works for me.
** The bile attracts the hoard with its strong smell. In the opening video, the goo that bill wipes of francis is boomer bile. Note that Francis says it stinks.
*** It can't be the smell, or else the boomer would constantly get owned by the infected. More than likely, it reacts with human skin to create a different compound.
**** It actually can be the smell. He said it stank after it had been on his fingers. So the Human skin sweat thing has some merit.
***** The boomer bile attracts the horde because of the methane gas.
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== The Bots ==
* The AI Survivor bots. [[We Cannot Go on Without You|If you die (or if you and your friends die), the level has to be redone]], regardless if there is a bot left alive. One can assume that the bots can't "move" on their own since they always follow the player. However, if you set up a Versus match against the Survivors that are all bots, you can see them move fluidly in the level to get to the safe house without the player leading the way.
** It wouldn't be much fun to sit and wait for the bots to get to a respawning closet. In multiplayer at least you can scout ahead (if your have free-look enabled) and tell them what's spawning.
** Actually, as it so happens, they ''will'' move through the level on their own if there's no player alive. They're just really conservative about it in Campaign. As far as why the game restarts if all human players die... well, that's not so much a matter of "in-universe" as "gameplay" reasons. If all the human players die, You Have Failed and should try again.
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** [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|The developers needed something to prevent the players from wandering off the map, and no one likes invisible walls anymore.]] That's how I see it.
* Chain link fence aside, why wouldn't our heroes just siphon enough gas from all the other cars to fill the stock car's tank (I'm sure Ellis could scavenge enough hose or tubing from the cars' engines to make a workable siphon), then backtrack and look for the first exit to go around?
** I think the problem was more that they could drive through 20 miles of parked cars than they were short of fuel.
*** You didn't read what I wrote. Why couldn't they just ''turn around'', get off the highway, and go around?
** They may have done this already multiple times and just thought "this may be as good as it gets". Conversely, turning around and driving around it would eventually lead to the same problem again.
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* In the final level of Dead Air, why does the sound of a fuel pump starting up alert more infected than the sound of a passenger jet crash landing?
** Could they have been reacting to the plan crash?
* And for that matter, wouldn't gunshots, hunter screams, witch cries, and tank roars all attract zombies?
** Gunshots are a no -- it's said above, and repeatedly, that Infected are not attracted to ''loud'' sounds, but ''high-pitched'' ones. As far as the sounds other Infected make go, probably because if Infected didn't ignore the various calls and cries made by their own kind, they'd constantly be attacking each other. The Tank just plain wouldn't attract them, though; again, the high-pitched versus loud distinction.
*** Except, when you're near the infected, they are attracted to the sound of gunfire. The suppressed SMG in ''[[Left 4 Dead]] 2'' noticeably reduces how quickly infected notice you firing the gun. Far away infected probably aren't attracted to the same degree, however, since gunshots heard from farther off sound more like a CRACK than a gun firing.
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**** Plus they might be attracted to the rather high pitched sound of shell casings falling.
**** High pitch sounds drive them into a frenzy and attract them, but it does not mean the sound of a gun shot would not get their attention. In addition to the fact all the games still have a muzzle flash that even in daylight is pretty darn bright.
* Why do all of the zombies in the hospital in No Mercy know which floor the survivors are on by the sound of a moving elevator?
** It could be that the infected were just there.
*** Plus, I'm sure any infected remotely nearby would've been following the gunfire and screams since you left the safe-room. The noise you make killing the infected who were closeby enough to hear the elevator will guide the infected who are further away towards you
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** If you listen to the commentary for the game, they were all originally connected. People found it to be a downer ending to not get rescued three times in a row. So they just chopped the link though some of it still shows.
* Please explain me,how did [[Kung Fu-Proof Mook|people]] wearing [[Goggles Do Nothing|hazmat suits]] manage to get infected? Infection could be bite-transmitted or airborne,it still makes no goddamn sense whatsoever.
