The Zombie Apocalypse, as Presented by PBS

World War Z

by Max Brooks
p. 2006

World War Z is a very odd book.

One of the very few ‘zombie novels’ out there, World War Z doesn’t read like a novel; it’s certainly not a conventional narrative. Penned by Max Brooks, the same author who wrote the tongue-in-cheek Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z is more like a history book with a narrative spin. Reading it feels like you’re watching a Ken Burns documentary, and if you’re able to immerse yourself in the individual stories well enough, it’s almost better than any historical reenactment.

It’s all very ‘break down the third wall’ as Brooks simultaneously plays author and interviewer, creator and character. Though the ‘interviewer’ himself stays on the outside, it is impossible not to gain some insight into the character through his introduction and his probing questions. When he states at the start, “if there is a human factor that should be removed, let it be my own,” you know you are about to read a series of accounts that are personal and very human.

Indeed, the individual interviews are interesting, telling and sometimes gripping as they approach the zombie apocalypse from all sides—early warnings, civilian experiences, military tactics—and from all parts of the world. I have got to hand it to Max Brooks—the man did his homework. With the exception of the zombies themselves, everything in World War Z is accurate and grounded in reality. It’s what makes the whole thing so chillingly believable.

On the whole, I appreciate that Brooks set out to give us a story that really breaks down what such a catastrophic event would look like on a global scale, because—admit it—we’ve all wondered how we might react in the event of an actual zombie apocalypse. Brooks’ presentation, however, represents an incomplete version of the whole story. It’s almost as if Brooks wanted to write a hundred different stories but couldn’t decide which one so he wrote them all. Nearly every one of the interviews could make a decent full-fledged movie about life post-Zombie-Apocalypse in and of itself. It’s the author’s prerogative to write it the way he wants to but Brooks did kind of spoil the possibility of ever getting to read any of these stories in their entirety. It’s almost as if he opted not to write them and decided if he wasn’t then no one could.

The upcoming movie adaptation of this novel sounds nothing like the book. On the one hand, that’s alright because a straight up adaptation would be kind of boring, but for the most part, it’s pretty disappointing that none of the characters are being written straight into the movie, killing the reader’s one chance of seeing any of these individual stories through to completion. There will be some parallel characters probably, names changed, but based on the previews, it’s almost a wonder they were allowed to still call it World War Z.

With the expansion of the zombie phenomenon into mainstream pop culture, it was inevitable that we would have to get creative in our approach. I’m still excited for this movie and any possible book sequels simply because of the new approach to an existing theme. I feel similarly about Warm Bodies, the upcoming zombie romance movie (which will only work if it remains tongue-in-cheek and doesn’t try to be serious). I’m not saying we should all start taking zombies too seriously, but it’s a force to be reckoned with, and it’s interesting to see people take the theme of living versus dead to new levels.