Critical Mick

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The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead
by Max Brooks
Three Rivers Press, 2003

Pay attention! This review could save your life.

The BBC news recently reported on a terrifying new strain of the H1N1 swine flu virus: H1Z1. Though the article was swiftly surpressed by powers unknown, many blogs have copied its alarming warning. This fatal H1Z1 variant can restart the heart, but the brain damage caused results in a victims staggering violently around, injuring those who try to assist them. ZOMBIES!

An Austin TV station (KXAN) has also reported on warnings of a zombie outbreak in Texas. And, I have myself seen footage shot in a maximum security prison in the Cebu Province of the Philippines. Imagine those hundreds of scary walking corpses from Michael Jackson's Thriller video, but in orange jumpsuits. ZOMBIES AHEAD! RUN! This will come as no surprise to novelist and lecture circuit sensation Max Brooks, who has for years been warning of the dangers of the virus and urging the security-minded to prepare themselves. A surprise hit at the bookstores, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead explains the pathology of the virus (which the scientist who discovered it called Solanum), the official criteria for incident classification (a Level 1 outbreak, Level 2, and so on), and what measures an average citizen can take to avoid death. And, of course, the walking dead. As smaller outbreaks will be managed by the authorities, Brook's book focuses mainly on what a person will need to know when no civil institutions are left to care for them. What if, after calling 911, there are no cops or ambulances coming? What if there never will be again? Rather than panic or perish, those who have read The Zombie Survival Guide will be cabable of avoiding the infected, travelling safely to a region of lesser danger, and defending themselves if they must.

Max Brooks' 2007 novel, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, is written with creativity, style and well-researched detail- all of which set him above the swarming, stinking masses of lousy post-Apocalyptic fiction which plague the earth. More in Mick's December 2008 review.

Broken down into sections full of practical tips about terrain, securing buildings and safe transportation, Brooks presents his Zombie Survival Guide in a format that harkens back to a Cold War-era manual about Civil Defense I once bought at a garage sale. It even has the same focus on working as a team and maintaining vigilant self-disciple. A detailed comparison argues the merits of the AK-47 over the M-16 and there are strong warnings against poor grooming and inappropriate clothing. Voodoo myths and other supernatural misconceptions are dismissed rationally by a section detailing the medical cause of zombie reanimation. It's so matter-of-fact, fifteen percent of the population will be convinced that the opponents described are real.

The word "anus" appears in the first ten pages and some of the guide's crude illustrations are inadvertantly funny, but Brooks leaves to us lame jokes to us bloggers. In the The Zombie Survival Guide, he narrates his tips about defense against zombies with a straight face- which, to absurdist like me, is constantly hillarious, and dead, dead cool.

My favorite section is the appendix which traces zombie outbreaks throughout human history. It transpires that George Romero did not invent this particular monster. To riff on The Cranberries: it's been the same old thing since way before 1916. Hadrian's Wall was actually built to defend the Roman Empire from the walking dead. What an eye-opener! Brooks also decribes the French Foreign Legion, beseiged by an undead army in the North African desert for three years. What imagination! And an American Indian who roamed the frontier, single-handedly avenging himself against a foe no one else knew how to fight. Now that's a character! There could be whole films made from each of Brooks' short historical entries. Even the one about rival Los Angeles street gangs who had to unite against the ghouls. Yo! What fun!

Zombee-Gees, ZomBTO: withering 70's musicians still shambling around the tour circuit

Critical Mick says: Informative, inventive and subversive, The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead is required reading in case of armageddon or plain boredom. It's an extremely well-made send-up. (At least, I hope it's a joke!)

How many drooling, looming zombies would it take to get Mick to finally set Max Brooks' book aside and run? Eight big stinkin' ones.

Yo! This review and all content on the DFA Guide site are copyright 2009 Mick Halpin. All links to other sites and documents are copyright to whatever source wrote something cool enough for Mick to give it a referral. Try to claim them as your own work and bad karma will catch up with you, baby. Believe it.

Irate, huh? Managed to piss off another one? Direct your hatemail to mick @ mickhalpin dot com.

This Page Was Last Updated On 4 July, 2009.