TWD, Survival Rule Of The Week: What you DON’T need from yourself

4) Jealousy

There is always going to be someone who has something that you don’t. Even people who seemingly have everything look at something that others have and want it for themselves. This is just how things are: No one will ever have everything they want.

When this becomes a problem is when someone grows to resent the other person for having the thing that they want and becomes willing to go to extremes to get it from that person.

I can think of no better example of just how bad this can get in a zombie apocalypse than Shane’s entire run in The Walking Dead, when, after having an affair with Rick’s wife, Lori (After thinking Rick had died from his gunshot wound during the beginning of the outbreak), began to scheme to kill Rick to get Lori back after Rick’s miraculous return.

On some level, Shane always envied Rick for the stable, loving relationship he shared with Lori (Even if they did have their issues). This was all well and good in a normal world, where Shane could keep trying to find the right woman, but then, the walkers arrived and put paid to all of that. In the aftermath of the outbreak, he and Lori found comfort in one another. Shane found something to give him purpose, namely carrying on for the “family” he’d created by slotting himself in the absent Rick’s place…which all came crashing down when Rick returned.

Shane’s response was to slowly go off the deep end, first casually considering killing Rick in a “hunting accident,” then just admitting it to Rick, trying to murder him, frame someone else for the killing, and try to go back to how things were before.

A person could sit there and say, because The Walking Dead is a TV show, that it’s not realistic, but frankly, you could watch any number of true crime stories and see one just like Rick and Shane’s. Where one friend either is or wants to sleep with the other friend’s wife or husband or whatever, and conspires to murder their friend to get their partner.

I would think that having laid out all of this, that the problems with jealousy in a zombie apocalypse would become obvious: A group can’t function very well if one member is so determined to take whatever it is that another one has, that they’re willing to kill to get it. Let that go on for long enough, everything implodes, and people start dying.

Jealousy is a fundamental human emotion — It’s been with us probably longer than the spoken word — but if you can’t keep it in check, it will consume not just you but your entire group. It will probably get you consumed not long afterwards.