Lumber On, Brain-Suckers

"For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth." -Max Brooks, World War Z

 
It took me awhile to get through Max Brooks' World War Z novel. I love the overarching idea of a zombie war and how it affected the entire world, but the journalistic/interview style it was told in was my greatest obstacle. I just couldn't really get into that format of storytelling. However, the more I

read, the more I certainly appreciated what Brooks accomplished. I can't imagine the time it would take someone to put that much research into a project like this. Brooks brilliantly aligns real world factors (tensions between certain countries, types of governments, attitudes of people from all over the world, and so much more), to add a heavy layer of realism to this oral history of a zombie war. No matter if someone likes this book or not, the research itself is an impressive feat. I had no trouble believing his timeline of the way the zombie epidemic spread either. Overall, I bought the story, even if there were times where the information was so heavy I felt like I was wading through too much. I wanted to know about the zombies and the gruesome bits more than about the technology or types of weapons used in the war.

Zombies are used in an interesting way here. Brooks occasionally paints a picture of them for us (moaning, lumbering, gray corpses that are quite stupid, but have an insatiable hunger for human flesh), and they are creepy monsters, especially since they don't require rest of any kind. They have one goal -- eat human flesh, and that's it. Normally I like monsters to have some reflection of human characteristics hidden inside them, but that's not the point for zombies. They really are just mindless monsters. Unless they are to perhaps reflect a bigger societal concern -- not the zombies themselves, but what they create, which is fear.

“Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells.” -Max Brooks, World War Z

 Fear sells. I can't tell you how many times we repeated that phrase in my communication classes in undergrad. People love to say, "sex sells, sex sells!" but the fact is that while sex may catch attention, it is still fear of something that sells the product. In the WWZ case, Phalanx becomes the drug that sells because of panic and fear. The drug created a false sense of security and heightened humankind's denial of what was happening around them to a point where that denial drives them nearly to extinction. Furthermore, that extinction isn't just being brought on by the zombies, but by the various governments of the world's countries trying to cover up scandals and mass killings they themselves created.

That is the fear and the consequence the zombies bring because of their lack of human traits. It's kind

of brilliant, or at least it is the way Brooks pulls it off. Fear is so incredibly human and it really shows what human beings are capable of. In the WWZ interviews throughout the book we read accounts of suicide, cannibalism, murder, nuclear war between countries, and the list goes on of what people did to each other to try and escape their fears.

Even at the end of it all, there are still millions of zombies either frozen or living on the ocean floor. Iceland's human population is wiped out, most countries are a mess, and the Holy Russian Empire has set up a breeding program for its women that horrified me even more than any number of zombies.

Another good quote from the book reads,  “Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature." So true, even in today's world. We don't focus on future generations and leaving the planet in tact for them. We use and take and assume the Earth is some magical source that will last for all eternity. In a way, we are zombies eating away at what we have until nothing is left. 


Lumber on, my fellow brain-suckers.

For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth.” - See more at: http://www.randomhouse.com/audio/catalog/display.php?isbn=9780739366400#sthash.iiL2XAkw.dpuf

For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth.” - See more at: http://www.randomhouse.com/audio/catalog/display.php?isbn=9780739366400#sthash.iiL2XAkw.dpuf

For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth.” - See more at: http://www.randomhouse.com/audio/catalog/display.php?isbn=9780739366400#sthash.iiL2XAkw.dpuf