Why is Don set up as a craven, cowardly bastard by the movie for being forced to abandon his wife? I'm sorry, but the previous movie has already shown that taking on an infected unarmed is pure suicide, let alone masses of them, and the only hope of survival if you're unarmed is to run away or barricade yourself in a safe place. Don does exactly that and still barely makes it out. But the movie sets up Don as a bad guy because he did what any person would do in that kind of situation, by refusing to get himself infected trying to 'save' his wife from a hopeless situation she put herself in and then tear her to shreds too. The movie then "punishes" him for this later on by getting him infected because of his wife. The very exact thing he had tried to save himself from. Riiight.
Also, why wasn't Don the main character? He's the only interesting character in the movie!
I thought the movie was going for a Psycho-like fakeout, where the audience was supposed to think Don was the main character who'll survive all the way to the end (whereupon he'll probably make a heroic sacrifice to save his kids, probably under similar circumstances to the incident where he couldn't save his wife) until ... surprise!
He's pretty much set up as being cowardly because he lied to his children, which again isn't the worst idea in the world.
I guess I'm the only one who thought his obviously real regret for his actions was supposed to make him sympathetic. I felt BAD for him when I realized he was going to be infected.
He's not actually set up as a coward, exactly, at least not in a negative sense. By abandoning his wife, he survived to look after his kids. By going back to her, he ruined everything. Yeah, the film had a pretty bleak moral landscape.
The false premise seems to be that Don is portrayed as a coward. He isn't. He's just the character who's been stripped of his Shining Armor and Grim Determination and hasn't been given anything else. In a war zone. With zombies. So Yeah.
Considering the war zone conditions he faced, it's pretty obvious to this ex-military troper that Don was clearly suffering from both survivor's guilt and PTSD. It's very likely that regardless of pragmatism, he sees himself as a coward and tries to justify his actions to get some peace of mind.
Alternate reading: The movie is presenting Don from Don's own perspective. However reasonable his actions might have been, you'd have to be a sociopath not to feel survivor guilt after that. He almost certainly considers himself a coward.
I'm more disturbed by the troper's question. What kind of a man would abandon his WIFE, the woman he supposedly LOVED? She was the mother of his children. Did he marry her for the sex??
A man who had no chance in saving her. His choices were run and maybe survive, or turn back and die.
And/or a man who, at the time, realized that his wife would rather have him - the husband she loved - survive to spare their children from being orphans. It's only after-the-fact that survivor's guilt, his lying to the children, and "If only I'd done X, she'd be safe" hindsight made him lose sight of that.
I think the people judging Don are forgetting that prior to running away he was fighting the Infected off with a crowbar while everyone else fled. He did literally the bravest thing he possibly could in that situation until eventually he lost his weapon and nearly got overwhelmed. The film doesn't outright say he's a coward, but the fact it's even set up as a subtext is pretty dubious considering how he only did what was necessary. He was given the opportunity to join his wife in a guaranteed torturous death or flee for his life (possibly coming back to save her later if he had the chance). If anything Alice was being unreasonable by expecting her beloved husband to stay around to have his eyes gouged out by a pack of lunatics in a hopeless fight he would have lost very badly.
Plus, people seem to forget one tiny detail, Don didn't actually lie, he said he saw her die, which he did, because when he saw her last she was bashing on the window then pulled into the shadows, meaning the infected definitely had a hold of her, which is in general a death sentence. Hell, even before then she was cornered in a room by them with no weapon, the fact that she had enough time to get to the window to bash at it is a miracle, seeing as the infected tend to dogpile and smash your face into paste unless they bite or vomit on you.
I thought about the exact situation he was in a few times; at the exact moment he made the choice, there were only two zombies in the room. More would enter in seconds (if that), but if he'd charged them full-tilt, he might be able to distract them long enough for his wife and the child to run past and go out the window. Hell, with a lot, but not-unprecedented-in-zombie-fiction amount of Plot Armor, maybe all three of them could have gotten out. Basically, fate was asking him to pull a Heroic Sacrifice for a chance at saving his wife and a little boy; extremely high risk, but also high reward. His choice doesn't necescarily make him a coward, just not the bravest and most selfless and optimistic person ever.
Questions like this always frustrate me, where people make assumptions about what a movie is saying, simply because of what characters in a movie may think. What evidence do you have that the movie depicts Don as a coward? The movie makes it very clear that it he hadn't abandoned his wife at that moment, he would have died. There are people who might call it an act of cowardice, but there's absolutely zero evidence that the film itself is pushing that interpretation; it's left entirely up to the viewer how to judge Don's actions morally. Even Don's kids aren't necessarily viewing him as a coward, they're just upset that he told them she died then turns out to have been alive. In any case, there's no reason to assume the movie is necessarily agreeing with the kids' perspective, they're simply reacting pretty much the way they'd be expected to react given the limited information they receive about what their father went through and the generally black-and-white perspective that children often have of the world. Now, there's no question that Don himself carries guilt over it, but, again, that's completely plausible and well in line with real-life situations where people were forced to abandon loved ones to save themselves; no matter how true it may be that they had no choice if they wanted to survive, they're still likely to carry guilt. Again, there's zero evidence—nada, zip—that the movie wants us to believe Don is a coward. Any viewer who judges him that way is pushing their beliefs on the film, nothing more.
I kept on wondering why I disliked the mother character, Doyle, and Scarlet so much. They were very heroic characters and we're supposed to like the heroes. Then I remembered the Serenity quote that "a hero is someone that gets other people killed" and it all snapped together.
If the wife hadn't been a hero and let the kid in, the infected wouldn't have found them. If the wife hadn't tried to be a hero and save the kid she wouldn't have been left and the end of the movie wouldn't have gone down as such. If Rose and Doyle hadn't been so determined to save the kids, the kids wouldn't have crossed the water and France would be safe.
How did Don get out of that room to attack the soldiers? There was a thick pane of glass (possibly bulletproof?) that he couldn't break through, and doors needed keycards to open. Also wouldn't the soldiers be able to see the obvious carnage through the huge window and know something was up?
It's a bit of a stretch, but the scene at the beginning where Don traps his kids in the revolving door for kicks (yep, shining example of parenting) explains how he let himself out and subsequently got the drop on the guards. Supposedly, he has all-access field-sensitive keycards that work by proximity, and not through physically-operated door handles.
It wasn't field sensitive, at the door in the beginning he placed his card against it, and whilst going through the place where his wife was being kept he was swiping his card all over the place, even to get into the room his wife was in he had to swipe his card on a thing by the door.
It's implied that because of how he was infected (by his asymptomatic wife) watered down the virus just a touch, he is still a crazy rage zombie but with enough reasoning left to do slightly smart things, such as opening a locked door, and stalking his kids and hiding from the firebombing, use a gun as a club. Still stupid as all hell to give a Janitor AAA cards for the Military part of the resettlement area, or at least place one damn guard.
