FearTWD, Survival Rule Of The Week: The threats you DON’T see

In a zombie apocalypse, the deadliest threats may not be obvious. As we learned in this week’s Fear the Walking Dead, what we DON’T see may be deadliest.

A zombie apocalypse will, obviously, be when a huge chunk of the population rapidly becomes cannibalistic, undead corpses. I say “obviously” because, once the number of zombies starts climbing into the millions, it’ll start getting tough to walk around without spotting them, and, much more dangerously, them spotting you.

Of course, as the latest episode of Fear The Walking Dead showed us, just because something isn’t trying to gnaw your face off doesn’t mean it’s any less dangerous. In fact, as I will demonstrate, it’s often times the things we don’t see that can prove the most dangerous.

Case in point: During Fear, Morgan was attacked…by a radioactive walker.

Think about that for a minute. Radioactive. Walker. Seriously, a zombie that was radioactive wouldn’t have to bite you, wouldn’t have to scratch you, hell, wouldn’t even have to touch you to kill you. Simply standing near a zombie like that could contaminate you with radiation and, if you were to, say, not realize you were contaminated, you might be wandering around for God knows how long getting radiation poisoning! It would really suck if you traipsed through an area that was radioactive and didn’t realize until weeks later that your clothes were bathed (And, subsequently bathing you) in deadly radioactive particles.

And, therein lies the problem: If you got contaminated by stumbling unbeknownst into a radioactive area, you could get slowly killed by something you didn’t even know was there. Who needs to worry about zombies when radiation will make you just as dead?

Of course, I imagine some people might ask: “Why would there be random places that are radioactive?” Well, most nuclear material a person is likely to go anywhere near would be at nuclear power plants. Now, if you’re thinking you wouldn’t go inside of one to play with the fuel rods, you’re right!

However, nuclear power plants only keep from going meltdown because there are people to man them. What happens if those people are gone? What happens if they’re dead? What happens if they are zombies? Nothing good, I can tell you that.

And this problem doesn’t end with nuclear plants. Dams also need people to man them, to do things like making sure there’s nothing obstructing the water. If so, over time, that water can build immense pressure, enough to rupture the damn, and wash everything in its wake (Including you) out of existence, which, of course, you likely won’t realize until its way too late.

Another thing that kind of goes out the window when a zombie apocalypse hits? Medical service. Why that’s important should be obvious, but there’s one aspect of it you might overlook: If there are no medical professionals around, diseases we might be able to fight off with the help of medicine (Like The Flu) can spread like wildfire, especially in a small group that’s around each other all the time.

And, you know what’s great about The Flu? By the time you get any indication anyone has it…you’ve already been exposed! ISN’T THAT GREAT!?!

You see, plenty of diseases work that way, where symptoms don’t appear until after a carrier has had it for a while, exposing everyone they come across to it without them even knowing. You might go to sleep one night relatively fine, and wake up the next morning barely able to breathe because some disease is wreaking havoc on your respiratory system, and the whole time, you never saw it coming.

Speaking of which, when I began this week’s Survival Rule Of The Week, I mentioned how obviously dangerous the zombies will be.

Well…it’s not quite that simple.

Initially, especially as panic sets in, the zombies will be concentrated in large herds. Over time, however, they’ll likely disperse, to some degree, but, all it may take is for one zombie to start walking in a direction to draw the attention of a few more, and then, a few more, and a few more, until, eventually, that herd has re-coalesced. Then, all it takes is for you or someone in your group to make a loud enough noise and, all of a sudden, you have thousands of zombies bearing down on you that didn’t even know were in the vicinity!

Yeah, the zombies can be obvious, but, the world is big, and all it takes for them to go unseen is something, even just a large enough amount of space, to be between you and them.

You can’t assume that you’re safe in a zombie apocalypse. While you may not see threats around you, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there. The moment you assume they aren’t is when you’re most vulnerable.

This is why you follow…The Rules.

And that’s our Survival Rule Of The Week! Hopefully, you’ve gained a little insight into all the various things you’ll need to look out for and do. 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 also get it at Amazon here, on iTunes here!