The Entire Fear The Walking Dead Timeline Explained

Nothing puts a family to the test like a zombie apocalypse. There's just something about running from the dead and scavenging for basic resources that either brings a family together or tears them apart. And with Kim Dickens' tough-as-nails matriarch Madison Clark in charge, the Clark-Manawa family of "Fear the Walking Dead" fares better than most in the post-apocalyptic North American wasteland of "The Walking Dead" franchise.

Unlike "The Walking Dead," which begins with the apocalypse pretty much in full swing, "Fear the Walking Dead" gives a much closer look at the early days of the societal collapse that happens as the virus rapidly spreads through the United States and, presumably, throughout the world. The series follows the Clark-Manawas and the people they pick up along the way as they travel from California to Mexico and throughout Texas.

Like "The Walking Dead," the timeline can sometimes be difficult to follow, occasionally leaving viewers unclear on whether a month or a year has passed. With a few time jumps and a couple of nuclear disasters in the mix, a whole lot has happened so far. Let's sort through all the twists and turns and break down the entire timeline of "Fear the Walking Dead."

Told through the perspective of a comatose Rick Grimes, "The Walking Dead" begins a couple of months into the outbreak, which Rick basically slept through from his hospital bed. "Fear the Walking Dead," on the other hand, begins in the very early days of the zombie outbreak and depicts the city of Los Angeles as Walker-induced chaos descends on the city in what would later be confirmed to be the year 2010. When heroin-addicted young adult Nicholas Clark (Frank Dillane) wakes up in an abandoned church that serves as a "shooting gallery" for users, he finds his girlfriend eating the face off a corpse.

While fleeing the trap house in terror, the barefoot Nick is hit by a car and ends up handcuffed in the hospital. Thanks to his troubled track record, no one believes what he saw in the church was real. Convinced it was a hallucination, Nick visits his drug dealer, who sees Nick as a loose cannon and tries to kill him. In the ensuing fight, drug dealer Cal gets killed, turning into a zombie just as Nick's mom Madison and her boyfriend Travis (Cliff Curtis) arrive. Although they manage to put Cal down, things only get worse from that point as the city begins to unravel and Nick's withdrawals start to fully kick in.

While Madison goes on a drug run for Nick, Travis and his ex Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez) get tangled up in a riot while retrieving their frustrating teenage son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie), ducking into the Salazar family's barber shop to take shelter. Eventually, they all make it back to Travis and Madison's home, where the families plan their next moves as society rapidly falls apart around them. Just as the Clark-Manawas are preparing to flee for the desert, the neighborhood is placed under quarantine by the National Guard.

Trapped in the protective bubble of the National Guard Safe Zone, the Clarks, Manawas, and Salazars struggle to plan their next move. After establishing the Safe Zone and putting up a fence around the perimeter, the military places the community under strict martial rule. As the days pass by, Liza begins providing medical care for the neighbors, Ofelia Salazar (Mercedes Mason) starts up a relationship with a soldier, and Nick steals drugs from the neighbor's IV, prolonging his addiction even further. Meanwhile, Chris and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) blow off some steam by playing dress-up, drinking champagne, and then trashing a wealthy neighbor's abandoned home. Although things seem to settle into something of a routine, the residents understand very little about what is happening, and the community is riddled with anxiety and fear.

When the Guardsmen begin removing people in need of medical care to an undisclosed location, Nick and Griselda Salazar are among those taken. While Daniel (Rubén Blades) and Madison react by torturing Ofelia's boyfriend for answers, Travis takes a different approach, asking the guards if he can visit the field hospital. After learning that the Guardsmen have been warehousing thousands of Walkers in an arena and that the men have been ordered to eliminate the civilian population and evacuate the city, Madison's group mounts a rescue mission to get their people out using the arena zombies as a distraction. They manage to free Liza and Nick, but learn Griselda (Patricia Reyes Spíndola) died of sepsis after surgery. During the escape, they add smooth-talking wheeler-dealer Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) to their party, who brings the group to his mansion where his luxury yacht The Abigail resides. There, the group learns that Liza has been bitten and Travis euthanizes her before she can turn.

