The Essential Max Brooks: The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z by Max Brooks
Authors: Max Brooks
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shipyards, factories, or other industrial sites. If this is the case, be cautious, observant, and always ready to flee. Also, beware of refrigerated warehouses storing perishable goods. Once electricity is lost, their quick decomposition can become a severe health hazard.
10. P IERS AND D OCKS
With some modifications, adequate supplies, and the right location, any dock or pier can be made practically unreachable. Because zombies can neither swim nor climb, their only access would be from land. Destroying that one access point would leave you on an artificial island.
11. S HIPYARDS
Despite the fact that they frequently are the storage site for industrial waste and hazardous materials, shipyards do present undeniable possibilities for refuge. Like warehouses, their containers can be transformed into barriers or, in some cases, even weapons. (See â Mar. 1994 A.D., San Pedro, California .â) The ships themselves become ready havens once the gangway has been secured. But before boarding, make sure you check these waterborne fortresses for infected crew, particularly in smaller, recreational marinas. In the first stages of an outbreak, citizens will no doubt flock to the shoreline, hoping to use (or steal) any available cabin cruiser. Because many marinas are built in relatively shallow water, they are not deep enough to keep zombies completely submerged. More than once, an unwary, amateur sailor has climbed aboard his boat to find several ravenous, waterlogged zombies waiting for him.
12. B ANKS
What could be safer than a stronghold already built to house the most valuable commodity on Earth? Wouldnât a bank be a logical place to prepare a defense? Wouldnât its security measures be more than enough to repel a horde of walking dead? Not in the least. Even the most cursory examination of banks reveals that a majority of their so-called âsecurityâ features require the deployment of police and/or outside security. With the police and all other special forces otherwise engaged during an outbreak, silent alarms, surveillance cameras, and waist-high locked gates will be useless when the dead smash through the plate-glass windows, hungry for human flesh. Of course, there is safety in the vault. These titanic constructions would stop even zombies armed with rocket launchers. (No, zombies do not know how to operate rocket launchers.) However, once inside the vault, what next? Given that there is no food, no water, and precious little oxygen, seeking refuge in a vault does little more than give you enough time to place a gun to your head, make peace with your god, and pull the trigger.
13. C EMETERIES
Ironically, and despite many popular myths, cemeteries are not the most dangerous place to be when the dead rise. In fact, they can be a place of temporary rest. As previously stated, infected bodies are more likely to end up in hospitals or morgues, reanimating long before they can be taken to cemeteries for conventional burials. And if by some miracle, a corpse did come to life inside its coffin, would it really ârise from the graveâ? To answer this question, one must ask another: how? How would a body with normal human strength claw its way out of a coffin, possibly made of steel, possibly encased in a hermetically sealed box, six feet underground? If one looks at the preservation methods involved in standard American burials, the fact is obvious that any person, undead or otherwise, could not possibly scrape, scratch, and crawl his or her way to the surface. But what if the casket is not made of steel? Even a plain pine box would be prison enough to entomb the most tenacious zombie. What if the wooden casket has rotted? In that case, the body has been lying buried so long that its brain has rotted away as well. Remember: Bodies that reanimate have to be fresh, reasonably intact, and infected with the virus. Does this describe a long-dead corpse? Although itâs seen as an iconic vision of the
10. P IERS AND D OCKS
With some modifications, adequate supplies, and the right location, any dock or pier can be made practically unreachable. Because zombies can neither swim nor climb, their only access would be from land. Destroying that one access point would leave you on an artificial island.
11. S HIPYARDS
Despite the fact that they frequently are the storage site for industrial waste and hazardous materials, shipyards do present undeniable possibilities for refuge. Like warehouses, their containers can be transformed into barriers or, in some cases, even weapons. (See â Mar. 1994 A.D., San Pedro, California .â) The ships themselves become ready havens once the gangway has been secured. But before boarding, make sure you check these waterborne fortresses for infected crew, particularly in smaller, recreational marinas. In the first stages of an outbreak, citizens will no doubt flock to the shoreline, hoping to use (or steal) any available cabin cruiser. Because many marinas are built in relatively shallow water, they are not deep enough to keep zombies completely submerged. More than once, an unwary, amateur sailor has climbed aboard his boat to find several ravenous, waterlogged zombies waiting for him.
12. B ANKS
What could be safer than a stronghold already built to house the most valuable commodity on Earth? Wouldnât a bank be a logical place to prepare a defense? Wouldnât its security measures be more than enough to repel a horde of walking dead? Not in the least. Even the most cursory examination of banks reveals that a majority of their so-called âsecurityâ features require the deployment of police and/or outside security. With the police and all other special forces otherwise engaged during an outbreak, silent alarms, surveillance cameras, and waist-high locked gates will be useless when the dead smash through the plate-glass windows, hungry for human flesh. Of course, there is safety in the vault. These titanic constructions would stop even zombies armed with rocket launchers. (No, zombies do not know how to operate rocket launchers.) However, once inside the vault, what next? Given that there is no food, no water, and precious little oxygen, seeking refuge in a vault does little more than give you enough time to place a gun to your head, make peace with your god, and pull the trigger.
13. C EMETERIES
Ironically, and despite many popular myths, cemeteries are not the most dangerous place to be when the dead rise. In fact, they can be a place of temporary rest. As previously stated, infected bodies are more likely to end up in hospitals or morgues, reanimating long before they can be taken to cemeteries for conventional burials. And if by some miracle, a corpse did come to life inside its coffin, would it really ârise from the graveâ? To answer this question, one must ask another: how? How would a body with normal human strength claw its way out of a coffin, possibly made of steel, possibly encased in a hermetically sealed box, six feet underground? If one looks at the preservation methods involved in standard American burials, the fact is obvious that any person, undead or otherwise, could not possibly scrape, scratch, and crawl his or her way to the surface. But what if the casket is not made of steel? Even a plain pine box would be prison enough to entomb the most tenacious zombie. What if the wooden casket has rotted? In that case, the body has been lying buried so long that its brain has rotted away as well. Remember: Bodies that reanimate have to be fresh, reasonably intact, and infected with the virus. Does this describe a long-dead corpse? Although itâs seen as an iconic vision of the
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