I'm hate-reading it for my book club. It already sucks for a bunch of reasons but it's also nakedly jingoistic in ways I don't even think the author understands because I think he's just a dumb rich kid (his father is Mel Brooks).
It's a zombie apocalypse book. The baseline we're working with is: if a country is a 
country its policies are good-to-neutral (for example Israel wisely accumulates all evidence of outbreaks and is the first to publish a report to warn the world, then is the only country to quarantine BUT SINCE THEY'RE SO WISE AND GRACIOUS THEY ALSO GRANT RIGHT OF RETURN SO PALESTINIANS CAN QUARANTINE WITH THEM) but any official enemy is disastrous evil (China hides the outbreak from the world, Russia slaughters their own troops to maintain rank, Iran starts a nuclear war). Also doesn't hesitate to slip in liberal conspiracy theories about them - the PLA makes millions selling human organs (extracted from live, unwilling subjects), Iran completes their nuclear program with assistance from DPRK.
I haven't got into the armed forces idolatry like there's so much that sucks about this book but this is the quote that made my eyes bulge out of my head:
Now, I am a good soldier, but I am also a West German. You understand the difference? In the East, they were told that they were not responsible for the atrocities of the Second World War, that as good communists, they were just as much victims of Hitler as anyone else. You understand why the skinheads and proto-fascists were mainly in the East? They did not feel the responsibility of the past, not like we did in the West. We were taught since birth to bear the burden of our grandfathers’ shame. We were taught that, even if we wore a uniform, that our first sworn duty was to our conscience, no matter what the consequences.
Fuck this dumb book how did it receive such universal praise 
They did not feel the responsibility of the past, not like we did in the West. We were taught since birth to bear the burden of our grandfathers’ shame. We were taught that, even if we wore a uniform, that our first sworn duty was to our conscience, no matter what the consequences.
Let's see: Nazis in Germany post-war were hired and brought directly back into:
- Official posts within the federal government and its ministerial cabinets
- into the upper judiciary and magistrates
- into local governance
- elevated and hired into immense wealth in industry and finance, or just kept where they already were in industry and finance
- hired into forming the Nazi core of the West German intelligence and secret police agencies (which would become today's German agencies) under the protective auspices of the OSS/CIA; who made extensive use of their networks of executioners and collaborators to prop up US-backed dictatorships and cartels and use as anti-communist stay-behind guerilla terrorists by the CIA and NATO (and brought into the CIA and FBI themselves, and into MI6 and Mossad)
- into German academia and universities as faculty and professors,
- to write western history books at the behest and with support of the US Army and OSS/CIA to sanitize their own crimes
- all those hired into NATO and into the EU
- into positions of power in West Germany (and all the NATO countries, helping in and helped by Gladio violently purging the communists) in such saturation and such impunity that it caused the formation of left wing militant groups that would assassinate and kidnap them.
but other than all of that though!
(And that's not even mentioning the Nazis and collaborators which made up the origins of Radio Free Europe/Liberty, the "Victims of Communism Foundation" which grew out of the fascist-filled anti-Soviet "Captive Nations Lobby" headed by OUN-B Nazis from Ukraine, and all the Operation Aerodynamic, Operation Paperclip, Operation Sunrise, Operation Beladonna, Operation Lynx, etc etc.)
ty comrade for doing my hard work for me to support my rant when my book club meetsNo problem comrade.
- Here's also a few of the industrialists and political elite of the US capitalist class who financed and were deeply connected with the Nazis and the German capitalist class
- And an additional article on nazis hired by MI6 and Mossad specifically, including the literal pioneer of the gas vans Walter Rauff [Archived]
- And historical OSS/CIA involvement in Ukrainian nationalism (broad strokes)
all for good measure. The collaboration and support for modern Nazi groups including in Ukraine is its own whole list of nonsense; but predictably a direct legacy with all the same powers toward the same ends, because why would they ever have stopped? (it's like when people say "operation mockingbird and cointelpro were past programs they stopped those" --- why would they ever do that? and why would they honestly tell you if they did?)