Life in the zombie apocalypse may generally suck, but at least aboard the Abigail Madison's crew has the scenery to enjoy. By the time the group manages to get their gear together and begins frantically boarding Victor's luxurious yacht, the military bombardment of Los Angeles is well underway and the dead are already beginning to overrun Victor's mansion. Against a hellish backdrop of fire and brimstone, the group boards the yacht, which is gratefully fully fueled and ready to go at least 3,000 miles or "all the way to El Salvador," according to Strand. But it's not all smooth sailing. The group soon realizes they'll have to make tough decisions when they encounter a group of survivors stranded on another boat. And since pirates are a staple of ocean life in the end of days, the group's luxury cruise can only last for so long.

Alicia copes with the trauma by bonding with someone named "Jack" on the radio, who she tells all about the size of their boat and its desalination system. The Abigail is soon pursued by a mystery boat, causing the teen to realize she may have done an oopsie. After Madison's group ducks into a nearby island to hide, the group encounters an ill-fated family and learns the west coast has been all but wiped out by the military. After a little zombie-related engine trouble and some scavenging, the group arrives in Mexico, where Strand and Nick take shore leave to get them into the country. Unfortunately, with Nick and Strand gone, everyone goes stupid and allows a family on a life raft to board. Unsurprisingly, they turn out to be pirates, and everything turns terrible fast. A poorly-executed hostage swap and a military tussle later, the group finally makes it to Celia's compound.

After arriving at Celia's compound, Strand learns that his boyfriend Thomas Abigail (Dougray Scott) has been bitten and is in the process of dying. Madison and Travis start to realize that something isn't right about Chris while Nick bonds with Celia, who seems to have developed some freaky ideas about the dead and has already mass-murdered an entire congregation with poisoned communion wafers. Snooping around the grounds of the compound, Daniel realizes that Celia is pulling a full-blown Hershel Greene and hoarding the dead in her wine cellar. After Chris gets caught holding a knife over Madison and Alicia, he leaves the compound with Travis hot on his heels.

Unsure of what to do with his son's broken brain, Travis agrees to leave with him to keep everyone else safe. Meanwhile, back at the compound, Daniel starts hallucinating and gets locked up by Celia's minions. Fed up with Celia's culty ways and the hold she has on Nick, Madison locks their hostess in with her secret stash of zombies, which Daniel sets fire to after escaping because, as it turns out, he's a badass former Salvadoran Junta agent. Assuming Daniel was killed in the fire, Madison, Strand, Alicia, and Ofelia flee. They run into Nick on their way out, who, fully indoctrinated to Celia's crazy ways, gives them the old "Peace out," taking off in the opposite direction.

After the mess at Celia's place, Madison, Ofelia, Alicia, and Strand manage to find a hotel with an excellent barricade system and hot running water. A cynical Ofelia takes off on her own in the group's truck, driving as far as she can and then walking until she reaches the U.S. border. The remaining group members team up with some folks already hanging around the hotel, clearing the rooms and luring the Walkers off the pier into the ocean like lemmings.

While the hotel crew are trying to keep out of hot water long enough to enjoy their hot water, Nick heads to Tijuana. Injured and in bad shape, he encounters Luciana (Danay Garcia), who takes him to her hidden community "La Colonia" so he can be treated. Outside of some light ritual sacrifice, it's a pretty nice place to live. Nick becomes part of the community, getting involved in their oxycodone-for-supplies dealing with a gang called Los Hermanos by day and getting cozy with Luci by night. When the gang finds them and the end of the colony seems inevitable, Nick — who spied a helicopter near the border — persuades the community to head toward it. He and Luci end up getting knocked out and imprisoned.

Elsewhere, father-and-son team Chris and Travis join a bunch of testosterone-charged, all-American Tourist Bros, who got stuck in Mexico during the outbreak, which coincided with Spring Break. Emboldened by their stupidity, Chris becomes even more intolerable and ends up killing a farmer in cold blood. Convinced that Nick is hanging around the area, Madison flashes the hotel lights. While Nick doesn't see them, Travis does. Unfortunately, he's not the only one, and when he shows up at the hotel gates, it's among a fairly thick crowd.

