Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Trust
By Liam O'Leary
Survival in a zombie apocalypse requires a lot. But, as this ENTIRE SEASON of Fear The Walking Dead shows, key among those things is TRUST.
As I watched Fear The Walking Dead’s midseason premiere yesterday afternoon, I was struck, like a slap in the face, by a very clear theme: Trust.
My God, was the message strong! It seemed that the only way the theme could have been any more obvious would be if someone just straight-up said “We need to trust each other.”
But the more I thought back on this season, the more I realized that, not only was this a theme of the midseason premiere, but, frankly, the entire season.
Basically, from the moment Madison and Alicia are introduced to Troy, the question of trust enters the forefront.
Can Madison trust Troy? Jake?
Can Broke Jaw trust Madison? (With all that “take over” talk)
“Wait a minute, isn’t the guy who runs the ranch the guy Ofelia met crossing the border? Huh…can Madison trust HIM?”
…You get the picture. Whenever people meet new people once the zombie apocalypse sets in, trust becomes a big deal. With survival on the line, you don’t know who might cut your throat if they think doing so will help them survive.
What’s more, you may not even be able to trust people you thought you knew in the apocalypse.
Once the question of survival comes up, if someone has multiple parties they have connections with, loyalties can become…murky. Look at Ofelia.
Ofelia was clearly conflicted with loyalty to The Clarks, who helped her family escape the chaos of L.A., but also to Qaletaqa, who rescued her out in the desert.
Conflicted though she was, it didn’t stop her from poisoning the coffee and getting several people (One of them almost being Nick) killed. While this helped Qaletaqa, it was something of a betrayal of Madison, Nick, and Alicia.
Similarly, if it turns out you’ve deceived someone in the apocalypse, it may not matter how noble your motives are, they’ll likely still see it as a deception they can’t forgive.
Think of how much trouble has been caused by all the lying Madison (And later Nick) did this season. By lying about who killed The Trimbols, it caused much more animosity between the people of Broke Jaw ranch and the Black Hat tribe.
This has now made the truce (Which also is based, largely, on a lie) much more tenuous than it needed to be, with the Broke Jaw residents believing that Black Hat slaughtered an innocent family trying to escape. Within a very short time, this led to an attempted murder, then a manslaughter, and now, two groups attempting to coexist, yet, are growing more distrustful of each other as time passes. Just imagine what would happen if everyone realized Madison’s deception now!
Worse still, Qaletaqa’s response, confiscating the ranch’s guns, only served to make Broke Jaw’s residents even more distrustful of him and his tribe. When you take away a person’s means of defense, they often interpret it as preparation for an attack.
You see, in order to really survive a zombie apocalypse, you need to bury a lot of your grudges and try to make a go trusting other people.
(Now, I say “a lot” because, obviously, if someone is a complete psycho…yeah…you don’t want to trust them.)
That aside, you need to be willing to bridge the gap, because, if you don’t, if you let paranoia and distrust grow and fester, you won’t need zombies to kill you…you’ll just kill each other. And, when the zombies do show up, you won’t know if you can count on the other person not to let a zombie bite you.
Trust is essential in a zombie apocalypse. Without it, no group, never mind any combination of groups, will be able to survive. Without the ability to know the person next to you has your back, you’ll be too busy looking over your shoulder to fight the zombies in front of you.
Next: The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Fight your demons
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!