[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ringo_tide.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:The first four volumes.]]
->'''Steve Smith''': Adventure is something that happened to someone else, preferably a long way away and a long time ago. ''When'' it happens it’s horror, terror or tragedy.\\
'''Faith Smith''': ''Someday'' this will be an adventure.

In various places online and off, Creator/JohnRingo has mentioned that he didn't care much for most ZombieApocalypse fiction. So what does he do? He [[StartMyOwn writes his own]].

''Black Tide Rising'' focuses on a CrazyPrepared family surviving the initial outbreak and taking refuge on a small boat in the Northern Atlantic. After a few months, they start scavenging other vessels, clearing them of zombies and rescuing survivors, finally establishing a small, well, nation of its own, charter and all.

The main characters are:
* Steven John Smith: Australian born ex-soldier in the Australian Special Air Service, later a naturalized American citizen.
* Stacey Smith: Steve's wife and engineer extraordinaire.
* Sofia: 15 year-old daughter of Steve and Stacey, the [[TheSmartGuy Smart Chick]].
* Faith: The ActionGirl. As in wearing 60 pounds of combat gear, fighting her way through entire hordes of zombies by hand, and doing all that while being 13 years old.


Books in the series:
# ''Under a Graveyard Sky'' (2013)
# ''To Sail a Darkling Sea'' (2014)
# ''Islands of Rage and Hope'' (2014)
# ''Strands of Sorrow'' (2015)
# ''Black Tide Rising'' (anthology, June 2016)
# ''The Valley of Shadows'' (co-written with Mike Massa, November 2018)
# ''Voices of the Fall'' (anthology, 2019)
# ''River of Night'' (co-written with Mike Massa, 2019)
# ''At the End of the World'' (Charles E. Gannon, 2020)
# ''We Shall Rise'' (anthology, 2021)
# ''At the End of the Journey'' ( Charles E. Gannon, March 2021)
# ''United We Stand'' (forthcoming anthology, March 2024 release date)

A graphic novel titled "Black Tide Rising" is currently in production (having achieved crowdfunding in October 2020), written by Chuck Dixon, and adapted from the first book in the series, with elements added from the anthology stories and novels written by Massa.

[[SimilarlyNamedWorks Not to be confused]] with ''Film/{{Dark Tide|2012}}'' or ''Literature/TheBlackTidesOfHeaven''.
----
!! The series uses the following tropes:
* ArbitraryWeaponRange: From ''Strands of Sorrow'':
** Mk 19 grenade launchers are used from Amtracks[[labelnote:*]]'''Am'''phibious '''tracks''', amphibious assault vehicles used by the US Marine Corps[[/labelnote]] on a swarm of zombies, but due to limitations of space and having five of them taking up much of that room, they find out that "overkill" really does exist, [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill contrary to usual belief]]. Many of the grenades don't even get to arm before hitting zombies, who wind up just as dead anyway.
** The minimum range of Tomahawk cruise missiles is why the -D variant (cluster munitions) fired to clear a beach of a mass zombie swarm, fired from the USS ''Michigan'', had to be steered around the long way inland before turning back to their actual targets. The other option, moving the ''Michigan'' further out to sea before firing, was considered and rejected.
* ArtisticLicenseLaw: {{Lampshaded}}; Near the end of the second book, a character points out that ''lots'' of stuff that is part and parcel of a zombie apocalypse is totally illegal. For example, the systematic extermination of infected zombies in an area is technically "slaughtering civilian persons some of whom are and some of whom are not American citizens without due process" AKA ''genocide.''
-->Seizing vessels willy-nilly. Clearing foreign towns without clearance from the legal government. No Rules of Engagement at all.
* AuthorFilibuster: There is, at one point, a rant about how the pharmaceutical industry giants and the Bush administration may be responsible for the virus and/or seek to profit from the vaccine. It's delivered by an unreasonable StrawCharacter conspiracy theorist.
* BadassFamily: The protagonists. Dad is a former special forces soldier, both daughters (particularly the younger one, Faith) mercilessly slaughter entire herds of zombies, and mom is an engineer that keeps things working in spite of resource limitations imposed by the setting even if she doesn't herself participate in zombie slaughtering
* BuryYourGays: A gay cop is introduced, given some backstory and then killed. His husband later seemed to have been paired with his husband's straight partner sent to protect him [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse but apparently dies later]], between books as [[spoiler:the straight police officer reappears, alone, working for one of the villainous groups in ''River of Night'']]. %%Move to OutOfTheClosetAndIntoTheLineOfFire when that launches.
* ButICantBePregnant: A pair of side-characters who show up in the third novel are a 17 year old boy and a ''very'' pregnant 12 year old girl rescued from a rubber lifeboat. Whilst the people of Wolf Squadron are ready to lynch the boy as a child rapist, the girl defends him, asserting that they never had sex--something that is medically proven. The best guess that the doctors of Wolf Squadron can come up with to explain how the girl conceived is a case of extraordinarily bad luck; the boy happens to be one of those men whose sperm are unusually vigorous, and since he and the girl were both frequently naked and masturbating in a life raft which was perpetually flooded with a low level of high-saline water, not too dissimilar to the fluids contained in the vagina, some of his sperm managed to make it inadvertently into the girl's vagina and thence to her ovaries when she was masturbating.
* ButIReadABookAboutIt: One short story from ''We Shall Rise'' has the survivors at a Catholic school depending on books from the school's library to guide them through their mechanical maintenance and gardening.
--> ''With a little help from one of the middle school girls, Emily fixed all things mechanical for us--as long as the thing that needed fixing had an owner's manual.''
