- Brooks' earlier Zombie Survival Guide (and other WWZ universe materials) show that the zombie virus has been around for a while on Earth, dating back thousands of years. Its just that this is the first time it spread in the modern world, where modern international travel allowed it to easily turn into a pandemic. There are "recorded outbreaks" going back to Roman Britain and earlier; these were the basis for legends about "zombies" or similar undead revenants throughout history. What was the *ultimate* origin of the zombie virus, thousands of years ago? Who knows. The outbreak that caused World War Z started in China, and is vaguely implied to be the result of the People's Republic of China continuing bio-warfare experiments with the zombie-virus that Imperial Japan was conducting in World War II, as part of Japan's real-life "Unit 731" bio-warfare division.
- Okay, the aliens are inept at their methods and finally got it right.
- And he came back to stop the zombie apocalypse. He succeeded and decided to publish his zombie survival guide to get a lot of money because his TARDIS got destroyed.
- Or, he came back to our time period AFTER he failed to prevent the zombie apocalypse of his favorite pet planet. He published the Guide to help prepare us years in advance, and because knowledge of zombies isn't mainstream yet, he published it as a comedy, to get it past everybody's scrutiny/disbelief. He's training us, but disguised it as entertainment. Classic Doctor.
- The Narrator of WWZ is the same Max Brooks who wrote the Guide used in that universe.
- Firstly, Australia has the benefit of being a large island nation with lots of resources and small population. However, not only is being an island no protection against sea-travelling zombies, there's one other major problem; Australia is a mere short boat-ride away from Indonesia, which has a population of over 200 million. Just as desperate people poured into Europe trying to find a cure for the infection, so will thousands of people pour into northern Australia. Our navy would probably try their best to create a blockade, but would probably be completely overwhelmed even if they did resort to sinking all refugee ships. Ergo, I propose that northern Australia would be overrun with zombies very quickly. As for the rest of the country, it's unlikely the infected refugees would get down to the southern part of the country very quickly because of the sheer distance, and so the southern population would get some sort of warning as the situation up north deteriorated.
- Secondly, the major cities would become infected first thanks to international travel. How bad this would be would vary from state-to-state; Western Australia, for example, has a state city that is very isolated and would therefore slow infection to other towns (however, miners flying between Perth and mining towns/sites would spread infection to remote areas). The eastern states of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria would have major problems though - a large chunk of Australia's population lives between all these cities and travel up and down the coast is frequent. As the eastern coast becomes a major hotbed of infection, people will desperately try to run inland to smaller towns, swamping them with infected refugees.
- Thirdly, Australians have a large amount of cultural cynicism towards authority, with the particular belief that all politicians are lying weasels. So when the government tries to cover-up the incoming zombies and tell a spin story, Australians are far more likely to dismiss it and suspect something's going on. This doesn't necessarily means that any Australian would grasp the situation quicker than people in other countries, but overall Australians wouldn't believe that the government has it under control, that the army will fix everything, and other placating denials.
- Finally, Australia has a small (but highly trained) army and very little gun ownership. Since it would be impossible for the army to cover such a huge country, the army will focus on protecting the government and important resources, leaving most Australians to fend for themselves. Rural areas would have an advantage over urban areas, as they would have more access to firearms, trained civilian teams (volunteer firefighters, etc), farms, and remote locations. However, water usually has to be pumped over many kilometers to these remote areas, and drought and fire will be even bigger problems than zombies.
- Overall? I'd say that some parts of Australia would be heavily infested, and the majority of survivors would be living within remote towns that didn't succumb to drought, fire, sickness, etc. Hell, considering how utterly isolated you could be, many of these towns would justifiably think they were the last people on earth. Clearing out Australia would also be difficult, considering its vast size and that everyone would have fled inland to the wilderness. But overall, Australia has it 50-50; some people are screwed, but some people will be fine if they're smart.
- One can only wonder then, with EVERYTHING in Australia trying to kill you, whether the zombies or humans will die out first should be debatable. On a serious note, most of Australia's landmass is desert; zombies decompose faster due to heat. As put in one of the pages on Aussies: It's like Russia. In Russia if you invade you can keep marching until you freeze to (un)death. Invade Northwest Australia and you can keep marching until you decompose from heatstroke.
