World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

The narrator interviews a man carrying a cane who simply refers to himself as “’the Whacko,’ because ‘everyone else calls [him] that’” (146). He was elected vice president as the country was in the midst of the war, still trying to establish the safe zone behind the Rockies. He describes himself as a “screaming radical” (147), the “heat” to the newly elected president’s “light” (147). The Whacko was unsure of the benefit of holding elections, but the president convinced him the country needed stability and to hold onto its “high ideals” (148).

The president’s proposals, such as putting criminals in stocks or whipping them, initially seemed insane, but the vice president came to agree that there were few options left. The fear of shame acted as a powerful deterrent and actually helped prevent crime. Any repeat offenders were subjected to work gangs, and extreme cases received the death penalty. Initially, the zombies weren’t the only enemy. A member of a group of religious fundamentalists, known as “The Fundies” (150), attempted to assassinate the president because the group believed stopping the zombies was “interfering with God’s will” (150). Another group, “the Rebs” (150), violently advocated for political secession. The Whacko can’t blame those east of the Rockies for rebelling because they were abandoned. When the country came to reclaim territory in the east, the secessionists were given the option to reintegrate peacefully. There was much violence, however, and the president grows ill from the stress because he is committed to keeping the dream that created the nation alive. The president is so dedicated that he has never even attempted to find out the fate of his family in Jamaica.

Joe Muhammad, the narrator’s next interview subject, owns a bicycle repair shop and sculpts molten metal into art in his free time. His most famous statue is the bronze Neighborhood Security Memorial in Washington, DC. It consists of three people—two standing, and one in a wheelchair.

Since Muhammad has a disability, the recruiter for the Neighborhood Security teams is skeptical when he initially volunteers to help patrol neighborhoods for zombies. When he convinced her—loudly so everyone else can hear—that his disability isn’t an obstacle, she finally relented and gave him the orange vest that symbolizes his membership in the team.

Everyone in the team was armed, and Muhammad carried a semiautomatic weapon. He emphasizes that patrolling at night was difficult due to how dark the neighborhoods get without electricity and without the moon or stars because of how polluted the atmosphere was. They went house to house asking if everything is okay. The early months were hard because new people were arriving all the time as part of the resettlement program. Muhammad had to adjust the Shannon family, who showed up one day to move into his house with him. However, he slept better with someone standing guard at night, which was one of the new rules: Someone in each house had to stay up all night, acting as watchman.

The patrol searched the many abandoned houses, securing them with police tape so if the barrier was broken, it indicated a zombie might be inside. They also had to watch out for squatters and looters—most of whom were friendly and were genuinely in need of food or shelter. Members of the team usually helped out until housing authorities step in. Others were more dangerous, such as the looter Muhammad killed after he shot Muhammad in the shoulder. There were also dozens of feral children as well as “Quislings” (155), whom Muhammad describes as people who go crazy and start acting like the zombies. Muhammad speculates the phenomenon may be akin to Stockholm Syndrome, where people sympathize with their captors. He explains that sometimes the only way to tell the difference between the two is the fact that zombies don’t blink. The saddest part of their situation, in Muhammad’s opinion, was that many of them were killed by zombies—“the very creatures they’re trying to be” (159).

The narrator talks with Roy Elliot at the Malibu Pier Fortress. Elliot is a former movie director and is recognizable to everyone around him, including the narrator. He explains that even after the Rockies were stable and the safe zones had been sanitized, people were dying of Asymptomatic Demise Syndrome, or ADS. It involves people passing away from a psychological state of despair. Elliot felt his career made him irrelevant during the war, but when he heard about ADS, he went to the government and offered to help. He said he could film the military in their efforts and restore people’s sense of hope. Elliot is refused, so he then tried the military, but he was told that the military has more important things to do.

He went on the road with his oldest son and simple camera gear and was able to film the final stages of a battle between students and zombies at a cluster of five college campuses just outside of Los Angeles. Three hundred students took a stand and ultimately defeated ten thousand zombies over four months. Elliot captured students and soldiers killing the last of the zombies, went home and edited the film with his wife narrating and screened it at several camps around Los Angeles.

