When Zombies Attack, It Will Be Too Late to Read World War Z by Max Brooks - A Review

The Zombie Survival Guide was written first to help the unsuspecting public as a vital element of surviving the zombie pandemic. The Zombie Survival Guide was written tongue in cheek and not to be taken seriously. However, Max Brooks, author of The Zombie Survival Guide, does not let us take zombies so lightly in World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. World War Z takes us into the lives of the survivors of the global spread of the virus that resulted in the Zombie Pandemic, the proliferation of zombies some time in the future. Could this be the coming 2012 Apocalypse that the Mayans have been credited with predicting? Mr. Brooks never makes that claim, however, given the public obsession with 2012 Apocalypse and what some believe is impending doom, it's not too difficult a stretch to point to the possible rise of zombies. This is especially true when one looks at the delivery of the storyline of World War Z.

The story is the fictional accounting of the zombie attacks as told to a UN observer/reporter who has travelled the globe at some point in the future to interview those few humans who survived the cataclysmic events that seemed to begin in China. The interviews are written as if the zombie pandemic and the emotions of the survivors are real. Because of the way Max Brooks has written World War Z, if it happened as he imagined, the spread of the virus and the resulting zombies would make the threat of a Bird Flu epidemic seem like a cold.

Author Max Brooks' survivors horrifyingly portray the zombies as mindless masses of human flesh in various states of decay, their only intent: to eat any and every living thing they can find. The interviewees in Mr. Brooks' book describe the zombies as they exhibit herd mentality, but show no collective, cooperative thinking. The zombie's only instinct is to eat. One even wonders why they do eat. There is certainly no cell rejuvenation; they continue to deteriorate to the point that they are almost unrecognizable as ever having been human.

Zombies have no fight or flight response to danger. If there is danger as percieved by the men and women who survived the pandemic, the zombies show no recognition of it. Zombies exhibit no desire to preserve or perpetuate the zombies as a species. It's "every zombie for itself."

To the victims turned survivors of the global event, the zombies are a relentless, disgusting, gruesome mass of "walking," moaning flesh that only vaguely resembled the human being that it once was.

Civilians turned activists, turned warriors and, finally, survivors find very little that actually destroys the zombie. However, in most cases, it is the government inaction of each country that is civilization's initial undoing, that causes the loss of so much life and the proliferation of so many zombies. Mr. Brooks demonstrates so well how the lack of imagination and innovation of a government here, the secretiveness of a government there, throw in the manipulation along with the world population's almost collective willingness to believe without question and you have the recipe for a successful zombie pandemic and ensuing zombie war - zombies the victors and humans the losers.

There have been zombie books and even zombie movies for years. I have never been a great fan, finding them more comical than anything. However, Mr. Brooks successfully removes the comedy in World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War and leaves us wondering what would really happen if there was a zombie apocalypse. How fast would the systems disintegrate, how ineffectual conventional thinking would become? How well could the world survive the breakdown of every safeguard? There are no zombie weapons. Why should there be. They must be invented, but only after the admission that the zombies do exist and that current weapons and warfare don't work to destroy them.

The survivors in World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War are incredibly real as we read their interviews and learn their story of survival. The hero, the interviewer could have been speaking to any one of us who may have the stamina, ingenuity, and most of all, the luck to survive. The survivors lose everything, but still continue. Their tales are chilling and seem real. You care about what has happened to them in most cases and wonder what would happen to you.

Not surprisingly, World War Z: An Oral History has been scripted for a movie, originally due out in 2012, coinciding with the Mayan date of what some believe will be the apocalypse. However, the release date has apparently been changed to summer 2013. The hero, the UN reporter is portrayed by Brad Pit. I look forward to a movie in which the zombies will be as chilling and ominous on the screen as they were in the book.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War made scenario for the zombie pandemic, zombies vs. humans seem credible and terrifying. Zombies attack, humans die, then humans come back, adding to the zombie population, only to go on and attack other humans. Do zombies exist now? I don't think so, but read Max Brooks' book and you may begin to think that a zombie virus could spawn real life zombies. A captivatingly scary read.