Shortly after Travis tells Madison about the Tourist Bros, two of them show up sans Chris, saying that they killed him after he sustained minor injuries in a car crash. Travis kills them both, injuring hotel resident Oscar in the fray and understandably damaging his relationship with the hotel folk. Leaving Strand, who is too into #hotellife to leave, Alicia, Travis, and Madison head to the gangster grocery and La Colonia in search of Nick, only to find both locations have gone bad. A dying Alejandro tells them Nick made a run for the border, and they all end up there around the same time.

Things at the border turn sketchy fast when Alicia, Madison, Travis, Nick, and Luciana are captured and taken to a military compound. They all escape as the compound is overrun but have to split up, with Madison, Nick, and Troy in a truck and the others in a helicopter. While Madison and the truck crew reach Broke Jaw Ranch — a community owned by Troy's survivalist dad Jeremiah — the chopper is attacked, killing Travis. Despite the family's loss, Alicia gets to enjoy a halfway normal life on the ranch, making a love connection with Jake. Meanwhile, a grieving Madison helps navigate an impending war with the Black Hat tribe, whose land the ranch is built on.

Amid negotiations with the Black Hat, Madison's group learns that Ofelia has been living among the tribe and Alicia realizes the Black Hat are reclaiming their lands because of the water shortage, which they see as an omen. Things worsen as Ofelia poisons Broke Jaw with anthrax, creating a deadly zombie outbreak. To end the war, Nick kills Jeremiah, with Madison quietly delivering his head to the Black Hat. The bid for peace works, and the Natives move onto Broke Jaw Ranch and integrate into the community with only a few problems. Hoping to negotiate for water, Madison and a few others take a tanker to Mexicali, where they find an imprisoned Strand and buy his freedom, then negotiate a trade with Lola: In five days, the groups will trade weapons for water at the bazaar.

Creepy Troy is living off the land and using a grenade launcher to route a massive herd of Walkers to the ranch as part of his Darwinian fantasy, and his brother Jake gets killed trying to stop him. The people of Broke Jaw do their best to stop the herd with a wall of RVs but end up trapped in the survival bunker where their food stores are kept. As their air begins to run out, Alicia directs the euthanization of anyone who has been bitten, but she ends up being the only person to survive the bunker. Madison, Walker, and Strand get back in time to rescue Alicia, Nick, and Troy, but Alicia just can't take any more loss and leaves them to be on her own as the others head back to the dam.

After Broke Jaw is lost, the survivors make their way to the bazaar as they had originally planned. On the way there, a very ill Ofelia falls off the water truck, revealing to the others that she was bitten in the chaos of their exodus. Madison sells their weapons so her friend can rest comfortably in the group's care while waiting for her father to arrive. She dies just as her father arrives, and Daniel agrees to bring the group to the dam. In the strange marketplace of the bazaar where everything is available, Nick falls all the way off the wagon on a bender of apocalyptic proportions. While the rest of the group head to the dam, Nick and drinking buddy Troy stick around at the bar getting wasted.

Meanwhile, Alicia is still wandering around on her own and ends up sharing food with Diana. After befriending each other, they travel to the bazaar together, where Alicia is recruited to assist in spinal surgery for Proctor John, whose motorcycle gang is planning to attack the dam. When Troy learns of their plans, he and Nick head to the dam to try and stop the worst from happening.

With the attack on the dam imminent, Strand, whose most defining trait is his knack for self-preservation, makes a deal with the bad guys the moment they show up. After learning about Troy's manipulation of the herd, Madison shoots him with a horrified Nick present. When Daniel catches Victor aiding the Proctors, a fight ensues and Strand shoots Salazar. As the outlaws take over the dam, the staff decide to use explosives rather than let the Proctors take over the community water supply. Strand tries to get Nick and Madison out, telling them he will do everything in his power to keep them safe and grabbing the detonator from Madison. While arguing over Troy's death, mother and son remain hidden while the outlaws execute the resistant dam workers.