Speaking of which, what the heck was Alice thinking? The cottage they were hiding in had dozens of infected swarming into it and she runs off to search the house for a small boy who had run off to hide. While it'd suck to leave the kid behind, Alice definitely should have known better at this point after living in infected Britain for weeks.
She saw the kid as a surrogate for her own kids and saw herself as their guardian who has no higher purpose in life than protecting her children. It's not rational, per se, but it's something a lot of parents would do (Hell, it's something a lot of pet owners would do) in real life.
How did Alice escape the infected? It's true she was infected by a bite and therefore might be considered 'one of them', but we see a flashback where she's being chased through the woods. If she's still being chased by that point, how did she make it out of the house without being mauled to death?
This is really more of an Epileptic Trees, but I think the infected let her leave alive. I know they have no higher brain functions left, and there's no "Zombie Master" to guide them or restrain them, but she is considerably different from normal humans already— she's immune. What better way to propagate the virus than to let her live? Considering how quickly her son became a carrier, all she'd have had to do was dodge and hold them off for 20-30 seconds so that they'd see her as a fellow infected... at which point, they'd "chase her" because they would think she had seen an uninfected human.
That hardly makes any sense if you remember the situation they were in. The room she's in is about to be invaded by a group of infected, and the entire shack scene showed very well how vicious they tend to be when attacking. Even if they could somehow tell when she was already infected, it's simply unbelievable that she managed to hold off 3-5 infected unarmed and come out of it with only a single visible bite on her body. The movie seems to imply that she somehow managed to escape the shack unscathed, only to be bitten later on in that chase through the woods. I don't know which one is harder to believe.
What's even worse is he wasn't even her son, it was just some random kid who entered the story and screwed everything up for them.
The "son" being referred to is Andy, not the boy in the cottage.
If the rest of the infected were able to see her as one of their own, it would stand to reason that her then infected husband would have as well. But we all know how that turned out.
Don's situation was unique. He had just turned at that point, and his last thought before turning was his guilt for having abandoned her—but it's guilt tinged with anger and resentment, which the "rage" part of him immediately taps into (notice that the moment he turns it quickly flashes back to the image he had of her at the window as he ran from the house), inducing his deadly attack on her.
Why in the world did the US military leave an infected woman in an unguarded, unmonitored cell in the safe zone overnight instead of immediately destroying her? Why did they shut off all the lights when the alarm was raised, making it much harder to spot the infected? The actions taken by the US military were so inept it was ludicrous, from the easily breached 'containment areas' to hiring soldiers who are too weak-kneed to shoot civilians in a 'Code Red' emergency.
Leaving the woman unguarded was a pretty dumb idea, but they kept her alive because she is the only known person to be infected with the Rage virus and keep her sanity. She's necessary as a test subject.
I'm pretty sure that the military general in charge of the recolonization zone actually ordered her to be killed, over the protests of the medical officer, because she's too much of a security risk. Which just adds to the absurdity, because the man acknowledges the massive risk and yet still leaves her unguarded.
More to the point, though, why in God's name would they attempt to contain her right in the middle of the main base? Prudence should dictate that any sort of quarantine area should be geographically isolated from the main populace. In this case, they had the whole of Great Britain to work with. Instead, they put her in the middle of a building right in the center of the only populated area left. Idiocy piled on idiocy.
Unguarded possibly because if she did turn, the guards, following protocol, would most likely need authorisation to shoot to kill her. No point in waiting for them to become extra ammunition for the infected whilst waiting for a response. Don't forget she was in a high security sealed medical booth, which Don did open, hence his subsequent escape. Also, the whole point of the clear zone is that there is no Infected blood there, thus the quarantine can't be outside the safe region, but I do get what you're saying.
While I understand that the military would need protocols for permission to fire, it would be foolish to have the same standard for the infected. They know that an infection can get out of control very very fast, and therefore would have a general 'shoot an infected on sight' rule. Heck, they knew she was there and a threat, they could have permission beforehand. Secondly, there should have been guards there to prevent a guy like Don from wandering in.
Let's look at this from the other perspective. The military has been pulling in survivors for weeks. Not a single one of them, to this point, has actually been a threat to anyone. The virus is, to all appearances, gone. No carriers have been detected. She is "obviously" not infected, because she isn't a raving mad-thing trying to attack everyone she sees! Most of the soldiers probably considered putting her in quarantine at all to be over-zealous rule-following at that point. Scarlet detects that the mother is infected, and runs to tell the commander, but nobody else knows there's a problem at that point, and mom is locked in a secure room, strapped to a bed. Scarlet has little reason to be concerned that she might escape, or that someone would sneak in. Everyone is reading these events from the perspective of the movie audience, who knows that something horrible is going to happen, because they paid good money to watch a horror movie. The soldiers are making jokes about having nothing to shoot because they're bored as hell. There are certainly some poor decisions made in this movie (many of which have been pointed out here), but they don't seem quite as stupid as they're being made out to be.
She was brought in almost a month after the previous rescued survivor. The entire place was monitored by security cameras, so they should already know about the bite mark on her arm. Even if she wasn't showing any immediate symptoms, everybody in that base was extremely suspicious of her even before the doctor could confirm she was carrying the virus, hence why she was bound to that chair in the first place. They had every reason to be careful, but because this is a horror movie they just seem to conveniently forget about the most dangerous person in that entire base.
Sure, we know something will happen because it's a horror film. The characters should have prepared for those things because one of the most powerful countries in the world was annihilated in a month. They should have planned for every possible outcome, have dozens of contingencies, and foreseen every single problem they came across in the film because they knew how high the stakes were and how badly the original containment failed. Just because those problems weren't immediately apparent the second they arrived does not mean they don't exist or will not eventually appear. Even the damn Boy Scouts have the motto of 'Be Prepared'. And what happened wasn't some bizarre out-of-left-field occurrence like the actual walking dead, but very ordinary problems that we already plan for, like asymptomatic carriers and security breeches and panicking civilians. This is basic Quarantine 101!
You're all forgetting one very important thing; they had absolutely no time to react. From the moment Don arrives to collect his kids, the following happens; Don finds out Alice is still alive, Scarlet suspects, and soon confirms, that she's a carrier, then goes and informs General Stone, who immediately orders Alice's execution... just as Don finds her in quarantine. If anything, Scarlet not getting someone to keep watch while she went to confirm Alice's carrier status is the only glaringly stupid decision anyone makes here.
And here's another thing: Why did the US military treat the population like sheep to be herded as opposed to arming them to defend themselves? Common sense should make it obvious that in a situation where anyone might get infected, the only way to counteract an infection while it is happening is to arm everyone so they can shoot any infected the moment they see them. Instead, they leave them totally unarmed, herded together in a single chamber without a single soldier in sight to protect them?
If they armed the civilians, I'm sure they'd be firing idiot balls at each other. Although it didn't make sense to keep them all stuffed in a single room, stuffing them all in a single room with weapons is just asking for someone to panic and start shooting others.
