You’ve made it. You are one of the “lucky” few to survive the initial onslaught of corpses and have boarded yourself up. Maybe you have family. Maybe you have friends. Maybe you even saw this apocalypse coming and prepared. That does not matter much if you flip your lid. One of the, if not the most, deadly weapons in your arsenal is your still functioning human brain; And, just like your other weapons, you’ve got to keep it in fine working order. That will not be easy, given the extreme stress and pressure of your new situation. Pressures like having to put down those friends or that family when they go rabid. So let’s see how coal becomes diamonds.

Do Not despair, your mother loves you.

Despair will be the most prevalent mental state among survivors. This is completely unavoidable, simply because of the all-encompassing and unprejudiced nature of the plague. This is not “being sad”, this is a mental state of total loss, where every third thought may be of ending it all yourself. You have to be prepared for the possibility of facing friends, family, and co-workers who are now only a threat to your life and well-being. These former loved ones are no longer loving of anything more than your death which can be quite unnerving for anyone. Given those facts, it’s easy to see how despair can rob even the most steel-willed individuals of their initiative. What point is there to surviving if there’s no one to survive with? The first goal is to move past this mode of thinking. It will be difficult to do, but it can be done. Take it one step at a time. You’ll need to purge yourself of all those sentimental feelings for the corpses you’ll need to drop. The people they once were are gone completely. Think logically, not nostalgically. Despair is the quicksand that drags you down and won’t let up. Logic is the ladder that saves your skin. So, cool your heart, take aim, and put one between the eyes of your infected sister. That’s no longer the girl you knew. It’s a rotting bag of meat.

Do Not be proud, because she has to.

Here’s your flipside. If despair can cripple you in the face of your dead loved ones, pride can wreck you in the face of the nameless horde. You’re a survivor, right? Then survive. Don’t take foolish chances and jump headlong into an extermination mission. You may have that semi-automatic and unerring accuracy, but the zombies have numbers, far more than you may have bullets. Go ahead; unload an entire magazine into that first wave. The second will get you as you reload. Keep it together. Just because you survived the first time doesn’t mean there will be a second time. You are not invincible, and simple things will kill you far easier than the dead. The only way to combat pride is to keep things painfully simple. Keep track of how many corpses you drop. Pick a number between one and twenty. Once you hit it, run. There’s no need to prove how awesome you are by your body count. Once you focus on racking up kills, you lose sight of staying up and about. And killing may not even be the answer you’re looking for. A knee-capped zombie is far less mobile than an upright one, and not every situation is “kill or be killed”. As the saying goes, “he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.”

Don't Panic.

Eventually, you’ll be in a no-winner. Maybe you started a fire that wasn’t necessary, or your gun jammed, or any other of the infinite number of things that could possibly go wrong just went wrong. Despair won’t reach you, and you’re certainly not proud of yourself. You panic, flail about like a hooked fish in a boat. That’s when you get gutted. What do you do? Unfortunately, panic is the hardest state of mind to peel yourself from. It’s one of those hard-wired survival tools planted deep in the brain, and it’s really there for a reason. Fight or flight is inborn, and your new goal is to redirect this panic. Take that urge to flee or fight and turn it into something useful. Guide your adrenaline addled brain toward inspired survival. A helpful way to do so is to constantly plan. Not intense plotting sessions or even complete schematics of a battle plan. I mean planning as in the spur of the moment sense. Every situation is fluid, but there will always be pillars of stability. Take stock of everything in sight, and think not of how it can help you out, but how it can knock you down. It may seem like a pessimistic mindset, but look at it another way: if you plan on the rickety ladder between buildings to fall as you cross it, then you have some idea of the new situation you might be in. Thinking ahead, even when that means imagining your own demise, might just help you stay quite alive. If you can imagine the dead tearing apart your door, then you can also imagine jumping out a window. Never panic when they bust down the door. Duck and dive through the glass if necessary.

Logic is to Emotion as Living is to Dying.

These are not rules. These are helpful hints. Your mental state is the one key to staying on your feet. If you can’t summon up the fortitude to do what needs to be done, then you can’t really help anyone, least of all yourself. Don’t take chances; because we don’t need fiery action sequences, we need methods and pacing. Most importantly, try your hardest to control your panic. Keep your cool, do what you need to, and you just might live to see the last bit of rotting flesh drop from the very last corpse.