In post-apocalyptic media, much of the characters’ suffering persists from their nostalgia for the old world. On the other hand, Christopher Todd Anderson suggests perhaps this post-apocalyptic world is better, revealing the corrupt, defunct old world (2012: 267). In the world of The Walking Dead (TWD), there are no longer any meta-systems for humans. As a result, the survivors’ actions toward establishing and maintaining a sustainable community constitute the essence of their system, which is consistent with British sociologist Anthony Giddens’s initial formulation of structuration and others’ ideas of sustainability in post-apocalyptic environments. This article examines the post apocalypse structuration and sustainability in TWD to demonstrate that expelling nostalgia and utilising technology, resources and creativity are key to imagining a more sustainable future. Rather than dwelling on the past and what was lost, characters need to figure out the roles they play in the new world, rules to be agreed upon and ways to utilise what resources they have. Only by doing this can they build new dreams from the nightmare they are living in and look towards the future – reflecting our own current world issues and how we need to focus on the solutions that sustainability offers for the collective good.

Read Building Dreams from Nightmares: Structuration and Sustainability in The Walking Dead