Genres: Action, Fiction, Horror, Horror Comedy, Humor, Military, Post-Apocalyptic, Satire, Science Fiction, Supernatural, Thrillers, War
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Summary:
It's been nearly two decades since the beginning of the apocalyptic global pandemic known as the Zombie War, and about ten years since humanity triumphed. The novel's framing device follows "Max Brooks," the author of the Zombie Survival Guide (referred to simply as "the civilian survival guide" in this book) and a UN Postwar Commission agent, as he travels the world interviewing survivors of the zombie apocalypse.
Although the exact cause of the zombie plague is unknown, the first cases of what would become a global pandemic were reported in China. The virus is thought to be ancient and was released as a result of the Three Gorges Dam's geological disruption. The Politburo is concerned that the outbreak will be perceived as a sign of weakness by foreign powers, so it is attempting to conceal it (much like it did with the SARS outbreak in 2002–2004).
Realizing that large-scale security sweeps for zombies can't be hidden, the Politburo creates a military crisis with Taiwan to divert attention away from the sweeps. Despite the lockdown, human trafficking, refugees, and the black market organ trade continue to spread the plague to neighboring countries. The first large-scale, widely publicized outbreak occurs in Cape Town, South Africa, earning the disease the moniker "African Rabies."
As a result, the public dismisses the outbreak as a severe strain of rabies affecting primarily poor African countries (mirroring how the first name used to refer to HIV, "Gay-related immune deficiency", treated it as a disease that only affected a minority group). Despite medical experts' warnings, world governments and the general public respond to the growing epidemic with total complacency, refusing to invest resources in disaster response and prevention for a full year.
Israel is the only country that has taken reports of the infection seriously, owing to a policy instituted after the surprise of the Yom Kippur War that requires its intelligence community to consider every threat, no matter how ridiculous. Israel declares a "voluntary self-quarantine," shutting down its borders and erecting a massive wall around its entire perimeter. Israel abandons the Palestinian territories in order to retreat to a more defendable position (including all of Jerusalem).
To persuade its neighbors that the quarantine is not a land grab, Israel allows all uninfected Palestinians safe passage into its borders before they are completely closed. This refugee policy, combined with the loss of Jerusalem, led to a brief but bloody civil war among Israel's right-wing ultra-orthodox, which was put down by the IDF.
The majority of other countries do not take Israel's quarantine seriously. Because of its overconfidence in its ability to suppress any threat and a desire to avoid causing panic during an election year, the United States does little to prepare. Although special forces teams are able to contain small-scale domestic outbreaks, a widespread effort is never launched: "brushfire wars" sap the US of political will, and the widely distributed and marketed placebo vaccine Phalanx creates a false sense of security.
A journalist reveals the following spring that Phalanx does nothing to prevent zombification and that the infected are not rabies victims but walking corpses, sparking the "Great Panic." As countries realize the true scope of the disaster, order breaks down around the world, and for a time, the rioting and breakdown of essential services kills more people than the zombies. As the undead take over entire regions, millions of terrified refugees flee to safety: Iran's attempts to stem the flow of refugees from Pakistan result in a nuclear exchange that obliterates both countries.
To put an end to and prevent mutinies, Russia decimates its own military. Because zombies, unlike humans, are unaffected by nerve gas, Ukraine uses its stockpile of chemical weapons against large groups of refugees and soldiers to separate the infected from the uninfected.
After zombies take over New York City, the US military sets up a high-profile defense in the nearby city of Yonkers in the hopes of restoring public order through a show of military might. The "Battle of Yonkers," on the other hand, is a disaster; Cold War-era weapons and tactics designed to disable vehicles and wound or frighten the enemy are ineffective against zombies, who use human wave attacks, can only be killed by direct brain damage, and have no self-preservation instincts. On live television, the unprepared and demoralized soldiers are routed. Human civilization has been on the verge of collapse for several weeks.
