How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

Reading for me has become a passive activity - one that I only take to when I’m waiting for the plane to take-off, taxi to the terminal or eating alone at a restaurant in Denver. I still thoroughly enjoy it, but since I base a lot of what I do on efficiency, there’s rarely a time when I can justify spending the time to do so.

I picked up the novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War quite some time ago, but have only now started reading it that I’m in full-swing travel mode again and have an ample amount of idle time. The novel is a series of interviews with survivors from the fictional (?) zombie war - how they survived, and what they experienced.

The story is peppered with really thought-provoking social commentary and gives an epic stage for showcasing the human condition. I’ll keep from spoiling it foryou (since I haven’t finished it yet myself), but I thought I’d share a strategy that one of the characters explains that they proposed in containing the zombie scourge.

A problem they faced in this war is that conventional war tactics were completely useless against the zombies. American “Shock & Awe” strategies were completely ineffective against an enemy that could not experience fear, and there was no salvation against an enemy who could survive drowning, burning, being torn to pieces or exposed to extreme environmental conditions. All you could do is blow their brains out.

Stick together

The outbreak was way too far out of control by the time any sort of defense could be organized, and armed forces were so weakened and spread out to do anything about it. They would have to withdraw to a special safe zone like an island or mountainous area to eradicate any immediate local infestation and then defend against further attacks.

There’s no way to save everyone

Only a small fraction of the population could be safely evacuated, and this fraction would have to be selectively chosen to keep society going once things settled down in terms of labour pool.

And easily the most controversial suggestion by this character…

Herd the rest of the survivors as bait

Distracting the living dead from the actual evacuation would be of critical importance due to their numbers, and this would involve herding the survivors that would not be evacuated into isolated areas, defending them, and even resupplying them to keep the hordes away from the rest of the survivors.

I haven’t read far enough ahead to see how effective this strategy is, but it really gives you an idea about how unsettling the book is in how it forces you to think logically, but often that is contradictory to being humane in a situation like this. The really intriguing parts of this novel are those that deal with how different societies and governments reacted (or failed to react) to the enormity of the situation. I’d highly recommend giving it a read!

Photo by James Calder

July 9, 2008 | Filed Under Writing