Is Eating People Morally OK? | Philosophy in TellTale Games "The Walking Dead" Season 1 Episode 2

Comments · 251

• CO

  @Commenter25 · 1 year ago (edited)

  i&apos;d argue trying to save larry in the meat locker isn&apos;t an obvious choice. cpr is unlikely to restart the heart, it&apos;s primarily to circulate blood until more help arrives. they had no defibrillator, and even if the st johns had one, they probably wouldn&apos;t hear or trust cries for help. like kenny says, he could turn fast. assuming katjaa noticed right when david died, that was about a minute. and they don&apos;t know how exactly turning works, what if the body being non-functional is enough for it to start, or the blood flow from cpr is too low? and if he <b>does</b> turn, he&apos;s one of if not the tallest character in the series, and can knock lee and kenny down with one punch. when that strength is put into a relentless painless husk, what are three people and a kid gonna do without any weapons in a tiny space? especially if two of them are within grabbing distance when he turns? at least one person would die, if not all of them. katjaa and duck are still outside, and would be helpless if they didn&apos;t escape, and kenny is worried most about getting out to help his family. with the power of omnipotent gamer hindsight, we know larry moves his mouth a little, but not if he was waking up, or if it was agonal breathing, or if he <b>was</b> turning and disaster was seconds away. either way, they definitely couldn&apos;t know before making the choice. i&apos;m not saying killing larry is objectively the right choice either, you can definitely still argue trying is the right thing to do anyway, or that you need to set the right example for clem, or that there was just a smarter way to handle the situation without making black and white assumptions. but there&apos;s also solid logic behind the decision to not risk trying to save him. that all aside, good video!

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• VR

  @vrokyoto · 1 year ago

  I’d say 10-15 years into the apocalypse, there is a good chance you can make a good argument to why cannibalism is good idea, or atleast a reasonable idea, but WEEKS into the apocalypse is absolutely insane

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• UN

  @UnfazedPhoenix · 1 year ago

  No way. &nbsp;This was in the BEGINNING of the apocalypse. There was still food to scavenge, and they were GROWING food on the farm. &nbsp;They also had a cow at the dairy. How can they justify murdering Mark when they had a cow right there? Because they wanted milk &amp; butter?! Those people were messed up. &nbsp;There were whole towns later in the series, which had food and didn&apos;t resort to murdering and eating people.

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• MA

  @madamefluffy4788 · 1 year ago

  The way I saw it, Larry was living on borrowed time as it was (nitroglycerin pills aren&apos;t going to be easy to come by in a zombie apocalypse). I sided with Kenny without hesitation - as why on Earth would I have Lee put so many lives at risk (not just those in the meat locker, but Katja and Duck, as well as Ben and Carly, who the St.John&apos;s would no doubt have gone back for) in an attempt to save Larry - &nbsp;who wouldn&apos;t have had his medical needs seen to indefinitely.<br><br>It&apos;s because of that need to protect the group that also convinced me to kill all the St.Johns (why would I have Lee spare any of them and risk more people meeting the same fate of so many other of their victims?)

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• NO

  @noot8076 · 1 year ago

  The thing about Larry is that you can see right before the salt lick is dropped on his head his mouth starts to move. It may be possible that he could be resuscitated if Kenny didn’t rush to a decision, though Larry was already doomed from the start because he only got lucky they were in a drug store with a person whose family literally owned the place. Had it been any other situation Larry would’ve died wayyy earlier

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• HA

  @hadoukenfighter · 1 year ago

  The Larry choice for me always came down to one thing &quot;Would I risk Clem&apos;s life on the off chance this dude somehow can be brought back to life (ignoring that realistically speaking he&apos;s doomed without proper medical attention ASAP afterwards) that has in the past tried to kill me and he&apos;s also a 300 pound huge dude in a tiny space?&quot; and I can&apos;t find a logical answer to reply with &quot;yes&quot; solely because the safety of children should be anyone&apos;s first priority.<br>There most likely was a better way to handle the entire mess granted but I can&apos;t say with confidence I&apos;d be able to come up with one in the heat of the moment, I can&apos;t be convinced that Risking a child&apos;s life to save an old man is the right call in any situation.

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• MA

  @masterjustin2246 · 1 year ago

  In a apocalypse, morals will definitely go all the way out when it comes to life and death situations.<br><br>Whether it’s stealing supplies such as food and medicine from another group, or killing a 12-year child in self-defense because he or she is trying to rob you for what you got. <br><br>It’s like Jolene said in at the end of Episode 2, “it ain’t the dead you gotta be worried about, it’s the living.” which is the point of this episode, no matter how many survivors that’s in the same situation as you or not, they will be prioritize their survival over yours, even if it means to being friendly to you in order to let your guard down just for a bit.<br><br>Cannibalizing people isn’t clearly right also as a example..since the St. Johns being that one too, believing that eating human people as a new way of life of living.

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• PE

  @PepsiCatss · 1 year ago (edited)

  I think episode 2 is the best episode of Telltales Walking Dead. Sure it doesn&apos;t matter that much in the grand scheme but it has some of the best choices in the entire series and makes you question if you&apos;d result to cannibalism if you yourself were starving and with zero guarantee for food in the future

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• BO

  @BOOPSBOOPS-r8n · 1 year ago

  Simply, no. Because Mark literally did not ask to be food, and i highly doubt he would accept if requested to be.<br><br>Now if you got a person who&apos;s willing to sacrifice a body part (or even their life) in order to feed their loved ones in an extremely dire situation...<br><br>... Like the Donner Party. Most popular example.

