The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Harsh Realities

The Walking Dead – Sometimes, “Doing good” requires doing BAD

Poor Eugene kind of had everything get dropped on him at all once, didn’t he?

When Eugene infiltrated the building inside the Commonwealth’s warehouse district where the spy ring operated from, he was confronted with the fact that Stephanie wasn’t Stephanie. He also learned that the document he signed to avoid prosecution for breaking into Calhoun’s apartment essentially marked him as crazy. And most importantly, he realized that everything, from the arranged meeting in Charleston, to his team’s capture, to the circumstances leading to his arrest, to punching Sebastian, was all organized so that the Commonwealth could discover the location of Alexandria.

What might have made that last part worse for Eugene was the response he got from Mr. Lance Hornsby, who not only admitted to the ruse, but then had the gall to tell Eugene that he and the rest of the communities in Virginia got the better of things! As Hornsby told it, Alexandria and Hilltop made out in the deal, getting assistance from the Commonwealth, and access to their resources. What might be the worst is that, to some degree, he was right.

As we saw a couple of times in this week’s episode of The Walking Dead, for some good to be done in a zombie apocalypse, sometimes, you need to do bad to achieve it.

Look at the little assignment Hornsby had for Carol, accompanying him to his meeting with Moto out in the countryside. Moto is, pure and simple, a drug dealer using poppies to create opium to sell to the Commonwealth. The reason for this nefarious deal was, as Hornsby explained, because the hospital would be a “pretty sad place” without the opium, suggesting that it was to develop morphine for surgery patients. Yes, what Hornsby was doing was terrible, but he was doing it for what he saw was a greater good.

Does this excuse evil behavior in a zombie apocalypse? No. But, we need to acknowledge that, to survive a zombie apocalypse, there may be times where you do need to do bad things, like steal food, loot abandoned stores, hotwire abandoned cars, and use lethal force to stop other survivors from using such force on you and your group. Are these acceptable behaviors before a zombie apocalypse? Again, the answer is “No,” but once the apocalypse does begin, survival takes precedent. Doing bad, in order to do good.