** I get the impression that by the time the sequel takes place there is a Typhoid Mary kind of situation going on. Otherwise immune people get brought into the safe zone and mingle with the CEDA workers. Said workers get ready for work, then change while in the suits.
** They can get infected because it wasn't until recently, in game time, that the CEDA realized people could be carriers without exhibiting symptoms. Chances are they picked it up while out of the suit, it incubated, and then kicked in while they're on duty. Chances are incidents like this are why the CEDA checkpoints fell apart; they were attacked internally.
** When walking through the Dead Center campaign, Coach said something along the lines of "I guess those suits ain't bite-proof, huh!" The zombies bit the people through the suits and the CEDA workers couldn't get out of the suit in the next hour before they turned.
*** That explanation falls flat immediately when you realize that several times after shooting an infected CEDA worker the sound of air rushing out of their suits can be heard. That means they were still sealed when you shot them, which means they couldn't have been bitten in the suits since they're still air-tight (no bite holes).
*** Left 4 Dead Wiki points out that the Hazmat Infected are wearing their gloves and boots under their suits, letting air into the arms and legs, instead of keeping them airtight all over the body. CEDA employees, the people whose responsibility is handling terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and pandemics ''are wearing their own Hazmat suits incorrectly''.
**** But from what can be gathered, the virus is not airborne but spread through body fluids such as saliva and blood. So there is not a need for them to be airtight. But as pointed above, the suits hiss meaning released, trapped air inside them. So the suits ''are'' airtight, despite the wiki evidence. So just the models are not portrayed correctly or there might be an internal seal under the sleeves and legs.
** the Left 4 Dead Wiki also states that each major body part may have its own air pocket, which could mean that the CEDA workers may have been bitten after all.
***** This troper knows someone at USAMRIID, so I asked them about this exact situation. Let's say we're facing each other, and having a conversation. As we talk, microdroplets of my saliva are getting on you, and microdroplets of your saliva are getting on me. In other words, even though the virus is not airborne in the literal sense, it CAN be spread simply by ''talking'' to someone who's infected that hasn't turned yet, or an immune carrier like the Survivors.
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** My theory is that the they didn't put the Hazmat suits on to protect themselves, but to protect others after they had been infected but before they turned. A zombie that has every part of their skin covered can't possibly spread the infection.
* The nature of the Special Infected has been bothering me for a while now. I guess we're supposed to assume that they're been transformed by the virus based on their bodies beforehand, turning the people into Tanks or Hunters and not not normal infected. I think that's much more plausible than random changes. So, basing my entire argument on that assumption, I have a few problems. Boomers. Yeah, I can believe there are a ton of really fat people in a big city. Same goes for Smokers. I can kind of let the Witch slide, for reasons discussed in the main page (pregnant zombie, or zombie rape victim [[Nightmare Fuel|* shudders* ]]). And I suppose the Charger could just be a hick. That kind of thing is rather native to the South. The Spitter... I don't know what the hell she's got going on, but I accept it. So my problem lies with the Tank, Hunter and Jockey. Do you honestly expect me to believe that in any given city, hospital, swamp, airport, or small town, there are several hundred [[Le Parkour|free-runners,]] [[Dumb Muscle|weightlifters,]] [[Super Speed|or star track & field athletes?]] I would really like to see an explanation, Left 4 Dead. I would really like an explanation.
** Your mistake is assuming the mutations are based on pre-existing genetics. Valve have never offered any sort of explanation for the Special Infected, other than the original strain 'changing'.
** Boomers are also under high internal pressure from all the bile in their belly; that's why they pop. It's possible that Boomer and Spitter are two related mutations. Where the Boomer's stomach juice turns into bile when vomited/spit, the Spitter's stomach juice turns into spit when spat. As far as the specials themselves, there's no reason to think they're based off what they were before. I don't see an explanation on just what the specials are beyond super rabies; it'd be trying to explain things that don't need to be and take away some from the faceless horde ideal.
