World War Z

Read from Thursday, August 18th to Sunday, August 21st.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks.  This was a really original, creative zombie novel that I enjoyed immensely.  And I am excited to learn that it is being made into a legitimate movie starring Brad Pitt, coming out in 2012.  Although it is not the kind of literary fiction I tend to read, this book was exciting, and very thought-provoking, especially about the end of the world and what kind of survival tactics you, or your country would take.  It had an international focus, as well as an American one (so you could get that nationalistic pride going.  USA! USA!).

The story takes the form of an oral history; a series of interviews with survivors of the decade-long Zombie War, that the humans ultimately won.  The interviewer, Max, works for the UN, but they ignored most of his interviews for their official report, wanting only facts and figures.  But Max wanted to portray the emotional, human aspect of the war, so he put it into a book.  Each interview lasts a few pages, and they are arranged mostly chronologically, so the whole story of the war is told through each person's perspective.  They range from low-level soldiers, to spies, to housewives, to the leaders of countries.

The outbreak started in China, where a boy went swimming down to the bottom of a lake created by a new damn, and he was bitten.  He infected some of his fellow villagers.  This story was told by the first doctor on the scene.  China sent in government troops in order to contain the spread of the virus, and they manufactured a war with Taiwan in order to hide the outbreak from the rest of the world.  However, the virus does spread of course, through black market organ trafficking and infected human refugees smuggled out of the country.  This story was told through one of the smugglers, and one of the doctors performing a heart transplant in Brazil.

The rest of the world, while hearing reports of the virus, refuses to believe it is a threat, and the U.S. government downplays the situation.  A ruthless businessman made a vaccine that he sold to most of the American public, but it worked only against rabies, and not against the Zombie virus.  He tells his story from his ice-fortress in Antarctica.   Finally, after an outbreak in South Africa, the world came to grips with its problem, and that began a period called "The Great Panic."  Millions of people ran, most of them north to colder climates, because Zombies froze in winter.  The U.S. government sent the army to Yonkers, NY in order to crush the zombie horde, but the army was routed instead.  They used old, Cold War tactics, used up all their ammo quickly, and did not anticipate the unending relentlessness of their enemy.

Around the world, other countries struggled as well.  Iceland became completely infected, Israel was the only country to completely self-quarantine, and Iran and Pakistan destroyed each with nukes over a refugee dispute.  India safely retreated behind the Himalayas, while Russia ruthlessly gassed their own population in order to identify the zombies among them.  This was the darkest period for humanity, and the mass migrations and confusion provided easy fodder for the zombies.  Finally, a plan was developed in South Africa in order to control the spread.  It was the Redecker plan, and it was named after the controversial founder, originally intended as a plan for the whites should the blacks take over the country.  Essentially, important survivors needed to make it to a safe zone in the country, one that could be easily defended using natural barriers.  Other groups would need to act as a diversion for the zombie horde, and that would pretty much be a suicide mission.  But it was the only hope for the country.

The U.S. created their own safe zone west of the Rockies, and many parts of the East were left abandoned by the army.  It was important that the safe zone be clean, and could be defended long enough for the war machine economy to get back up and running.  For years this stalemate lasted around the world, while everyone regrouped.  Finally, the U.S. president made an inspiring speech to the rest of the world leaders that humans needed to go on the offensive, and not just wait it out.  It would be important not only physically, but also psychologically.  This part of the story was told from the point of view of one of the new soldiers trained to fight the zombies.  The army redeveloped their fighting techniques: pacing their shooting, and only at the head; taking turns on the front line; and forming a complete line from north to south, and eliminating everything in its path.  The first battle in New Mexico was described by the soldier, as they shot for days at the enemy horde, and created a wall of zombie corpses hundreds of feet high.  Slowly but surely, the country was reclaimed.  There were some human pockets of resistance that had to be retaken, and zombies still had to be completely eradicated, especially from the sea floor, where they sometimes emerged onto beaches.  However, life was able to return to a sense of normalcy, even though the vast majority of the human population had been eliminated (the most populous city was Llhasa, Tibet) and the economy had to be rebuilt from scratch (the economic powerhouse is now Cuba).

It was a fun, and interesting thought exercise.  I really enjoyed the strategy aspect of the novel; the troop movements, what countries did and how they reacted, where the pockets of resistance were based out of.    It was great that it had an international focus.  Each perspective was a small story in itself, so the plot had to be pieced together disjointedly, but all in all, it worked out well.  I am excited to see the movie.  Four out of five stars.