What is P.A.D.R.E. in ‘Fear the Walking Dead?’

Warning: This article contains some spoilers. Please read at your own risk.

This year, the Fear the Walking Dead spin-off show to The Walking Dead is reaching its end. For eight seasons, viewers have followed various characters, visited a number of locations, and now fans are wondering more about one codenamed P.A.D.R.E.

For those who have not watched the show, the apparent acronym whose full meaning has not been revealed yet is an autonomous safe zone built by the United States government at the start of — or just prior to — the zombie outbreak. It is stocked with resources, has the capability to field a group of trained guards, and at different points has tried to kidnap children, which the franchise’s official wiki says people at the facility referred to as “eggs” and appear to want as a means of creating a cult-like organization.

The exact location of the space has not been confirmed in the show’s season as of this story’s filing, but it has appeared in the first six of the final 12 episodes, and Fort James Jackson in Georgia is its real-life counterpart. It is possible the state could be revealed to be the actual location on the show, or it could span multiple places as, at one point in Morgan’s story, he and another character are taken out onto the water toward a very large ship. Remnants of the federal government with a lot of real estate are common in post-apocalyptic stories (see the Enclave in Fallout), and there is certainly space for this in the real world.

In the nuclear “football” the President of the United States can use to launch a nuclear strike, there is a list of secretive “black sites” around the nation he or she can be taken to in an emergency. After the 9/11 attacks, former Vice President Dick Cheney was taken to the Raven Rock Mountain Complex in Pennsylvania, and over the decades, formerly private places like the bunker for Congress beneath the Greenbrier hotel and resort in West Virginia have been revealed to the public and made accessible. For now, audiences will have to wait and see just what will happen, certainly, but the odds the show could pull from the truth are very likely. Episodes of Fear the Walking Dead are available to watch on AMC’s website, Hulu, and YouTube with a subscription in addition.