Have you considered that the zombies are not the apocalypse in The Walking Dead?

What if I told you that it in fact the main characters of each media entry in the universe who are the apocalypse and not the dead?

It’s not exactly hidden throughout the shows/games (in fact a lot of times it’s very overt) that the main characters galavant through the apocalypse leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. The formula seems to be: character is in need of a safe place and by some divine intervention find themselves taken in by a community of survivors for better or worse. They start getting involved in the power dynamic of the community, act as a catalyst to set off any conflict or disaster that’s been building for the people there, and before long the character(s) are back on the run with smoke and death and zombies behind them where the community used to be.

In the early apocalypse it usually seems to just be the main cast running away from a world that’s falling apart around them, but as the years go by and it keeps happening it becomes clearer that it’s their fault.

I mean in the oldest storylines we are many years into the apocalypse, meaning the new colony they find has been managing for a long time. Imagine it from their perspective. Spent 5-6-7-8 years fortifying a base, learning who to trust, making friends, farming, envisioning the future you will build, and some goofy guys show up from nowhere. Within a month everything you built is destroyed and most everyone you know is dead, there is a war or other catastrophe in their place, and a few people who the strangers took a liking to survive and run off with them to the next colony to be destroyed.

In Daryl it’s literally like every time you see kids playing and people farming it’s a signal to the viewer like “yea they are all gonna be slaughtered soon”.

I remember a tone in the original show of “they are all naive of the way the world is now and they’ll die because they are playing pretend normalcy” when they found a colony somewhere. But by the time we get close to a decade in, they clearly aren’t just lucky to have gotten this far. The only thing they are naive to is what happens when the main character shows up.