- It's 2850km (as the crow flies) between Brisbane and Darwin, and most of that is desert. Given a rate of movement of 5km/h (the average LIVING human walking speed, so that's probably generous for a corpse), it would take 23 days for a zombie to reach Brisbane. Even supposing reinfection at rural townships along the way, that's more than long enough for a corpse to dessicate in the heat, or be eaten by our wonderful insect residents.
- According to the ZSG, the fastest zombies take about one step every 1.5 seconds. Assuming a stride of about 2 feet/61 cm, that's a speed of 0.45 miles/0.73 km per hour. That's 162 days to cover 2850 kilometers (though insects will not eat zombie flesh, so they would not be a factor in zombie decomposition).
- Also, bush-fires.
- Made even more interesting by the sheer amount of eucalyptus trees all over Australia. What do eucalyptus tree leaves have in abundance? Eucalyptus oil. Any kid who's had a bonfire can tell you how fast branches of dry eucalyptus leaves go up; they practically explode, and they're part of the reason (along with drought) why our bushfires spread so fast. (There are stories of bushfires overtaking people driving in their cars.) So on one hand, zombies are going to be cooked pretty quickly. On the other hand, so is everyone else.
- I checked the Zombie Survival Guide and it says nothing specific about how dry deserts affect zombies. After all, mummies last longer in deserts, especially since there is such a huge lack of moisture. They'd rot faster in the northern tropics, true, but then you have the sheer mass of projected zombies. But even if they did rot faster, don't forget that Australia is the harshest continent to life apart from Antarctica. You can't live in the Australian wilderness unless you have the knowledge, which most people don't.
- It stands to reason that the zombies would die in the outback. Zombie flesh is poisoned to prevent decay, but they'd still desiccate. Sure mummies can be preserved for thousands of years, but have you ever tried to move one's limb? It would snap in half. In a desert, a zombie should dry out like a raisin before keeling over, immobile. Still, though, I can't see a lot of people taking advantage of this to survive—even ignoring the fact that the few people would actually know how to survive there, the number of people who can live off the land is limited by the calories that can be harvested from it, and isn't Australia so notoriously poor in natural resources that it's actually cheaper to import their food from overseas?
- Exactly. You can escape to the outback and be safe from zombies, but then you'd have to suffer some of the harshest environments on earth. In this situation, both the zombies and the country itself are your biggest enemies, and you have to decide which one you'd rather take on.
- Also, depends on the resource. Australia has big grain, rice, sheep, cattle and fruit industries, but all of that hinges on how lucky you are with the rains. If you're in a good weather cycle you can have a farm in a pretty remote area and survive fine. But the moment the drought or flooding shows up - and it will - then you're in a damn big pickle.
- Keep in mind the struggles early settlers had in Australia. It was extremely difficult for them to farm the land because of the soil quality, and this was on the east coast, where the drought isn't so bad and where everyone lives. You can just about forget about farming land out west, which is where most people would flee.
- Don't forget that aside from the environment, the reason why everything in Australia can kill you is because of poison, which will have no effect on zombies. So you can forget about using our armies of spiders against the undead.
- It's mentioned in the section about the ISS astronauts that the government evacuated to Tasmania. But I can't help thinking this is the usual "oh, we'd be fine" that also seems to pop up whenever nuclear war is discussed. (I am Australian, before you start throwing rocks at me.)
- I actually doubt how well that would actually go - Tasmania is remote and has lots of lush greenery, but it's also a short ride away from the mainlaid. Could they really protect all of Tasmania from 20 million desperate refugees trying to escape on any water vessel they can?
- Not the point. It's to get away from the zombies, full stop. Refugees can get there by boat, but they have to be screened first. The is exactly the same as the British evacuating north of the Antonine Wall, the Germans north of the Kiel Canal, the Americans west of the Rockies... it's mentioned several times the number of refugees that made it there. That's the whole point — get to a defendable position, and get as many people there as you can.
- No, it is the point. The Survival Guide has mentioned several times that your base in a full-on zombie apocolypse not only has to be isolated from zombies but from people. Refugees will certainly bring the virus with them, and how the hell is Australia's small military going to screen each and every single boat pegging their way to Tasmania? The only things you'd get is Tasmania swarming with zombies. If you want to save your government for the long term, you get to a defendable position and make sure no one else can get there.
