Utilizing an Ecocritical lens to identify social anxieties for Rick stemming from Shane’s “light-switch story”. The repetition that’s seen in the post-apocalyptic dystopia and return to nature, is foreshadowed as an idea in Shane’s quip over the consumption problems that face humanity because of women’s inability to turn off light switches. The Freudian association is made through the familial link that Shane makes relating to the reaction of women to this criticism: “You sound just like my father”. This view is entirely problematic and informed by patriarchy. Under the guise of a joke, which Freud again would suggest is an attempt at relieving anxieties about matters of “dire importance to the subject”. Shane’s little tale finishes with him saying “at least I tried” which underpins in its entirety his own failings. The first season of TWDthrough its narrative navigation of word and image that allows for a graphic reiteration of there being no safe place while emphasising humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels as problematic. The dire concern that “the world is run on fossil fuels” (TWD. TS-19) is reiterated in both texts and employs a regime of verisimilitude through which the reader is interpolated.