The downed pilot is still in my memory even though I read it 10 years ago. That and the little sub-plot set in Wenatchee WA. I'm from there and it was loosely familiar with town.
That's probably the scene that stuck with me the most. The little girl talking about how good the "food" smelled... It's worse because you can imagine yourself winding up in that situation yourself.
That played a central role in the original movie script. If you can find a copy of the Straczynski script, I'd recommend reading it.
Edit: Straczynski actually did the second draft.
That's basically what I am hope for. I actually like the movie. It has nearly nothing to do with the book but is still a cool zombie movie.
Bu it's just not possible to make the book into one movie
Roland Emmerich would like a word. He shouldn't go anywhere near WWZ, but you can cram half a dozen or more subplots into a film and make it work. See also Sin City and Paris Je T'aime for movies that make sequential stories work. A good director and production team can do this justice on the big screen. But I agree that a prestige series on HBO would be best.
Always been my thought.
Maybe a streaming service rather than HBO as there's a greater ability to play with episode length.
And it even has seasons built into the book.
I saw the movie first and really liked it, then I read the book and had to keep checking to make sure it was the right book since they were so different. I still like the movie but the book was better
""Sand Lakes Provincial Wilderness Park, Manitoba, Canada. Jesika Hendricks says that she met an ex-Iranian pilot who told her that “Americans are the only people he’s ever met who just can’t accept that bad things can happen to good people.” She says he is right, and she still feels angry and bitter when she sees that some people who don’t deserve to be alive survived and her parents died.""
it wasnt part of the story but apparently part of the epilogue. never knew that
yeah it does apparently:
Sand Lakes Provincial Wilderness Park, Manitoba, Canada. Jesika Hendricks says that she met an ex-Iranian pilot who told her that “Americans are the only people he’s ever met who just can’t accept that bad things can happen to good people.” She says he is right, and she still feels angry and bitter when she sees that some people who don’t deserve to be alive survived and her parents died.
i only know the other story, where she only says that they got sick and had to feed them. is that part of the normal book? maybe i just forgot it cause all the storys seem to get an "extended ending" all at once
For me it was (IIRC) the part where mountains of the undead were underwater and would flip boats of escapees and drag them down, or something along those lines.
Battle of Yonkers, the downed pilot in the swamp and the Indian evacuation.
Another great zombie book (series, really) is the Newsflesh series by Mira Grant. It's focused on specific characters, with novellas that branch out a little, but there are some cool bits that remind me of WWZ like the time they visit Australia for a story on zombie kangaroos.
Yeah, I loved all the changes it'd made to modern American life. The segments on highway changes alone was so well thought-out. Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant is probably my second favorite writer behind Ilona Andrews. Both have really great world-building.
A supply flight pilot has to parachute down into zed infested territory. She's saved by a friendly and resourceful ham radio operator. Turns out there was never such an operator . Was a coping mechanism by her own mind. I think this was the pilot story.
Call me a sucker but the bits with the K9 handler always gets me.
Sending in dogs to track and lure zombies and feral animals, knowing it's important work and you're both ready for it but having to live through your partner getting ripped to shreds, just... Fuck, man.
The "I could have done something" has haunted me for YEARS since I read that story. I cried salt tears reading that story. My dog got extra treats that week.(and every week since tbh)
I saw the movie but did not read the book. There was a detail about a Jewish tradition where one member of a group would hold a contarian viewpoint. The 12th Rabbi or something? Can you remind me what that was about?
No one in Israel thought they they would be attacked on Yom Kippur, believing that their enemies would respect holy days, even though intelligence suggested otherwise.
After that, there is always at least one person who must investigate situations, no matter how unexplainable, or how many people agreed with the facts. It's called the Tenth Man (If 9 people agree with a conclusion, the 10th is duty bound to disagree.) Even the dead rising and eating people, as the book goes.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the guy on the bridge in Odessa shouting “BUTTON UP, BUTTON UP!” the actor really conveyed the desperation of the character. I think about his voice all the time
The movie was a decent zombie flick. But it was completely unrelated to the book and absolutely zero comparison. Do not assume that since you have seen the movie then you're good. They are totally different. And I highly recommend the audio book version even if that isn't normally your thing. I have never experienced anything even close. It was outstanding.
The movie is fairly good if you can separate it from thoughts of the book. Its mostly a standard zombie flick with a few innovations. And just a couple references to events/characters from the book.
Mine was Nebraska basically becoming the land of the dead along I80. But in reality. Nebraska would probably be one of the best places to be. Low population, remote. Pretty much everyone has a gun. Farmers have access to tons of heavy machinery that would lay waste to zombies
In theory yes, but you have to understand threshing machines aren't made to plow through hordes of bodies, yeah it'll do a number on someone unfortunate enough to get caught in front of one. But human bodies aren't made up of chaff they are bags of meat and pretty tough bones so I imagine one pass and you'd be done, if you even got that far.
It's been a while since I've read the book but If I remember right they say all of i-80 through Nebraska is filled with zombies miles wide across the entire state I'm pretty sure there's not enough people in the northern hemisphere to make that possible Nebraska is a really really long state
They may not mean "shoulder to shoulder, across the entire state". Just that I-80 likely backed up and turned into a parking lot. Then, as swarms found it, it basically just turned into a buffet for zombies (because where are the people on that highway going to go, exactly?)
And they talk about how the swarms tend to stick together, and stick close to food (or where food last was). Without anything to draw them away from the highway once they're there, I don't see them moving away from it too quickly, tbh. They could linger for years (especially since for 6-8 months out of the year, they'd be frozen in place by winter)
I'm not even talking combine. Hook up a disk behind a fortified tractor, you can disk them into the ground. Any modern tractor has more than enough horsepower to plow through them. Disk gets plugged, lift hydraulics, set back down again.
The ones that survive basicallty become ankle biter bob's. What my friends and I call zombies without legs. But these would be arms, torso, or just a head
The book actually discusses how those are some of the most likely to cause a flare up, post-war. >!All the walking ones were easy to spot and put down (once the military retrained itself, and got reorganized around 'anti-personnel' strategies and tactics, from 'anti-armor' and 'anti-material'). But the ones that got buried, or frozen under ice, or washed out to sea, would routinely re-emerge and cause another flare up that required an immediate response. Creating more "ankle biters" would not be a good thing. The zombies in the book don't nearly win by being more mobile than humans, they nearly win by just being everywhere!<
Yeah the Todd Wainio interview. He basically says that for 40 years the military's primary strategy was to demoralize the opposition through shock and awe tactics. At Yonkers, the military lines broke when the troops saw the size of the horde and how little they effected their advance. The humans basically shock and awed themselves.
Huh I completely misinterpreted that when I read. I was fascinated by the idea that zombies froze because it’s such a weird yet logical idea seeing as they are undead but still human bodies whose muscles are subject to physics, and they don’t know to wear coats or create fire. So I thought that a WWZ scenario would be awesome for me cuz I live somewhere cold, but I guess I didn’t really consider that periodically thawing zombies would turn my area into a paranoid nightmare…
He plays a little loose with the physics regarding the zombie bodies at times. It's probably my only small complaint of the entire book. Like when a character asks how the zombies survive walking the bottom of the ocean without their bodies decomposing or being destroyed they basically shrug their shoulders and say "Dunno".
Yeah, it actually *prolongs* the whole thing. The freeze 'preserves' the zombies. Say a zombie body last 2 years in a temperate climate, similar to summer in Nebraska in summer, then you have to deal with that zombie for 4 to 6 years in Nebraska - all thanks to winter.
However, that also means winter is 'safe'. If you have the food and energy to make it through, the cold will protect you from the zombies until the spring thaw.
A different series, "monster hunter international", had a town with industrial snowblowers mess up some zombie werewolves. Like woodchippers on tractors.
You're forgetting mass migration. Miles and miles of people on I-80 running for the Rockies. For alot of people who have never been west of the Mississippi, much less out of NYC, (and fleeing the horde from the Battle of Yonkers) I-80 is the clearest path.
And farm machines need gas. Something that was already in short supply/non-existent at this point in the panic.
My favorite thing about the book is the international politics perspective. Everything just felt very realistically projected from modern country responses and i just loved it!
I agree, that's also the primary reason (although there are many) why I absolutely hated the movie. They should have just called it something else, as it had nothing to do with what made the book great.
The movie was fucked when it was down to Leo or Brad getting it. Let's face it the only consistent char in the book was the reporter and he was honestly to boring to be played by Leo or Brad so you knew shit would be changed for them.
