The Zombie Survival Guide

Infobox_Book
name = The Zombie Survival Guide


author = Max Brooks
cover_artist = Max Werner
country = United States
language = English
subject = Zombies
genre = Humour, Horror, Informative
publisher = Three Rivers Press
release_date = September 16, 2003
media_type = Print (Paperback), Ebook
pages = 272
isbn =
oclc = 51251720

"The Zombie Survival Guide", published in 2003, is a tongue-in-cheek survival manual dealing with the fictional potentiality of a zombie attack. Its author, Max Brooks, lays out detailed plans for the average citizen to survive zombie uprisings of varying intensity. In essence the book is similar to survival guides.

Contents

The book is divided into seven separate chapters and an appendix.

The first chapter is entitled "The Undead: Myths and Realities". It lays down the specific ground rules that are referenced repeatedly in the book. The most important of these describes "Solanum", the fictional virus that creates a zombie, along with details on how it is spread (such as through an open wound, when coming in contact with infected blood), treatment of the infected (suicide or amputation) and the abilities and behavioral patterns of the Undead.

The second chapter, "Weapons and Combat Techniques", discusses the weapons at the reader's disposal and weighs them against the various threats that may be faced during confrontations with the undead. The book recommends the M1 Carbine and a machete, as portrayed on the cover of the book.

The third chapter, "On the Defense", focuses on how to turn your home into a base where you could stay for weeks and where to go if you run out of supplies or the undead overrun your home.

The fourth chapter, entitled "On the Run", discusses the rules and necessities of traveling through zombie-infested territory. It also discusses types of terrain and the pros and cons of vehicles.

While chapters three and four emphasize avoiding zombies, chapter five, "On the Attack", specifically deals with engaging ghouls to ensure their destruction. It discusses the proper strategies and tools to eradicate the Living Dead from your area.

The sixth chapter, "Living in an Undead World" looks at survival during a doomsday scenario, a Class-4 outbreak would see zombies becoming the dominant species on Earth. Advice in this section is adapted from previous sections; recommendations for surviving a siege is repeated, though altered for relevancy to the long-term entrenchment a Class-4 outbreak represents. Discusses potential places to make your new home and what to do and what to watch out for once you have your corner of civilization set up.

The guide concludes with a fictional list of documented zombie encounters throughout history. The oldest entry is 60,000 BC, in Katanga, Central Africa, although the author expresses doubt to its validity. Instead, he presents evidence from 3,000 BC in Hieraconpolis, Egypt as the first verifiable instance of a zombie outbreak. The most recent entry is 2002, in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.

The Appendix takes the form of a sample "Outbreak Journal", with the fictional author noting a covered-up zombie outbreak being seen on the local news. The following pages are blank entries, for the reader to use as a basis for their own journal; their inclusion furthers the overall feel that the book is a survival guide to a life-threatening possibility.

The journal section also introduces a lead in to the novel, World War Z, in describing how a group of zombies came to be in China, which is listed as the outbreak's source.

Solanum

The guide attributes the zombie outbreaks to a virus known as "Solanum". The disease was first recorded by Jan Vanderhaven while traveling through South America. He describes those infected with the disease as bearing festering sores, mottled skin, and decomposing flesh. He said victims show no rational thought or recognition of anything previously familiar to the victim. They neither sleep nor drink water, and reject all food apart from living prey. The infected will attempt to eat all living prey that it observes. Vanderhaven describes seeing a hospital orderly throw a living rat at an infected individual, who then consumed the rat whole.

Solanum is described as working by traveling through the bloodstream from the point of entry to the brain, where the virus replicates in all cells in the frontal lobe, eventually destroying them. All bodily functions cease during this period, including respiration and heartbeat. The infected individual falls into a coma during this period and eventually awakens as a zombie. The zombie does not need air, food, water, or even a heart to live. Their one and only goal will be to find and infect other individuals. The only way to stop this is to destroy the brain or remove the head. Note that if the zombie is decapitated, the head still remains a threat.

The symptoms occur in the following order. The timeline may be several hours off, depending on the size, number and location of the bites, and the constitution of the victim.

Hour 1- Pain and discoloration of the infected area. Immediate clotting of the wound.

Hour 5- Fever between 99 F. and 103 F. Chills, slight dementia, vomiting, and acute pain in the joints.

Hour 8- Numbing of extremities and infected area, increased fever from 103 F to 106 F. increased dementia, loss of muscular coordination

Hour 11- Paralysis in the lower body, overall numbness, slowed heart rate

Hour 16- Coma

Hour 20- Cardiac arrest, cessation of brain activity

Hour 23- Reanimation

Solanum is extremely contagious and 100% fatal. Physical contact with infected blood or saliva always result in infection. Ingestion of infected flesh results in permanent death unless the victim has open mouth sores. Solanum is fatal to all living organisms, though humans are the only organisms that will reanimate. Parasitic insects such as mosquitoes reject infected hosts 100% of the time. All animals will instinctively run, swim or fly away from zombies.

Comic

Random House will be publishing a comic based off the "The Zombie Survival Guide" to be written by Brooks. It will be titled "The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks" and will be released on January 6, 2009. [cite web |url=http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307405777 |title=The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks |accessdate=2008-09-17 |work= |publisher=Random House |date= ] [cite web |url=http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/recordedattacks/ |title=Recorded Attacks video |accessdate=2008-09-17 |work= |publisher=Random House |date= ]

References

ee also

*"World War Z"
*"How to Survive a Robot Uprising" - A similarly styled book on how to deal with rebellious robots.
* Zombie Squad
* Zombie apocalypse
* Zombies in popular culture

External links

* [http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/zombiesurvivalguide/ The Zombie Survival Guide Website]
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2003/10/26/DI2005033114558.html Washington Post interview with Max Brooks]
* [http://futurefire.net/2005.02/review/d-brooks.html Review of "ZSG"] in "The Future Fire" 2
* [http://suicidegirls.com/words/Max+Brooks/ Daniel Robert Epstein of SuicideGirls interviews Max Brooks]
* [http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/hierakonpolis/zombies.html Zombie Attack at Hierakonpolis by Renée Friedman (Archaeological Institute of America publication)]