- The cornerstone of the Redeker Plan is not just withdrawing your government to a smaller area, but concentrating every available ounce of military firepower in said area. The refugees who are able to make it to the boats and get to Tasmania (assuming they know that's the rally point; see the German narrative where they switch from civilian designations to grid codes before ordering the final bugout, and the American "Go North" debacle) will find themselves facing down every able-bodied Australian infantryman available, and can be contained on their boats by the military until quarantine procedures can be run, either by sweeping them with dogs or just confining them to their craft for 28+ hours. If the refugees get out of control, or are too numerous, there are options for those willing to Shoot the Dog (for example, the nerve gas bombings in the Ukrainian narrative) or just be murderously indifferent (the American "Go North" strategy).
- Australia's military is indeed small; but then, so is the island of Tasmania. Australia's military is 'small' relative to the size of the nation; if the 'size of the nation' is technically reduced to the island of Tasmania, it's much more manageable.
- For what it's worth, post-war Sydney appears to be inhabited and functioning reasonably well, as the hospital housing the dying astronaut is there.
- One can only wonder then, with EVERYTHING in Australia trying to kill you, whether the zombies or humans will die out first should be debatable. On a serious note, most of Australia's landmass is desert; zombies decompose faster due to heat. As put in one of the pages on Aussies: It's like Russia. In Russia if you invade you can keep marching until you freeze to (un)death. Invade Northwest Australia and you can keep marching until you decompose from heatstroke.
- In favour of Australia doing well, we have already considered a plan analogous of the Redeker plan in the past. Specifically in World War 2, the Brisbane Line [1] was considered a potential defense in the event that the Japanese ever established a firm footing on Australian soil.
- A direct implementation of this plan would be unlikely to work, given Brisbane is a capital city and would receive infected via other means (planes, cruise ships, etc.) however it wouldn't be difficult to adapt the plan.
- The hospital suite where the astronaut is being treated is also called the Presidential Suite. Australia, being a constitutional monarchy, currently doesn't have a president, so it's possible that Australia post-war has embraced republicanism.
- However, while Zion is a fairly racially diverse place, with many people with black and white skin, there are very few Asians. This makes no sense, given that North Korea is perhaps the most racially homogenous nation on Earth.
- Inside the apartment of the unnamed old man where Kondo found the sword, he finds a picture of the man in his youth, wearing an Army uniform. This picture includes a younger brother.
- The problem is that Tomonaga is originally from Nagasaki, while Kondo is from Sapporo. Unless Tomonaga's brother moved to that same city the odds are that this was just some random veteran.
- Kondo is from Kokura, on the northern tip of Kyushu (about halfway between Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Or at least, if he's not from there, that's where he is when the outbreak happens ("Kokura was engulfed in hell"); he heads north only because he thinks that's where he can get transport to Kamchatka.
- The problem is that Tomonaga is originally from Nagasaki, while Kondo is from Sapporo. Unless Tomonaga's brother moved to that same city the odds are that this was just some random veteran.
- Towards the beginning of Tomonaga's narative, he explicitly states that his older brother was in the army during the Second World War, and survived to establish a life for himself.
- The old man's sword is described as posessing a leather wrapped grip. This was a custom replacement, as standard issue for Gunto-pattern military swords was either wood wrapped with rayskin and cloth, or solid aluminum.
- At the end of Tomonaga's first narrative, upon picking up the sword that Kondo found, he states that the "weight and balance felt familiar to the touch". As military pattern swords were declared illegal weapons in the aftermath of World War 2, his older brother's sword was likely the only one he ever handled, with even less chance of coming across one with a similar custom grip.
- Well its explicitly stated that Kondo killed the guy, as he was a zombie when he broke into his apartment.
- Tomonaga's statement doesn't refer to the feel of the grip. It should also be noted that Kondo describes the leather as having replaced the original sharkskin in a rather ramshackle manner. If Tomonaga ever handled his brother's sword it probably had not seen any use and would have been like standard issue swords.
- The gentleman in question was an obstructive bureaucrat during FDR's tenure. He was a noted Anti-Semite and as an Assistant Secretary of State withheld visas at a time when they could have saved many desperate people. His actions (or inactions) led to his demotion once 1944 came around and the true scope of the horrors the Nazis had done were revealed to the world. He could have saved thousands and been greater than Oskar Schindler. Instead he doomed them by his own prejudices. Something to think about...
