The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: A Cold, Cruel World

3) A Front-Wheel Drive Car

Not far from my hometown, just outside of Boston, there is a hill that the highway goes over; it’s a highway that my dad and I had driven over thousands of times.

Well, when I was younger, and we’d have blizzards, my dad would recount a slightly harrowing adventure he had during the infamous “Blizzard of ’78”, which ravaged the state in February of that year. As my dad would tell me, he had left work (Which was in the northern part of the state) early that day in order to beat the traffic; He recalled that people had initially underestimated the storm, but, the more he heard about it, the more concerned my dad was, so, he felt that the precaution was warranted.

Anyway, he arrived home just as the storm was bearing down; all he had to do to get home was make it up that hill, and he’d be essentially home free. The problem was…the hill was fairly steep. Now, this is pretty much irrelevant most times you’re driving on it, but when there’s snow, that incline can become a serious problem.

My dad told me how he had to slowly make his way up the hill, in the snow, before reaching the crest and the straight shot home. He did, obviously (As I’m here to tell his story), the thing is: A lot of other people who were also trying to make it up that hill…never did. They died, on that hill, in their cars.

The difference between my dad’s car and so many of theirs? Front-wheel drive. The car had, essentially, pulled itself up the hill, while the rear-wheel-drive cars — Fairly common in the seventies — trying to push themselves up the hill, couldn’t get traction in the snow, and were stuck, and, as my dad told me, a few of those drivers would never see the other side of the blizzard, dying in their cars.

This is why I tell you to try to get a hold of a front-wheel-drive car before winter sets in a zombie apocalypse, because, these days, people are plowing, salting, and sanding roads and highways in the winter. Still, no one will be around to do any of that once there are zombies, and you’ll need such a vehicle to get you out of dodge before the storm really sets in.

You can afford to get stuck in a blizzard just as much as you can afford getting surrounded by zombies, which is to say, “You can’t.”