The Walking Dead seizoen 5 is bruter en harder dan ooit, maar tussen realiteit en fictie zit natuurlijk een wereld van verschil. Zo haten de makers de mensen meer dan de zombies, en daarom heeft de website Cracked.com nu dit artikel geschreven die je goed moet lezen. Want zoals je weet is de zombie apocalypse onvermijdelijk.

In the world of The Walking Dead, nobody has jobs, unless stabbing zombies in the brain through a chain-link fence can be considered a job (and even if it can, it's certainly not a career). Now, this is of course part of the appeal of any apocalypse (as we've mentioned before -- most of us would love to trade long days in a cubicle for lawless zombie combat) but it's also by far the most implausible part of the show, even including the undead and the fact that women can apparently survive a zombie apocalypse while dressed like this:

It's not the implausibility that's worth noting -- it's that it implies something about the world that only terrible people believe. Let me give you an example:

There's a moment in Season 3 when the main characters are driving along in their ad-placement SUV and a random, able-bodied survivor in a backpack tries to flag them down, begging to join them.

They just pass the guy, ignoring him, the unspoken understanding in the vehicle that they can't take on another mouth to feed. Later, at the end of the episode, they pass by the same dude, now lying dead on the street. They stop, take the supplies off his dead body, and drive off into the distance. The message is clear: in this new, dog-eat-dog world, that's all survivors are good for, the food and tools in their backpack.

So ... what if it had turned out that guy was himself a badass zombie-killing machine? That'd come in pretty useful, right? Well, maybe they could tell by looking at him that wasn't the case (no visible weapons, not covered in enough zombie blood). Fine.

But what if he turned out to be a skilled surgeon? Or an electrician? Or an expert gardener? Or a carpenter? Or a mechanic? You don't think they'll ever need somebody who can heal wounds, or hook up a generator, or grow food, or build a shelter, or repair a vehicle? Really? Because it seems like 90 percent of the group's problems could be solved by somebody who just knew what the hell they were doing.

"But," you might say, "what percentage of the population are actually experts? The odds are probably better that he's both worthless and a pedophile!" And if you're saying that, congratulations, because you share the same worldview as the producers. So let's say the hitchhiker isn't an expert at anything, but did work at a Walgreens when he was in college years ago, and thus knows what antibiotics to steal and in what dosages. Or, maybe he was just an unemployed hipster, but he was an Eagle Scout when he was a kid and thus knows how to tie every kind of knot, how to identify every kind of edible mushroom, and how to skin every kind of game. Maybe he's just a really good cook. How many people do you know who are truly worthless? You can learn a bunch of useful shit just working at a convenience store for a month.

Hell, maybe he's just really funny, and thus good for morale. You don't think that would be helpful in a world where 90 percent of the conversations are about how they don't know if they can continue under the weight of their crushing despair?

If so, it doesn't occur to anyone in the world of The Walking Dead. It doesn't occur to them that any fellow human might have something useful to offer. The central theme has always been that, in a world where society has broken down, only the most cold-hearted, murderous badasses survive. The rugged individualists who don't need anybody.

The rest of the survivors out there, well, they're just sheep. Dead weight, waiting to get slaughtered by either zombies or psychopaths, in a world that has naturally selected against everything but. That leads to the larger message that ...