The Walking Dead, Survival Rule of the Week: Never Assume

Tales of the Walking Dead season 1

Never assume gifts from strangers are harmless.

Way back in season five of The Walking Dead, as Rick Grimes’ group was making their arduous death march to Washington, they were given an anonymous gift of bottled water. As Eugene Porter went to drink one, Sergeant Abraham Ford immediately stopped him, slapping the bottle out of Eugene’s hand, owing to the possibility that the water could have been a trap laced with some chemical that couldn’t be seen. In the first episode of Tales Of The Walking Dead, we finally saw someone actually execute the nefarious scheme Abraham was so afraid of.

While Joe was talking to Sandra about how her bunker was set up and her choice in music, she offered him a nice brownie to fill his stomach after his long journey; however, after taking a few bites, Joe’s vision was getting fuzzy, his hearing was getting distorted, and his movements and reactions very sluggish: As it turned out, Sandra had laced the brownies with weed, something Joe was, sadly, unprepared for.

It’s tempting to accept gifts from strangers in a zombie apocalypse, especially if our own supplies are low or outright nonexistent. The prospect of not only getting free food or drink but better yet, a person friendly enough to share them is almost too good to pass up.

However, pass up we must because it’s far too easy for our benefactor to surreptitiously spike whatever they’ve given us with drugs or poison in the hopes of incapacitating us or killing us all together. Think of it like taking candy from strangers when you were a kid or accepting drinks given to you by a stranger at a party: Do not assume they’re safe. Unless you prepared it yourself, you have no idea what you’re putting in your mouth, and that is a dangerous gamble to be making in the zombie apocalypse.

And that’s our Walking Dead Survival Rule Of The Week! Making assumptions is a bad habit, even at the best of times, but, in a zombie apocalypse, it’s downright dangerous. If you assume things are safe or strangers are friendly, you may discover all too late that your assumptions were dead wrong. If you don’t want to make such mistakes during the apocalypse, why not pick up my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can also get it at Amazon here, on iTunes here!