The Walking Dead: Survival Rule of The Week

If you’ve been following me long enough, you know I have my own rules to surviving a zombie apocalypse. Today, I use The Walking Dead to teach you one of those rules.

This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a little while, but, I never managed to find the time to do it. Luckily, I was up early today, and last night, we were given a perfect example of a rule that I believe is oh so important to surviving a zombie apocalypse, so, I thought, today is the perfect time to do this.

Oh, and, by the way, ::MAJOR SPOILER ALERTS::, this is your warning.

Rule #38: “Never assume. ANYTHING.”

In a zombie apocalypse, you can not assume anything about your circumstances, especially not when it comes to how easy or safe things are, how they’re going, or how they may be. If you do so, you lull yourself into a false sense of security, which, in turn, makes you extremely vulnerable to both zombies and hostiles, because you’ve entered the situation believing you’re safe, when, in fact, you are far from it.

“…But, WHAT does that have to do with last night’s episode of The Walking Dead?”

I was hoping you might ask that!

Merritt Weaver as Dr. Denise Cloyds, The Walking Dead -- AMC

Merritt Weaver as Dr. Denise Cloyd, The Walking Dead — AMC /

Let’s start with poor Denise. Now, on the face of it, you might assume her death has nothing to do with assuming anything. Well, you would be incorrect.

You see, Denise died because her, Daryl, and Rosita took the train tracks, because they assumed they were safe. They didn’t think that anyone, never mind Dwight, would ambush them as they made their way back to their truck.

Furthermore, part of the reason she died was that she wasted precious time trying to get an orange tonic for Tara. Maybe, had she not done that, they would have passed by before Dwight and company even arrived!

And why? Because she assumed nobody was around to attack her. She believed that while there were walkers, there wasn’t anything around that was real threat. She assumed that she was safe. Sadly, she was wrong, and it cost her her life.

Josh McDermitt as Eugene Porter, Austin Amelio as Dwight, The Walking Dead — AMC /

Of course, Denise wasn’t the only person to learn Rule #38 on last night’s The Walking Dead. Dwight also got a painful lesson about not making assumptions…when Eugene chomped on his junk.

And why did that happen? Because, quite frankly, Dwight assumed that Eugene was harmless and would never make an attempt to attack him, of course…Eugene did. In probably the most painful way imaginable.

By assuming Eugene was harmless, Dwight underestimated both how intelligent Eugene was and how capable he was, leaving himself (And a rather sensitive area of his body) extremely vulnerable to Eugene’s attack…much to his chagrin, and gave Daryl, Abraham, and Rosita the opening they needed to repel Dwight’s attack, and take out several of his men.