History Headscratchers / WorldWarZ

*** Just because Russia is already authoritarian doesn't mean that they are going to resort to random extreme (and pointless, as explained above) measures like decimation. Unlike the measures taken by other countries, the measures taken by Russia are not a logical outgrowth of what the current government could be expected to do, but simply the assumption that Russia is capable of any brutality, regardless of whether it even makes any sense. It's entirely correct that the author's portrayal of various countries is heavily influence by bias and a good illustration is the difference in attitude towards Russia and China. As bad as the Chinese government is (though it's not as bad as Russia), the Chinese people are mostly decent people, as shown by the Chinese who were interviewed. Russians, on the other hand, are just as bad as their government and have no redeeming qualities - even the point of view characters. There is no indication that it was failed contingencies that allowed the formation of the Holy Russian Empire. Rather, it seems to be taken for granted that (just like it's taken for granted that Russians won't fight unless under they are under gunpoint), that Russia's natural government is an oppressive totalitarian one. Finally, religious influence in Russia is much lower than in the US. The Eastern Orthodox Church may enjoy state backing, but all indicators of religion devotion are much lower than in the US and they have little influence in public life. It's yet another example of the portrayal of Russia being nothing more than a collection of negative and ignorant stereotypes.

*** Just because Russia is already authoritarian doesn't mean that they are going to resort to random extreme (and pointless, as explained above) like decimation. Unlike the measures taken by other countries, the measures taken by Russia are not a logical outgrowth of what the current government could be expected to do, but simply the assumption that Russia is capable of any brutality, regardless of whether it even makes any sense. It's entirely correct that the author's portrayal of various countries is heavily influence by bias and a good illustration is the difference in attitude towards Russia and China. As bad as the Chinese government is (though it's not as bad as Russia), the Chinese people are mostly decent people, as shown by the Chinese who were interviewed. Russians, on the other hand, are just as bad as their government and have no redeeming qualities - even the point of view characters. There is no indication that it was failed contingencies that allowed the formation of the Holy Russian Empire. Rather, it seems to be taken for granted that (just like it's taken for granted tha tRussians won't fight unless under they are under gunpoint), that Russia's natural government is an oppressive totalitarian one. Finally, religious influence in Russia is much lower than in the US. The Eastern Orthodox Church may enjoy state backing, but all indicators of religion devotion are much lower than in the US and they have little influence in public life. It's yet another example of the portrayal of Russia being nothing more than a collection of negative and ignorant stereotypes.

** It's implied that Gerry, while a genius with tactics and information gathering, is completely ignorant of virology. He probably didn't even know that those vials could contain uncurable strains, they certainly didn't warn him beforehand otherwise he would have actually watched before he just dumped the contents into a case. Not to mention the zombie was right there (and for some reason almost completely inert) meaning if it attacked, that glass wall isn't going to hold for long (at least, not if the zombie manages to call it's friends).

** A hugely simple solution didn't seem to occur to a bunch of scientists', pen and paper, 3 people went in, write down and give a list to Jerry and Segen each, of the door code and which vials to take (specifically adding a warning of which shelf not to take) that means that all three know what to take and what not to (the scientist who went with then would obviously not need these things) as a just incase one or two of them got killed, problem solved with the whole "I'll take one that might not be curable and kill me" scenario.

*** There is no indication that it was failed contingencies that allowed the formation of the Holy Russian Empire. Rather, it seems to be taken for granted that (just like it's taken for granted tha tRussians won't fight unless under they are under gunpoint), that Russia's natural government is an oppressive totalitarian one. Finally, religious influence in Russia is much lower than in the US. The Eastern Orthodox Church may enjoy state backing, but all indicators of religion devotion are much lower than in the US. It's yet another example of the portrayal of Russia being nothing more than the collective of negative and ignorant stereotypes.

*** RealityEnsues is a trope entirely about realism and satire, specifically how using the realistic consequences to satire another fiction trope. For example, there's an episode of family guy where Peter offhandedly blows up a children's hospital for a gag. At the end of the episode where Peter goes to claim his reward, he is instead arrested. His adventures did give him development, but at the end of the day he blew children up, children that existed in his world. It satirizes how some cartoons would do heinous things for gags and just forget about them when they become irrelevant to the plot at hand.

** Considering that as this entry is being written, a major country's leadership's take on a world-wide, deadly pandemic has been, "ignore it for six weeks," then, "One day it's just gonna disappear like a miracle," the idea that the U.S. government could approach fighting zombies with this kind of stupidity is unfortunately more and more realistic by the day.