If Covid taught us anything is that the USA and western europe are not surviving a zombie apocalypse
I've said it before on hexbear and I'd like to say it again: I'd love to see a zombie apocalypse move made that's actually just an analogue for how the west handled COVID 19: They easily could have prevented it if they wanted to but they couldn't possibly inhibit capital from doing its thing so instead everyone's getting eaten by murder corpses
The new CDC guidelines say that you can return to work or school 5 days after being reanimated
holed up in my house for 2 months
zombies everywhere, no hope in sight
MRAP turned technical blazes around the corners, kills scores of zombies, coast is finally clear
doors open, it's my landlord with the county sheriff evicting me because i haven't paid rent in two months
guy complains that i'm never getting my deposit back with all the blood everywhere
I've thought about this, too! It would be fun to have the movie start out like any other zombie film, with everything having already fallen apart and people fighting each other to survive. Then you reveal later in the film that other parts of the world still have functioning societies and it's just the west that completely fell apart.
Piggybacking off anarcho_blinkenists comment - if you haven't already, listen to the Horror Vanguard episode on Shaun of the Dead.
Gotta say though zombie bites are a horribly inefficient way to spread especially from shambling corpses that move that slow. Unless it speads like the t virus through contaminated water etc. Plus the general contempt for human life makes me think human shaped vectors for a virus don't stand a chance.
I think that's why a lot of later zombie media have an alternative vector to the zombie infection other than biting.
Like the Last of Us happens due to the fungal spores being in contaminated flour, randomly infecting swathes of the worlds population. The Walking Dead generally has that everyone alive is infected through an unknown vector (aerosol?), but when you die or get bitten you turn into a zombie. Daybreak had the HPV vaccine be the reason why teenagers survive a biochemical weapon which adults didn't etc.
Yeah that is true. Like the flood in halo being spread by airborne spores. That was more believable. Just spreading by bite I don't see it. Give someone with skilled blood lust armour, sharp weapons and clear instructions he'll take out a decent amount before going down. Have a group of em even more. Have an army and make it some Thermopylae scenario (real armour not that magazine cover outfit they wore in the movie) with a narrow passage it becomes interesting. Give them projectile weapons it becomes a bloodbath especially if you use hit and run.
It also makes sense. Like with any infection in real life. Take Covid19 before vaccines and antivirals, you could be asymptomatic or you could die depending on comorbidities and luck. Or the Black Death, some people survived the bubonic version, others didn't but if you got the septicaemic or pneumonic version you were basically dead. But they were the same bacteria.
There being an initially spreading airborne wave turning some people and sparing others etc.
Facts. I read about 20% of cases are asymptomatic. Thats a slick way spreading as opposed to a foaming at the mouth maniac attacking you. I've seen people say it might work because of the shock of seeing loved ones turn which catches people off guard..... We'll ill run out of loved ones though
honestly besides causing huge massacres, i dont think walking dead like slow zombies would cause many if any nations to disappear, WWZ argues that it was the black organ trade the real reason the virus spread that far in some bits but i dont see most modern militaries having to abandon half or more of their countries to survive his version of the zombie virus
bUt YoU hAvE tO sHoOt ThEm In ThE hEaDNonsense, pure nonsense
You pump enough bullets into something, unless that shit is being caused by Dark Wizzards, it's gonna stop moving
My Anatomy and Physiology professor really got his hackles up about this little trope
Even with the runners I just don't see it. In world war z battle of yonkers made me laugh. Apparently bombs weren't really effective. artillery strikes and the shrapnel weren't cutting through them like they should..... But apparently average folks with bats can rock their noggin
didnt they also lost the battle of yonkers with a tank brigate and a bunch of other military vehicles? like just run over the zombies with your tank silly
Shiiiiiiit 40 plus tons? Form a moving wall of death and turn the streets into a canvas
They could just get a bunch of jeeps with blades sticking out the sides like some scythed chariot and drive through the zombies.
