History Main / BewareTheLiving

Indeed, in zombie fiction, the protagonists will often come to realize that zombies are not the most dangerous thing they'll be facing. The real threat will come from [[DisasterScavengers roaming gangs of bandits]], [[ColonelKilgore psychotic military officers determined to mow down everything in sight]], [[ArmiesAreEvil malicious military forces]], [[CrazySurvivalist overly paranoid survivalists who simply can't trust anyone]], [[DirtyCop whatever corrupt law enforcement was born of]] [[PoliceAreUseless (or remains in the aftermath of) the disaster]] or even normal, everyday people who were [[GoMadFromTheApocalypse either]] DrivenToMadness or [[IDidWhatIHadToDo ruthlessness born out of desperation]] by the horror going on around them.

Indeed, in zombie fiction, the protagonists will often come to realize that zombies are not the most dangerous thing they'll be facing. The real threat will come from [[DisasterScavengers roaming gangs of bandits]], [[ColonelKilgore psychotic military officers determined to mow down everything in sight]], [[ArmiesAreEvil malicious military forces]], [[CrazySurvivalist overly paranoid survivalists who simply can't trust anyone]], [[DirtyCop whatever corrupt law enforcement was born of]] [[PoliceAreUseless (or remains in the aftermath of) the disaster]] or even normal, everyday people who were either DrivenToMadness or [[IDidWhatIHadToDo ruthlessness born out of desperation]] by the horror going on around them.

** In one scene in ''Dead Rising 2: Off the Record'', Chuck Greene effortlessly restrains a female zombie while commenting on how easy they are to kill compared to psychotic survivors (or as he calls them, 'nutbars').

** Lampshaded by one character who points out that the Crossed are doing nothing that normal humans can't do, and have been doing as long as our species has existed.

* ''ComicBook/{{Crossed}}'':
** While the titular Crossed are psychopathic, sadistic, murderous cannibal rapists (and all five of those can apply in one scene), many of the surviving humans aren't much better.

* Most of the conflict of ''Series/TheWalkingDead2010'' comes fron ''human threats'' rather than walkers. At the start of the series, the characters struggle against zombies, but as time goes on in the series the characters have adjusted to zombies as a reality, yet the danger of humans becomes more and more severe.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
* The zombies in ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooOnZombieIsland'' never actually try to harm the protagonists. As revealed at the end of the film, the zombies are actually [[spoiler:victims of a life- draining curse cast by the main villains of the movie, Lena and Simone. Every harvest moon, the zombies rise to scare away visitors, keeping their operation secret.]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* ''Film/Cargo2013'': Vic is willing to use other humans (albeit in protected cages) as bait to lure in zombies to kill, and is keeping a woman named Lorraine against her will (although whether as a Sex Slave or just to maintain some feeling of domestic normalcy in his home is unclear).

* ''Literature/TheZombieSurvivalGuide'' devotes one chapter to weighing the pros and cons of different types of shelter, from schools to office buildings to churches. When discussing prisons, the author mentions that it's often safer to confront ten zombies than it is to take on one hardened criminal.
** The book also notes that the two worst places you could seek shelter during the initial outbreak, are 1) police stations and 2) gun stores. Police stations will be quickly flooded by unprepared citizens freaking out (which would attract the zombies). Gun stores will probably already be occupied by the owner (leaving you outside and unarmed, helplessly shouting to a very paranoid man who might just shoot you) or by a bunch of crazy people looking for firearms (who would probably shoot you dead the moment you walked in).
* ''Literature/WorldWarZ'' has a soldier grumbling about how the most threatening thing they faced wasn't zombies; it was human survivalists who had been holding out for years and refused to return to civilization, often setting up all kinds of traps that were invariably much more dangerous to other humans than they were to zombies. They were nicknamed "Last Men on Earth" or "[=LaMOEs=]" for their egotistic attitudes.
* ''Literature/{{Newsflesh}}'': The living are definitely as big a threat, or worse, than the zombies. They try to control the remaining living with fear, and with weaponized zombie outbreaks.