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** I think we're also assuming a bit too much from the army in the game. They're evacuating people, likely trying to set up safe zones near infected areas, having carriers infect people inside of those safe zones which means they need to cleanse and then rebuild new ones, control the infection as best they can AND protect vital areas of the country. In the middle of all of this I don't see them taking too much time trying to wipe out each individual infected. In reality, as shown in Parish, they're likely more interested in containment. Destroy bridges, reinforce roadways with mounted positions, erect barriers and then bomb cities to thin out the horde. All of this means that when the horde finally moves to assault an army position they are in as good of shape as possible. This works much more effectively than sitting down thinking "how can we kill each and every infected out there?" This is doubly important if you consider the fact that military procedure would likely necessitate containment, studying the infection and then working on countermeasures.
*** By distracting zombies away from your evacuation stations, you make it much, much easier to go through the process of evacuation and containment. It could be as simple as stuffing several ambulances, fire trucks, or police cars to the gills with timed explosives, turning on the sirens, and leaving. You have additional time to evacuate, fewer zombies are being attracted to your position, and it serves the purpose of reducing the overall number of shrieking cannibals that you will end up fighting one way or another, either when you go on the offensive or they follow the refugees to the safe zones.
**** The game is set to take place in the couple of weeks of infection. When you are losing forces either to infection or death from being attacked and performing a fighting retreat, stopping to think "Hey they are attracted to car alarms we should make a device to do that!" takes a back seat to survival and setting up a new AO. If the finale of Parish should be anything, there are always ''two'' pipe bombs on the fender of the hummer at the end of the bridge. By then, the army probably does know now from experience and survivors but has not been able to implement a serious solution with it just yet. They are still learning how the virus spreads, mutates and that there are people immune that are carriers of it. Suffice to say, there is a lot of crap going on and they are trying to do the best they can. As for the safe idea, even if you took a small fire safe to do that with, can you imagine lugging around an extra ten-twenty pounds while having a jockey riding your back?
***** "They don't have the time to do anything fancy" would be a nice answer if producing a really loud noise isn't exactly difficult. As had been noted, Survivors don't have much trouble carrying things of similar weight like a propane tank, and while special infected may makes things difficult they are of a much lesser threat without a common infected to help them. In the end you just have to ask yourself if the game would be easier if you had an bile bomb of infinite use provided, and the answer would be yes.
****** The new ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'' comic answers the question; The army has no idea what the hell the infected are. They don't know about the special infected or what attracts them. They don't do "anything fancy" because it would really look like a insane idea.
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** It would hurt more to be hit by someone with shards of bone sticking out of their arms than with a fist. The ladder thing, however, I agree with.
** Maybe they [[MS Paint Adventures|retrieve them from a safe?]]
** [[Monty Python and
** It's pretty rare that it happens, anyway. The one time I managed to knock off both a zombie's arms without killing it [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|I declared that my life was complete from that moment on.]]
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** Problem is, a few of the lines the survivors can say upon exiting the first stairwell and seeing the Commons are along the lines of "What are these things?" implying this was the first time they ever saw them. On top of that, the intro movie makes it pretty clear that they've already fought through a bunch of Infected before making their way up to the rooftop of the apartments expecting a helicopter evac.
*** I was under the impression most of what happened in the intro movie was a sort of [[Cutscene Power to the Max]]-style rendition of all the campaigns, with the parts not necessarily shown in chronological order.
* OK, why are people insisting that Bill is going to be the one that dies in the Left 4 Dead 1 DLC/The Passing? The only thing they go by is that how the voice actor didn't record lines for Crash Course, so they assume that the VA isn't doing anymore lines.
** Because he's the grizzled old war veteran who understands the necessity of sacrifice? Nick and Francis get into a fight while Ellis develops a little crush on Zoey. This leaves only Louis and Bill. If you compared the characters by popularity, Louis would come out on top due to [[Memetic Mutation|GRABBAN PEELZ]].
