If a reckless scientist created a virus that
turned you into a zombie vampire determined
to destroy humanity, what would you do?
I know i’m going in reverse order with this
one, but I'll have the How to Beat the Darkseekers
video coming out soon.
In this How to Beat video, we’ll follow
the Darkseekers, see if we can make better
decisions, and ultimately attempt to beat
Dr. Neville and the survivors in, I am Legend.
If you think you have a better way, let me
know in the comments!
If you like these how to beat videos, consider
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We start out following the remaining Darkseekers
surviving in Manhattan, 3 years after being
infected with the Krippin Virus.
The virus has altered their bodies and minds
significantly at this point, so we need to
better understand their physiology and psychology
in order to make reasonable recommendations.
Physically, the Darkseekers are formidable.
Their bodies constantly release adrenaline,
which increases strength and speed due to
the extra blood and oxygen flow to muscles,
it dilates pupils for better night vision
and focus, as well as quickens reflexes.
Their main weakness is their severe intolerance
to UV radiation, which is fatal within seconds.
Mentally, the Darkseekers are a bit all over.
At first glance, it seems like they are mindless
killing machines determined to destroy what’s
left of humanity.
But later in the movie, when one of the Darkseekers
replicates a snare trap that Neville previously
used against them, and successfully baits
Neville into it, it shows that the Darkseekers
can learn, replicate, strategize, and plan.
In the alternate ending, the Alpha Darkseeker
and his tribe let’s Neville live after he
returns his wife to him.
This reveals that the infected have the social
capacity to form hierarchies and relationships,
as well as make peace with enemies.
The Darkseekers didn’t seem to be able to
use weapons, drive vehicles, or use complex
tools, so despite them being smarter than
we thought, they still aren’t even remotely
at a human intelligence level.
In the book, it’s more varied and complicated.
Neville finds a woman in broad daylight and
forms a romantic relationship with her, only
to find out she was actually a Darkseeker
sent to spy on him.
She reveals to Neville that when the dead
were infected, they were reanimated into mindless
killing machines.
But when the living were infected, those that
didn’t immediately perish retained much
more of their human characteristics and intelligence.
She also reveals that they had developed medication
that diminishes the worst of their symptoms,
which might be why she was able to deceive
him so well.
The novel Darkseekers ultimately capture,
jail, and execute him for his crimes against
their species.
Before Neville’s life is ended, he finally
realizes that from their perspective, he was
the evil one for murdering and experimenting
on thousands of them in an attempt to find
a cure.
Since we’re talking about the 2007 movie,
but also since this would be boring if they
only had the intelligence of a hyena, let’s
assume we’re dealing with the enraged neanderthal
or early homosapien variety of Darkseekers.
They can use some tools, learn by observation,
possess relatively long-term memory, have
limited speech and language, some social structure,
the ability to domesticate and cooperate with
animals, are minimally innovative, and are
carnivorous predators who can hunt well.
One day, you're huddled up with your fam,
catching some z’s, and some dude busts in
with his gat and guns down your bro who's
having a midnight snack, then abducts your
girl before riding off into the sunset in
his supercharged stang.
What would you do?
It’s gonna get dark here for a bit, sorry.
According to the National Criminal Justice
Reference Service, the survival rate for abductees
at different time periods is not good.
Abductees not found within 1 hour have a 44%
chance of being dead, 74% within 3 hours,
91% within 24 hours, and within 7 days, are
almost guaranteed to be dead.
Considering they are dealing with an armed
man, who’s probably been abducting, experimenting
on, and killing other Darkseekers for years,
you already know this.
You could throw a tarp over your head and
bum rush Neville right then and there, but
he’d just blast you with his AR-15 before
you could get close.
Your Darkseeker girlfriend will probably be
dead by the time you find Neville.
If you can find her within a few days, there’s
a slight chance she’ll still be alive.
But unfortunately it’s more likely that
you’re only going to get revenge for her
murder.
Neville takes off after abducting your girl.
