Zombies have been an entertainment staple for decades. People are obsessed with zombies, and some have even gone as far as preparing for a zombie apocalypse. While there are zombie believers and zombie naysayers, shows like AMC’s The Walking Dead have taught us a thing or two about zombies and what to do if we ever find ourselves in a world of “walkers”:
60. Youngsters Can Turn as Well
The series begins with a small girl in slippers who proves to be a walker. Sophia coming back from the barn illustrates the same point, though far more painfully. Being young is no safeguard, and a child who has turned is still capable of biting you.
59. Animals Are Fair Game
Rick’s horse receives a far worse reception in Atlanta than Rick himself does. The walkers drag it to the ground and feast on it while Rick hunts for somewhere to hide. Humans aren’t their only interest, so livestock can attract their attention as well. Remember that before you place a pen right next to your camp.
58. A Motionless Walker Can Still Wake
Certain bodies appear harmless since they aren’t moving. Hershel discovers just how wrong that assumption is while the group clears the prison. A walker lying on the floor bites his leg when he ventures too near.
You must inspect the bodies along your path, not only the ones approaching you. Waiting for every threat to rise first hands the dead an advantage.
57. Water Doesn’t Make Them Safe
The Governor abandons Pete’s weighted corpse in a lake. Pete turns around, and his body continues to move beneath the surface. Water may keep a walker out of reach, but it won’t kill it. Before you wade in, you’d want to get a good look at what’s down there.
56. Snow Can Hide Them
Winter introduces a new problem in “The Storm.” Some walkers freeze where they stand, while others appear from the snow as the group goes by. A white field can conceal a threat directly at your feet. The cold might slow some of the dead, but you can’t rely on it to halt all of them.
55. Burning Walkers Can Keep Coming
The scorched walkers in “The Grove” continue to move toward the living. Fire has caused plenty of damage, yet they keep going. Setting one on fire doesn’t mean you can turn your back on it. You may have just turned the thing chasing you into a fire hazard too.
54. A Severed Head Can Still Bite
The Governor’s fish tanks make for some grim home decor, but they also teach a useful rule. A walker’s head can remain active after it is severed from the body.
If the brain remains intact, keep your hands away from the mouth. Removing the head and destroying the brain are not the same thing.
53. A Bite Doesn’t Always Kill Right Away
Jim is still able to talk once the camp finds out he was bitten. Much later, Carl gets time to write letters and bid farewell to his family. A bite can keep someone alive for a while, even as their condition worsens. Appearing healthy enough to walk doesn’t mean they’ve avoided its effects.
52. Amputation Can Sometimes Save a Life
Hershel survives the bite he got in prison after Rick cuts off the bitten portion of his leg. That offers the group a rare chance to save someone who would otherwise die. It’s a desperate measure, involving blood loss and the need for care afterward. The show never guarantees that every bitten person can be saved.
51. A Hidden Bite Puts the Group at Risk
When Jim’s wound is discovered, he pleads with Jacqui to stay silent. It’s easy to see why he’s afraid. Daryl’s first reaction is to propose killing him.
Even so, concealing the bite leaves everyone else unaware. They won’t be able to assist you, alert you to a turn, or shield you from those who are sleeping unless they’re aware of what has happened.
50. Not Every Body Turns at the Same Rate
Dr. Jenner explains to the group that the interval between death and reanimation may vary from minutes to hours. There’s no tidy countdown that applies to every body. A person who lies motionless for a time might still turn, while another could rise before you’ve had a chance to cope with the loss.
49. Sickness Can Bring Walkers Within Your Walls
Patrick doesn’t require a gap in the prison fence. He falls ill, dies indoors, and turns close to people who are sleeping. By the time the group realizes something is wrong, the dead are already inside the cell block.
A sick room deserves as much attention as a gate. The guard posted outside can’t detect a threat that begins in the adjacent bed.
48. Walker Guts Can Make You Ill
Gabriel and Negan use walker guts to pass through a herd, but Gabriel later grows so sick that his eyesight is in danger. Negan doesn’t meet the same end. The trick may work and still carry a price. Rotting flesh isn’t something you’d want anywhere near your eyes or an open wound.
47. A Filthy Weapon Can Be Lethal
Before the assault on Hilltop, the Saviors smear their weapons with walker blood and guts. Later, several of the wounded, Tobin among them, die and reanimate within the community. The assault continues well beyond the moment the gunfire ends.
In the world of the show, even a small cut from a contaminated blade can put the entire camp at risk.
46. Any Claim of a Cure Requires Evidence
Eugene persuades people to gamble with their lives on a journey to Washington by claiming he knows how to stop the outbreak. He then confesses that he is not a scientist and has been lying all along.
The original series never provides the survivors with a verified cure that restores walkers to human life. If someone claims they can solve everything, you would want more evidence than just a confident speech.