** Baseball is not completely alien to and unheard of in the United Kingdom; it's just a lot less popular.

* What happened to Australia!? Seriously, we know about every other continent, and there's an Australian astronaut in one chapter, but no mention!
** Oceania was mentioned in several chapters, with it being made fairly clear how the fared (not well, what with all the seaborne zombies and boat people.) Australia itself did okay since it's able to provide their dying astronaut with a hospital bed.
** The book ''does'' say the Aussie government moved to Tasmania, same chapter.
** There is also mention in the book of traditionally-armed Aborigines facing down 'the Auckland horde', implied to be far more successful than the Battle of Yonkers.
*** Those were Maori from New Zealand, different country.

*** Particularly stupid because the Lobotomizer as described is basically just an E-tool, which is a real tool actually issued by the U.S. Army already. While it's mostly a shovel (entrenching tool) it is also quite an effective melee weapon that can be readily swung at the head,

* I don't get how this disease managed to get worldwide. It moved through human bites, and organ transplants, with a 24 hour incubation - but that still doesn't add up for me how this disease managed to get global.
** That's an simplification of it. You're neglecting the ignorance (nobody knew about it, ergo nobody knew to watch out for it) and denial (What, me, infected? You must be joking.)
** The fact the book says so little about how the outbreaks spread is at least somewhat justified. Whoever was on-scene at the start of an outbreak, and could've potentially told the narrator about the details, is either eaten or a zombie. It's a sampling bias in the sources' testimony that ensures we mostly hear about the aftermath.
** There was a period of at least a year where attempts to contain the zombie epidemic were a complete mess. China was trying to keep everything secret, and failing catastrophically. Thousands of refugees (either infected or with infected relatives) were fleeing into the Developed Countries due to rumors of a cure, and the Developed Nations (particularly the USA) were complacent about the outbreak due to the false security created by Phalanx. By the time it became clear that decisive action was necessary, it was already too late.
*** That sums it up very well: there's a period of over a year or more when people just deny that it exits, allowing it to spread in small numbers around the world - he said that in the USA they started in inner city slums, which is where illegal aliens would try to disappear, but over time even when people knew the bites were a fatal form of "rabies" or something, their survivor instinct kicked in, or people tried to save infected relatives. A major point is, would you honestly take out your own parents or children? That is, ''before'' it was well-known exactly what zombies were? Or even then, wouldn't you hope for a last minute cure? They only felt motivated to get off their asses and take costly "emergency measures" when it was obvious, but when its obvious is when its too late. Its a tacit criticism of that Hurricane Katrina thinking: "why didn't you give more funding to the dams earlier?" "The dams weren't obviously broken earlier" (even though hydro-engineering people working on the dams explicitly warned that they were going to break if something wasn't done).
*** Katrina was a few blindspots N'Awlins had gone, literally, decades without caring about until it came on them like, well, a sudden flood. Solanum was an entirely novel biological threat requiring massive incompetence or ignorance or OOC on the part of just about everyone. Millions of people, at least, across the world. The news media would ''cheerfully'' publish a story where the biggest medicine in Western history is a placebo, panic or no. The internet alone would basically implode[[note]]On Conspiracy Theories:Mr. Brooks, they don't work that way.[[/note]]. There are clinics in ghettos, with doctors who are trained to notice things just like this. And think about the hysteria about Bird Flu, which kills much less people than regular flu. People tend to ''overestimate'' disease severity, and Solanum looks a lot like rabies to the uninitiated.
** One of the key issues tackled in the "prequel" Zombie Survival Guide notes how the incubation period is usually 24 hours, but can vary by several hours or even a day depending on the location of infection and strength of the immune system. There's also the issue of people taking their infected love ones (Brooks pointed out one Chinese businessman who smuggled his already-zombified family to a nearby country). And while some of the infection started from China, Zombie Survival Guide implies that there were patient zeroes all across the planet, they simply took off after the first wave of infection caused the Great Panic and crippled the infrastructure.
** The slow incubation period is actually an ''asset'' to the disease, as it has a 100% mortality rate. If it spreads fast and still had a 100% mortality rate, it'd die out almost instantly since it's host won't be able to spread it farther than a walking distance. The fact that it needs up to and possibly over 24 hours to fully turn means that it can get across the globe, as an infected person can do a hell of a lot in the 24 hours before he/she turns. Also, while it spreads by bites, it technically spreads by fluidic contact, meaning victims are walking biohazards.

