**Warning: spoilers ahead (nothing past season 4)

I admit, I didn’t get the Walking Dead craze at first.  I watched ten minutes of a season 3 ep and my eyes glazed over.  But then I had a dream that I was watching TWD and  wanted to see if the dream was at all like the show, so I started from the beginning and—I don’t know, it became a sort of frenzy.  I watched five and a half rounds of it in a year.

Now it’s gotten to the point where whenever I have a spare moment in public, I think to myself, what would happen if the zombie apocalypse were to break out right now?  If these were the people I had to live with, would we survive?  It’s a fun way to pass time in waiting rooms in particular.  Today our cast included a doctor, a secretary, and an assortment of patients…

We obviously want to keep the doctor around.  I get the feeling he would be overly logical and argumentative, and I’m not sure he’d fight well, but… he’s a doctor.  He’s also kind and would probably be the voice of reason.

VERDICT: Protecting-the-farm Herschel

Next is a man with an oxygen tank spouting off conspiracy theories.  He thinks the secretary’s telephone ringing might be a bomb ticking.  Okay, never mind that even the governor only managed to scout out two oxygen tanks—this guy’s loud mouth would be a huge liability.  He’s already paranoid; in the apocalypse he’d be a raving disaster.  He’ll likely be the first to die.

VERDICT: Jim, the guy who goes a little crazy digging a hole in Season 1

Third is a man in flannel and light, baggy denim.  He’s the one Conspiracy Man is ranting to, and in between saying, “Yep.  Yeah, you just never know,” to him, he smirks at me.  He has these bright blue eyes and a calm, confident demeanor.  When the secretary schedules his next appointment, he keeps talking about the first day of deer season and how he’s going bear hunting in a few weeks.  This, I think, should be our leader.  On the other hand, he’s kind of mellow, and I think he’d let the doctor call the shots.

VERDICT: Daryl

The secretary is very quiet and timid, but I see the shady looks she gives Conspiracy Man and even Flannel Man as she struggles to fit an appointment around his busy hunting schedule.

VERDICT: Carol

Next is Gary (name changed), a maintenance man from a local nursing home, which I know because of his uniform.  In real life, he might do okay in the apocalypse, but in my head, the uniform means he is definitely going to be the first walker we see.  Those uniforms are so humanizing—it’s one thing to kill a nameless, practically faceless walker, but it’s another to stab Gary after imagining him fixing radiators for the elderly.  We’re sad to see you go, but bye-bye, Gary.

VERDICT: WALKER

This is looking bad so far.  We don’t have a Rick.  I don’t trust Farmhouse Herschel to make the best calls until he becomes Prison Herschel, and Carol might make him look at the flowers before that happens.

Good thing I would be….

Just kidding.  We all know I’d probably be Beth.  Post suicidal farmhouse Beth, but still.  I’d probably just start learning how to survive and then die over something completely stupid.

VERDICT: DOA

What I’m Listening to: Oats in the Water by Ben Howard
(And Somebody That I Used to Know is stuck in my head now)