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

5) Laziness

Survival in a zombie apocalypse doesn’t just happen by accident. Sure, you may get a lucky break when the outbreak hits, but once everything’s collapsed…you can’t just expect that food or water or weapons or whatever is just going to fall into your lap. You have to work for it.

You have to go and look for food or water. You have to grow food and collect water. You have to find weapons or make them yourself. This is to say nothing of the work you have to put into getting a decent shelter.

Of course, if they’re desperate enough, even the laziest person will go out and look for food or water, but things that aren’t so immediate? Those they might skip.

Things like patrolling the grounds of their base, clearing the nearby area of roaming zombies, or maybe, checking to make sure all the gates are shut and locked. These are all inglorious, menial tasks, the sort of thing you can imagine someone saying, “Meh, someone else will get it.”

That is the sort of attitude that causes trouble in a zombie apocalypse because, when you get right down to it: Every job is important.

If someone isn’t watering the gardens or the crops, there’s no food. If someone isn’t checking the rain catches or solar stills, there may be no freshwater. And, if someone isn’t making the rounds, checking the perimeter, checking the gates, checking the area, either zombies or hostiles or both get inside your base, and from there, it’s chaos and death for everybody.

You have to force yourself to always be willing to do the little jobs, even if they’re boring, even they’re tedious, because doing those things are what allows you to wake up the next day. You can’t let yourself get complacent or lazy because there may not be anyone else to do the job. Your survival is dependent on the effort you put into achieving it.

No one said survival was going to be easy. Don’t expect it to be.