Held captive by the Proctors and forced to continue nursing Proctor John, Alicia arrives by raft at the dam just after the group has taken over. Learning of her mother's presence at the dam, Alicia makes a deal to keep Madison safe. When Proctor John catches Strand helping Nick and Madison get away, the leader decides to kill the Clarks and Victor together beginning with Alicia. Out of options in a standoff atop the dam, Nick threatens the Proctors with the detonator, bargaining for his mom and sister's lives, with Strand leaving with them.

Down below, Daniel pretends to be more injured than he is, taking out a handful of Proctors with his ruse. Nick finally detonates the dam, with Daniel pulling him to safety as it begins to crumble. In the ensuing deluge, locals fill their buckets with water as Madison swims to shore. According to most fan pages and quite a few Redditors, the dam exploded on Day 64 of the outbreak, coinciding with the CDC explosion in Atlanta.

After the explosion at the dam, Season 4 of "Fear the Walking Dead" experiences a dramatic time jump of about a year and introduces a handful of new characters as well as bringing Morgan from "The Walking Dead" into Madison's world. After trying to rob a woman who turns out to be Althea, Madison is instead given supplies in exchange for her story, an experience that inspires her to build a community around a baseball diamond. Madison, Alicia, Strand, Luciana, and Nick create the community, but they run into farming trouble due to a problem with weevils. After sending young spy Charlie to infiltrate the community, a rival group called the Vultures threatens them, demanding Madison give up their supplies. After she refuses, the Vultures retaliate by releasing trucks full of Walkers at the stadium. The stadium gets overrun, with Madison heroically leading the dead into the diamond and then burning the stadium so her kids can escape.

Morgan and John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt) meet and are saved from Walkers by post-apocalyptic journalist Althea and her SWAT vehicle. With Morgan injured, they decide to stick together until he is healed. They get lured into a trap by Nick, Luciana, Victor, and Alicia. While Alicia's people are forcing Althea to take them to where they found a flag with the number 51 on it, the SWAT vehicle swerves and gets stuck, causing the group to have to work together to tow it. Nick sees the Vultures' blue El Camino and goes after it, impaling Ennis on deer antlers before getting shot to death by Charlie. John, reunited with his lost love June (Jenna Elfman), moves into a school bus with his lady and Charlie. Alicia, Luciana, and Strand move into a mansion, where Strand drinks himself silly and Luciana struggles with depression in the wake of Nick's death.

After a bottle episode in which Alicia and Charlie (Alexa Nisenson) are caught in a hurricane, the pair find that both the mansion and the bus are abandoned. Meanwhile, Morgan shelters in place in a semi-truck with a box that reads, "Take what you need, leave what you don't," falling asleep in the vehicle and waking up at a fully-stocked gas station with running water. There, he meets trucker siblings Wendell (Daryl Mitchell) and Sarah (Mo Collins), who tell him they are the ones leaving supplies. But, after a brief tangle with a brewer named Jim (Aaron Stanford), Morgan learns that Wendell and Sarah are actually stealing supplies rather than leaving them, and it's a trucker named Polar Bear who has really been helping folks.

Morgan, Wendell, Sarah, and the new guy head back to Texas in exchange for Morgan's promise to reveal the location of Alexandria. Morgan's group reunites with Althea and June. Meanwhile, a mystery woman named Martha is sabotaging the supply drops with sketchy water. She tells Morgan to quit helping people on the radio before stealing the SWAT truck and shelling the semi Jim and Morgan are in. When the semi explodes, the group runs into a hospital to escape a herd. While Jim succumbs to a Walker bite, the others evade Martha, who is slowly dying of an infection. Unfortunately, she doesn't die until after she manages to poison the water at the gas station with antifreeze. Luckily, the ethanol in Jim's beer serves as an antidote. Sufficiently humbled, the others decide to continue the work for Polar Bear, who died in the hurricane. They move into a denim factory and use it as a base of operations for their Polar Bear Network.

