The Walking Dead: What Would YOU Do?

On Sunday’s Fear The Walking Dead, we saw the sort of brutal decisions people must make in a zombie apocalypse. They may be bad, but…what would YOU do?

I watched Sunday’s episode of Fear The Walking Dead yesterday morning. Immediately, I found myself horrified (Seriously, this might have been the scariest part yet in the series) as I watched hotel manager Elena Reyes lock a wedding party of several dozen people in a reception hall with an infected.

As I watched this, my first thought was how despicable I thought Elena was. She didn’t even try to get some of the wedding party out. Instead, opting to abandon them as they begged for help, knowing full well what their fate was going to be.

My second thought? How much this reminded me of one of my favorite characters in The Walking Dead, Father Gabriel, and his decision not to unlock the doors of his church; both cases had the same result: The people on the locked side of the door found themselves trapped, at the mercy of creatures who had none.

And…that’s where I left it for a while, as I collected info for this week’s installment of Things To Note.

But, then, as Elena and Alicia passed through the reception hall, she revealed to Alicia the dilemma she was presented with:

The hotel was at capacity, she had a responsibility to the other guests, and neither she nor Hector could reach a doctor; Elena figured keep the wedding party quarantined until help arrived.

…That help never came.

As they waited for help, God only knows how many of the wedding party were attacked, bitten, succumbed to the infection, turned, and attacked others. It was something Elena clearly regretted, yet, ultimately, had no power to prevent or change.

That’s when I started thinking again about Father Gabriel.

Father Gabriel

Not long after Elena doomed Oscar and Jessica’s wedding party, Father Gabriel was committing his own sin.

While preparing for the night, his parishioners arrived at the doors of his church, looking for sanctuary. The congregation pounded on his doors, looking for Gabriel to help, but instead, attracted walkers; They cried out and banged on his doors, but, he never opened them, and they were consumed by the dead.

Father Gabriel’s actions weren’t much different than Elena’s, and, much like Elena, it seemed that he had no options.

The way Gabriel explained it to The Group, it sounds like the arrival of the walkers came not long after that of his congregation, giving him little time to help. He couldn’t see through the doors, and had no way of telling how many walkers there were or how close; He didn’t know if, in attempting to save his flock, he’d end up condemning them, trapping them inside his church as the herd followed in behind them.

Now, after thinking about all of that, about the circumstances Elena and Father Gabriel had to consider, a question popped into my head: Can ANY OF US say we’d have done anything differently? If WE found ourselves having to make a potentially life-or-death decision right there on the spot, what would WE do?

The Walking Dilemma

It’s wicked easy to criticize someone for making a decision that doesn’t go very smoothly, but, how many of us have actually been in a circumstance where we have to make a life-or-death choice, right there on the spot?

These are the situations Elena and Father Gabriel found themselves in, and, for the most part, they’re the only individuals we’ve come across so far in The Walking Dead or Fear the Walking Dead who had to make such decisions when the apocalypse was at its worse, and the populace was the most unprepared for it.

Which brings me back to my question: If you found yourself in a burgeoning zombie apocalypse, and forced on the spot to make a decision which may get some people killed, or, get you or more people killed, what would you do?

Circumstances like this, I imagine, would, sadly, be very common at the onset of a zombie apocalypse; People would be behaving normally, only to have the undead thrust upon them, and be completely unprepared for them. A great many people would fall prey to the dead before they even knew what hit them.

There wouldn’t be an easy answer, and there wouldn’t really be a “win” to such a choice; You’d just have pick the proverbial “Lesser of two evils”…and hope you could live with it.

So, let’s just all hope we never have to make such a choice.

What do you guys think? Do you think such choices would be a no-brainer? Do you think you could make such a decision? And, if you did, do you think you could live with it? Let me know in the comments!

Next: The Walking Dead: The Walking Dilemma

And, of course, if you appreciated this, and care to hear my ideas on how to survive a zombie apocalypse, you can always pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can also find it on Kindle here, and, on iTunes here!