Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Being A Survivor

Strand has skills for survival

2) Make Sure You Have Valuable Skills.

Part of what has kept Strand alive for so long in the apocalypse has been how he has proven useful to other people. I’m thinking, specifically, when he became the community medic at the Rosarito Beach Hotel in season three of Fear The Walking Dead.

Now, I’ll grant, Strand was mostly faking it, claiming his treated stab wound was something he did, but he managed to provide some minor medical treatment, ensuring that the mass of refugees that flooded the hotel didn’t kill him.

In a zombie apocalypse, next to having the skills and arsenal necessary to fight off hostile people, the one thing more likely to save you when meeting hostiles is being useful. If you have some skills in, say, medical training, ability to speak a foreign language, military training, hunting and tracking, knowledge of mechanics, carpentry, etc. — you may be able to convince a group of people that they’d be better off having you alive than dead and that they should add you to their group.

Of course, such skills aren’t simply useful for ensuring that potential hostiles don’t see you as “expendable,” but also because they’re just useful skills to have in any survival situation. People will get hurt or sick and need someone to treat them. There will always be people who speak different languages, and knowing those languages can prevent dangerous and unnecessary conflicts. People will need to know how to fight to stay alive in the face of zombies and hostiles, and people will have to hunt for food.  Vehicles will be essential to getting away from zombies and to use as places to keep them away from you while you sleep, so knowing how to repair and/or build such things will never become needless.

Put simply: If you want to survive, you need to have the skills to do it.