*** That may be canon when that comic is released, but gameplay wise, the survivor that will die will be determined by the players in ''[[Left 4 Dead]] 1'', so it'd make no sense to do that and then say one specific survivor will always be the dead on in The Passing. The whole Nick VS Francis is just one of many possible outcomes depending on who the game decides to keep alive for The Passing.
**** Actually, the one who isn't there in The Passing will always be the one that canonically died, it's just that the DLC for the first game allows you to see HOW it happened. I think.
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** Maybe he just wanted a cola in what he felt were his last hours for some reason , like if he got bitten whilst getting up there or something.
* From a realism point of view, it's a little strange that at the start of every campaign they lose the kick-ass Tier 2 guns they had by the end o the previous one but just happen to have all these Tier 1s sitting around.
** Maybe they threw them away because they though they were about to be saved. It is at least explained at the start of Hard Rain when Ellis asks Nick about the flares in the gun bag.
*** After Dead Center, they could have used the same Tier 2 guns for the entirety of a very long journey (during food or piss stops) until eventually they break and the team is forced to use the backup guns
**** You're forgetting about the fact that they're going to have to keep on getting ammo supplies for them, not to mention things such as the guns getting dirty and jamming; they don't have cleaning kits or even any sort of impromptu things like brushes, bootlaces, motor oil, and screwdrivers needed to clean most of the guns. Okay, the AK-47 can be field stripped, cleaned, and reassembled pretty much without tools. However, the M16 is much more finicky about dirt and it has that direct gas impingement system which is so effective at dirtying the action. Don't forget that Magazines get busted, barrels wear our, corrosive primers eat away at firing pins, the systems eventually deteriorate and fail. Here's another thing: if the automatic weapons are legally owned and registered Machine Guns, then that means that the newest ones of them could at the latest have been made in 1986. Seeing how the games take place in the late 2000's, that means the guns are all easily pushing 30 years old by the time the apocalypse rolls around.
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*** Maybe they were still in shock from Bill's death and how he died. It's less dickish that way
*** Following Bill's death, they took his "the four of us are all that matters now" message to heart. They still help other survivors, since it doesn't really cost them anything, but they won't share their island or offer anything more than that.
*** It would take one breath of air to say "The army is rounding up carriers--you guys might be some."
* Speaking of the military... In the first game, you were constantly running into zombies in Army and Police uniforms, but in the sequel, even though there are significantly MORE cop cars around, and more references to the government response, there are NO zombie cops or soldiers in the entire game, not one. What the hell is up with that?
** Zombie cops in riot gear are the uncommon infected for the Parish campaign. Other than that, I suppose a fanwank explanation is that since 2 takes place after 1, the cops and soldiers are the infected you see in Hazmat suits.
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* While I love the comic, there is a canon discrepancy that bugs me to no end. The survivors raise the bridge in order to escape on the large sailboat, {{spoiler|Bill dies to restart the generator}}, and they sail away after the horde dissipates. All fine and dandy... except they lowered the bridge again for the second batch of survivors {{spoiler|carriers}}. So then... how did they sail away, exactly?
** They got on the boat, sailed it past the bridge, then noticed the ''[[Left 4 Dead]] 2'' survivors and went back on to it to help them. After they get past the bridge, it doesn't matter whether it's up or down by that point. And if I remember right, you can even see a boat of some kind in the water on the other side of the bridge in The Passing, while it's partially beached in The Sacrifice.
** The new stuff just raises more questions. For example, why is the "Green Flu" so inconsistent? Why does Mora refer to himself as acaptain when he is a first lieutenant? When did Bill become such a b*stard toward redshirts? When did Francis become even more of a b*stard toward Louis?
** I think I've got this: while the zombies are swarming Bill's corpse, Zoey mentions they have to wait for the horde to dissipate before they can get back to the boat. The Passing must begin right before Zoey, Francis, and Louis head back to the boat.
