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

5) SURPRISE! …Everyone had the same idea for an escape route as you.

At the beginning of all of this, I suggested memorizing maps of places you thought you might go to, specifically to know escape routes, but, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you should be making sure to memorize the airport, the harbor, the train terminal, or the subway stations, because those will be the places that everyone else will try to go to.

Last week, I talked about how we as a species have this annoying little quirk called “mob mentality”, which causes people to act violently or (More importantly for our purposes here) irrationally because they’re in a large group, well, I’m pretty sure this also includes our old enemy: Mass panic.

Now, to tie these two things together: Where do you think the panicking mob will go once they realize their city or town is infested with zombies? The places where they get the fastest means to get the furthest away, that means airports, seaports, and train stations. All hoping to get on one of the last vehicles out of dodge.

The problem is, I don’t think they’ll succeed.

Just…imagine this for a minute: People, first dozens, then hundreds, then, thousands, all converging on the airports or the docks or the train platforms, with hundreds of zombies not far behind them. The doors open, people spill out into the gangway or the train or what have you, falling over on top of each other as they go, that’s the lucky ones, anyway. The unlucky ones get pressed up against the sides of the door way as a literal crush of people all push against them, likely squeezing the air out of their lungs. The unluckier people don’t even get that, as they are pushed down, or tripped by some other panicking person around them, and get trampled, squashed like a bug under a mass of frightened humanity.

The people unluckier still are those at the back of the stampede, safe from the threat it poses, but tragically, closest to the thing it’s running from. Caught between the bottlenecked mob and the jaws of the dead, worse still are the poor souls who got tripped or trampled, but not to death, as they will be completely defenseless and trapped, knowing the cruel fate that awaits them.

Have you imagined all of that? Good. Now you know why you should memorize maps of the places you go and may go to, so that you can learn the back ways, the ways that, while people will still go to, won’t be swarmed by the mob, and thus, giving you a fighting chance to survive.

I wasn’t kidding last week: Sometimes, there is not safety in numbers.