Max Brooks new book, 'World War Z; An Oral History of the Zombie War" while fictional, is an adaptive interpretation based on actual military history.
Max Brooks has chronicled one of the most interesting and devastating wars in history. The fact that this war never took place and borders on the science fiction are beyond the fact. The war I refer to is World War Z. This of course (and the clues may have been out there with Mr. Brooks last work, The Zombie Survival Guide) is about the war between humanity and the zombie menace. In this self titled book, Mr. Brooks weaves an interesting tale of the all-out conflict on a truly global scale in which every human either became a fighter or became a meal. Told from the perspective of a documentary chronicle set in the last stages of the mopping up of this war (which lasted for no less than a half dozen years) the book uses an interview process for each chapter. Each person interviewed, impartially by the chronicler, simply tells their version of what they experienced in the war and it is left to the reader to piece together the total story from what you glean from these varied tales. In this aspect it is not much different from the popular documentaries on the history channel or PBS in which grizzled old vets retell of their time in combat in frank and earnest terms.
The book, which honestly covers a possibility which almost certainly will never happen, does look at our current military world in harsh terms. The adage that the military is always ready to fight the last war holds true in this proposed war. You understand this after reading interviews with a "Sierra-Hotel" F-22 Raptor pilot who was shuffled off to fly transports once her now obsolete billion dollar air-superiority fighter was grounded. This point is driven home once more when thermobaric weapons and air delivered ordinance fails to stop zombie hordes in an interview related by a grunt that narrowly lived through the Battle of Yonkers. The author points out that the simplest military technology turned the tide with things such as the infantry square (scion of the Napoleonic wars) and edged weapons (used by survivors as varied as an ultra urban internet geek in Japan with a katana to his claymore wielding counterpart in England). In what may be the most relevant chapters of the book, Mr. Brooks delves into how a crisis such as this could make today’s already volatile countries disintegrate. You see North Korea shut down, China fracture, Israel erupt in civil war, Pakistan sling nuclear weapons at it's neighbors, The Holy Russian Empire arises again and Cuba become a Mecca for everyone in a boat wanting to escape the overrun areas of United States.
With these scenarios and the refreshing way in which Max Brooks tells the story in an oral history format told by more than fifty people, it is honestly hard not to get drawn into the book. Any student of military history will turn from page to page and see something they have read about or studied whether it is a tactic, weapon, or organizational concept, applied with this very new twist. It is a book that is definitely fictional but in the end leaves you with a desire to plan to "retreat to a more defensible location".