Elliot initially thought the film was a failure, but two weeks after the screenings a psychiatrist from Santa Barbara came to his house and asked for more copies. Apparently, after the first screening of the film ADS cases dropped by 5%. Elliot put a small crew together and they made hundreds more films. Once ADS cases were down by 23%, Elliot was finally given access to the military. He filmed as they shot two laser weapons, Zeus and MTHEL (which stands for Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser), through the brains of zombies. A month after the release of the film, titled Fire of the Gods, ADS cases were halved. The film also saved the MTHEL and Zeus projects, which were both being phased out because they were expensive and difficult to use with swarms of zombies and moving targets. Elliot made seven more movies on the military’s technology, explaining that none of it made “any strategic difference” (166) but had a huge psychological impact. Elliot admits the films are mostly lies and that they chose not to show the dark side of humanity, but they are lies that give people desperately needed hope.

Gavin Blaire, the blimp pilot from Chapter 13, brings the narrator to his commanding officer, Colonel Christina Eliopolis, who is considered legendary for both her fiery temper and remarkable war record. She recalls her frustration that the FA-22, which Eliopolis piloted, was deemed obsolete during the war. DeStRes found that the air force was essentially unnecessary since their weapons are expensive and do the least amount of damage. Their main objective became resupplying various zones west of the Rockies where resources and civilians were located. Eliopolis explains that the most essential drops were SSDs, or self-sustaining drops, which mostly included tools or spare parts. There were Purple Zones set up to refuel or for repairs since most planes didn’t have the capacity to fly across the country without a stop or two, but they didn’t help prevent Eliopolis’s own plane from going down en route from Phoenix to Tallahassee. She still doesn’t know what happened to the plane, but she was sucked out of the plane and parachuted down into Southern Louisiana.

Eliopolis emphasizes that they have been trained for this type of situation. She spotted another parachute ahead of her on the way down, and she eventually finds her copilot dangling from a tree and being eaten by zombies. A woman’s voice comes over her radio identifying herself as part of the Skywatch system, which reports on downed planes. The woman, who went by the handle “’Mets Fan’ or just ‘Mets’ for short” (175) advised her to get to open land on I-10 and wait for a rescue team. Before she left, Eliopolis saw her copilot’s eyes open, so she shot him. On the way to the rendezvous site, Eliopolis stopped to check out a submerged SUV that was full of supplies, and she suddenly found herself surrounded by several zombies. She climbed on top of the SUV and was able to drop 61 zombies. She wouldn’t make it to I-10 before dark, so she found a perch in a tall tree and hooks up her hammock. She took two sleeping pills and quickly passed out. However, when she woke up, the bottom of the tree was surrounded by zombies. She executed her escape plan by jumping into the water below but “cracked [her] ankle on a submerged rock” (177).

Eliopolis began limping her way to I-10 with zombies trailing behind. As she passed zombies on the onramp, grabbing at her as they sat trapped in their cars, Mets yelled at her to keep going. She made it to I-10, and a civilian helicopter picked her up, though Eliopolis finds out later it wasn’t actually the rescue crew Mets said she called but a regular civilian patrol that happened to be in the area. She thanked Mets, who doesn’t respond. The narrator then reminds her that Mets and her cabin were never located. Eliopolis confesses that she was told in the debriefing that her radio wasn’t functioning from the moment she landed, but she insists she didn’t make Mets up. The psychologists pointed out that Mets could have been short for Metis, the Greek goddess Athena’s mother, and that Eliopolis’s own mother was from the Bronx. However, Eliopolis dismisses all the conjecture and says it doesn’t matter who she was because she was there in Eliopolis’s time of need, so she’ll always remember her.

Englishman David Allen Forbes is currently sketching a 14th-century Gothic “Hrad” (187), or castle, for his book Castles of the Zombie War: The Continent. He emphasizes to the narrator that castles were important to the war. While palaces like Versailles turned out to be “death traps” (189), many castles offered fortification, including a high wall. They were not without their own hazards, as illness, fires, and explosions sometimes swept through and killed those trapped inside. However, many offered unparalleled protection and kept people alive through sieges that lasted days, months, and, in some cases years. There are several examples of groups that chose to stay at castles, even after the immediate danger had passed. Many people also became skilled at using medieval weapons, like double-bladed battle-axes and claymores.

Forbes then uncomfortably references the situation at Windsor Castle—which came equipped with state-of-the art security as well as underground oil and natural gas deposits that were siphoned for power. Forbes discusses how “She” (193)—by which he presumably means the queen—insisted on staying to help defend the castle for the long haul despite Forbes’s protestations. She refused to retreat or run. While her fate is not made clear, that it did not end well for her is indicated through Forbes’s tone and language. He fights his emotions as he tells the narrator that she, and those like her, “must forever be an example to the rest of us” (194). Before the war, the royals were viewed as obsolete, but many of them, like the queen, proved their worth amid the crisis.

