How is there one fat character (Steele) if this is a zombie apocalypse movie? They don't have any junk food around like cheeseburgers, fries or even a connection to living animals.
Perhaps Rhodes forces the scientists to eat less to save more food for his soldiers?
Or Steele was even fatter before he was forced to retreat into the bunker, and he has drastically lost weight?
Well most likely not, cause then Steele's uniform would have outgrown him by then.
To be fair, he could have found a spare uniform after he lost weight.
Seemed like they had plenty of booze in that facility. Besides I don't think it was ever mentioned in the film that they were at risk of running out of food and seeing as 1) they lost ~6 people prior to the film and 2) they were actively looking for more survivors they ever were worried about it.
More accurately, they weren't looking for survivors to feed and join them in the bunker. They were looking for survivors to pull them out of their crappy bunker that reeks of rotting zombie flesh and hopefully transfer them to a better, more resources-rich one.
I think it's meant to reflect what is left of the military in such a situation. When it came to the situation, everything collapsed, including the government and military. And due to desperation and lack of the best candidates for soldiers, they literally started scraping the barrel and using people who are rejects, which included people who weren't physically fit or emotionally stable. This not only explains the presence of a fat soldier, but how someone as unstable as Rhodes could be allowed as an officer into a unit.
Dr. Logan was not shot in the head, he only died of multiple gunshots to the chest and stomach area. So going by Romero's rules for the lore of his "Of The Dead" movies, why didn't Dr. Logan reanimate?
His body landed in a refrigerator. This plus rigor mortis would've made him incapable of moving. So he reanimated, but is frozen in place.
Either that or he simply wasn't dead long enough to reanimate.
There's no indication that being shot will lead to becoming a zombie in the first two films (it's been some time since this troper has seen the later films, so can't be sure what rules were presented in them). The only other person shot in a non-headshot was Harry in the original film, and he died from the wound. It wasn't until after his daughter was seen feasting on him and Ben coming down into the cellar when we see him resurrect. The same is true with Steven in Dawn of the Dead, as he was shot in the arm, but it was being bitten by multiple zombies that lead to him resurrecting. And even then, there is no set timeframe for how long a recently dead body becomes an active zombie.
To be fair, it was the movie Land of the Dead that confirmed that any recently deceased person who still has their brain intact reanimates.
Originally one of the concepts for Day of the Dead considered a more [[Bittersweet Ending]] where despite nearly everyone dying, whatever was causing the reanimation in dead bodies had finally ended (As Day of the Dead was envisioned as the grand finale to the trilogy) and bodies no longer needed to be shot into the head - it's possible Logan not reanimating is a by-product of this concept, though considering Land of the Dead came into existence, and reanimation still occurs, this essentially quashed the concept for good.
Still, I guess, like other tropers suggested, the answers of Dr. Logan's body landing in the refrigerator or Dr. Logan simply not being dead long enough to reanimate are the best answers for now.
Why is it that shouting through the megaphone attracted the zombies throughout the city, but the Helicopter did not? A heli on the ground as anyone can tell you is very very loud.
It could be because the megaphone would tell the zombies that humans are around for them to stalk and eat since this is a human voice they are hearing. The zombies, at least in the Romeroverse, don't seem smart enough to comprehend helicopter noises would mean humans are around. So it's not so much the volume of the sound as it is the type of sound that attracts the zombies.
Zombies aren't necessarily smart, but they do seem inclined to habit. Lots of things in the sky make noise, like birds or rain or thunder. Given how long it's been, the zombies may have been desensitized to sky sounds, because whatever's been making any noise up there is either out of reach, or just not immediately edible enough to provide food. So they don't pay attention to the sounds of a helicopter unless they can either See it or they were just chasing a human that went up in one, letting them Definitely know there was food in one.
Okay, so the Zombie Apocalypse happened a few months ago. How is it that the privates are all surly fatasses in their 30s and 40s? Even in the slashed-budget days of the Carter administration when retention was a major problem, a guy who never made corporal/specialist in six years was out of the Army, period, and there was still a physical fitness standard. One wonders where the hell they found these losers.
I'm guessing "beggars can't be choosers" applies here: the U.S. Army was completely overrun by zombies as we were told zombies now overrun humans at a ratio of 400,000 to 1. When you run out of fit qualified and well-trained soldiers, you'll have to make do with fat lazy ones.