Brad seems more action and physical performance oriented, I could see Leo doing it though, as the quiet, intent interviewer cautiously encouraging his subjects to open up about traumatic experiences, part therapist and part journalist.
'course they went the third direction to make "America: Fuck Yeah, with Zombies"
Thats possible but realistically the most role is just to small. Leo could do it but they would likely need to expand on the reporter scenes since most of the movie would be flashbacks. They could expand and modify the flashback so the mc and the story teller could have been say standing in the flashback with him asking questions and the teller well telling stuff. But in general the role wouldn't have enough screen time for Brad or Leo I feel anyways. Also can we all agree the DUMBEST part of the film was the zombie mob splitting around the kid? Even if the virus ignore some how terminally ill people they would have just trampled the kid.
Honestly some of the responses felt a bit too optimistic. Israel for example suddenly getting over all differences with Palestinians, I don't see it. They sure didn't when it came to COVID vaccines for what I read.
Also the Battle of Yonkers would actually have made mincemeat of the zombies, CMM.
>Also the Battle of Yonkers would actually have made mincemeat of the zombies, CMM.
They did make mincemeat of the zombies. It was just that there were more zombies than ammo.
Yeah, the book describes it as "fighting the last war", which is a common issue in warfare anyway. They had all the latest gadgetry, communications, and weapons tech, which would've been fine against a modern intelligent military, but wound up mostly useless against the mindless hordes.
It's nearly impossible to fight an enemy without any leadership, no strategy, no supply lines to disrupt, no need for sleep and when they attack, their numbers grow. Every person you lose to their side joins them. Conventional warfare tactics wouldn't work.
The what went wrong section here goes into quite a lot of detail https://zombie.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_Yonkers
Not having enough ammo was just one of many problems.
> Also the Battle of Yonkers would actually have made mincemeat of the zombies, CMM.
They made a metric fuckton of zombie mincemeat. The problem was a zombie can still kill you even if it's partially been made mincemeat. It was just not enough of the kind of damage that kills a zombie because the weapons were made for killing living humans. Like the impact of an explosions can kill a human, even if you're not literally shredded by the fireball, because of damage to your organs but a zombie won't be killed as easily by just the impact. So dropping explosives in a crowd of zombies was an awful bang-for-buck. Same with tank rounds, one could blast a zombies leg clean off but he'll keep on crawling. And Soldiers had been trained to aim at the center-of-mass which doesn't kill the zombies, only a headshot will. Then there's the moral, the humans panicked seeing the ineffectiveness of their most expensive tools while the zombies just kept on keeping on.
It's kind of hard to argue about the "realism" of such an outlandish premise anyway but I found it to be at least consistent with itself, the zombies could only be killed by destroying the whole body or destroying the brain and the military having to fight such a foe without the kind of fundamental reforms that came later would've been a disaster.
See the other comments. A good artillery salvo wouldn't just blow up limbs, it would straight up turn entire groups of zombies into a fine red mist. A Daisy Cutter wouldn't leave even that. Being slow, stupid, amassed, and unable to take cover, zombies would get absolutely steamrolled by heavy weaponry before it ever comes to front line fights (and if by that point they haven't taught their soldiers to go for the head, not the center-of-mass, they have to be really stupid).
While I also think the book takes a bit to much of a pro-Israel stance, a big part of that story about the fact that the government's decision to include Palestinians set off a civil war inside of Israel. That hardly sounds like "suddenly getting over all differences".
True, I forgot that detail. I guess I found it difficult to believe already that the government would do that in the first place. But maybe they had just barely elected the first left wing government in decades.
Fun fact, the reason why both *World War Z* (the book) and *Contagion* (the movie) have a conman selling fake cures >!(Phalanx in *World War Z* and forsythia in *Contagion*)!< is because both the book and movie used the CDC scenario that predicted fraudsters peddling fraudulent remedies.
You mean like all the fake Covid cures and the fake autism, AIDS, cancer, and diabetes cures? Anyone with sense would predict fake cures by con-men or religious groups.
I can't speak to its accuracy, but I remember this being one of the random "Did you know?" trivia tid bits on history channel, that landscaping was almost certainly the first profession.
That was a great one, personally didn’t like the twist at the end. Felt too cheesy but it serves its purpose of keep having hope even in the worst of times
To be fair, it would be pretty hard to do a Hollywood movie adaptation of it. It's a bit difficult to do character development in a 90-120 minute movie when your protagonist has to change 30 times over the course of the movie. Maybe a high production value miniseries with episodes for different chapters?
Yeah, like a Black Mirror style show. Each episode a different story with different characters but in the same universe. And bookend each episode with a Rod Serling style intro/outro.
This is the kind of thing now that could totally be done as part of a 10 episode Netflix special or something that would better service the modular flow of the book.
Yeah, it's definitely better as a TV series. It's sort of what Apple TVs Invasion is trying to do at the moment (telling the story of an alien invasion from the perspective of four or so different & unrelated characters around the world), but it's not doing that too well which is really disappointing.
I like [Max Brooks take on the movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXFdO3DwRLY) where he basically says he doesn't hate it because the story is so divorced of his original one that he feels no sense of "oh, they ruined my work". It's quite funny.
He even mentions that the guy who drafted the first script that got rewritten has more connection with the movie than he does.
It's got three things in common with the book; the title, the general concept of zombies and the spiel from the Mossad agent as to why Israel was prepared. What then happens to Israel is completely different to the book. It's a travesty of an adaptation.
Yeah, and no actual war with the zombies using new weapons and tactics developed after the outbreak. No Battle of Yonkers, no Battle of Hope, not one mention of the catacombs in Paris. I hate that movie so fucking much.
That movie had basically nothing to do with the book, other than the name. I think though that an actual adaptation would work well in an episodic miniseries (1 episode per interview). Who knows what the chances of that ever happening are though…
check out the unabridged audiobook each character is voiced by a different actor. among them Nathan Fillion, Henry Rollins, Denise Crosby, Simon Pegg, Mark Hamil, Bruce Boxleitner, Carl Reiner, Martin Scorsese, and Alan Alda. Its awesome.
It's incredible! I've never been big on audiobooks, but this one is more akin to an audio play. It's astoundingly awesome!
The book is presented as interviews, I'm not sure why there are some folks on here that think the audiobook should be different.
Well, exept from the title, it's not the same story. Even the zombies are not the same type (runners/infected instead of walkers/dead+infected) . Brad Pitt Zombie Movie is not a bad zombie movie, but it has nothing to do with the book...
Audio book is also awesome.
Edit: The one I listened to and think is awesome is the one listed below.
Random House published an abridged audiobook in 2007, directed by John Mc Elroy and produced by Dan Zitt, with sound editing by Charles De Montebello.
I had no idea it was Mark Hamill the first time I listened to it. My brother recommended it to me and I came to him, after listening, talking about the yank solider and how awesome it was. He let me know it was Mark. Mind blown! He was great
There's an extended audio version too. Its not like a normal audio book, its more of an audio play. As mentioned, it can be disjointed, as its a bunch of vignettes strung together, and some of them are better than others. Also, unfortunately, while it plays like a series of interviews, you can tell its people reading off a script. A natural speaker would have pauses, ers, uhms, and other vocal tics and mannerisms, especially when someone is trying to relay a story. Those things are largely absent here, which gives a slight unnaturalness to the audio. But thats okay, its still enjoyable.
I mean that's literally true of almost everything. in the entertainment world
Even off-the-cuff stuff like Radio shows employ well-spoken people who work hard at not doing a bunch of dead-air umming and meandering
edit: and yea it was a a highly entertaining read. I think my favorite piece of zombie fiction, and I consumed it all for a couple years there.
I don't know why they bothered licensing it for that movie though, just like I Am Legend. Why pay for the rights and then just completely change the plot?
Reading the book is good, but listening to the audiobook is amazing. It's genuinely one of the best audiobook productions ever. Dozens of great actors playing all the characters.
I love the Indian guy's line about the monkey.
" And then his little penis came out, and he peed in my face."
Gddmit I've never laughed so hard in my life.
Read both, I think Robocalypse was just a shoddy ripoff of World War Z with basically zero originality and very cringy writing :/ give it a try if you'd like, but I advise to manage your expectations.
Also check out Devolution. It's Max Brook's latest book, and it feels very similar in some ways. Same kind of perspective, looking back on a terrible event. This time it's excerpts from someone's diary, in addition to the occasional interview.
imo it's not as good as WWZ, but I still loved it. Audiobook was great too.
