The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Dangerous by default

1) Our emotions get the better of us.

In the first half of season two of The Walking Dead, the most immediate threat to Rick’s group was not (Surprisingly) Shane (Though, we’ll address him later), it was, in fact, Hershel.

Now, especially if you never saw season two, and only remember Hershel from seasons three and four, this might be surprising to you. “Hershel!? A THREAT?! WHAAAAT?!?” And, to that, I’d say, well…yes.

You see, when Rick’s group met Hershel, it was still early in the apocalypse, and Hershel, along with his daughters, Maggie and Beth, his friends, Otis and Patricia, and Beth’s boyfriend, Jimmy, believed that the walkers were sick, and, while that was technically true, they didn’t believe that the infection had killed them, and simply thought that, eventually, they would be cured.

As we all know by now…they were wrong.

It wasn’t simply that Hershel thought the walkers were sick, he was going around collecting walkers that he either found roaming around his farm, or, the walkers of his family members who’d turned, and storing them all in his barn. While he kept them because he believed they could be cured, he held onto to that belief long after he should have know that they were decomposing because he cared about them.

Granted, Hershel’s only a character in a TV show, but, is the idea of what he did so far-fetched? Do you think it’s impossible that someone, after losing somebody they cared about to the zombie virus, may try to hang onto them? Is it impossible that they might get defensive if you try to deal with their reanimated loved ones, should you meet them? Of course not!

The reason I brought up Hershel, and how he dealt with his loved ones turning is because I believe that, in a zombie apocalypse, you will see just that kind of behavior! I can almost guarantee that you’ll see at least a few people (Maybe even people you know), keep zombies because, having lost so much, they can’t bear to part with what they have left of the people they cared about.

If you meet such people, you need to be extremely careful when dealing with them. You don’t know how far their attachment to a zombified person will take them. At best, it might make them unable to part with their infected loved one; At worst, it might make them scheme to feed people to their dearly departed, having some demented notion that doing so will keep them “alive”.

Once emotion comes into the mix between a person and a zombie, things can get real dangerous, real quick.