Do you ever find yourself getting upset because you took way too long to check out a book, show, or other piece of media? I’ve had a lot of instances like that, especially when it comes to comics and novels. Well, recently, I had another such instance, regarding the jaw-dropping book that is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.
I started reading Max Brooks’ World War Z in September 2021, and I only just finished it at the start of March. Needless to say, I’m a little ashamed of myself. This book is too damn good for me to have taken as long as I did to finish it. For the longest time, The Walking Dead was my gold standard when it came to the zombie corner of the horror genre. I’m pretty sure World War Z just swooped in and stole that spot.
As the title implies, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is essentially a history book, a war journal of sorts, detailing numerous survivor stories from the dark ages of a zombie apocalypse. The book carries you from the first days of the outbreak—including several possible “patient zero” scenarios—all the way to the final days of the war, which, overall, leaves the world significantly worse for wear, but with society on the rebound and many survivors still hopeful for what may come next. After all, humanity survived its own extinction. Things can only go up from there, right?
I’d love to be able to pick apart Max Brooks’ brain and find out just how the hell he concocted this horrific masterpiece of storytelling. Not only is it atmospherically gripping, it’s also almost too intelligent for its own good. Brooks clearly took his time and did his due diligence when crafting this novel; the attention-to-detail here is oftentimes staggering. Brooks doesn’t just write about a bunch of different random events during a zombie apocalypse. He goes in depth regarding medical practices, military tactics and equipment, real-world survival methodology, and the frailty of political hierarchies, and he repurposes all of these things to fit the confines of a zombie narrative.
The book is eerily pertinent, acting as an uncanny mirror in which we might examine the faults of many modern societal norms. Early on, in fact, it hits scarily close to home, with similar situations as to what mankind has been dealing with for the past two years. Which is certainly saying something, considering this book came out in 2006.
Case in point, one of the first few interviews in the book comes from a doctor who helped invent a drug/vaccine known as Phalanx at the onset of the outbreak. This drug was marketed as a means to protect oneself from the zombie virus (which, at that point, was erroneously considered a form of rabies). The narrator points out, then, how the drug was later revealed to be basically useless and that it didn’t protect anyone at all from the virus. The doctor rebuts, “It protected them from their fears. That’s all I was selling,” taking no responsibility for the fact that he and his colleagues likely played a large role in kickstarting the period of mass hysteria known as “The Great Panic.” This strikes me as a frightening parallel to our current, real-world circumstances with the COVID-19 pandemic. Which, again, is pretty crazy to me, considering how old this book is.
Brooks also demonstrates an apt ability for voicing dozens of characters and having them all sound unique; each interview helps broaden the world in new and interesting ways. His tight grasp on military lingo is particularly impressive in this regard, as he writes out a dozen or so interviews conducted with individuals from a military background. It’s particularly impressive to hear these people discuss tactics and strategy when facing a zombie army, something that common military practices just don’t work against. One interviewee notes how, to win a war, you basically have to beat your enemies into submission by outwitting them, starving them, and/or draining them of their hope. Thing is, though, you can’t really do any that against zombies. Viewing a zombie apocalypse through a military lens is pure genius, and Brooks executes this concept with relative ease.
The book, perhaps, gets no darker than during the interview with a man named Paul Redeker. In the world of the novel, this man is deemed as both an angel and a devil of sorts. Essentially, Redeker advises the South African government to use human bait to drive off and attract hordes of zombies to confined positions, so that military forces and other survivors can safely move through and fortify other regions. Otherwise, they would risk losing everything, due to a lack of coordination and a basis from which to mount a meaningful defense. It’s an excruciatingly grim tactic that ultimately pays off in spades, so much so that other nations start implementing similar plans to great effect. One can only hope that such a plan is never needed in a real-world circumstance on such a grand scale.
Furthering the madness of this zombie infested world, Brooks deftly touches on the idea of government ineptitude and impotence. From initial reactions to the outbreak, to how the nations overcame the zombie threat, almost every major government in the world is touched on in one way or another. Brooks pays special attention to the U.S., Russia, and China, though. An entire section of the book is labeled “Home Front USA,” as the States end up as one of the hardest hit regions in the world, largely in part due to the government’s inaction during the onset of the outbreak. Russia uses cover-up tactics to try to quell any panic or fear, which, of course, just makes everything worse when everyone finds out what’s really going. And China’s military are essentially ordered to fight to the death, for fear of otherwise showing weakness, despite the odds clearly being stacked against them. In each case, the interviews that unfold from these circumstances are insanely powerful. There’s the humiliating US army defeat in the Bronx, the Russian decimations (in which Russian soldiers were ordered to kill each other for insubordination), and an entire crew of Chinese officers and their families surviving a majority of the outbreak below the sea in a submarine. And because of how brilliantly it’s all depicted, it feels so shockingly believable.
The pure horror element surrounding this apocalyptic world is superb, top to bottom. Few things sound as petrifying to me as having to clear out zombies on the bottom of the ocean floor or within the Paris catacombs. Because those places weren’t already bitterly terrifying. But even beyond that, there’s something decisively unnerving about the utter collapse of society that Brooks is able to effortlessly capture. There’s an interview about how a manor full of wealthy survivors is overrun by other survivors with nowhere to go; the whole thing turns into a blood bath, and that just sounds so astonishingly on point to me. The novel is scary in more ways than one, to be certain.
My one (minor) gripe with the book is that it’s a little difficult to keep track of the timing of everything. I found any indicators of specific times for events to be fairly rare. Obviously, it’s implied that a great deal of time passes, but it’s still a bit tricky to accurately place everything. The way I understand the timeline, though, is that outbreak lasts roughly 20 years, with the interviews conducted by the narrator happening about 10 years after the official end of the war. Overall, though, this doesn’t really harm the novel’s integrity, as all the events and interviews still flow seamlessly together, and the sense of the passage of time is still inherent enough. Maybe just a date marker at the start of each of the book’s main sections would’ve helped.
I also consider it a shame that such an outstanding book got turned into such a crummy movie. The World War Z movie, in my humble opinion, is just no good. Sure, there’s some fun action sequences, and most of the performances are fine, but it just completely misses the point of what the book did. They’re truly only related in name and nothing more. My advice: skip the movie and just read the book.
That being said, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War ends up being, I believe, the most realistic and powerful take on the zombie apocalypse to date; this is truly some of the best of what the genre has to offer. Brooks effortlessly grounds this clearly fictional yet abundantly scary scenario in the real world without breaking a sweat. Furthermore, Brooks demonstrates his clear understanding of what makes all great zombie narratives work: it’s not about the zombies, it’s about the human drama that stems from their arrival, and how humanity can grow stronger and overcome them.
There’s a lot more I would love to talk about, story wise, with this book, but for those who haven’t read it, I’d rather not spoil all of the juicy drama. And trust me, there’s tons of it. Even if the zombie genre isn’t something you’re into, this is still a book that, I think, anyone could read, simply on the basis that this is just phenomenally written prose, if nothing else. The believable manner in which everything is presented, coupled with the highly pertinent themes, make this a read that should not be missed.
And so, while zombies are hot on my mind, I’m going to go finish editing and revising my zombie-themed short story. More on that, hopefully, in the not-so-far future.