45. Rain Can Wash Away Your Disguise
Rick and Glenn’s first journey through a herd goes smoothly until the rain begins. The rain rinses off the guts that hide their scent, and the walkers start to take notice of them. Your cover can be ruined for a reason as mundane as the weather.
A plan that gets you halfway across the street still needs a way to get you back out.
44. Fear Can Destroy a Good Disguise
When Rick’s group attempts to cross Alexandria, Sam wears the same blood-soaked covering as the others. He becomes frightened and begins to panic amidst the walkers. They assault him, and the escape plan falls to pieces.
Smelling like the dead is not the entire task. The individual beneath that covering must also be able to make it through the crowd.
43. Skin Masks Can Deceive Them as Well
The Whisperers don masks crafted from walker skin and move unnoticed among the dead. Their entire way of life is built upon that disguise. They likewise speak softly and travel along with the herd. The mask is just one element of a technique they have taken time to master.
42. A Walker Could Actually Be a Person
Jesus takes a swing at what appears to be a walker in a graveyard. It evades his blow and kills him. The one attacking is a Whisperer concealed among the dead.
Once people begin wearing those masks, you cannot judge an entire crowd by how it shuffles. A living foe can hold back until you are near, then act in a way no ordinary walker would.
41. Some Walkers Can Open Doors
Aaron’s group is met with an unpleasant surprise in Season 11’s “Variant” when a walker operates a door handle. On many other occasions, a shut door has given the survivors valuable time. In this situation, they must reconsider that defense while the attack is still ongoing. You can’t expect every walker to simply shove against the wooden boards.
40. Certain Walkers Can Climb
Waiting it out on the roof is no longer an option. During the group’s encounter in “Variant,” a walker climbs up to Jerry. Height still provides an advantage, but a roof or a fence isn’t somewhere you can afford to stop watching.
39. Certain Walkers Can Pick Up Objects
When a walker grabs a rock near Jerry, it turns into a weapon. Aaron manages to stop it, but the attempt alone is enough to shift what the group understands. In that fight, teeth are not the only danger. These walkers can make use of objects around them, so their reach may extend beyond arm’s length.
38. A Helmet Can Make a Walker Tougher to Kill
When Rick’s group arrives, the dead prison guards are still wearing their riot gear. Their helmets block strikes that would succeed against an uncovered head. A guard doesn’t become easy to reach just because he has turned. Before you charge in, you need to check what the walker is wearing.
37. A Coffin Can Conceal an Ambush
Negan transports Sasha to Alexandria inside a coffin, planning to keep her as a hostage. By the time he opens it, she has already turned. Her assault disrupts his plan and creates an opening for Rick’s group to strike back. Even someone you believed was under your control can turn into a danger when kept hidden from sight.
36. Removing Their Bite Shifts the Situation
The arms and jaws of Michonne’s two chained walkers have been taken off. They don’t lunge at her the way other walkers would. Milton examines them and concludes that being unable to feed has made them passive.
It’s a strange rule, and a bleak one, yet Michonne has discovered a purpose for it. She can move with them rather than battling every walker she encounters.
35. A Car Can Get Stuck on Bodies
On the trip to find medicine for the prison, Daryl tries to reverse out of a herd. Bodies accumulate under the car until it can no longer move. The group is forced to abandon it and push through the dead on foot. An engine offers little help once the wheels can’t grip the road anymore.
34. A Supply Run Can Lead Into a Walker Trap
When Daryl and Aaron come across those food trailers, a search seems worthwhile. Opening one springs a trap, and walkers come pouring out of the trailers surrounding them. The Wolves have transformed the promise of a meal into a lure.
If you notice indications that a place has been rigged, take the time to figure out the reason. The dead inside might have been placed there deliberately.
33. A Herd Can Become a Human Weapon
Alpha doesn’t require every walker to grasp her plan. She and the Whisperers steer the herd wherever they choose, then let its hunger handle the rest. The assault on Hilltop demonstrates how terrible that can become. When a mass of the dead moves directly toward your home, a living person may have directed it.
32. Noise Can Help You Escape
Glenn sets off a car alarm to draw walkers away from the store in Atlanta. It’s a smart use of the very thing that typically gets people killed. If all the dead are searching for the loudest sound, you can place that sound somewhere else. Just make sure the person creating it has a way out.
31. Your Distraction Needs a Backup
In “A Certain Doom,” the group plays loud music from a wagon to lure the herd away. The Whisperers catch up and destroy the sound system. A lure that relies on a single piece of equipment can fail quickly, particularly when a living enemy understands how it operates. You must know where you will go if the music stops.