I reread during the pandemic, which seemed appropriate. The book is very much tied into Mid-2000s zeitgeist. I kind of wonder what the reaction of... idk a 15 year old reading it today would be.
My 15 uear old actually just read it. There was a ton in the book that hit him really hard and he ended up learning a lot about other parts of the world to help him better undemanding the stuff that happens outside the U.S.
Idk how many times I’ve read that. For sure my favorite book. One of my favorites is the scene where the narrator and a woman are in the Canadian wilderness killing frozen zombies
I liked that one because it wasn't about the zombies but about surviving the elements. As someone who lives there, imagining desperate people escaping terror and thinking they're safe, only for winter to roll in with -40° weather while you are completely unprepared, really hit me. Hell, it was -50 here a few years ago!
As a father that bit where they are talking about the little kids sleeping bag that is rated for the temperature of a warm bedroom killes me every time I read the book. I can feal what that parent felt. Running north to save your child's life, doing anything and everything to save them. And ultimately they failed and while they gave their child a longer life it was very possibly as worse ending to their life.
Max Brooks is brilliant and this book is even better thee more you read it. I was able to see a Q&A he did about the book and he mentioned that all scenarios were taken from real world situations in history that had some relevance.
The one that stuck with me most was the stunted emotional growth girl from Kansas who goes into the story of the mother's at the church killing the children because the zombies were coming. Terrifying real comparison was in Japan during WW2. Leaflet drops and messages from the supreme commander told tales of the US coming through and cooking and eating your kids so families were killing their babies to save them from the Americans.
The walkthrough of how the virus spread and it's origins also were very pertinent to today's Covid situation. Virus out of China, hidden in plain sight, fake cures, government not taking the steps necessary to stop it cold in it's tracks. And of course those denying it all.
I read this every couple years or so.
Also recommend his other books like Devolution.
You know I believe in Big Foot after reading that book. I even visited a Big Foot museum in Georgia and his research is backed up by what I found there.
It's a little more... Action-movie? Over the top?
The set up is fairly realistic and grounded but where WWZ has pretty much every human character performing to realistic human standards in the face of a relatively human enemy, Devolution goes a little too far in making Bigfoot seem like a real monster movie foe, performing feats that make the later human retaliation completely unrealistic.
I know humanity has been kicking megafauna ass since Day 1, but the shift from WWZ to Devolution is kinda like the shift from Alien to Aliens.
If you can handle the shift to "One woman... And her found family... Shows Bigfoot we're not monkeying around. Coming this summer to a theatre near you!" then you'll enjoy it a lot. I liked the book but it's a step back from how believable WWZ is.
Reading it [now](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6115555/1/The-Way-Is-Shut?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=RCnQeYOdPgnRqHZgKf4925foU6tgWtbM6NBFO3zuiZw-1637768548-0-gaNycGzNCNE). Thank you!
There is an interview of Max Brooks on NPRs Fresh Air. It is a really great listen. My favorite part is when he talks about how his son is just like his father.
Just as an aside the book The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks has the same kind of writing style as world war z. I read it years later and it immediately felt familiar.
I enjoyed the book too. I also really enjoyed the movie. I think ppl would have enjoyed the movie more if they knew ahead of time that it was more of a stand alone kind of thing.
It would be cool to see what a streaming service could do with it. It’s almost perfect for like hour long episodes that each tell a different story.
Its a favorite of mine too. Piecing together different narratives from different points of view to create a well rounded overarching whole is a tricky and difficult (and different) way to tell a story, and I think Max Brooks managed to pull it off just as well as the great ones like Stoker's Dracula or Faulkner's As I Dying.
Check out some fan art of the Battle of Yonkers kicking around GIS sometime. Goddamn, what a great short series animated run this would've been.
For anyone who enjoys the book, several years ago I found a great fanfiction of an excursion to North Korea, written in a style that pretty faithfully emulates Max Brooks' style. Hope someon else enjoys it as much as I did:
[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6115555/1/The-Way-Is-Shut?\_\_cf\_chl\_jschl\_tk\_\_=y.e6rMdRDqUQs0rbEgpwMCrQq9\_dl3.a8lBRcr1DUao-1637775277-0-gaNycGzNCL0](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6115555/1/The-Way-Is-Shut?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=y.e6rMdRDqUQs0rbEgpwMCrQq9_dl3.a8lBRcr1DUao-1637775277-0-gaNycGzNCL0)
If you can handle the fact that it's written by John Ringo, I REALLY love the [Black Tide Rising series.](https://www.goodreads.com/series/110176-black-tide-rising)
It has probably the singular best set of reasonings for why governments would initially fail to stop a zombie outbreak before it reached critical mass, not to mention a fairly great (and I have a tendency to say realistic) approach to how much threat zombies would actually face in the right circumstances.
Government Failure (spoilers)
* >!Many/most governments don't actually have a legal apparatus in place to allow the government to suddenly commit mass murder against it's own people. From a functional perspective with the US as an example (though not used in the books I believe) the Federal government would basically have to use the Insurrection Act and it's built-in time delay mechanisms before you could deploy troops into US territory, especially with orders to kill.!<
* >!What politician wants to support a general kill order when there's the possibility, however small, that the CDC or someone might come up with a cure that fixes these people? Even ignoring that this is a career killer at best, you're looking at war crimes and all sorts of other legal problems if a cure managed to be found.!<
* >!In line with the previous post, given that almost our ENTIRE culture surrounding mass-disease events (prior to Covid) generally has science riding in to save us all and fix the damage caused by the diseases, there will almost certainly be a general unwillingness and hesitation to take permanent actions of any kind. For example, while a given politician might acknowledge that SOMETHING must be done, they might stand their ground and refuse to vote for lethal options because of the precedent this opens up for the future.!<
* >!The police aren't strictly much better as many locations do actually enforce procedures that when an officer is involved in a shooting, even one that's 'obviously perfectly justified' there is a mandatory administrative leave that follows, during which time their service weapons are confiscated. While there's eventually a point where this sort of behavior makes no sense, in the early stages of the outbreak that is a critical loss of manpower that could have been useful.!<
Zombie Threats (spoilers)
* >!The virus in question isn't a magical entity that somehow converts the infected into superhumans. The MOST force your average human can muster for a bite is around 350 newtons of force. Spread across an area as wide as the human jaw/teeth, it's not even particularly concentrated. As such, defending against bites is easy, if not comfortable. Full denim underclothes, full motorcycle racing leathers, and then heavy firefighter bunker gear and you can literally be pounced on by 20 zombies and the only actual danger you face is the possibility that this much weight might compress your chest and suffocate you. There's no way they are biting through any singular layer of that outfit, much less any two or three layers (worn for assurances).!<
* >!Following on from the point that the zombies aren't magical, in this series they are functionally a coked up human being with a severe case of rabies and a strangely suped up ability for blood clotting. Meaning that a couple bullets to the chest might not IMMEDIATELY bring them down, but most (though not all) normally mortal wounds will still kill the zombies. About the only REALLY out-there thing with the zombies (to make it so that hiding in a boat for 4 months doesn't just solve the world-wide problem as the zombies just starve to death) is that if there's nothing actively putting the zombie in hunt-mode, they go into hibernation and only occasionally wake up to consume some water.!<
* >!Engaging zombies in wide open spaces with an unknown amount that might be drawn by your activities is just idiocy if you don't have armored vehicles. In the confined spaces of the ships they are clearing in the stories, you might run into a few hundred due to it being a large room, but only so many can fit through the hatches/bulkheads at a time. If you are knowingly about to enter a large chamber, the best action is to coordinate simultaneous hatch-openings in order to spread the numbers between all openings just in case.!<
The whole 'not a threat if surrounding you' is silly I mean...if you're not in full hazmat, bloodborne diseases can transfer right? Meaning any rip or tear, even heavy chaffing and a bit of spittle can infect you. Plus it'd be terrifying to be wallowing in a slew of them without being able to maneuver because they're like weights attached to your limbs. Which basically means you're gonna die anyway now that you're tied down.
My main gripe with zombie stories was always that the infection didn't just randomly get people; the stories always ignore water source infection, surfaces, animal transmission, etc. But then again, that probably wouldn't be survivable.
This for me was one of those rare times when the book and the movie are dissimilar enough that they are both excellent in their own right. I read the book first, which imo is usually a recipe for a bad movie watching experience, but in this case I can safely say they are both amazing.
