World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006) is an apocalyptic horror novel by Max Brooks. The novel is a collection of individual accounts narrated by an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission, following the global conflict against the zombie plague. Other passages record a decade-long desperate struggle, as experienced by people of various nationalities. The personal accounts also describe the social, political, religious, and environmental changes that resulted from the devastating war. World War Z is a follow-up to Brooks' "survival manual" The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), but its tone is much more serious. It was inspired by The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two (1984) by Studs Terkel, and by the zombie films of George A. Romero. Brooks used World War Z to comment on government ineptitude and American isolationism, while also examining survivalism and uncertainty. The novel was a commercial hit and was praised by most critics. Its audiobook version, performed by a full cast including Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, and John Turturro, won an Audie Award in 2007. A film inspired by the novel, starring Brad Pitt, was released in 2013.Movie Details:
Author: Max Brooks
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre: Horror, post-apocalyptic fiction
Published: 2006 (Crown)
Media type: Print (hardback & paperback), e-book, audiobook
Pages: 342 pp
ISBN: 0-307-34660-9
OCLC: 65340967
Dewey Decimal
813/.6 22
LC Class: PS3602.R6445 W67 2006
Preceded by: The Zombie Survival Guide
Source: Wikipedia n IMDB
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Plot:
Throughout the series of oral interviews compiled by the narrator (an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission), the story of the global war against zombies, "World War Z", is told. The zombie pandemic's "patient zero" was a young infected boy in China; although it is implied that the boy was not the first victim chronologically, his infection (as well as those he infected) is the first to be recorded. It marks the point when the Chinese government attempts to contain the infection and concocts a crisis involving Taiwan, to mask their activities. Regardless, the infection is spread to other countries via the black market organ trade and refugees, with a larger outbreak in South Africa bringing the plague to public attention. As the infection spreads, Israel abandons the Palestinian territories and initiates a nationwide quarantine, closing its borders to everyone except uninfected Jews and Palestinians. Its military then puts down an ultra-Orthodox uprising, which is later referred to as an Israeli civil war. The United States does little to prepare because it is overconfident in its ability to suppress any threat. Although special forces teams contain initial outbreaks, a widespread effort never starts: the nation is deprived of political will by "brushfire wars", and a widely distributed and marketed placebo vaccine creates a false sense of security. As many more areas around the globe fall to infection, a period known as the "Great Panic" begins. Pakistan and Iran destroy each other in a nuclear war, after the Iranian government attempts to stem the flow of refugees fleeing through Pakistan into Iran. Following the fall of New York City, the U.S. military sets up a high-profile defense in Yonkers, New York. The "Battle of Yonkers" is a disaster; modern weapons and tactics prove ineffective against zombies, as the enemy has no self-preservation instincts and can only be stopped if shot through the head. The unprepared and demoralized soldiers are routed on live television. Other countries suffer similarly disastrous defeats, and human civilization teeters on the brink of destruction. In South Africa, the government adopts a contingency plan drafted by apartheid-era intelligence consultant Paul Redeker. It calls for the establishment of small sanctuaries, leaving large groups of survivors abandoned in special zones in order to distract the undead and allowing those within the main safe zone time to regroup and recuperate. Governments worldwide assume similar plans or relocate the populace to safer foreign territory, such as the attempted complete evacuation of the Japanese archipelago to Kamchatka. Because zombies freeze solid in the cold, many civilians in North America flee to the wildernesses of northern Canada and the Arctic, where millions of people die of starvation and hypothermia. It is implied that some turn to cannibalism to survive; further interviews from other sources imply that cannibalism occurred in areas of the United States where food shortages occurred. The three remaining astronauts in the International Space Station survive the war by salvaging supplies from the abandoned Chinese space station and maintain some military and civilian satellites using an orbital fuel station. A surviving member of the ISS crew describes "mega" swarms of zombies on the American Great Plains and Central Asia, and how the crisis affected Earth's atmosphere. The U.S. eventually establishes safe zones west of the Rocky Mountains and spends much of the next decade eradicating zombies in that region. All aspects of civilian life are devoted to supporting the war effort against the pandemic. Much of it resembles total war strategies: rationing of fuel and food, cultivation of private gardens, and civilian neighborhood patrols. The U.S. government also initiates a "Re-education Act" to train the civilian population for the war effort and restore order; the people with skills such as carpentry and construction find themselves more valuable than people with managerial skills. Seven years after the outbreak began, a conference is held off the coast of Honolulu, Hawaii, aboard the USS Saratoga, where most of the world's leaders argue that they can outlast the zombie plague if they stay in their safe zones. The U.S. President, however, argues for going on the offensive. Determined to lead by example, the U.S. military reinvents itself to meet the specific strategic requirements of fighting the undead: using semi-automatic, high-power rifles and volley firing, focusing on head shots and slow, steady rates of fire; and devising a multipurpose hand tool, the "Lobotomizer" or "Lobo" (described as a combination of a shovel and a battle axe), for close-quarters combat. The military, backed by a resurgent American wartime economy, began the three year long process of retaking the continental United States from both the undead as well as groups of hostile human survivors. Prewar military doctrines and equipment are mentioned as being employed to deal with sometimes well-armed and organized criminal or rebel opposition. Ten years after the official end of the zombie war, millions of zombies are still active, mainly on the ocean floor or on snow line islands. A democratic Cuba has become the world's most thriving economy and the international banking capital. Following a civil war that saw use of nuclear weapons, China has become a democracy and is now known as the "Chinese Federation". Tibet is freed from Chinese rule and hosts Lhasa, the world's most populated city. Following a religious revolution and the revival of Russian orthodoxy, Russia is now an expansionist theocracy known as the Holy Russian Empire. Owing to the fact that many young Russians either became zombies, were infected with HIV, or died due to drugs, the government has initiated a "breeding" program, with the remaining fertile women implied to be coercively impregnated to raise the birthrate. North Korea is completely empty, with the entire population presumed to have disappeared into underground bunkers. The situation in the British Isles is not entirely clear in the novel. The Pope and members of the British Royal Family had fled to Ireland and the Isle of Man. The United Kingdom is described as intact,[1] following the military retreat to the Antonine Wall, and now exports oil from a reserve under Windsor Castle where the Queen held out for the war's duration, refusing to flee with her relatives. In France, the Palace of Versailles was the site of a massacre and has been burned to the ground; military losses were particularly high clearing the catacombs underneath Paris, because the catacombs housed nearly a quarter of a million refugees during the early stages of the war, all of whom became zombies. Iceland has been completely depopulated, and is the world's most heavily infested country. The Israelis and Palestinians have made peace, and Israel and its former occupied territories have been renamed "Unified Palestine". Mexico is now known as "Aztlán". Several countries are described as having revised borders due to the "dumping" of convicts into infected zones; these convicts rose to command "powerful fiefdoms" that later became independent states. A so-called "Pacific Continent" appears to encompass previously uninhabited islands as well as ships rendered immobile due to lack of fuel after the Saudi Royal Family have destroyed the oil fields in Saudi Arabia. The United Nations fields a large military force to eliminate the remaining zombies from overrun areas, defeat hordes that surface from the ocean floor, and kill frozen zombies before they thaw. Life on Earth is hinted at being brought to near extinction.
