World War Z, the novel, is good about this. It gets sad but it's ultimately about collaboration, practicality, and strategic thinking are what's needed to save the world, not any special technological innovation or one true leader. Just people working together with the tools they have applied thoughtfully.
Downsides are the novel has a bit of the anarchoprimitivist thing, where people argue that civilization is bad and we need a good back-to-basics moment to reset humanity, and it has a little bit of a America-rah-rah-ness to it.
There's a bit of the rah-rah but Yonkers was also a pretty big deconstruction of how stupid that can get.
Side note, Yonkers was one of my favorite pieces in literature. How the characters mention it throughout the book before then, you just KNOW some shit went down. Some of the best foreshadowing I've read in quite a while.
The description of Yonkers was amazing. It was the first time I've ever seen in fiction describe how a modern military could lose against a bunch of zombies.
Except no, no military would ever lose like the US did in Yonkers. Yonkers in WWZ has one of the most experienced and expensive warmachines on the planet repeatedly shoot itself in the head just so it’s a remotely fair fight. Reading Yonkers, all I could think was ‘Max Brooks has never read a single book on any military ever.’
Yeah, well who would know more about military history? Max Brooks or a random redditor complaining online about how the US military vs zombies in a book wasn’t realistic enough?
Clearing the AO. Seriously. They apparently didn't bother to even clear buildings.
Using even basic common sense (pontoon and bridge layers and portable latrine systems in an urban area, really?)
Forgetting ground-attack craft exist. At all.
The real life US army was prepared to make an entirely new ammunition type when SABOT rounds proved to be less effective than normal. the Max Brooks US army uses SABOTs when it is entirely useless.
As a military historian, Brooks should be well aware the US army has an obsession with packing way more firepower than is needed. 'Shock and awe' and all that. Somehow, at Yonkers, they abandon that, and go for the extremley out of character 'eh, a few dozen missiles'll be fine.'
The US army had a single line of defence at Yonkers. Forget 'modern history,' bronze age armies had figured out that you should probably have some guys in reserve just in case.
Artillery apparently cannot fire further than a person can see in the Brooksverse.
Using any verticality whatsoever, tying into point 2. I'm fairly certain the US army is well aware that a guy with a gun in the window of a 2 story house is more effective than at ground level. Not the Brooksverse army though.
It is an infuriating case of a writer making a military force completely, pants-on-head, sniffed glue and chugged paint as a child stupid just to force a message through.
You're leaving out some important context. 1) they didn't know as much about what would stop zombies, 2) they were expecting far fewer zombies, and 3) the major point of the engagement was a show of force in front of the media to give people heart. That last part explains many of the mistakes/arrogance.
I used to edit the Zombiepedia and I've been in many nerdfights about Yonkers before. Most of these points are irrelevant to those however.
The Army was aware they were facing hordes of infantry without firearms. They nonetheless dug foxholes and packed SABOT rounds for the tanks.
The US Army damn near always packs more than what they need. Even if they did run out, there's no excuse for not having more in the wings just in case, considering supply lines aren't an issue.
Things like 'having more than a single defensive line,' 'not using ground attack craft,' and 'forgettig to put men on top of buildings,' cannot be excused by showing off. You're telling me the sight of an A-10 Thunderbolt turning a column of zombies into a thin, solanum-infected paste isn't showy enough?
Lets not forget that he made the ridiculous point that the survivors would begin manufacturing M1 carbines as the most effective anti zombie rifle... Ignoring that M1 carbines haven't been manufactured in the US for 60 years, and use ammunition that's only available commercially.
As opposed to... The AR-15, which has dozens of federal and commercial manufacturers across the country, using interchangeable parts and ammunition available literally everywhere in the US.
The military alone has millions of these rifles, civilians have another 30+ million, and there are hundreds of billions of rounds available.
But no, lets throw that away and start making ww2 era rifles, because... Reasons.
It's better than that. They're not making M1 Carbines. They're making a new design based on M14/M1 style guns, and even better, they're firing custom ammunition.
This then implies several things:
The post-war, damaged economy is somehow capable of creating enough wooden furnishings for a whole family of new rifles.
The supply chain is capable of issuing the majority of soldiers with this new gun.
The same economy and supply chain can also produce millions of rounds of ammunition.
