The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: What you need from yourself

4) Resilience

Much like the endurance of zombies, one thing you can be pretty certain of in a zombie apocalypse is spending a little time going through the proverbial wringer.

Survival will be tough. In one fashion or another, you will get beat up — Sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally — whatever the case may be, it will happen, and…you need to be able to take it and bounce back.

Unlike the others, however, this is a little…difficult to improve on. I mean, how can you train yourself to withstand physical pain and injuries?

I suppose there are things you can do, like learn martial arts, boxing, kickboxing, maybe MMA training, and, maybe, specifically, try to learn how to train your body to take that kind of abuse. Still, I imagine most trainers would be trying to teach you not to get beat up, so I don’t know how much progress you’d make in this regard. Though learning such combat training would be extremely useful in dealing with living threats but, that’s another story for another time.

It’s possible that, in the process of improving your strength and building up your body, your muscles get strong enough to shake off certain injuries. If you know who Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar are, then you know that what I’m suggesting is not fanciful nonsense, as both men can thank their years of physical training for saving them from neck injuries that might have killed an ordinary person. I’m not saying you need to become something like either of them, but I am saying that it would likely improve your chances of survival if you did.

Sometimes, resilience isn’t a matter of physical prowess but rather a matter of sheer determination, and that is something you definitely can improve upon. You need to remember that if you’re in a zombie apocalypse, what matters is your survival, and in order to ensure that survival, you can never give up, no matter how battered you get. If you can resolve yourself to keep fighting to live so long as you have the ability to do so, that may take you further than years of training could.