The Zombie Survival Guide/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Many high-velocity rounds like the M-16 or M249 SAW fire can cause "Hydrostatic Shock", meaning that a massive pressure wave goes through the body, rupturing organs and quite likely the brain, from a center-of-mass shot. Why does this not affect zombies?
    • As zombies don't replenish their fluids, their bodies would necessarily be rather dehydrated, and hydrostatic shock may not affect them to the same extent as it affects a living organism.
      • Dehydrated tissue wouldn't absorb force as well. One. 223 round starts ripping good-sized holes in the target.
    • Plus there's the fact the author was strongly against fully-automatic weapons and wasting ammo on center mass shots. Which is a good point. Enough hydrostatic shock might be able to cripple a zombie's central nervous system, but any time going straight for the head would be more efficient, you might as well.
      • How necessary those headshots are has been enthusiastically debated on the World War Z page, but, overall, if you can disable a zombie (be it via spinal damage, leg damage or indirect trauma-- organs don't count) with 2-3 shots reliably rather than trying to get a headshot on a moving target at distance with whatever weapon you can find and/or have ammo for, I personally prefer the former.
        • It's also easier to hit the head on a zombie that's already been slowed down.
  • Why is it so important to dispose of the corpses? Brooks' zombies are considered taboo by animals, thus scavengers won't eat them and spread infection, they are noninfectious in 48 hours anyway, and the time you spend disposing of them is time you could be gathering food, ammo, or supplies, or getting the Hell out of Dodge.
    • He does mention that although most animals find zombie eating taboo, insects like flies or maggots do not (at least once the zombie is properly 'dead'), and although the zombies aren't decomposing too quickly, their rotting flesh does still present very obvious and potentially deadly safety hazard.
  • Why is Brooks so against dismembering the zombies? I don't care if they can still bite me, I care if they can get to me to bite me, and thus a spinal shot or one to the knees would be best.
    • A legless or paralyzed zombie can still crawl. Worse, a zombie lying down can be more difficult to spot, especially at a distance. An able-bodied zombie, for instance, you could see coming at you from a good distance even if it's wading through long grass. A zombie that's had its legs blown off, however, you might not see it at all until you're right on top of it and its teeth are in your leg.
      • and... suddenly that assholish groan is gone?
        • They only groan once they've got eyes on prey usually.
      • This point does at least matter less if you're on the run, and not intent on clearing out an area or defending it. If all you're after is getting away, and a non-fatal (for a zombie) and immobilizing shot would prove more efficient at stopping an immediate threat and preventing pursuit, then the crippled zombie would become Someone Elses Problem.
      • There's also that its pretty damned easy to spot a man-sized object lying on the ground unless it just happens to fall into tall grass, especially if its moving. (They'd try and drag themselves towards you, remember?) And that its pretty damn hard to bite a guy in the leg if he's wearing thick boots and leggings. And that the above assumes that all 'downed zombie clearing' would be done on foot instead of just driving a truck back and forth over the relevant area until the zombies all go squish.
  • Why shouldn't spears be used in a zombie outbreak? Also, shovels are never mentioned. Wouldn't you want a weapon that can smash in a head and chop through a skull from a safe distance? And chances are you will be needing one anyway...
    • Mostly because using a long pole-based weapon on zombies gives them something to grab and drag you down with. Even if that didn't happen, a point is made that stabbing weaponry can get stuck in a Zed's head, probably knocking you off-balance. It's also stated that shovels are decent (well, a type of "battle" shovel from Japan and used by those monk zombie hunters) Zed-killing tools.
  • Why is the use of automatic weapons downplayed? Ammunition can be found by the thousands in the back of any gunshop and in the millions in any military base.
    • Ammunition will eventually become scarce if people waste half of theirs on impractical or unnecessary shots.
      • The US military averages 250,000 rounds of ammunition per dead insurgent and has consistently done so over the past several wars. We ain't run out yet.
    • he does rather Hand Wave away the "scythe theory", though. It's not that that bad an idea.
  • Brooks goes to the trouble of discussing Hollywood and Voodoo zombies, but why does it completely neglect actual, real-life zombies? I'm talking about parasite-based insect ones.
    • The book's not about them. It's about classic Hollywood style zombies, and the voodoo zombies are only really mentioned because they have the same name and are made from people.
  • The book claims that Egyptians may have removed the brain of a dead pharaoh so that a zombie cant reanimate it. But didn't he also say an already dead body could not be reanimated?
    • Yes, but the Egyptians didn't know that.
  • In the world of the book, the existence of zombies is common knowledge. So why do governments around the world continue to cover-up zombie outbreaks?
  • Brooks states that it takes up to five years for zombies to decompose due to most of the bacteria in the body getting the hell out of dodge once solanum enters the system. But they still rot, meaning that some bacteria remains. With all the detail Brooks goes into explaining how lethal and how terrifying solanum is and how everything in the animal kingdom will flee from its presence, one has to wonder just what naturally occurring bacteria in our bodies is Badass enough to not give a damn and just carry on business as usual?
    • He talks only about bacteria, not about archaeans or fungi, which can have greatly different cell structures, but can also act in decay. Plus the fact that something like Brooks describes - an Universal Poison - might be actually impossible in Real Life due to evolutionary constraints. And by the way, not all bacteria can "get the hell out of the dodge" due to the simple fact that they can't move.
    • And even with with all bacteria Hand Wave-d out of the body, mechanical wear and tear is a massive problem.
  • It has been a while since I read the book, but I remember specifically that the survial guide said that not all microbes were killed how by a zombie's body system. This just raises new questions like 1: How come the microbes that remain inside a zombie that are unaffected by Solanum don't replicate out of control and speed up decay? 2: How does the cells of a zombified being get nutrients to live if the zombie has no circulation and digestive system to speak off. Finally 3: How do zombie cells not kill themselves with their own waste products from metabolism if they (again) have no circulation?
    • Because Solanium turns the body into a perpetual motion machine. It outright says so in the book. It's a Lampshade Hanging to how impossible the zombie-phenomenon is in Real Life.
      • Which sort of shoots all his other griping about how "unrealistic" zombies/tactics he doesn't like are in the foot. You can't go "This stuff is ridiculous and thus stupid" and then turn around and say "My stuff is also ridiculous but that's okay because I like it so just play along".
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