Barati Palshigar is an interview subject for the documentary called Words at War, which centers on the UNS Ural, a Russian civilian ship where Radio Free Earth is first broadcast. The ship was stationed at Ulithi Atoll for the duration of the war along with several other civilian ships and naval vessels. Palshigar believes that, in the case of the war, ignorance proved deadly. Many died due to lack of information about the “undead virus” (194). Radio Free Earth was the outgrowth of the International Program for Health and Safety Information, launched shortly after the Redeker Plan. It was based on Radio Ubunye, which was broadcast by South Africa’s government to give its isolated citizens information, and repurposed for a global audience.

Palshigar is an interpreter specializing in Indian languages. He was approached by a former colleague named Mister Verma at a refugee camp in Sri Lanka to work for the radio program. They sometimes worked 20 hours a day translating and broadcasting messages, mostly concerning basic survival. A lot of the misinformation they had to combat dealt with the nature of the zombies and what they were capable of as well as how to stave off the virus. Palshigar found it to be difficult work, but he is thankful he never had to work in the Information Reception Department. He explains to the narrator that they received data from experts around the world but were also able to pick up radio transmissions from any radio. They were bombarded with cries for help that they were authorized to ignore due to time constraints. Every member of the IR department eventually died by suicide.

The narrator speaks with Hyungchol Choi, deputy director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. Choi discusses the debacle in North Korea, which initially appeared to be one of the best prepared countries in the world. Not only is it surrounded by water and has a demilitarized zone dividing it from South Korea, but it also has a militarized population and a subterranean system in place to protect it from attack. Its people were also programmed to do whatever their leader told them. However, before any major outbreaks were reported, the North suddenly cut all diplomatic ties with the South. Those stationed on the border, like Choi, noticed that the number of North Korean troops began to decline. One day, the replacement shift at Panmunjom, the joint security area, simply never showed up.

Similarly disturbing was the complete lack of radio traffic. Satellite images showed that the number of people in North Korea seemed to be shrinking. Meanwhile, South Korea was dealing with a growing number of outbreaks and their own version of Yonkers. They were distracted and continued to fear a war with the North, which never came. Choi still wants to execute a mission to go into the North to see what happened. Those above him argue that it’s still too dangerous, as information is still too scarce. Most speculate the whole population retreated to the subterranean complex, where the Great Leader could then better realize his dream of being “a living God” (203). Or perhaps it all went terribly wrong and the caverns are filled with 23 million zombies waiting to be released.

The narrator talks with Kondo Tatsumi, a warrior monk. Tatsumi explains that his culture shuns individuality, unlike in America where it is embraced. He always considered himself an “otaku” (204), or outsider, so he sought refuge in cyberspace. He felt powerful and competent navigating information, and he and his clique hacked data and collected massive amounts of information about the zombies, or “siafu” as they called them (206)—another name for the dangerous African army ant—when the crisis hit. After hacking Doctor Komatsu’s hard drive and viewing his data, they were surprised when Komatsu publicly announced that complete evacuation of the population was the only option. However, Tatsumi felt completely isolated due to his online lifestyle and didn’t worry or think about anything except obtaining more information.

Tatsumi was soon forced to recognize there was a problem when his mother stopped bringing food to his bedroom door. His online clique also started to disappear. At first he was annoyed, but after a few days he woke up to find he had no internet connection or cell reception. He searched the apartment for his parents but couldn’t find them. He tells the narrator he still doesn’t know what happened to them, but he knows they wouldn’t leave him on purpose. He began panicking and headed out the front door only to find a zombie dragging itself toward him in the hallway. He shut himself back inside the apartment and pulled the window curtain back, observing a city “engulfed in hell” (210). The zombies were everywhere.

Tatsumi heard zombies breaking through his front door and decided to escape off the balcony by tying sheets together. He made it into the apartment below, which already had a barricaded front door. When he checked the bathroom, he found that the only neighbor he had ever talked to, Reiko, had slit her wrists in the tub. He took her sheets to make more rope and spent three days making his way down to street level, gathering survival gear in the process. In one apartment, near the end of his journey down, he fought an older man who had recently become a zombie. After he sent him hurtling over the balcony, he found a beautifully crafted sword that he took as his weapon. Until then, he hadn’t been able to find any weapons.

