For me the most interesting aspect of apocalyptic horror fiction is the response and recovery...providing the apocalypse is a credible one that allows for the possibility of human survival and eventual recovery (for instance a massive planetoid strike that reduces the whole surface of the planet to molten magma would be right out). That's why - as an example - although "The Road" struck a cord with me emotionally - I could not fully engage with the characters and their situation because I didn't understand what had brought their world low and why - years, apparently, after the triggering event - this situation for survivors was still so primitive and desperate. Same with the generally execrable "Walking Dead" universe of stories where the characters never did seem to learn how to overcome the issues of their new normal and spent a lot of time flailing uselessly about. Did the zombie virus preferentially kill anyone with an IQ over 90?
What makes Brooks' book better than a lot of them is that he charts out a fairly plausible pathway for human response, I think. Basically denial, panic, and, finally, a hard-nosed, careful analysis of the threat(s) and the correct response to them. (He even has a small place — much smaller than real life events have shown, I am afraid — for the idea that some people would get permanently stuck in the "denial" phase.) This is one reason I like teaching with it, because the Brooksian zombie threat is very materialistic and well-defined, and so you can talk with a bunch of engineering students about how, for example, they would zombie-proof our university and create a plan to survive for, say, 5 years, until outside order could be restored. (This was an actual assignment of mine.) As an exercise, it's less about the specifics (though some of those are interesting, like, "how edible are fish caught in the Hudson River?", which is an entirely answerable question once you think to ask it), and more about the problem-solving framework. Which you can then apply to lots of other less fanciful hypotheticals.
I enjoyed the "Walking Dead" graphic novels but avoided the television series, because it looked very silly by comparison. The graphic novels vary in how intelligent the humans are when they confront the scope of the problem, and make the (I think important) point that other people are as big of a problem and cause of problems in such a world as the zombies themselves.
The basic thrust of TWD universe is that humans are the real problem and indeed it would seem (until the writers of the series deemed otherwise) the zeds were part of the background like trees. But the conflicts between human groups seemed forced and artificial given how thin surviving humans were on the ground, how plentiful the resources left behind by a society that collapsed in a matter of weeks, and the fact that there was no competition for resources between people and the walking fertilizer of this world. I think the tendency of people in such circumstances would be not to wander (though some might just to see what became of that place just over that hill in the distance) but to settle in some safe seeming, defensible locale and try to recover some semblance of the lives they once knew. As to the rise of petty tyrants leading to anthill wars between communities - unless the tyrant wanna be has some special knowledge or can act through willing henchman as a gatekeeper to certain resources , I don't see how they obtain and wield power in a mostly empty world where everyone is armed and resources are everywhere for easy picking. True perishables are long gone but there is much still available for recovery and consumption. Indeed, on the scale of potential apocalypses - the zombie apocalypse should be at the easier end of the scale vs nuclear war or an asteroid impact. On the harder end - the impact of the event will wipe out huge volumes of resources as well as people (especially nuclear war in its full counter-force/counter-value form which is aimed at, in part, piles of resources we call "cities") . On the zed end - as depicted in the TWD tv series - society fell quickly - over a period of ~6wks - leading to a world emptied of people but with much of its physical infrastructure intact. So once you've survived the ZA event and gotten over the "ick" factor and have learned the rules of this new world -you should be in good shape. As long as you don't need a tooth extracted or an appendectomy. You'll be doing even better once you've found some people to join up with (preferably not led by a deputy sheriff from GA or a bargain basement Mussolini). People will be the most precious resource in the post ZA world as you try to fill in the gaps in knowledge and skills your community needs to have addressed. The person you turn away from the gate today (cause they look a little sketchy or cuz the script said so)- might be the dentist, doctor, or plumber you need tomorrow.