* ButNowIMustGo: Subverted with Bjorn Klunder, the protagonist of one of the short stories. The people he helped save ''think'' Bjorn left in search of someone else to help once they could survive without him. What really happened is that Bjorn had a heart attack while on a supply run and drove his snowmobile onto a frozen lake. He and his snowmobile fell through the ice, [[NeverFoundTheBody never to be found.]]
* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts: Efforts by the remnants of NASA to rescue the people in the International Space Station are shown in the background of the third novel and are given more focus in a short story.
* CallToAdventure: Discussed early in the first book;
-->'''[[PapaWolf Steve Smith]]''': Adventure is [[DidntWantAnAdventure something that happened to someone else, preferably a long way away and a long time ago]]. ''When'' it happens it’s [[ResignedToTheCall horror, terror or tragedy]].\\
'''[[ActionGirl Faith Smith]]''': ''Someday'' [[JumpedAtTheCall this will be an adventure]].
* TheCameo: Music/{{Voltaire}} shows up in the midst of an apocalyptic rave in the Central Park.
* CarFu: In ''Strands of Sorrow'', Faith uses the mass and speed of her M-1 Abrams tank to great effect in running down zombies, complementing the M1028 canister rounds (think "120mm shotgun") she's blasting them with, ultimately killing all but maybe ten percent of a quarter of a million zombies by the time she's done.
* ChainsawGood: During the operation to clear a [[spoiler:cruise line]] ship, Faith mentions several times that she'd like to have a chainsaw available as a clearing tool, although Fontana points out some of the problems with using a chainsaw as a weapon.
* ClosestThingWeGot: In the short story "Maligator County," a survivor who taught at a Sunday school conducts the community's nondenominational church services.
* CoolOldGuy:
** Even well into his seventies, Mr. Walker is able to keep up his end of the deal in ''Islands of Rage and Hope'' when the climactic mission is threatened by zombie swarms, [[spoiler:ensuring that every last Marine that went on the mission survives and returns.]]
** The main couple of "Up on the Roof" and some of their friends are in their seventies and eighties and help come up with a good plan of survival for themselves, their families and others they gradually take in.
* ConstructionVehicleRampage: In "Maligator County," the local survivors use a convoy of bulldozers, tractors, sprayers (to distribute poisonous pesticides), and combine harvesters to clear out the 7,000 zombies keeping them from re-settling the nearest town.
* CorporateWarfare: The Bank of the Americas where Steve's brother Tom works employ and organize various gangs and mercenaries to capture or kill zombies to harvest their bodily fluids for the (technically illegal) vaccine as things take a downward spiral.
* CrazyPrepared: The Smith family have enough plans for different apocalyptic scenarios, with [[CodeEmergency a code]] [[PoliceCodeForEverything for every single one of them]]. The father also has at least one other identity ready in advance, which he uses to keep the preparations for the apocalypse from being tracked back to him.
* DeathByAdaptation: Queen Elizabeth II and Pope Benedict XVI both die during the height of the plague, which is set in 2012, a full decade before either of them would die in reality.
* DeathByChildbirth: It's noted throughout the second through third novels that between the lack of doctors and medical equipment, compounded by the health issues of many survivors, a significant number of the pregnant survivors and/or their children are going to die in labor. The fourth novel, set after the "baby boom", makes it clear that this is exactly what happened.
* DeathOfAChild: There are quite a few children eaten by zombies, or who die of thirst and such on the ships and life rafts that Wolf Squadron finds. The two youngest cheerleaders from the short story "Not in Vain" (both fourteen years old) are among those who turn.
* DemotedToExtra: Stacy barely appears in the third book and is only mentioned in the fourth.
* DirtyCommunists: What remains of the Russian government has resurrected the Soviet Union. They periodically threaten to nuke America if what's left of the federal government doesn't share the vaccine that they're sure is being stockpiled for the US military.
* TheElitesJumpShip:
** Zigzagged with Tom Smith (the main characters brother) and his banker and pharmaceutical associates: They put a lot of effort into trying to stem the original outbreak, but they also set up fallback areas to flee to and ride things out for if/when that fails.
** Social media CEO [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed Mick Mickerburg]] gathered up an enormous yacht filled with his fellow executives, lots of scantily clad women, PrivateMilitaryContractor bodyguards, cooks and luxury items and went sailing off to try and ride things out at sea, like so many others. His bodyguards then attempted to mutiny and rape, rob and kill everyone else and rescue ships that arrive some time later find just two survivors.
** In the short story "Descent into the Underworld," Italian villagers come into conflict with the inhabitants of a nearby ElaborateUndergroundBase (complete with a movie theater and swimming pool) inhabited by wealthy American doomsday preppers. A year after the ZombieApocalypse, the PrivateMilitaryContractors guarding the bunker and at least some of the rich families inside it plan to steal the village's harvest. They also kidnap a child as a ReplacementGoldfish for a family whose daughter drowns in the pool.
** In the short story "Chase the Sunset," several Canadian soldiers discuss a list of their upcoming assignments. One of those assignments is liberating a six hundred foot deep bunker which houses the Canadian prime minster, a [=NORAD=] general, ten members of Parliament, and "assorted aides, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives and mistresses."
** ''The Valley of Shadows'' reveals that the Mayor of New York fled the city with his family for their private estate on Antigua very early in the plague, though he at least stayed in contact with the rest of the city government who stayed behind, in order to manage things remotely.
* EmptyQuiver: In ''Strands of Sorrow'', Faith's squad are horrified when they're clearing Mayport Naval Station and find that several of the nukes stored there are missing. Fortunately, a close examination of the base records determine that they were moved to Cape Canaveral during the Fall, where they are later located and secured by another team.
* EmbarrassingNickname: [[TeenyWeenie "Mouse Sack"]], a gang member who becomes one of Tom's enforcers, companions. He's bitter about it.
