Book Review – Max Brooks’s “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War”
Today I finished reading Max Brooks’s account of warfare, survivability, and a global pandemic in World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.
This book is scheduled to be released in the zombie film World War Z in June of 2013.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a collection of interviews of the survivors, from doctors to politicians to the soldiers themselves. The story behind the book is that years after the war, the United Nations Postwar Commission compiled a report from an agent’s interview notes. The agent was angered that the Commission neglected to include individual stories from the war, so the agent’s supervisor advised him to take his notes and interviews, and make them into a book about the war. That’s how we have World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.
In World War Z, Brooks takes us throughout the worldwide struggle as his character interviews the survivors after the Zombie War. We learn about the initial cases of people rising from the dead, how it was hard to identify the problem at first and ways to contain it. One of the interviews is with a doctor in a remote part of China as he encounters “patient zero,” a young boy who was bitten while swimming with his father. His father was never found, but the boy transformed into a zombie and began biting others, causing the terrible disease to spread. The doctor watched as the Chinese government swooped in and launched a cover-up, going as far as instigating a crisis with Taiwan to make people look the other way.
Another case involves a doctor in Brazil who assists a cardiologist with performing a “black market” heart transplant. The patient received the new organ from overseas in China (implying an illegal harvest, sale and transport of human organs; includes executing people for access to rare organs). It turns out that the transplanted heart was infected with the killer disease, and since it was in a critical organ, the disease rapidly spread through the patient’s body. He quickly succumbed to the disease and was a zombie by the next morning, going so far as killing the cardiologist before being shot and killed by another doctor. The staff at the medical center were basically paid off to stay quiet about what really happened.
The outbreak of the disease in Africa, and thus dubbed “African rabies,” brought worldwide attention to the problem and the massive humanitarian problems that followed. We hear about how people panicked and tried to flee Africa, stampeding each other and trying to scramble onto boats to escape the zombies. But the zombies were capable of standing in water and still grabbing and killing people, and many boats were capsized and sunk by zombies. Beaches quickly became massacre sites as people tried to flee the zombies.
Israel was one of the first countries to fully recognize the zombie problem. The country isolated itself and used a massive wall to do a self quarantine. People were still allowed entrance into the country after passing before a team of zombie sniffing dogs. Those people who carried the disease were sent away and presumably killed. “Clean” people were allowed entrance, but as one young Arab boy witnessed, some of the Israelis were fed up with their government’s policy of openness towards their enemies, and the country started going through a civil war.
Some people are expecting some countries that are lifelong enemies, such as India and Pakistan, to use the zombie conflict as an excuse to go to nuclear war. But it doesn’t happen that way. Instead, we hear about how India refugees passing through Pakistan and into Iran sparks a minor conflict. Ties were severed between the Iranian and Pakistani governments, and small clashes between military forces quickly escalated into an exchange of nuclear weapons. The nuclear war wiped out major cities in both countries, essentially destroying that area of southern Asia.
The United States initially used teams of special forces soldiers to contain local outbreaks of zombies. While the raids themselves were highly successful and killed a lot of zombies, this tactic was not continued because of the country’s war-weariness from previous conflicts. Thinking that the natural borders of two oceans combined with a “miracle” anti-zombie infection drug called Phalanx, officials believed that the U.S. was immune from a massive zombie outbreak.
But they were wrong.
Phalanx was revealed to be a fraud, though that news was too late. The zombies were here and people were being killed and transformed into zombies at an alarming rate. Cities quickly became death zones, and people fled in a massive event known as the “Great Panic.” Many chose to travel north to the upper reaches of Canada. They knew that zombies would freeze in the winter and not be a threat for half the year. An interview with a young girl revealed how those people who fled north had to face issues such as finding a heat source along with food. It’s implied that some of the people turned to cannibalism.
The U.S. military wanted to make a show of conducting a massive battle against the zombies. It would be a showcase of military power and proof that the zombies wouldn’t stand a chance against a weapon as fierce as the American army. A strategic area was selected in Yonkers, New York, and the soldiers dug in and awaited for the advancing zombie horde. A soldier from the battle tells the story about how the current weapons and tactics did very little against the zombies. Soldiers trained to shoot at the center of mass had to quickly learn how to aim for head shots to put the zombies down permanently. Tanks and artillery would only maim the zombies, dismembering but not stopping the killer creatures.