I've been in the headspace of a much more critical discussion of World War Z. You're not wrong with it's unique mechanical-narrative framing being a boon for cinema if replicated. That doesn't take away it's politics which is to put it mildly is a time capsule fusion of 2000's liberalism and 'reformist' doctrine. This to my mind makes "How are we going to adapt Yonkers and the Redeker plan?" a bigger question to ask any future adaptation rather than the ones you've already answered in this article.
To get back to the main topic: This considerations and discussion with more neutral space does lean me more towards the mini-series. The differences in research and locational negation should provide more peer review and updating on it's politics. My only nitpick is that the adaptation should have a mixture of hi-fi/lo-fi presentation distinct from the Burns style to both preserve the post-apocalyptic with new tech of the setting and the context of the interviewing breaking this work into it's own out of a neutral goverment report.
Those are interesting questions to ask, too — how would a world in the 2020s re-answer some of the questions that Brooks asked? Now that you bring that up, I am reminded of having to explain to my students who Colin Powell and Howard Dean were, as they were clearly the models for the US President and VP at the time, and are pretty unknown to your modern college student. "Mission Accomplished" means very little to them. Its American political references are all entirely Bush-era, and absolutely do not map onto the 2020 political landscape at all, and need "translation" for anyone who wasn't around then, much less for a modern retelling. I anticipate coming back to this theme when I write something up on Contagion, and the ways in which its political imagination was clearly limited by its times — where the conspiracy theorist grifters are all outsiders and not the ones running the government...
And, yeah, I agree that the exact style of Burns wouldn't work quite as well "in universe" — the aesthetic would be a tricky one to get right. But what fun that would be, to figure that out. I am imagining somewhat silly "re-enactments" being paired with "found footage" of a much greater realism.
Your division at first sounds a bit off. The book's satire seems based more on the performance of it's "present" subjects rather than their actions in the past. Upon reflection, I can see how that's not a hard gap to cross at least on a case by case basis. One wonders how Trump's(That chapter shows that it's not so much modeling than innuendo IMHO) reality shelter would fit both in this question and in general. The retelling would probably use that part to try to fuse the two(like dead set) while it looks for what rich person would have such apolitical clout currently.
That being said if you don't mind more pointed political criticisms: I sincerely hope we can find a better answer in the 2020's than "Maybe we can learn something from failed plans defending apartheid" .
I'm not sure I read the book as suggesting the latter in the way you seem to imply it is. I think having two key elements of the story coming out of the South African and Israeli settings were more about looking for examples of people who (for reasons perhaps right or very wrong) would have created the kind of environment for fostering deeply "unthinkable thoughts." But the book itself also indicates that such thoughts were, in fact, thinkable elsewhere, and also gives alternative successful pathways to thinking about how to fight the war (e.g., the Japanese arc). I also think that giving someone like Redeker the "credit" is intentionally meant as a Werner von Braun situation — which is to say, meant to raise the exact moral and ethical questions you are raising. It doesn't exactly imply that Redeker came out of the thing whole, either! :-)
I find it hard to bridge the interpretative gap between us that would turn the Yukio Mishima coded organization as a real alternative to Redeker. Even without explicitly invoking the japanese version of godwin's law " Having a Red Zone survive and get anime levels of good at killing zacks" ain't a true policy deviation nor quite a psychological one from America interpretation
I would have personally picked the China arc. The whole conflict of the rebellion and ethnics driving the defection is a straight out opposition to the broad strokes of Redeker. Which makes the author injection of the rebels implementation at the end bizarre and undermines a lot of trust in me in terms of my reading of it.
Edit: I get the attempt of a Von Braun situation but the execution still breaks credibility in my eyes. The caveat of Identity loss doesn't fully sell the moral snowflakeness(or if that's part of the unreliable narrator selling which part of it was unreliable) of the character and the chessey Mandela endorsement.
The second issue and that post-covid....the broad strokes of the plan just by itself isn't really that unthinkable to me. It's just uncomfortable triage....it's sucks to think about but not really "Sanity-breaking that could only be barely be come up by planners of racist atrocites" bad .