** The 1 survivors need to hang out on the bridge until Louis is good enough to walk. While they're hanging out, the 2 survivors show up. Realizing they need to lower the bridge, the Zoey and/or Francis move the boat to the other side while the 2 survivors are making their way through the campaign, then go back to help them lower it. Alternatively, they had already moved the boat but had to stay on the bridge until Louis could make it down.
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** For some probably hyper-technical reason that I wouldn't understand, straps are a total bitch to render in real time. Most games just completely ignore them and let people fill in the gaps on their own. Notice how guitars float in pretty much every rhythm game for another example.
** Can anyone think of a way that the weapons (and Medkits) could feasibly [[Sticks to the Back|stick to the Survivor's backs]]?
*** Straps and harnesses most likely, again, we just dont see them in game because it would be a pain in the ass for the designers to work on little details like that.
* The explanation behind the crescendo events is that zombies are attracted to loud noises and lights. Apparently fire, the Survivors' shouting, muzzle flashes, gunshots, and ''explosions'' all don't count.
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* I made a [[Wild Mass Guessing]] about this... but if the Carrier gene is passed down solely from the father, wouldn't Zoey and Rochelle have to have an XY Karyotype? The Y chromosome is the only bit of the genome that can be solely inherited from the father, and if it were on anything that could be received from either parent, it wouldn't pass down solely on the father's side.
** The mother's egg has one X chromosome and the father's sperm contains the X or Y chromosome to determine gender. That would not determine immunity, it would be another gene in the sequence that would do so. Some people are not allergic to cats while others are, this is from a different gene than the sex determinant gene.
*** You misunderstood my point. Quite badly in fact. Cat allergies, for instance -- and most genetic traits -- can be inherited from either parent, as barring the X and Y in males, you get one copy of each chromosome from each parent. The comic establishes that the Carrier gene is ''solely and specifically passed down from the father, rather than from the mother or from either parent.'' But the only bit of the genome that passes down solely from the father is the Y chromosome... so it would seem impossible for the Carrier gene to pass down in this way if it was on anything ''but'' the Y, as any other part of the genome is either equally obtained from both parents, or, in the case of the X in males, obtained solely from the mother. My entire point was that, if it were on another chromosome, as you suggest, there would be no mechanism I am aware of which could restrict it such that it was only passed down on the father's side, rather than your having a chance to obtain it from either parent.
**** Unless the mothers' immunities can't be passed down because the immunity gene (or whatever) needs a boost from Y-Chromosomes
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*** Even discounting carriers, which by the way are a fairly common thing with real diseases, there's this thing called an incubation period. CEDA didn't seem to impose any sort of quarantine period.
**** "Carriers" seem to work differently with the Green Flu than with everyday sorts of disease (see the sex-linkage discussion above - there's a specific gene at work). Admittedly this doesn't address why CEDA wouldn't have considered the possibility, as the discovery of "immune" carriers seems to be recent.
** This actually makes sense when you take into account the whole "The Virus is mutating" idea. When the virus first happened, it just made everyone sick. This was shown in the comic where Louis was the only one coming into work. CEDA was completely a hundred steps behind at all times, as shown with those posters about watching your hands. They were out collecting samples of Special Infected while trying to evac regular people, showing how little they actually knew about the situation. One can only assume that studying the infection when the first infected cropped up, they realized it could only get worse and decided the country was doomed.
*** See, that doesn't answer the question of why they ''evacuated'' people in response to a highly contagious disease, ''regardless'' of whether it turned people into zombies, apparently without a 48-hour quarantine period. The theory that at first it just made everyone sick explains everything else they did, but not why they decided on a course of action that would inevitably spread the disease even further. When there's a contagious disease, you ''isolate'' people and ''prevent'' them from leaving the area they're in, something well understood as far back as the Black Plague.
