Hernandez 1 Katherine Hernandez Hass, Lynda 11 October 2013 WWZ Because the aftereffects of war, terrorism, and natural

disasters to closely resemble the scenarios of zombie cinema, such images of death and destruction have all the more power to shock and terrify a population that has become otherwise jaded by more traditional horror films.(Bishop, Pg. 18) War World Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks is an interesting book because it has a lot of views on how the world would react to a zombie apocalypse. Brooks gives the reader many details on how people react to something that is strange and unknown he also relates it to real historical event that make the reader go into fear when they read the book. The interviewer was writing a report on the Zombie War that had occurred. The interviewer whos name is unknown goes around the world to interview people on what they had lived during the war. Many interviewees gave detail on what it was like and/or what they did about it. Some of the governments responded well and a lot of them tried to cover it up. Nobody was prepared for the walking dead so they tried to ignore it and stop it form other people finding out. So in the end The official report was a collection of cold, hard data, an objective after-action report that would allow future generations to study the events of that apocalyptic decade without being influenced by the human factor. (Brooks, Pg. 15)Therefore, the interviewer wrote the book to provide the human factor. Brooks uses some conventions of zombies like the origin and spread that gives us understanding on how it all lead to the war, and the convection of a group of survivors is what makes this different to other zombie conventions. There is no one specific group that because everyone around the world went through the

Hernandez 2 Zombies War Many factors contributed to the spread of the zombie virus the way others were infected was by being bit. It happened in Night of the Living Dead, Zombieland, and Shawn of the Dead and in many other zombie movies. In the book, WWZ by Max Brooks the interviewer goes all over the world and the Walking Plague(Pg 37). In the first interview the with doctor Kwang Jingshu he said that; The bite radius and teeth marks had to have come from a small, or possibly young, human being (Pg.19). When he got to patient zero he asked what had happened to him and the mom came forward and said the boy had gone moon fishing with his father to see what they could find from moon fishing. She finally explained that the boy came up crying with a bite mark on his foot and the boys father was never found. When the doctor Jingshu got there, he wondered why they were so scared that they had to lock the patients up, but after seeing this boy he was also scared. Jingshu had never seen anything like these patients before so he did not know what to do. Another interview was Fernando Oliveira a doctor who did illegal transplants in this case it was a heart transplant he had a confidential guy that always got what him what his patients needed. The organs were tested but he said; We didnt know about Walking Plague then. We were concerned with conventional ailmentshepatitis or HIV/AIDSand we didnt even have time to test for those (Pg.37). When Oliveira went to see doctor Silva, because of a called he got he saw the nurse and knew something was wrong; Silva was lying in the far corner, Muller crouching over him with his fat, pale, hairy back to me (Pg.40). In one of the other interviews they had said it was rabies but no one really believed it because of some the nurses who has seen it and where saying that those were not rabies. That wasnt rabies! one of them yelled. Rabies doesnt do that to people! (Pg.49) For the most part the spread of the Walking Plague was by humans biting other humans.

Hernandez 3 The spread of the Walking Plague(Pg. 37) could not be contained when everyone tries to ignore it or not believe in it. The US government unlike the Chineses government tried to cover it up so that no one would know or get scared about what was going on. They suppressed it until it could no longer be kept in the dark because there started to be many small outbreaks all over. Not everyone reacted in the right way some had no sense way they did while other were successful in surviving. Zombie movies graphically represented the inescapable realities of unnatural death (via infection, infestation, or violence) and presented a grim view of modern apocalypse in which societys infrastructure breaks down. (Bishop, Pg.17) This leads to WWZ and how some people have smart reactions and others have stupid reactions. In this book, the Israelis government reacted in a smart way thanks to the Warmbrunn-Khight report was written by fifteen people who had previous research and were experts in their field. Thanks to this report, Israel had Voluntary Quarantine. Warmbrunn came up with the idea to meet up with Knight and they had both done research and read each others when they finished the told each other this is pretty bad, hug? (Brooks, Pg82). By the time they began to write this, the plague was spreading quickly. The stupid ones were the CIA because they did not want to believe in what was going on. Bob Archer the interviewee asked about what was going on The next day I received transfer orders: Buenos Aires, effective immediately. (Brooks, Pg.109). the copy was originally hand delivered by Paul Knight himself it was found at the bottom of the desk of a clerk in the San Antonio found office of the FBI. Three years after the Great Panic.(Brooks, Pg. 109). This shows that due to ignorance, the US was not ready for what was coming and so that made them weak. If they had paid closer attention, they would have been better prepared. One of the most common conventions about zombies is a group of survivors. Romeros

Hernandez 4 Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead start of with a group of survivors also Zombieland and Shawn of the Dead. But the book War World Z an Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks does not have a specific group od survivors but interviews of survivors of all over the world. This set this zombie book apart from one the common zombie conventions. Brooks gives interviews in which he details the war that officially cost some 600 million dead. It is the seriousness with which the author takes his subject that makes his efforts effectively chilling.(Schaefer) The lack of just one group of survivors makes it more scary because each interviewee gives details of what the went through and many of the things mentions can happen or are based on historical events that did happen. BROOKS: Well, you know, before I'm a zombie nerd, before I'm a science-fiction nerd, I am a history nerd. And everything that I put in "World War Z" has actually happened at some point in human history. All I did was zombify it. Most zombie movies just scary you because of what they represent but this books makes it more real. All the details that are given provided and that it happened all around the world and not just in one place that the story concentrates. This book shows us how people do not always handle every thing in the manner that they should. In most films, the survivors think they are the only ones out there and they just want to find there save haven. In this, the interviewees have already lived trough it but they did not believe in it or know what was going on. Over all, many conventions can make a zombie movie or book produce horror. The way the zombies virus spread is the scariest part. In works of horror, the humans regard the monsters that they encounter as abnormal, as disturbances of the natural order. (Carroll, Pg.53) The zombies were not just man but also women and kids. This is why the conventions of the origin and spread. The origin was in China and the spread was cause because of ignorance. The governments tried to cover it up and it did not work because it was bigger than any thing that had

Hernandez 5 happened before. It was hard to kill the zombies because the brain had be crushed to get the to die. In addition, something that makes it different is that there is no ones specific place or group that the story is centered. WWZ fits in the zombie genre because it has common conventions of the way it spreads.

Hernandez 6 Works Cited Bishop, Kyle. JPF&T (n.d.): n. pag. 2009. Web. 16 Oct. 2013. Brooks, Max. "World War Z." IBooks. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2013. CONAN, NEAL. "Interview: Max Brooks." N.p., 12 Sept. 2012. Web. 11 Nov. 2013. <http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=160758839>. Carroll, Nol. "The Nature of Horroe." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 16 Oct. 2013. Schaefer, Christie. "World Socialist Web Site." World War Z: Monsters of This Society's Own Making -. N.p., 25 Oct. 2007. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.