The Walking Dead Survival Rule Of The Week: The Time To Fight

This week’s episode of The Walking Dead showed not only Rick, but all of us, that sometimes, you have no choice but to fight.

Last night, we saw another great midseason finale from The Walking Dead, where all of the little side stories we’d been seeing over the past few episodes (Except for Heath’s whereabouts) were tied together.

We saw Rick and Aaron successfully retrieve the goods from the houseboat, though not without trouble, including Aaron getting beat up by The Saviors just for the sake of it.

Maggie was becoming acclimated to The Hilltop, and it to her in turn, thanks to her heroics in dealing with Simon’s “message”.

Morgan and Carol where pressured by Richard to convince Ezekiel to declare war on The Saviors, citing the fact they could re-neg at any time and attack The Kingdom.

Spencer made his play to usurp Rick…only to get gutted, literally, by Negan. Rosita, meanwhile got her chance to shoot Negan, but missed and only hit Lucille instead.

And Michonne found Negan…sort of. What she found was a large battalion of Saviors, and, as her Savior guide informed her, “We’re ALL Negan.”

All of this together led The Group (And by extension, us) to one simple conclusion:

In A Zombie Apocalypse, You HAVE TO FIGHT

In a zombie apocalypse, as Rick and company were so clearly reminded last night, zombies will not be your only or even necessarily your biggest threat: People will often prove far more deadly.

With enough time, numbers, and coordination, a group of hostiles can prove to be an extremely lethal threat. While zombies can obviously swarm you, they can’t set traps, they can’t plan, they can’t be wantonly cruel or malicious.

But people? They can. And, sadly, they probably will. History is littered with displays of human cruelty, why should a zombie apocalypse be any different?

Hostiles can extort you, they can rob you, they can rape you, they destroy your home, they can torture you, and they can selectively (And in the cruelest manner they can conceive of) kill not just you, but the people you care about.

Furthermore, if a group of hostiles decides to do such things, how will you (And, it will be you who has to) stop them?

Will you negotiate with them? History has shown us how well that has worked out, too: In the Dark Ages, The Vikings made a fortune extorting kingdoms of all their money on the promise to not attack — a promise they would, eventually, break. The Nazis, too, famously made pacts to not attack other countries, only to, inevitably, break them, and launch The Blitz.

The fact is, no matter what deal you make with hostiles, it hinges entirely on their willingness to uphold their end of it.

If they believe they’re strong enough to extort you in the first place, what’s to stop them from simply taking what they want?

…Nothing.

Any time they tire of dealing with you, they can launch an attack, wipe you out, and take what they wanted all along. Simple as that. Living under the gun in perpetuity like that is not living…it’s slavery.

This brings me to my point. Negotiating with hostiles is not really an option. Despite what some people may want to believe, in a zombie apocalypse, violence is the solution.

Now, as I mentioned last week, you can’t go into a fight with hostiles half-cocked, you need a plan, but, regardless, you do need to fight.

You can’t let yourself become hostage to hostiles. This is doubly true when they can simply kill you on a whim.

With subjugation and death possibly looming over at anytime, if you have the means to resist it, you owe it to yourself to do just that.

Fighting hostiles on a large scale will not be easy, The Group’s predicament in The Walking Dead shows that, but, really, is there an alternative?

No. No, there isn’t.

There are times to run and times to fight in a zombie apocalypse, when faced with subjugation from hostiles…it’s time to fight.

Next: The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Have A Backup Plan

And that’s our survival rule of the week!! Hopefully, it will help you should you ever need it and give you that mental edge that will prove so crucial once the dead start eating everyone.

If you like this and want to find out more rules to survive the zombie apocalypse, why not pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can get it on Kindle here and on iTunes here!