The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Fight your demons

6) You’re losing your empathy.

The last two entries glide effortlessly into this one. You can easily see how losing loved ones can make one angry, and, over time it can make one…simply stop caring.

But, unlike someone who’s developing anger issues, this problem can be far more insidious. In the already violent world of the zombie apocalypse, if you’ve been dealing with lots of hostiles, you might just slide into killing anyone who becomes a problem without even realizing it.

Let’s use Rick as an example (As if you couldn’t see that coming).

After losing The Prison to The Governor’s third attack, thinking almost the entire group (Including Judith) died, and The Claimers attacking him, Carl, Michonne and Daryl, Rick snapped.

He ripped Joe’s throat out with his teeth and butchered “Deserved-it” Dan.

Then he reunited with the rest of The Group, only to discover Terminus was a colony of cannibals. Rick led Abraham, Sasha, and Michonne to hack them all to death.

These are understandable, considering what those two groups were going to do/had done.

However, when The Group returned to Atlanta to rescue Carol and Beth, we saw just how detached Rick was becoming.

After a run-in with several Atlanta police officers, Rick chased down Sgt. Bob Lamson, ramming him with a police car (While Lamson was on foot, I might add), before gunning down the prone officer like a dog in the street.

After stopping one of Lamson’s subordinates, Officer Licari, from beating up Daryl, he was about to blow him away a point blank range. Only Daryl saved Licari from suffering Lamson’s fate.

Did Rick need to ram Lamson with the car? No. Did he need to kill him? No. Would Rick have needed to kill Licari? No.

But, he did do those things, and he was going to kill Lamson. Why? Because he didn’t care anymore. Hell, the only reason he didn’t go with his plan to just kill everyone at Grady Memorial Hospital who got in his way was because Tyreese managed to talk him out of it, otherwise, he’d have killed even more people!

After losing so much, and believing he’d lost more, Rick had simply stopped caring about other people. Glenn had to talk him into letting The Crazy Guy out of his shipping crate in Terminus, and Carl had to convince him to help Father Gabriel.

Clearly, Rick’s empathy towards strangers, of which he had so much before The Prison fell, was completely depleted.

In its place was an emptiness. Not necessarily a blind rage, but a total lack of concern for others. If they weren’t part of his group, he couldn’t care if they lived or died or if he was the one to kill them.

Obviously, this is bad. Keep this up long enough, you just become…a killer.

So, how do you fix it?

Think back to the rest of your group. Chances are you didn’t know that many of them (If any) when the outbreak began. They were strangers to you, yet, now, you probably consider them family. You’d risk your life for them and vice-versa. But, that wouldn’t be the case if you never gave each other a chance.

If you come across someone who isn’t a hostile, or, at least, is only so because they assume you hostile, remember that they’re still human. They are just like you, and just like the people in your group. You don’t have to let them into your group, but, if they’re only hostile because they think you are, you don’t need to blow them away, either.

At the end of the day, we’re all still human. If you can remember that, then you’re not too far gone, yet.

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

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!