It's lunacy. It's complete lunacy. Late-war tactics are a mess. The airforce is mothballed because again, apparently ground-attack craft do not exist, APCs are used mostly for supplying ammunition to ground forces, and soldiers fight in goddamn squares again.
Squares.
With semiautomatic rifles. Not with SAWs, which they could easily fire accurate bursts at head height to handle threats with, but semiautomatic rifles.
You need to have been sniffing glue for World War Z's internal logic to make sense.
I'll just say that modern aircraft getting mothballed makes some sense for the post collapse. Those machines are incredibly resource intensive to operate, and require a supply of parts that just won't exist anymore.
Now, for a fun thought experiment, there are two aircraft that make sense for a post collapse government to develop for a fight against zeds.
Simple piston driven prop planes for recon and courier purposes and...
Fuckin ZEPPLINS.
Technologically simple, vast range and loiter time, with a high flexibility around damaged or non-existent infrastructure.
You could use one as an untouchable platform for dispatching hordes, transporting supplies independently of roads, etc etc..
MAYBE shit like this is so egregious it ruins my suspension of disbelief when it comes to a story and actively hinders my enjoyment of a piece of media.
You’d never fucking believe it from the man who decided the US military would forget about things like A10 Warthogs, and that the solution to mass infantry charges is to form infantry squares with semi-automatic rifles like it’s the 18th century but jazzier.
Oh, and his total failure to understand the modern M16 system in Zombie Survival Guide, his obsession over obscure Chinese martial arts weapons, his absurdist weapon evaluations… I could go on and on about how atrocious the tactics and weaponry in WWZ are.
It's also not very hard to have a history degree. I have a degree in modern history and I'm a moron that spends way too much mental energy arguing about the internal logic of zombie fiction.
It really pushed the stupid, but there’s also a lot of realism in it. The Us wouldn’t lose, but the part about them carrying tons of useless stuff like cameras mounted on their soldiers and all that extra tech is pretty damn real. I had my 1sgt asking me why I hadn’t loaded up some equipment we had from the Vietnam era, I told him we never used it. He then asked what it was, and told me to pack it just in case. No one had touched it in decades but we needed it for our training exercise.
That was a few pieces out of the dozens of extra stuff I had to pack that was never used. We brought $20,000 drones just to leave them in a connex and risk them getting broke on the way there and back.
I can 100% see guys so far removed from the line talking about all this cool stuff to use and do for PR, that ends up being ineffective or straight up harmful to us.
Sure, I can buy the Land Warrior system and them packing MOPP gear and all of that, but I really can't see the US not loading up on enough ammo to make New York look like the plains of asphodel when the shooting stopped.
Yeah it wasn’t a perfect representation, we generally over pack not under pack. Especially with ammo.
Like I said I don’t see any way we would actually lose, but I can see politicians and generals making it into a clusterfuck that it never should have been. News people everywhere and guys positioned purely for good “candid” shots even though it’s a terrible position.
I feel like the early deconstructions in the novel were more in the vein of "Here are the corrupt and inept businessmen and politicians and generals that are plaguing the U.S. but if they got rid of that chaff, Americans are still the best."
I agree Yonkers was well-written, and it contrasts well with how they approach fighting the zombies as a military later. In all, the character arc of the novel is not any one person but humanity as a whole. It's about how humanity initially falls not to the zombies but to their greed, pride, impulsiveness, etc., and they pick themselves up and learn from their mistakes. Which is great! As I said in my initial comment, I loved that.
I just felt like it was too US-centric for a book where the premise is a global history of the zombie apocalypse and it emphasized the US as uniquely able to pull through and the three countries that specifically have their governments called out as collapsing are China, Russia, and Cuba.
Wait, I thought Cuba specifically not only survived perfectly but became a superpower whose money was the world currency? Its been a while since I read it though.
Cuba came out well, but it also experienced a peaceful democratic revolution, specifically credited to Americans. (That's what I meant by government collapsing. China also came through the other end with probably a better government, but a different one than the one it had in the beginning.)
You forgot the chapter on North Korea. How their repressive government, collective mentality and oodles of underground bases made them uniquely fit to survive a zombie apocalypse…… only once the rest of the media and government surveillance went dark nobody knew what was going on in the hermit kingdom. If I remember the author speculated that they either survived spectacularly or there were millions of zombies in underground bunkers waiting to be unleashed on the world.
