TWD, Survival Rule Of The Week: Things aren’t always what they seem

If you saw Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead then you know that, in a zombie apocalypse, things aren’t always what they seem.

This past Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead introduced us to a brand new groups of hostiles, The Whisperers, who have taken camouflage to a whole new level by not simply wearing cloaks covered in walker guts, but by wearing walkers’ faces as masks.

This has made me take stock of a lesson you definitely need to pay attention to if you ever want to survive a zombie apocalypse should you ever be unlucky enough to experience one, namely that, in the apocalypse, things aren’t always what they seem.

First thing you need to learn isn’t what it seems is your safety. In a word…that’s all it is: A word.

Sure, you can be safer, as in “Being in a fortified structure is safer than being outside amongst the dead”, but, to suggest that that status is permanent in any way is, quite frankly, deluding yourself.

I’m not saying you should live in a constant state of fear or paranoia, because that’s not helpful, but, I am saying that, if you go around convincing yourself that your survival is assured, that your base is impregnable, or that situation is somehow perfect and unassailable, you’re doing yourself no favors, either.

It’s impossible to think of every possible scenario you could encounter, yet, when you assume that you’re untouchable, you can leave yourself vulnerable to overlooking a lot more of those possible scenarios than you otherwise would.

And, sadly, the more overconfident you are about your safety, the more likely you are to neglect its upkeep. The elements won’t change simply because of the apocalypse, and walls and other essential defenses can decay over time, making them easier for the dead or, more likely, hostiles, to exploit.

If you give yourself a false sense of security, you’ll eventually wind up learning the hard way that your setup is not nearly as rock solid as you had convinced yourself it was.

Even if your base/community/whatever is relatively close to the level of security you believe it has, it may only be as perfect as the people running it.

Of course, as we all know…people are not perfect. People make mistakes, and sometimes, just one mistake, regardless of how secure you think you are, can lead to disaster.

All it takes is one gate left open, one opening or weakness overlooked, or one careless noise made to cause your security to break down.

If you leave openings for threats to get in through, sooner or later, they’ll try, and you can’t very well just assume they’ll fail. If you do, you might just wind up getting killed in your sleep by sneaky hostiles or hungry zombies.

Frankly, so long as something isn’t physically impossible (Though, let’s be honest, if the dead are getting up and trying to eat you, I think the list of what’s impossible has shrunk a fair bit…), you can’t necessarily rule it out.

Going back to this Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead, the group never thought they’d see walkers express intellect, yet, that’s (almost) exactly what they found.

And, while The Walking Dead is a TV show, the fact that The Whisperers exist in it means that people mimicking their behavior could easily exist if a zombie apocalypse ever happened.

Just because you think something can’t happen, doesn’t mean it can’t.

Following that line of thought, you need to realize that, some of the biggest threats you’ll face in a zombie apocalypse are hiding right in plain sight.

You may see a herd of zombies and not realize that hiding within it are people, wielding the herd like a weapon, pointing it at anyone they seek to attack.

Similarly, you might discover another group of people who present themselves as benevolent, only to find out they’re insidious hostiles!

Like I said at the start: In a zombie apocalypse, things aren’t always what they seem. The sooner you recognize that, the better prepared you are to survive.

This is why you follow…The Rules.

And that’s our Survival Rule Of The Week! 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!