World War Z
Max Brooks
The introduction by the narrator explains that he is a
former UN Investigator and was responsible for compiling an official report on
the Zombie War. He goes on to explain that he felt the official report did not
accurately reflect the true impact of the War as it focused only on cold,
factual data; and so he decided to
write a “Personal History”, collecting and sharing the “human”
experience from individuals from all walks of life from all over the globe.
The book is loosely organized into pre, during, and post Zombie
periods, and jumps from place to place. There are far too many stories to share
in one review, so I’m going to focus on my personal favourites:
Manitoba, Canada:
Zombies have no internal heating mechanisms and
so freeze into immobility in sub-zero temperatures. As a result, middle class
families fled the Zombie menace in a mass exodus to the Northern expanses of
Canada, escaping the horror of the undead without considering the horrors they
fled towards. A survivor recounts how badly these average
families fared: people brought Sponge-Bob sleeping bags and DVDs instead of
axes and water; they crammed into their
cars and minivans only to abandon them when the gas inevitably ran out, or the
roads made impassible by other abandoned vehicles, leaving families stranded in
a frozen wilderness with picnic lunches and useless electronics. 11 million North Americans escaped the
Zombies, but not starvation, madness, and cannibalism. And then, in Spring, the
zombies begin to thaw…
Kyoto, Japan
A spoiled, utterly pampered young man in Japan is obsessed
with the Zombies from the very first; and becomes an expert on how to survive
them. The only problem? He is an “Otaku”, living his entire life online, and
has forgotten the physical world . So he is completely caught off guard when,
one morning, he discovers that his mother has not left him breakfast outside
his bedroom door as she always does. She
doesn’t bring his lunch or his dinner, either. It never occurs to him to look for his parents, and instead
struggles along for days on raw, uncooked ramen and tap water. Only when the
entire internet has gone “dark” does he finally broach the outside world, where
his intelligence and ingenuity allow him to survive long enough to discover an
ancient, priceless treasure… and thus is born a new kind of Samurai…
Quebec, Canada
This ultra-creepy story is narrated by a former Parisian
soldier, who belonged to a battalion charged with cleaning up the catacombs of
Paris. He emerges so traumatized he moves to Quebec and never steps on French
soil again. If you like to have nightmares, this is the story for you.
What about the crews on the Space Stations? Abandoned,
adrift, and completely unable to help or hinder, a few brave astronauts struggle
to survive long enough… for what?
How does the most secretive and state-controlled country
handle a Zombie apocalypse? (Interestingly, it is a completely different story
than what the film portrayed. In this one case, I found the movie surpassed
the book – but no spoilers!)
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