* The Standard Infantry Rifle. Why would you dedicate the immense resources needed to produce and integrate a brand new semi-automatic 5.56 weapon system by the millions when you already have one?
** The new-model anti-zombie army only went on the offensive about ''seven years'' after the initial outbreaks. Human civilization almost collapsed that first year, when they were barely holding the passes in the Rocky Mountains and there were still hordes of zombies in the Safe Zone. So the SIR was part of what was admittedly a long-term project to completely reform the US military, even down to uniforms. We have tended to switch to entirely new rifle systems when prepping for major wars in the past.
** The M-16 is a famously persnickety rifle, fragile and prone to jamming. The SIR was designed to never jam, and be the most durable gun out there.
*** The Vietnam-era M16, yes. And that was due more to meddling bureaucratic incompetence than any real issue with the rifle itself (essentially, the powder got switched to a 'dirtier' version, and the troops were told the rifles didn't need to be cleaned due to a chrome-lined barrel) The modern M16A4 rifle is a world-class weapon, one that serves as the base for some/many NATO service rifles because of how GOOD it is.
*** It's only prone to jamming if you don't clean it, which the military is trained to do every chance they get. It can actually take more physical abuse than the AK-47, due to being made out of milled parts rather than stamped ones. The SIR is implied to be an AK clone chambered in 5.56. This cannot be true, because 1.) It is described as accurate, something anyone whose knowledge of guns goes beyond VideoGame/CallOfDuty knows ''does not'' apply to the AK family. It is also unlikely because even if the M-16 series were the glorified peice of shit the book says it is, it would still be more practical to at least use the magazines, something the AK series is quite fundamentally incapable of doing.
*** True, the very first M-16 series rifles were prone to jamming problems, but that was largely due to insufficient training on how to maintain them. Every weapon needs to be regularly maintained, AK series rifles included.
*** Further, if they were looking for a reliable, semi-automatic rifle with a heavy stock, they already had the M-14 as well. True, it fires the 7.62 round, but that is readily available from ammunition depots and gun stores as well.
*** This troper can attest that the M14's performance perfectly matches a description of the SIR
*** Additionally, the vast majority of the 'persnickety' M16's jams are because of the cheaply made, poor quality magazines. Anyone familiar with weapons knows that a well-maintained M4 or M16 with PMags jamming is a rare, rare occurrence.
*** Agreed. This troper has run through many hundreds of rounds with an M4. Like any machine, a little lube goes a long way.
*** The AK series of rifle is perfectly accurate for its purpose. More than a few countries have adapted the AK platform into ''sniper rifles.'' Portraying AKs as inaccurate bullet hoses is, itself, VideoGame/CallOfDuty logic. AKs are also capable semi-automatic rifles; much of their reputation for inaccuracy comes from their rather high ''full-auto'' recoil (on semi-auto, recoil is negligible and comparible to AR-15s) and some issues with the original 1949 model. Note that almost all "AK-47s" in the world are in fact based on the ''AKM'' which was a modernization of the original 1949 model.
*** Your knowledge is about 40 years out of date. The first model M16 rifles were prone to jamming due to improper maintenance and bad-quality ammunition. Modern revisions (such as the M16A4 and the M4 carbine) are very reliable when properly maintained. And soldiers maintain their rifles religiously.
*** To be fair, his knowledge is 40 years out of date because Brooks' knowledge was 40 years out of date: the post is practically quoting the Zombie Survival Guide, which proved - among other things - that Max Brooks' firearm knowledge was absurdly inadequate and inaccurate. (His firearms information and recommendations were more inaccurate than they were correct. Sadly, most readers never bother to error-check him.)
** The M16 is only "persnickety" because the first weapons issued were done so in Vietnam without proper maintenance kits, because of a myth that was thrown around that they didn't need maintenance, which has now led to this nonsense about them being unreliable. With proper maintenance they're as reliable as most other rifles.
** You have to take into account the resources at the time. Complex weapons with polymer frames were just not as easily produced in mass. You are talking about needing to make tens of millions of the weapon that needs to be easy to use, have a standardized munition, and modifiable for various roles. The SIR was said to be made out of wood (plentiful) and steel (readily available) for its production. Add in the industrial complexes, much less molds and blueprints to make an M16 or M4 may not have been there so they started from scratch.
*** There are large stores of already-existing M16 and M4 weapons in civil defense and National Guard armories that could be rapidly mobilized to supply an expanding militia force. That and the actual internal design of the M16 is not complicated, relatively speaking, and is easy to mass produce once you switch over a factory's assembly lines. There was absolutely no reason to push out an inferior civil defense weapon like the SIR when you can just build more M4 carbines. Even
** The blueprints for suitable weapons would've been available in the safe zone beyond the Rockies, because U.S. Ordnance Inc. manufactures Army and Marine M4s in Nevada. The vast majority of American-made military rifles come from factories East of the Mississippi, however: getting sufficient weapons into the hands of troops would've required a massive re-purposing of the hunting- and sporting-rifle companies that are more common in the West.

