An Accurate Generalized Timeline of The Walking Dead.

Before we get into it, I know the wiki has a “dated” timeline, but it’s dated as “At least this many days have passed, possibly more” and doesn’t really take into account generalized markers of time passing that the show has put into it. As a fic writer, I really prefer having something more accurate. And the wiki one only really takes into account stated passage of time (a character references that x number of days have passed since z event, but not how much between y event and z event). So as of end of season 8, “At least” 618 days have passed. 

But accounting for generalized time markers, it’s been two years and one month since the global outbreak of the Wildfire (walker) Virus. That’s 760 days.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

August 1st - Global Outbreak : Fear the Walking Dead (FTWD) references the outbreak happening in August of 2010. There are signs on the school walls with “August 10″ being referenced and since it’s a school, it’s likely those are future dates. We know it started in 2010 because of Season 2 of FTWD explicitly stating it’s 2010 during the episode “Date of Death”

As a “Generalized Timeline” we need a date to start with and since it likely started before August 10th, we’re going to set it at August 1st just to have a close and nearly accurate start date.

Mid September - Lori becomes pregnant : But she won’t find out until she skips her period in Early/Mid-October. We can assume it happened Mid-September because if she skipped her period in September she’d have already been worried about it during Season 1 and she wasn’t.

September 28-October 2nd - Majority of Season 1

October 2nd - Atlanta Group Arrives at the CDC : The day they arrive at the CDC, Jenner says the Global Outbreak happened “63″ days ago. 

October 6th - Atlanta Group Ends up at the Greene Farm : So far the references and accounting of days is easy to keep up with. So about a week into October they’re at the farm.

October 7th-End of October - Season 2 : They’re on the farm for about two and a half weeks or so before Shane tries to kill Rick and the Herd shows up and they burn the farm house down. So we’re just going to generalize to “End of October”

End of October 2010-Mid-June 2011 : Timeskip between Season 2 and 3

June 2011 - Roughly First Week - Arrival at the Prison : Hershal references Lori as being about a month overdue when they get to the prison and about a week later Judith is born. Mid-June is ten months after a conception date of Mid-September. Minus a week gets them arriving at the prison around the end of the first week of June.

June-July 2011 - Season 3 : Season three lasts about 20 days or so.

Everything Good so far? Great! Now it’s time to skip ahead to Season 7 and start counting backwards! 

But don’t worry, we’ll still keep the timeline going forward, it’s just that all the references will be coming from future dates starting in Season 7

July 2011-May 2012 - Time Skip between Season 3 and 4 : We come to this by counting backwards from Maggie’s reference in Season 7′s “Something They Need” to preparing the Hilltop crops for winter.

Second week of May 2012 - Season 4 Starts : The first half of Season 4 is about a week long starting with the ominous outbreak of flu and ending with the Governor rolling up to kill them all while folks are still recovering.

Mid-May 2012 - The Governor Returns and the Prison is Abandoned/Season 4B begins : The back half of season 4 is about a week long, ending with Team Family in almost it’s entirety captured by Terminus. Season 5 picks up immediately where Season 4 ends.

Late May 2012 - Team Family Escapes Terminus, Tracks down Beth, and Season 5 Begins : The first half of season 5 only takes place across the span of 4 to 5 days. So Late May it is!

Beginning of June 2012 - Team Family leaves Atlanta after having to say good bye to Beth - It takes about two and a half weeks to travel from Atlanta to Richmond to Alexandria - in large part because they ran out of gas about 60 miles outside of DC and had to start walking. Fortunately, they catch the attention of Aaron…

Mid-to-Late June 2012 - Team Family Arrive in Alexandria/Season 5B starts : Team Family meet Aaron/arrive in Alexandria roughly two weeks before Morgan shows up. Also, Judith turns 1! Yay! First Birthday!

First/Second week of July 2012 - Morgan shows up/End of Season 5, Start of Season 6 : Morgan arrives at Alexandria about a week before the Mega Herd stuff happens. We are given reference to this week passing through the black and white flashbacks that show meetings, planning, and preparation before the first trial run that ended up being the actual run.

Mid-July 2012 - The Mega Herd/Dwight/Blowing up Negan’s Men : Leading the Mega Herd and getting robbed by Dwight happened about a month and a half before Team Family met Jesus (see next entry). And the events of the first half of Season 6 occur across the course of two days.

Mid-July 2012-Last week of August 2012 - Mid-Season 6 Time Skip : Lauren Cohen said they’d been told two months had passed since the Herd in an official interview, while in-universe Abraham summed up the time since then as “a month back”. Splitting the difference we’ll put it at a month and a half for our Generalized timeline.

Last Week of August 2012 - Team Family Meets Jesus and Takes out the Saviors Satellite Outpost for The Hilltop : This event takes place about a week before the Lineup.

September 2012-First Week - Negan Sets up the Line up and Kills Abraham and Glenn/End of Season 6, Beginning of Season 7 : This event occurs about two weeks, maybe two and a half? before “Something they need”. Season 7 isn’t all that long. Official Sources (interview with Gale Anne Herd I believe) say Season 7 only lasted about 19 days.

Mid-to-Late September 2012 - “Something They Need” : Maggie tells Eduardo they need to prepare the crops for the coming winter. Depending on the crops, farmers and gardeners tend to start doing this mid-September in to early October with mid-to-late October being the final harvest. Since we know it was pretty warm just a few weeks back, it’s safe to say this occurs in mid-to-Late September.

Why only a year after Season 3? Because Judith is only about a year old. So only one winter has passed between the end of Season 3 and Season 7.

We can begin counting forwards again!

September 2012-Last Week - End of Season 7/All of Season 8 : Season 8 took place across like, a week. It was a very intense week, but at best it was 8 days. So last week of September.

And ta-da! Two years and one month as of the end of September 2012 since the Outbreak went global!

Hope you enjoyed and that it helps.

For fun: Ages!

Daryl is either 42 or 43 as his age was Norman’s age at the start of filming (i.e. 40) and only 2 years have passed. So depending on his date of birth…

Beth most likely had a winter birthday since she was 16 at the farm in October 2010, but 18 when she died in May 2012.

Carl was 14 when he died since he was 12 during Season 1 & 2 in October 2010 and didn’t live past September 2012. He was likely a late fall/early winter Birthday and only a couple months shy of turning 15.

Maggie’s Birthday is probably sometime between November and April as she was 22 during Season 2, 23 during Season 3, and 24 at the start of Season 4. 

Carol is around 48-49 years old since Melissa started filming around age 46.

Ezekiel is around 43-44 Years old since Khary’s character was introduced in season 7 and the actor is now 45.

Rick Grimes is about 38-39 years old since Andrew started filming when he was 36 or so.

Michonne was introduced when Danai was 35 in season 3 so her character is only 36, potentially 37 depending on birthdate.

Glenn was about 27-28 when he died because Steven Yeun started filming when he was around 25.

All other character ages (save for Judith cause she’s like, a year old now and has had several actor changes) can be figured in this manner. Just take the age the actor was at when they joined the show, and add the number of in-canon years since their first appearance. If it’s anywhere between season 5-8, they’re probably the same age as when the actor first started filming, unless otherwise explicitly stated. Such as with Beth and Maggie.

Richard

i still laugh at this