30. Fire Can Draw Them Into a Trap
During “No Way Out,” Daryl sets Alexandria’s pond on fire, and walkers walk right into it. The glow draws them away from the people battling in the streets. Used in that manner, fire helps thin out the crowd. Daryl gives them a single spot to gather while the survivors handle those still wandering the town.
29. You Can Lead Them Over a Cliff
In “A Certain Doom,” Lydia and Carol help steer the herd toward a cliff. The women make it clear, but the walkers continue over the edge. No sense of danger is strong enough to stop the crowd.
The landscape can handle part of the work for you. Guiding a herd to that spot is the difficult part, especially when you must walk near its front.
28. A Fence Has Limits
The prison’s fences hold until too many walkers push against the same section. After that, the posts give way, and the group must pull the dead aside. A fence requires maintenance and people to keep an eye on it. You can’t simply close the gate and let a crowd press against it for days.
27. A Single Weak Point Can Bring Down a Safe Zone
Alexandria’s wall is broken open when a nearby tower collapses. Once a gap exists, the herd has a path into the streets. The wall alone isn’t the only thing you need to inspect. A damaged structure next to it can ruin all that effort, and an escape plan still matters inside a protected town.
26. Watch What’s Above You
A supply run in Season 4 turns bad when walkers begin dropping through a shop’s roof. The group has been scanning the floor for danger while more of it waits above. Old buildings can collapse beneath the dead. Before you spend time inside one, check the ceiling along with the doors.
25. Herds Can Gather Out of Sight
The quarry close to Alexandria has kept an enormous number of walkers contained behind a barricade of trucks. That goes some way toward explaining why the region has appeared so peaceful. Once the trucks begin to give out, the town’s good fortune comes to an end.
A handful of quiet weeks won’t reveal what lies in wait past the next ridge. You have to understand the terrain surrounding your home, including spots where the dead might become trapped in great numbers.
24. Keep Them Out of Your Water
The walker stuck in Hershel’s well presents an issue that a gun cannot fix. The group attempts to pull it out in one piece, but the body rips apart and contaminates the water. That well has to be abandoned. Even after a dead walker stops moving, it can still rob you of a water source for a long time.
23. Body Armor Can Buy You Time
Before forcing his way through the walkers at the destroyed prison, Glenn suits up in riot gear. The sturdy cover allows him to get past bodies that would otherwise easily reach his skin. It doesn’t guarantee his safety in every fight, but it does allow him to escape. Clothing deserves more consideration than most of the survivors give it.
22. Keeping Walkers Near Your Camp Is a Bad Bet
Hershel keeps walkers in his barn because he hopes they are sick people who can still be helped. The rest of the group sleeps and works nearby, barely aware of what is inside. Once the barn is opened, they must confront the threat immediately.
Even good intentions cannot make a shed full of walkers safe to live next to.
21. Feeding Them Creates Problems
At the prison fence, someone is feeding the walkers rats. We find out afterward that Lizzie was the one doing it. To her, this is how she looks after them. As for the others, it simply gives the dead one more reason to gather around the place they are struggling to protect. If you plan to lure walkers in with food, be certain that you truly want them there.
20. Grief Can Make You Hesitate
Morgan finds he simply cannot bring himself to shoot his wife once she has turned. Afterward, he tells Rick that she went after Duane. He understands what walkers are capable of, yet that knowledge doesn’t make it any easier to act when the face before him is one he loves.
In that moment, you may need someone else to step in for you. It’s a difficult thing to admit before the need for it actually arises.
19. A Child Can Misunderstand Reanimation
Lizzie holds the belief that walkers remain people she is able to befriend. In “The Grove,” she takes Mika’s life in order to show that returning isn’t something to be afraid of. Her conviction has stretched well past simply naming the dead at the fence.
The adults raising a child must understand what that child believes becoming a walker signifies.
18. Shut the Door on a New Threat
As the patients’ condition deteriorates in the prison, Hershel begins shutting the doors of their cells. If a person dies and reanimates, a barrier can stop that walker from getting to the next bed right away. Keeping every room open makes containing the damage far more difficult.
It gives you time. When an outbreak happens inside your own house, that might be the only time you have.
17. Tight Spaces Can Leave You Trapped
Noah, Glenn, and Nicholas find themselves trapped in a revolving door, with walkers closing in from both directions. Glenn attempts to figure out a way to escape, but Nicholas pushes his way out and leaves Noah vulnerable. That decision leaves no room for recovery.
A tight gap might hold some walkers at bay, yet it also leaves you with no space to maneuver.
16. A Tunnel Isn’t Always an Escape Route
Aaron brings Maggie down into a sewer so they can slip past the herd surrounding Alexandria. Underground, they come across walkers, and then they realize the herd is also waiting at the exit on the other side.
Simply knowing where a tunnel goes is not sufficient. You have to find out if you’ll be able to get out once you arrive at the other end.
