The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: It’s little things that get you

Between the flu, and the things Siddiq missed, if there’s one lesson to take from this week’s Walking Dead, it’s that it’s the little things that get you.

Siddiq sure had a rough time of it on this week’s episode of The Walking Dead, didn’t he? I mean, damn, he’s trying to treat over a dozen people getting sick from a disease he can’t recognize, he was having constant flashbacks to when he saw ten innocent people, including several friends, get decapitated by Alpha, a Whisperer Carol was trying to interrogate dies of accidental poisoning because of Siddiq apparently forgetting that he packed hemlock into his bag and, after finally figuring out what was making everyone sick, he realizes only too late that the man who’s been helping him all this time…was a Whisperer…who kills him.

So…yeeeeaaaah…not a good week to be Siddiq.

But, while watching this week’s episode, I was quickly struck by one key idea: Everything that was taking people down, was something relatively small.

Let’s start with Siddiq’s most immediate problem: The disease. Within a matter of hours (As we saw over the previous episode), at least thirteen people were coming down with some sort of stomach virus, causing fever, weakness, and vomiting, with one, Cheryl, succumbing to it.

Those people didn’t need to get bitten by a walker, or be exposed to radiation, or anything like that to get taken down, all it took…was a germ, a tiny organism we can’t even see with the naked eye. That’s how easy it can happen. Yeah, everyone’s worried about zombies and hostiles, but, few people stop to think about the threats that they can’t even see.

Just because it’s a zombie apocalypse, doesn’t mean other things can’t kill you.

Oh, hey, while we’re at it, let’s talk about that “other thing”, shall we?

As we learned a couple of episodes back, part of Alpha’s “shifting strategy” to take down Alexandria has included contaminating the creek which provides the town its water.

This is something you need to be wary of in a zombie apocalypse. Seriously, thousands of people die every year from water-borne diseases like dysentery and cholera, so, before you take a drink, make sure you’ve boiled the water first, and then, just to be sure, follow your water supply back to its source and ensure there are no zombies using it for a bathtub.

Next, let’s look at Siddiq’s larger problem: That his assistant was a Whisperer, and he didn’t realize it.

I mean, I can’t blame him, when the first time you meet a guy, he’s wearing someone else’s rotten face, of course you’re not going to recognize him!

…But, the fact remains, Dante was leaving clues: His failure to try to treat the sick while Siddiq was away, poisoning the captured Whisperer, and, of course, his habit of clicking his tongue.

Will hostiles necessarily give hints to their malicious intent? No, but, you need to be observant around people. You need to watch what they do, how they act, and how often they do certain things. You never want to be caught off-guard by hostiles, and, to do so requires constant vigilance. It might seem small, but, sometimes, a slight lapse in that vigilance can allow a snake into your midst.

Now, let’s look at this from the other side, for a second.

Dante was doing a really good job of being a saboteur, except for his tongue-clicking. If he hadn’t done that during the mass execution by Alpha, maybe he could have kept on being a spy, and not had to kill Siddiq (Which, like The Governor when it came to Martinez, was something he apparently didn’t want to do). My point is: Sometimes, the things that give us away are little tics and habits we may not even realize we’re doing.

Of course, other times, the little things get us because we rely too heavily on them to uphold something bigger, and, like stacking a big, wide box on top of a small, skinny box, it comes crashing down.

For Alpha, the little thing was her lie that she killed Lydia, and the big thing she was relying on that lie to uphold, was the illusion of infallibility held by her loyalists.

When Gamma saw that Lydia was, in fact, very much alive, it shattered that illusion of Alpha, and perhaps, shattered her illusion that the Whisperer way was the only way to survive the apocalypse.

This is almost certainly going to cause a lot of problems for the Whisperers, as Gamma, now with her idealism about Alpha broken, may start fostering discontent among the more uncommitted members of the group and, perhaps, start serving the same role for Carol that Dante plays for Alpha.

While Alpha could never have let the Whisperers know the truth, it’s funny that something so small can potentially undermine Alpha’s entire ideology.

Survival in a zombie apocalypse can be a funny thing. While, yes, you can easily be taken down by the obvious things — Zombies, hostiles, natural disasters — the things you really need to be worried about, are the things that fly under the radar. It doesn’t always need to be the big things that do you in, sometimes, it’s the little things that get you.

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!