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** Funnily enough, you all missed my point entirely (why does the <s>Mini-14</s> Hunting Rifle do more damage per bullet than the M16) to focus on something wholly irrelevant ("it's not a Mini-14 even though it looks exactly like one"). And to counter that point, let me remind you that the Desert Rifle has "CAL 5.56mm" written on the side. The same as its real-life counterpart, as well as those of the Hunting Rifle and the M16. So, as I've stated, names and magazine capacities aside [[AKA-47|these are the exact same weapons as they appear to be]], just being used to shoot zombies instead of something that exists in the real world. Oh well, in any case I found [[Game Mod|the best fix for this]]: [http://www.l4dmaps.com/details.php?file=14069 a model replacement that turns the Hunting Rifle into an actual M14], both justifying the increased power and [[Weapon of Choice|ensuring I will never use anything else ever again]].
* Just noticed something after dusting off the old disc. In No Mercy 2, there is a part of the subway tunnel where the wall is blown out. That seems reasonable enough. But continuing off of that is a smooth-lined tunnel which was clearly bored out and if you follow it, it eventually reconnects with the main subway line and smashes through the concrete wall. How did that get there? There doesn't seem to be any drilling equipment nearby and a tank couldn't do it even if it were inclined to.
** They had just begun construction of a service tunnel when The Infection struck. The big hole by the fire is the result of a hastily prepared explosion used to draw Infected away from the fleeing construction workers.
* I understand it from a gameplay standpoint, but I still find it funny that in Hard Rain the survivors go to all the trouble of reaching a gas station 2 miles inland when they could have siphoned plenty enough gas out of the several dozen abandoned vehicles and [[Exploding Barrels|conveniently placed hyper-volatile gas cans.]] Heck, if willing to chance getting some dirtier fuel, they could have extracted the gas from all the molotovs laying about.
** The gas they need is diesel, which it's possible -although a bit of a stretch- that the majority of the vehicles and gas tanks are simply normal gasoline. The gas cans they need in Hard Rain are green, which is usually a color associated with diesel gas.
** The gas cans in Hard Rain do, in fact, have the word 'diesel' written in big letters on them, for what it's worth.
* Excuse me for being [[Captain Obvious]] over here, but the infected look like they're in pretty bad shape: they've got grey, decaying skin, there's blood caked around their every orifice, and they frequently vomit or just lie down and die. In the sequel, they look even ''worse'' off. And it's not as though the infected are traditional, undead zombies who can continue to shamble around even as they fall to bits; the infected are alive, but barely so. Seems to me that if the survivors just gathered up some canned goods and hunkered down real quiet-like in a saferoom they'd stand a pretty good chance of outliving the disease, whereas the cross-country sprint is an unnecessary risk. (Admittedly, ''Left 2 Eat Cans of Beans in the Dark 4 a Couple of Months'' would be a much less compelling game.)
** There are three problems with that. First, cabin fever. Both groups of Survivors are a fractious bunch at the best of times, give it three, four days in a small space before they kill each other. The second is food. You see ''any'' food during your campaigns. You even pass through several stores and the shelves are picked clean. Hardly surprising, given in an emergency the first thing most people loot is food. Our Survivors would starve long before the Infected died out. Finally the Survivors cannot be sure that the Infected will die out; it's a very odd illness, what with the massive mutation. I wouldn't risk my life on an unproven assumption.
*** You ''do'' find food throughout the game -- boxes of Chocobites and cans of beans aren't plentiful, but they're at least present -- and I suspect that if the survivors focused their energy on finding hidden caches of food and bringing it back to a safehouse rather than running and gunning their way down the East Coast they'd burn fewer calories. Good point about the survivors being likely to kill each other, though.
*** Remember those olive drab wooden crates in most safe rooms that you all seem to have forgotten? Yeah, it says "U.S. ARMY "K" RATIONS" right on the front
**** That came off different that I wanted it to, but yeah they are in most safe rooms keep an eye out for them. It does bring up the question that "Did the military set up the safe rooms"
** Keep in mind there aren't just infected out there. There are also huge ass Tanks that can punch its way right through a saferoom door (and they will if you dawdle too long in the opening room). The survivors probably would hunker down if there was a place that could survive an assault, but you never come across one.
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