Really, they could have only allowed people back to England unless they had weeks of responsible survival and firearm training, just so they could defend themselves without panicking.
Yeah, giving panic-stricken civilians firearms would've just been asking for it.
A bunch of civilian corpses because they all panicked and shot each other is better than another zombie horde. I would have considered it worth the risk (and maybe trained them, as referenced above).
You're missing the point. The NATO forces supervising the repatriation and protection of the British civilians had a plan in case of the worst case scenario: Code Red. If things got really bad, they were given clearance to give the order to kill everything moving. Arming a populace that you may be killing later on would allow them to kill you back. Not smart.
Indeed it may have been, or it may not have been, since simply owning a gun or even taking a few shooting classes doesn't mean you know when and how to use one in times of duress and in chaotic situations, such as during a mass evacuation amid an epidemic. Adding guns to the equation wouldn't guarantee success, but it would guarantee collateral damage from barely-trained, badly-trained, mis-trained, and/or panicky civilians. All of this is moot, anyway-a much better way to deal with Infected intruders has already been discussed below.
Unlikely, given that the much more highly-trained and disciplined soliders with night vision were screaming about how they couldn't tell infected from civilian. If they couldn't control the horde or tell who to shoot, random guy who's been to some weekend classes certainly can't. That was why the Code Red order came down: because the soldiers - the professional snipers on the rooftops - couldn't take out the infected.
It is established in the previous film that while the infected are agile, they don't really utilize fine manipulation/other skills due to their mindless nature and rage. Then WHY did a FREAKING HELICOPTER try to gun down the survivors while they are driving their CAR? Infected can't drive! There was an order to "Kill them all" issued by the government early in the film, but that was a totally different context.
Because it's the American military and Americans fire on friendly Brits! It's more of the same illogical stupidity seen everywhere else in the film.
The order is to kill them ALL. The point isn't simply that they may or may not be infected; the fact that they will almost inevitably BECOME infected. It's actually the most logical part of their plan - the illogical part comes in not having more safeguards to keep the situation from getting that bad. The context of the kill them all order is irrelevant. They're not so much trying to stop the infection from taking hold as it has become too late, so now they must stamp it out. It's kind of like burning the area in a forest fire's projected path - you take away the fuel so it cannot continue.
Remember that the "modified" Code Red was an order to kill ALL civilians. The commander gave that order when he realized that not only were the infected spilling out of control, but also that ordinary people could be carriers. That's the main reason Alice was fumigated when she came out of the infected zone - it was already procedure to take precautions against "carrier infection" even before the military actually KNEW it was possible.
As the track on the soundtrack aptly says, Abandon Selective Targeting. Even their own soldiers on the ground were targets, remember poor Doyle?
Why do idiots keep referring to the Rage-infected citizens as zombies? They aren't. They aren't dead, or undead, they are alive, but infected with pure Rage. They are not zombies. They have memories of their life. They continue to remember things. They still feel pain and remorse. They can be killed in the same ways uninfected people can, from a single gunshot to the chest, to being poisoned and gassed. They aren't zombies, just people who are really, really angry on a primeval level. Are people to dumb to figure it out, even though it is explained in the plot, or too lazy to notice? Or are they so dense that they have to label every virus in movies as being 'zombie'.
What you're doing is splitting hairs, possibly to seem superior about something that everyone already realizes anyway. There's no point in arguing the semantics of what exactly constitutes a zombie in the context of the movie, (unless you're doing a really bad impression of The Simpsons Comic Book Guy) since it's pretty clear it belongs squarely in the genre as a "Zombie" movie. Vampires in the Blade movies are likewise infected by a virus and very much alive (not to mention being killed by all manner of conventional weapons) but it doesn't make those who refer to them as Vampires any of the epithets you're hurling around willy nilly.
It's probably because, for all intents and purposes, they really are almost exactly like other 'fast' class zombies. Maybe if the movies had actually done something to illustrate the differences, people would see them as something separate from the undead.
Like what? Have the father follow his children without attacking them? That happened. Killing the infected in conventional ways that would kill the average human? That happened. Have them actually die of natural causes and starvation? That happened. Have them retain a level of their intelligence? With immunities to the virus? That happened. The only thing even remotely zombie-like was that the infected could infect others, but the same is true for most viruses and diseases. They are people, alive and intelligent as ever, just really, really angry. If being angry makes a zombie, then most people on earth are zombies.
You say follow without attacking, I say stalk, which some zombies do. As for killing zombies in ways that would kill humans, most 'fast class' zombies are fragile like that to make up for their speed. I have no idea where you're getting the 'they have intelligence' bit, though plenty of zombies, fast and slow, retain intelligence (heck, I can recall one that learns how to use a gun). And normal zombies do the whole 'some people are immune' thing as well. These are all zombie traits.
Sigh. In the film, Don follows his kids around, not doing anything until the very end. Even then, he does not attack the children straight away. There is even one point where he watches from afar and then leaves. If he was a zombie, he would not just stand around doing nothing whilst someone was a short distance away, he would journey towards the food. As for intelligence? Word of God. And zombies don't retain intelligence; they aren't sick people, they are dead. Dead people do not retain intelligence or memories. What examples do you have of other so-called 'fast' zombies being killed by something as simple as being gassed? And what zombie movies have people who are immune? Don't say Resident Evil; Alice's strain was mutated. She is infected, but in a different way. The virus works in the way in which it was originally intended. She had no natural immunity.
On the 'dead people do not retain memories' bit, Day of the Dead and Land of the Dead would like to have a word with you. Both by modern-zombie codifier George Friggin Romero.
They're called zombies because zombies have an entire genre of movie dedicated to them and Rage virus victims don't. It's an imprecise way to classify the film, but it works for some people because of the similarities in tone, implications and setting.
"Zombie" does not mean "undead" or "dead"; it means a mindless person. Under voodooism (you know, where the word "zombie" comes from) a zombie was just a regular person under the domination of a Bokor's magic. In the truest sense of the word then, the only modern movie that could be called a true "zombie movie" is The Serpent and the Rainbow. The Romero model of zombie (which Romero took mostly from VAMPIRE folklore) is NOT the only model of zombie. People can try all of this genre gerrymandering that they like but it just looks laughably nitpicky.
Exactly. No, they're not truly undead zombies, but it's a zombie movie in spirit and more-or-less fits the genre.
And to be honest, if I was in the position that those guys are in, I'd want something pretty simple to call the enemy- 'mindless and really angry people' doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
How about "Infected"? It's short and sounds better than zombie.
Since 28 Days Later, I think that Infected has become the de-facto name for zombies-that-are-not-zombies-because-they-are-alive, it worked for Left 4 Dead.
Why don't the infected eat each other? Even animals and humans resort to cannibalism when faced with starvation. And why don't they attack each other, if not for food, then out of pure rage?