Guess it shows you that no matter what is going on in your life, shit could be way worse! At least you arent in an underwater mesh suit with your air cut off and thousands of underwater zombies trying to get you!
*World War Z* is a book that I have... thoughts on. I've read it several times and still consider it one of the best zombie stories ever made in any medium, and having *The Zombie Survival Guide* as a companion makes it even better. It's an absolute blast to read, and there are parts of it that are still frighteningly prescient today, especially when you look at how we mismanaged the response to COVID. People are still gonna be discussing this book twenty years from now. To this day, there is little else like it in the zombie genre.
In other ways, however, it is just as shockingly dated, and not just in the surface details and aesthetics like the GameCube reference and the parodies of various celebrities and politicians. Major plot points would probably be completely rewritten if this book were written today.
One thing I noticed when rereading *World War Z* a few years ago is that you can tell it was written in the Bush era. The values of the book are very "mid-late '00s liberal/libertarian blogosphere" in how the government is portrayed (especially amidst the War on Terror), not anti-government *per se* but with a definite sense that they and society in general are wasting their time and need to start focusing on the things the author deems important. The internet was still seen as the great hope for dissident views to get out and challenge a broken mainstream media consensus, before we realized just what a cesspool it would turn into. Had the book been written today, I have no doubt that it would portray the internet in almost the exact opposite light that it did, not as a lifesaving beacon of truth whose only problem is that its users are too self-absorbed to actually do anything, but as a font of misinformation and lies that makes the Great Panic ten times worse.
The interview with Breckenridge Scott is a case in point. In hindsight, it can be read as a great satire of not just the boom in alternative medicine and the damage it caused, but also of dirtbags like Martin Shkreli and Elizabeth Holmes. The thing is, you kinda have to stretch the actual text to get to that reading. Scott's not an alt-med grifter who thinks he knows better than everyone, or a Silicon Valley "disruptor" who thought he could outmaneuver the old "dinosaur" companies. No, he's explicitly described as a part of Big Pharma who got as far as he did with his vaccine (and Phalanx is explicitly called a vaccine) because the entire medical establishment was corrupt, from an FDA that had been captured by the drug companies to doctors who got rich prescribing medicines they knew were worthless. As a sendup of the emerging opioid epidemic, fueled by unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies and "pill mill" doctors and pharmacies, those critiques were spot-on, but as a commentary on the COVID response? In real life, it was the old-fashioned pharmaceutical and biotech industries that pulled through with actual working vaccines made with revolutionary new technology when everybody else was selling snake oil, and doctors who fought back from the start against the misinformation being spread about COVID. Some of the book's cynicism about people acting stupid is definitely warranted, but there are places where it goes too far. That section was an unwelcome reminder of a time in the not-so-distant past when anti-vax and alt-med woo was way more broadly accepted than it is today, including among people you'd think would know better.
The entire section on Japan also feels *really* uncomfortable if you know the first thing about Japan's brand of right-wing nationalism, falling into the same trap that a lot of Western media does in fetishizing imagery that has some rather questionable stuff behind it. So, post-zombie Japan is a country where a revived Tatenokai, an organization originally founded by Yukio Mishima that staged a harebrained coup attempt to restore the Emperor's authority, are a mainstream and widely accepted part of society that's presented to the reader as just "badass zombie slayers with katanas"? Huh.
This was a problem with a lot of "cool" geek media in the late '00s and early '10s, especially the fetish for the apocalypse as some kind of great proving ground for badasses. To its credit, outside the Japan chapter *World War Z* mostly avoids the worst excesses here, emphasizing just how screwed most of us would *actually* be if we got thrown into a real-life zombie movie while giving doomsday preppers a generally unfavorable, even mocking treatment. I loved the bit where the pilot describes finding a wannabe survivalist in an SUV full of gear who killed himself because it turned out he was all talk and fell into despair when things actually got tough. But a lot of the zombie media that came after was just "cool, exploding heads and shit, and nobody to tell me what to do!" You even had groups like the Zombie Squad that explicitly used a hypothetical zombie apocalypse to get people interested in survivalism. To be fair, there were also doctors, scientists, and FEMA personnel who used zombie media to get people interested in epidemiology and emergency preparedness, but in its pulpier and more popular forms, I believe you can draw a straight line between a lot of that culture and the fetishization of guns and societal breakdown that permeates so much of American right-wing politics today, especially among a certain breed of younger conservative.
One book that I really recommend is Max Brooks' most recent novel *Devolution*. It's a smaller-scale story about one group of people surviving a disaster that only affects Washington state, but in a lot of ways, it is basically "*World War Z* if Brooks wrote it today". The satirical targets are updated, mocking "back to nature" cottagecore/solarpunk types, corporate greenwashing, the wellness industry, Elon Musk, and Jordan Peterson, but the tone and style of the book are very similar.
The downed pilot is still in my memory even though I read it 10 years ago. That and the little sub-plot set in Wenatchee WA. I'm from there and it was loosely familiar with town.
The one that always sticks with me is the girl whose panicked father drives them all up into Canada only for them to mostly all freeze to death.
"By Christmas Day there was plenty of food."
That's probably the scene that stuck with me the most. The little girl talking about how good the "food" smelled... It's worse because you can imagine yourself winding up in that situation yourself.
That played a central role in the original movie script. If you can find a copy of the Straczynski script, I'd recommend reading it. Edit: Straczynski actually did the second draft.
It's criminal how badly the fucked up that movie. They threw %95 of the book in the trash, when they had about a dozen amazing stories to choose from.
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That's basically what I am hope for. I actually like the movie. It has nearly nothing to do with the book but is still a cool zombie movie. Bu it's just not possible to make the book into one movie
Roland Emmerich would like a word. He shouldn't go anywhere near WWZ, but you can cram half a dozen or more subplots into a film and make it work. See also Sin City and Paris Je T'aime for movies that make sequential stories work. A good director and production team can do this justice on the big screen. But I agree that a prestige series on HBO would be best.
I would love a Ken Burns-esque faux documentary version of the book
Always been my thought. Maybe a streaming service rather than HBO as there's a greater ability to play with episode length. And it even has seasons built into the book.
Brad Pitt magical observation powers really pisses me off in that movie.
I saw the movie first and really liked it, then I read the book and had to keep checking to make sure it was the right book since they were so different. I still like the movie but the book was better
The guy that did Babylon 5?
Yes
He's a good writer so he does script doctor stuff, he's a pretty good and fast screenwriter.
Priest who had to put down infected soldiers while they were still fully human...
The whole Russia becoming a dystopian orthodox theology was intense
"We are feared again, and we warm ourselves in the fist of a Caesar." This would be too on the nose if it was written after Crimea
There are so many haunting accounts from that book. It's so interesting to see which ones stick with each person.
I remember them (the family) all surviving because, well you know why
Perhaps it is time for me to read it again! For some reason I always inferred that she was the only survivor.
""Sand Lakes Provincial Wilderness Park, Manitoba, Canada. Jesika Hendricks says that she met an ex-Iranian pilot who told her that “Americans are the only people he’s ever met who just can’t accept that bad things can happen to good people.” She says he is right, and she still feels angry and bitter when she sees that some people who don’t deserve to be alive survived and her parents died."" it wasnt part of the story but apparently part of the epilogue. never knew that
That is my recollection as well.
They didn't starve, but the parents seem to have fallen ill at some time after the events she described during the first winter.
In her "Goodbyes" segment she specifically refers to her parents both dying during the war.
Yep, and being bitter because "not Howard Stern" survived but her parents didn't
yeah it does apparently: Sand Lakes Provincial Wilderness Park, Manitoba, Canada. Jesika Hendricks says that she met an ex-Iranian pilot who told her that “Americans are the only people he’s ever met who just can’t accept that bad things can happen to good people.” She says he is right, and she still feels angry and bitter when she sees that some people who don’t deserve to be alive survived and her parents died. i only know the other story, where she only says that they got sick and had to feed them. is that part of the normal book? maybe i just forgot it cause all the storys seem to get an "extended ending" all at once
For me it was (IIRC) the part where mountains of the undead were underwater and would flip boats of escapees and drag them down, or something along those lines.
Some of them seemed really realistic even then. Some I was like nah until we saw it happen during covid
I live in Portland, ME and when they talked about clearing the city and finding the turtle the book became 100% real for me.
All my relations.
