The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Leave your hangups behind

Lots of people have prejudices and hangups. In a zombie apocalypse, they’re more useless than they are now, as The Walking Dead has shown us.

Last week, as I was thinking about people believing they can do anything in a zombie apocalypse I remembered something. I suddenly remembered Daryl and Beth finding half a woman’s corpse ghoulishly propped onto a mannequin, with a sign reading “Rich bitch” stuck to her.

It got me thinking about the clear brutality and glaring classism in the barbarous act. That then got me thinking about this: Once a zombie outbreak begins, things like classism, racism, etc. are 100% useless. Granted, they’re all useless now, but, in a world where survival is paramount, it (should) become plainly obvious just how useless those things truly are.

To explore this, let’s start with the incident which got me thinking about this in the first place.

While it may appear rather tame, as her body isn’t horribly mutilated, when you step back and look at it, you realize just how terrible the woman’s fate truly was.

She was cut in half, with her upper torso staked onto mannequin legs like some kind of sick Halloween display.

On top of that, a sign was nailed onto her chest, apparently, while she was still alive.

How do I know? Well, look at the picture. If you look carefully, you can see dried blood crusting around the perimeter of the nail. Sure, it could have happened after she died, but, with no clear wounds and certainly looking cleaner than a walker, this seems unlikely.

Especially when you consider the other walkers Daryl and Beth found in the clubhouse. Three walkers, all rather well dressed, were left hanging on nooses from the ceiling. Chances are, whoever was so kind as to do that to those people extended the same kindness to the “rich bitch” in the pro shop.

And, that sign is also quite telling. Initially, one might think the treatment of those four people (Plus the well dressed corpses in the basement) were coincidental. However, the sign belies the apparent motive to all of these killings: Classism. Someone — Who, we never find out — took it upon themselves to brutalize the survivors of the clubhouse because they were all wealthy.

To the best of our knowledge, these people didn’t do anything to deserve their fate; Apparently, being from the wrong socioeconomic class was enough to warrant such brutality.

What was the point of it all? What was the point of murdering so many people simply because they had more money, back when money had value? And, money will not have value when civilization crumbles, so ideas of “rich” and “poor” will have even less value.

The person who’s “rich” will be the one who has gathered a lot of supplies. That’s it. What they had before, unless it was a lot of supplies, or a fortress, won’t mean a damned thing.

Which brings me back to my earlier question: What’s the point? Did it make the killers feel better? Did it avenge some longstanding grudge with some other rich person? Even if those were true, it doesn’t make it any less pointless.

Of course, that’s not the only pointless idea that we need to bury when the dead rise. And, The Walking Dead has provided us with a good example of that, too. I speak, of course, about racism.

While we honestly haven’t gotten too much racism shown in The Walking Dead, it’s been there, nonetheless.

The most prominent example came from Merle in the first two episodes of the first season of the show, where he hurled racial slurs at T-Dog before beating him up.

Being so obvious, I don’t need to go into much more detail about the incident and jump straight into why it’s so stupid.

Quite simply: Does anyone think the dead are really going to give a damn about our skin color or ethnicity? I sincerely hope not, because that would imply those people are less intelligent than the dead.

I’m not asking people to suddenly love everyone, that’s unrealistic.

But, what I do ask is that people realize, no matter what your reasons for hating particular peoples are, those peoples are infinitely more likely to help you than a zombie ever will.

The dead won’t care what color your skin is, unless it’s a deathly shade of gray. The won’t care what your ethnicity is, either. So long as you’re breathing, the dead will try to eat you. Period.

Even if another person is part of a race of people you dislike, distrust, or outright hate, at least they’re alive. The dead won’t share your hatred. They won’t only go after the people you hate, they will go after you, too. And, conversely, depending on what happens, that person you hate may be the only person who can save you from being eaten alive.

Oh, and another thing: Simply because the zombie apocalypse is happening doesn’t mean that people of your ethnicity aren’t going to be hostile towards you.

If someone goes into the apocalypse thinking that just because a person shares their skin color that they’re suddenly going to become their best friend, they will be sorely mistaken.

The fact is, people have never been unified under such lines before, and the zombie apocalypse is not going to be any different. The selfish, the greedy, the violent, and the just plain evil won’t care if you share their skin color: If they want to rob or kill you, they’ll damn well try.

And, that’s ultimately the point. All the different ways we divide ourselves today won’t mean shit in a zombie apocalypse. The fact is: The dead won’t care and neither will the hostiles. The things out there looking to kill us won’t care who we are, what we look like, who we’re attracted to, or how much money we had before the outbreak, they will try to kill or eat us, regardless.

If you plan to survive, you need to realize this. If you are really hung up on these divisions, you need to let them go. They are not going to do you any good. In fact, chances are, they’re more likely to get you killed. And, if it’s going to get you killed, you don’t need it.

This is why you follow…The Rules.

Next: Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Your crimes will haunt you

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!