The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: The Leaders We Follow
By Liam O'Leary
The Walking Dead -bad people
6) In A Zombie Apocalypse, Bad Leaders Lead To BAD PEOPLE.
In this week’s Walking Dead, we were introduced to our second named member of The Commonwealth, Mercer, the “pumpkin colored” (According to Ezekiel) leader of their security forces. Mercer is a thoroughly mean individual, who takes his job of maintaining The Commonwealth’s security very seriously, to the point that Ezekiel called him a fascist.
Don’t get me wrong; security is important in a zombie apocalypse — look at Dante’s infiltration of Alexandria last season for proof of that –but The Commonwealth seems to take it to an extreme, holding potential candidates in detention cells for months, assessing them several times over, before letting them in… God only knows what they do to those who get a bad assessment.
However, Mercer is only a symptom. While he is, at the very least, leader of The Commonwealth’s border patrol (For lack of a better word) — Maybe even their overall head of security — he is not in charge of the entire Commonwealth, someone else is. I honestly don’t know who the leader of The Commonwealth is, but I can not imagine that, with The Commonwealth’s clear love of bureaucracy, that the actions taken by Mercer and his team are not done with their approval.
My point? Mercer is as bad as he is because his bosses want him to be that bad. He’s a henchman, and henchmen work for villains. The leaders of The Commonwealth are villains, as sure as you’re reading this, and when your leadership structure is comprised of villains, it bleeds down through.
Next. The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Surviving The City. dark
And that’s our Survival Rule Of The Week! A group of survivors is only as strong as its weakest link, and, if that weakest link happens to be the leader of that group, it is most assuredly screwed. You need good leadership in a zombie apocalypse, without it, you might just be following someone right off of the cliff. If you want to lead yourself to survival in 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!