* EnemyMine: In ''The Valley of Shadows'', Tom negotiates a truce and alliance between the banks, the NYPD, the city government, and various organized crime factions to stay out of each other's way during their respective efforts to harvest zombies for vaccine materials, thereby avoiding infighting that would just destabilize the city even further. Unfortunately, the whole situation ends up falling apart when [[spoiler: one of the crime groups turns the police on one of the others with a FalseFlagOperation]], kickstarting open warfare between them just as society starts to collapse altogether.
* FakeStatic: In ''Islands of Rage and Hope'', when the civilian head of a Dutch-controlled Caribbean island is mentioned by Captain Smith to be screaming about Dutch Marines taken on a mission [[spoiler:to save Prince Harry from London]] by US Marine Corps Colonel Hamilton, Hamilton starts faking transmission problems to not have to deal with it. Smith knows the static is fake, but it serves as sufficient excuse to not further bother Hamilton with the issue.
* FalseFlagOperation: Near the climax of ''The Valley of Shadows'', [[spoiler: the Queens-based Jamaican crime boss Overture arranges for a zombie outbreak in the facility housing the remaining NYPD members' families, and plants evidence pointing towards his rival, Jersey-based mob boss Marticardi, as being responsible, which turns the police force on him]].
* FindTheCure: Some of the short stories involve scientists working on a vaccine and/or soldiers capturing zombies for them, with said vaccine being referenced in the novels.
* FunWithAcronyms: "ZAM" (or more commonly "Zammie"), for '''Z'''ombie '''A'''pocalypse '''M'''oment, for things that would only make sense in a ZombieApocalypse.
* FourStarBadass: One of the survivors retrieved from Tenerife in the Canary Islands is retired military, but when it all drops into the crapper on the London mission at the climactic battle of ''Islands of Rage and Hope'', he reveals himself as a Special Forces Lt. General who was operating incognito for the sake of not winding up outranking Captain Smith, whose command of Wolf Squadron is more based on personal loyalties than formal chains of command. [[spoiler:His actions when being swarmed by zombies ensure that every last Marine on the mission return safely and bring back enough material to make vaccines for all of the submarine crews]].
* GiantSquid: Downplayed. In the fourth novel, a trip to San Diego CA brings a ship of marines into a bay that, due to the millions of infected active, has become a perpetual feeding ground for both [[ThreateningShark Great Whites]] and Humboldt Squid. The latter actually freak out the marines observing the feeding frenzy more than the sharks do. Especially after a particularly nightmarish scene where infected begin falling a near-fatal distance onto a partially submerged deck and begin being dragged bodily into the swarming mass of squids. An observer comments that California's beaches probably won't be safe to swim at again for the rest of his life, as Humboldt squid are not only highly aggressive carnivores, but also highly intelligent, and possibly possess social inheritance... meaning that not only are these squids learning to prey on human victims, but they'll teach other squid to do the same.
* GilliganCut: Happens several times throughout the book, as part of the dialog.
-->'''Steve''': We are ''not'' going to a concert, in the dark, in zombie infested New York, and that's final!\\
'''Sophia''': This band sucks!
* GiveGeeksAChance: Billy, the protagonist of the short story ''Ham Sandwich,'' recalls how lucky he felt in high school that his pretty, popular girlfriend Cindy liked him, an overweight kid obsessed with electronics.
* GoodShepherd:
** In the short story "Up on The Roof" two of the groups of fleeing motorists who show up asking the main characters for refuge (and receive it) are Chicago clergymen and their families and congregations, who'd holed up in their churches before having to move out.
** Pastor Gerber in "The Road to Good Intentions" is a fire and brimstone radio preacher but also shows a caring side towards the people in his care, and a desire to reach out and help others.
* GroinAttack: In a discussion on how to deal with infected security people [[spoiler:aboard a cruise liner]] who are wearing body armor, Faith suggests a chainsaw. When Fontana points out the Kevlar armor would jam the chain, she says "come up", and makes a motion of cutting up between the legs.
-->"Ooooh," Hooch said, [[ShareTheMalePain grabbing his jewels]]. "There’s things you just don’t say around guys."
* GunNut: The main character of the short story "How Do you Solve a Problem Like Grandpa" is a gun hoarder whose collection goes well into the triple digits. His family tries to pressure him to sell most of his collection until the zombies show up.
* HatePlague: [=H7D3=] ultimately turns the infected into feral, vicious non-sapient cannibalistic animals who are human only in a biological sense. It's essentially a tweaked version of the Rabies virus that doesn't kill its victims.
* HeroicComedicSociopath: Faith verges on this at times, swinging somewhat unpredictably between the three parts of the trope. Justified in that she's a thirteen year old girl caught in a zombie apocalypse.
* HorrifyingTheHorror: Normally, zombies will mindlessly swarm anything that moves, even if it's something like a squad of heavily-armed Marines who are mowing them down with gunfire. However, once Wolf Squadron gets ahold of a working Abrams tank and puts it to work easily cutting through a horde several ''thousand'' zombies strong, the surviving ones rediscover their survival instinct and flee as fast as they can, the narration noting that their feral brains are finally recognizing something other than themselves as a predator.
* HumanResources: The fastest way of collecting large amounts of antibodies for use in a vaccine against [=H7D3=] -- the ''only'' way to make it in large quantities throughout the series -- is to collect the fluids from the head and spine of its victims, as it only infects higher level primates. The task is done under secret conditions by Thomas Smith and some associates due to the illegality of the act at the start of the series, and then becomes open policy once the apocalypse has ravaged the world and people are struggling to rebuild.
