The smartest decisions in The Walking Dead: Part II

Season 6: Rick convinces Alexandria to get rid of the quarry herd.

This season was a tough one for me, as I was torn between this and Rick agreeing to form an alliance with Hilltop. What put this over the top for me was two things:

1. I feel like both of those are applying the same principle (Which I’ll cover in greater detail in a moment).
2. When you consider the trouble the alliance with Hilltop got Rick and company into, I feel like, in terms of what they lost in relation to what they were trying to achieve, this was the better decision.

For those who don’t remember, at the beginning of season 6, Rick and Morgan, a couple of days after Rick killed Pete, found a massive herd of walkers packed like sardines inside a quarry. Realizing how dangerous the herd could prove if it got out and ambushed Alexandria, Rick suggests the community follow his plan to get rid of the herd, though he’s met with some skepticism, as Rick’s group only arrived at the town a few days earlier. However, at Deanna’s insistence, the community agrees to follow Rick’s lead.

For the most part, the plan worked. Daryl, Abraham, and Sasha successfully led the majority of the herd away, while the rest ended up besieging Alexandria because of the Wolves’ surprise attack, which, obviously, Rick couldn’t have expected.

What makes this smart is that Rick saw a clear danger to the community that, while not necessarily immediate, was one that Rick knew would become so sooner rather than later. Rather than just sit around and wait to deal with the problem later (Or whenever the barricade holding the herd in gave way), Rick determined that the problem was important enough to deal with as soon as the community was able to.

Let’s compare this to what I named as my worst decision of season 3: Rick letting Andrew live. In that instance, Rick saw a clear threat in Andrew, but, rather than deal with him, left him with a group of walkers and just assumed that they’d take care of the problem. Obviously, things didn’t work out that way, leading to the deaths of Lori and T-Dog.

When a threat presents itself in a zombie apocalypse, you need to deal with it as soon as possible, because, the longer you let it linger, the bigger of a problem it’s likely to become.