Connecting The Walking Dead: ‘Truth Or Dare’

4) “Sunset Protocol”

In the fourth ever episode of Fear The Walking Dead, Madison Clark discovers that the military are killing anyone, alive or dead, that they find outside of the safe zones within Los Angeles.

Throughout the remainder of that season, we never learn why this is happening, and the most we do learn is that it appears to be weighing very heavily on the National Guardsmen watching over Madison’s neighborhood. The closest thing to an explanation we get in that season at all is Dr. Bethany Exner, the leading military doctor in L.A. explaining to Liza Ortiz (Travis Manawa’s ex-wife) that, by that point (About two weeks into the outbreak), the government is now aware that whenever someone dies, they turn. That is, honestly, the closest thing we get to an explanation.

However, in this week’s The Walking Dead: World Beyond, we finally learn what was going on, and how widespread it was.

During the last of Huck’s flashbacks to the outbreak, we learn that, after her and her unit had to go through Hell trying to rescue civilians from the service tunnels, the order comes down that anyone, regardless of whether they’re alive, infected, or dead, found inside the “hot zones” is to be killed, a directive referred to as “Sunset Protocols”. Huck questions this order (And, notably, her commander is not pleased to give it), but, is shouted down by PFC Owens, who brings forth the grim logic that any of the civilians they just rescued may already be infected as justification. Rather than carry out the grisly order, Huck sabotages the lights inside the warehouse the Marines are using as a headquarters, and puts down the rest of her unit, rather than let them gun down the civilians.

This revelation shows that one of the darkest parts of the beginning of the outbreak shown in Fear The Walking Dead was, sadly, not a one-off, or something relegated to the relatively untenable city of Los Angeles, but rather, a brutal reality across the United States, as military units were forced to make a “lesser of two evils” choice and try to spare those they knew were healthy, at the expense of those who might have been sick.

Man, if the remainder of the season is like this, we are in for some really dark stuff…

So what did you think?  Did any of these connections slip past you? Were there any that you thought I missed? Let me know in the comments! If you like this and want to see something different from me, specifically my 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!