The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Plan, Plan, Plan

The Walking Dead season 11

You won’t be the only one making plans.

I don’t know if everyone saw it, or if it was exclusive to AMC+, but, after this week’s episode, there were quick previews of this upcoming Sunday’s episode, which made it seem like Carol’s attempt to get Pamela Milton to help reign in Lance Hornsby is going to backfire, with her and Sebastian first throwing Hornsby under the bus, then turning on the group, eventually forcing them to team up with Hornsby to finally put a stop to the Miltons. I might be wrong, but considering how sketchy Pamela and her son have been thus far…I don’t think so.

This brings me to my point: In a zombie apocalypse, you aren’t going to be the only person around coming up with plans. I warned of this problem in this week’s first entry, where I said that while zombies can’t and won’t plan, people can and they will.

While you are making your own plans to deal with hostiles, you need to keep in mind that whoever those hostiles are, they will also be cooking up plans. Frankly, you should think of whatever weaknesses might exist within your plans, assume your enemies may eventually see and/or attempt to exploit them, and then think of how you’d prevent them from doing that.

Next (Actually, this should be first, but I digress), you should learn as much as you can about your enemies and their strengths because the more you know about them, the more you can attempt to predict their moves. Think back to when the group was first fighting the Saviors. If Rick had known that the satellite outpost was only one of at least four outposts (Not counting the sanctuary itself), he would have been a lot more cautious in going to war with them because he would have known that they could have had people watching them all the time.

Furthermore, the more you know your enemy, the more you can know not to underestimate them. If, for example, you met a politician who survived years into the apocalypse and had a large army at their disposal (Kind of like Pamela Milton…), you’d hopefully realize that, while they may not be able to beat you in a straight fight, if they’ve lasted this long and haven’t been overthrown yet, they must not just be smart, but a master schemer, capable of being several moves ahead, and finding ways to shift blame and weasel out of tight situations.

Never assume that an enemy is stupid. If they’ve lasted long enough in a zombie apocalypse, they haven’t done so out of dumb luck, they’ve done so by being smarter than everyone who’s tried to bring them down. If you want to keep surviving, you have to be smarter than them.

And that’s our Walking Dead Survival Rule Of The Week! A zombie apocalypse is not something to go into half-cocked. If you go around just trying to wing it the whole time, you’ll end up getting your face chewed off. You need to be smart. You need to have a plan, and then another, and then another, and then realize that the bad guys have plans, and make plans for that, too. If you want to know where to get started making those plans to survive, 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!