Fear the Walking Dead Showrunners Preview Season 7: A Nuclear Zombie Apocalypse

As the dust settles on Season 6 of Fear the Walking Dead, showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg reveal how the fallout from the explosive season finale creates a scary new world for the survivors of Season 7: a nuclear zombie apocalypse. In Sunday’s season finale, “The Beginning,” the heroes scramble for safety and shelter after underground cult leader Teddy (John Glover) fires off a submarine-launched missile loaded with nearly a dozen nuclear warheads. Characters like Morgan Jones (Lennie James), Alicia Clark (Alycia Debnam-Carey), and Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) survive the initial blasts, but they’re left alive in an irradiated wasteland that former power plant worker Grace (Karen David) predicts will be worse than Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Chernobyl.

“We have effectively blown up this area of Texas. It’s going to be a completely new reality for our characters to reckon with,” Goldberg said on Talking Dead. “We’ve seen them grow very formidable and able with how they’ve navigated the apocalypse for these six seasons. And now it is a whole new game with the apocalypse.”

In Season 7, premiering later this year on AMC, the survivors “are going to have to deal with the devastation, nuclear fallout, ash, unbreathable air, destroyed structures, limited resources, all these new environmental factors that are going to make survival just exponentially more difficult for them,” Goldberg teased. “This new world is going to bring out very different sides to all of these characters because they are in a whole new reality — and a very scary one.”

Fear’s new season is scaring up bomb-blasted radioactive zombies designed by Greg Nicotero, the special make-up effects guru behind the walkers of The Walking Dead, and a post-post-apocalyptic type of human villain.

“We said, ‘All these nuclear bombs went off, let’s push the walker stuff as much as we can.’ And [Nicotero’s team] gave us some really cool designs that we’re excited to see brought to life,” Chambliss said. Added Goldberg, “The nuclear apocalypse will also bring out a new element of human adversary, and some also really cool-designed garb accouterment to reflect this new reality. There’s going to be a lot of gas masks in Season 7, as you can probably guess (laughs).”

“The Beginning” is now streaming on AMC+.

Fear the Walking Dead returns with new episodes later this year on AMC. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things The Walking Dead Universe.