Some stories are just entertainment. You watch them, enjoy them, and eventually move on. But sometimes a story becomes something more. It becomes a memory, a source of inspiration, and a part of who you are. For me, that story was The Walking Dead.
Years later, that passion would inspire me to create my own The Walking Dead fan community, Alexandria Safe Zone.
Growing Up With The Walking Dead
I still remember the first time I saw The Walking Dead. It was 2010, when the first season of the series premiered. I was eight years old. Because of the horror elements, violence, and mature themes, my mother did not really want me watching it in the evening. But my curiosity was stronger. I remember quietly sitting near the television, watching it secretly. Not on a phone. Not on a tablet. On an actual television screen, waiting for each episode and becoming absorbed into this new world. At that age, I was fascinated by the walkers, survival, action, and the atmosphere of the apocalypse. I did not yet understand all of the deeper ideas behind the story. But something about the series stayed with me.
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As the years passed, I did not simply watch The Walking Dead — I grew up alongside it. I waited for every new season announcement, every trailer, and every episode release. I experienced the anticipation between seasons and the weekly wait between episodes. The series became a part of my life. When I was younger, I saw a story about survival. As I grew older, I started seeing a story about humanity.
What Rick Grimes Taught Me About Humanity
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The character who influenced me the most was Rick Grimes. For me, Rick represented the ability to hold onto your humanity despite everything life throws at you. He lost people he loved, faced impossible situations, and was pushed to his limits.
He fell many times. He was broken by the world around him. But he continued trying to protect others and refused to completely lose himself.
Finding the Good in The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead fan community
That idea became one of the most important lessons I took from The Walking Dead: a person can experience darkness without becoming part of that darkness. Over the years, I returned to the series again and again. I have rewatched The Walking Dead more than 18 times in total. Every rewatch showed me something new. A scene that once seemed simple could have a completely different meaning because I was watching it from another stage of my own life.
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Creating the Alexandria Safe Zone Fan Community
The Walking Dead fan community
Around 2014–2015, I started following different The Walking Dead fan communities across various platforms. For many years, I was mostly an observer. I watched how fans connected through their love for the universe, discussed characters, shared theories, and built friendships around a fictional story. I realized that a fandom is not only about the content itself. It is also about the people who gather around it. In 2024, I created A.S.Z. (Alexandria Safe Zone) a fan community inspired by the safe community from The Walking Dead. The idea came from wanting to create a place for people who shared similar values and a similar way of looking at the universe.
Alexandria in The Walking Dead represented rebuilding something good in a broken world. I wanted to create my own version of that idea online. A safe place for fans. A community where people can discuss the series, share opinions, participate in conversations, enjoy streams and content, and feel comfortable being themselves. The goal of Alexandria Safe Zone was never only to create another fan account.
The Walking Dead fan community
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It was to create a community built around respect, positivity, and a shared passion for The Walking Dead. The project has grown into a multi-platform fan community with more than 900 TikTok videos and over 700,000 total likes. One of the most meaningful parts of the project is my original series "Find the Good", which currently consists of 177 episodes.
The idea behind Find the Good is simple: even in the darkest worlds, there are still moments of kindness, humanity, friendship, sacrifice, and hope. The Walking Dead contains tragedy, loss, and violence, but it also contains some of the strongest examples of people choosing compassion when it would be easier to choose cruelty.
The Walking Dead fan community
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For me, Find the Good became a way to highlight the message I personally found in the series: even when the world becomes darker, people can still choose to do good. Another special part of this journey has been receiving personalized video messages for Alexandria Safe Zone from actors who portrayed Oscar in The Walking Dead and Nat in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.
For me, these moments created a connection between the fictional world that inspired the real community that grew from that inspiration.
How The Walking Dead Inspired a Real Community
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Looking back, I never expected a television series about a zombie apocalypse to have such a lasting impact on my life. When I first watched The Walking Dead in 2010, I saw a story about survival. Years later, I saw a story about humanity. Alexandria Safe Zone became my way of continuing that feeling in the real world, creating a place based on respect, friendship, creativity, and hope. A fictional safe place inspired a real community.
The Walking Dead may be a fictional story, but the connections it created between real people are completely real. And that is why, even after all these years, I still believe we can always find the Good.
The Walking Dead fan community
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About the author:
Artem is the creator of A.S.Z. (Alexandria Safe Zone), a fan community dedicated to The Walking Dead universe.
Project links:
TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@a.s.zuniverse — short-form content, including the "Find the Good" series.
YouTube https://youtube.com/@a.s.zuniverse — videos and community content.