While working on the Polar Bear Network, the group reunites with Daniel Salazar. Logan's people lure the group away from the factory and take over while Morgan, Luci, Alicia, June, and Dorie get into a plane crash. While stranded, they find a radiation warning sign. Morgan meets Grace (Karen David), who tells him the power plant collapsed last year and the area is chock full of radioactive Walkers. Grace, who managed the plant, is suffering from radiation sickness but feels responsible for wiping out all the contaminated Walkers. Strand wants to use Daniel's plane to rescue his people, but Daniel refuses because Strand is the worst. Not to be deterred, Strand teams up with Charlie and the trucker siblings to try and steal the plane, but since Daniel wasn't born yesterday, he disables the plane before they can. But, when Daniel's cat Skidmark nearly gets him killed by a Walker pack, Strand rescues him anyway, trashing Daniel's plane in the process. A grateful Daniel lets the group use his warehouse.

Morgan loses his staff to radiation exposure, and June and John find a camp that died from radioactive Walker exposure. Alicia and Morgan discover a group of kids whose parents died of radiation sickness including Annie, Max, and Dylan. Dylan helps them radio home, and after learning that Daniel's plane is a dead end, they decide to repair the crashed one. While working on the repairs, Grace warns that a second reactor meltdown is imminent and the group needs to rapidly peace out. June and John encounter Dwight of "The Walking Dead" (Austin Amelio) in a ghost town, who has traveled from Virginia to Texas looking for his wife Sherry (Christine Evangelista), following notes she leaves for him along the way. After meeting again, Morgan and Dwight decide to leave their Savior War baggage behind them, and Dwight and John continue the search for Sherry.

When Strand and Charlie fly Jim the Brewer's beer bottle-shaped hot air balloon into the hot zone, it is immediately overrun by radioactive Walkers. Grace and Morgan delay the reactor meltdown with a generator repair and the group faces off with radioactive Walkers. The sirens sound at the power plant, signaling a meltdown. The group flees as the containment building explodes, spreading radioactive ash all over the area. With the plane conveniently repaired just in time, Morgan's group piles inside. Back at home, the truckers create a runway from Christmas lights so the plane can land.

Logan (Matt Frewer), whose people trashed the denim factory and abandoned it, radios Morgan's people asking for help finding an oil field since the fuel supply is dwindling. Although they're living out of a caravan while June looks for a new home, Morgan's group continues to help others. While assisting a man at a mall, Grace becomes sick and passes out. Alicia, who has renounced killing, finds a painted tree that reads, "If you're reading this, you're still here." Inspired, Zen Alicia picks up her own paint cans and begins helping the cause.

The group then encounters Wes, who painted the trees. Wes tells them he was attacked by Logan's people. After learning where Althea stores her tapes, Logan's crew steal them in hopes of finding the location of the oil field. The bid works, and they arrive at the oil field, leading to a standoff. Just as Logan is rethinking his choices, a crew led by Logan's ally Virginia (Colby Minifie) arrives to gun him and his people down. The chicly-dressed Virginia seems to know everything about them from Al's tapes and offers to team up with the Polar Bear crew. After Morgan's people decline their offer, Luci bargains for their lives by agreeing to run the oil field. The Polar Bears are given a tanker of gas and set off to continue looking for their new home.

After a few failed recruitment attempts aimed at Morgan's people, Virginia makes her own pro-Pioneer propaganda video, inspired by Al. The information war escalates when Pioneer outcast Tom counters with a documentary contrasting the groups. Virginia corners Morgan's group, promising to help them cross a dodgy bridge and reveal where Sherry is if they join the Pioneers. When they refuse the dangling carrot, she uses a herd of Walkers to try to force them into submission. Morgan's people retreat to Humbug's Gulch, where John thinks they can make a home. Virginia isn't having it and forces the group to surrender with a massive herd of Walkers. Believing they are out of options, Morgan gives up. While they wait for Virginia's people to arrive, they spend the last of their time together by holding a wedding for June and John.