You need to hunt this guy down asap.
Problem is, he only comes out during the day
where there’s an abundance of the sunlight
which kills you in seconds.
You don’t know where this guy lives, but
you've probably seen or heard him roaming
around on the daily, so it’s safe to say
he lives around here.
Still, Manhattan’s a large area.
First thing, round up your crew.
If you’re going to find a needle in a haystack,
you need a lot of scouts, and you need to
start communicating with other Darkseekers
around the city.
Dr. Neville already ran the numbers in the
movie.
Based on infection rates, fatality rates,
and the percentage of the population that
was immune, there are roughly 588 million
Darkseekers in the world.
In 2007, there were around 1.5 million people
living in Manhattan out of 6.6 billion worldwide.
Manhattan made up 0.0002 of the world's population.
That means well over 120,000 Darkseekers are
surviving in Manhattan with Neville.
Since Manhattan was ground zero, this number
is probably higher.
Maybe over the years some died along the way
from starvation, but there would’ve been
a lot of humans, corpses, food, and animals
to eat.
There are 262 city blocks in Manhattan, so
there are roughly 5-600 Darkseekers residing
in every city block of Manhattan.
Someone had to have spotted Neville returning
home.
Maybe nobody knew where he was, they were
too afraid of Neville, or they just can’t
communicate very well.
How else could you find him with just your
squad?
You could use your domesticated darkseeker
dogs to track him down as well.
In the movie, Darkseekers had an enhanced
sense of smell, to the point that Neville
had to use vinegar to block his scent trail
up to his house.
While darkseekers cooperating with infected
dogs seems odd, if we’re assuming they have
the intelligence of Neanderthals or early-homosapiens
it’s actually realistic.
According to National Geographic, early homo-sapiens
and Neanderthals did form dog-human alliances.
This was because the dog’s could track and
find the prey better than humans, and the
humans could kill it from a distance, avoiding
a risky close encounter for the dog.
All you’d need is for the infected dog to
get a whiff of something Neville encountered,
like the music store, pier, golfing spot,
etc., then start tracking the scent.
You could also have the dog track the scent
of your girl, which may be stronger considering
nobodies taking showers.
An uninfected bloodhound can track a scent
up to 130 miles away, that’s ten times as
far as Manhattan is long.
The Discovery show’s Mythbusters proved
that a bloodhound could pretty much track
your scent down no matter what you did, meaning
Neville’s vinegar wouldn’t have done shit
to stop a KV infected dog from finding him.
If you had domesticated a KV infected dog,
you should employ them to track Neville down
as soon the sun goes down.
They’d likely find Neville within the night.
It’s also distinctly possible that you don’t
have KV infected dogs that you’ve domesticated
and trained to track humans down, what could
you do then?
Neville isn’t being stealthy.
Maybe he was at the start of the outbreak,
but the combination of complacency and mental
decline has caused Neville to be very obvious
about his movements and patterns.
He’s driving a gas-guzzling truck with the
windows down blasting Bob Marley, and that’s
when he’s not ripping through town in a
bright red supercharged V8 Shelby Mustang,
blasting his rifle at deer.
Those sounds are gonna carry and echo through
the lifeless city.
But just hearing him go for a cruise around
town or golfing won’t help you find his
home though.
You’d want to go to the top of the tallest
buildings in Manhattan to scout and observe
his movements during the day.
The Empire State Building, One World Trade
Center, and Central Park Tower are good ones
to start with as they will give you varied
vantage points over all parts of Manhattan.
During the day, the intense UV can bounce
off of surfaces and get reflected into your
eyes.
Given our vulnerability to UV rays, and that
due to the adrenaline dumping into your body,
your pupils will be fully dilated as well,
you could be blinded by looking out of windows
during high noon.
I’d say that wearing polarized sunglasses
with UV protection would work, but that may
be asking too much from the Neanderthal brained
Darkseekers.
It might be more reasonable to recommend that
you scout from the top of the buildings when
the sun is low.