In the end, the zombies won the Battle of Yonkers as the soldiers were forced to retreat from the advancing horde. The military supposedly ended the battle by dropping a massive, thermobaric bomb on the creatures, but the zombies do not need air to survive. Even after the ghastly effects of the bomb, whatever zombies could still move were continuing to do so, advancing on whatever living souls were still in sight.
Citizen survivors fled the cities and went wherever they could find a safe haven. Zombies dominated most of the country. There were small pockets of fortified areas, such at college towns or certain manufacturing plants. Resources quickly became scarce and people had to learn how to find food and fresh water sources.
The military helped the fortified areas by flying resupply missions and dropping provisions by parachute. We hear the story of a female C-130 Hercules pilot (a former combat pilot) who had to bail and parachute into the zombie-filled swamps of Louisiana when her aircraft suffered from a massive structural failure. She stayed on the run, keeping ahead of the zombies while receiving tips from somebody on the other end of her emergency radio. The woman suffered an ankle injury but ultimately made it onto an elevated part of the interstate and was rescued by a helicopter.
It’s not really established how the zombie virus originated, or if any scientific breakthroughs were made for combating the disease. All that’s really known is that a bite from a zombie is a death sentence, and many of the soldiers who were bitten in combat decided to take their own life before allowing the virus to transform them into a zombie.
The U.S. establishes a defense line through the Rocky Mountains and redevelops its military tactics. The army focuses on a simpler plan using basic tactics, reliable rifles, special K-9 units to find the zombies, and a new battle plan to combat the zombies. We hear about the battle out west near a town called Hope, and how the new combat tactics were incredibly successful. The new army advanced across the Great Plains and eastern parts of the country, wiping out the zombies wherever they were found.
World War Z ends with more interviews telling about the aftermath and how life has been changed for almost everybody around the world. Zombies still roam the unpopulated areas, and it’s estimated that millions of the creatures are still roaming the bottom of the world’s rivers, lakes and oceans. For some of the soldiers, the killing in the battlefields was where they felt like they belonged. Some of those soldiers head overseas and continue hunting and killing the deadly creatures wherever they may be found.
So is World War Z a good book?
World War Z is great for those who love stories about the military, war, survival, and of course, zombies.
The book itself is an easy read, and the more you know and understand about the military and combat situations, then it’s that much better. In particular, it feels like many of the scenarios could have been straight out of World War 2 and Vietnam.
World War Z put part of the spotlight on the humanitarian issues of the Zombie War, such as sudden relocation, starvation, and just trying to survive as a whole.
For the most part, today’s way of life here in the U.S. is fairly simple when it comes to accessing necessities such as food, water, power and gasoline. But what happens when you cut off those necessities? Each household should have a small supply of emergency food and water for just such an occasion, but that only lasts for a few days for some people and possibly a few weeks or longer for those who are really prepared.
But when a massive crisis like the “Great Panic” hits, and people have already consumed their survival gear, what are they supposed to do? Cities are danger zones from the increasing number of zombies, small towns aren’t much safer, and highways and interstates have become killing fields. The government is too busy trying to stop and contain the outbreaks of zombies, but most people know that it’s a waste of time. But as long as resources are focused on fighting and containing the problem, it’s that much less that can help the citizens survive.
So what do you do? Can you stay at home or in a strong shelter long enough to not only survive the zombies but also the other survivors desperate for help? Should you try to travel and find a new residence? Remember that gas stations are empty, so you can only travel as far as the tank of gas in your car and then wherever you can access by foot.
Some people claim that books like World War Z and television shows like The Walking Dead are part of a conspiracy to educate and inform people on what to expect should a major crisis occur, and you would essentially be on your own for days or weeks at a time. It’s a grim topic but such a crisis is always a real possibility, especially during a massive natural event or the outbreak of war.
We may not have to deal with a zombie invasion, but World War Z does take a frighteningly realistic look at how a pandemic event like that could occur, and it’s not pretty. World War Z is a grim reminder of how governments and societies tend to behave, and how survival may make you face your darkest fears.