15. A Trapped Walker Can Get Free
Carl comes across a walker trapped in the mud, moves in too near, and runs off when it grabs toward him. Afterward, it breaks free and goes after Dale. What seemed like a minor, isolated danger turns into a loss of life within the group.
When you abandon a walker, be certain that everyone is aware of its location. Never count on the mud to keep it trapped indefinitely.
14. A Walker Can Carry a Second Threat
While on the warehouse mission in “Spend,” Aiden opens fire on a walker that still has a grenade attached to its gear. The explosion rips across the room and ruins the supply run. The corpse lying before you might be clad not only in armor but also in something lethal. A clean shot at the dead isn’t necessarily a safe one for the living who are close by.
13. Everyone Needs Basic Training
The drill conducted on the beach at Oceanside offers the survivors an opportunity to train together as a group. Armed with shields, they rotate through turns confronting waves of walkers emerging from a wrecked boat. It gives them the chance to figure out where to position themselves while others fight at their side.
More than a single person in your camp must be capable of holding a line. The day that individual falls ill or is absent should not be the day the rest of you are forced to learn how.
12. Have a Place to Meet if You Get Split Up
Once the farm is overrun, survivors flee in separate vehicles and quickly lose track of one another. An aged roadside stop becomes the spot where a number of them reunite. There’s no guarantee that everyone will exit by the same gate once a herd shows up. Settling on a meeting point beforehand can save you from wandering blindly through walker territory.
11. Clearing a Path Can Be Enough
In “Rock in the Road,” Rick and Michonne employ a pair of vehicles and a cable to carve a route through a herd. They waste no time inspecting each body that has fallen. They return to their group and head out.
Clearing an entire area isn’t necessary to escape. At times, all you require is sufficient room to get to the vehicle waiting for you.
10. The Disease is Airborne
Most people think that you have to be bitten by a zombie to become one, but “The Walking Dead” has taught us otherwise. We learned that the disease is airborne and everyone is infected. Because of this, you don’t turn into a zombie by being bitten by one; you turn into a zombie simply by dying.
Whether or not you believe in zombies is up to you. Maybe you think they’re real and you’re waiting for the zombie apocalypse to occur. Or maybe you just like them for entertainment purposes. Either way, “The Walking Dead” has taught us plenty about zombies, so if an apocalypse does occur, try to stick with these facts when fighting off “walkers”.
9. They’re Attracted to Movement
Unless you can run really fast and far, you have a higher chance of surviving a zombie if you stand still.
8. They’re Attracted to Noise
Zombies will go where the noise is. If you are by a loud factory, you are probably surrounded by zombies. This is why it is smart to kill zombies with a quieter method than using a gun, as the noise of the shot will attract other zombies to the area.
If a zombie apocalypse does occur, you will be safest in the quieter, remote areas, like Hershel’s farm.
7. They’re Relentless
When a hungry zombie sees a potential meal, it will do anything to get a bite. You can’t trap yourself in a closet and hope that they’ll go away. As long as the zombie thinks that you’re there, it will continue to push and claw at the door until their physical strength breaks it down and you become its dinner.
For this reason, if a zombie apocalypse ever happens, it is smart to always work in pairs. This way, both of you can look out for each other and protect each other from imminent death.
6. They’re Slow yet Deadly in a Herd
One thing that has been shown time and time again throughout the show is the fact that a large horde of zombies is unstoppable and deadly despite being aimless and very slow in speed.
5. Infinite Energy
They never tire, no matter what organ they are missing. If you are not careful, zombies will get you no matter how old, weak, or injured they are. Although older zombies are slower than younger ones, they decay slowly and preserve energy; therefore, zombies can be deadly irrespective of when they got infected.
4. They Retain Human Memories
The majority of zombies do not retain any of their human instincts once they get reanimated, but there have been a few exceptions where individual zombies did retain a part of their memories.
3. More Than One Will Eat You
If you are attacked by a zombie, you can guarantee that another one will follow closely behind to take a bite out of you, too. Zombies love the blood of a recently deceased individual, so numerous zombies will eat one person just to get a taste.
2. Camouflage Works
Covering yourself with zombie flesh and blood can mask the scent and fool other zombies. This, however, only works if you imitate the zombie movements also.
On a lucky day, you can even steer an entire horde of zombies in whatever direction you want if enough camouflaged partners are there among the zombie horde.
1. Shoot them in the Head
A zombie is already dead, and people make the mistake of thinking that they can shoot them anywhere and kill them again. This is wrong. If you want to kill a zombie, you have to take out its head.
You can use a good gun, a bow and arrow, a dart, a sledgehammer—whatever will pierce their brain is the only way you will effectively kill a zombie.
Do you have something to add to our list of the lessons The Walking Dead taught us about zombies? Sound off in the comments below!