The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: No Other Choices

The Walking Dead doesn’t have to eat, but people do, and food is limited

If you’ve been following this season of The Walking Dead since the beginning, then you know how dire the communities’ food situation had been after the conclusion of the Whisperer War. They had to eat horses and scrape together a soup from the last of their stores.

The main reason why Maggie and her team risked life and limb fighting the Reapers was that Meridian had a large stock of food and seeds that they could use to replenish their depleted supplies.

The reason I mention this is because if there’s anything The Walking Dead gets right about a zombie apocalypse, it’s how desperate your food situation can become in one and how quickly that can happen. This leads to an important question: What do you do once your group starts running out of food?

Your first answer should be to look for more food in the surrounding area — At the beginning of the apocalypse, this shouldn’t be that hard to accomplish — and, once you’ve exhausted that avenue, then what?

This is where “bad choices” come in. If you and your group are staring down at starvation and discover that the only option you have is to steal food from another group, what do you do?

You might be able to ask for food, but if you don’t know this other group, or worse, know they’re hostile, asking for food might as well be an invitation for them to attack you. This would lead to them taking what supplies you do have because you’re effectively announcing that you don’t have the means or the strength to fight protracted battles with them.

So, now you’re left with the choice: Do you steal food or not? If you don’t, your group starves, but if you do, you’re inviting war with whomever you’re stealing from. They need that food just as much as you, and they won’t want to give it up. If you have to fight for that food, either during or after the theft, you probably will lose people, but, presumably, less than you would without the food.

What would you choose?