While not addressed in the film it is possible that the flesh of the infected is toxic and would be pretty indigestible. That and the virus might cause the victim to emit a scent that makes a victim not want to eat another infected to allow for better spread. If that's the case that's a pretty nasty virus.
In fact, forget starvation - if the Infected cannot ingest food or drink, wouldn't they have died within a matter of DAYS from dehydration, rather than weeks from malnutrition?
The majority of water the body loses is lost through excretion (feces and urine), so if the infection simply stops the digestive process altogether it'd slow down dehydration while also making the victim unable to process food and drink.
Not eating would only slow down defecation, reducing water loss by about 4%. Urination is a separate physiological process; shutting that down would cause death from accumulated blood toxins within days, especially in a starving subject. The Infected must've been slurping up water from puddles and so forth on the sly.
The infected were shown to be vomiting blood so frequently in 28 Days Later, they should have been at risk of dying of dehydration in less than 24 hours.
Remember, the virus was Rage, eating the victim wasn't their goal, just killing them to satisfy their rage, though the food was just a bonus. Word of God (28 Days Later: The Aftermath comic) states that Infected detect non-Infected by smells of deodorant, perfume etc. Infected aren't prone to splashing some on, given their somewhat dying, bloody bodies. Perhaps they simply don't feel the Rage towards their own kind?
But people fleeing and hiding from infected wouldn't be prone to splashing some on either. Sure the stuff you splashed on before the virus outbreak would take time to wear off but the same goes for the stuff the infected splashed on before being infected. By the time an infected stopped smelling like deodorant, the people hiding from him would have too. For that matter, most children and many sick people (including people who've been lying in hospital beds for 28 days), a good percentage of people who work at home, and, well, let's just say "the stereotypical science-fiction convention attendee" don't necessarily wear perfume, deodorant, cologne, etc, especially not every single day. There would be far more survivors if only people who'd applied perfume, deodorant, etc were being targetted. Not to mention the fact that they'd either ignore any non-infected they see at a distance or through a glass window (because they couldn't smell them) or they'd charge anything they saw - including other infected - until they got close enough to smell them.
Best evidence of all that the "infected target their victims because of deodorant" theory is a load of hooey? Because we saw them attacking freaking rats in the first movie. Not many of those are going to be wearing deodorant. Nibbling on it, conceivably, but not wearing it.
The whole movie was written in the era of everyone blaming America for everything. The writers deftly managed to find a way to make a virus invented by British scientists America's fault. While not actually retconning it to being an American-made virus, they brought the US military in to be the idiots of the movie. Hopefully this helped the whiny far-left writers blow off some steam and maybe their next project won't be such a transparent "America Sucks"-a-thon.
Well, if you put your far-right rage aside for a moment... a pair of British kids left the "safe zone" to retrieve their infected, British mother, and her British husband subsequently tongue-hockeys her and gets himself infected. The Americans are only responsible in a very roundabout sort of way for the whole thing, and in fact the American commander had the right idea, which was to just kill the infected woman and destroy her body. Which would have prevented the whole mess from starting off again, if not what what that silly British dude did.
Seconded. Really though, what was so unAmerican about the portrayal of the US military? Do you really think that if this situation happened that the military wouldn't take the actions that they did? They were in a hopeless situation. Giving the final kill order was the only option that they had left.
Just to explain how the American military was portrayed as idiots we can start with the part where two children were able to escape the protection zone, the way they gathered the population in a room with one entrance, the overall lack of guards... anywhere. While the "British" characters might have been stupid, a lot of their actions were motivated by emotional content. The American stupidity came from straight up stupidity.
Also, far-left? I must have fallen asleep during the bits where Robert Carlyle advocated collective ownership of means of production.
Both movies make a pretty good case for why gun control is a suicidal bad idea. Or as Jim from 28 Days Later would put it, "This is a really shit idea. And you know how I know? because it's a really obviously shit idea."
The movies make a case for why gun control is a suicidally bad idea in a world where zombies (or rage virus infectees, if you prefer) exist. Since they don't in the real world, if proving that point was the movie's goal (which I don't think it was) it would be a great example of a Space Whale Aesop. The movie no more "proves" that gun control is a suicidally bad idea than werewolf movies "prove" that not silver-plating everything is a suicidally bad idea, or the average slasher movie "proves" that having sex is a suicidally bad idea.
Did no one see the British soldiers in the previous movie?
Why are only American troops shown in the movie if US and NATO forces are involved? Where are Britain's Continental neighbours? Why don't they send troops?
Because the U.S. is the single-largest NATO member and have always taken point in NATO operations. More than anyone else, they have the manpower, resources, and organization to pull off something as monumental as the quarantine and eventual repatriation of Britain; on a more cynical note Britain's continental neighbours probably preferred to let the Americans assume the risk of dealing with potential infected. Furthermore, those neighbours were all probably not only knee-deep in refugees, but were more concerned with keeping their own forces back in case Rage somehow jumped the Channel.
It's quite strange that the helicopter so easily makes it to France at the end. One would imagine that the French are quite eager to prevent the infection from spreading to their country, so it is more than likely that any unidentified aircraft would simply be shot down, while passengers of regular flights would at least be quarantined upon arrival.
It's not that far from London to French soil, and IIRC they had a military pilot flying a US Military helicopter. Any allied officer would probably be hesitant to fire on Americans without clear authorization, which may not have come down fast enough. On the other hand, they helicopter was wrecked, so it's entirely possible that it * was* shot down, and the infection spread from people attempting to help the injured kids.
The British Channel is the last barrier between The Virus and mainland Europe, Africa and maybe even Asia. At this point, having observed the events in the UK, everybody must be aware that this would lead to the near extinction of whole continents. I think, it can be safely assumed that the French would pursue a strategy of "shoot first, ask questions later" in that case.
Exactly. Cause a minor international incident, or possibly introduce the worst virus on the planet to your country? Hrm.
Yes, but would a French SAM missile battery operator necessarily know that the situation had so thoroughly deteriorated in the last day that they should fire at will at all helicopters coming over the channel? And wouldn't the military-trained pilot flying the helicopter specifically try to avoid being shot down? And isn't the whole point moot anyway, because the helicopter crashed? They may have very well swatted it out of the sky.
The helicopter WAS shot down, hence the scene with the shot down helicopter.
Actually it's not really possible to say it was shot down or otherwise. What's the "otherwise" in this case? Well if either of the children succumbed to the infection over French soil (one fan theory is that because of Andy showing heterochromia i.e. different coloured eyes like his mother, so too would be be an asymptomatic carrier) e.g. by some of Andy's blood getting into a scratch on Tammy's body, then of course they would surely attack Flynn and cause a crash that way. Indeed, at least one version of the screenplay indicates that it happened this way. Furthermore, the level of crash damage arguably isn't consistent with SAM damage; one would have to cross reference all French SAM types used around 2007 and the type of destruction they can cause to see if this could be possible.
