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

4) Zombies are great listeners.

There’s an old pirate saying: “Dead men tell no tales”. How ironic, then, that one of the dead’s greatest assets will be their hearing.

You know, staying out of sight of zombies is something that’s, frankly, rather obvious. Something that might not be so obvious is staying out of hearing of zombies, partially because of something people may not even think about, namely, that all the noise of human civilization that is ubiquitous to us, will disappear once society crumbles. In the absence of that noise, every other sound will carry, maybe even miles further than it otherwise would have, meaning that zombies could be alerted to your presence from miles away.

I don’t think I need to elaborate on why that’s a problem, do I?

I can not overstate just how insidious sound can wind up being in a zombie apocalypse, because, especially if you assume the zombies stupid, you’re not going to spend much time thinking about all the noise you make. I mean, you’ll already be underestimating the zombies, so, you’ll probably assume that making noise won’t matter, because the dead will be too dumb to recognize the sound as people, right? This could lead to people being carelessly noisy and, inadvertently, drawing hundreds of zombies to themselves.

Remember that, just because a zombie is dead, it doesn’t mean it’s brain isn’t functioning, nor does it mean its senses aren’t functioning. They’re just as capable of hearing you as they were when they were alive, actually, more so, seeing as how quiet the rest of the world will be.