The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Recklessness

To survive a zombie apocalypse, you need to act, but, you shouldn’t be reckless. That gets people killed. On Sunday’s Walking Dead, that’s almost what we saw.

Survival, whether you’re in a zombie apocalypse or not, requires being careful. Now, no, I’m not saying you should walk on eggshells your entire life, but, what I am saying is that you can’t afford to be reckless.

Recklessness is what causes people to tailgate tractor-trailers at eighty miles an hour, while, in a zombie apocalypse, it causes people to take risks they really don’t need to, and make the chances of them getting eaten by zombies skyrocket.

You see, the problem with being reckless in a zombie apocalypse, as opposed to now, is that, well, there’s zombies. All it takes is one hasty decision, one careless shot fired, one bad idea, to get yourself eaten alive by a horde of walking corpses or killed by new age barbarians.

Let’s take Rosita for example. During Sunday’s Walking Dead, she decided to go off to look for guns…by herself.

What if she had run into a detachment of Saviors (Like Rick and Michonne did)? What would she have done? Run? Try to fight them? While she could have, if they were armed, or heard her coming, those plans would collapse real quick.

And then there’s what actually happened: While reaching for a gun, she nearly gets jumped by a walker. Sure, she managed to hack it to death, but, its bloated physique made doing so much tougher than it should have been.

And all of that…for a toy gun.

Rosita could have mitigated her problems had she simply insisted Tara or Aaron come with her as backup!

But, let’s not forget Rick’s total dearth of judgment in this episode!

There he was, battling a gang of walkers at The Carnival Of Doom, when he decides to stop, climb a Ferris wheel and try to shoot a deer.

…WHAT?! WHAT WAS HE THINKING?!

Rick fell to the ground as the Ferris wheel collapsed — No surprise, it’d been exposed to the elements for years by that point — leaving him scrambling as a mob of walkers surrounded him, forcing Michonne to make the save and almost getting her killed when she thought he’d died!!

Oh, and the walkers got the deer, anyway. Wunderbar.

Back to Rosita, again.

As the episode ended, we saw her and Sasha conspire to shoot Negan, using a sniper rifle from the guns Rick and Michonne found.

On paper, this seems like a good idea: Sasha is a skilled marksman, and the gun is extremely powerful. In theory, it should turn Negan into Swiss cheese.

…Except, Rosita doesn’t have much success with these sorts of plans, does she?

If you recall in the mid-season finale, “Hearts Still Beating”, Rosita attempted to shoot Negan in the face; As of this moment in the show, Negan is quite alive.

Olivia, on the other hand…is not.

This is because, rather than plan it out and think of a good way to carry it out, she just kinda rushed into her attack. She missed. Worse still, Arat made Olivia pay the price for Rosita’s hasty action as a result.

Sadly, I’m seeing some of that same mindset in her and Sasha’s plan now; Both seem to think that they will be the ones to suffer for their plans when, as history has shown, it’s usually a third party who ends up suffering.

And this is the general problem with recklessness: People who exercise it often ignore the (very) severe consequences their actions can create. They either assume they’ll succeed, that there won’t be consequences, or, that they can live with those consequences.

More often than not, however, none of those scenarios end up being the case. There are almost always consequences, success is not guaranteed, and, in a zombie apocalypse, those consequences can easily be more than you can live with.

There are almost always consequences, success is not guaranteed, and, in a zombie apocalypse, those consequences can easily be more than you can live with.

The ideal thing to do? Not be reckless.

I know sometimes, you have to make decisions on the fly. But, if you can, think about what you’re going to do.

You must remember: Lives will be at stake; you can’t afford to do something half-cocked, as those lives can very easily be lost because of it.

That is why you think ahead. That is why you follow…The Rules.

Next: The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Toughness

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!