To better hear his movements without the window
barrier, you could use tarps to pitch a tent
on the rooftop while wearing lots of clothing
to eliminate the UV exposure.
Since he wouldn’t want to be out past dark
where he’s most vulnerable, listening and
watching for where he is driving at sundown
would give us a general location.
I’d wager that he lives in the residential
areas with less of a dense population of Darkseekers
around, as well as smaller, more securable
buildings.
He wouldn’t want to be in an apartment building,
because there is no way to secure all the
entrances.
This means either Upper West Side, Upper East
Side, Greenwich Village, East Village, or
somewhere similar.
He might even live in New Jersey, or one of
the other boroughs, but that should be the
easiest thing to cross off by observing from
the building tops if he crossed the bridges,
or based on which bridges were blown.
I’m not sure if the Darkseeker’s brains
retained enough grooves and folds to understand
this, but simply tracking his movements would
be enough to locate him.
From the tower tops, it’s likely you would
see him at the South Street Seaport pier everyday
at the bottom of Manhattan, golfing off the
USS intrepid in the middle of Manhattan, and
possibly driving up to the The Metropolitan
Museum of Art to fish nearer the top of Manhattan.
The Darkseekers wouldn’t know the names,
but they’d know the locations.
We’d see that he didn’t cross any of the
intact bridges.
Most importantly, with time, we’d see or
hear his vehicle coming from and returning
to somewhere in the Greenwich Village region
at sundown.
Then, it’s just a matter of hiding out in
closer and closer buildings until you’re
pretty much on top of him.
It shouldn’t take more than a few days for
this whole process, maybe a week.
Like we said earlier, your girl that Neville
abducted is likely dead by this point, but
there isn’t really a faster way to find
him as far as I can tell.
To narrow down where his actual home is, you
can search for his truck at night.
It should be one of the only ones without
weeds growing on it and clear windows.
It’s likely he parked his truck close to
where he lives, and wouldn’t use any underground
parking because it’s too dangerous with
the lack of sunlight.
Once you find his car, hide in one of the
nearby buildings and see which apartment door
he comes out of the next morning.
Once you know his exact apartment, you can
figure out how to get to him.
You need to tread with caution and scout him
out to see his weapons, setup, patterns, etc.
Even though you could overpower him toe to
toe, he’s got an immense firepower advantage,
wielding weapons that you aren’t capable
of wielding.
He’s also inherently smarter than you.
He’ll routinely check the condition of any
defenses he’s constructed, like his IEDs
and UV lights in the park, which you’ll
now know about by scouting him out.
You might not know what they are exactly,
but you could reasonably guess it’s harmful
to you.
Time is of the essence, so skipping this step
is probably necessary if you want any chance
of finding her alive.
If you watched my TAU video, you know where
i’m going.
I’d recommend having you and your darkseeker
crew sneak into the unsecured adjacent apartment
at night, then in the morning when he leaves,
break into his house from within the building,
save your girl, then and lie in wait.
When he comes back home at sundown, he won’t
know that anything is wrong.
As soon as he opens the door, jump him.
That should be game over.
There are a few other methods and strategies
you could try too.
You could use clothing to cover yourself from
UV rays and attack him during the day, but
it’s unwise and risky.
1 clothing mishap when you’re chasing or
fighting him and you’re dead, and during
the day he’s always armed.
I’m not sure how it would help, but you
could use the sewer system to travel by day
if need be.
If this happened in the winter with recent
snow, tracking him would be incredibly easy.
All you have to do is find and follow the
truck tires or footprints.
You could try to use traps, like in the movie,
but it’s a bit risky.
When the Alpha Darkseeker trapped Neville,
they almost got him, but they did get lucky
that Neville was there at the right time,
hit his head knocking him unconscious, then
stuck himself with his own knife.
If Neville got snared midday or didn’t get
knocked unconscious, he’d have gotten out
of the trap in time.
In either of those circumstances, he will
realize you're more intelligent and threatening
than he previously thought, and he’ll be
more on guard.
