The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: The Two Sides Of Trust

Tale of the Walking Dead

When everyone is untrustworthy, NO ONE IS.

I think that this week’s Tales of The Walking Dead had probably the most damning indictment of distrust as a philosophy that I’ve ever seen. At one point, as Dee pled her case against Billy, she was shot down by Brooke simply replying “You don’t trust anybody.”

Boom. All of that rightful suspicion I talked about Dee having in the last entry, noticing Billy monkeying with the lights (Which she should have mentioned, by the way), forget about all of that because, as Brooke pointed out: Dee didn’t trust anybody, so, why should Billy be any different?

If Dee had mentioned seeing Billy playing with the perimeter lights in his reflection on the dining room door, maybe that would have been something to warrant suspicion, but, absent that, as far as Brooke was concerned, it was Dee not trusting someone, something as unusual a circumstance as a day ending in the letter “Y”.

Herein lies the problem with being completely distrustful; it’s a phenomenon I like to call “Syndrome syndrome” (Named after The Incredibles villain), where, if everyone is something — In this case, untrustworthy — then no one is because you no longer have a standard that differentiates people. Dee didn’t trust anyone, so why should Brooke have cared that she didn’t trust Billy? It wasn’t like Dee had laid out any specific reason, any evidence, or anything to convey that this wasn’t just another run-of-the-mill distrusting.

As valuable as distrust can be in a zombie apocalypse, if that isn’t simply your baseline when dealing with new people, but becomes a constant when dealing with everyone, then, when the time comes that you determine some is really bad, either no one will believe you, or no one will care, because you suspicion of them be seen as perfectly normal.

And that’s our Walking Dead Survival Rule Of The Week! Trust is important, essential even, to survive in a zombie apocalypse. Strangely, though, so is distrust. It’s a two-sided coin, not simply because you need both but also because you can’t have too much of either. You don’t want to be naive, but at the same time, you can’t be so distrustful that it becomes meaningless. To survive, you need a little of both. If you want to strike that balance in a zombie outbreak, 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!