Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Sometimes you can’t win
By Liam O'Leary
![Kim Dickens as Madison Clark - Fear the Walking Dead _ Season 4, Episode 4 - Photo Credit: Richard Foreman, Jr/AMC Kim Dickens as Madison Clark - Fear the Walking Dead _ Season 4, Episode 4 - Photo Credit: Richard Foreman, Jr/AMC](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/shape/cover/sport/db09badc7c25c85b5341754dae80ada89b47b926248c910bf7882bdc70f5df64.jpg)
This week’s Fear The Walking Dead had, frankly, a pretty downer message, but, one that isn’t untrue: Sometimes, in a zombie apocalypse, you just can’t win.
A zombie apocalypse will suck. A huge portion of the human race will become flesh-eating ghouls. Governments will collapse in the ensuing chaos. Civilization as we know it will crumble. Again, it will suck.
As much it will suck, we can fight against it. We can prepare, we can learn survival skills, we can make sure the people we care about are ready, we can overcome…right?
Normally, I’m the first to say “Yes!”, however, I also don’t want to trick you into thinking that survival will be a cakewalk. The fact is, sometimes…we just can’t win.
Let’s look back at the beginning of the outbreak for an example.
Assuming it takes twelve hours for a bite to turn someone, and a zombie bites six people in an hour, in a day, you’ll have one-hundred forty four zombies. You know how many you’d have by day two at that rate? Try twenty thousand. By yourself, Hell, even in a large group, only if you happen to be in a wide open, empty area, will you have a chance of dealing with them. Without that, fighting them would be impossible.
Similarly, if the forces of nature are against you, you may just be fighting a battle you’ve already lost.
If you have a group large than a few people, your food and water requirements are going to get pretty big. As such, if you’re confronted with an extended drought, torrential storms, or a protracted winter, your food and water can become dangerously low. If you can’t feed or hydrate your group, it doesn’t matter how much you want to hang on, you physically will not be able to do it.
And…that’s the worst part. Even if we want to carry on, even if believe we can carry on, some things are simply beyond our control to change.
We can’t control the weather, we can’t predict when a horde of zombies might come or from where. Unfortunately, our desire to persevere can make us stubbornly hang onto a place we simply can’t hold. Eventually, those dangers that are out of our control will make holding it impossible.
Is this a call to just give up? Certainly not. What I am suggesting is that you be realistic. If your base becomes untenable, cut your losses, take your group and supplies and move to a more sustainable place. It isn’t giving up, it’s just recognizing when you need to change your gameplan.
This is why you follow…The Rules.
Next: Fear The Walking, Survival Rule Of The Week: Watch your back
And that’s our survival rule of the week!! Hopefully, it’ll help you 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!