* HumanTraffickers: In the backstory of the Tom Smith books, Risky was a victim of sex traffickers who (prior to the apocalypse) gave her to a mafia member to try and curry favor. [[EvenEvilHasStandards He was not amused, and had them killed.]]
* JurisdictionFriction: Before civilization collapses, the FBI does everything it can to ''interfere'' with any research into the virus; in the eyes of the FBI, the microbiology experts doing said research are also the primary suspects -- and the FBI's concern is more "[[InspectorJavert find the guilty party]]" than ''"[[LawfulStupid save civilization]]."'' Case in point; when a college student figures out the key process of the virus, the FBI arrests him out of hand, denies any scientist access to him for some time, and in the process traumatizes him so much he isn't of much help in combating it.
-->They think about the perp walk and calming the public because, just because you have the culprit the plague is going to ''[[NoOntologicalInertia stop all by itself!]]''
** TruthInTelevision; after the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks 2001 anthrax attacks]], USAMRIID and the CDC sent some researchers to the FBI as consultants. ''The [=FBI=] immediately accused the researchers of making the attack.'' After weeks of harassment, one of the researchers committed ''[[DrivenToSuicide suicide]]'' -- and the [=FBI=] immediately [[DeceasedFallGuyGambit declared him solely responsible and closed the case]].
--->"As far as most epidemiologists were concerned, if you could explain to the FBI how something worked, in other words if you had the ability to do it, it meant to whoever you were talking, you were their current prime suspect. Which meant that nobody in their right mind in the industry wanted to explain anything to an FBI agent. Of course clamming up and being “uncooperative” also made you a prime suspect. [[Catch22Dilemma Catch 22]]."
*** Bonus points; not only had the specific genetic strain used in the attacks never before been seen anywhere in the West, a key process in weaponizing it was a closely held ''Soviet'' secret. '''Nobody in the U.S. had ever produced it or had any idea how.''' USAMRIID and the CDC considers the attacks the biowar equivalent of the Roswell Landings.
* JustBeforeTheEnd:
** The first half of the first book shows the early days of the ZombieApocalypse, as society slowly starts to decline due to the government infrastructure struggling to handle the crisis, before it finally hits a tipping point and everything collapses into chaos.
** ''The Valley of Shadows'' revisits the same time period, this time focusing primarily on the POV of authority figures in New York City struggling to maintain order and slowly being overwhelmed by the crisis. A scene in the last third, shortly before the tipping point is hit, has Tom point out to his boss just how bad things have gotten by bringing up how ''half of Staten Island'' has been burning for days because there's no longer an FDNY left to deal with the fires.
* KukrisAreKool: One of Faith's main melee weapons is a Kukri.
* LawfulStupid: Ringo's favored target in this series.
** On the federal level, law enforcement agencies spend all their time harassing their biotech consultants -- and anyone else with microbiology training -- ensuring that the disease runs its course.
** On the state and city level, it quickly becomes public knowledge that the only source of vaccine is the spinal fluid of zombies, so anyone caught with effective vaccine (with identifiable human protein in it) is arrested for first-degree premeditated murder, while someone selling sugar water gets off with a fine. Also note that the arresting officers ''then use the seized vaccine themselves.'' As a result, less than one in ten thousand people are vaccinated, and over 99% of the human race is infected by the virus and turned into zombies.
** Decker, a character introduced in the third novel, is initially hyper-focused on military law and procedure due to suffering extreme SanitySlippage. [[spoiler:Most notably, he's introduced having kept his infected superior officer alive and subdued in his raft because another superior officer, before being killed, told him to take care of him.]] It's noted that he's actually all but useless outside of a controlled, non-combat environment, because he lacks any sense of initiative. In the fourth novel, he manages to snap back to his senses, at least mostly.
** When they rescue the marine recruits from Parris Island, it's noted that due to the recruits having spent the months of the apocalypse constantly being drilled to parade formation, they have similar issues to Decker, if less extreme.
** After the incident at Parris Island, it becomes standard operating procedure for the Marines of Wolf Squadron to treat all Defense personnel survivors as "civilians", regardless of former official rank, until they have managed to determine whether they've discovered somebody who has adjusted to the realities of this new post-apocalyptic world or if they've got a (possibly crazed) idiot who can't see past the rules and regulations.
* LemonyNarrator: John Ringo goes full Snicket in ''Strands of Sorrow'' as Faith fights with Trixie at Ft Hood.
* LifeSavingMisfortune:
** In "Social Distance," a group of teenagers are signed up for an intense outdoor survival course by their parents to shape them up after (mostly minor) acts of delinquency. Being outside of the city when the zombies rise makes this punishment ultimately beneficial for them.
** In "Maligator County," the protagonist observes that tourists would have certainly brought the zombie infection to the area if the owner of the only tourist site hadn't closed it down for a few weeks. The reason he closed it was to devote more time to helping two relatives with health issues.
* LittleMissBadass: Faith becomes well known, both in the story and out, as being a hardcore ass-kicker, at all of 13 years old.
* TheMafia: Tom cuts a deal with a Newark-based Sicilian mob to try and stabilize the situation in New York JustBeforeTheEnd.
* MamaBear: The Secretary of Education tries to cease zombie-killing activities and put zombie-killers on trial for murder because she was separated from her daughter during the breakdown of society. Her daughter was almost certainly turned into a zombie afterward and it is implied that the secretary is trying to save her (zombified) life and/or take revenge on the people who might have already put her down.
* MemeticBadass: Faith is becoming one in-universe, thanks in part to videos made of earlier boardings of infested ships and with Marines after their rescue from the ''Iwo Jima'' (in which she played an important part as well).
* MenAreTheExpendableGender: The survivors that Wolf Squadron picks up favor women by a fairly high percentage, which is explained as a natural result of men tending to sacrifice themselves to protect women.