The authorities picked the worst possible emergency plan for this situation. They're worried about a disease outbreak so their solution is to put everyone in the same room together. When you do that you allow a single infected individual to infect everyone else in one go, which is pretty much what ended up happening in the movie. They would've been better off telling everyone to lock themselves in their rooms.
A room secured only by a standard set of fire doors, no less. Oh and kept in darkness, to keep them nice and panicky. At least if it had been a reinforced bunker, then maybe it wouldn't have been such a wall banger.
Seriously. When the alarms go off, everyone goes to the nearest windowless room (or even preprepared saferooms) and locks the door. They form a roster, communicate to central command and wait for the all-clear. Boom. Nice, isolated population, and you can determine who the Infected are by the process of elimination, so you can communicate back who exactly to watch out for. Problem solved.
One would think the first three rules for re-settlement would be this: 1: Ensure all living quarters are isolated and able to be completely securable, 2: Have each of these quarters stocked with enough emergency supplies to keep the occupant alive for a few weeks, and 3: when alarm sounds, everyone goes back home and locks themselves in until further notice. Then all the army has to do is use a check-in system or physically check each room to see who survived and who didn't after everything is relatively secure.
For such a horrible disease that they contained to a single island why not hit it with a neutron bomb or give it a mass chemical weapon bath to ensure it wouldn't get to the rest of world. Gee look a virus that spreads so fast it's overtaken a whole nation and then some. Nuke the island bet the virus dies in the atomic fireball.
Honestly, this bugged me too. You'd think that they'd quarantine the island for at least a few decades and spend that time razing the entire country to a cinder. But then apparently in 28 Months Later (the planned sequel) the virus has managed to get to Russia. Guess these movies are set in a world where people haven't invented bombs.
Clearly they invented bombs; firebombs, at least.
Fallout. So glad you don't run the world.
Fallout from a high enough airburst is minimal, but then again, try explaining that to the politicians.
Maybe fuel bombs then?
Fallout from a single bomb is much better than a worldwide pandemic. Plus, if done high enough (where it should be done anyway, because it increases the effective radius) little to no fallout is produced at all.
May I point out that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki are thriving urban centres today?
And a slight increase in thyroid cancer rates downwind of Britain is so much worse than inevitable zombie apocalypse.
Razing a country built to house 60 million people would produce enough smoke to lower global temperatures for decades, causing worldwide famine. It would be the equivalent of a nuclear war/winter.
Since the infected are still alive and still human, they should still be susceptible to nerve gas, which dissipates quickly, leaving no lasting danger.
Indeed. Which is why they used nerve gas in 28 Weeks Later. The thing that's throwing people here is that the Code Red would have worked, if not for a military pilot breaking orders and bringing a carrier over the channel.
Two words: Neutron Bomb. Kills non-plant life while leaving infrastructure mostly intact (well, more intact than a regular nuke, anyway).
That's an extreme over-simplification. In reality, a Neutron Bomb is virtually indistinguishable from a normal nuclear weapon (it is a nuclear weapon) in effects - the only real difference is that heavily shielded people (such as those within a NBC-protected tank) would be lethally irradiated, even though they were protected from the blast.
I agree that decontaminating Britain first would have been a real good idea. The problem is, Britain is huge. And nobody here seems to understand the problems that disinfecting a large area from a biological weapon (which Rage effectively is) presents. Neutron bombs would be useless (see the above explanation), because there's no indication that the Infected would be radiation-vulnerable. And the area affected by any sort of a nuke is tiny, compared to the area of Britain as a whole. Nerve gas and other chemical weapons also might kill the Infected, but that's a big unknown, and the cleanup from them afterwards is even worse. Frankly, about the only sane way would be to develop a specific anti-Rage virus compound, put it in an aerosol, and spray it over a (small) section of the country. The military would then occupy that section, run around and spray the anti-Rage on everything, wait a couple of weeks, then repeat that on an adjacent area. Frankly, disinfecting a country the size of Britain would almost certainly take decades. There's simply no quick-fix.
Why the hell did they try to resettle England a mere 28 weeks after the outbreak? There's nothing in England that is so important to take that risk, and I couldn't imagine that anyone would want to step on England again after escaping certain death. The rest of continental Europe would be far too nervous to allow anyone there anyway, considering it was a miracle it was contained only to England. Raze the damn island and leave it alone!
England, Scotland and Wales were all down. I hate to tell you but there is a hell of a lot going on over there. Important stuff.
Not after the infection has wiped out/evicted the entire population.
There was no need to write off Britain as a whole. All the infected had died, except for one woman who was immune, which no one could have predicted. But even that situation was perfectly containable, as she wasn't actively trying to spread the infection. The only reason it went wrong was that the Americans failed to keep her isolated and under guard, especially when they knew her husband was in District 1.
No one could have predicted it? Asymptomatic carriers are not uncommon today, nor are virus mutations (see the panic over Swine Flu). When you're dealing with an extremely dangerous virus, things like mutations, asymptomatic carriers and other complications would be at the top of your list of priorities. Plus they have no idea of how long the virus can survive outside the human body, if it can/has jumped to other animal species, and so forth. You can't say a situation is 'containable' when they've had barely 28 weeks to study this virus and what it can do. There is nothing in Britain so valuable to take risks with such a deadly virus. If the movie was set around a team sent to study the virus and not rebuild Britain, that'd make more sense.
They knew what the virus was and what it could do, it was released from a laboratory.
Yes, but the additional backstory tells us that the creation of the Rage Virus was an unintended accident. Even then, a virus running free in the outside world is totally different from it being tested in a sterile lab.
Because it was simply free land? Why do other countries invade another, for the resources, simply. London already had buildings etc, so why not?
For morale people! Remember how the world felt with 9/11? Now imagine that happened in the majority of the British Isles! People want hope, rebuilding and everything-is-over clean ups. The inclusion of civilians is clearly a political move, and it shows from the attitude of the soldiers (they think the civies are burden). Well that backfired.
"Nothing in England so important"? A completely abandoned nuclear power with millions of refugees swarming around in its neighbours? London is one of the co-capitals of the world economy (along with New York), so you can imagine the valuable information that it holds, information stored in highly vulnerable electronic storage that degrades extremely quickly, assuming it isn't below the water table and thus destroyed as soon water pumps fail. Luckily, the UK's nuclear arsenal is confined to its submarines (which I assume would be quickly directed to France or the US), but there are 24 nuclear reactors in the UK that certain parties would be very interested in ransacking. Going back so quickly is one of the few realistic elements in the film.
What is the deal with needing refugee camps anyway? There wasn't enough time for any meaningful evacuation before the borders were closed with extreme prejudice, most of the people that were out of the UK would have been out of it anyway. There is more than enough British expats out there to put up the few tourists that would have been caught out the country. And even if there was the need for refugee camps, why tents? There are huge caravan (trailer parks) sites and hotel complexes that do nothing but hold UK tourists in the summer seasons. All plumbed and with all mod cons, assuming that there were need for refugee camps then you could house all the tourists in those complexes with room to spare. Especially in Spain where the kids were mentioned as having spent the time.