- Likewise, the book's Breck Scott acts selfishly and thinks only of himself and his own gain. Had he helped spread the truth instead of acting like the prevailing mindset of the day, he might have been celebrated in the post-war world instead of reviled.
- Considering the amount of shocking bombs that were dropped in his version there's no way in hell the government will let him publish it (at least without redacting some things).
- It's stated right in the intro, where the person Max gave his report to rejected the report for a version without the "human element", Bombs and all, and told him (paraphrased) "If you don't like it, write your own (Expletive Deleted) book!"
- A huge fan of the Alpha Teams, Dr. Iain Feist leaped at the chance to accompany one of them on a mission to re-establish control of an overrun military prison facility as part of a covert effort by the government to retrieve compromising information from the prison's records. Unfortunately, despite surviving the mission, he suffered a fatal aneurysm due to a head injury sustained during the PIE ammo's development before he could be interviewed for the book.
- So odds are that the Imperium of Man starts in Russia, which has become a theocratic state post-war.
- So the Emperor of Mankind is Putin? And he will be around for 40 000 years more? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!111
- We still have to experience the Dark Age of Technology and everything that led the Imperium from being an atheistic absolute monarchy to a theocratic state.
- Fridge brilliance: in ancient times it was the norm for all cities to have massive walls, and for the gates to be manned by soldiers and locked at night. Thus the ancient world may have actually had a much easier time dealing with the problem. Soldiers were also properly trained and fully armoured for close-up melee combat: a hoplite or legionary is difficult to bite anywhere, expert at keeping people off, and not at all squeamish about smashing skulls because that's what they're paid to do normally. Combine with Greek fire and automatic crossbows for best results.
- While possible, it's also important to note lowered birth rates are a thing across countries with First World living standards. Access to medical care, adequate nutrition and generally stable income are generally associated with decline in birth rates as well as other factors such as longer life expectancy and the presence of birth control. This means after the war, due to the obvious setbacks in these areas stemming from the mass outbreak, there's a good chance Japanese people will be able to partially recover from their population loss.
- Though that said, Iceland was also an island and it is clearly mentioned as being completely overrun and fallen to the zombie hordes in the book.
- Cuba was a able to manage the refugee crisis and avoid a massive outbreak because they had guns and knew how to use them, whereas Iceland had been largely unarmed. Like the Cubans, the Irish have guns and know how to use them.
- Although thinking about it, how freaking SCARY would waves of zombie babies/children be? (Shudder)
- Given the twist near the end that the zombies instinctively avoid the terminally ill, it is possible that the virus also causes the zombies to ignore children, since they wouldn't be effective at spreading the virus.
- Except Tommy, the little boy whom the protagonist's family adopts, was being actively chased by his own infected parents.
- It's possible that children can be infected, but just drop dead instead of becoming a zombie.
- It's also possible that there are plenty of child zombies out there. They just don't have long enough legs to keep up with the adult-sized ones, so are out of sight at the rear of any given herd.
- Alternately, the movie was produced In-Verse as a massive promotion for Phalanx, which is why the zombies act so differently: the screenwriters took the inaccurate term "African rabies" and ran with it.
Dr. Kwang Jingshu considers her ignorant and superstitious, blaming the government's sinking of the Ghost City of Fengdu, with its temples to the gods of the underworld for the zombies... but what if she's right? Not that it's revenge, but that it is caused by the sinking of Fengdu.
In the Zombie Survival Guide, Brooks posits that many civilizations had some knowledge of the undead, and some (e.g. The Zulu court, Ghengis Kahn, and the Japanese Brotherhood of Life) kept intact zombies or zombie parts around as curiousities or for ceremonial purposes.
Where better to keep a secret zombie, or group of them, than the Ghost City of Fengdu? And when the city was flooded, and buildings started to fall apart underwater... chains to rust... then some unfortunate divers got a lot more than they bargained for.
She mentions they had lived in Waukesha their whole lives, and Wainio mentions the guy went into a house while they were scounting to retake Chicago, Wakusha isn't so far out to be impossible, he is even described very similarly to how Jesika described her dad, perhaps since those years, they got separated, and he thought Jesika was dead, and simply let go.