The Fear The Walking Dead Missile Landing Theory That Makes So Much Sense

"Fear the Walking Dead" finished its explosive sixth season with a literal explosion. The season's climactic moments found cult leader Teddy launching a nuclear missile with ten warheads into the atmosphere, posing a seemingly inescapable threat to all the survivors. The finale then played out each of the survivors' stories, splitting them up into several groups and showing how they spent their final moments waiting for the warheads to land.

However, apocalypse is averted when, through deus ex machina means, each survivor is able to, well, survive. Daniel, Luciana, Charlie, Jacob, and Wes are rescued by a helicopter. John, June, Dwight, and Sherry hide in bunkers and shelters. Morgan and Grace, after briefly contemplating suicide, wait out the explosions on the submarine. And Strand being Strand, he survives by luck, the warhead detonating too far away to kill him. In the end, only Teddy, Dakota, and Rachel meet their ends in the explosion.

So, there you have it — despite an actual nuclear detonation, most of our survivors have lived to fight zombies another day. Or have they? According to one particular fan theory, the troubles faced by the survivors may just have gotten worse.

Obviously, as many fans and critics pointed out, the biggest problem facing the survivors in the aftermath of the explosion is the radiation fallout. Now, it's hard to tell the exact blast radius of the warheads, but one can assume that it's a lot. After all, warheads are designed to cover a large area, so a detonation will certainly mean a significant portion of Texas has been bathed with radiation.

But that's not the only glaring issue facing the survivors. As noted by Screen Rant, not all the warheads detonated. Yes, if one re-watches the finale, you can clearly see that only one warhead detonated, meaning that there are still nine unaccounted for. Could this mean that the others might still affect the rest of Texas? It seems very likely, unless the rest of the warheads all somehow turn out to be duds. If the rest of the warheads do detonate, it will alter the path of the survivors in many ways. 

One way in which the multiple detonations could affect the series going forward could simply be that all the survivors are killed off. What if next season starts with the old cast only for an episode, before having them all vaporized by the rest of the explosions, then starting over with a new cast? Or all of the survivors could somehow survive the remainder of the explosions and the season's storyline will involve them trying to survive amid the radiation. The survivors would have to juggle surviving two different apocalyptic scenarios, nuclear fallout and zombies. And given that walkers can only be killed by a headshot, that means some will certainly still be around. Could we see the debut of nuclear walkers? Walkers that are brimming with radiation but otherwise intact? One can only hope.

Either way, even if this theory isn't explored and the other warheads are forgotten, it's a safe bet that the show will most likely focus on the nuclear fallout of the one warhead. Adding in radiation as an obstacle for the survivors will heighten the stakes of an already perilous struggle. Let's keep an eye out for "Fear the Walking Dead" Season 7.