* MenOfSherwood: In the short story "Maligator County", several of the drivers during the ConstructionVehicleRampage against the zombies don't appear until right before the battle. Additionally, most of the gunmen and archers providing covering fire from the backs of the vehicles. Only one man dies, in exchange for 7,000 dead zombies.
* MundaneUtility: Submarines had a fascinatingly easy time of it. Their nuclear power sources are effectively infinite, as long as they have power they can purify water. Their stores are admittedly finite... but once they run low, they find a cute use for their sonar -- one active ping will knock entire schools of fish senseless, whereupon they simply scoop them up off the surface of the water with their bare hands and soup's on.
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed:
** At one point the team salvages a luxurious yacht belonging to "Mike Mickerberg", the CEO of [[Website/{{Facebook}} "Spacebook"]]. Faith recognizes the owner among the zombies, and promptly serves him with a 12 gauge round.
** Later in the third book, an entire chapter is devoted to an island resort where several celebrities are encountered, such as "Jerome Arthurson" of the BBC hit show [[Series/TopGear Top Speed]], and "Brandon Jeeter", who is described as a "[[Music/JustinBieber vocalist and every teen girl's heartthrob]]". Some of the celebrities that turn in that chapter are "Snoopi", [[Series/JerseyShore who is mentioned several times as being a reality show starlet from New Jersey]] and "Rebekah Villon", the female lead of the teen phenomenon ''[[Literature/TheTwilightSaga Midnight]]''.
** ''Islands of Rage and Hope'' also introduces [[Creator/EmmaWatson Anna "Wands" Holmes]], star of the "[[Film/HarryPotter Wizarding Wars]]" movie series. She joins Sofia's helicopter crew in "Strands of Sorrow" as a door gunner.
** As well as an expy of Harrison Ford (Harold Chrysler), who later joins Wolf Squadron as a helo & fixed wing pilot.
** ''Strands of Sorrow'' brings us the Vice President of the US, who's clearly this universe's equivalent of UsefulNotes/SarahPalin, albeit transplanted from Alaska to Oklahoma.
* NoPreggerSex: Subverted. It's mentioned several times during Stacey's third pregnancy that her and Steven's sex life is the opposite of impeded by her condition. Also, the pregnant 12 year old is advised by a doctor to begin having daily sex with the 17 year old father of her child because the medical benefits of doing so may be the difference between her living or dying when she goes into labor.
* NotUsingTheZWord:
** Given that zombies were previously regarded as purely fictional, the experts in the first book are initially reluctant to call victims of [=H7D3=] "zombies", but eventually give in to the inevitable as everyone's thoughts gravitate that way anyhow.
** ''To Sail a Darkling Sea'' has a Marine who annoys others by insisting on a shifting list of terms including "[[Film/{{CHUD}} C.H.U.D.s]]"
* NoZombieCannibals: Subverted. The {{Technically Living Zombie}}s of the series have no problems with eating other victims of the SyntheticPlague if other meat isn't available.
* OperationBlank:
** The clearance of the hospital at Guantanamo Bay for the sake of gathering vaccine-making materials is dubbed Operation Echo Bird.
** The mission to clear the Leeward Islands in order to secure a landing zone for the ISS evacuation capsule is given the rather on-the-nose name Operation Leeward Sweep (as Steve points out, there's not really anybody left to disguise the mission's intent from).
** The mission to clear and secure Mayport Naval Station is named Operation Rattlesnake.
** The mission to the [[spoiler: London Research Institute]] at the climax of ''Islands of Rage and Hope'' is retroactively revealed in ''Strands of Sorrow'' to have been called Operation Golden Lion.
** The systemic clearing of Marine and Navy bases along the East Coast is called Operation Swamp Fox.
** Steve calls his plan to create zombie-killing traps [[spoiler: using radiation-emitting devices]] Project Subedey.
** The mission to begin clearing Washington DC is called Operation George.
** ''The Valley of Shadows'' reveals that Tom's evacuation plan for his corporate associates is called Plan Zeus.
* OurZombiesAreDifferent: The {{Technically Living Zombie}}s, created by a {{Synthetic|Plague}} HatePlague, do eat flesh like Romero zombies, but will turn on other zombies if no other food source presents itself, and can go into hibernation to conserve energy when food is unavailable. Ultimately, however, these can die on their own by starving to death, and don't require [[BoomHeadshot headshots]] or AppliedPhlebotinum weaponry to kill.
* OverrankedSoldier:
** A side effect of most of the US military ending up either dead, infected, or cut off from any chain of command is that many soldiers/sailors/Marines end up in positions of authority far beyond what their rank nominally has. For example, the highest-ranked known surviving Coast Guard officer is a Lieutenant, and the de facto Joint Chiefs of Staff (a body normally composed only of 4-star officers) are a bunch of Colonel-equivalents chaired by a Brigadier General.
** And then there's the matter of Sophia and Faith, who as part of the formalization of Wolf Squadron's alliance with what's left of the actual military are inducted as a Navy Ensign and Marine Lieutenant respectfully. To be fair, they are both highly skilled at their duties (especially combat, in Faith's case), but that doesn't change the fact that they're only 15 and 13 years old, and normally wouldn't even be able to enlist, much less be officers.
* PassThePopcorn: When Dr. Curry is recruited by Bank of the Americas to act as their "resident MadScientist" (read: the person who can make their private supply of vaccine once it's discovered how to), one of the perks he asks for in his private lab space is several hundred packs of microwavable popcorn he can help himself to while watching the 24/7 news coverage and teleconferences by other scientists studying the plague.
