The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: The enemy within

5) They’re a coward.

To be perfectly honest, someone being a coward in a zombie apocalypse isn’t inherently bad. It’s naive and absurd to assume that everyone is going to suddenly turn into a goddamned action hero in a zombie apocalypse. The fact is: People will be scared. Period.

That said, that becomes a problem when the person in question is such a fraidy cat that they abandon all logic, reason, and sense of community and go into a blind panic when people are relying on them to hold it together. This is how people get killed: Because some chickenshit loses it and abandons their post or their group entirely when confronted by hostiles or zombies.

Now, I don’t need to go into a deep hypothetical with how this can be bad, do I? All I need to say is one name: Nicholas. Most of you know the rest, for those who don’t, a quick recap.

In Season Five’s “Spend”, Glenn, Eugene, Noah, Tara, Aiden, and Nicholas were raiding a store for supplies. Bad things happened, Tara got injured, Aiden died, Eugene had to man up to get Tara to safety. Just another bad day in the apocalypse.

However, as Noah, Glenn, and Nicholas tried to escape the herd inside the store, they got stuck in a revolving door. Eugene managed to disperse some of the walkers, but the trio were still trapped.

Glenn had a plan to get everyone out of the revolving door, but, Nicholas, ever the hero, didn’t even bother trying Glenn’s plan and weaseled his way out of the door, screwing up the weight balance inside.

This, in turn, allowed the walkers to reach through their side of the door and grab Noah. Suffice to say, this did not end well, with poor Glenn being forced to watch the horrible scene.

Why did this happen? Because Nicholas was a massive coward.

If he’d listened to Glenn, there was good chance the trio would have all made it out of the store alive, but, nope, he could even hold himself together long enough to even try Glenn’s plan…and Noah died a grisly death because of it.

This is why you can’t let people be cowards in your group. A little fear is normal and, frankly, necessary, but, you’ve got to help any group members who are a little chicken to conquer that fear.

If you don’t, that person will just become a liability, a ticking time bomb of panic, waiting to go off at the worst possible time, and likely causing a lot of good people to die in the process.

Next: The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Know The Signs

And that’s our survival rule of the week!! Hopefully, this list will help. Maybe it’ll give you a head’s up on the sorts of people you should avoid and the behaviors such people might exhibit. As important as it is to stay ahead of the dead, it’s just as important to stay ahead of the living, too!

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!