Life on the Outside

-- They have shown us what it's like when Will went to find his youngest son and bring him home.

No. Will went into the adjacent Santa Monica bloc to get his son. Each colony is a little different. There, the average folks were apparently more rebellious than in LA and killed a lot of the red hats soon after the arrival, until there weren't enough left to maintain order. Rather than getting the occupation to send reinforcements from elsewhere the local proxy made a deal with the warlords: meet our weekly quota for the Factory, and we'll give you the run of the bloc. Except of course for the green zone where all the remaining red hats are now stationed. The people of Santa Monica were left to fend for themselves in a criminal-controlled no man's land.

-- They fire!

We don't know that. The pilot said those imperial walker style drones showed up to trash any camp that got too big. Not that the Raps were trying to exterminate every last human being. I mean, maybe the aerial drones DO fire on human travelers but she didn't say that. It's quite possible all the aliens want is to keep human communities small so they can never get organized enough to pose a threat.

-- Nope, how long they last in terms (of the quality) has nothing to do with how many people were killed early on. They would have an expiration date and would either still be good, or have expired. Medicines can go bad after the expiration date and do more harm.

Yes certain things do expire. I'm talking about non-perishables. Canned goods would still be edible for several years. Dried vacuum-packed fruits and meats could literally last for decades, as would certain dessert products like Twinkies, and pre-packaged rations like MREs. Some medicines are actually good well beyond their listed expirations. And some simply lose their potency with time, while others eventually break down into toxic by-products. You have to know your pharmaceuticals to know which is which.

But as far as the non-perishable foods are concerned, how long they last is DIRECTLY related to how many people are out scavenging. If 95% of the population is wiped out on day one, the survivors can live for quite a while on that stuff before they'll have to start harvesting crops and hunting (raising livestock would probably qualify as too organized). On the other hand, if almost no one was killed at the outset resources would be consumed quickly and fighting over what remained would indeed be underway within a week or two.

Few medicines are really that perishable if stored at or below room temperature. The expiration date is mostly a planned obsolescence number made up by MBAs and lawyers. The lawyers figure out when the first one tenth of one percent of the medicine goes bad when stored in direct sunlight at 140 degrees and then set the expiration date a month before that. The MBAs figure out the average shelf life for stocked medicines and then bump the expiration date back by three months to force new inventories to be ordered "because they expired".

The reality is that most shelf stable medication (ie, doesn't require constant refrigeration) is usually in some hydrochloride salt which are extremely stable if kept dry and at room temperature.

Let's say some some population-depleting apocalypse comes. I would not hesitate to use ANY medicine I scavenged that was a hydrochloride salt base. Any gelcap still intact is also probably OK, too. Even many liquid base medicines that are shelf-stable will last ages if the liquid is alcohol or propylene glycol.

Obviously refrigeration required medications would be a loss, and probably even if you stocked up and refrigerated them. They're refrigerated because they start decaying once they are made, refrigeration just slows decay to some acceptable level. Even with refrigeration they will become unusable over time.

Fortunately most medicines that matter are in some HCl salt formulation and will last years or even decades. At year 10+ after the apocalypse you might have issues with meds found outside a shelter at risk of UV or high heat exposure, but something on a pharmacy shelf? You're fine.

You'd be more likely to see cooperation in this sort of environment, when you're facing a common enemy that's both smart and highly advanced. Fight amongst yourselves and you risk having that fight interrupted by aerial and ground drones who show up and splatter everyone. In The Walking Dead the equivalent enemy is utterly mindless, very predictable in its behavior, and easily managed (most of the time) once you figure that behavior out. Not so with the raps.

You could come up with rules and procedures to avoid detection but they'd have to be adhered to with an almost religious devotion. Any complacency could prove fatal. Overly belligerent members of a concealed community who were inclined to start fights or try to seize control would be dealt with harshly - which could very well mean a bullet in the head. Working to stay hidden and keep everyone fed, with proper medical treatment if at all possible, would be the only priorities. Anyone who couldn't grasp that reality would no longer be an asset.