The Walking Dead Theory: Did Winter save the Civic Republic?

Since we’ve been introduced to the Civic Republic in Rick Grimes’s final episode of The Walking Dead, something’s been bothering me about them. This only increased when we learned in The Walking Dead World Beyond that the Civic Republic (Presumably at their capital) has a population of two hundred thousand.

I started wondering: “How in THE HELL can they have that many people during a zombie apocalypse?”

For the longest time, I couldn’t fathom how anyone, much less a large group housed in, apparently, a large city could maintain a group that large for that long into the apocalypse. It just didn’t make sense to me.

…And then, this week, I had a revelation.

The Walking Dead Theory: The Civic Republic survived because their first winter was too cold for the walkers.

Earlier this week, I started thinking about how scary The Walking Dead would be if it were set in a place that gets harsh winters. Something that, up until this year, we never really got, and after thinking about it and looking over the little we’ve seen of walkers in extreme cold, I determined that…it wouldn’t be.

What we saw of the walkers in a blizzard painted a picture of monsters that were far less dangerous, sometimes frozen stiff by the extreme cold, and rendered far easier to kill by those same temperatures.

And, as I was writing that article, it hit me: That must have been how the Civic Republic was able to survive as well as it has.

Sure, they have a large army and a lot of supplies with which they can maintain them. Still, I think the thing which allowed them to stand long enough to get that strong was that they were centered in a place that, once winter hit, was too cold for the walkers to pose nearly as large of a threat to them as they did when the outbreak began in (I think) the late summer.

Using what we saw of how the U.S. government was handling things in the first season of Fear The Walking Dead and Huck’s flashback in World Beyond, we know that they had been able to secure numerous safe zones within Los Angeles.  And all branches of the military were being deployed to gather as many uninfected people as they could. While those efforts didn’t go perfectly, it’s entirely possible that, in at least one city in the U.S., they succeeded enough that they didn’t require executing Operation: Cobalt or Sunset Protocol.

This isn’t to say things were clear of walkers but clear enough that the military personnel in the city could maintain it in the way that the National Guard tried to in L.A., presumably under the guidance of whatever remained of the U.S. government after things collapsed.

I think things changed once winter set in. Depending on how quickly and severely the extreme cold hit, the proto-Civic Republic Military would have discovered the walkers were suddenly far easier to deal with in the cold and systematically eliminated them from their city and the surrounding area. Using the winter as a chance to build up and take in as many survivors as possible to increase their strength, then repeating the process further and further out with each successive winter, as their population increased.

“Well, that would mean their capital would have to be in a place that gets really cold, like Pennsylvania.”

Or…New York?

We already know that the Civic Republic has facilities in both states. This means that it’s entirely possible that they could have just had a frigid winter and wound up being spared by the sort of temperatures that, while dangerous for living people, are terrible for dead ones.

Think about this for a minute: If the Civic Republic has a research facility where they’re trying to cure the zombie virus in Ithaca, New York, the chances are good that the lab isn’t the only thing in the facility. Just having many scientists there, alone, with dozens of walkers inside, and who knows how many outside, wouldn’t be a good idea.

You’d need a good contingent of soldiers there to protect them, and those soldiers would need barracks, and supply depots, and garages to house their helicopters, and whatever else they needed. Remember, this isn’t just some fuel dump where a pair of soldiers gas up and then leave: This is a research facility where they’re trying to cure the plague that’s devastated the entire world. This is important; it needs to be secure, and if there’s one thing we know about the Civic Republic, it’s that they’re dead serious about security.

Don’t you think something like that is something they’d keep close by? I do, and, in fact, I think they’re so close by that they might as well be the same place. If so, and with the sort of icy, frigid winters upstate New York gets, it would certainly go a long way to explaining how they can have a population of two hundred thousand when most other communities we’ve seen can barely muster even a fraction of that.

But, what do you think? Do you think the weather played a role in the Civic Republic’s survival at the beginning of the zombie apocalypse? Do you think it was something else? Like what? Seriously, I’m curious. If you enjoyed this and want to learn how you can stay alive in a 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!