About these 150,000 survivors in the Scottish Highlands...

It sounds like a serious plot hole. Apparently the storyline about Scotland would never have happened if Terry Nation hadn't walked out. As one critic said, the show ended up being full of continuity problems.

This might be the longest of long shots, but maybe the larger immunity in Scotland had something to do with the colder climate? Consequently, people living in Scotland had better resistance to the plague. Like every other survivor in Britain, they developed the initial symptoms but managed to fight it off. Apparently it's impossible to get a cold in the North Pole because it's too cold for the germs. I feel like a creationist trying to make Noah's Ark sound plausible.

Don't forget that as viewers we're in the same boat as the main characters. Trying to find our way with only a vague idea of what happened and learning as we go.

In reality with a deadly disease there would be places that it wouldn't reach, because by the time it became obvious that such a disease was doing the rounds on that scale, governments would be closing airports/ports, restricting travel, etc.

Could there have been 150,000 people in the rural areas of Scotland? 150,000 sounds a bit over the top, but the basic idea (that there could be larger groups in more isolated areas) is sound.


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I just want sausages and mash and a bit of cake. Not twigs fried in honey or a donkey in a coffin!

I just finished watching the complete series so it's still fresh in my mind...

When they got to Scotland in the last segment of episodes and the "laird" said there were about 150K people still alive there, I had a WTF moment! It's not like Scotland is an island or anything (even in the 70's). The plot went to great pains in the first season to establish how lethal and contagious the virus was, and even in the 2nd and 3rd seasons they're still concerned about it being a killer. It would have decimated every big and moderate sized city in Scotland just like it did everywhere else on the globe, and probably every small hamlet and burgh, too, because people fleeing the cities would have carried it with them.

And when the main characters do reach Scotland, no-one there seems to be taking any precautions at all--they invite everyone into the manor for pints and darts! Seemed like a major fault with the show's runners losing a grip on what their predicament had been and still was, that is, the whole damn premise of the show.



Congrats, IMDb...you finally got around to screwing up the look of the message boards, too!

I doubt they'd survive the plague or be any less exposed to it, no. But at the same time they're remote enough to be far away from the more conventional disease and industrial pollution hazards of the major urban areas, which would probably do much to decimate anyone lucky enough to survive the plague. Being rural dwellers they probably have more idea of what they're doing than a bunch of middle-class urbanite wannabes like most of the main cast.

There's also the reason claimed that they're somehow a bit more traditional and basically base around the laird as authority figure, so it was easy for those that remained to carry on- not too sure how true this is and how much is fancy.

Lots of redheads in Scotland (and Ireland), maybe having the ginger gene could give you a higher immunity to the virus.