It annoys the hell out of me. For the longest time I thought this was some First World phenomena where people simply have no concept of the dangers posed by dark alleys and rooms, walking alone at night, or strangers. I’ve since realised that authors just let their characters be muck-for-brains twerps as a means of moving the plot forward.
I’m not talking about instances where the character realises a situation is potentially dangerous but moves forward anyway because the stakes are too high not to. I mean the person who goes downstairs in their underwear calling ‘who’s there’ in a horror movie.
It’s a game, dude! Who the heck fights to play a game against someone who’s likely to shove something sharp and pointy between your ribs? And the other members of the team are like ‘yeah, you show him, man!’.
Show him how to die a pointless death?
Nope. This lady strolls off after everyone else, stops to help a person who’s been mauled by the protesting mob (they’re zombies, but nobody knows that yet). Mobs so savage that they actually bite chunks out of people are a glowing neon sign that you don’t want to be in this situation, right? Hahahanope! Moron lady camps out on the train station platform with the person she rescued, watching his bites ooze weird shit until the person tries to eat her.
I really hope she died for her stupidity but that was the point where I said ‘nope’ and stopped reading.