The narrator meets with Sensei Tomonaga Ijiro, founder of the Tatenokai, or “Shield Society” (216). Kondo Tatsumi, who is Ijiro’s second in command, serves them tea and takes a seat beside Ijiro. Ijiro begins by telling the narrator he has been blind since boyhood when he watched the atomic bomb go off in 1945. He is considered one of the “hibakusha,” or “survivors of the bomb” (217). While the hibakusha are viewed as both victims and heroes, they are also seen as social outcasts. Ijiro had a hard time finding work after the war and attempted suicide many times, but something always kept him from following through. He eventually headed to the northern wilderness of Sapporo, on Hokkaido, and found work as a gardener at the Akakaze, a former luxury hotel that was turned into a repatriation center then back into a luxury hotel.

The first news of an outbreak came when Ijiro was still at the Akakaze. He heard conversations of an increasing number of outbreaks but ignored them until his manager held a staff meeting where he told everyone there was no cause for concern. Ijiro could tell something was wrong due to the manager’s careful articulation of his words, which was indicative of the manager covering up a speech impediment that only crept through his formal training in times of extreme stress. Ijiro then decided to leave because he didn’t want to be a burden to anyone else or become a zombie and infect other people. He hitched rides with truck drivers until he reached the Hiddaka Mountains. He felt the location was a suitable place to die but continued to keep himself alive. One morning he found himself facing a bear and decided not to fight it. He determined that their meeting was “the will of the kami” (221) or divine spirits for Ijiro’s lifetime of dishonor. However, the bear ran as a zombie approached Ijiro from behind. Ijiro killed it and spent the next few months surviving, sleeping during the day while hunting and foraging at night. He stayed alert and was always able to hear the zombies approach and kill them with one strike. One night, as he settled in to sleep in a tall tree, he smelled a human approaching. Ijiro jumped down the tree onto Tatsumi, who was directly below him. On the ground with a blade to the back of his neck, Tatsumi explained everything that had been going on. Ijiro laughed as he let Tatsumi up, realizing they had been kept alive to be Japan’s gardeners, helping it to regrow.

Seryosha Garcia Alvarez is the narrator’s interview subject. They talk in Alvarez's office, on the 69th floor of the second-tallest building in Cuba, sharing the “breathtaking” (227) view of the sunset through the photovoltaic windows. Alvarez shares that Cuba was almost completely isolated from the rest of the world under Fidel Castro until the zombies came. Cuba’s isolation became an asset once the outbreaks started, as did their large population of doctors. The virus was quickly contained, and the country prepared for war as the rest of world experienced the Great Panic. They defended themselves against zombies and refugees coming in by sea. Five million Americans came to their shores, some of them—ironically—travelling in homemade rafts. Others came from Africa, western Europe, and Latin America.

The large population of refugees were put to work in Resettlement Centers, which Alvarez clarifies were not worse than prison. However, prisoners were planted inside to spread rumors that those who made trouble would be thrown into a pit of zombies. The strategy was designed to keep people in line. The government soon established a program where prisoners could be outsourced beyond the prison walls to fulfill the menial jobs Cubanos have rejected. They could earn points toward the release of other prisoners, so the prisons were quickly emptied.

As the rest of the world began to attack the zombies, Cuba became the world’s “breadbasket, the manufacturing center, the training ground, and the springboard” (232). They were a hub for those travelling by air and sea, and the money that came in created a thriving capitalist economy and solid middle class. The influx of Americans began to change the culture, and an increasing number of freedoms were slowly granted to everyone. Castro not only embraced the idea of democracy for his country but also took credit for it. During the elections, he voted himself out of office. The country is now home to hundreds of pollical parties as well as regular riots and protests.

The narrator talks with Admiral Xu Zhicai, who immediately defends himself as a patriot, not a traitor. He explains that early on in the crisis the army rejected their version of the Redeker plan. The army believed that with enough manpower and weapons, the zombies could be defeated. They relentlessly drafted their young population and sent them into battle. Captain Chen suggested to the crew of the Admiral Zhen, a nuclear submarine, that their only means of escape was to steal the ship and desert their county.

The crew took three months to smuggle supplies as well as their families on board. After Captain Chen gave the order to cast off, their only goal was to travel stealthily to avoid detection. They feared their own government might be hunting them. However, after a hundred days, they began to investigate the situation. Through the periscope, they discovered thousands of ships on the surface of the water, including commercial, military, and private. Many were drifting without fuel, and several were cluttered with makeshift shelters. Some were populated only with zombies. The water was also filled with the undead.

