The Walking Dead Survival Rule Of The Week: What to avoid – City Edition

5) Cities

I know what you’re probably thinking “A thing to avoid in cities is…cities?“, well…yeah. Honestly, a city is one of the last places you want to be during a zombie apocalypse, if the previous four entries didn’t already make that clear, but, don’t worry, I’ll elaborate.

What’s the one major event we’ve seen in both The Walking Dead and Fear The Walking Dead? Do you remember? It wasn’t the outbreak, we haven’t, technically, seen it in The Walking Dead. We’ve seen people in it, like Alpha in Baltimore, or Shane at the hospital trying to protect Rick, but, we never actually saw the outbreak. Something we did see in both shows, though? Cobalt.

In both Walking Dead shows, we saw the government’s ultimate response to the zombie outbreak: Firebombing every major city from Miami to Vancouver. In the first episode of season 2 of Fear, we saw LA get hit, and in The Walking Dead season 2 episode, “Chupacabra”, we see a flashback of Shane and Lori watching as Atlanta is destroyed before the group can ever reach it. If there’s one thing from Walking Dead that I can certainly imagine happening, it’s something like Cobalt.

Honestly, it stands to reason: Once world governments realize what it is they’re dealing with, they’re going to do everything they can to contain it, up to and including destroying major population centers if they have to. As brutal as it sounds, a zombie apocalypse would truly be one of those proverbial “lesser of two evils” scenarios, where the government would have to choose between destroying cities of millions, or doing nothing to stop the deaths of the entire human race. Given the stakes, they would take destroying the cities, and this means, if you’re there, whether a zombie or not, you run the risk of getting caught in the blast of whatever weapon they use to do it with.

How to avoid it?

Well, there are two answers here. First, if you are a commuter to a city, simply…don’t go in. If you should happen to hear stories about anything that could be a zombie before you head into the city for work or school, just call in sick, don’t show up.

I mean, if you’re hearing stories about people eating each other, either from people you know, or from the news, chances are, the problem has pervaded society much worse than the stories you’re hearing has let on, with zombies no longer just existing among the fringes of society, but now having such numbers that they’ve become noticeable by society at large. The full-blown outbreak is not far behind at that point. Stay home, warn or gather whoever you can, get your supplies, and get ready.

Now, if you’re one of those unfortunate souls who are in a city when zombies start popping up, you need to leave as soon as possible, before all the things I’ve mentioned in the previous entries start happening. If things haven’t gone into full outbreak yet, the highways heading out of the major cities should be no more dangerous than they are normally, and are probably your best way out. But, if you don’t trust things to hold steady while on the road, hail a cab or Uber and just drive through the surrounding communities, preferably heading inland, avoiding the highway as much as you can. That is, probably, your safest option, unless, of course, you have a boat.

However you do it, the sooner you get out of cities when the dead start walking, the better off you’ll be.

And that is (Those are?) our Survival Rule(s) Of The Week. Hopefully, you’ve gained a little insight into all the various things you’ll need to avoid in a zombie apocalypse and how to avoid them. If you like this and want to find out more tips 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!