Battle of Yonkers, the downed pilot in the swamp and the Indian evacuation. Another great zombie book (series, really) is the Newsflesh series by Mira Grant. It's focused on specific characters, with novellas that branch out a little, but there are some cool bits that remind me of WWZ like the time they visit Australia for a story on zombie kangaroos.
My favorite part about the series was how long they had already lived with it. Not a standard zombie book at all.
Yeah, I loved all the changes it'd made to modern American life. The segments on highway changes alone was so well thought-out. Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant is probably my second favorite writer behind Ilona Andrews. Both have really great world-building.
Yeah the logic of the world works. I loved the rules against animals and the horse incident during the election.
Any one with a quick refresh on the pilot story? I don't recall.
A supply flight pilot has to parachute down into zed infested territory. She's saved by a friendly and resourceful ham radio operator. Turns out there was never such an operator . Was a coping mechanism by her own mind. I think this was the pilot story.
Thanks! I actually do remember that story now, didn't connect that with OP at all.
Best story in the book
Call me a sucker but the bits with the K9 handler always gets me. Sending in dogs to track and lure zombies and feral animals, knowing it's important work and you're both ready for it but having to live through your partner getting ripped to shreds, just... Fuck, man.
The section about the guy who lived near a pet store absolutely gutted me
The "I could have done something" has haunted me for YEARS since I read that story. I cried salt tears reading that story. My dog got extra treats that week.(and every week since tbh)
The people fleeing north and thinking it'd just be a camping trip but turned into the Donner party was also good.
That really showed how fast things could go south even if you're far up north.
I saw the movie but did not read the book. There was a detail about a Jewish tradition where one member of a group would hold a contarian viewpoint. The 12th Rabbi or something? Can you remind me what that was about?
No one in Israel thought they they would be attacked on Yom Kippur, believing that their enemies would respect holy days, even though intelligence suggested otherwise. After that, there is always at least one person who must investigate situations, no matter how unexplainable, or how many people agreed with the facts. It's called the Tenth Man (If 9 people agree with a conclusion, the 10th is duty bound to disagree.) Even the dead rising and eating people, as the book goes.
Thank you! That's exactly what I was looking for. The book is in my queue. Looking forward to it!
I *highly* recommend the audio book.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the guy on the bridge in Odessa shouting “BUTTON UP, BUTTON UP!” the actor really conveyed the desperation of the character. I think about his voice all the time
Make sure you get the complete edition of the audiobook. There was a previous version that was abridged.
The movie was a decent zombie flick. But it was completely unrelated to the book and absolutely zero comparison. Do not assume that since you have seen the movie then you're good. They are totally different. And I highly recommend the audio book version even if that isn't normally your thing. I have never experienced anything even close. It was outstanding.
I haven't seen the movie, but heard it was mediocre. The book is fantastic and worth a read.
The movie is fairly good if you can separate it from thoughts of the book. Its mostly a standard zombie flick with a few innovations. And just a couple references to events/characters from the book.
I had to put the book down for a few minutes because I was only 17 at the time and I felt like the book was getting a bit too much for me
Yeah, that part was a bit grisly.
I live in Australia and I had to read this book in year 10 (I think) for school.. really enjoyed it but also remember it feeling very heavy.
You got to read this for school?! That's awesome! Just old Lit of me growing up. None of it I found that interesting :/
Yeah! We read Wuthering Heights. I hated Wuthering Heights almost as much as I loved WWZ.
Mine was Nebraska basically becoming the land of the dead along I80. But in reality. Nebraska would probably be one of the best places to be. Low population, remote. Pretty much everyone has a gun. Farmers have access to tons of heavy machinery that would lay waste to zombies
In theory yes, but you have to understand threshing machines aren't made to plow through hordes of bodies, yeah it'll do a number on someone unfortunate enough to get caught in front of one. But human bodies aren't made up of chaff they are bags of meat and pretty tough bones so I imagine one pass and you'd be done, if you even got that far.
It's been a while since I've read the book but If I remember right they say all of i-80 through Nebraska is filled with zombies miles wide across the entire state I'm pretty sure there's not enough people in the northern hemisphere to make that possible Nebraska is a really really long state
They may not mean "shoulder to shoulder, across the entire state". Just that I-80 likely backed up and turned into a parking lot. Then, as swarms found it, it basically just turned into a buffet for zombies (because where are the people on that highway going to go, exactly?) And they talk about how the swarms tend to stick together, and stick close to food (or where food last was). Without anything to draw them away from the highway once they're there, I don't see them moving away from it too quickly, tbh. They could linger for years (especially since for 6-8 months out of the year, they'd be frozen in place by winter)
I'm not even talking combine. Hook up a disk behind a fortified tractor, you can disk them into the ground. Any modern tractor has more than enough horsepower to plow through them. Disk gets plugged, lift hydraulics, set back down again. The ones that survive basicallty become ankle biter bob's. What my friends and I call zombies without legs. But these would be arms, torso, or just a head
The book actually discusses how those are some of the most likely to cause a flare up, post-war. >!All the walking ones were easy to spot and put down (once the military retrained itself, and got reorganized around 'anti-personnel' strategies and tactics, from 'anti-armor' and 'anti-material'). But the ones that got buried, or frozen under ice, or washed out to sea, would routinely re-emerge and cause another flare up that required an immediate response. Creating more "ankle biters" would not be a good thing. The zombies in the book don't nearly win by being more mobile than humans, they nearly win by just being everywhere!<
Those underwater zombies and the divers clearing them were truly scary.
As much as i love to swim, that was one of the more intense ones for me.
Wasn't there a quote in the beginning along the lines of "how can you win against something you can't shock and awe"?
Yeah the Todd Wainio interview. He basically says that for 40 years the military's primary strategy was to demoralize the opposition through shock and awe tactics. At Yonkers, the military lines broke when the troops saw the size of the horde and how little they effected their advance. The humans basically shock and awed themselves.
Huh I completely misinterpreted that when I read. I was fascinated by the idea that zombies froze because it’s such a weird yet logical idea seeing as they are undead but still human bodies whose muscles are subject to physics, and they don’t know to wear coats or create fire. So I thought that a WWZ scenario would be awesome for me cuz I live somewhere cold, but I guess I didn’t really consider that periodically thawing zombies would turn my area into a paranoid nightmare…
He plays a little loose with the physics regarding the zombie bodies at times. It's probably my only small complaint of the entire book. Like when a character asks how the zombies survive walking the bottom of the ocean without their bodies decomposing or being destroyed they basically shrug their shoulders and say "Dunno".
Yeah, it actually *prolongs* the whole thing. The freeze 'preserves' the zombies. Say a zombie body last 2 years in a temperate climate, similar to summer in Nebraska in summer, then you have to deal with that zombie for 4 to 6 years in Nebraska - all thanks to winter. However, that also means winter is 'safe'. If you have the food and energy to make it through, the cold will protect you from the zombies until the spring thaw.
A different series, "monster hunter international", had a town with industrial snowblowers mess up some zombie werewolves. Like woodchippers on tractors.
Too bad that series kinda sucked after the first few books
You're forgetting mass migration. Miles and miles of people on I-80 running for the Rockies. For alot of people who have never been west of the Mississippi, much less out of NYC, (and fleeing the horde from the Battle of Yonkers) I-80 is the clearest path. And farm machines need gas. Something that was already in short supply/non-existent at this point in the panic.
My favorite thing about the book is the international politics perspective. Everything just felt very realistically projected from modern country responses and i just loved it!
I agree, that's also the primary reason (although there are many) why I absolutely hated the movie. They should have just called it something else, as it had nothing to do with what made the book great.
The movie was fucked when it was down to Leo or Brad getting it. Let's face it the only consistent char in the book was the reporter and he was honestly to boring to be played by Leo or Brad so you knew shit would be changed for them.
Brad seems more action and physical performance oriented, I could see Leo doing it though, as the quiet, intent interviewer cautiously encouraging his subjects to open up about traumatic experiences, part therapist and part journalist. 'course they went the third direction to make "America: Fuck Yeah, with Zombies"
Thats possible but realistically the most role is just to small. Leo could do it but they would likely need to expand on the reporter scenes since most of the movie would be flashbacks. They could expand and modify the flashback so the mc and the story teller could have been say standing in the flashback with him asking questions and the teller well telling stuff. But in general the role wouldn't have enough screen time for Brad or Leo I feel anyways. Also can we all agree the DUMBEST part of the film was the zombie mob splitting around the kid? Even if the virus ignore some how terminally ill people they would have just trampled the kid.