It's unclear how many people became infected, but it doesn't seem anywhere close to a majority of the island- even if 10% of London's population were infected, that would be 755,000 people running around-so where are they? 10% of Great Britain would be 6 million people-where are they all? Did they all run out into the country? And if it was a majority of the population, where did 30 million+ Infected go? It's a bit of a catch-22, because if they didn't get infected, they must have evacuated...but how did millions of people get clear of Great Britain in less than a month?
Boats. In 1940 Operation Dynamo evacuated over 338,000 men from the beaches of Dunkirk in 9 days. The infection began in the South East of England and even at a fast run it would take several weeks to spread North and West. There are a lot of ports in Britain.
Also, given answers on both movies' headscratcher pages, it looks like someone infected with Rage can only really have a lifespan of a few days before they vomit up so much blood they completely dehydrate and die. This would explain why by the time of the first movie there are relatively few left; waves of Infected populations arise, die and leave behind other waves, so you never really have a majority of a population both alive and infected, that is until the end when there are so very few uninfected left.
Those aren't good reasons to bring civilians back in to settle so soon. Commando teams/military to retrieve information, secure important locations, etc, sure, but not families.
Of course there's important stuff in England. The correct procedure for dealing with that is to send the US military in and loot it all. (Also, electronic information? Have you never heard of offsite backups? Because, trust me, anyone with information worth saving would have.)
There is plenty of info that is not backed up because it is sensitive, copyrighted, or it's too expensive (small businesses, anyone?). And it's not just London- a country has plenty of information that is backed up only within the country itself. You think the British back up all of their data in Northern Ireland or Gibraltar? And if you're sending in troops to loot, then why not have them clean up since it's apparently safe enough for them to be there in the first place? And what about the refugees? Their homes still exist, yet they're in cramped, dirty refugee camps. They'd want to go home at the earliest opportunity, especially when they hear that US troops are running around on the ground with impunity. The countries spending billions of dollars to support them would want them gone, too.
Sensitive/copyrighted information would be backed up with the same security. Anyone who thinks backups are too expensive for businesses of any size needs to extract their cranium from their hindquarters as that cost is inherently minuscule in comparison to the cost of losing vital data (and for that matter, the government would have taken as much of that data with them as possible). Sending in troops (which should be geared appropriately for the various transmission possibilities) generally means the opposite of "it's safe for everyone". Just because people WANT to go back doesn't mean you let them risk wiping out the vast majority of the world's population. There was absolutely no valid reason to resettle that early. And for that matter, they should have had ships off the island for most people, and especially some quarantine vessels for research purposes.
I have actually worked for the kind of organizations that work with sensitive information. Yes, backups are made, but as someone else already pointed out, these backups are usually confined to the same country. There are things that are legally restricted from being backed up or transmitted offshore in many countries, especially financial data. I'd also guess that stuff from the MoD would also remain within England, with maaaybe some backups in Scotland or Wales. Unless HMG has taken the precaution of backing up everything in Northern Ireland and Gibraltar (or even Falklands?), there's a good chance that everything has gone poof.
They mention early in the movie that Zone 1 only has a population of 15,000 people. Don's kids were the first children allowed in, and the military was not happy about their arrival. I get the impression that what we see in the movie is the initial wave of contractors sent in to rebuild, not a full-scale resettlement.
It's entirely likely that there were asymptomatic carriers during the original outbreak, however they may not have been as fortunate as Alice in evading the infected and ended up dead anyway, so on the basis of available evidence they may indeed have assumed that asymptomatic carriers are simply not a thing with this virus. Until Alice showed up.
Why do people run around with infected blood on their skin, especially their face. Wouldn't you want to wipe it off as soon as humanly possible?
That drove me nuts. Only one drop has to get in your mouth and you're screwed.
Or an eye...
Well the infection spreads at near light speed, so if you get blood spattering your face and a few seconds later you are still you then it is probably best not to go wiping it around risking it reaching an open wound or eye. Plus blood dries fairly quickly, when it is wet is when you are still fighting the infected which is not the time to worry about personal cleanliness, and once you've stopped fighting them you are probably focusing on staying hidden from them so it drops down the to-do list.
The final shot of the movie shows a mass of infected "zombies" rushing out of a tunnel overlooking the Eiffel Tower, showing that the infection has spread to Paris. Um, how? I understand that the main horde of the infected ran into the Chunnel (The underwater train tunnel connecting France and England), although I can't fathom why. There's really nothing drawing them into it, but I digress. Seeing as how the Chunnel exits in Calais, France and Paris is over 150 km away, were the French simply not informed about the massive wave of infected individuals carrying the most deadly virus known to man rushing underneath the sea towards their country? One has to think that there would still be some fortifications underground from the last time England was quarantined, or this should have happened in the original movie.
Assume the infected ran full speed the whole way there (due to the virus making them unable to be tired or some random idea) and give them a speed of say... 15mph. That 90-ish miles could have took them about 6 hours to run it. Could they have properly sealed off the Chunnel in that time? Probably, but let's say they were just carrying the Idiot Ball and filled it with soldiers with shoot to kill orders. Zombie Movies 101 says that ends badly.
You're both forgetting one important thing- Andy is technically infected too, and since the ending is 28 days after the kids and Flynn escape London, that's plenty of time for Typhoid Andy to accidentally spread the infection all over again. This of course assumes you're okay with the chopper getting across the Channel.
They ran into the Chunnel? I assumed they just ran into the London Underground, which is why they bumped into Don. I also figured the French infected were sired by Andy somehow accidentally infecting people post-crash.
If the helicopter crashed, maybe a first-responder tried giving him CPR, and then got infected via the saliva?
I'll bet the moment the infection in 28 Days Later was known, the Chunnel was blown away, flooding entirely, to prevent the only route for Infected to cross to the mainland. Even if they couldn't make it through the tunnel, one could have got on the Eurostar by accident. Most likely, the Infected had come out of a Metro station, having already being spawned days earlier from Andy spitting/kissing/bleeding on his sister/doctor/pilot near Calais...
In 28 Days Later Selena mentioned that infected were spotted in Paris and New York after just a few days. Seeing as it couldn't have spread to New York by walking it could've spread a different way. Another thing, maybe some bird had gotten blood on them and then flew to Europe.
Actually, that was confirmed to be false reporting. It's only in Britain.
Given how much fear the news of what was happening in Britain must've stirred up in the rest of the world, people in uninfected countries were probably reporting "infected" everywhere. Heck, there were probably uninfected folks who were shot and killed because somebody spotted them staggering around drunk and frightened police thought they were.
The whole point of the end of the movie was that the little guy was infected, but was asymptomatic. It was kinda the point.