Virginia arrives, separating Morgan's people and sending them to separate communities and shooting Morgan. She leaves him for dead but later sends a bounty hunter to bring back his head. When one of the Pioneers' doctors examines Grace, who believes she is dying, they learn that she is actually sick because she is pregnant and severely malnourished. John investigates a Pioneer crime and is made a Ranger by Virginia. Alicia and Strand get sent to a warehouse full of sticky molasses and Walkers. Working together, they help clear the warehouse against tremendous odds, a feat that earns Strand a privileged role in the community. June and Sarah are given the opportunity to run a mobile clinic, although their survival rates are fairly dismal. Meanwhile, on the run and suffering from an infected gunshot, a red-eyed Morgan helps a man deliver his wife's baby and then encounters some men who believe he has a key they need.

While sneaking off to look for Al's girlfriend, Al and Dwight stumble onto a group of people who seem to have been intentionally infected with bubonic plague via rats, with the culprits painting "The End is the Beginning" as their calling card. They narrowly escape, and Dwight is finally reunited with Sherry. After a romantic reunion, Sherry disappears and Dwight is captured by a masked group, who just turn out to be Sherry's anti-Virginia coalition. Dwight and Al team up with the group to steal back the SWAT truck, with Morgan joining in the fun at the last moment.

Frustrated by the felled trees she keeps finding marked with "The End is the Beginning," Virginia searches for answers. A new well explosion at Tank Town leads to a mass casualty event, and the community goes into action. John, June, Luci, Sarah, Virginia, and the rest of the Pioneers work to save as many people as possible. At the site, the same message that was found on the trees tells them the explosion was perpetrated by the same people behind the rat attack.

When Virginia finds Wes' art supplies, she believes him responsible, torturing him for answers. Another explosion at the oil field traps Virginia and June, with Virginia ending up bitten on the hand by a Walker. Despite June's hesitation to help Virginia by amputating her hand, the leader convinces her that the community faces a greater threat and tells her that if she saves her, she will build her a hospital. John wants to leave, but June, whose mobile hospital is not going well, can't turn down the chance to save lives. As Tank Town burns, John heads out without his wife.

After a convoy escorting Virginia's sister Dakota is attacked, Strand asks Charlie and Alicia to help him find the girl. She's located at a hunting lodge whose resident uses his taxidermy skills to create twisted Walkers straight out of body horror hell. After Morgan arrives and saves them, Alicia learns that he is the one who attacked the convoy. Morgan and Dakota go on the run from Virginia's people, encountering a depressed John near his cabin.

To get Dakota back, Virginia decides to hold Daniel, Grace, June, Wes, and Sarah hostage. John realizes that Dakota is the person who committed the crime he had been investigating. To keep her secret, she kills him, but not before Morgan realizes what's happened. Dakota tells Morgan that she saved him after he was shot by Virginia, and that she wants Virginia dead. Alicia, Dwight, and Charlie arrive at Morgan's community, which he is building where the lake was before the dam broke.

Back at the Pioneer community, Virginia holds Morgan's people at gunpoint, beating Daniel and demanding to know where Morgan and Dakota have gone. In her frustration, Virginia threatens to kill the visibly pregnant Grace. Morgan shows up, but he tells Virginia in front of everyone present, "It's over for you," before coming clean with the whole truth about Dakota killing the Ranger. His words poison the community against her, and Strand initiates a mutiny. In the ensuing mayhem, Morgan takes off with Virginia, planning to use her as leverage to get Grace back.

The next morning, Virginia reveals that Dakota is not her sister but her child. After a brief encounter with Sherry's people, Morgan takes Virginia to his community. There, Sherry's people and the mutineers demand justice, and Virginia willingly accepts that she must be executed. Morgan can't go through with it, instead deciding to exile her and Dakota. Realizing that Virginia's stupidity is the reason John died, June shoots her in the head and leaves, putting on John's hat as she walks away.

