So you love zombies? NO, I mean you really LOVE zombies? You spend time in chat rooms debating over the best methods to survive a zombie outbreak or zombie apocalypse. You argue with non-believers about how likely a zombie plague actually is. You love the mechanics of the various zombie incarnations and how society and more specifically the police, the military, and the every day Joe would actually react? You have dug so deep that you actually can vividly imagine the whole process of the zombie invasion would take place, including the discovery of "Patient Zero", the initial victim, and the expansion of the plague or whatever process would take place that caused the initial infection and where it goes from there.
This book is for you.
Jonathan Maberry has done exhaustive research, conducting interviews with over 200 experts in various fields who have as much of a fascination with zombies as he does. This book serves as a research tome for not only the zombie fan but those who might direct a zombie flick or write a zombie story. No stone was left unturned in the process of going through a theoretical zombie apocalypse...well, a lot of it argues the validity of the idea of an apocalypse actually occuring if we are talking about a plausible scientific explaination for zombies rather than a supernatural process. Slow vs. fast, spiritual vs. plague infected, it is discussed here and far beyond that.
My favorite parts of this book had to be the smaller insertions, including the ongoing debate of fast vs. slow zombies as discussed by numerous authors, directors, and other experts in the field. There is also a great deal of zombie art in this book with the artists comments on what they were conceiving and thinking about when they created a particular piece.
I have always felt that in many zombie movies the police and military are treated with limited respect-they are made to be less than competent so a zombie apocalypse is that much more likely. This book presents a fair and balanced view of how the police, SWAT, and the military might actually respond. Good stuff for a real zombie zealot but the author still acknowledges the excitment that goes along with the fantasy that is zombies. Perhaps this book peels back too many layers of this onion in exposing what is realistic and possible but the author says more than once in the book, as a reminder to the reader, that we are talking about zombies here, the modern variation concocted by George Romero in Night of the Living Dead, not something we have ever really seen or that has ever actually really existed...as far as we know.
This is the book for the zombie fanatic. Perhaps a little too dense and complex for the casual zombie observer, someone who digs the occasional zombie flick or book. But if you really are fascinated with everything zombie in all its gory incarnations, if you can imagine hunkering down in a bunker cleaning your guns waiting for the undead to break down your reinforced doors, then this book is a great read.