* PomPomGirl: The short story "Not in Vain" follows a cheerleading squad during the initial outbreak who are characterized as energetic, yet perfectly nice, with a strong team dynamic and a willingness to sacrifice themselves to make more of the vaccine if infected.
* TheRemnant: After the ZombieApocalypse gets into full swing, the US military is quickly reduced to a handful of submarines and isolated pockets of soldiers and Marines, all reporting to a small group of officers holed up in the SAC bunker in Omaha. The rest of the world's militaries aren't in much better shape.
* SanitySlippage: Faith goes a little into this after they board a yacht that was taken over by the mercenaries hired to protect it and sees the carnage that followed, [[spoiler:killing and raping everyone there.]] It becomes more serious when they're clearing a [[spoiler:cruise]] ship later. Oddly it's not fighting zombies that does it but what she finds after the zombies are cleared out, [[spoiler:the horror shows in the cabins, even the ones where they find survivors.]] She turns Trixie, a teddy bear they found on one ship, into a CompanionCube as a coping mechanism.
* ScienceHero: Plenty of scientists working on vaccines or at the remnants NASA fill this role in the books and short stories.
* SchmuckBait: One of the methods Wolf Squadron uses for dealing with zombies, discussed in ''Graveyard Sky'' and used in later books in the series, relying on the fact that zombies are attracted to noise and lights. Both done on a group level (ships holding large parties before machine gunning down zombies, and mounting speakers on vehicles to play music as a lure) and automated systems (modified cargo carriers turned into zombie shredding machines).
* ScreamsLikeALittleGirl: The short story "Social Distance" has a youth counselor who is bitten by a rattlesnake on the eve of the ZombieApocalypse make a high-pitched yelp like "a girl getting free tickets to a Taylor Swift concert."
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere:
** Steve himself does this after getting Tom's warning at the beginning of the series, walking out of the classroom he's teaching and gathering his family to flee by boat, as per their emergency plan.
** Chris' first scene establishes that when the outbreak hit the cruise liner he was working on, the ship's crew immediately abandoned ship, leaving the passengers and cruise staff to fend for themselves.
** In the short story "Up on the Roof" after witnessing their chopper reporter [[DeadlineNews get infected and shot]], one of the news anchors abruptly gets up and says he's leaving. Ironically, while he's never heard from again, his co-anchor and cameraman (both of whom stay at their posts until the power runs out) are later shown finding refuge in the main characters' group.
* SerendipitousSurvival: In the short story "Spectrum" Enoch Mists over Water, an autistic Living History exhibit avoids the zombie apocalypse due to living inside in a walled-up park where he works the rest of the year that's in the off-seasons. Due to his condition he takes a long time to notice how odd it is that no one starts showing up again afterwards, aside from two "Betas" who he takes in as "volunteer docents".
* ServantRace: "Betas" -- humans who turned but later overcame the zombie virus -- start to appear after a few years. Numbering about the same as uninfected survivors, they lack normal zombie aggression or any ability to spread the virus themselves, but their IQ has been reduced to the 60 to 80 range... thus making them quite satisfactory for many unskilled jobs. Smith [[DevilsAdvocate points out]] that the uninfected human survival rate is around ''1%'', and there are a ''lot'' of important if unskilled jobs that need to be done. Most disturbingly, the initial baby boom was pretty much a flash in the pan; though ''every'' fertile woman rescued by Wolf Squadron was pregnant if a man was present -- resulting in ''two thousand'' pregnancies coming to term pretty much ''simultaneously'' -- but once part of the fleet conception essentially dropped to pre-plague levels and ''stayed'' that way. However, female betas are still fertile... and their test subject "just happened" to be pregnant when they found her.
-->(Slavery is wrong.) One hundred percent and absolutely. So is sex with a person who cannot give knowledgeable and intelligent consent. The term there is rape.\\
So is leaving fragile, helpless human beings to die lost and alone in a howling wilderness. So is famine from lack of agricultural workers. So is the rights you are fighting for dying out for lack of an educated supporting population, being replaced by a tide of barbarism, Madame Secretary. Which, since women will have ''no'' rights, will at least eventually solve the population problem.\\
Last but not least, whether we like it or not slavery ''will'' occur. History matters. Slavery has ''always'' been, back to prehistory, a reaction to labor limitations. See also: human trafficking in the pre-Fall world.\\
We need labor. Once it gets out that betas can be trained they ''will'' be rounded up and used for labor. Once that happens, abuses will occur and young ladies like Miss Katherine ''are'' going to end up barefoot and pregnant. Probably in brothels. And if one of them has AIDS or retains the H7 virus in its blood form despite the lack of symptoms? ''Wow'', do we get problems.\\
We can make laws against it. It will still occur, as will the abuses, and being ''already'' illegal that much harder to police.\\
There are ''no'' good choices left in this world, Madame Secretary. Only less bad ones.\\
''Which do you choose?''
* ShadowGovernment: The American federal government's emergency protocol for having a backup network in case of crisis is a major plot point, as it allows for a small remnant to survive and coordinate with the protagonists' efforts at fighting back against the zombie hordes and start reclaiming the country.
* ShoutOut: The short story "Up on the Roof" has a scene with people from a news station flying a helicopter looking for a refuge (and finding the main characters group). ''Film/DawnOfTheDead1978'' comes to mind.
* SiblingYinYang: Sofia and Faith
* {{Squee}}: Faith tends to do this when presented with new ways of killing zombies, so much so that in ''Strands of Sorrow'' she's specifically ordered to not squee before being told of the tanks and other armed military vehicles at the Blount Island facility. She does it anyway, before catching herself.
* SuddenlySignificantCity: With DC still too overrun with zombies to be safely used as a capital, the restored federal government relocates to the more secure Jacksonville, Florida.
* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: A lot of what makes this series so distinct is its efforts to put a realistic spin on the ZombieApocalypse. Rather than magical walking corpses, the zombies are [[TechnicallyLivingZombie humans reduced to hyper-aggressive feral carnivores]] by a SyntheticPlague. The virus is also engineered to induce the infected to strip off because a "zombie" who was clothed would ultimately become infected and die due to toxins from a build-up of waste products trapped in its pants. Because the zombies are living creatures, they can be taken down by any kind of damage, it's just a matter of bleeding out.
** The vast majority of female survivors rescued who had male companions turn out to be pregnant, simply because when people are stranded together in close quarters with no other major distractions, sex tends to become a default means to alleviate boredom and stress.
* SurvivorGuilt: {{Discussed|Trope}} in ''Islands of Rage and Hope'', with a US Marine sergeant having a serious case of it after surviving the zombie outbreak at Guantanamo Bay because her superiors ordered her to retreat [[spoiler:instead of trying to save them from a horde of {{Technically Living Zombie}}s in the prologue, and is contemplating whether to shoot herself in the head or strangle herself and save the bullet for someone else.]]
* SyntheticPlague: [=H7D3=] is a purposefully designed [[spoiler:multi-stage]] agent that ultimately turns its victims into ''very'' aggressive humans with no real sapience, basically being little more than two-legged feral animals.
* TechnicallyLivingZombie: Even though the virus has reduced them to such a horrid condition, [=H7D3=] victims are still fully alive despite being rabid and savage.
* TakeThat:
** The first story pulls no punches in depicting the FBI as LawfulStupid idiots so overeager to arrest suspects that they just damage efforts to fight the plague.
** The short story "Ex Fide Absurdo" has the characters talking about how disappointing it is that the ZombieApocalypse prevented the release of the ''Franchise/StarWars'' Sequel Trilogy. They agree it would have been fun to see those movies unless the filmmakers did something completely stupid like bringing the Emperor back to life, having a Darth Vader SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute, or killing off Han Solo. They then proceed to laugh at the idea that any filmmaker would be stupid enough to alienate the fanbase by killing Han.
** ''Liberation Day'' (which was written in 2019 or 2020) features a {{Jerkass}} ConspiracyTheorist who won't take the zombie vaccine even though this is putting the whole community at risk. Eventually, his exasperated neighbors physically hold him down while he gets vaccinated. The scene is a pretty blatant criticism of people who won't get vaccinated against [=COVID=]-19.
* TanksButNoTanks: In ''Strands of Sorrow'', Faith initially mistakes anything with armor and a gun as a tank, until two [=NCOs=] that are with her set her straight on what qualifies as "tank", which the assault vehicles they were initially considering at the Blount Island facility certainly do not.
* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: In general this is the attitude of those clearing the zombies, but in ''Strands of Sorrow'' during one attack against a horde using 40mm grenades fired from Amtracks within the ArbitraryWeaponRange of the grenades, it's mentioned that there ''is'' such a thing as "overkill".
* ToBeLawfulOrGood: A recurring issue that our heroes face is that the "Good" thing to do (aka, that which will help humanity survive the zombie apocalypse and reclaim Earth) is often very much not the "Legal" thing to do.
** This starts as early as the opening infection, when it becomes evident that the only feasible way to prepare large amounts of vaccine and potentially avert widespread outbreaks is to euthanize the infected to derive vaccine culture from their spinal columns: this is recognized as both very pragmatic and horribly inhumane, and the people who do it strive to cover up their activities as best they can, lest they end up going to jail as serial killers.
** ''To Sail A Darkling Sea'' features a surviving military lawyer who feels she has to resign her former position to be of use to the survivors, as otherwise she would be legally obligated to report them for the many, ''many'' acts of civil and military crime they are committing in the process of saving the remnants of humanity from the infected.
** In ''Strands of Sorrow'', when the Secretary of Education takes over as the highest remaining legitimate authority in America, the military remnants who have been keeping humanity alive face two choices: overthrow her in a coup for the good of humanity, or do the legal thing and submit to her ruling, even if this means potentially causing humanity's extinction. They find the former idea so repellent that they are all but willing to concede to the second option, before they are convinced to instead TakeAThirdOption: undertake a SuicideMission into the heart of infected Washington to recover a higher-ranked political survivor who can legally overrule the Secretary's insanity.
* TokenGoodCop: In the short story "Up on the Roof," Ceyonne's father, Jerome, is the last surviving cop in East Chicago to remain on duty, still trying to help people besides his loved ones in the last few days where society is still in the JustBeforeTheEnd stage.
* TooDumbToLive: Recovered at Parris Island is Colonel Downing, who not only spent the months of the apocalypse simply repeating basic training instead of trying to do more practical things with his recruits, but also takes one look at [[LittleMissBadass Faith]] and proceeds to chew her out as a glorified mascot who has no place in the Marines due to being underaged and not formally trained, before declaring her discharged. This makes him immediate persona non grata with pretty much every Marine and Navy personnel in Wolf Squadron, and causes him to get elaborately chewed out over just how big a mistake he made, demoted and ReassignedToAntarctica. Zigzagged in that, once it all dies down, even Faith feels that he was punished a bit too harshly and he is given some redemption.
* TrilogyCreep: As mentioned in the Acknowledgements section for ''Strands of Sorrow'', there was originally only supposed to be three main books, with at least one collection of short stories written by various writers set in the Black Tide Rising universe, but Ringo's Muse wouldn't let go, and at the insistence of a wife that was getting tired of his pacing around ''Strands'' was written.
* TyrantTakesTheHelm: Near the end of ''Strands of Sorrow'', the [[Series/BattlestarGalactica2003 Secretary of Education]] is recognized as the highest-ranking surviving member of the pre-Apocalypse US government... and she turns out to be a ZombieAdvocate. She ''immediately'' orders;
##All clearing operations halted, abandoning uninfected ''survivors'' in infested areas.