A movie should at least have the best scenes, and that should include the story of that blind Japanase guy who stays in Japan when anyone else gets out, and then finds out why: because he needs to nurture the garden and free it of any unnatural things.
And of course what it should also contain episodes of that guy selling snake oil and getting rich, but afterwards getting hunted down in his gated villa etc.
There are so many different views on such a global catastrophe in this book, I always thought about it more being about total war than about zombies at all. It's just that the war is going to be a total if any fatal casualties you have at once change sides and continue to fight for the enemy.
The book has many, many such great scenes, characters, situations. It's what makes it a good book! And it is exactly why the movie gets it so wrong, by basically avoiding all of that. So disappointing!!!
Great article, thank you. I did quite a bit of thinking on this topic before the film came out. I loved the book and was astonished when I heard there was going to be a Hollywood film adaptation. My initial thought was "but there's no single character so how can there be a movie star?" And then I heard Brad Pitt was starring. I erroneously concluded that he was going to be the initial narrator, and thought to my sadly deluded self, "ah, that could work, Brad Pitt travels about the world interviewing various folks for his UN report, cool, hope they include the Australian segment". But alas, they only kept the name...
I do think my initial idea would work well with your suggestion of a streaming series. A named actor could be the link between each episode as they travel about the globe, seeing for themselves the rebuilding efforts, and then finding and speaking with a key person, and then the narrative cuts to a flash back. I'd love to see that!
Those are nice variations — either as an Anthony Bordain-style travelogue (would totally work, and also allow for almost infinite episodes, if one were so inclined), or having it be a meta-series about the making of a series (which would allow a lot more plot options, as well, beyond those of the book — e.g., what are the constraints put upon the filmmaker, what are their own difficulties in doing all that travel, etc.).
Excited for this new blog. I've been strangely on a post-apocalyptic kick in novels lately, having read Dr Bloodmoney by PKD, Farnham's Freehold by Heinlein back to back this year and Alas, Babylon (which has a fantastic audiobook read by Will Patton) by Pat Frank. Alas, Babylon seems like it's a lot like WWZ (haven't read) in that it's mostly about the degradation of industry and survival after all the standards of living people had gotten used to go away, and the slow recovery/readjustment to the "thousand-year night".
Thanks! I am planning to write about Dr. Bloodmoney soon, in fact. Such a bizarre (and relatively obscure, considering the profile of the author) take. I love telling people about it and it's weirdness.
I really enjoyed "Contagion" as well and think that kind of story telling would work for WWZ (which I also greatly enjoyed - never caught the film after I realized how different it was from the book). Post pandemic I rewatched the Contagion and was struck by how many things the screenplay anticipated that actually happened with COVID: conspiracy theories, quack cures, resistance to quarantine controls, the total unreadiness of our health care systems to deal with a growing disaster that was so massive and fast moving, running out of storage room for dead victims...Life imitated Art.
The film World War Z is totally worth skipping. Or at least, watching with an eye for it as not being anything much like the book. It has a few very well-shot scenes. I think the intro sequence in the trailer is probably the best scene in the whole movie, as it really does capture something. (It was so effective at giving that feel of being on the ground when something terrible is happening, but not understanding what, that it gave my wife some flashbacks to her experience of being in Manhattan when the 9/11 attacks occurred.)
I'll write more about Contagion, but if anything, it underestimated how stupid we could all be as a society. In Contagion, the conspiracy theories and the quacks were all "outsiders." During COVID, they were being pushed by "insiders," the political mainstream, many in the media, etc. Sigh. If they had put that in a movie in 2011 I don't think people would have found it plausible at all.
