Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: The best and worst in us
By Liam O'Leary
This week’s Fear The Walking Dead made one thing perfectly clear: Desperate times bring out the best in some, and the worst in others.
A zombie apocalypse will be a desperate time: Zombies everywhere, civilization crumbling, chaos ensues, the whole nine yards.
In desperate times, some people shine, becoming better people in response to the dire situation. On the other hand, some people sour, letting the horrible world they now inhabit make them horrible in turn.
Having seen this on full display in this week’s episode of Fear The Walking Dead, I decided to change things up a bit, showing two examples of how good people can be in a zombie apocalypse, and three of how bad they can be.
I always prefer to get the bad stuff out of the way, so, let’s start with an example from Sunday of how a zombie apocalypse can bring out the worst in people…
The Worst In Us #1: It’s too easy to hate.
Let me just get this out of the way: Did you guys notice how much Strand, Luciana, and (especially) Alicia tried to kill Naomi?
Umm…why?
I mean, the mere fact that Naomi was alive seemed to surprise Alicia, and, we saw what The Vultures did, so, where is this hatred of Naomi coming from?
Presumably, Alicia sees The Vultures (apparently) rescuing Naomi as…some kind of betrayal? I don’t get it.
But, whether I get it or not, the zombie apocalypse can do that to us, it can fill us with hate. When hate pervades a person’s mind, it’s like a sickness, like an obsession, and it consumes them.
The fact that, even after disposing of their real enemy, The Vultures, Alicia, Strand, and Luciana became determined to kill Naomi says everything we need to know: They’re so consumed with hate, that now, even people relatively peripheral to the destruction of The Diamond are targets of their violent rage.
Sadly, this is what desperate times like a zombie apocalypse can do to people. Once we let hate in, if we don’t get rid of it, it’ll swallow us whole.