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After waking from a coma in an abandoned hospital, police officer Rick Grimes finds the world he knew gone - ravaged by a zombie epidemic of apocalyptic proportions. Nearby, on the outskirts of Atlanta, a small encampment struggles to survive as 'the dead' stalk them at every turn. Can Rick and the others hold onto their humanity as they fight to live in this terrifying new world? And, amidst dire conditions and personal rivalries, will they ultimately survive one another?

I just can't seem to understand what survive one another means.

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  • I can give you a chemistry response: "Survive one another" means the system is oscillating repeatedly around the equilibrium of people and people (they are each other's rivals). Seriously, without jargon, it means that there is the relation that humans should survive their rivals. Ah, guess it was more difficult to explain than I though it would be. The sentence is referring to each human with "one" and his\her rivals with "another". Yup. I guess that wraps it up.
    – M.A.R.
    Feb 10, 2015 at 21:20

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In this excerpt, survive one another means survive the attacks, thefts, etc of one another. Because everyone is under dire conditions and personal rivalries, they will try to exterminate one another to get what they want, so they have to survive others' attacks.

For example,

There are 5 angry, aggressive dogs in a cage. How will they survive one another?

In this case, all of the dogs want to kill every other dog, so one dog will have to fight to survive the other dogs that try to kill him. This goes for every other dog, so they have to survive (the attacks of) one another.

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    The phrase can also be used figuratively, with a little bit of hyperbole. For example, consider four roommates at college who don't get along very well. One might ask: Will they survive one another? (Of course the answer is "yes;" it's just another way to say, "How will they make it through the semester without driving each other crazy?")
    – J.R. ♦
    Feb 10, 2015 at 21:39
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The term personal rivalries gives a hint to the meaning. In most apocalyptic settings, a majority of the actors will have one goal: survival at all costs. This survival will typically be at odds with people around them who are also attempting to survive at all costs.

So, ultimately survive one another would mean to survive the plans and schemes that the people around them will develop that would be at odds with their own survival.

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