In terms of what drove them to the tunnel, my theory is that it was guarded by military blockade at either end (it was useful to remain open to funnel certain supplies and personnel through) and the new infected chased a survivor to the British end, meatgrinded their way through the defences and then chased another survivor partway down the tunnel, then carried on to the French end.
You know, most of this stuff I either ignore, didn't notice, or can rationalize away. That's fine. What's not fine is the fact that this page doesn't have a listing for that absolutely ludicrous sequence where Flynn uses his chopper to puree the infected. I'm not even sure that's physically POSSIBLE- maybe one or two, sure, but a whole heaping horde of them? What? No. What? Goddammit.
It's not possible at all, even with only one. Helicopter Blender fails miserably in real life.
It's made even worse when you consider that the whole reason he was doing it was to try and kill the innocent civilian hanging onto his helicopter. The infected he managed to kill were just a bonus.
No it wasn't. Before the aforementioned Helicopter Blender moment, Doyle clearly says "Flynn, we're gonna die down here! Do somethin'!" And, while Flynn doesn't want to take the other people, he IS trying to save Doyle. The helicopter had no weapons on board, so he tore the infected apart with the primary rotor.
What always got me was, it is known that the infection is spread by a single drop of blood getting into the human body by open wounds, eye fluids, mouths, etc. So what do you do? Turn the air into an infectious blood fog while piloting an open-sided helicopter. Was he trying to get himself and his buddy infected?
According to this message you might not be entirely correct. I feel that the scene as depicted in the movie is plausible. The point about not wanting infectious gore mist all around you is still valid, though.
Above link no longer active. However, the original response is correct: this would fail miserably in real life. Aerospatiale Gazelles have lightweight fiberglass rotor blades. Even a bird strike can critically damage one if it's a heavy bird. Slamming those blades into a dozen or more rage-zombies means that chopper is out of control and crashing pretty much right away. note Light helicopters are particularly susceptible to rotor damage or even imbalances. Stray balloons can imbalance the main rotor of a light chopper like an MD-500 - not enough to cause it to crash, but enough that a pilot will set it down in a hurry because it's unstable. Heavy blades like those found on a UH-1 or modern heavy blades like those on a CH-47 or -53 can also take more of a beating, but that's because there's heavier (and more) material to absorb impact energy. Advanced rotors like those on an AH-64 are multilayer laminates designed so that impacts are very unlikely to break the blade completely. The Gazelle has none of these features. So in addition to aerosolized rage blood, they'd also have a flaming chopper wreck to deal with - essentially the definition of "bad plan."
The movie establishes that the infected do not attack and kill each other. They only target people not infected with the rage. The wife was infected with the rage, so why did the husband kill her?
Well, the wife doesn't show a certain symptom (the rage), so we can only assume she also doesn't show the symptom which makes her unattractive to the other infected. Further up on this page someone theorized that the virus makes their flesh highly toxic.
Which causes another Plothole, because as mentioned near the top, how the hell did Alice escape the cottage without being horribly killed by the dozens of infected surrounding the building? If she escaped because she 'passes' as one of them, then Don had no reason to kill her. If Don kills her because she doesn't 'pass', then she should have been killed in the cottage. Nice one, writers.
It could be that the ability to tell the difference between an infected and a non-infected doesn't come until later on, because the virus is still working to take over.
It's a common interpretation that the rage virus amplifies anger and that is the reason he killed his wife after being infected. She infected him on purpose and that made him angry, so he had no reason not to kill her.
Suddenly it dawns on me. The infected don't attack he each other but he kills his infected wife? So is this rule is only in effect if you've got the disease or could you bull rush a bunch of zombies in a berzerker rage and they'd leave.
Probably not, no. It's also likely that infected emit a pheromone as a symptom, which helps to allow them to identify each other in combination with the rage.
Where are the main characters from the first movie? I know its George A. Romero tradition to simply ignore each cast of characters in each new instalment, but why not even give them a cameo or something here?
Because then we can assume they live happily ever after and far away from the zombies. I'm betting that as some of the few survivors of the zombie apocalypse they were given citizenship and refuge in another country rather than resettled in England, so that they could be debriefed and provide the resettlement teams useful ways to survive/stop the plague. Plus, the actors don't get the sequel dragging their reputations down.
Given how 28 Days Later ended, do you think there is the slightest chance those characters would want to live in a military-run quarantine zone?
^Fridge Brilliance.
It was later explained in the comic that they were arrested for killing the rapist soldiers. Selena and Hannah were eventually released (the comic states Selena and Hannah are in protective custody), but Jim wasn't and is currently awaiting execution by firing squad. The series really seems to have a hard-on for wanting Jim dead. First the alternate endings (one of which is stated to be the "real" ending) and then this. Wow.
Why the hell would people want to execute someone who was clearly defending himself and others from insane rapist soldiers? Just because they're soldiers doesn't make them automatically immune from legal repercussions. "Hard-on for killing Jim" indeed.
I know everyone was herded to a large room for the Rule of Drama - Tropes Are Tools after all - but putting everyone on lockdown in their own apartments would have made a lot more sense. Everyone would be at home with toilet facilities and food, and access to a telephone. Once everyone was in their domicile with the door locked the soldiers could ensure the hallways and public areas were clear and then go to the apartments door by door to clear people to go out.
True- but there would be some people who obviously won't listen and try to investigate on their own, putting themselves in potential danger.
So? Let them. As long as the majority of people lock themselves out of harm's way, the infection will be be much easier to contain. If some idiot wants to find out what's going on and gets himself infected, the rest of the population smart enough to isolate themselves will be in only slightly greater danger than before.
Plus, can the Infected smash through locked apartment doors easily? They obviously didn't have much trouble smashing through barricaded windows early on in the movie. Sending troops out in the apartment hallways would have posed extreme risks as well, due to the closed space - unless they happen to be wearing hazmat gear. It'd make a lot more sense to draw them out into one huge area with anything that makes loud noise and shoot everything up. The Infected are attracted to smell, aren't they?
Even if the Infected can break down doors, having everyone barricade themselves in small groups in separate apartments means that the Infected would have to break down fifty doors to infect everyone rather than just one as in the movie. It would give the military lots more time to evaluate the situation (especially if they're in contact with each small group and know where each is) and pick the best course of action. And the Isle of Dogs is a military-occupied safe zone, so would it be too much to ask for fortified shelters? Even a simple windowless room with a steel-bolted door would suffice. Have one or two per floor per building, and you've got a quarantined population.
I suspect that internal politics and cost cutting determined the provision, or rather lack of, shelters from the infected.
How did they fit 15,000+ people in one room, and so quickly for that matter?
Given, herding people into the big room was a problem, but they knew of the quarantine plans in the first place. These people know how dangerous the infected are, how fast it spreads, and have almost certainly been shown footage of the infected. So naturally the second the military says "There's a breach! This is not a drill! Everyone to the quarantine zone!" what does everyone do? COMPLAIN!