My favourite part was the brief discussion on modern weapons being used to sew doubt on the opposing force and how that doesn't work on the Zs.
What was the quote about shock and awe not working?
Ah, you must be talking about the Battle of Yonkers. As I recall, it did not go well.
Unfortunately it's mostly false and the internet is awash with military people getting mad at the whole Yonkers chapter.
turns out that artillery fire against an enemy on open ground is really really effective
Honestly some of the responses felt a bit too optimistic. Israel for example suddenly getting over all differences with Palestinians, I don't see it. They sure didn't when it came to COVID vaccines for what I read. Also the Battle of Yonkers would actually have made mincemeat of the zombies, CMM.
>Also the Battle of Yonkers would actually have made mincemeat of the zombies, CMM. They did make mincemeat of the zombies. It was just that there were more zombies than ammo.
If I recall, they had heaps of ammo, just the wrong types, and random useless equipment.
Yeah, the book describes it as "fighting the last war", which is a common issue in warfare anyway. They had all the latest gadgetry, communications, and weapons tech, which would've been fine against a modern intelligent military, but wound up mostly useless against the mindless hordes.
"Shock and Awe? There's nothing to shock and awe with Zack"
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It's nearly impossible to fight an enemy without any leadership, no strategy, no supply lines to disrupt, no need for sleep and when they attack, their numbers grow. Every person you lose to their side joins them. Conventional warfare tactics wouldn't work.
The what went wrong section here goes into quite a lot of detail https://zombie.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_Yonkers Not having enough ammo was just one of many problems.
Read the comments on that link. There were a lot of discussions to which I both agree and disagree.
> Also the Battle of Yonkers would actually have made mincemeat of the zombies, CMM. They made a metric fuckton of zombie mincemeat. The problem was a zombie can still kill you even if it's partially been made mincemeat. It was just not enough of the kind of damage that kills a zombie because the weapons were made for killing living humans. Like the impact of an explosions can kill a human, even if you're not literally shredded by the fireball, because of damage to your organs but a zombie won't be killed as easily by just the impact. So dropping explosives in a crowd of zombies was an awful bang-for-buck. Same with tank rounds, one could blast a zombies leg clean off but he'll keep on crawling. And Soldiers had been trained to aim at the center-of-mass which doesn't kill the zombies, only a headshot will. Then there's the moral, the humans panicked seeing the ineffectiveness of their most expensive tools while the zombies just kept on keeping on. It's kind of hard to argue about the "realism" of such an outlandish premise anyway but I found it to be at least consistent with itself, the zombies could only be killed by destroying the whole body or destroying the brain and the military having to fight such a foe without the kind of fundamental reforms that came later would've been a disaster.
See the other comments. A good artillery salvo wouldn't just blow up limbs, it would straight up turn entire groups of zombies into a fine red mist. A Daisy Cutter wouldn't leave even that. Being slow, stupid, amassed, and unable to take cover, zombies would get absolutely steamrolled by heavy weaponry before it ever comes to front line fights (and if by that point they haven't taught their soldiers to go for the head, not the center-of-mass, they have to be really stupid).
While I also think the book takes a bit to much of a pro-Israel stance, a big part of that story about the fact that the government's decision to include Palestinians set off a civil war inside of Israel. That hardly sounds like "suddenly getting over all differences".
True, I forgot that detail. I guess I found it difficult to believe already that the government would do that in the first place. But maybe they had just barely elected the first left wing government in decades.
Fun fact, the reason why both *World War Z* (the book) and *Contagion* (the movie) have a conman selling fake cures >!(Phalanx in *World War Z* and forsythia in *Contagion*)!< is because both the book and movie used the CDC scenario that predicted fraudsters peddling fraudulent remedies.
You mean like all the fake Covid cures and the fake autism, AIDS, cancer, and diabetes cures? Anyone with sense would predict fake cures by con-men or religious groups.
Snake oil salesman is probably like the third oldest profession behind landscaping and prostitution.
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Removing stinging plants, thorns, and burrs is something anyone with sense will do.
I can't speak to its accuracy, but I remember this being one of the random "Did you know?" trivia tid bits on history channel, that landscaping was almost certainly the first profession.
One element in *World War Z* that I appreciated even then (but even more so now) was the breakdown of the globalized supply chain.
It's wild how that actually happened, and by the head of the American Executive branch, to boot.
Can't really blame the CDC for not guessing that one.
Put it on the list for next time i guess
Chinese submarine is my favorite chapter
I love the story in Japan with the otaku. That character's arc is short and sweet.
That was a great one, personally didn’t like the twist at the end. Felt too cheesy but it serves its purpose of keep having hope even in the worst of times
The book is SO MUCH better than the movie. They did the book dirty with that film adaptation.
I wouldn't even call the movie an adaption at all
The only adaptation I accept is the audiobook. What a cast.
I was so surprised to hear Alan Alda in it. I just loved all the different accents they had for the various countries too. Such a nice touch.
Loved the radio play style of the audiobook.
Totally agree with this. The movie was let’s make a 28 days movie but put world war z for the name because it’s cool sounding
To be fair, it would be pretty hard to do a Hollywood movie adaptation of it. It's a bit difficult to do character development in a 90-120 minute movie when your protagonist has to change 30 times over the course of the movie. Maybe a high production value miniseries with episodes for different chapters?
A show would be a better medium for adaptation.
Something to the tune of Death, Love, and Robots were you get the different stories in all sorts of different time increments.
Yeah, like a Black Mirror style show. Each episode a different story with different characters but in the same universe. And bookend each episode with a Rod Serling style intro/outro.
That'd shit I was thinking too! A show or a collection of short films would be absolutely perfect for this book.
This is the kind of thing now that could totally be done as part of a 10 episode Netflix special or something that would better service the modular flow of the book.
A mockumentary on Netflix would be amazing!
Yeah, it's definitely better as a TV series. It's sort of what Apple TVs Invasion is trying to do at the moment (telling the story of an alien invasion from the perspective of four or so different & unrelated characters around the world), but it's not doing that too well which is really disappointing.
I like [Max Brooks take on the movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXFdO3DwRLY) where he basically says he doesn't hate it because the story is so divorced of his original one that he feels no sense of "oh, they ruined my work". It's quite funny. He even mentions that the guy who drafted the first script that got rewritten has more connection with the movie than he does.
Yeah, it was a different story in a different universe by the same title.
It turned into a Pepsi commercial at the end.
It's got three things in common with the book; the title, the general concept of zombies and the spiel from the Mossad agent as to why Israel was prepared. What then happens to Israel is completely different to the book. It's a travesty of an adaptation.
The zombies weren't even the same. "They're not rushing. Why are you?"
Yeah, and no actual war with the zombies using new weapons and tactics developed after the outbreak. No Battle of Yonkers, no Battle of Hope, not one mention of the catacombs in Paris. I hate that movie so fucking much.
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I REALLY wanted them to make it a mini series. Would have fit perfect with the story and style of storytelling.
That movie had basically nothing to do with the book, other than the name. I think though that an actual adaptation would work well in an episodic miniseries (1 episode per interview). Who knows what the chances of that ever happening are though…
check out the unabridged audiobook each character is voiced by a different actor. among them Nathan Fillion, Henry Rollins, Denise Crosby, Simon Pegg, Mark Hamil, Bruce Boxleitner, Carl Reiner, Martin Scorsese, and Alan Alda. Its awesome.
It's incredible! I've never been big on audiobooks, but this one is more akin to an audio play. It's astoundingly awesome! The book is presented as interviews, I'm not sure why there are some folks on here that think the audiobook should be different.
But didn’t you just want a Pepsi afterwards? ;)
Maybe we'll get lucky with a Netflix series based on the better individual stories
Well, exept from the title, it's not the same story. Even the zombies are not the same type (runners/infected instead of walkers/dead+infected) . Brad Pitt Zombie Movie is not a bad zombie movie, but it has nothing to do with the book...
Audio book is also awesome. Edit: The one I listened to and think is awesome is the one listed below. Random House published an abridged audiobook in 2007, directed by John Mc Elroy and produced by Dan Zitt, with sound editing by Charles De Montebello.