If I'm getting tvirused I wanna be smacked with Nemesis's tentacle
This the book where the US follows a genocidal plan created by one of the architects of apartheid South Africa. and abandons the population , resources and industry of everything to the east of the rocky mountains.
This is portrayed as a brave and courageous sacrifice, and not an an incredibly stupid and insane thing to do.
they did this after, somehow, zombies just totally overran like an actual set up killbox meant to murder zombies, like idk I'm sure zombies are tough and all but they can't bite into a tank, artillery would just shred them, and so would like any number of high caliber guns, like, idk, I feel like the battle of yonkers or what the fuck ever was p. stupid
this is mostly because the guy who made the book couldn't decide wether he wanted ''realistic'' rage-virus zombies that are restricted to all the limits of the human body and can die like any other person, or straight from the grave undead zombies that can only be killed with very specific, arbitrary circumstances like silver bullets or destroying the head, etc.... So as far as i remember his logic about the battle of yonkers is that artillery and bombs were useless because uhhhhh .....it can't destroy the head???
IKR I stated l started trying explain and was like fuck how do I stop there's so much to talk about
That quote is nuclear levels of incompatibility with reality. German tanks piloted by Banderites are currently being destroyed in the fields of Kursk, again. That's how wrong it is.
You're forgetting one very crucial exception to all of this: "Cuba won the zombie war."
Edit: I just remembered, the end of that chapter is indeed super lib.
spoiler
Cuba received thousands of refugees that ended up turning Cuba into a lib mUlTi-PaRtY dEmOcRaCy
They also became a free market capitalist country, so it's still anti-communist.
what an exhausting plot point to make up in your zombie book lmao what trash; and this became a movie with A-listers? I should become a dreck writer
whats funny is that the movie decided to drop pretty much all ideas from the book and just made a generic zombie movie with the same name
And then the nerds got mad when it wasn't gonna be good either way
I remember this book also said that Isn'treal was successful in fighting off zombies because they already had lots of militarized barriers and checkpoints in place. No irony there.
I always like "The Zombie Survival Guide" much more anyways.
The book is definitely trash. If the rest of the book wasn't so bad, the West German chapter could be a good example of POV bias (like this is what he believes not true fact), because the East German commander actually kills himself because he can't live with having to abandon civilians to the zombies, subverting everything said about East Germans.
I would be fine if the whole book was Rashomon but the thing is all the points of view always align to reinforce a specific worldview, which is ultimately the worldview of a dumb mericabrain
Yeah but that's just the brilliance of the author adding another meta layer where the person doing these interviews is seeking to reinforce a specific narrative, just like the "journalists" of the real world! (not actually true, but it is kinda funny how you can read it that way)*
*You can't really read it that way because you have to bend the text a lot but the author is a fuck so who cares
I haven't read this since i was like 14 and I knew it was bad but fuck
The western narrative about Germany is that after the big bad war we taught the Germans a new way to march and after that everything was good. Please do not ask why guys like Heinrich Judenmurder got to keep his job.
I was just thinking about this book the other day. The chapter with the astronaut is another standout moment.
It's near the end of the book I think. It's from the POV of an astronaut that was on the ISS for the entire zombie apocalypse and it ends with the revelation that China made their own space station just to have the ability to blow it up and make it impossible for anyone else to get into orbit. Honestly the more I think about the book the more I realize that China is the villain of the story, way more than the zombies are.
Yeah, the spirits of those dead kids definitely told Max to do Bright
Fingers crossed, the author dies a painful death... Honestly I wish the same for more than a few fanfic authors who were outright YanKKKee/genocide-brained. There's little to no places in the Anglosphere or online Anglosphere where one can avoid this cancer (here is good though
)... wish I could delete the language from my brain tbh, hope someday the language dies apart from scholarly use like with Latin