The crew monitored radio traffic and satellite television. They found a world in chaos—plagued by death, evacuations, mutinies, and warfare. Food and medical supplies began to deplete on the ship. Some of the civilian passengers had seeds, and the crew determined the only way to get soil was to travel back to the Pacific. They docked the ship at the island of Manihi, where they became rich with supplies by providing electricity to the refugee inhabitants. Several months later, however, a missile from a Chinese sub hit one of the other docked ships, and Captain Chen gave the order to depart immediately. When the other sub attacked, they counterattacked, and the sub exploded. Captain Chen believed the commander of the other sub may have been his own son. After that day, he was broken, and the Admiral Zhen headed to the Arctic.

As life settled into a monotonous routine, another Chinese sub approached. However, this one came in peace and was in fact commanded by Captain Chen’s son. He told them that China had broken into a civil war after the collapse of the Three Gorges Dam, and the other sub that attacked them was on the opposing side. Everyone cheered, and they headed home. Their final move was to bomb the bunker where the leaders of the opposing side were hiding. The leaders surrendered and China reunified against their common enemy. The crew learned the country had already started implementing a Chinese version of the Redeker Plan. Captain Chen heard the news, and though he was happy and smiling on the deck with a cup of tea, he closed his eyes to rest and never opened them again.

The narrator visits Terry Knox, the only commander of the International Space Station from Australia, in his large hospital room. When the crisis hit, Knox and his team were in space. Knox sent the scientific team and other nonessential personal back to earth, then gave the rest of his team the option to stay. Some remained despite having no way to get back to make sure a few of the essential satellites orbiting earth stayed aloft. They took trips to the ASTRO, or Autonomous Space Transfer and Robotic Orbiter, which carries fuel, to refuel several satellites. They watched several key events helplessly from space. Although they were unable to hear, they saw the battles at Yonkers and Chongqing, the evacuation of Japan, and General Raj-Singh being rescued from a zombie mob by helicopter. They also observed zombie holes, which was when a zombie dug a pit in the ground to go after an animal.

They also watched the damage being inflicted on the earth with their own eyes from the view port. They saw massive fires, including billions of campfires, and Iran and Pakistan’s nuclear exchange. Eventually, the earth was completely covered by a gray shroud. By using thermal and radar sensors, they saw the Three Gorges Dam collapse and carry ten trillion tons of water toward the East China Sea. Knox becomes angry recalling how the Chinese government handled the situation, calling it “unavoidable” (261). For Knox, the Dam, which was built on an active fault line, was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Two weeks after the dam destruction, they got a distress call from Yang Liwei, the Chinese space station, which was surprising since they had tried to hail it previously with only a hostile recording as a response. They headed over and found the lone occupant dead from a gunshot wound and the escape pod with its hatch blown. Knox speculates the other occupant was blown into space. He believes they were caught up in the Chinese civil war. The station was teeming with supplies, but also rigged up to explode and ruin the area for any other space exploration. Because of the escape pod’s hatch was blown without closing the air locks, the station was decompressed and was dramatically off its normal orbit. Though the escape pod was still usable and they could have gone back to earth, Knox and his team chose to take everything they could to restock the ISS before the Yang burned up in earth’s atmosphere. The ISS was able to stay in orbit for three more years before a replacement crew arrived on a civilian ship. Knox says he has no regrets despite being exposed to lethal cosmic radiation and other complications from being on the ISS for so long. The narrator reports that Knox dies three days after his interview.

The narrator talks with merchant ship master Ernesto Olguin at a beach house in Ancud, which now serves as Chile’s economic and cultural center. Olguin discusses “The Honolulu Conference” (264), which he feels should have been called the “Saratoga Conference” (264) because they spend most of their two weeks there aboard the USS Saratoga. They were there for a meeting of the new United Nations, which contained 72 delegates. Olguin’s role as naval attaché was to figure out how to integrate the navy into a convoy structure for international trade.

On the first day, the American ambassador made it clear that the United States intended to go on the offensive and aggressively rid the world of the remaining zombies. Everyone immediately began arguing, with the opposing side fearing such a tactic would only result in more lives lost and pointing out that many of the zombies were already in a state of decay. The American president then intervened in the chaos, calmly explaining that to triumph humanity needed to reclaim the planet. He told them they will vote on the decision later.

Since Olguin wasn’t allowed to vote, he sat on the flight deck with his counterparts from other countries discussing wine. Commander Emile Renard from France carried a rare bottle of Chateau Latour, 1964. Everyone was impressed and shocked that he still had the bottle. He opened it, and the group savored every sip as the UN members voted. They decided in favor of an attack, though overall support for America’s measures was “poor” (269).