The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Your Apocalypse Family

The Walking Dead groups see each other as family

Have you noticed that the really strong groups in The Walking Dead either were or saw themselves as a family?

Compare Rick’s group, the Reapers, even Woodbury to groups like Terminus. When the former has run into trouble, the rest of their group made efforts to help them. In Terminus, when Carol caused the dead to breach the community, the people visibly left other group members to die, even when they easily could have helped them. The Woodburians would have survived had The Governor not gone ape and gunned down most of them. Rick’s group obviously have survived, despite a litany of troubles, and the Reapers, even with being in (Presumably) DC when the outbreak hit, being there when Cobalt was initiated, and being in the apocalypse for years, stand strong, without devolving into the insane lunacy seen by Terminus or the Whisperers or the tyranny seen with the Saviors.

The thing those three groups have in common? Their members cared about one another, seeing each other as the families, so many of them lost when the outbreak hit, while the others, for the most part, didn’t; the Whisperers and Terminus especially being so detached as to see each another as little more than, as my old nemesis Martin said, “…Just assholes I survive with”.

Seeing one another as family ensures that members of your group will work to keep one another (And, by extension, the group) alive and make efforts to help them rather than just leave their teammates to die unnecessarily.