Their trap partially works, causing the death
of his dog, but Neville does escape.
The next night, it appears that Neville is
sitting at his desk on the pier.
It should’ve been obvious that it’s a
trap.
You know that this guy will not be out at
night chilling on the pier when he’s most
vulnerable, and if he is, he’s got plans
for you.
Don’t engage him.
You need Neville alive, so he can take you
back to his home where he took your girl.
If you kill him, or cause him to suicide himself
with a grenade, you’ll never find her.
Just wait until he goes home and then kill
him.
The Alpha almost captures Neville alive, but
another survivor rescues him.
Luckily for us, she accidentally leads the
Darkseekers back to his home.
The frontal charge while screaming is scary,
no doubt, but it’s incredibly dangerous
because now this dude knows you’re coming.
This guy probably has defenses set up.
Attacking from the rear of the building, the
rooftop, or breaking through the adjacent
building is safer, because there is more cover.
This hasty charge cost them a lot of lives.
Eventually, they corner Neville in the basement,
where he pulls a grenade out.
This is hard to counter because the darkseekers
might not understand it’s a grenade.
It’s safe to say they don’t, so them getting
blown to pieces was unavoidable.
To make it interesting, say you, the Alpha
Darkseeker, did recognize it as a m67 fragmentation
grenade from a barely accessible memory of
before the outbreak when you played call of
duty too much.
You should back off immediately and find a
new plan, because confronting Neville will
just cause him to bomb you and your girl.
Once Neville let the grenade spoon fly, all
hope of saving your girl is gone.
The grenade fuze is activated, and in 4 seconds
anything within 5 meters will be destroyed.
According to Quora, here’s what you should
do.
Dive behind nearby cover immediately.
If you can pull a table over then do it, but
if you need to take a step to reach the table,
forget it.
Lay face down with your feet toward the explosive.
Cross your feet at the ankles to avoid exposing
more sensitive areas.
Cover your head with hands, and use your forearms
to cover your ears.
Lastly, open your mouth slightly to equalize
any pressure from the blast concussion.
Yah I know, there’s no way the darkseekers
would know this either, but it doesn’t matter
anyways because after Neville dived into your
horde of darkseekers, he will be shocked when
the grenade doesn’t make a bang and he’s
still alive, because the grenade was an inert
dummy grenade as indicated by the blue spoon.
You can now get your revenge, and your girl
can be saved.
Sure she has a barely working cure in her
system, but it’s likely it doesn’t work,
the virus mutates infecting her again, or
her constant exposure to you reinfects her.
Let’s recap how things could’ve gone down
differently.
To be honest, they shouldn’t have let a
threat like Neville live as long as he did.
They should have hunted him down and killed
him the first chance they had, especially
when he was abducting them left and right,
preventing this whole situation from happening.
Killing Neville earlier on would’ve prevented
you, your wife, and your friends from dying
and prevented a cure from falling into the
uninfected’s hands.
Anna and Ethan would’ve gone to Vermont
to the survivor group and survived either
way.
The Alpha Darkseeker got lucky that his trap
worked on Neville, that Neville lost it mentally
and his rescuer led them back to his home,
and that his darkseeker girl was still alive.
None of these things were reliable or probable.
Their plan seemed to be working, but their
hastiness led to a confrontation where Neville
fragged everyone, with Anna and Ethan being
the only survivors.
Realistically, if Neville abducted your girl,
well, it’s likely she’d be dead before
you could find her, even with all our strategies.
With our help, the Alpha Darkseeker could’ve
prevented his death and a lot of darkseeker
casualties by sneaking into Neville’s home
when he left in the morning.
I’d say that we could ultimately beat Dr.
Neville, but just not in time to save your
girl.
Thanks for watching, and remember, if the
evil man that invaded your domicile started
rigging shit up, and put a juicy blood vial
on a blanket at the entrance with ropes and
pulleys all around it, just ignore it, ok,
it’s obviously a trap.
