The Walking Dead, Survival Rule of the Week: People can surprise you

The Walking Dead season 11, part 3

Never make assumptions in the apocalypse. You don’t know what you don’t know.

The remaining storyline in this week’s Walking Dead ran concurrently with Eugene’s trial, specifically, Eugene, Max, and Yumiko trying to see if they could get Mercer on board with them and turn him (And potentially, the overwhelming majority of the Commonwealth) against Pamela. With Eugene in jail and Max barred from speaking with her brother for the duration of the trial, it fell to Yumiko to convince him to help. Believing he was unaware that Princess had also been hauled away, she tried to use that fact to persuade him, only for Mercer to reveal that he knew of Princess’s fate before telling Yumiko that she shouldn’t be seen with him and, basically, kicking her out of his office. Yumiko left fully convinced that Mercer couldn’t be reached and had chosen Pamela over the people.

This assumption, however, would prove wrong.

As the episode concluded, and Eugene was being escorted by troopers to meet his fate, he instead was met by Mercer, who revealed to Eugene that he was freeing him and that they were going to make a stand against Pamela and her loyalists, and liberate the Commonwealth.

The point is that, in a zombie apocalypse, you really shouldn’t make an assumption about things, particularly people. Just because something seems a certain way doesn’t necessarily mean that it actually is. A situation might seem safe, but in reality, maybe host hundreds of zombies that you can’t see. Similarly, a person might seem to be an enemy but, in reality, is secretly working against a shared threat. The thing both of these examples have in common is that there are elements to them that not only do you not know, but you don’t even know that you don’t know them.

Things aren’t always going to announce themselves in the apocalypse — Zombies aren’t going to warn you that they’re there, and, if a person is trying to keep their intentions secret…they’re going to — and, because of this, there’s a lot going on that you’re not going to be aware of, and moreover, you’re not going to be aware of your own ignorance.

This is why you should not be making assumptions in the apocalypse because you don’t know what you don’t know, and what you don’t know can hurt you.

And that’s our Walking Dead Survival Rule Of The Week! A zombie apocalypse is going to come as a shock. No one will be expecting it, and that shock will topple everything. But, even after the greatest of all surprises, as you navigate your way through the apocalypse and meet other survivors, you will be hit with even more surprises because each person you meet has the capacity to do it, both for bad and for good. If you want to be as ready for those surprises as you can be, why not pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can also get it at Amazon here, and on iTunes here!