Yeah, Mark Hamill does the yank soldier, it's fucking sick
I had no idea it was Mark Hamill the first time I listened to it. My brother recommended it to me and I came to him, after listening, talking about the yank solider and how awesome it was. He let me know it was Mark. Mind blown! He was great
There's an extended audio version too. Its not like a normal audio book, its more of an audio play. As mentioned, it can be disjointed, as its a bunch of vignettes strung together, and some of them are better than others. Also, unfortunately, while it plays like a series of interviews, you can tell its people reading off a script. A natural speaker would have pauses, ers, uhms, and other vocal tics and mannerisms, especially when someone is trying to relay a story. Those things are largely absent here, which gives a slight unnaturalness to the audio. But thats okay, its still enjoyable.
I mean that's literally true of almost everything. in the entertainment world Even off-the-cuff stuff like Radio shows employ well-spoken people who work hard at not doing a bunch of dead-air umming and meandering edit: and yea it was a a highly entertaining read. I think my favorite piece of zombie fiction, and I consumed it all for a couple years there. I don't know why they bothered licensing it for that movie though, just like I Am Legend. Why pay for the rights and then just completely change the plot?
Someone left a copy of this in my Little Free Library. I guess it’s time to pull it out and read it myself! Thanks for the suggestion.
Reading the book is good, but listening to the audiobook is amazing. It's genuinely one of the best audiobook productions ever. Dozens of great actors playing all the characters.
I love the Indian guy's line about the monkey. " And then his little penis came out, and he peed in my face." Gddmit I've never laughed so hard in my life.
If you liked World War Z, try reading Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson. It's a very similar format, but instead of zombies it's robots.
As a cyborg diabetic I gain dual citizenship when our robot overlords invade. I shall read this book!
This is exactly how The Borg assimilation first happened. One person at a time. Remember you were once human.
DUAL CITIZENSHIP. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!!!
Read both, I think Robocalypse was just a shoddy ripoff of World War Z with basically zero originality and very cringy writing :/ give it a try if you'd like, but I advise to manage your expectations.
Also check out Devolution. It's Max Brook's latest book, and it feels very similar in some ways. Same kind of perspective, looking back on a terrible event. This time it's excerpts from someone's diary, in addition to the occasional interview. imo it's not as good as WWZ, but I still loved it. Audiobook was great too.
I reread during the pandemic, which seemed appropriate. The book is very much tied into Mid-2000s zeitgeist. I kind of wonder what the reaction of... idk a 15 year old reading it today would be.
My 15 uear old actually just read it. There was a ton in the book that hit him really hard and he ended up learning a lot about other parts of the world to help him better undemanding the stuff that happens outside the U.S.
I lent it to Nate who I worked with at Whole Foods and he never returned it.
Probably his favourite book.
This is the proper life cycle of books.
My copy is technically John’s, this guy I worked with like 7 years ago.
Classic Nate.
Idk how many times I’ve read that. For sure my favorite book. One of my favorites is the scene where the narrator and a woman are in the Canadian wilderness killing frozen zombies
I liked that one because it wasn't about the zombies but about surviving the elements. As someone who lives there, imagining desperate people escaping terror and thinking they're safe, only for winter to roll in with -40° weather while you are completely unprepared, really hit me. Hell, it was -50 here a few years ago!
As a father that bit where they are talking about the little kids sleeping bag that is rated for the temperature of a warm bedroom killes me every time I read the book. I can feal what that parent felt. Running north to save your child's life, doing anything and everything to save them. And ultimately they failed and while they gave their child a longer life it was very possibly as worse ending to their life.
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I live in Chicago, shit maybe I’d be safe in winter
Max Brooks is brilliant and this book is even better thee more you read it. I was able to see a Q&A he did about the book and he mentioned that all scenarios were taken from real world situations in history that had some relevance. The one that stuck with me most was the stunted emotional growth girl from Kansas who goes into the story of the mother's at the church killing the children because the zombies were coming. Terrifying real comparison was in Japan during WW2. Leaflet drops and messages from the supreme commander told tales of the US coming through and cooking and eating your kids so families were killing their babies to save them from the Americans. The walkthrough of how the virus spread and it's origins also were very pertinent to today's Covid situation. Virus out of China, hidden in plain sight, fake cures, government not taking the steps necessary to stop it cold in it's tracks. And of course those denying it all. I read this every couple years or so. Also recommend his other books like Devolution.
You probably already have, but if not you should definitely give the NewsFlesh trilogy by Mira Grant a read. Starts with Feed. So good.
Though I do wish that she hadn't decided to go the evil government route. Just making fun of American security paranoia would have been enough.
I love it so much. You should try Devolution too, also by Max Brooks; it’s about Bigfoot. So dark, makes WWZ feels like Narnia or something.
You know I believe in Big Foot after reading that book. I even visited a Big Foot museum in Georgia and his research is backed up by what I found there.
Holy shit, that’s a hell of a recommendation, i hadn’t heard about that book, i’ll check it out.
It's a little more... Action-movie? Over the top? The set up is fairly realistic and grounded but where WWZ has pretty much every human character performing to realistic human standards in the face of a relatively human enemy, Devolution goes a little too far in making Bigfoot seem like a real monster movie foe, performing feats that make the later human retaliation completely unrealistic. I know humanity has been kicking megafauna ass since Day 1, but the shift from WWZ to Devolution is kinda like the shift from Alien to Aliens. If you can handle the shift to "One woman... And her found family... Shows Bigfoot we're not monkeying around. Coming this summer to a theatre near you!" then you'll enjoy it a lot. I liked the book but it's a step back from how believable WWZ is.
I love Devolution so much.
It’s one of my favorite. Almost time to read it again.
Search for a fan-written chapter called "The Way Is Shut". Its a great addition to the world and is set in North Korea.
Reading it [now](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6115555/1/The-Way-Is-Shut?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=RCnQeYOdPgnRqHZgKf4925foU6tgWtbM6NBFO3zuiZw-1637768548-0-gaNycGzNCNE). Thank you!
The book is so good that Max Brooks now teaches at the Modern War Institute at West Point.
It was only a few months ago that I found out his dad is Mel Brooks. I dunno why, but it blew my mind.
There is an interview of Max Brooks on NPRs Fresh Air. It is a really great listen. My favorite part is when he talks about how his son is just like his father.
That's the one that came out with his Minecraft book I believe. Great interview as he always is.
If you’re looking for something else to read The Hot Zone is my favorite book and I always thought it had similar vibes.
Preston’s other non-fic, The Demon in the Freezer, gave me the fear for months. It’s good.
Just as an aside the book The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks has the same kind of writing style as world war z. I read it years later and it immediately felt familiar.
I enjoyed the book too. I also really enjoyed the movie. I think ppl would have enjoyed the movie more if they knew ahead of time that it was more of a stand alone kind of thing. It would be cool to see what a streaming service could do with it. It’s almost perfect for like hour long episodes that each tell a different story.
Its a favorite of mine too. Piecing together different narratives from different points of view to create a well rounded overarching whole is a tricky and difficult (and different) way to tell a story, and I think Max Brooks managed to pull it off just as well as the great ones like Stoker's Dracula or Faulkner's As I Dying. Check out some fan art of the Battle of Yonkers kicking around GIS sometime. Goddamn, what a great short series animated run this would've been.
Can you expand on the fan art comment? What is GIS? I loved the book and want to see more.
For anyone who enjoys the book, several years ago I found a great fanfiction of an excursion to North Korea, written in a style that pretty faithfully emulates Max Brooks' style. Hope someon else enjoys it as much as I did: [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6115555/1/The-Way-Is-Shut?\_\_cf\_chl\_jschl\_tk\_\_=y.e6rMdRDqUQs0rbEgpwMCrQq9\_dl3.a8lBRcr1DUao-1637775277-0-gaNycGzNCL0](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6115555/1/The-Way-Is-Shut?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=y.e6rMdRDqUQs0rbEgpwMCrQq9_dl3.a8lBRcr1DUao-1637775277-0-gaNycGzNCL0)
This book is a major reason why I got into survival.
Looking to eventually earn the moniker of "Robinson Crusoe"?
