Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Things Aren’t What They Seem

5) People Can Surprise You.

Teddy has, quite frankly, been the best villain Fear The Walking Dead has ever had. Period. He’s a warped, vile murderer, a calculated manipulator, and worst of all, a utopianist, meaning he believes he’ll create a perfect world and destroy as many people as possible in service of that goal—a true monster.

However, at the end of this week’s episode, as Teddy has locked Alicia away inside the Tramlin Hotel’s fallout shelter, she yells to him how she won’t remake the world the way he wants it, to which Teddy turns around, smiles at her, and replies “I know. I’m counting on it.“

As crazy it as it is, it almost made me sympathize with him because he knows that Alicia won’t carry out his plan the way he wants…except, that is what he wants: He believes that, with everyone else, including he and his loyalists, gone, that Alicia will make the world a better place.

It boggles the mind. I would never have expected that (Never mind what it suggests) from someone like Teddy.

Yet, things like that can happen, even in a zombie apocalypse. Just when you think someone is an utter selfish coward (The way just about everyone in this episode seemed to feel about Strand), they turn around and do something courageous and selfless. Just when you think someone is the biggest, most thick-headed idiot you’ve ever met, they can whip out the kind of sage wisdom or insight you could only expect from the most learned and worldly of minds. And, just when you think someone is the vilest, narrow-minded piece of human garbage, out of the blue, they show a level of compassion for someone you would be convinced they’d sooner set on fire than help.

People are capable of so much more than many of us give them credit for. It’s why you can’t always judge a book by its cover in the apocalypse, because, in such extreme circumstances, people can show you who they truly are, meaning that people you would otherwise write off may prove to be among the best people you meet or ever could meet.

If there’s one thing I can guarantee about a zombie apocalypse, it’s this: Things will not be as they seem, and, more importantly, neither will people. Some good people may be turned bad by the apocalypse; others may reveal that they never were good in the first place, and yet others may prove to be something wholly different than what you thought they were. If you want to survive, you need to train yourself to see them.

And that’s your Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week!  Hopefully, you’ve learned that things and (Especially) people in the zombie apocalypse will not be as they seem. If you like this and want something else to help you survive the zombie apocalypse, why not pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can also get it at Amazon here, on iTunes here!