The zombies serve only one ongoing function in the show: Having brought about the collapse of political society, their constant menace prevents the reconstitution of political society on any large scale. Survivors therefore have to figure out how to establish atomized communities large enough to save them from a precarious hunter-gatherer existence, but small enough to be manageable as safe, prosperous, and free communities. That proves a constant and often losing struggle in which little survives except our band of fellows and a little hope of a better world, which is why The Walking Dead keeps coming back.

Once the producers of the show put their own instinctive social principles through the decision trees created by their plot constructs, certain consistent patterns appear. If you’re alone or your band consists of just a small number, you’re basically a hunter-gatherer on the run, like our prehistoric forebears, except for the fact that you’re being hunted yourself. Living like that, you are forced to survive like an animal in desperate straits, forced to fear everything and everyone. Salvation lies in finding other people, but you have to assume that any humans you come across are even more dangerous than zombies. It makes you wonder how terrifying it might have been for our ancestors to cross paths with Neanderthals amidst the glaciers of Europe 30,000 years ago.

On the other hand, in The Walking Dead large communities (say 30 or 40) tend to be run as totalitarian collectives. Notice that the large-scale communities in the show are all dysfunctional in some profound way: Either dictatorships (such as that run by The Colonel) or centers for organized cannibalism (Terminus) or silly re-creations of suburban utopia that have survived this long only through sheer luck (Alexandria). In none of them is there anything like the rule of law.