While some creative minds in Hollywood like to build up a wall of “Use Your Own Interpretation” around their works, The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman is almost always willing to give fans insight into the post-apocalyptic world of both his comics and the TV series. And fans will ask Kirkman ANYTHING, even when the subject matter involves banging would-be zombies.
Someone wrote in to the Letter Hacks section of The Walking Dead #134 recently and asked if someone infected by a zombie bite would then pass on the disease to someone else by having sex with them. (It takes all kinds.) Here’s how Kirkman explained it, probably while passing that person’s information on to some kind of authorities.
If you had a septic wound that was infecting your blood stream, would you pass that infection through sex? No. So…having sex with someone after they’ve been bitten…much like eating a living human’s flesh after they’ve been bitten (show reference…to a thing that happened years ago in the comic) has no effect on you.
Makes sense to me, for the most part, although there are still plenty of diseases that DO get passed through sex; it’s a feasible question. So I guess the only way anyone has to worry about getting zombified from sex is by getting down and dirty with a bitten person for so long that they die and are then reincarnated, at which point they’d bite and infect their partner. Coincidentally, that’s exactly how I want Carl to lose his virginity, with Rick knocked out on the couch.
The flesh-eating comment Kirkman made in the quote was in reference to the fate of Bob, who watched Gareth and the rest of the Terminus crew chowing down on his amputated and infected leg. Granted, Gareth met a much more gruesome ending and we never really got to see if the cannibalized leg meat would affect him. But now we know that the series is also on board with Kirkman’s infection ideals.
I’m guessing we can also infer that one cannot get walker-itis from using the same dirty needle as a bitten person, nor can one catch it from a toilet seat. I’m not sure why anyone would be worried about that anyway. People on The Walking Dead have a far, far greater chance of being killed by another full-faculty human being over getting turned into a walker. Perhaps they’ll head to a Red Light District when Season 5 returns on February 8.
