The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Face reality

In the season 10 midseason finale of The Walking Dead, Dante’s betrayal seemed to make everyone in Alexandria do something we all must do in the apocalypse: Face reality.

This week’s episode of The Walking Dead began with Rosita, Father Gabriel, Daryl, Carol, and Aaron confronting the fact that not only was Dante a spy for Alpha, but had been doing so for months. This revelation seemed like a wake-up call; Shaking them out of some sort delusion and slapping them in the face with cold, hard, reality.

With that in mind, this week, I thought I’d make my Survival Rule Of The Week all about shattering illusions and doing what may be one of the hardest things to do in a zombie apocalypse, and face up to the reality of it all.

First of all, you should never delude yourself about what you’re getting into should you find yourself in a zombie apocalypse: It will not be easy.

Survival won’t simply be a matter of avoiding the dead, or avoiding hostiles, or staying fed and warm, it will be about doing all three of those things, plus a few more things, just to keep you on your toes.

Now, there may come a time where, perhaps because you’ve been dealing with the apocalypse for so long, that, on some level, it feels easy. This is would be a mistake. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that, the moment you believe that survival has become easy is the moment you grow weaker.

Why? Well, to paraphrase Rosita: “Maybe we’re not as strong as we think we are.”

When you believe that survival has become easier, you stop trying to get stronger, because you cease to believe you need to, this makes you complacent, and more unprepared to meet new threats you might not have been expecting.

Another reality you need to face in a zombie apocalypse is, as Virgil put it, “…Being acquainted with violence”.

If you want to survive, you need to know, and probably need everyone in your group, and everyone in your family to know how to fight. Fight who? Oh, you know, zombies, hostiles, the usual.

Think of it this way: If someone in your family doesn’t know how to defend themselves…what happens to them if you aren’t there to protect them?

Bad stuff. That’s what.

And, who might you need to protect them from? Hostiles. That’s who.

You see, this is part of the reason why you can never let yourself believe that survival has become “easy”, because, there will always be someone who either wants to take what you have or destroy what you have.

Some will be motivated by greed or desperation, while the others, maybe hate, maybe envy, maybe they’re just deranged. Whatever the case may be, if you have gotten to a point where you’ve convinced yourself that you and your group are too strong for anyone to take down, instead of making yourself that strong, another group is going to come by who wants to mess you up, and…might just do it.

But, wait, malcontents who hope to be that group, who swoops in to screw up another groups relative prosperity! Don’t think you are getting out of this reality check unscathed!

Just because you have a cool, misanthropic attitude and aren’t attached to the old world doesn’t mean your attempt to survive is going to be peaches and cream.

Whenever you come across people who believe themselves counter to the rest of society, one thing they seem to have in common is this belief that they’ve created something perfect.

Here is reality check: Not only are people not perfect, but, they can never create something that is.

Inevitably, there will be cracks in whatever perfect system or perfect society they believe they’ve concocted. Whether it manifests as failures in leadership, or failures in the rank and file members of the group, those cracks will turn into fissures, and rip their whole system asunder.

Why? Because, just like when someone convinces themselves they’re too strong to fall, any group that convinces themselves they’ve created the perfect way for humans to live, will fail, because they’ve convinced themselves that they can’t, and stop trying not to.

Even if we aren’t in a zombie apocalypse, should we ever find ourselves in one, we can’t let ourselves live in this fantasy land where everything is great, and we’re untouchable and we can breeze through it all. It’s a dangerous delusion we simply can’t afford. To survive, the first thing we need to do is face reality.

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!