Fear The Walking Dead Theory: Who is hanging walker heads?

In this season of Fear The Walking Dead, weirdos are hanging walker heads from trees. Who are they? Well, I think the answer goes deeper than we realize…

Right out the gate in this season of Fear The Walking Dead, we were introduced to some true weirdos. About halfway through the season opener, Morgan and company came upon a fence made of walkers strung together, and (More importantly for our purposes), several trees, all with incessantly biting walker heads hanging from their branches.

Later, The Head Hangers reappeared, saving Luciana from a small mob of walkers, and hanging their heads from the corner of a nearby billboard. While Luciana clearly benefited from their visit, between this and the “orchard of biters” I think it’s safe to say the message is clear: GO AWAY.

While I can respect a person’s (or group’s) desire to be left alone in the zombie apocalypse, this is a little extreme, I mean, clearly, these people are crazy…right?

See, the thing is…I don’t think they are.

Theory: The Head Hangers…are The Helicopter Group.

You see, this came to me as I was prepping my Things To Note for “The Hurt That Will Happen”. I started asking “Did Logan know about the head hangers?”, but then, I realized, Logan’s group had probably never even been to that part of Texas, which got me thinking about someone who had: The Helicopter Group.

They were obviously in the area at some point, considering one of them was a walker there and another snatched Al, so…maybe they knew about The Head Hangers.

Then, suddenly, the thought hit me: “What if…they are The Head Hangers?”

Let’s think about what we know about The Head Hangers so far.

First, we know that they either have a lot of skill or a lot of equipment, because, if you noticed, those trees in that orchard of biters were pretty tall, and some of the branches the heads were tied to were pretty thin. No ordinary person is going to jump or climb up a tree to those precarious branches, just to tie walker heads to them! It takes someone with either some serious athleticism or a damned cherrypicker to get up there to do that.

Well, The helicopter Group does have helicopters at their disposal, is it too far of a stretch to imagine they have cherrypickers, too?

Second, they had to have time.

To kill all those walkers (At least in the case of the ones in the trees, ’cause, there was a lot of them), to get them all up in the trees, then to get out of there before the kids arrived to make their walker fences. You need time to do that without people or more walkers interrupting. And, speaking of which…

Third, they needed to have a hell of a lot of courage. As I just mentioned, The Head Hangers needed time to arrange their morbid Christmas decorations, lest they get interrupted by more walkers.

That said, as evidenced by how many walker heads were in the trees, whoever they were knew how to handle a lot of walkers. That takes some serious backbone to stand up to walkers just to let people know you’re crazy. What could make someone so brave, I wonder?

Oh! I know! BODY ARMOR.

Think about it…

When Al first encountered the armored walker, she tried stabbing him with her knuckle blades a few times, and it just bounced off of his helmet, and he had armor like that over most of his body; If it could stop a knife, you think some rotten teeth are going to do anything to it?

I sure don’t.

Of course, this all begs the question: If The Helicopter Group are the ones hanging walker heads everywhere, and making walker fences…why? What’s the point?

It’s like I said before: “The message is clear: GO AWAY“.

I believe The Helicopter Group may, in fact, be operating out of Texas (It’s certainly big enough) and, they’re using these tactics as a means of keeping people away.

It makes perfect sense: If you’re the last remnants of the U.S. Government (See my last theory), and you don’t want randos you don’t know or trust stumbling onto your base, what better way to ensure that doesn’t happen than by convincing said randos that they’re stumbling into the territory of brutal, crazed killers? It’s not like we haven’t seen other groups of disturbed hostiles try to employ similar tactics, just look at The Whisperers!

I think the clear attempts to intimidate the group and anyone else in the area is intended to both keep any potential hostiles or riffraff away, as well as any people who may have become contaminated with radiation from the nuclear plant (Perhaps even by the walkers who are already contaminated).

Of course, if that doesn’t work, and some nosy journalist comes poking around, you can always just pull an ol’ “snatch and grab” like the CIA abducting someone…

But, wait, I know what you’re thinking: “The Head Hangers are OBVIOUSLY the kids! They were the ones setting up the walker fences, so, they MUST HAVE BEEN the ones hanging the heads from the trees!”

But…are they?

Think about this: When we saw Max and Annie making a walker fence, there were trees alongside the road. I mean, they could have easily tied a few walker heads to those trees to complete the illusion, yet…they didn’t.

Another thing that occurred to me watching the kids make the walker fence, and listening to their conversation: They are clearly suspicious of the group. It would be easy to say that their time in the apocalypse had made them that way, but, there’s another factor to consider: The Helicopter Group are in the area, maybe even local.

We know that they were milling around enough for one of them to turn and for another to find (And abduct) Al. What if the kids saw them and had a similar idea to theirs: Use walkers to try to scare off strangers; In their case, the weird dudes wandering around the Texas countryside in weird armor.

And, wouldn’t it be convenient that a group of kids, of all people, might be the one to have seen them? If a bunch of kids told other survivors they saw them, you think they’d believe those kids? Another group of people? Okay. A group full of weirdos? Sure. But, a group of people impervious to walkers? …Nah, I don’t think so. I think the kids saw them, got spooked, and started making walker fences hoping it would keep this group of weirdos they spotted away, the fact it might work on any other strangers they met was just a bonus.

Hell, maybe seeing The Helicopter Group snatching up other people is why the kids are so suspicious in the first place.

But, what do you think? Do you think the person or persons hanging walker heads in the Cackleberry area are The Helicopter Group? Do you think they’re someone else The Helicopter Group are in conflict with? Am I crazy? Let me know!

And, if you want hear my theories on how to survive a zombie apocalypse in the real world, why not pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can also find it on Kindle here, and on iTunes here!