* In ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', this trope is in effect beyond the Wall. [[GrimUpNorth There]] roam the Others and their undead hordes, but some of the [[ArmyOfThievesAndWhores Night's Watch]] ([[DangerousDeserter especially the deserters, mutineers and their ilk]]) and many [[BarbarianTribe Wildlings]] can be just as vicious.

* Most of the conflict of ''Series/TheWalkingDead2010'' comes fron ''human threats'' rather than walkers. At the start of the series, the characters struggle against zombies, but as time goes on in the series the characters have adjusted to zombies as a reality, yet the danger of humans becomes more and more severe.

* In ''Dead of Winter'' zombies are a constant problem but the real conflict arises from the fact that each player has their own secret agenda despite everyone supposedly playing cooperatively. Some agendas require the player to hoard vital supplies without which the other players will suffer penalties. Others outright require you to arrange for other characters to get killed off.

* ''{{VideoGame/Rebuild}} 2'': While the zombies are the main threat, the vilest enemies are the Last Judgement gang, a religious cult insisting on killing anyone who doesn't follow their beliefs (and the less said about how they treat women the better). During the assault on their compound (one of the game's MultipleEndings) the attackers blow a hole in the LJ's walls, flooding them with zombies.
* While most of the survivors in ''VideoGame/DeadIsland'' are friendly and willing to help (provided ''you'' help them out in exchange), there are also human gangsters that players will encounter about mid-way through the game who are considerably more dangerous than the zombies due to being armed with guns, meaning they can kill you from a distance and they ''will'' shoot the moment you're in their range of sight.

* In the ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' franchise, the threat posed by zombie outbreaks is typically just a sign of the much larger threat posed by the Umbrella Corp (and various other {{Big Bad}}s when they [[spoiler: finally get shut down between the events of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilCodeVeronica'' and ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'']]) and the [[AttackAnimal weaponised mutants]] they manufacture from the "lucky" few who ''don't'' turn into zombies.

* In the ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' franchise, the threat posed by zombie outbreaks is typically just a sign of the much larger threat posed by the Umbrella Corp (and various other {{Big Bad}}s when they [[spoiler: finally get shut down between the events of the first three games and ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'']]) and the [[AttackAnimal weaponised mutants]] they manufacture from the "lucky" few who ''don't'' turn into zombies.

* ''Manga/HighschoolOfTheDead'': [[NotUsingTheZWord 'THEM']] are certainly very threatening, but the human [[EvilTeacher Koichi Shido]] is, in some ways, far more [[HateSink vile]] and [[TheSociopath horrifying]].

* ''ComicBook/{{Crossed}}'': While the titular Crossed are psychopathic, sadistic, murderous cannibal rapists (and all five of those can apply in one scene), many of the surviving humans aren't much better.

* This trope is a major theme in George A. Romero's ''Film/LivingDeadSeries'', which is also probably the UrExample and TropeCodifier. For example, in ''Film/NightOfTheLivingDead1968'', [[spoiler:the sole survivor of the film]] gets shot by some redneck zombie hunter, who doesn't bother checking whether his target is alive or not. In the following parts of the series, that focus more on the effects of the ZombieApocalypse on human society, people fall in complete anarchy. More often than not, the zombies actually end up ''working for the favor'' of the protagonists by killing the humans who pose a more considerable threat to them.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* ''Series/AllOfUsAreDead'': The zombies kill and infect everything in their path, but the BigBad of the first season is Gwi-nam, a sociopathic bully responsible for killing and infecting students and teachers that could have otherwise survive. He is bitten by zombies but manages to keep his humanity and sentience intact out of his desire for revenge and endless violence and becomes something of an EmpoweredNormal.
** Na-yeon is a RichBitch with a hate boner for people from poor backgrounds. She infects the poor, but otherwise a very sweet individual, Han Gyeong-su, out of spite for his "welfie" status.

* Most of the conflict of ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' comes fron ''human threats'' rather than walkers. At the start of the series, the characters struggle against zombies, but as time goes on in the series the characters have adjusted to zombies as a reality, yet the danger of humans becomes more and more severe.

* ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDead'': As in [[ComicBook/TheWalkingDead the comic series]], when the main characters aren't fighting cannibals, bandits, kidnappers, and quasi-dictators, they're fighting [[WeAREStrugglingTogether each other]]. All things considered, walkers only serve as tools with which the characters can be killed off; the ''conflict'' comes from humans.

