World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War in After the End: A Post-Apocalyptic Book Group

Jul 21, 2012 Mary Overton added it · review of another edition

A Studs Terkel style oral history of the zombie outbreak; interviews taken 10 years after the declaration of victory:

From the "Introduction"
"It goes by many names: 'The Crisis,' 'The Dark Years,' 'The Walking Plague,' as well as newer and more 'hip' titles such as 'World War Z' or 'Z War One.' I personally dislike this last moniker as it implies an inevitable 'Z War Two.' For me, it will always be 'The Zombie War,' and while many may protest the scientific accuracy of the word zombie, they will A Studs Terkel style oral history of the zombie outbreak; interviews taken 10 years after the declaration of victory:

From the "Introduction"
"It goes by many names: 'The Crisis,' 'The Dark Years,' 'The Walking Plague,' as well as newer and more 'hip' titles such as 'World War Z' or 'Z War One.' I personally dislike this last moniker as it implies an inevitable 'Z War Two.' For me, it will always be 'The Zombie War,' and while many may protest the scientific accuracy of the word zombie, they will be hard-pressed to discover a more globally accepted term for the creatures that almost caused our extinction." pg 1

From an interview with General D'Ambrosia, on the beginning of America's major offensive:
"Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it? At least this time around we knew what we were combating, but when you added up all the experience, all the data we'd compiled on their origin, their physiology, their strengths, their weaknesses, their motives, and their mentality, it still presented us with a very gloomy prospect for victory.
"The book of war, the one we've been writing since one ape slapped another, was completely useless in this situation. We had to write a new one from scratch.
"All armies, be they mechanized or mountain guerilla, have to abide by three basic restrictions: they have to be bred, fed, and led. Bred: you need warm bodies, or else you don't have any army; fed: once you've got that army, they've got to be supplied; and led: no matter how decentralized that fighting force is, there has to be someone among them with the authority to say 'follow me.' Bred, fed, and led; and none of these restrictions applied to the living dead.
"Did you ever read All Quiet on the Western Front? Remarque paints a vivid picture of Germany becoming 'empty,' meaning that toward the end of the war, they were simply running out of soldiers. You can fudge the numbers, send the old men and little boys, but eventually you're going to hit the ceiling ... unless every time you killed an enemy, he came back to life on your side. That's how Zack [military slang for zombie] operated, swelling his ranks by thinning ours! And it only worked one way. Infect a human, he becomes a zombie. Kill a zombie, he becomes a corpse. We could only get weaker, while they might actually get stronger.
"All human armies need supplies, this army didn't. No food, no ammo, no fuel, not even water to drink or air to breathe! There were no logistic lines to sever, no depots to destroy. You couldn't just surround and starve them out, or let them 'wither on the vine.' Lock a hundred of them in a room and three years later they'll come out just as deadly.
"It's ironic that the only way to kill a zombie is to destroy its brain, because, as a group, they have no collective brain to speak of. There was no leadership, no chain of command, no communication or cooperation on any level. There was no president to assassinate, no HQ bunker to surgically strike. Each zombie is its own, self-contained, automated unit, and this last advantage is what truly encapsulates the entire conflict.
"....
"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. That's the kind of enemy that was waiting for us beyond the Rockies. That's the kind of war we had to fight." pp 271-273 ...more

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Jul 25, 2021 Gretchen rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: adult, animals, dystopian, also-movies-or-shows, sci-fi, fantasy, zombies, after-the-end-book-club

The Zombie War, World War Z as it was to be called, has ended. Max Brooks has traveled all over the world to gather personal accounts for his postwar report, but found that much of it was deleted for being too personal. He compiles all of these personal accounts into this book. People from around the world describe how WWZ started in their country, how they survived, what they did to survive, what the war cost them, and sometimes the part they played in the victory over the zombies.

This book ha ...more

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