Things are going well at Valley Town. The only rule is that people's weapons have to be checked, logged, and locked up while they're visiting the community. As Sherry, Strand, and Sarah arrive to talk about the Paint People threat, Grace goes into labor. Morgan heads out in the SWAT truck to find a fetal monitor, leaving Daniel in charge. An explosion bringing Walkers to the village finds everyone reaching for their weapons — only to realize they have all gone missing. After some in-fighting and general chaos, the group learns that Daniel is suffering from some kind of a psychological problem, and he ends up leaving the community with Strand to live in Lawton.

Dakota tells the group that she heard Virginia say the Paint Cult is based in Dallas. Luciana and Wes rush to join Al and Alicia, who are already halfway there. They infiltrate the settlement and learn it's called "The Holding." At the Holding — a fairly well-established community with plenty of fresh vegetables, a cafeteria, and electricity — they find maps of the area and realize this group is targeting settlements. Wes, whose brother Derek is a member of the community, asks Derek what gives and learns that the community believes everything on the surface needs to die so the world can start over. While trying to escape with the information they've gained, the group is caught by Riley (Nick Stahl), who puts them in an embalming room. The group is told that they can be freed if they reveal the location of Valley Town. When Wes realizes Derek knew he was in Tank Town and executed the attack anyway, he kills his brother by throwing him against a Walker.

After a cult member tries and fails to embalm her, Alicia has the displeasure of meeting cult leader Teddy (John Glover). Riley and his men pursue Morgan and Grace, but his men are killed and Riley runs away, leaving Grace to deliver her stillborn daughter. While searching for answers about the cult, June meets John's dad (Keith Carradine), who tells her Teddy was a serial killer before the apocalypse.

Since Alicia messed up their last place, Teddy's cult gets ready for a move. Dakota joins the cult, and Teddy takes her and Alicia with him while he moves his mom's body. Alicia considers killing Teddy but realizes she needs to find out what he's up to first. After a brief encounter with someone Alicia believed to have died back at the diamond, Teddy does the one thing TV villains just can't avoid doing and reveals every detail of his evil plans to launch the nukes on a washed-up submarine in Galveston. Alicia gets a warning out to Strand before Teddy locks her into a bunker hidden below a hotel, convinced that she will be the perfect leader for the survivors of the blast.

Dakota, Teddy, and Riley (who was once the submarine's weapons officer) get ready to launch the nukes, and the race is on to stop them. Morgan's group makes it to the sub while Luciana heads to a Naval base. While fighting off Walkers on the sub, Strand pulls a Strand and leaves Morgan for dead. While the pair eventually make it to the control room and stop the nukes, Riley and Teddy do manage to launch one towards Texas.

Everyone quickly scrambles to find shelter before the nukes hit. Sherry and Dwight save a family from a couple of cultists and take shelter with them in their storm shelter. Rachel, whose baby Morgan helped deliver, becomes badly injured trying to escape but manages to save her baby before she dies. Morgan and Grace confess their love for each other, and, after finding the baby, take cover from the nuclear shockwave. June and John arrive and reveal that Teddy lied to Dakota and plans to duck into a nearby bunker so he can come back and launch the rest of the nukes later on — a job that requires two people.

Dakota finishes the cult leader off, and June and John get into Teddy's bunker in the nick of time. Strand finds shelter in a building, where he meets a historian named Howard and starts to look slightly villainous. The rest of the group follows coordinates Daniel heard on the radio and end up getting rescued by a CRM helicopter just as the nukes hit.

Huge swatches of Texas are now nuked-out wasteland. Strand has turned the building he used to survive the blast into a base of operations. When his Rangers pick up a guy named Will, Will agrees to lead Strand to Alicia, revealing that he was part of the community Teddy killed when his people moved into the hotel bunker. When they reach the bunker, it's empty except for a note that reads "PADRE." Concerned about his emotional ties to Alicia, Strand has Will thrown off the Tower. He then reinforces the Tower by surrounding it with a living moat of Walkers.

