Fear TWD, Survival Rule Of The Week: More than one way to skin a cat

In this week’s Fear The Walking Dead, we saw the group find inventive ways to solve their problems. It goes to show: There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

If there’s one certainty in a zombie apocalypse, outside of zombies, it’s that things are not going to go exactly as you plan. Honestly, how can you truly predict how many zombies there will be in any particular place, at any one time, and what they’ll do?

You can’t. The best you can hope for is to make an educated guess and hope you avoid the panicking mobs before the undead descend upon you.

This is why it’s important to think of other ways around problems and dangerous situations as you encounter them.

Let’s start with something simple: Did you notice half the weapons the group had in the elevator? …They weren’t “weapons” in the conventional sense.

Morgan had what looks like a walking stick fashioned into a spear, and June was using a piece of broken electrical conduit as a hammer or a pick.

The point? In a zombie apocalypse, when you can’t find a weapon to fight the dead with, you can make one out of just about anything heavy or sharp you can wield in your hand.

Of course, this philosophy doesn’t just apply to weapons to fight the dead; it can also apply to avoiding fights with the dead.

Case in point: The group found themselves trapped in the loading dock of St. Luke’s hospital, with only a chain link fence separating them from dozens of infected.

Obviously, they needed a distraction. Conventional wisdom would have somebody go out into the fray somehow, and draw the horde’s attention. Also obviously, in their situation, that would be almost certain suicide for whoever got picked for that task.

That’s when Morgan had an epiphany: Set off the alarm of a car not far from the loading dock. And, how did he go about doing that from the roof of the hospital? By chucking a corpse from the damned roof, that’s how!

Just about anything can be useful in the right circumstances. A little ingenuity, can go a long way.

This doesn’t need to be limited just to dealing with the dead, either. Just about any kind of obstacle can be dealt with in something other than the usual way in a zombie apocalypse, if you think outside the box…and have a little luck.

If you recall from last week, I warned against going into tall buildings in a zombie apocalypse because of how they become deathtraps if you lose the first two floors to the dead. Basically, I asked the simple question: How are you going to get down?

Well, Morgan and the group proved that, with some rope, and either a fire engine, cherrypicker, or just a good distraction, getting down from a fairly tall building is possible. Even things that might look like certain death…aren’t so certain with some clever thinking.

Finally, this sort of ingenious approach to survival can even loosely apply to medicine!

Don’t have gauze or bandages around? No problem! Just find some clean clothes or rags, and wrap your wound in those!

Is it the best thing you can use? No, obviously not, but, in the event that’s all you’ve got, it’s a hell of a lot better than just exposing your wounds to the environment.

Furthermore, as we saw in Sunday’s Fear, if you lack antibiotic ointment for injuries, yet still need some means of keeping it clean, just rely on some strong liquor! There’s a reason that many mouthwashes contain alcohol, it’s because alcohol makes a great disinfectant and germ killer. Again, this may not be the best option you have, but, until you can get some kind of halfway decent medical care, dousing your wounds in liquor will likely be the best option you have.

A zombie apocalypse will be far from conventional, and therefore, you should know coming into one that you may need to think in a slightly unconventional manner to survive one. Simply because something isn’t meant a particular task doesn’t mean that it can’t do that task. Additionally, with a little ingenuity, and a lot of luck, even situations you might think are impossible…might not prove so impossible.

At the end of the day, there’s more than one way to skin a cat in a zombie apocalypse.

This is why you follow…The Rules.

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!