Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: DON’T give up
By Liam O'Leary
If there was one lesson to be gleaned from this week’s Fear The Walking Dead, it was this: No matter what, you DON’T give up.
Things will, at one point or another in a zombie apocalypse, get bleak; It being a zombie apocalypse — With zombies eating people, civilization crumbling, death on a massive scale — it kind of goes with the territory.
This includes once the dust has settled and you find your biggest problem might be the living and not the dead. You now have to deal with raids, surprise attacks, and ambushes. Once again, the threat these pose can make one quite afraid of what hostiles will do and make your situation quite grim.
However, no matter how bleak things get, you can’t give up. Whether that giving up is just letting yourself get killed or abandoning your base, neither is an option, and I’ll explain why.
First, let’s assume you have hostiles attacking your base or trying to drive you out of it, if your plan is to flee, you’re not thinking things all the way through.
Why do I say this? Well, if your enemy is launching surprise attacks, ambushes, or raids, they probably have scouts or raiders watching your base.
What do you think will happen if they catch you trying to flee? They will either capture you (And do God only knows what) or straight-up kill you.
On top of that, part of the reason you have a base is because, being without one leaves you extremely exposed.
Even if those hostiles aren’t waiting for you, you can find yourself at the mercy of other hostiles, not to mention the dead; Either have a much better chance of killing you without walls to protect you.
Ultimately, if your hostiles are either willing to kill you or your group to take your base, and/or they’re waiting to ambush you should you flee, it makes giving up your base practically suicide. In other words: Depending on your circumstances, giving up your base is an invitation to death…which is the opposite of survival.
Simply because things look bleak doesn’t mean you can give up, because, quite frankly, you can’t afford to. You need to remind your group what’s at stake and, more importantly, you need to fight back.
We got a good example of this in this Fear, actually.
It seemed like things were looking bleak at Broke Jaw Ranch as this week’s episode started. They’d lost eight people to Qaletaqa Walker’s attack, two of Jeremiah’s fellow “Founding Fathers” of the ranch were dead, Luciana had left and more were threatening to do so.
Yet, by episode’s end, the community was ready to fight.
Starting with Troy giving a pep talk to the militia, he reminded them of their need to ensure the community felt secure. He didn’t give them any sort cliche rallying cry, he simply told them that they would be a model for everyone.
Then, later, Madison succeeded in letting a rather fearful Broke Jaw community know that the terrible fate of the Trimbols was what awaited all of them if they chose to flee. Granted, it was actually Troy who killed them, but, regardless, Madison managed to get the community to pull together and be prepared to fight anyone who sought to drive them out. It wasn’t the most honest thing she could have done, but, nevertheless, it got people ready to fight for their survival.
You can’t give up in a zombie apocalypse. No matter what it is threatening you, be it living or dead, you simply can not give up. You can’t give up your base because it might just mean giving up your life.
Survival is the name of the game in a zombie apocalypse. Giving up means you lose. You can’t afford to lose.
This is why you follow…The Rules.
Next: Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Don't lose sight
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!