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  • Similar to my surprise when I reread world war z and discoverd that the cool ass zombie book I read when I was 15 actually sucked ass

    • Extremely funny for it to have the reputation of like realistic zombie fiction and then theres a whole chapter in japan with a samurai otaku and blind shaolin warrior monk travelling the lands.

      Not so funny is all the racism in it.

      • Also Russia being taken over by Rasputin, if I recall correctly. I still remember the last line from the Russia chapter, because it makes no sense. It's something about "and you know what the word tzar comes from". Which is like, okay so he's calling himself Caesar? How does that matter.

        The racism is kinda funny in a way, because it's just every single stereotype you can make up. The Brits fight with longswords and love the queen, the Russians have Rasputin, the Canadians don't exist.
        And there's some cool stuff like the french catacombs.
        The Palestine chapter should get him executed.

      • The first time I read it, I was like 14 or something, and everyone talked about how realistic the geopolitics were and being 14 I believed them. It wasn't for a few years that I revisited it and saw that it was the most liberal bullshit.

  • I burned through a copy of WW Z a handful of years ago.

    I liked the "war diary" presentation. Didn't really catch on at the stereotyping because I wasn't paying attention and enjoying the stupid story book when all the zombie entertainment was flooding the market.

    I did get caught up in how silly the USA's military response was portrayed. Kettling thousands of zombies in a city and then dropping bombs/artillery on top of them would do a pretty good job of shattering skulls and liquefying brains. Shit, just having any tracked armored vehicle with mine rollers on the front could have done a great job dezombiefying a city's worth of zombies just by kettling the Z's and then slowly driving in a straight light down a street. Instead, bombs and artillery were described as having no effect (unless my memory is completely wrong), which... just isn't how explosions work.

    There's entire sections of any modern military doctrine about digging holes/trenches for fighting positions and obstacles. Dig a series of narrow/shallow trenches with tanglefoot wire obstacles between trenches, lure a city full of zombies towards them and any zombie that falls down is pulped by the thousands of other zombies walking over them. Your bait team just walks or drives away.

    Of all the ways to bash the US military, criticizing its ability in destroying a large population of squishy targets tightly packed together is absolutely not the most believable story device.

  • World War Z is still the best zombie fiction (for better or worse) because it actually ends. Every other zombie story fizzles out or becomes Man vs Man with the zombies fading into the background. I cannot stress enough how much zombie fiction pervaded culture in the 2000s, rivaling MARVEL in the 2010s, so somebody pulling a Blazing Saddles on the genre was desperately needed.

34 comments