The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From the Living Dead, published in 2003, is a fictional survival manual that deals with the potentiality of an undead attack. Its author, Max Brooks, lays out detailed plans for the average citizen to survive zombie uprisings of varying intensity.
Contents
The book is divided up into seven separate chapters, plus an appendix.
The first chapter is entitled Myths and Realities and laysdown the specific ground rules that are referenced
repeatedly in the book. The most important of these describes Solanum, the virus that creates zombies, along with how it is spread, treatment of the infected, and why the zombie infection does not spread to non-human creatures. The second chapter is entitled Weapons and Combat Techniques and discusses the weapons at the reader's disposal, and weighs them against the various threats that may be faced during confrontations with the undead.The third chapter entitled On the Defensive looks at options for individual to stay in a stationary location. It focuses on remaining stationary in an undead ambush. This is followed by a chapter entitled On the Run which explores dealing with attacks while traveling. While chapters three and four emphasized avoiding the undead, chapter five, On the Attack, is specifically about engaging ghouls to ensure their destruction. The final chapter looks at survival during a doomsday scenario, a Class-4 outbreak would see battle for humanity's survival shift in the zombies' favor, much like the zombie-infested world that can be observed in Land of the Dead. Advice for this section is adapted from previous sections; recommendations for surviving a siege is repeated, though altered for relevancy to the long-term entrenchment a Class-4 outbreak represents.The guide concludes with a fictional list of documented zombie encounters throughout history, including a zombie Cossack, victim of an outbreak that happened 415 years prior, which was described in another entry.The oldest entry is 60,000 BC, in Katanda, Central Africa, although the author expresses doubt to its validity. Instead, he presents evidence from 3000 BC in Hieraconpolis, Egypt as the first verifiable instance of a zombie outbreak. The most recent entry is 2002 A.D., St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. The journal section also introduces a lead in to the next novel, World War Z, in describing how a group of zombies came to be in China which is listed as the outbreak's source. The Appendix takes the form of a sample "Outbreak Journal," with the fictional author noting a covered-up zombie outbreak being seen on the local news. The following pages are blank entries, presumably for the reader to use as a basis for their own journal; their inclusion furthers the overall feel that the book is a survival guide to a real life-threatening possibility.
Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack :
1. Organize before they rise!
2. They feel no fear, why should you?
3. Use your head: cut off theirs.
4. Blades don’t need reloading.
5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.
6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it.
7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.
8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!
9. No place is safe, only safer.
10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.
Solanum
The guide attributes the zombie outbreaks described to the virus "Solanum" (not to be confused with the plant genus). The virus is said to be neither waterborne or airborne; the only way to become infected is through direct fluidic contact, in which context the virus is 100% communicable, with a 100% mortality rate.
Cultural appeal
As a primarily niche-oriented piece of fiction, The Zombie Survival Guide appeals largely to two groups:
- Humor fans The book's humor is derived from its deadpan delivery and general style of parody of the survival books that were popular at the time it came out, like Army Survival Manuals and the Worst Case Scenario series of survival guides. While examining the menace that zombies represent in great detail, from the biological makeup of a zombie to anti-zombie tactics in different strategic situations, the book never alludes to considering its subject as anything less than a real, plausible threat to mankind.Throughout the book, unnamed "research" is cited as the backup for most arguments, though individual events (as listed in the Recorded Attacks chapter) are also cited where relevant. The reader is frequently warned that the advice is ignored at the reader's own peril, with the end result of "cold hands gripping your arm and dirty, worn teeth biting into your flesh," supposedly being a very real possibility. Author and humorist David Sedaris has been recommending the book on his 2007 book tour.
- Zombie fans
The book definitively states another set of rules for zombie-related canon. Clarified subjects include:
- How zombies are created
- Why exactly zombies can only be killed by damage done to the head
- Why zombies are unaffected by standard offensive tactics
- Why zombies are qualified as "undead"
Presented facts are largely compatible with concepts seen in various zombie films, adding another level of authenticity for fans of the genre.
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