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* In ''Webcomic/DeadWinter'', zombies have your typical ZombieGait and no fancy powers, leaving other humans as the main threat. Such as ''The Yellow Ponchos'',[[labelnote:*]]A group of survivors that have become more interested in raiding rather than trying to find ways to make sure they survive on their own.[[/labelnote]] ''[[ArmiesAreEvil The Army/National Guard]][[labelnote:*]]Suffered a case of TestosteronePoisoning and are under the illusions they are heroes despite just saving or kidnapping women, engaging in sex-slavery under the pretext of repopulating the human race and killing anyone that gets in their way.[[/labelnote]] and last but not least ''[[PoliceAreUseless The Police]]''[[labelnote:*]][[MoralMyopia myopic]]{{Knight Templar}}s who intercept then apprehend travellers and confiscate their goods. [[{{Hypocrite}} They still insist that they're maintaining "the rule of law",]] and react harshly to [[MoralMyopia any sort of resistance]].[[/labelnote]]

* [[https://www.cracked.com/article_21251_5-things-every-movie-gets-wrong-about-apocalypse.html This trope]] is discussed and subjected to a refreshingly optimistic {{Deconstruction}} by ''Website/{{Cracked}}''. As many RealLife survivors of disasters can attest, the first thing members of a community do when struck by one is to quickly seek out and ''[[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome help]]'' neighbors, not panic and go at each other's throats as order crumbles.

* While the titular ''ComicBook/{{Crossed}}'' are psychopathic, sadistic, murderous rapists (and all four those of those can apply in one scene), many of the surviving humans aren't much better. The biggest example would be the ranch owner who started a religious cult (and had been raping his daughter for years). The protagonists also shoot a bunch of children in cold blood (they would likely have starved/become Crossed otherwise, but that doesn't make them feel any better). They try to justify this in that the kids had been unwitting cannibals but...

--> Have you been outside JACKASS!!!

Indeed, in zombie fiction, the protagonists will often come to realize that zombies are not the most dangerous thing they'll be facing. The real threat will come from [[DisasterScavengers roaming gangs of bandits]], [[ColonelKilgore psychotic military officers determined to mow down everything in sight]], [[ArmiesAreEvil malicious military forces]], [[CrazySurvivalist overly paranoid survivalists who simply can't trust anyone]], [[DirtyCop whatever corrupt law enforcement was born of (or remains in the aftermath of) the disaster]] or even normal, everyday people who were either DrivenToMadness or [[IDidWhatIHadToDo ruthlessness born out of desperation]] by the horror going on around them.

* In ''Webcomic/DeadWinter'', zombies have your typical ZombieGait and no fancy powers, leaving other humans as the main threat. Such as ''The Yellow Ponchos'',[[labelnote:*]]A group of survivors that have become more interested in raiding rather than trying to find ways to make sure they survive on their own.[[/labelnote]] ''[[ArmiesAreEvil The Army/National Guard]][[labelnote:*]]Suffered a case of TestosteronePoisoning and are under the illusions they are heroes despite just saving or kidnapping women, engaging in sex-slavery under the pretext of repopulating the human race and killing anyone that gets in their way ''especially'' the Police.[[/labelnote]] and last but not least ''The Police'''/[[labelnote:*]][[MoralMyopia myopic]]{{Knight Templar}}s who intercept then apprehend travellers and confiscate their goods. [[{{Hypocrite}} They still insist that they're maintaining "the rule of law",]] and react harshly to [[MoralMyopia any sort of resistance]].[[/labelnote]

* In ''Webcomic/DeadWinter'', zombies have your typical ZombieGait and no fancy powers, leaving other humans as the main threat: gangsters, militaries...

* [[https://www.cracked.com/article_21251_5-things-every-movie-gets-wrong-about-apocalypse.html This trope]] is discussed and subjected to a refreshingly optimistic {{Deconstruction}} by ''Website/{{Cracked}}''. As many RealLife survivors of disasters can attest, the first thing members of a community do when struck by one is to quickly seek out and ''[[RealityEnsues help]]'' neighbors, not panic and go at each other's throats as order crumbles.