I've been wondering this for a while now... why Seattle? I mean it's more convenient in terms of temperature than, for example, California or Australia (can you IMAGINE the bodies rotting in the heat *shudder*) but did you have any specific reasons for it?
There were a few reasons we went with Seattle actually!
We didn’t want to have it in a city/region that had been done in zombie stuff before. The south has been done, east coast has been done, midwest has been done, etc. But the northwest was intriguing to us. As far as we know there’s not a Seattle outbreak out there.
They’ve got an ocean on one side and Canada on another, limiting their options. Cause if there’s a virus outbreak you bet your ass the Canadian government would be locking down the border to the north. And the ocean could be salvation or a death trap depending on who you are. This narrows the characters options for movement and resources.
Easy to spread the infection from, hard to get back up to. Its really far away from obvious help but still close to largely populated areas. Government is across the country, most of the military bases in the US are across a desert, and any foreign help would have to go over the Pacific or the whole country. (Or Canada would have to risk the infection getting across the border if it wanted to help.) Its a tricky spot cause its cornered in. But Portland and all the large cities in California are close and connected by heavy traffic highway.
Geographically its got lots of cool things to play with in the setting. Lots of forests @w@, lots of bays and peninsulas, some mountains in the north. It gives us a lot of resources to pull from to incorporate into plot.
The weather makes it suck more for everyone. It’s raining constantly and cold. More hoops to make them all jump through is always good. Like with the bridge in the landslide, and many times they had to hole up in possibly dangerous places because of the rain, it impacts character movement and raises the stakes. (Although, like you pointed out, it does have its upsides).
The color scheme. Northwest has a really cool look. Everything there is pretty vibrant greens, albeit a bit dreary and grey otherwise because of the constant rain and overcast. That’s exactly the feel we wanted with the show (as you can tell from the title cards and such).
Sorry, I always write too much ;w;
If the answer is longer than a paragraph, you know Zoe answered it whoOPS
But I hope that kinda gives you a better idea of why we picked Seattle and the stuff we liked about it specifically.