World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Okay, so zombies are overdone. Once it was just me and my friends coming up with zombie contingency plans. Now, everybody and their mother has one and the joke is just... old. They've officially made a zombie rom-com. I'm over it.

However, this book brought me right back into the hype. I think the main reason I latched onto the zombie meme as my movie monster of choice was because I've played enough video games to believe I could handle that. Vampires? Real ones with speed and strength and an actual desire to drink human blood, I mean. No, I would die. Werewolf? I can barely take down my 6 month old puppy. Supertech aliens? Throwing in the proverbial towel. But zombies? They are slow, stupid, and can be bludgeoned to death. Their only power is numbers, and I believed myself fully capable of not letting those numbers get out of control. I'm a smart, zealously prepared individual, right? Confidence, yo.

This book made me lose my confidence.

Brooks tackles the zombie apocalypse from every angle. I am very close to literal when I say every angle. He not only hits dozens of countries, ages, and positions in the war, he goes on to explain what the zombie apocalypse would mean both to dogs and astronauts. For being under 300 pages, this book is thorough. I have some questions on the validity of some of the other countries' view points (the way he katakana-ed his Japanese made me double take, though I was impressed with his inclusion of an Ainu), but nothing destroyed my ability to enjoy the book. I doubt it would be popular in China, but even when Brooks throws around blame, he emphasizes showing lots of characters with lots of perspectives. There are brave Chinese, terrified Chinese, righteous Chinese, thus avoiding stereotyping a nation.

The K9 unit was by far my favorite section, showing both the most human and inhumane aspects of the world, often without a zombie in sight. My Lucy would make a hell of a zombie dog... except for the whole thing where she can't bite them. Actually scratch that. Stay away from zombies, Lucy.

Back to the novel, though Brooks shows a variety of people suffering the war, capitalizing on the war, steering the war, avoiding the war. I am famous for hating war stories of any kind, but you make it about zombies, and I am suddenly interested. He also distinguishes how different a zombie war would be from fighting living humans: an army that can't be bought or intimidated or even dented. It's a fresh perspective on a stale story.

One of my biggest pet peeves with zombie media is that they are always so vague about how things start. I can and do suspend my disbelief for a catalyst to the disease (this book is no exception), but how it spreads? It's not like the flu. The mythos dictates it is transferred by bite. Honestly, how hard could it be to not get bitten in the early stages of an outbreak? Brooks introduces the idea of organ transplant as a viable infection spreader. He looks at dozens of ways the virus could get out in the world undetected, and they all make a scary sort of sense.

Everything in the book feels viable, really. Brooks gives a nod to the Last Man on Earth (LaMoe's.... hah) stories in an almost derogatory way. It is pretty ridiculous to think only a single human or a smattering of civilian groups would survive. We have governments with much higher safety protocols and stakes in this industry. This is where the movers and shakers fighting the tide would be or where the civilians would end up once they had something to contribute. Brooks' focus is global, and therefore so are his viewpoints.

On that note, the documentary style of the book is gripping. Again, it feels fresh and keeps everything pointedly realistic. It's still clearly Brooks' voice in all of the tales, and some of the people are a bit cookie cutter (not so good at writing the female perspective except in the case of the stranded pilot. Loved her story.), but they each tell their tale and keep the audience tuned in. It would make a great movie. Too bad they don't appear to be actually making this book into a movie so much as slapping its title on a completely different movie.

The interviewer remains largely unidentified, allowing me to slip into a role I actually could handle during a zombie apocalypse. Interviews! Yes, I can do that. I like that while Brooks' makes a clear statement about how people with no blue collar skills (Hi! I'm a liberal arts major!) are kind of asking for this type of danger (perhaps not in the form of walking dead, but there are hundreds of other crises where the practical skills of daily life need to be much more available), he also points out the role the arts have in helping humanity survive. He doesn't dismiss white collar jobs so much as show the disparity between them, the value of being drywall repair tech. It's the most obvious theme of the book, and one that resonates with me.

I had fun reading this book, but I rethought my contingency plan while reading it too. I thought about it, for the first time, with other people. It's a book that makes you self-assess while at the same time gives you the thrill of humanity beating back the undead waves. Recommended for zombie enthusiasts everywhere, particularly those who need a change of pace.