The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: The Monsters Within

1) Sometimes, Nice Guys Do Finish Last.

Near the beginning of this week’s episode, while in his temporary “banishment,” Negan is confronted by himself, in the appearance we most recognize him for — A leather jacket, a red scarf, his hair slicked back, and with his barbed-wire baseball bat, “Lucille,” by his side.

“Savior Negan” mocks his present-day self for deluding himself into thinking that the Alexandrians would see him as anything but his Savior incarnation, which, he contends, is who he truly is.

Present-day Negan didn’t really want to hear this from his past self, especially not when confronted by how effective he was back then when compared to himself now, reminding him that he got far better results through violence or the threat of violence than he ever could with “a kind word.”

The sad thing is, to a certain degree…he was right.

A good deal of this episode featured Negan’s run-in with a local biker gang named the Valaks Vipers, who were more than happy to kidnap and beat him up to get him to reveal the location of the doctors he got the medicine for Lucille.

Negan tried talking with them but considering that they outgunned and outnumbered him, felt no real need to be nice to him or the doctor he got Lucille’s chemotherapy treatment from.

My point is: There will be people like that in a zombie apocalypse who think they have the right to do whatever they want to whomever they want because they have the ability to do it.

Such people exist right now. They’re the world’s bullies and criminals and terrorists, and sadly, not all of them will get eaten by zombies when the apocalypse hits. Generally, these kinds of people don’t respond to words because they believe that they can do whatever they want. Do you know what might make them stand up and take notice, though? Someone strong enough to make them believe that if they did do something untoward to anyone else, that they’d regret it.

This was the point “Savior Negan” was making: The workers amongst the Saviors listened to him because they respected him, and the more violent ones? They listened to him because they were afraid of him.

In a zombie apocalypse, when dealing with people who are…unnecessarily violent, being nice doesn’t help, you need to make such people believe that crossing you would be bad for their health, and, if they don’t, you need to be willing to prove to them that it would.