Robert Tulip wrote:

geo wrote:Brooks, the author, takes a cynical view of politics in general, imagining a scenario of catastrophic outbreak and how ineffectual the government's response would be. He also describes the general apathy we have towards impending disasters. People will generally try to downplay the seriousness of things they don’t really understand, be it global warming, avian flu or zombie apocalypse. And by the time we’re ready to take action it's far too late. Brooks seems to be particularly cynical about our politicians, how they are concerned only with their own re-elections. I see parallels with the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, slow to act and with a bureaucratic indifference to human suffering.

Geo, I think your comment here explains the core theme of the book. Ineffectual apathy towards impending disaster is a central issue in world politics, and Brooks uses it later to raise searching questions about the capacity of democracy to respond to existential threats. If people habitually lie and conceal an infectious fatal disease, out of a misguided sense of compassion, how can political leaders respond in a way that will be in line with collective best interests?

You mention the global warming parallel which Brooks raises in this chapter. I suspect he intends this as an important subtext, with the idea that people can go into denial about something that will be catastrophic, and that our social instincts are not adequate to providing rational response to global problems.

It is more than just apathy though. There is an admission of the limitations of government, although I believe this touched upon more in the second chapter than the first. The government relies heavily on the placebo effect- a vaccination for the flu, or zombies-duck and cover for dropping the bomb. Rather than admit the the government doesn't know what to do, or can do nothing, they make up a fake solution that keeps people from questioning reality.

i like stories that change the p.o.v of the characters. however if certain characters return, i think he should give more of an indication at the start of a section to make it easier to follow. Maybe give each interview a number or something like that to make it easier to keep track of? Cause while i enjoy a book that makes you think, i also find it a bit hard to follow

other then that i'm really liking it. I like the concept and i do agree with the government's way of acting in the beginning, it does take kind of a cynical view of government. but i agree with the point about the cover up to avoid a mass hysteria

I really, really hate to admit this, but I've found myself actually lenjoying the book. Whether Zombies, chemical warfare or pandemics--of which we have had a few scares in the last couple of years--the book touches just enough on reality to actually make it scary. I don't know whether or not I'll continue on enjoying the book (so far it is taking on the timbre of Killer Virus disaster movies) but I'm plugging on and liking it. There, I've said it!

I'm finding it hard going. the comments here help do make it more interesting.

deathscythe210 wrote:i like stories that change the p.o.v of the characters. however if certain characters return, i think he should give more of an indication at the start of a section to make it easier to follow. Maybe give each interview a number or something like that to make it easier to keep track of? Cause while i enjoy a book that makes you think, i also find it a bit hard to follow

other then that i'm really liking it. I like the concept and i do agree with the government's way of acting in the beginning, it does take kind of a cynical view of government. but i agree with the point about the cover up to avoid a mass hysteria

My sense is that WW Z is structured in a deliberately scattered, confusing and interrupted way to reflect the disorientation of a society under attack by the living dead. The character confusion may be key to the author's message because it depersonalizes, its hard to get to know characters or have any relationship with them when they are all mixed up together and pop in and out in almost a nonsense way. I think it takes a skilled writer to use a structural device like this but still carry the story thread sufficiently and keep the readers interest. We'll see if Brooks can pull that off. As to government inaction, I'm looking out for any citizen action and responsibility - 'government' provides us with a convenient 'other' to blame for inaction and ineffectiveness and thereby duck citizen responsibility.

There was a lot of talk about Phalanx, and how that basically everyone but the consumer knew it wasn't doing anything to stop the spread of disease. All the same, the government continued to encourage people to take phalanx for the placebo effect of a false sense of security.

This reminds me heavily of George Bush's urge for us to just forget all about the terrorists and go shopping.


Brooks later returns to some of these characters, the ones who had a part to play, or were witness to multiple important events in the course of the plague, but those interviews are broken up chronologically. So, he is playing it like he interviewed a character about their whole experience during the plague, then breaking that interview up and splicing it in where it belongs chronologically.

Some of these character swaps do get lost in the shuffle, but if you do remember them from earlier, it helps to see how people are emotionally evolving to deal with their new world.

johnson1010 wrote:Phalanx ... everyone but the consumer knew it wasn't doing anything to stop the spread

I thought this was brilliant satire. This Phalanx guy is basically saying "fuck you buddy, I made a shitload of money and I'm laughing all the way to the bank. That's the American Dream. Who gives a flying fuck that I personally caused the total destruction of civilization by lying and fraudulently promoting a pill that I knew did not work, even in the face of certain knowledge of clear and present danger of a deadly infectious and unstoppable zombie epidemic. So I distracted people from possible genuine actions. So What? Money is more important than people. Governments are for sale, and I bought them. Politicians are a pack of whores and everything they say about security is pure bullshit. Ha ha ha! "

Yeah.

That's the thing about this book. It's all centered around a crazy idea, but even the more heavy handed characters, like the guy who put out Phalanx, they ring pretty true to me.

That really COULD happen! (The pacifying fraud that keeps people from real action)

johnson1010 wrote:That really COULD happen! (The pacifying fraud that keeps people from real action)

Not only COULD but DOES.

This book is a biting satire of how modern idiocy fails to engage in strategic assessment of real security threats.

The main example is climate change. People imagine that personal action, such as turning off lights, might help prevent global warming. It won't. The only thing that will prevent global warming is global industrial action. But the energy industry is just like the Phalanx pill guy in the zombie war, selling a seductive dream of a non-solution.

So the USA spends trillions on weapons and allows Hurricane Katrina to destroy New Orleans because the nation fails to see that levee maintenance is a higher order security issue than wearing shoes on planes.

HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, and the cultivation of superbugs through failure to regulate antibiotics, are similarly high order security problems. But as Brooks points out in WWZ, the harsh anti-democratic measures required to win against a serious plague are simply off the political radar in the modern world. Lets hope it stays that way. But the real threat is that if you deny a problem for long enough, you eventually get to a situation where practical measures are seriously unpopular, and implementing them requires military dictatorship. Preventing the degeneration of democracy into tyranny requires lively public debate and contestability around policy choices, so that people understand the consequences of their decisions and unpalatable political choices never become necessary.

Did you guys know that Max Brooks is Mel Brooks' son?