It is stated at one point by some CIA guy that North Korea was able to avoid the zombie outbreak by systematically removing the teeth of all of its residence in less than 24 hours. The reasoning being that if nobody had teeth then the virus couldn’t spread because nobody could bite anyone. He states that it was “the greatest feat of social engineering ever achieved”. Like I get this is a fictitious plot but they can’t even avoid making up the most utterly deranged bullshit lmao.
Yeah the movie was total dogshit. Weirdly I was almost a zombie extra in it when they filmed some of it in Scotland (which they'd made to look like Philly for some baffling movie industry reason) but a work commitment prevented me from being there when they were filming - Probably a blessing really given how much being an extra apparently sucks lmao.
I was big into the book as a kid, although in retrospect the politics are incredibly lib/cursed and feel like some shitty reddit alternate history map: Cuba becomes a superpower by embracing a form of disaster social democracy, China has a civil war where wholesome reformers win against self destructive Maoists, Israel becomes a safe bastion that lets in Palestinians and the only pushback is from a group of ultra orthodox radicals, Putin becomes a new Tzar because le evil despotic Russia, Britain embraces the monarchy again because they're super brave and inspiring during the crisis, shit like that.
That said, insufferable though his politics are, I will admit Max Brooks can paint a pretty good picture and some of the stories are quite compelling (ranging from genuinely effective terror with zombies swarming through the Paris catacombs to dumb nerd shit that's kind of fun like an Otaku becoming a zombie slaying Ninja after lowering himself level by level down an infested Tokyo apartment building) but I feel like rereading it now would make me mad.
I always liked the latter portion of the zombie survival guide where it gave a historical recap of past outbreaks stretching back to ancient egypt. Just fun little worldbuilding exercises that don't overstay their welcome
Ahh yeah those were really good, may have to reread them if I can find my copy.
I remember a cool one where the IJA tried to weaponise zombies by parachuting them into China but they were all taken out super quickly by Communist sharpshooters that were trained to aim for the head :mao-aggro-shining:
I love in the illustrated version of it where it goes over the Roman tactics for fighting zombies
I read that book a few months ago, but all I remember is that it keeps using the same writing "trick" every time. It describes some Hollywood scene of a hero fighting zombies in an unrealistic way, then says "I bet you'd love to do that, you little piggy. You'd love to be blorbo from your zombie movies. Well guess what, dipshit? You'll die if you do that." Like yeah, it's right, but the author writes that same kind of scenario at least once every chapter