[quote=@Luminosity]
I didn't get a great sense of what the social situation is, though? Like, there are these zombies for lack of a better word, and we presumably keep them out of the safe zone, or the military does. What about people outside of the safe zone? Do they try to attack it? Or what happened to them all?
[/quote]

The soldiers do indeed kill any zombies who get inside the grounds but, as the building was under reconstruction when the first spores were released, there are safety walls and roofs around all sides of the church except main entrance. Those walls had several points in them where stairs were for entrances but those were blocked off by military built sand bags and blockades. So, while the zombies do assault the walls, the soldiers mostly keep them back and limit gunfire to a minimum as it attracts more of the infected. While looters had attempted to take the safe zone before it was fully established, they didn't quite stand against the soldiers and, as such, their bodies sort of stand as a warning to any other looters. After more infected started to gather around the safe zone, looters and refugees alike started to stop coming to Safe Zone 88. 

Inside the Safe Zone itself, tensions are high as food and water are running low and the civilians aren't quite happy with the soldiers being unwilling to leave. The soldiers believe that they are the one and only line of defense in case of infected or looters. While quite a few civilians believe that the soldiers are right, there is nearly a greater amount who believe they should risk their lives for them. Up until four months before the beginning of this, Safe Zone 88 had connection to six other Safe Zones which were still up an running. It is still their belief that those six safe zones are still running now but nobody has been able to confirm. The occasional gun shot can be heard echoing through the mostly quiet streets so the people of Safe Zone 88 have assumed that there are survivors out there. So, while Safe Zone 88 hasn't confirmed positions of any groups of survivors nor the safety of the other safe zones, they still believe that there are a sizeable amount of people who are still alive in NYC.