The government of South Africa adopts the Redeker Plan, a contingency plan drafted by apartheid-era intelligence consultant Paul Redeker. It proposes the creation of small safe zones, with large groups of survivors being abandoned in special zones as human bait, acting as a deterrent to the undead while allowing those in the main safe zones to regroup and recover. Governments all over the world assume similar plans will work. The US government establishes a safe zone west of the Rocky Mountains, relocating its headquarters to Honolulu, Hawaii.
Those who are left east of the Rockies are told to flee north, as zombies will freeze solid in the cold. Many panicked and unprepared civilians flee to the northern Canadian and Arctic wildernesses, where eleven million people perish from starvation and hypothermia.
Other safe zones are being established around the world by surviving governments. Scotland and Ireland are the only parts of the United Kingdom that remain. Except for safe zones in the Danish and Iberian peninsulas, as well as the Alps, continental Europe is nearly completely overrun. Russia withdraws to trans-Ural Siberia, while India creates safe zones in the Himalayan valleys. Due to its island geography and disproportionately strong military, South American nations retreat west of the Andes Mountains, while Cuba becomes a bastion against the undead.
In the Pacific, Australia establishes a safe zone in Tasmania, while Japan chooses to evacuate its citizens to Russia's Kamchatka peninsula, which is colder. China's Politburo, on the other hand, refuses to make any strategic retreats, making it the war's worst-affected country. Half of China's military revolts against the Politburo's incompetence, and the new government implements the Redeker Plan by retreating north to Manchuria, killing its leaders with a nuclear strike.
Within their new, limited borders, the surviving safe zones spend the next seven years gradually rebuilding their industrial base. The USS Saratoga then hosts a United Nations conference off the coast of Honolulu. While many countries are content to wait for the zombies to decompose naturally, the US President insists that they must go on the offensive to reclaim the planet. The US military reinvents itself to meet the specific strategic requirements of fighting the undead, including the distribution of semiautomatic weapons, retraining soldiers to aim for zombie heads and employ volley firing strategies, and the invention of the "lobotomizer," a melee weapon designed to quickly destroy a zombie's head, all in the name of leading by example.
The military begins the three-year process of retaking the contiguous United States from both undead swarms and groups of hostile human survivors, backed by a resurgent US wartime economy. Because each zombie is an independent fighting unit with no logistical lines or command structure to target, the war is a large-scale campaign of total extermination, slowly clearing and securing every mile of territory, because even a single surviving zombie could restart the infection cycle.
Other nations that voted to attack launch their own offensives: Russia, whose armories are severely depleted, relies on large stocks of World War II-era tanks, firearms, flamethrowers, and ammunition to wage a costly offensive against the undead.
The United Kingdom takes a patient but methodical approach, clearing its territory five years after the war's official end. France, determined to reclaim its pride and reputation after a string of humiliations and defeats dating back to World War I, charges headlong into the undead, its armed forces displaying incredible bravery at an exorbitant cost. As the war draws to a close, an unnamed British Army general observes that there are "enough dead heroes for the end of time."
The world is still heavily damaged ten years after the official end of the Zombie War, but it is slowly recovering. Hundreds of millions of zombies still roam the ocean floor, mountains above the snow line, and arctic regions like Scandinavia, Siberia, and northern Canada. During the recovery, there have been numerous political and territorial shifts. Cuba has evolved into a democracy and now has the world's most prosperous economy.
Tibet is liberated from Chinese rule, becoming a democracy and home to Lhasa, the world's most populous city. Following a religious revolution, Russia has become The Holy Russian Empire, an expansionist theocracy that has implemented a repopulation program that keeps the country's few remaining fertile women as state broodmares.
North Korea is devoid of people, with the entire population believed to have fled to underground bunkers or died in the outbreak. Iceland has been completely depopulated, and it remains the world's most heavily infested country due to a lack of a properly equipped military force and a large influx of infected refugees.
Shorter life expectancies, limited access to running water and electricity, and an ongoing nuclear winter have all contributed to a lower overall quality of life.
Despite this, the vast majority of those who have survived have hope for the future, knowing that humanity has come back from the brink of extinction.