##All infected be captured and restrained instead of killed, despite the lack of non-lethal weapons or a cure for late-stage infection -- and the military is to search for her infected daughter while doing so.
##The heroes of the series be charged with crimes against humanity, stating that the infected are still technically human.
** The final action sequence of the novel is a desperate strike into the heart of infected DC in search of ''anyone'' who could outrank her, because her administration will get everyone killed within weeks and the military refuses to enact a coup.
* UnexpectedSuccessor: Under Secretary of Defense Frank Galloway, the man who as National Constitutional Continuity Coordinator becomes acting head of what's left of the US government until an actual member of the presidential line of succession can be found, is noted to have been ''126'' on the list of people with the authority to take that position.
* VestigialEmpire: Many governments and their militaries, after the HatePlague hits them, are almost totally destroyed, ruling only a relatively small part of their original territory. The US, Russia and China are specifically mentioned.
* VomitDiscretionShot: In ''Strands of Sorrow'', Faith goes to town on a horde of zombies in an M-1 Abrams tank equipped with M1028 rounds (canister rounds, think "120mm shotgun") that's shooting and [[CarFu running over]] many thousands of zombies. At "The Hole", the secure military facility outside of Omaha where the acting President is located, where they're watching the video take from an orbiting helicopter with a camera, it's said that the air carries "a very distinctive odor of vomit", and the acting president is shown lowering a waste basket, with the context of having just used it to catch his own vomit.
* VomitIndiscretionShot: In ''Strands of Sorrow'', when Faith goes to town on a horde of zombies in an M-1 Abrams tank equipped with M1028 rounds (canister rounds, think "120mm shotgun") that's shooting and [[CarFu running over]] many thousands of zombies, everyone in the helicopter that's watching the carnage loses their lunch, all of them Marines, and most having been previously through a lot of heavy fighting during the zombie apocalypse and in wars against ordinary humans.
* WastelandElder: Several such characters appear in the short stories, set within a few years of the ZombieApocalypse.
** In "The Road to Good Intentions," Pastor Garber is over seventy and serves as the leader for his community, an isolated town that struggles to keep out the zombies.
** Munro in "Return to Mayberry" and Joe Gallrein in "Maligtor County" both set up well-defended farming collectives so they, their large families, and various neighbors and relatives can survive early on. Later, they push forward to wipe out the zombies in nearby towns and rescue people who are trapped in buildings and starving to death.
** The short story "A Thing or Two" briefly features Robin, a late middle-aged woman in charge of a backwoods town that largely survives by trading with an extended family of nearby moonshiners for alcohol to use in their makeshift hospital.
** The short stories "The Downeasters" and "Liberation Day" feature a Maine island with about sixty inhabitants who struggle to remain vigilant against the zombies and deal with dwindling supplies. The oldest woman on the island, wheelchair-bound Matilda Grant, is also on the board of selectmen who make decisions. She exerts less leadership than the two younger selectmen and dies of lung cancer during the TimeSkip between stories, but still fills the role of a wise, elderly survivor who says things that are worth listening to.
* WastelandWarlord:
** Recurring character Eric Lamont, "King of Miami and the Kingdom of Florcubatamp," is a former soldier who was dishonorably discharged after failing a drug test. After the ZombieApocalypse, he turns most of Florida into a feudal kingdom, while boasting over the radio about how he'll take over everywhere else in due time. The people in his "protectorates" are fairly comfortable and well-treated, but he doesn't hesitate to have his enemies fed to the zombie hordes. Ultimately, he chooses to form a truce with the the restored government rather than fight it.
** The short story "Appalachia Rex," features King Dale, a militia leader who declares himself the monarch of Tenessee and refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the restored government, [[ConspiracyTheorist who he accuses of causing the outbreak in the first place.]] The narrator (a Catholic schoolgirl) and her classmates are concerned and suspicious that Dale and his men want them as {{Sex Slave}}s, although this is never confirmed.
* WouldHurtAChild: Many people comment on the fact they don't like killing the zombie children and while we don't see it happen the characters clean up the remains of children on occasion.
* ZombieApocalypse: Justified, [[TheVirus H7D3]] is man-made to create a zombie apocalypse. It's pointed out early on that it's clearly engineered to solve problems most zombie media wouldn't think of: one example is that the virus makes the infected tear off their clothes before they go completely insane -- this is because;
-->"They’ve got to crap. Every species eliminates waste. If you can’t figure out how to use a door handle, how are you going to take off your pants to take a crap? And modern clothing is going to plug it up. Eventually the subject dies of impaction and necrosis.”
** Solution?
--->"[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formication Formication.]] This refers to a form of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paresthesia paresthesia]] or ‘itching, tingling’ which feels like ants crawling on or biting the skin. Series of presentation is somewhat random, but at a certain point the patient tends to strip to get the ‘spiders’ or ‘ants’ off.”
* ZombieApocalypseHero: The main protagonists are a history professor and his thirteen-year-old WaifFu-happy daughter. Among the tougher and more successful protagonists of the tie-in short stories are a paraplegic septuagenarian FriendlySniper, a cheerleading coach, a bunch of gamers, a selectman on a Maine island, a family of moonshiners, and a farming community (plus refugees who include a GunNut stockbroker) that has a pack of zombie-killing guard dogs and ultimately goes on a ConstructionVehicleRampage.
----
->...as long as humans maintain boring, humdrum civilization, post-apocalyptic or apocalyptic fiction will remain popular. Because it is who we are in our hearts.\\
At our core, we are all savages.
-->--''John Ringo''