* [[PunctuatedForEmphasis Bull. Shit.]] Massive explosions (like the ones created by the military's favorite shock-and-awe weapon, the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-43/B_Massive_Ordnance_Air_Blast_bomb MOAB]]) don't throw around and overpressure bodies-- they rip them apart. No zombies would be getting back up, because no zombies would be in less than seven pieces. The MOAB can level city blocks, the zombies would be a game to it.

* Several parts of the book go into depth about America having just gone through a long brushfire war and a massive economic recession (where have I seen this before?) Its entirely possibly that more ammo than was supplied was deemed "wasteful" or some such nonsense. This also fits with the theory that the military wasn't expecting conventional tactics to be as useless as they were. However, the problem is that yet again the book entirely ignores actual military doctrine and recent military history, which is a recurring complaint. IRL, doctrine for a "brushfire war" is to carry ''more'' ammunition because you have to worry about the possibility of ambushes 24/7 and irregular opportunities for ammo resupply. Troops in Iraq typically carried an ammo load of approximately 250-300 rounds, and went nowhere -- not even to the latrine -- without an absolute minimum of 30 each for their pistol and rifle. Over the past decade the US Military expended approximately 250,000 rounds for every insurgent killed ([[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-forced-to-import-bullets-from-israel-as-troops-use-250000-for-every-rebel-killed-508299.html source]]). The core philosophy of US military logistics, particularly for combat essentials such as ammunition, can be summed up in one sentence: "Only Too Much Is Enough".

* It got so much DanBrowned is not even funny: The resistance of human body to the Shock and Awe weaponry (answer: [[MadeOfPlasticine is not much]]), handwave the rest of the armament in existence, the effect of heat and cold in meat, metabolism and mobility in dead bodies, The overuse of incompetent government (Chinese government in real life while somewhat fascist, actually had a competent internal military and there are more competent Generals than those show in the book in the U.S) and this troper been a psychologist can tell that the way of the use of Moral Damage, the reaction to danger from civilians and its ramifications is pure [[GoshdangItToHeck crab]]. Doing Handwave and making some BittersweetEnding is not a Deconstruction.

* Is anyone else having a serious case of FridgeHorror after reading the book or listening to the audio version? Humanity more or less survived and beat back waves of the undead and reclaimed the planet for itself, but the damage to the ecosystem has been done. Widespread pollution has changed the seasons, heavily polluted the atmosphere and certainly the bodies of water, and that's just the man-made damage. Take into account that there are countless numbers of zombies in any sizable body of water, doing nothing but slowly decaying away. Max Brooks made it painfully clear that the solanum virus is toxic no matter how minute the dosage is and the virus seems to remain active for extended periods of time. That means sooner or later the zombies are gonna be disintegrated and their solanum contaminated flesh is going to spread throughout the rivers and the oceans and whatever fish are still presented will be dead. The various oceans are going to become toxic graveyards, the ecosystem is going to be decimated even worse than before, and it's just a matter of time before the planet can no longer support any form of human life. Humanity might've won the battle against the zombies, but that's about all they won.
** That's the point.
** Yeah, this is made explicit in one of the last interviews. "Tell it to the whales."
** To take a slightly more hopeful approach, the fact that humanity isn't already extinct means there's a chance -- however slim -- of solving these problems. A cure for Solanum might one day be found. The ecosystem could one day be repaired. It's a slim hope, perhaps, but it's better than no hope at all, which is what would be the case if humanity was already dead.

In reality, the artillery barrage utterly failed to penetrate the German trenches, and as a result, the infantry advance turned into a mass execution. The battle plan also called for the barbed wire strung across no-man's land to be chopped up into harmless pieces by the barrage; much like the zombies, the barbed wire did not get that memo, and remained a significant obstacle to the advance--much like a zombie, a coil of barbed wire is vulnerable to a direct hit, but will quite literally bounce back from anything else. The tragedy of the Somme was that, by this time, there was plenty of evidence that a frontal assault on a trench was never going to work: both sides has been dug in and stalemated for ''years'' by this point in the war, precisely because trench + machine guns gave the defending side an overwhelming advantage. The artillery barrage was a decent idea--it could have worked if the artillery had been more powerful and more precise than it was at that time--but the generals were fixated on the idea of a decisive infantry assault, one big push that would turn what was happening into the kind of war they were familiar with. The parallels make it very clear that Brooks's point ''is'' that they're blinded by doctrine; however, to make the metaphor work, Brooks has them go by the WWI playbook rather than the current, real-world one, which ends up muddling things. The answer to pretty much every "why didn't they use X" in this scene is "because they didn't have it at the Somme."

*** If I recall correctly, a point was made in the book that detailed intelligence concerning the Zombie threat did existe, but very few people with authority seemed to care.

*** What makes this more egregious is that there were actually ''several'' choppers already in the air but not one of them is put of effective use.