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In Game Of Thrones Season 7 Episode 6

Jon Snow bands together with The Brotherhood

to venture beyond the wall and retrieve

a "live" undead specimen to convince Daenerys

of their existence. During the expedition, the band is attacked by a bear. A redshirt dies. Why didn't they simply take this casualty after it turns, instead of risking their lives by going deeper beyond the wall?

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Not all corpses are necessarily resurrected. As we can see, only after a white walker casts some kind of spell, the dead get to walk again. We can see this happening multiple times:

  • In the episode S05E08: Hardhome, after the slaughter at Hardhome, we can see that none of the (fresh) dead have stirred, until the very end, where a White Walker stands on the dock, spreads his arms and looks really evil. Then all the dead rise.

  • In episode S07E07, after Viserion is hauled from the lake, we can see that he as well isn't resurrected by himself, but rather needs a bit of help from the Night King to come to life again.

Both these examples show that the resurrection requires some affimative action from the White Walkers. There is no indication that the 'red shirt' killed by the bear attack would have been resurrected if they brought him down.

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    I don't know... Aren't they concerned about burning the dead to prevent the resurrection that appears to be automatic?
    – Jared Becksfort
    Commented Jan 27, 2018 at 17:57
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    @JaredBecksfort no, burning removes the corpse altogether. This would also prevent white walkers from resurrecting. So that can't really be used as evidence for either, since it fits both.
    – JAD
    Commented Jan 27, 2018 at 18:03
  • Yeah, probably so. I was thinking that in the first season the dead Night's Watch Rangers resurrected spontaneously in Castle Black, but I just read that they had blue eyes when they picked up their frozen bodies, so they may have already been affected by the White Walkers. gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Othor
    – Jared Becksfort
    Commented Jan 28, 2018 at 20:40

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