It is also implied that the operation itself was a slapdash affair from the start, "put together in a manner of days," as Sarah explains. There were only 18 people at the facility to begin with (including the 5 soldiers and 1 scientist who have since died, as revealed by Rhodes), and they either have inadequate equipment or not enough of it. Things were likely already falling apart when the US government and military set up their outpost, so it's no stretch to think that with such hurried preparations they just press-ganged any military personnel they could get their hands on, regardless of competence or the lack of it.
Plenty of total schlubs were probably frantic to sign on with the military in the closing weeks of the zombie outbreak, if only to have access to guns and a lot of other guys to hide behind. Having already lost so many of their competent troops, the surviving officers accepted any warm bodies that could pad out their dwindling ranks ... not least, because rejecting the wannabes would end up inflating the zombies' numbers instead, when the losers got themselves killed.
The soldiers are reservists, not active-duty - Captain Rhodes wears the subdued shoulder sleeve insignia of the 99th U.S. Army Reserve Command. They're part-time logistics guys abruptly activated from the Delaware-Pennsylvania-Maryland-Virginia region and sent south to Florida. This explains not only their lack of discipline, morale, and military bearing, but also their general incompetence and poor marksmanship: they're not combat troops and they're not even accustomed to spending a lot of time in uniform. Rhodes himself, a Reserve Infantry Officer, is probably a Philadelphia policeman who tried to abscond in a police boat in Dawn of the Dead (1978).
Why did they never attempt to thin out the horde near the gate? it's clear the zombies can't get through the gate at the current amount, and as The Walking Dead had shown, a few people walking the line with knives or sharp sticks could have thinned it out a bit lessening the danger factor, also the main draw of zombies, a horde making a lot of noise would attract more, hence why the buildup was happening.
Nothing says they hadn't tried that. But logically speaking their main goal was to keep quiet and try not to rile them up. They seem to indicate that the zombies get excited whenever they see or hear humans (as can be exemplified by the fact that a lot of them in the city at the beginning were laying dormant in some capacity without any noise of prey to stir them), so as long as they stay out of sight the zombies go quiet and don't pose as great a risk. There was apparently only 18 of them at the start, down to 12 now, so it could be they've done this before but now don't want to risk sparing the manpower (even moreso if one of their previous personnel losses was due to this plan, given how careless some of them are). Also, stabbing them through the gate is fine, but then they would also have to dispose of the bodies afterwards. Which would necessitate going outside the fence and risking more zombies trundling up while they're clearing them out. As leaving them could pose any number of risks (from drawing more of them in or from the simple health risks of leaving a pile of rotting meat to sit in the open and fester), it may have just been a more time efficient and safe plan for them to duck out of sight as much as possible and only ascend to ground level when they absolutely have to.
Meta, but why do some people consider Miguels suicide a Heroic Sacrifice? He had no way of knowing the danger Sarah, John and Bill were truly in, or that they were in the holding pen, considering the million other ways he could have went out, luring a horde of zombies into the base seemed more like a final "screw you" to everyone in the base, not just Rhodes and the other soldiers.
I'm not sure why some people consider Miguels suicide a Heroic Sacrifice either. However I do think some people simply either found the timing suspicious or feel that there has to be something to justify Sarah being with Miguel considering how he treated her earlier in the film.
Having seen the film multiple times, there's no reason to believe Miguel's actions were heroic in anyway. He was clearly at wit's end; disowned by his fellow soldiers for Johnson's death, felt betrayed and emasculated when Sarah gave him a sedative against his will, depressed because he lost an arm and just suffering a general mental breakdown because of the pointlessness of their work and no sign of any other human survivors. The man clearly wanted to wipe out the compound as a final middle finger to the operation. Sarah, John and Mc Dermott managed to escape because of his actions, but that was purely a coincidence and they still just got lucky.
At best, it could be considered an unwitting one, his suicidal actions gave Sarah, John, and Mc Dermott time to get out, there is simply no way he knew him luring the zombies onto the elevator, would help them, he was trying to kill everyone in the base.
The 2018 remake, "Bloodline"
When the tactical team do the supply raid on the university, we see that their members (such as Baca) are carrying assault rifles and other armaments well suited for such an operation. But then at the ending, an army of undead is invading the base and what does Baca have to fight them off? Just a pistol. Why wouldn't he have his rifle on hand for a situation even more deserving of it than a pretty straightforward stealth and recon mission?
The alarm was raised in the middle of the night, Baca and Co where alerted by a doctor being chased by a zombie on their way to see them. Presumably rifles are stored in an unseen secure armoury and all soldiers only had access to their side-arms during the emergency. Now why they wouldn't properly arm themselves or be on high alert after having their outer perimeter fence breached, and having a potentially dangerous specimen captive, that's another matter.