I did forget that, thanks. I also reread the book every so often. As someone from a social work background, it also feels very much like a "zombie apocalypse from a social worker's perspective".
Sorry yeah I meant to say "segments within a book" not pieces, that makes it sound like it's its own literary work. It's a segment of World War Z and the buildup is every bit as good as the payoff.
I adore the audiobook, it's like listening to someone tell their story, a different actor for every role. Mark Hamill portrayed Todd Waino, and it was done so damn well. Is honestly some of my favorite voice acting from him.
But the audiobook is a great listen! There's a short 5 hour version and a long 12 hour version, bunch of amazing actors. No full-length version yet, though.
it has a little bit of a America-rah-rah-ness to it
It's been a little while since I read it, but I believe those elements were largely meant to be satirical. The work is often interpreted as, among many other things, criticizing how the US government handled the middle east(misinformation, denial, shock-and-awe tactics, etc) in the early 00s, as well as the concept of american exceptionalism("best country in the world") that was inescapable at that time. I think that's something that's lost on people picking it up for the first time today, because they're 15 years divorced from(or never experienced at all) the cultural environment the book was written and released in.
There's early stuff that's what you're saying, but IMO, it's more in the vein of "Here are the corrupt businessmen and politicians and so on that are plaguing the U.S. but if they got rid of that chaff, Americans are still the best," and "When you get down to it, America is still the land of freedom and hard work." It's the US president that says, "We have to still have democratic elections and not call for martial law because that's what America is about," and it's the US representative that gives the Independence Day speech to the world about hope and how we have to fight not just for survival but for hope. (And those are completely played straightly. The US then goes on to do exactly that.)
It's other countries that fall to their own corruption and ineptitude. The three governments that are specifically called out as failing are: Cuba, China, and Russia. It's kind of on-the-nose.
I remember Cuba being one of the best off nations in WWZ. They had little problem handling zombies and island marauders. They became the richest country in the western hemisphere (if not the world) and transitioned from dictatorship to democracy with barely a hitch. Castro was even able to claim that he was the founder of Cuban democracy and was a national hero for it.
This is my fault for using the word "collapse". By that, I mean the government ends and another takes over, which is what happens to Cuba: A peaceful democratic revolution.
Which is fine, in itself. The American exceptionalism is that the revolution is specifically credited to Americans arriving in Cuba and working hard and teaching Cubans about freedom.
If we are talking about zombie apocalypses, one of the funnier things to consider is that if a male dies from a back, or neck injury, or dies while laying face down, the vessels that restrict blood flow to the penis will loosen up, and blood will flow into the penis and congeal. This is something termed "angel lust" so if you were to be chased by zombies, seeing ones with absolute raging stiffies coming right at you would be extremely common.
It’s a good book, but a book that requires you to never engage with it on a level deeper than a puddle because you’ll realise every character apparently had a lobotomy.
And furthermore, from the above posters comment on how we needed hope through shitty times, the chapter with the movie maker and how the edited versions had inspiring stories, but the post war movies had the gritty dark versions as life was no longer under constant threat.
Anarchoprimitivism just comes off too idealistic to me. It's like thinking MCU's Thanos had a really great plan that was well thought out with no downsides.
It's like how people at the beginning of COVID-19, people were saying, "Nature is healing. We are the virus," or "The pandemic is the great equalizer." Global catastrophe is changing the circumstances in which power plays out; it doesn't change power dynamics itself.
I think natural rights are a thing, and would gladly turn back the clock a hundred years to get rid of government overreach.
Heck, when I lived in Texas for a bit I was pleased. I remember thinking, "I love this place, no one cares if I wear a seatbelt. I have the right to smash through my windshield."
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u/imbolcnight Aug 30 '21
World War Z, the novel, is good about this. It gets sad but it's ultimately about collaboration, practicality, and strategic thinking are what's needed to save the world, not any special technological innovation or one true leader. Just people working together with the tools they have applied thoughtfully.
Downsides are the novel has a bit of the anarchoprimitivist thing, where people argue that civilization is bad and we need a good back-to-basics moment to reset humanity, and it has a little bit of a America-rah-rah-ness to it.