The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: It’s human nature

7) People need purpose

People have always striven to find purpose. Even cavemen devoted themselves to other things beyond merely surviving, and as time wore on, people found purpose in all sorts of things: Their families, their communities, their nations, their occupations, their recreational pursuits, etc, whatever the case was, people always looked for purpose.

In the absence of it, people throughout history have gotten restless, depressed, angry, and even violent.

Will this be the cause of violence in a zombie apocalypse? Not necessarily, but, even if it was, that’s not what I’m worried about. What worries me is that, in the absence of purpose, people will look for one, and, in the absence of a normal society to curtail it, the new purposes people find in the apocalypse could become quite disturbing, indeed.

Look at the Whisperers. Alpha created a cult dedicated to living as much like the dead as humanly possible, seeking to destroy any group she came across which attempted to live like normal people, borne out of some idea that the Whisperers were to be the stewards of the end of the world.

While the Whisperers are, obviously, fictional, the cults they’re meant to be equivalents to are not. You don’t need to look too far to find cults, even in present day society, and a cursory glance over the last few decades can reveal half a dozen insidious cults which have popped up across the world, many having bizarre and violent belief systems. If they can exist now, what makes you think that they wouldn’t emerge, in some form, after a zombie apocalypse has begun?

What’s worse is that, with the societal collapse I mentioned in the last entry, and the simple fact that we would be in an actual apocalypse, it would only embolden and encourage such groups, the apocalypse being some confirmation of whatever warped ideology they held, and the societal collapse the perfect invitation for them to enact all manner of evils on “non-believers”.

With this being a possibility, you will need to be extremely wary of other groups you meet, because, you may not know just from looking at them whether they’re normal people, or weirdos beholden to beliefs that are unmitigated insanity.

The thing about a zombie apocalypse is that you’re not only trying to survive against the innumerable hordes of hungry undead, but also, against any number of other people who may not care about whether you live or die. If you want to survive in this environment, you need to understand not only the world you find yourself in, but also, human nature itself, because, understanding that can make you understand who may pose a threat to you and why.

And that’s your Survival Rule Of The Week! Hopefully, you’ve come to understand that some of the worst things you’ll see in the apocalypse come from the darker parts of human nature, and to be on the look out for signs of those things in the people you meet. If you like this and want to find out more tips to survive the 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!