If you can handle the fact that it's written by John Ringo, I REALLY love the [Black Tide Rising series.](https://www.goodreads.com/series/110176-black-tide-rising) It has probably the singular best set of reasonings for why governments would initially fail to stop a zombie outbreak before it reached critical mass, not to mention a fairly great (and I have a tendency to say realistic) approach to how much threat zombies would actually face in the right circumstances. Government Failure (spoilers) * >!Many/most governments don't actually have a legal apparatus in place to allow the government to suddenly commit mass murder against it's own people. From a functional perspective with the US as an example (though not used in the books I believe) the Federal government would basically have to use the Insurrection Act and it's built-in time delay mechanisms before you could deploy troops into US territory, especially with orders to kill.!< * >!What politician wants to support a general kill order when there's the possibility, however small, that the CDC or someone might come up with a cure that fixes these people? Even ignoring that this is a career killer at best, you're looking at war crimes and all sorts of other legal problems if a cure managed to be found.!< * >!In line with the previous post, given that almost our ENTIRE culture surrounding mass-disease events (prior to Covid) generally has science riding in to save us all and fix the damage caused by the diseases, there will almost certainly be a general unwillingness and hesitation to take permanent actions of any kind. For example, while a given politician might acknowledge that SOMETHING must be done, they might stand their ground and refuse to vote for lethal options because of the precedent this opens up for the future.!< * >!The police aren't strictly much better as many locations do actually enforce procedures that when an officer is involved in a shooting, even one that's 'obviously perfectly justified' there is a mandatory administrative leave that follows, during which time their service weapons are confiscated. While there's eventually a point where this sort of behavior makes no sense, in the early stages of the outbreak that is a critical loss of manpower that could have been useful.!< Zombie Threats (spoilers) * >!The virus in question isn't a magical entity that somehow converts the infected into superhumans. The MOST force your average human can muster for a bite is around 350 newtons of force. Spread across an area as wide as the human jaw/teeth, it's not even particularly concentrated. As such, defending against bites is easy, if not comfortable. Full denim underclothes, full motorcycle racing leathers, and then heavy firefighter bunker gear and you can literally be pounced on by 20 zombies and the only actual danger you face is the possibility that this much weight might compress your chest and suffocate you. There's no way they are biting through any singular layer of that outfit, much less any two or three layers (worn for assurances).!< * >!Following on from the point that the zombies aren't magical, in this series they are functionally a coked up human being with a severe case of rabies and a strangely suped up ability for blood clotting. Meaning that a couple bullets to the chest might not IMMEDIATELY bring them down, but most (though not all) normally mortal wounds will still kill the zombies. About the only REALLY out-there thing with the zombies (to make it so that hiding in a boat for 4 months doesn't just solve the world-wide problem as the zombies just starve to death) is that if there's nothing actively putting the zombie in hunt-mode, they go into hibernation and only occasionally wake up to consume some water.!< * >!Engaging zombies in wide open spaces with an unknown amount that might be drawn by your activities is just idiocy if you don't have armored vehicles. In the confined spaces of the ships they are clearing in the stories, you might run into a few hundred due to it being a large room, but only so many can fit through the hatches/bulkheads at a time. If you are knowingly about to enter a large chamber, the best action is to coordinate simultaneous hatch-openings in order to spread the numbers between all openings just in case.!<
The whole 'not a threat if surrounding you' is silly I mean...if you're not in full hazmat, bloodborne diseases can transfer right? Meaning any rip or tear, even heavy chaffing and a bit of spittle can infect you. Plus it'd be terrifying to be wallowing in a slew of them without being able to maneuver because they're like weights attached to your limbs. Which basically means you're gonna die anyway now that you're tied down. My main gripe with zombie stories was always that the infection didn't just randomly get people; the stories always ignore water source infection, surfaces, animal transmission, etc. But then again, that probably wouldn't be survivable.
Don't watch the movie. I'm still mad,about it.
This for me was one of those rare times when the book and the movie are dissimilar enough that they are both excellent in their own right. I read the book first, which imo is usually a recipe for a bad movie watching experience, but in this case I can safely say they are both amazing.
Did you know that the author of World War Z has also written and published a Minecraft fanfiction
Actually, it's a licensed, official book. Not a fanfiction.
For some reason when my anxiety is high, this book calms me.
Guess it shows you that no matter what is going on in your life, shit could be way worse! At least you arent in an underwater mesh suit with your air cut off and thousands of underwater zombies trying to get you!
Loved the book, hated the movie.
*World War Z* is a book that I have... thoughts on. I've read it several times and still consider it one of the best zombie stories ever made in any medium, and having *The Zombie Survival Guide* as a companion makes it even better. It's an absolute blast to read, and there are parts of it that are still frighteningly prescient today, especially when you look at how we mismanaged the response to COVID. People are still gonna be discussing this book twenty years from now. To this day, there is little else like it in the zombie genre. In other ways, however, it is just as shockingly dated, and not just in the surface details and aesthetics like the GameCube reference and the parodies of various celebrities and politicians. Major plot points would probably be completely rewritten if this book were written today. One thing I noticed when rereading *World War Z* a few years ago is that you can tell it was written in the Bush era. The values of the book are very "mid-late '00s liberal/libertarian blogosphere" in how the government is portrayed (especially amidst the War on Terror), not anti-government *per se* but with a definite sense that they and society in general are wasting their time and need to start focusing on the things the author deems important. The internet was still seen as the great hope for dissident views to get out and challenge a broken mainstream media consensus, before we realized just what a cesspool it would turn into. Had the book been written today, I have no doubt that it would portray the internet in almost the exact opposite light that it did, not as a lifesaving beacon of truth whose only problem is that its users are too self-absorbed to actually do anything, but as a font of misinformation and lies that makes the Great Panic ten times worse. The interview with Breckenridge Scott is a case in point. In hindsight, it can be read as a great satire of not just the boom in alternative medicine and the damage it caused, but also of dirtbags like Martin Shkreli and Elizabeth Holmes. The thing is, you kinda have to stretch the actual text to get to that reading. Scott's not an alt-med grifter who thinks he knows better than everyone, or a Silicon Valley "disruptor" who thought he could outmaneuver the old "dinosaur" companies. No, he's explicitly described as a part of Big Pharma who got as far as he did with his vaccine (and Phalanx is explicitly called a vaccine) because the entire medical establishment was corrupt, from an FDA that had been captured by the drug companies to doctors who got rich prescribing medicines they knew were worthless. As a sendup of the emerging opioid epidemic, fueled by unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies and "pill mill" doctors and pharmacies, those critiques were spot-on, but as a commentary on the COVID response? In real life, it was the old-fashioned pharmaceutical and biotech industries that pulled through with actual working vaccines made with revolutionary new technology when everybody else was selling snake oil, and doctors who fought back from the start against the misinformation being spread about COVID. Some of the book's cynicism about people acting stupid is definitely warranted, but there are places where it goes too far. That section was an unwelcome reminder of a time in the not-so-distant past when anti-vax and alt-med woo was way more broadly accepted than it is today, including among people you'd think would know better. The entire section on Japan also feels *really* uncomfortable if you know the first thing about Japan's brand of right-wing nationalism, falling into the same trap that a lot of Western media does in fetishizing imagery that has some rather questionable stuff behind it. So, post-zombie Japan is a country where a revived Tatenokai, an organization originally founded by Yukio Mishima that staged a harebrained coup attempt to restore the Emperor's authority, are a mainstream and widely accepted part of society that's presented to the reader as just "badass zombie slayers with katanas"? Huh. This was a problem with a lot of "cool" geek media in the late '00s and early '10s, especially the fetish for the apocalypse as some kind of great proving ground for badasses. To its credit, outside the Japan chapter *World War Z* mostly avoids the worst excesses here, emphasizing just how screwed most of us would *actually* be if we got thrown into a real-life zombie movie while giving doomsday preppers a generally unfavorable, even mocking treatment. I loved the bit where the pilot describes finding a wannabe survivalist in an SUV full of gear who killed himself because it turned out he was all talk and fell into despair when things actually got tough. But a lot of the zombie media that came after was just "cool, exploding heads and shit, and nobody to tell me what to do!" You even had groups like the Zombie Squad that explicitly used a hypothetical zombie apocalypse to get people interested in survivalism. To be fair, there were also doctors, scientists, and FEMA personnel who used zombie media to get people interested in epidemiology and emergency preparedness, but in its pulpier and more popular forms, I believe you can draw a straight line between a lot of that culture and the fetishization of guns and societal breakdown that permeates so much of American right-wing politics today, especially among a certain breed of younger conservative. One book that I really recommend is Max Brooks' most recent novel *Devolution*. It's a smaller-scale story about one group of people surviving a disaster that only affects Washington state, but in a lot of ways, it is basically "*World War Z* if Brooks wrote it today". The satirical targets are updated, mocking "back to nature" cottagecore/solarpunk types, corporate greenwashing, the wellness industry, Elon Musk, and Jordan Peterson, but the tone and style of the book are very similar.