Book 8: The Zombie Survival Guide

The Zombie Survival Guide

Max Brooks

Three Rivers Press

2003

I knew this book took itself seriously before I read it, but I didn't realize it took itself this seriously.

The hype around The Zombie Survival Guide is pretty intense, and has been since it reached some popularity in the mid 00s. It's been on the must-read list for a while now, and I'm glad I got around to it.

It's definitely recommended reading for even those who do not consider the inevitable zombie apocalypse to be a real threat. Hopefully, most people recognize how fragile society, especially a post-industrial society, is. Three days' of downed supply lines will leave any and every urban and suburban community out of damn near every consumable good.

If folks know something bad is coming, it'll be even less time than that as people have a tendency to horde for a three-inch snow storm, let alone the erasure of the last 500 years of human development at the hands of listless, moaning hordes of the undead.

This would be a good way to introduce the callous and apathetic social participant to the concept of preparation. In the world we live in, shit does have a tendency to happen. Shit constantly happens, as a matter of fact, and it happens to lots of people in lots of places all around the world.

Outside of North America and Western Europe, we can observe a high frequency of shit happening. Although we do see occasional shit in the “developed” world, our shit usually has something to do with a repressive police state in one way or another.

In most of the rest of the world, the shit people deal with is more of a “Am I going to see my next birthday?” vintage.

Here's some shit happening in Greece:

And here we see some shit from Iran:

African shit:

British shit going down:

This is the shit some Chineese Muslims decided to bring:

No one is insulated from shit going down.

As much as people like to bury their heads in the sand and make tell themselves that as long as they have their toaster and their TV and their steel-belted radials everything is going to be A-OK. Forever.

The most casual observer of history knows that nothing lasts forever. The Zombie Survival Guide helps prepare, through humor and fantasy, otherwise apocalypse-ignorant folks for the very real possibility that shit will be going down in their hometown.

The book, as good as it is, has some problems. Its primary focus is on the United States. This is a mistake. I understand that it's impossible for one book to cover everything, but it would have been helpful to remind the reader that in other parts of the world, people know how to take care of business. They live and die by their decisions on a daily basis, so they may be helpful allies in the war against a dark army of soulless ghouls. This really isn't the case with the average 'Merikan.

It's other major fault is that it addresses the reader as though they'll be leading whatever post-apocalyptic group they happen to fall into. The universal axiom that too many chiefs and not enough Indians is a big problem and needs more than the cursory lipservice we see in The Zombie Survival Guide.

The case studies, at the end, were honestly a waste of time. It's not like they lend any serious credibility to the book, and they offer little practical advice. If anything, they reinforce the ideas covered in earlier chapters. Maybe some people need that. Most don't, though.

I've read several "survival guides." While most of them are geared towards outdoor skills and navigation, few have much to say about urban survival. There are so-called urban survival guides out there, but, as I understand them, their main thesis is that you should stay indoors, STFU, and wait for things to cool down. That won't be the case when the zombies come.

While it's nice to see the niche market of zombie survivalism develop (lots of books on Amazon), I wonder how much of it is Man Vs. Wild nonsense.

So while the Zombie Survival Guide takes itself seriously-- it doesn't bullshit you -- I hope people can make good use of it for more than just a laugh.