Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: It’s always something
By Liam O'Leary
If you’re going to try to survive a zombie apocalypse, you can’t rest on your laurels. As this week’s Fear The Walking Dead proved, there’s always a new problem. It’s always something.
A zombie apocalypse will not just be a one-and-done affair. You can’t assume “Oh, it’ll be done in month or so” or some such nonsense. You need to realize that it will become your world: It’ll be there morning, noon, night, and the next morning, until every last zombie rots away.
Why do I say this? Well, because I want you to understand that no matter what you do or what you build in a zombie apocalypse, you can’t be complacent.
Let’s say, for example, you establish a respectable base somewhere. Sure, it keeps the zombies out, but, what about supplies? It means you’re going to have to go out to get them.
Going out to get supplies can be dangerous, because, well, you have to go out into the very zombies your base is meant to separate you from! It sounds counter-intuitive, but, rest assured, starvation and dehydration are not fun ways to die.
There are, of course, alternatives to scavenging for supplies. For example. you could try your hand at growing or raising your own food.
Of course, that comes with its own problems…
First of all, if you’re not a farmer, learning to grow large amounts of crops or raising animals can prove tough.
Second, even if you are a farmer, there will always be things out to eat or kill your food: Bugs, weeds, disease, predators, zombies.
Third, even if there aren’t things menacing your crops or your livestock, it may not matter if the weather doesn’t cooperate. A long, snowy winter or a hot, dry summer can be murder on your crops or your animals. If they die out on you and your reserves are thin, what do you think will happen to you?
Well, you could always create a community, that would certainly help give you more people to farm and find supplies, right?
It can…assuming, of course, you can trust them.
You see, you need to be extremely careful when taking in new people, because their loyalties could lie with someone else.
Even if they’re not disloyal, the apocalypse can wear on people, turning even people you may know or trust into crazies over time. You need to do what you can to ensure that everyone in your group is holding it together and loyal to the group. You can’t afford to have problems within your own people.
Sadly, problems within your group may pale in comparison to problems outside your group.
All those other things I mentioned? The dead, supply shortages, crop failure, bad weather, etc? Those can’t consciously act against you. They can’t plan or predict or react. Hostile people, on the other hand? They can do all of those things!
Worse still, they can (and probably will) take any of those aforementioned things, if they know about them, and make them worse.
Even a base and a community to populate it can be swept away by a bad enough collection of hostiles.
The point of all of this? No matter what you build, it isn’t a perpetual solution to all the problems you could have. You need to constantly be ready for the next problem when it comes. You need to know that threats are out there and you can’t just sit back and think you don’t have to prepare for them. It’s always something.
As Thomas Jefferson said: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
This is why you prepare. This is why you follow…The Rules.
Next: The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: There can be a better way
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!