The Apocalypse is Coming, and It Wants Your Brain: World War Z

The old saying would have it that "armies prepare to fight the war they just finished." That does seem borne out by recent history: WWII vs. Korea; Korea vs. Vietnam; Vietnam vs. the Gulf Wars... perhaps the military mind can only learn the hard way. We can forgive the military this time, though, for there was never a way to prepare, at least not for a war like World War Z. After all, how can you prepare for an enemy that knows no fear? for an enemy that can't feel pain? for an enemy that can't die, because he's already dead?

That's the story of World War Z, where "Z" is for "Zombie."

Yes, zombies - the undead; reanimated, flesh-eating ex-humans that take a lickin' and keep on tickin'; shambling, howling, moaning, blank-eyed ghouls that can only be killed by destroying their brains. Think of it: your parents, children, lovers, co-workers, bosses, teachers; all ambulatory dead with a single purpose. To eat the living. Small wonder the military, even with its smart bombs and remote-controlled spy planes, proved less successful than a farmer with a .22 rifle or a homeowner with a sharp axe. But let's begin at the beginning, shall we?


In the beginning, they called it the "African Rabies," even though the earliest outbreaks were actually in Asia. You didn't have to be a fan of "Dawn of the Dead" (or of "Shaun of the Dead") to recognize the symptoms: the victims died, woke up again, and started trying to bite anyone who came within reach. Entire cities were infected - even entire countries. Israel slammed its borders shut with the Palestinians inside; the inhabitants of the Windward Islands killed everything and everybody who tried to cross their beaches. Japan evacuated entirely: its population headed north to where the living dead lay frozen six months of the year, allowing for at least a brief respite. Iran and Pakistan cooked up a little nuclear war; China had a civil war all its own. The climate grew cold from the smoke and ash of billions of campfires, from hundreds of millions of funeral pyres.

Mankind stood at the brink of extinction, the last enemy humanity itself. But mankind has an indomitable will to survive, and survive it did - at the cost of untold millions of lives and near complete collapse of world order. Read here the stories of the survivors and of the heroes - and a few villains - as told in their own voices and the voices of those who saw them in action.


A companion to his earlier The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z is the second release by Max Brooks. Brooks patterned his work on oral histories of the World Wars, with an unnamed interviewer recording the stories of participants from around the world in their own words. From the earliest reported outbreaks to ongoing post-war mop-up operations, he interviews eyewitnesses at every level - including an astronaut who watched the world go dark from his perch on the International Space Station. He interviews heroes - foot soldiers of half a dozen armies; survivors who fought their way through the hordes of undead with farm implements and ceremonial weapons. He interviews villains - the richest and most detested war profiteer in world history; government officials apparently more interested in covering their asses than saving their species. You'll hear from a doctor, a submariner, a feral child, an infantryman, and the head of the USA's agency in charge of deciding which half of the country to abandon to save the other half.

No stone is left unturned; no sacred cow left ungored. The foolish decisions that might have cost millions their lives are laid out in all their futile detail; as is the dawn of understanding, the melding of ancient arts with new technology. That's what finally turned the tide of a war against man himself, an awful war in which one's fallen comrades suddenly become the enemy.


Post-apocalyptic fiction often serves to remind us of crucial lessons. One we might learn are that the vocations we value so highly would be of little use after such a war - in one case, a former Hollywood deal-maker finds herself reduced to a student learning how to perform menial labor... learning from her former downstairs maid, to boot. Stock brokers and lawyers are a dime a dozen - but mechanics and carpenters; they're the currency of empire. You might have been a rock star or the NBA's most valuable player, but if you don't know how to honey-dip a septic tank you just ain't diddly.

World War Z is clearly an allegory from which mankind - meaning you and I - might learn a lesson or two. Lessons like "don't depend on technology for every little thing" come to mind immediately; others are subtler. The dittohead contingent has been incensed by what they perceive as a leftist slant to Brooks's writing, probably in the main because Max Brooks is "from Hollywood," the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. Some rail against the statement that the US troops were weary after the latest brushfire war (assuming - apparently because Brooks is "from Hollywood" - that he means Iraq). Others are annoyed by the rise of Cuba as a post-war economic power. Still others squawk about the solution of "the Palestine problem" or the rise of fundamentalism across the globe in the aftermath of war. Others simply don't seem to like it that the USA is no longer the preeminent world power when the fighting's done.

Get over it: it's a post-apocalyptic novel; a work of fiction...

The book's greatest weakness, however, has nothing to do with politics and world-view. It's structural: every one of Brooks's characters (except one with the mind of a four-year-old) speaks in more or less the same voice. Iranian, Chinese, Russian, American, Cuban - the inflections and the speech patterns do not differ. Japanese dung-shoveler, Russian foot soldier, or American cabinet member - the vocabulary and the command of the subject does not vary. It gets a little monotonous.


Given the popularity of vampire and zombie novels these days, I suppose I should take a few words to tell you what World War Z is not. There's no sex, very little gore, and no palace intrigue. The reanimated are mindless, so there's no plotting and no politics. If that's your favorite aspect of reading about the undead, then you'll certainly want to look elsewhere. This, my friends, is actually a serious work of fiction.

A good one.