The Worst Decisions In The Walking Dead, Part II

Season Ten: Carol chases Alpha into a walker-filled cave.

There’s a lot to compare between Maggie’s terrible decision from season nine, and Carol’s terrible decision from season ten. Both are made by characters who, for the most part, didn’t make the sort of awful choices that would warrant a place on this list. Both wind up getting the rest of the communities they care about threatened by massive herds of walkers. And, both happened because they were so bent on revenge, that they threw caution to the wind, and, as a result, had their decisions come back to bite them.

In case you forgot, at the end of the season ten midseason finale of The Walking Dead, Carol, along with Daryl, Aaron, Jerry, Connie, Kelly, and Magna, set out to find and destroy the Whisperers’ greatest weapon: Their titanic horde of walkers. As the team approached the cave where the horde was stashed, Carol spotted Alpha entering the cave, and, without so much as a thought, chased after her, forcing the rest of the team to follow her, and subsequently, be trapped by a cave-in.

As if that weren’t bad enough, they were now forced to squeeze their way through the claustrophobia-inducing tunnels of the cave, with several walkers chasing after them, nearly getting poor Jerry trapped and bitten in the process.

On top of that, after finding an exit, Carol, still wanting to strike back at Alpha somehow, grabbed a stick of extremely unstable dynamite, and accidentally dropping it, causing another cave-in, and forcing Magna and Connie to be left behind, with only Magna (So far) returning.

The reason I consider this decision the worst of this season is the aftermath. I’m not just talking about being trapped in the cave, and being forced to leave Connie and Magna behind, but also, the fact that this, essentially, drove Alpha (And, subsequently, Beta) to declare total war on the communities. If Carol hadn’t just rushed in after Alpha, maybe the team wouldn’t have gotten trapped, maybe they could have killed Alpha in the cave, buried the horde, and then finished off the rest of the Whisperers (Who wouldn’t have had a horde to fall back on) shortly afterwards.

Carol’s rashness, either directly or indirectly, led to Hilltop being destroyed, countless people being killed, and, at least last we saw, the survivors being trapped inside an abandoned skyscraper as an angry and crazed Beta, who’s since made a new horde, leads the Whisperers in a grand (And likely bloody) siege.

All because Carol couldn’t keep her rage from blinding her. Speaking of which…

…Why does everyone have to do stupid things when they want revenge!? Carol, Maggie, Ron…it seems like every time people try to get revenge in The Walking Dead, it blows up in their face!! Maybe they should stop.

And that concludes our list of the worst decisions in The Walking Dead. I think I was much calmer this week, though, the “revenge thing” is irritating. If you enjoyed that from last week, I’m sorry I couldn’t get quite that riled up. On the other hand, I do hope that you might have also learned a few lessons about surviving a zombie apocalypse this week by learning what not to do.

If you want to learn more about to do and not to in a 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!