WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Fear the Walking Dead's Season 5 episode "The Hurt That Will Happen," which premiered Sunday on AMC.

With this week's episode, Fear the Walking Dead introduces a terrifying new obstacle for the survivors to contend with: nuclear fallout from one of the presumably many now-unmanned nuclear power plants. Newcomer Karen David plays Grace, a former operations manager attempting to stop the spread of radioactive material after a meltdown. Her mission is compelling, but so is the idea of yet another apocalyptic event arriving as a secondary result of the first apocalypse – mostly because, when you think about it, nuclear fallout should be one of many expected, and potentially deadly, results of the deterioration of the nation's infrastructure.

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Cities, roads, waterways, animal populations – all are maintained (to some degree) by humans. Without that kind of maintenance, within several months, the United States becomes a much more dangerous place -- one that’s far more difficult to navigate than either The Walking Dead or Fear the Walking Dead has given real attention to. That isn’t meant to be a criticism; both are post-apocalyptic fiction, and their narratives have intentionally focused on the problems humans cause for each other rather than on external forces like exploding power plants and broken roads.

But if Fear’s fourth and fifth seasons are any indication, new showrunners Andrew Kitsis and Ian Goldberg are prepared to lean in to a more disaster-filled drama. Last season saw the survivors deal with extreme weather, and this season opened with a plane crash ,followed by this week’s nuclear problems. That got us to thinking, if The Walking Dead were to take a more “realistic” view of what would happen if a huge part of the population became zombies, what other major difficulties would the survivors face? Take a peek below to see some of the less-sexy horrors that would follow a sudden decrease in the population.

Zero Gas Transport, Almost Immediately

The biggest issue The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead skirt in the face of better storytelling is that gasoline goes “bad," within three to six months if it’s not used. Fear the Walking Dead’s early seasons take place in a relatively compressed amount of time; Madison and her family reach the ranch within months after the initial outbreak, so all the travel they did during that period makes sense. But most of the car travel on The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead after the first few months of the outbreak is highly unrealistic. Much like zombies!

We actually see The Walking Dead deal with that in Season 9, when it’s revealed they’ve been attempting to develop ethanol fuel, as well as pilfering covered wagons from museums in Washington, D.C. But the Fear crew running an entire assistance network using two huge trucks and a plane would be impossible in a similar real-life situation  – unless someone managed to keep a refinery operational.

Extreme Flooding

This might come as a surprise to anyone who doesn’t live on or near an active waterway, but flooding would occur in those major cities almost immediately. The History Channel's Life After People devotes a portion of its second episode to the complex systems in place to manage the flow of the Chicago River so pollution doesn’t empty into Lake Michigan, the source of the city’s drinking water. Two main branches of the river were actually forced to change course in the early 1900s so water flowed into a newly built canal and not into the lake. The system of locks in place to maintain that activity is sophisticated and requires no small amount of humans to operate. Without them to do so, inclement weather would cause the river to flood within weeks of the operators leaving.

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That means towns downriver would be completely uninhabitable with some being completely submerged. On a larger scale, any city below sea level that depends on human effort to maintain drainage and prevent flooding would be subject to the same issues. Without the drainage systems in place in New Orleans dating back to its founding, the city would be vulnerable to extreme flooding fairly soon given the sheer amount of engineering required to deal with such eventualities today.

Disease

The Walking Dead franchise has actually been pretty good about the health issues that spring up when doctors, hospitals and reliable drugs are in short supply. What they don’t address is the proliferation of disease in addition to a dearth of medical care. If a Walking Dead apocalypse occurred tomorrow, we’d have anti-vaxxers to thank for the massive resurgence of measles and polio. People are pretty decent at knowing what antibiotics to loot from a pharmacy, but attempting to stash vaccines and administering them on the proper schedule without medical supervision would be well out of the realm of most people’s expertise. Also, once antibiotics run out, humans again would be vulnerable to illnesses that barely warrant a trip to the doctor in this day and age.

Also, most western governments engage in enough animal control to keep rabies at bay in heavily populated areas. Britain has completely eliminated the disease, and in America, we literally air-drop inoculation “snacks” for wildlife populations. Without that kind of management, cases of rabies could spike sharply, making already-dangerous animals even more so (but the walkers like eating animals, too, so maybe not as big a problem in a specifically "zombie" apocalypse).

Starvation

Both shows have established the existence of food shortages and the necessity of finding a way to create sustainable agriculture, but neither has acknowledged that canned goods only last for about five years – and that’s if they were canned correctly as the apocalypse occurred. But non-perishable goods continue to be a premium on both shows whenever characters search abandoned housing or stores for supplies.

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Also, without the infrastructure to move food from place to place, diets would change drastically. No more citrus for anyone living north of Tennessee, no more fresh saltwater fish for anyone inland, and no more fresh animal protein at our fingertips. Those who were not lucky enough to have a Maggie Rhee in their midst would be in danger of malnutrition and starvation if they couldn’t successfully raise livestock and crops. Hunting is a solution in areas rich in wildlife, but that's not everywhere, and with travel so limited, migration would be difficult unless you were enterprising enough to find a vehicle and the necessary supplies to make a potentially long journey. Without resources and education, famine among the remaining population could likely be a serious problem.

Airing Sundays at 9 PM ET on AMC, Fear the Walking Dead stars Lennie James, Colman Domingo, Alexa Nisenson, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Garret Dillahunt, Jenna Elfman, Austin Amelio and Karen David.