Fear The Walking Dead showrunner: No Rick Grimes, no swimming zombies

“They can wade,” Erickson said, presumably while checking “serious discussion about water-bound zombie capabilities vis-a-vis the dog paddle” off his bucket list. “We’ve figured out the best ways to shoot water zombies. They don’t drown. They keep floating back up.” An exclusive clip from the upcoming season showed Nick Clark (Frank Dilane) under water with a zombie floating immediately overhead, so recreational swimming is off the list of activities for the foreseeable future. Instead, the characters will be involved in the tricky business of building trust and alliances among one another—star Kim Dickens mentioned that her character, Madison, has “good instincts to not trust these new characters,” but will nonetheless establish some “uncomfortable alliances that she has to.”

Additionally, those hoping our seafaring adventurers would somehow come across Rick and Michonne, possibly fly-fishing for whales in a hydrofoil (as long as you’re living in fantasy land, just go for it), are going to remain forever disappointed. “No,” Erickson said firmly in response to the possibility of a crossover. “That’s the one straight answer I can give you.” Americans aren’t exactly geography wizards, so perhaps not all viewers realize the odds of people floating on the Pacific Ocean stumbling across a hardy band of survivors on the East coast are slim. They just live in the same universe, and the same zombies rules hold for both shows. (“Anything that has been established in the comics we have to follow,” Erickson stressed.) So there won’t be any decomposing bodies briskly butterfly-stroking towards the boat, and if a horde of zombies envelops them, Madison and company should quickly pull themselves under the nearest dumpster.