How to make friends and influence zombies

There’s no doubt that friendships and networks will be important in the post-apocalyptic world. After all, people will need to band together for protection and survival. While making friends with other survivors may not be a requirement, it’s probably a good idea. Since there’s safety in numbers, you never know when you’ll need someone to watch your back. And, you know, finding a survivor group to join will probably be easier if people in that group actually like you.

The circumstances for finding and making friends will change from what it’s like today. Here are a few points to keep in mind:

  • Be kind and treat people nicely. You know, the Golden Rule and all that.

    It’ll probably be easier to burn bridges and anger people after the apocalypse, what with the whole fighting to survive thing, but sometimes it’ll be better not to. (Remember, pick your battles.)

  • Share your supplies. If you have a bit to spare, why not share it? It might mean the difference between life or death (or eating or being eaten) for someone else. If you do share, you’ve probably just made yourself a friend.
  • Be fair. If you’re in a leadership role, treating everyone equally may not make you friends, but it probably won’t get you (many) enemies. Sometimes, not having enemies is just as good as having friends.
  • Watch out for other people. It’ll be a dog eat dog world, and if you can help or protect someone without bringing any danger to you, why not do it? Key words here being “not bringing danger to you,” of course. If saving someone means you end up getting eaten, then, well, I can’t really blame you for not wanting to do it.
  • Be open-minded. Just because there could be zombies, vampires, aliens, etc. out there, it doesn’t mean they’re all bad or evil. Some of them could be nice, or could be nice to have as allies. If you can befriend a zombie leader, for example, you’ll probably have a pack of zombies as allies. (This would be especially helpful during a zombie apocalypse.)

Remember that the creatures wandering your post-apocalyptic world may not be all bad.  Some of them might even be nice and/or make good friends or allies. For example, what if it turns out that zombies retain some of their pre-undead intelligence and awareness? If this turns out to be true, then befriending an influential or otherwise important zombie can be beneficial for you and your fellow survivors. I’d say that being able to convince a zombie leader not to eat you or suck your brains out is a good kind of influence to have.

Of course, it may not possible to truly influence a zombie. However, it could be possible to become friends, or at the very least, allies, with one. Having your friend network extend into the non-human (or non-living human) population could be helpful. I mean, it’d be pretty handy to be able to get your zombie friends to attack that annoying survivor group that’s been stealing your food, wouldn’t it?

At the end of the day, having friends and allies will be a good thing. Of course, you’ll probably end up making a few enemies along the way, too.

When you do, your need for friends will never be greater. Especially if those enemies are trying to kill you.

3 thoughts on “How to make friends and influence zombies

  1. Of course, there are limits to being kind and nice post-apocalypse. Traders and other competing survival groups need to know that turning on you= death- not slow torture, not arrogant grand-standing, just death, doled out unblinkingly.

    Yet another reason to have a charming, manipulative, intelligent and creative person as your leader.

    1. True. It’s might best to have a leader who can charm people and be friendly, but who can also break people in two and order all manner of chaos and destruction without batting an eye (and possibly before breakfast). Being perceived as weak won’t help much, after all.

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