(Editor's Note: This is part of a special nonrecurring feature called TV Thursday. Later today Marisa and I will have up a post about Game of Thrones. How topical! Go Pop Culture!)
Hey all, Carney here again. I’ve been with The Walking Dead ever since Rick put a slug in the festering skull of the girl who just wanted to show him her teddy bear. It’s become a Sunday evening tradition in my household and it looks like it’ll stay that way for a long time thanks to the show’s enormous, highly marketable audience, in spite of all the brain-dead lurches in the scripting, dialogue, and character development departments (I’m looking at you, Season Two: Herschel’s Boring Farmhouse). The way I see it, even when the storytelling flatlines there’s still intrinsic value in watching a pair of hillbillies dispatch staggering monsters with a crossbow and a mechanical knife-wielding stump.* I got time fo’ dat!
So in honor of the AMC apocalypse drama’s third season finale, Patrick suggested I weigh a handful of Oklahoma Cityans’ odds of survival when the world starts doing the Zombie Shuffle. Here’s to hoping that nobody takes this too seriously. Also, please be warned that a few mild spoilers follow.
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The Oklahoma City Thunder**
Nick Collison’s already tackled this pressing issue in his GQ blogging, but he’s a little bit more optimistic about his and his teammates’ odds against the undead than I am. Zombie dodging is a nimble, wiry person’s game and something just tells me that Nick’s on-court instincts are going to kick in, prompting him to set a pick for Russ or Kevin Martin to slip a listless, shuffling double-team. The problem with setting a screen on a zombie isn’t unlike setting a pick on Metta World Peace in that you run the risk of something insane and violent happening to your face.
Unfortunately Nick would be one of the soonest to go, right along with the other bigs***. When you’re that tall, hiding from walkers becomes an ordeal. Had the Thunder been playing on the road in Atlanta and wound up with the Grimes crew when the outbreak hit, I imagine that pack of zombies in the premiere of season two would’ve done most of them in. Also, sorry Kevin Durant, but your comically long arms and legs that create mismatches on the hardwood are just more real estate for a biter to latch on to when the end of the world comes.
The Grantland dudes all agreed that Russ has pretty good odds of survival though. I think his adamantium frame and apparent resistance to infectious disease ought to serve him well. Heck, it’s probably worth asking here: Can a guy who hasn’t in his life sat out from a game of basketball due to injury or sickness even contract the zombie virus? Maybe in this Thunder-centric TWD reality they’ll rebuild the Center for Disease Control and figure out how to synthesize Russ’s blood into a cure for all mankind, making him the new savior of the human race.
Estimated survival time after outbreak: Russell Westbrook: Until humanity is restored. Rest of team: Three weeks.
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Wayne Coyne
How many zombies does it take to get to the center of a Wayne Coyne space bubble? I bet that thing’ll keep one or two at bay for a while, but eventually they’ll gnash their teeth right through it and feast on some rock star guts. Which is probably something Wayne’s already doodled.
Estimated survival time after outbreak: A week and a half.
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Megan Mullally
While you wouldn’t peg a 54-year-old actress as an ideal zombie apocalypse survivor your typical 54-year-old actress usually isn’t married to Ron Swanson Nick Offerman. Little-known fact about the OKC-raised star of stage and screen’s rugged husband: he actually owns and operates his own woodshop, which makes the couple model end-of-the-world holdouts.
Estimated survival time after outbreak: 20 months
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Skip Bayless
Since fruitless, roundabout discussion about LeBron James’ legacy is the only thing keeping this truth-stretching, nutter-wearing, 1.4 points-per-game-averaging, Troy Aikman-hounding hack’s career alive, I’d say his survival is integrally bound to that of Miami’s star forward.
Estimated survival time after outbreak: However long it takes for the zombies to catch LeBron.
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Dan Gordon
I don’t know Dan personally and I’ve never met him so I can’t reasonably estimate his chances of survival. But I did follow him on Twitter for about a week and a half in 2011, which was long enough to determine that he —how to put this nicely?— is very well-connected. Let’s just say that this was before he’d hit the milestone (milestone?) of 100,000 tweets and now the jeweler’s closing in on 125,000. If only you could tweet away the undead.
Estimated survival time after outbreak: However long Twitter’s last server holds out.
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Sweet Brown
If Oklahoma City’s biggest viral video sensation can escape an apartment fire I’d say her survival instincts are on point.
Estimated survival time after outbreak: Seven months
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Wes Welker
The way the latest addition to the Denver Broncos’ roster shreds NFL zone defenses is nothing short of Nightcrawler-status. Welker’s combination of elusiveness and canny snap decision-making makes him as valuable to your zombie-survival team as he was to your fantasy team.
Estimated survival time after outbreak: 18 months
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Ed Shadid
I can see the Ward 2 Councilperson working really hard to architect an acceptable, forward-thinking compromise that the undead will ignore in the exact same way that most politicians tend to ignore acceptable, forward-thinking compromises.
Estimated survival time after outbreak: Two months
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The dudes in Broncho
One of my very favorite bands from Oklahoma, Broncho is already accustomed to living out of a van, having toured all over the country the last year or two. And with the way they dress … heck, they could probably shuffle and mutter their way through a whole pack of zombies unscathed the way Rick and Glenn almost do in season one.
Estimated survival time after outbreak: Nine months.
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Biker Fox
Frank P. DeLarzelere —as he was known before prior to his legal name change in 2005— is my favorite Tulsan, which is saying something since my parents and brother currently live in Tulsa and I was born and raised there. If Biker Fox has lived this long hotdogging in front of cars on his bike, something tells me that zombies are not something that would trouble him. Or something that he would really even notice that much.
Estimated survival time after outbreak: Infinite. Also, take two and a half minutes of your time to watch this please.
*As TWD fans can see, I began this post before season three’s penultimate episode.
**This sure gives “Zombie Sonics” a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?
***Take a minute to imagine all seven feet and three inches of Zombie Hasheem Thabeet. Mortifying.
Matt’s on Twitter at @okmattcarney writes the pop music column for LOOKatOKC every two weeks. He previously wrote for TLO about rap songs with Thunder shoutouts and why John Fullbright deserved a Grammy more than Mumford & Sons, and is best known for the time he photobombed Bob Stoops.
