Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: The Hidden Threat
By Liam O'Leary
1) The Outbreak
You might think that you’d know if a zombie apocalypse were coming, but the reality could be far different.
In The Walking Dead universe, where Night Of The Living Dead was never created, it would be easier for people to catch on to a zombie outbreak because there is no comparison in popular media. People can’t just dismiss random acts of cannibalism or people who should be dead wandering around as someone “watching too many movies” or other such throwaway excuses. For us, in the real world, where we do have constant references in movies, TV, books, and games, the moment someone sees something out of the ordinary, there is an army of people ready to dismiss it.
On the one hand, it does prevent panic (A little bit, anyway), but at the same time, it also means that, if a zombie outbreak did happen, people in positions who could try to get the outbreak under control and the populace at large wouldn’t believe it.
Because so many people won’t believe it, it gives the dead time to start shoring up their numbers, allowing them to bite people unchecked, without doctors or scientists being alerted to the growing threat to try to get a handle on it.
Worse still, governments won’t mobilize to contain the virus, and by the time they do, when hospitals start getting overrun with people who are bitten and people start taking notice, it will probably be too late.
The best advice I can give is to prepare well ahead of time, especially if you see or hear a story about someone biting another person. Remember the stories we were all hearing about people getting into fights over toilet paper last year? Well, once more and more reports come in of incidents that sound increasingly like zombie attacks, imagine that, but amped up to eleven. Once that happens, you won’t be able to get a pack of gum (Never mind anything more important) without risking getting trampled or punched, or bitten.
Maybe the scariest thing about a zombie apocalypse is how the whole thing can sneak up on you.