The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: People suck

3) People are stupid.

I told you I had a rant about this brewing…

It never ceases to amaze me just how stupid people can be. Just when I think I’ve seen or heard the dumbest thing imaginable, something new comes along and reminds me that there are people out there who have a level of intelligence comparable to that of a possum.

I could probably spend an hour detailing all the various flavors of stupid people might exhibit in a zombie apocalypse, but, that would be a waste of my time, when, honestly, a few examples would do enough to get the message across.

Like what, you might ask? Oh, like people putting their own selfish wants over the safety of their group or maybe even their own family, how’s that for a start? Seriously, look at Gregory, from The Walking Dead. The stupid bastard tries to sell out his community, Alexandria, and The Kingdom to the Saviors, fails, IMMEDIATELY gets turned on by Simon, tries to act like everything’s normal (After leaving Father Gabriel to die as repayment for saving him), gets jailed by Maggie, escapes, then goes back to the Saviors, the same guys who turned on him the moment he wasn’t useful to them. Do you think there aren’t people so self-serving that they would try that? Please.

Want another example? Okay, how about people blabbing crucial information to a stranger, before even figuring out whether the person they’re blabbing to is sketchy or not?

Seriously, even in the year 2020, long after these tactics have been exposed and have been practiced for years beforehand, people still get tricked by scam callers asking for credit card numbers and things like that. If that can happen now, do you honestly think people wouldn’t fall for an equivalent to that in a zombie apocalypse?

Alright, enough of that. Earlier, I mentioned how I’m not treating someone being ignorant as an equivalent to being stupid, and, I’m sticking to that. You see, for the most part, ignorance is simply someone not knowing something. You can’t sit there and call a four year old stupid for not knowing multiplication when they haven’t been taught it yet, now can you? It’s the same idea.

However, ignorance can be compared to stupidity when it is willful. It’s what I like to call “Ostrichism”, i.e., when there’s a problem, a person (Or group of people) know there’s a problem, have some means to address it, and just…don’t. They sit there and pretend that there isn’t a problem, or worse, find excuses for it, rather than actually address it, and, proverbially, put their heads in the sand…like an ostrich.

Imagine if the Alexandrians knew about the quarry herd, had the means to lure them away or burn them all, and, rather than do either of those things, just…didn’t. If they knew about the quarry herd and just pretended like it wasn’t a problem, that would have been the epitome of stupid.

But, sadly, people do stuff just like that right now, as we speak. They sit there, and watch things burning around them and, rather than acknowledge the problem, just pretend like it isn’t even there. This won’t change just because there’s zombies, and will, in fact, be worse, because it’ll probably be the reason so many people become zombies.