The smartest decisions in The Walking Dead: Part I

The Walking Dead Smartest Moments: Season Five

Daryl leaves Carol behind to get reinforcements to rescue her

In season five of The Walking Dead, after meeting Father Gabriel and destroying the survivors of Terminus, Daryl, after recognizing a car driving around in the darkness, grabbed Carol and followed the car back into Atlanta, in the hope that it would lead him to Beth, who’d been kidnapped by someone driving a similar car.

During that excursion, Carol got hit by a another car being driven by what was revealed to be a pair of Atlanta police officers, who took her into in the very hospital they just left. After listening to the wisdom of Noah, who (With Beth’s help) had just escaped that same hospital, Daryl fought against his own instincts, and returned back to Father Gabriel’s church to recruit Rick, Sasha, and Tyreese to help him and Noah retrieve Carol and Beth.

While “leaves Carol behind” doesn’t inspire confidence, trust me, it’s actually wicked smart.

Why?  Because Daryl’s first instinct was to jump out and try to stop the cops from taking Carol to the hospital, but, luckily, Noah was there to stop him and let him know that the cops had more to help Carol with than the two of them did. Daryl easily could have ignored Noah and done what he was trying to do, but instead, realized that Noah was right and that the two of them couldn’t hope to rescue Beth and Carol alone, and chose to go back, gather the rest of the group, and then go back and complete the rescue.

It takes good sense to realize when you’re outmatched in some way — Overpowered, outgunned, outnumbered, etc. — and need help to do what you want to do. Anyone can sit there and, figuratively, ram their head into the wall hoping to knock it down, but, a smart person assesses the circumstances in front of them and gets help when they determine that they need it.

Whenever you’ve seen, in horror movies, someone going out alone to try to fight the monster or the killer or whatever, and you find yourself screaming at the character on screen not to do it, the reason why it bothers you so much is that you know it’s stupid, you know they stand no chance and yet, for some absurd reason, try to do it, anyways.

It stands to reason, then, that doing the opposite of that, is extremely smart.

That’s it for the first five seasons of The Walking Dead. Considering everything we saw in those first five seasons, I think that these are the five smartest decisions. Like I said in the beginning, they weren’t necessarily the most dramatic, or stood out the most, but, that’s part of the point: Sometimes, the smartest decisions, particularly in a zombie apocalypse, are relatively small, simple, and, at times, seem mundane, but, in the end, keep you breathing. Here’s hoping you learned a little bit about how to make smart decisions should you ever find yourself in a zombie apocalypse.

If you want to learn how to make more smart decisions 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!