Fear the Walking Dead: Survival rule of the week, misguidance

Fear the Walking Dead: what if the person misguiding us is ourselves?

Strand has spent the first half of this season of Fear The Walking Dead struggling between who he is and who he wants to be. The former seemed to win out over the latter, sometimes to his own disappointment. Because of this, Strand wanted Alicia to join him at his tower in the first place. She, being the only person he trusted to be the gentle hand he believed he needed to make his budding community something more long-lasting and the beacon he saw it as. Yet, his selfish actions, specifically killing Will (in the hopes of driving Alicia away), caused that hope to be dashed. In this way, Strand’s instincts wound up screwing him over.

This is a pitfall we need to be extremely careful not to fall into in a zombie apocalypse but is one that is very difficult to avoid, as many of us can be blind to the gaps in our instincts or not think our actions through as well as we should, and wind up sabotaging ourselves.

How do we avoid this? It takes a lot of honesty and self-reflection to know where our shortcomings are. You don’t need to announce these to the world by any means, but at the very least, you need to be honest with yourself. Knowing when you’re out of your depth, so that, rather than blindly charging through, thinking you know all the answers, you can, if nothing else, proceed with caution.

Furthermore, we need to try to think ahead about what our actions may result in. To go back to Strand for a minute, he knew he was conflicted about wanting Alicia to join him at the tower. He went from wanting to gloat over his success to her at one point, then worrying about ensuring her safety a few hours later. The pragmatist in Strand should have known to keep his options open, and as much as he may not have wanted Will around, kept him around in the event his concern for Alicia overwhelmed his lust for glory, and he chose to bring her in after all. I’m saying: Don’t make hasty decisions that you know you could have the potential to regret because chances are, you will wind up regretting them.

And that’s our Walking Dead Survival Rule Of The Week! Guidance is an important thing to have in a zombie apocalypse, but, only so long as its good. Having a guide who doesn’t know where they’re going, one you don’t trust, or one leading you down a path you don’t really want to go, is no better than having no guide at all! And, if you don’t have one, and have to rely on yourself to do the job, know your limits in that capacity, and don’t make decisions you can reasonably guess may come back to bite you. If you want some reliable guidance, 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!