Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Don’t lose sight
By Liam O'Leary
A zombie apocalypse can crush you. But, as this week’s Fear The Walking Dead showed, whether its threats or goals, don’t lose sight of them.
The ability of a zombie apocalypse to crush you can not be overstated: It’s depressing, can be monotonous, and horrific. You might be spending months at a time doing the same routine, hoping that all your preparations are never needed. Then, just as you think the day you’ll need them will never come, it does, and you lose everyone you love.
As I said, crushing.
However, what can crush you faster is losing sight of A) what you’re fighting and B) what you’re fighting for.
What do I mean? Well, let’s start with the former…
Some time ago, I discussed how important fear was in surviving a zombie apocalypse — How being reckless can be fatal.
Well, survival requires more than having a healthy respect for the dead. The fact is, as a threat, zombies aren’t simply going to go away because you deal with some of them.
Whether because geography funnels them to you, or something at your base draws them, the dead are always going to be a problem, until they rot away.
This means you shouldn’t assume at any point that you’re free of the dead. You always need to be prepared for them and prepare for a lot of them, in case the worst happens.
Look at the Rosarito hotel for example. In the Season Two episode, “Pablo and Jessica”, Madison manages to lure the many infected in the hotel into the ocean to get carried away by the current.
However, just before Mrs. Stowe commits suicide in Season Three’s “The New Frontier”, we get a glimpse of the beach, where a small gang of infected are emerging from the sea.
And, then, what happened when Strand returned to the hotel, at most, three days later? The gates were flung open, it was empty of people, full of infected; The Rosarito was overrun.
That is how quickly disaster can strike in a zombie apocalypse.
Of course, it isn’t just the dead you can’t overlook. It’s the living, too.
If you have a belief that hostiles have been operating within range of your base, you should be on alert. You should prepare yourself for an attack, because one might be coming.
Yet, that is not what the people of Broke Jaw Ranch did. As Troy and his team made for their outpost, they found themselves surrounded by Qaletaqa Walker and his troops.
After not hearing back from their scouts days earlier, they honestly should have been prepared for an ambush. They weren’t and they paid for it.
In a zombie apocalypse, especially if you have something valuable, like a solid base, you need to realize other people are going to want it and will do anything to take it. Just because the dead might be the most constant threat you face, it does not mean they are the only one. Hostiles can and will rely on this oversight to attack you and your group, should your preoccupation give them an opportunity. The best way to deal with this is to not give them the opportunity in the first place.
On the other side of the coin in the zombie apocalypse is not losing sight of what you’re fighting for.
Part of what crushes people, what depresses them and makes them give up, is emptiness. If your life becomes simply the same routine of trying to scrape by and avoiding death, it will get to you, sooner or later. The monotony can lead one to feel hopeless, or that there is no real future. Nothing kills like thinking there’s no future.
While I can’t promise or guarantee you a future, I can address the monotony.
Even in the darkest times in human history, our species has always fallen back on our ability to create and express ourselves.
It’s what separates us from animals, and helps give our lives meaning and purpose. Some might think this absurd, but, even devoting a little time to doing something creative or fun can make the apocalypse bearable.
And, if our lives only becoming about getting to the next day of fighting the dead, and devoid of anything else…what’s the point? If we resign ourselves to that existence, and forget what made us human in the first place, what are we doing?
We can be our own worst enemies sometimes, especially in a zombie apocalypse. If we lose sight of the fact that the dead will keep coming, or that they’re not the only threat, it can get us killed. And if we lose sight of what we’re fighting for (You know, civilization?) then, ultimately, we still lose.
To survive and make that survival worthwhile, we need to keep sight of our goals and our hurdles. We need to see the threats, and, just as importantly, we need to keep sight of who we are.
This is how we stay human. This is why you follow…The Rules.
Next: Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: It pays to help
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!