Rick rides into Zombie Atlanta
This will not be a Mad Men-style, 50 Shades of Gray-style, or Woody Allen-style posing guide for a city. No. Here we will not go to cafes or shops. We won't even sleep in any hotel. This guide is only suitable for motivated , that they are not freaks, that they know how to see in their next American trip the opportunity to set foot on the locations of the zombie series par excellence (in addition to Dead Set ). So we landed in georgia. And reeking of rot.
Few series starts are so disheartening. You wake up one day in a hospital and the world is no longer a world. You have lived, without knowing it, in a security bubble in an insane, inhuman environment. And you realize, with your robe open at the bottom, that your only company are zombies. That's how the sheriff Rick Grimes wakes up after a period in a coma without knowing what has happened to the world and that's how we got hooked on The Walking Dead , in a king county hospital , Ga. There is no such city. It is a poetic license of the creators of the series (rather, of the original comic) but the hospital where the episode was recorded does exist, which turns out to be, in reality, the Atlanta Union Mission (ironically, a Christian social center for the homeless of the city of Atlanta).
Rick waking up to the new world at Atlanta Union Mission
It is not easy to know that you are one of the few alive (healthy) in this world. So when Rick learns that Atlanta is home to the CDC (Center for Disease Control, Center for Disease Control) he feels that his family (and his salvation) can be found in the city. He arrives at the devastated city, mounted on the back of a horse (Rick is epic, first of all) by the Highway 85 and he realizes that Atlanta is not safe at all.
Target: Atlanta
Rick is saved from a horde of zombies by (oh, coincidence) the group of survivors of his wife and son and led by Shane, Rick's former sheriff partner and at the time lover of his wife, Lori (there are those who don't walk with little girls ...) . He meets them (great moment, it was time for the poor man to have some joy) in the camp where they live on the outskirts of Atlanta ( at Westside Park, Bellwood Quarry ) . Of course, during the rescue of Rick, Merle Dixon is left on the way (tied to a pipe on the roof of the building Norfolk Southern from the city) . The subsequent rescue mission is a complete failure, attack on the base camp included. That's when getting to the CDC becomes the group's goal and one of the duels of the titans between Rick and Shane.
Arriving at the CDC (and leaving the place realizing that there is nothing to do and that the building is scheduled to self-destruct) is quite an odyssey. Actually, this building is the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center , an arts, educational and cultural center of Atlanta. And he is still alive, kicking and programming.
Merle and company on the roof of the Norfolk Southern Building, Atlanta
The supposed salvation of the first season
All wrong. Or so it seems the end of the second season when we meet another target: Fort Benning , a United States Army installation where it is rumored that they can find a safe place to take shelter, with two rivers that cross its borders and making it a quite desirable place. But they would never make it to Fort Benning...because of traffic jam!
In the Highway 20 in Henry County a pile of cars accumulates on both sides of the road, not allowing the caravan of our living to pass. They are cars of families who tried to flee Atlanta to Fort Benning and never made it. When Daryl, riding his missing brother Merle's motorcycle, finds a way out of the quagmire, the group's caravan breaks down. As they try to search the abandoned cars for parts, a horde of zombies arrives. Panic. The group splits up. Little Sophia disappears. Change of plans: Fort Benning doesn't exist without Sophia.
Henry County Highway 20: Zombie Territory
that's when the forest becomes important , when the group takes refuge in Cochran Mill Nature Center in Palmetto , Georgia, and from where they try to find Sophia, always going back to the car graveyard to check that she hasn't come back on her own. This swampy forest is a natural trap due to its convoluted terrain and, how could it be otherwise, is full of zombie-farmers who wander aimlessly in search of human flesh. Nice! During the search (some people even joke about its duration) they end up in places as curious as the Holy Light Baptist Church that in reality it is the Bethel United Methodist Church in Luther Bailey Road in Senoia . They hear the church bells and, thinking that it could be Sophia's desperate call, they run to meet her to find a few parishioners... Infected, of course. But Sunday dresses.
Daryl in the woods looking for Sophia
Fort Benning does not exist without Sophia and neither does it exist with the son of Lori and Rick injured: Carl is shot in the woods, just at a moment of climax, while observing a healthy, unblemished deer, a remnant of what had once been the world. Otis is the culprit, a man who, realizing his mistake, will take them to the house where he lives with his family to cure him. Hershel Greene's farm.
This 'haven of peace' is where Carl slowly recovers as the two groups try to gain each other's trust and rest to take turns looking for Sophia by Cochran Mill Nature Center (especially Daryl, who becomes obsessed with finding her). The farm turns out to actually exist: it is a private property (located between Highway 85 and Chestlehurst Road in Senoia ), which hasn't stopped fans of the series from searching for locations with cameras in hand.
The Greene Family Farm
But this shelter away from the undead crowd is of little use... **(spoiler) ** because old Hershel's barn keeps more than a few alpacas: it keeps all the zombie-friends-relatives of the Greenes, that these they feed daily waiting for them to resurrect as humans. And **(huge spoiler) ** Sophia is among them. After a back and forth and a non-stop shoot-shoot and whistle, Rick is the one who ends up killing the little zombie. And the crack between the members of the group begins. Of course, there is not much time for reproaches because so much noise has aroused the curiosity of the surrounding zombies that invade the farm causing our (increased) group to go out by legs dividing. It's the 'every man for himself' . And Shane is not saved, of course.
The forest is once again the epicenter, the place of escape for the zombies and the reunion of the living, who seek the car graveyard to reunite everyone. But not all arrive: Andrea is missing. The rest of the group rests in Elders Mill Road, Senoia, next to a waterfall. In the background, a prison.
Elders Mill Road: after the storm comes the calm
Thus we arrive at the third season, with a critical eye on West Central Prison in Zebulon . It is the metaphor made localization: salvation in a zombie world is a prison; confinement and loss of freedom as a form of survival . And in contrast to this prison, an enemy ghetto: Woodbury . This fictitious population (led by the 'Governor') is a kind of civilized and orderly world outside the zombies, protected for 24 hours by its inhabitants who try to maintain order within the chaos. There they arrive **Andrea and the impressive Michonne ** (who rescues her from the forest). Woodbury is actually Senoia (filming takes place between Main Street, Seavy Street, Travis Street and Johnson Street, essentially) . The inhabitants of Senoia have become accustomed to living with the desirable characters (and not so much) of The Walking Dead.
The prison, main setting of the 3rd season
Between wars and invasions between the prison and the ghetto, there is another population that is the protagonist of this last season, another Georgian town that has been involved in the middle of supernatural recording : Grantville It works like King County, we return to the starting town, where the characters from the prison end up going back to look for food, some other memory of a past time and, above all, ammunition. They have to prepare for the great war. And not against zombies, precisely.
The final great battle is slowly simmering between the Woodbury Ghetto, Senoia, and the Zebulon Jail. What will happen in the end ? Either way... Burn Georgia! _* There are routes traced by fans who have gone out in search of locations with camera in hand, marking all the pins of each chapter on the map, like Google Maps of The Walking Dead or this Foursquare.
*** You may also be interested in:** - Mad Men's New York
- Portland and Seattle Beyond 50 Shades of Gray
- The Brooklyn of Girls
- All the articles of María F. Carballo
The 'Governor' of Woodbury: Senoia actually