Meanwhile, Morgan has formed a little family with Baby Mo and Grace, and they've turned the submarine into their home. After an effort to re-up their supplies goes bad, they discover a significant powdered milk supply stashed under the flooring, solving their food crisis for the next few months. Elsewhere, John and June get by in the bunker, but with a dwindling booze supply, structural instability, and a secret room where Teddy used to kill his victims, morale isn't great. As the bunker collapses, Strand's people grab them and take them to the Tower. Emboldened, Strand gets snippy with Morgan over the radio, making it clear he's looking for some kind of an arch-nemesis relationship. Strand has fully embraced his inner dictator by this point, donning military-inspired clothing and even having his portrait painted.

Josiah ends up making amends with Morgan when they have to euthanize Rufus. The rest of Morgan's people, who have been living in an old fort, learn that Wendell is living in Strand Tower, but Sarah isn't allowed inside. Happy to be back together, Dwight and Sherry decide to become vigilante outlaws known as Dark Horses. After they are nabbed by Strand's crew, Strand asks them to find a missing woman named Mickey (Aisha Tyler). They do, but only to recruit her as a Dark Horse after offering her help. Al and Isabelle meet up and go on the run from the CRM, looking for the apocalyptic version of happily ever after. Meanwhile, all of post-apocalyptic Texas is abuzz with rumors about some fantastic place called PADRE.

Morgan shows up at the Tower, begging Strand to let June treat a sick Baby Mo. Strand agrees if Morgan will help with his Stalker problem – apparently they are threatening to release radioactive Walkers if Strand doesn't give them asylum. Strand unexpectedly collapses, having been poisoned by Morgan. To save Morgan's life, Grace joins the Tower. After leaving, Morgan encounters the Dark Horses and some Stalkers, learning that their leader is Alicia, but it wasn't them who released the radioactive Walkers. Alicia believes the dead Senator Vazquez is telepathically showing her the way to PADRE and decides to raise an army to take the Tower from Strand.

Charlie infiltrates the Tower and falls in love with Ali (Ashton Arbab), who is supposed to spy on her. The kids decide to run away together but learn Charlie is dying of radiation sickness. Howard, who discovers their plan, tosses Ali off the Tower. This enrages June, who becomes committed to taking out Strand's regime. Meanwhile, Strand becomes more paranoid. John dies smuggling Baby Mo out of the Tower, and Wes, who betrayed his friends, becomes Strand's new sidekick.

Morgan moves the moat Walkers away from the Tower and into the crater, where he discovers that the radioactive Walkers have been released via a ramp. Dwight and Sherry lure the herd into a bunker and narrowly escape. With the Tower exposed, the army prepares to descend on it as Morgan gets Mo out of the danger zone. In the fight that follows, Strand's people mutiny, Strand kills Wes, and the Tower catches fire.

After escaping from the Tower, Alicia wakes up on a beach to learn that the radioactive herd burned in the Tower has made Texas uninhabitable. Strand, no longer a dictator, is feeling pouty after his Tower crisis, so Alicia invites him back into the fold. After hearing from Morgan in the Gulf of Mexico, the group takes off on an ocean voyage in search of PADRE, leaving Alicia behind.

After reaching Louisiana, Morgan gets his baby snatched by none other than the long-presumed-dead Madison Clark, who survived the stadium but has lung disease as a lasting consequence. These days, she works as a full-time baby snatcher for PADRE. With a white lie about another pregnant survivor, Morgan gets Mo back, but the posse punishes Madison by burying her head in the sand at high tide. After Morgan rescues her, the two pair up and use a ruse to get transported to PADRE.

The future of "Fear the Walking Dead" will be on the water, according to showrunner Andrew Chambliss. "I think one thing that kind of goes hand-in-hand with the production of the show is that we've been for the past four seasons in Texas and we're going to be actually moving the show to Savannah, Georgia, which is on the water," Chambliss told Entertainment Weekly following Season 7. "We end the season with Morgan and Madison going out to a boat. So I think it's safe to say that Season 8 will have a very different environment from what we have seen before. And it will, in many ways, be centered around the water."