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• LE

  @legendoflex6881 · 1 year ago

  I think what drove the farm group to eat people was two things.<br>1. Isolation from other people. From what it appears to be they have been basically by themselves as a family, and the only people we know that they are familiar with are the bandits. And the bandits are arguably way worse than them. So between the extended period of time away from other groups of people, and the few they have encountered have been violent; it may be safe to say that with the decline of their metal health being away from decent people their views on a stranger’s humanity may be warped.<br>2. Just because they have food doesn’t mean that it isn’t hard to sustain or is a guarantee. Crops can die with changing weather conditions and that cow was the only one left and was having some health complications. All this to say that they have it good for now, but it is hard to upkeep and any bad luck could turn the tides fast. No more cow means no more sustainable protein supply. No more crops means no more main source of food. And no more gas for the electric fence means no more safety. The reality of all these uncertainties with their bad experiences of people thus far probably lead them into the mindset of wanting to use the least amount of their own resources possible. Meaning if they believed that someone like Mike was likely to die, or wasn’t worth giving up their own medical supplies for, then it would make sense to eat Mark and focus on saving their resources for long term use for the upcoming winter months at least<br><br>…And honestly idk if I can argue whether or not given the circumstances if it was wrong or not to resort to cannibalism on a liability….However I will say morally that it is wrong to use leave him to bleed out slowly to death alone😂Lol but I do get why they kept him alive during the butcher process. If he turned during that process they would not have been actually been able to eat the meat. You could argue that they could just destroy the brain right away and then start cutting, but chances are they did not know very well how the turning process works. For all we know they believed any death at all spreads the disease throughout the body, and that even the destruction of the brain was not safe enough…But yeah they could have at least put poor Mike out of his misery after being done taking his legs.<br><br>As far as if they planned to kill off the group, who is to say. Personally I think that they were, or at least were going to consider it. My theory is that the brother were scouting out the bandit group till they found the bandits doing deals with Ben. At first they may have thought Lee’s group were an extension of the bandit group, but then soon realized they were actually being targeted with threats and forced to give up supplies. They may have also noticed the kids at camp and realized that this group was not a part of the bandits targeting the farm. Now knowing this I think they chose to come unarmed to the group with the gas for food deal with a plan A and plan B.<br>Plan A. Feel out the group are they decent people compared to those targeting them? If yes second thing to find out is if this group is as resourceful as themselves(willing to go as far as cannibalism if for the greater good)or of any use to their farm? If the answer to this is also yes they would either use the group for its resources(like kidnapping their vet) or they would fully take them in as part of the farm if they were open minded to the idea of what it means “not to waste”.<br>Plan B however in my opinion was to canabalize them all if the answer to either of these questions was no. <br><br>Dinner in my mind was supposed to see how the group would handle the idea of not wasting even another human being for food. After dinner was done I think that they planned to tell the group what they just ate, and scope out which individuals could live with themselves and which ones would fight back. Otherwise it would be dumb to offer them Mark as dinner in the first place! That would go against the code of not wasting anything because one dinner would not change anyone’s weight or fat content that quickly. mark would therefore be wasted, and the group seems collected enough that I doubt they did it just to torment them. I genuinely think having them eat Mark was a test. Those who ultimately accepted finally having been able to eat their first meal in weeks/months at the cost of a human life would get to freely work on the farm. Learning that Kenny’s wife was a vet she would be forced one way or another to stay compliant and in servitude since her skills were too valuable to lose with them being down to only one cow. She would be kept till either the cow passed away, or till they could start bringing in more useful animals. And everyone else that freaks out too much or fights back would then be put to slaughter. The children possibly may be spared if they believed they could raise them to accept this new way of life

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• JI

  @JitteryJackanape · 1 year ago

  If Mark actually died, sure i can see the argument in the zombie apocalypse for it. But Mark didnt die and was being kept alive to take pieces of one at a time. Danny begs you to keep him alive so the meat doesn&apos;t spoil. <br><br>It would be one thing to eat someone who is dead. But to keep a person alive and slowly kill him is even more evil and ruthless then cannibalism itself i would think. You wouldn&apos;t even do cattle like that. <br><br>Also, you gotta kill Larry in the meatlocker. We saw a man turn within like 2 minutes in this exact same episode. CPR doesn&apos;t work like that. Larry probably would&apos;ve thanked Kenny if he could because he would&apos;ve immediately killed his daughter as a walker. Kenny was 100% right to preserve the group. He was unconscious having a heart attack and his adrenaline was through the roof. Walkers have turned as fast as 30 seconds in twd because of rage or adrenaline. Shane Walsh is a prime example. Larry would&apos;ve reanimated quickly after his heart stopped. You prevent that no matter what.

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• CR

  @crazymartin526 · 1 year ago

  I think the reason they didn&apos;t use Maybelle for milk may be because cows only produce milk after they have a baby, Maybelle was pregnant and about to give birth, which means she wasn&apos;t producing any milk at the time.

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