The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: What are we fighting for?

What do we fight hostiles for in a zombie apocalypse? As Carl said in The Walking Dead, it’s something we can’t lose sight of.

Fighting hostiles, Hell, going to war with hostiles is just something we’ll probably have to deal with in a zombie apocalypse. There are always bad people, and they’ll always try to take from or hurt others and they need to be stopped.

Beyond, that, though…what are we fighting for?

The answer is that we’re fighting for a world that, whilst plagued with zombies, is as free of (For lack of a better term) “evil” as possible. We fight to rid ourselves of those who seek to pillage, plunder, subjugate, or outright destroy us.

Of course, all of that doesn’t really mean anything, if we lose what separates us from such people, along the way.

Chandler Riggs as Carl Grimes, Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, The Walking Dead — AMC /

To illustrate my point, let’s look back at what got Carl bitten in the first place: Trying to help Siddiq.

Now, some might argue “Well, that’s why you don’t help people in a zombie apocalypse!” and, while I agree that you can’t be careless (Lest you end up like Carl!), you should try to help others.

The first reason is simple: We need to stick together if we want to survive. I’ll be the first to say that you should be able to survive on your own, but, ideally, you should be in group. Humans have always been social animals, and we’ve always worked best in groups; zombies won’t change that.

With that in mind, especially if we lose our loved ones in the outbreak, the only way any of us will form groups, is by helping each other out. By finding other decent people, we can work together to defeat those who might not be so decent.

Katelyn Nacon as Enid, The Walking Dead — AMC /

If we choose not to help other good people as the apocalypse wears on, it will only hurt us in the long run.

Aside from losing out on more people to help us survive, it may make us less able to tell the difference between the good people and the bad people, and just assume any strangers are threats and treat them as such.

Worse still, if your group does lose people, in the absence of any new people, those losses will pile up. Lose enough members of your group to the dead or hostiles, and you won’t have “a group”.

Lauren Cohan as Maggie Rhee, Adam Fristoe as Dean, The Walking Dead — AMC /

Of course, with war sort of being my focus for much of this month, I’d be remiss if I omitted the effects it has on us.

War can do terrible things to us…if we let it. If we become consumed by hate and fear, we can lose the very thing separating us from those who’d harm us. From the moment any conflicts begin until they end, we must strive to hold onto who we are. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, while we can’t be pushovers, we can’t let ourselves descend into savagery. If you go too far down that rabbit-hole, our own group may be forced to start seeing us as the hostiles.

Owen Harn as The Crazed Man, Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes, The Walking Dead — AMC /

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche uttered the famous quote: “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.” (Emphasis mine), and, in a zombie apocalypse, that holds true.

We need to be careful dealing with the truly depraved amongst hostiles, lest we start to emulate them. If we start employing torture, cruelty, and barbarism against people instead of simply trying to defeat them, we’ve become no better than our enemies, and little better than the dead. Ultimately, we’d deserve the same treatment we administered.

Josh McDermitt as Eugene Porter, Seth Gilliam as Father Gabriel Stokes, The Walking Dead — AMC /

Therefore, in spite of the horrors we see and experience at the hands of others, we mustn’t fall.

We have the capacity to be good, and must side with part of our nature. It may not be easy at times, but, we’ll find that not doing so would become more difficult in the long run, as our actions come back to haunt us.

Again, I’m not saying be wimpy, just…don’t become a gang of psychos. There will be a time after your war is over, you don’t want to lose the very thing you were fighting for in the fighting for it.

Never let anything cause you to lose sight of your humanity.

Next: The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Our own worst enemies

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!

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