Maybe it was left out for pacing reasons, but I got the impression there was no training for the settlers on what to do in the case of an outbreak. It seemed like the 'tour guide' talk on the DLR was all they got. There should've been so much training and so many drills it was burnt into their brains. The kids should've been terrified of crossing the boundary, but instead, they seemed to have no idea why it might be stupid.
The military underestimated them. Children had not been brought in yet. The military was used to dealing with adults. You tell an adult not to go to a zone that's an infection risk, they're bound to listen. They expected the children to listen to and not go hopping over fences into danger zones.
Quite likely there would have been more training, but the kids ran away basically on the following day, and the military would have expected Don to brief them prior to their training drills.
London is shown to be littered with potentially infected corpses. We see in the first movie that dead bodies can carry the virus. Why would the UK be considered safe to resettle under these conditions? With enough exposure, the virus could very well jump species to something that can cross the river into the green zone.
There are millions of people living in the UK. You expect the military to clear away every single body on the streets before they bring people back? Perhaps that's exactly what they did with the safe zones. They were maybe clearing away bodies and potential infection risks one zone at a time. Remember that the people in the UK were being kept in makeshift refugee camps in other countries. They couldn't keep them there forever. It's a wiser decision to introduce people gradually back to society and for it to rebuild slowly than to just throw everyone in there at once. And the residents were told that the zones outside were unsafe so they had the sense to not go there. Tammy and Andy are the first children to be brought there so the military didn't have a procedure for dealing with children jumping the defences.
Don was clearly right that Alice shouldn't try to find the kid and justified in abandoning her when she refused to listen; even if by some miracle they'd made it out of that room without getting caught by the infected (it's difficult to see what Don could have done) there's simply no way that the kid could have made the sprint to the boat; it would be touch and go whether the adults would be able to make it. Given their escape plan is implied to be well-rehearsed, Don would have known this, and so too should Alice.
It was a young child. Alice was a mother and her own children were currently out of the country. She acted out of desperation. I think it comes down to a matter of ethics - would you be able to leave a child alone to die in that situation?
People complain that it was the kids who were responsible for bringing the infection into District 1, but it would have happened sooner or later anyway. It was only a matter of time before the soldiers would find Alice and bring her back, and things would have gone the way they did in the movie—all the kids did was speed it up.
You're assuming that someone else would have kissed Alice?
Don would still have kissed her (probably), no matter when or how she was found. Even if the kids hadn't escaped the safe zone and found her, the soldiers eventually would have. All it might have done was delay the inevitable, since apparently Don's kind of a moron (As are the military, for not posting a frickin' guard at her door).
Eh, she might have eventually died of starvation or some other disease... she wasn't in that great of a shape when they found her, and her food supply was just lousy with maggots.
Moreover, Don wouldn't have known to come looking for her if the kids hadn't told him they found her, meaning no one would have gotten around to reuniting with her family until later, when she'd resumed talking and her identity had been verified. By then, her blood would've identified her as a carrier and she'd either have been quietly killed, or (if the lady doctor had been more persuasive about her value as a possible cure) her family warned of the risk and kept at arms' length.
The kids have been called irresponsible for letting themselves be airlifted to France even though Andy was a carrier, but neither one of them knew. They didn't know anything about Alice's status as a carrier or what that meant; all they knew was that Andy got bit and didn't turn crazy.
The sister knew, or at least seemed aware of the possibility. When the pilot asks if they are safe to board, she purposefully tries to hide her little brother and the way it's shot implies she's trying to keep them from seeing his eyes. It would make no sense to hide him (especially right after being asked if they were 'safe' i.e. not infected) unless she thought he was, and her awareness to hide his eyes really drives that home.
What was the situation in Ireland, especially Northern Ireland? Shouldn't there be a functioning UK government in Belfast for refugees to make their way to first and surviving units of the British military to recognise?
Or even the Scottish Islands, which would be surprisingly easy to clear/hard to infect. You'd be better filling up the Outer Hebrides with refugees (or Orkney and Shetland) than shipping them straight into Central London.
Or the Isle of Wight, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The Isle of Wight is less than an hour from London by air, and all three are tourist destinations (i.e. they have a lot of surplus accommodation).
Northern Ireland has a troubled political history and even given the crisis shown in these movies, it may be a very tall order for the Republicans to swallow accepting both a British Government in exile and a huge (British) military presence in Ulster.
Haven't seen anyone else bring it up exactly, but why would Don's badge have access to the quarantine room? I get being able to access all the base facilities to do your job, but that room should only be unlocked by the chief medical officer. Not even the base commander would be given access as there would be no reason for him to open the door without the head doctor beside him. A guard or some kind of monitoring entity should have also been there, but that's more about redundancy.
This bugged me as well. Don is a maintenance technician; in the real world he wouldn't have the clearance to get into most areas without an escort, and his badge would not give him unrestricted access.
A bad oversight by the military which cost them dearly.
What's the point of the Code Red protocol, besides showing US armed forces shooting and blowing up stuff? There is no real need to exterminate the infected, since it's known that they can't survive long on their own. A much smarter solution would be for the military to exfiltrate as fast as they could, leaving the civilians behind. Yeah, that would suck for the civies, but being shot on sight isn't exactly better.
If they had any hope of a relatively easier cleanup outside of Zone 1, they had to exterminate the infected. Moreover, to prevent the remote chance of infected managing to escape Great Britain.
Why did it seem that the France was caught completely by surprise at the end of the movie? Yes, it was assumed that the situation was under control when the Americans went into the UK to initiate the repopulation effort, but given the immensity of the danger involved, you'd think that a significant French military presence would be stationed along the English Channel just in case. And even if somehow that measure wasn't taken, the fact that the American military lost control and new infected have appeared was already a known factor, so you'd assume that an immediate lockdown would have been declared and the French air force would have scrambled every fighter available.
If you infer that the helicopter crash resulted in the death of one or both of the kids, but also that they infected people coming to their aid, then that could have contributed to the breakdown of France's defences. Presume that France wouldn't be so ruthless as to just shoot down an evaucation helicopter; maybe they greeted them on the ground with weapons ready, but they were still overwhelmed by the infected kids (and pilot too, potentially). Meanwhile, the ending shows that other infected ran from England through the Channel Tunnel and eventually made it to Calais, then more inland into France. Now that tunnel is a chokepoint which is reasonably possible to defend at both ends... but it's still a chokepoint, meaning that if they overwhelm those defences (no matter how many infected they sacrifice to the gun turret emplacements etc), they can then funnel subsequent infected through the Tunnel and hence arrive into France and start to infect en masse. Both the crash and the Tunnel attack together probably had the effect of overwhelming the French State, similarly to how the UK was originally overwhelmed.
you might not be entirely correct. I feel that the scene as depicted in the movie is plausible. The point about not wanting infectious gore mist all around you is still valid, though.