I agree and in Contagion - compassion, intelligence, and expertise successfully pushed back against the charlatans and eventually won the day. In the real, in the here and now, degreed and credentialed expertise has to shout to be heard above the self serving pols and similar ilk who politically need to discount the efficacy and knowledge of government organizations trusted with protecting our health and environment. The impact of the noise makers was bad during COVID - now imagine the damage such interference would cause if we're faced with a latter day Spanish Influenza. Or our society is trying to marshal the resources and provide some response to impacted areas in the wake of a limited nuclear attack.
This post could be the foundation, or at least seed, for a pretty interesting presentation on storytelling and disaster recovery at next year's "Prep Summit." https://www.preparednesssummit.org/home
If you get serious about attending, please let me know. I'm on a planning committee for a radiation-related workshop that's held the day before the conference opens. I can be sure to send you the relevant information.
One other book to add to your list is Warday. Published in 1984. Is set in 1988/9, five years after a limited US / Soviet nuclear war. It's a combination travelogue and oral history of where America is now and what happened in those five years. Has an interesting meta level where the real life authors of the book are the main characters. Imagining their own lives and families in the aftermath.
World War Z reminded me a ton of Warday. Pity it's mostly forgotten now.
Thanks! I will check it out. Interesting that was co-written by James Kunetka, whose book on Los Alamos (City of Fire) is much better known than this book, apparently. It has an audiobook, as well.
I'd like to second the recommendation! I was borderline-obsessed with Warday when I was in middle school (in the early 2000s), after discovering it among a bunch of my parents' old sci-fi paperbacks. It started a lifelong fascination with apocalyptic fiction.
There are two other undeservedly-obscure 1980s nuclear-war novels that I would enthusiastically recommend: Carolyn See's "Golden Days" and P.C. Jersild's "After the Flood". Granted, I must admit that neither of them is quite what you were requesting in this post--they're both closer to "The Road" than "World War Z". But they might fit with your general interest in fictional depictions of nuclear war.
"Golden Days" may be the single strangest book I have ever read--equal parts satirical comedy of manners about LA yuppies, apocalyptic drama, and surreal religious allegory. It features a uniquely...cheerful take on nuclear war. It's quite short--really a novella.
"After the Flood" is the complete opposite in tone--it's perhaps the bleakest apocalyptic novel I've yet read. It's Swedish--think Ingmar Bergman or Lars von Trier. It was inspired by the author's work as a physician on civil defense, where he was instructed to euthanize casualties of nuclear attack. But I find it endlessly re-readable despite its bleakness--it's a picaresque first-person narrative by a young man who has grown up in and only known this ruined world. It's also quite short.
I subscribed just so I could reply to this. "After the Flood" is not just my favourite post-apocalyptic novel, it's one of my favourite books of any genre. It's hard pin down why, but I love how the descriptions are so vibrant and detailed even though the world itself is so bleak and miserable. I haven't seen many books with as evocative storytelling. Admittedly the setting is not what you'd call a scientifically accurate post-nuke world, but the other merits more than make up for that.
I can add a strong recommendation behind this book. Great to see someone else has read it too, it's obscure even in Northern Europe and seems to be totally unknown elsewhere.
Also interesting to hear about the author's background. I have read some other books by Jersild and I always wondered what inspired him to write something so different from his other works.
Absolutely, I read "Warday" when it came out in in '84 and in my opinion - it should be considered the gold standard for nuclear war fiction. Not perfect in every respect - but it is a captivating, well sourced, and well-told story. The novel made the point that a limited nuclear exchange might leave most of the country effectively untouched but yet still negatively touch the lives of everyone in the country.
Thanks! I have just started it as an audiobook. Love the intro so far. Some things I would consider implausible or unlikely (the idea that the Soviets would have targeted a single nuke at NYC... if only!), but overall the framing is very thoughtful and has already given me some ideas to borrow/reference in the video game.
I write from Milano, Italy: I read War Day in 1984 at the peak of the 80s war fear, I was 13, it triggered an interest in nuclear war that lasts so far. I read so many times the interview to Wilson Ackerman and the flight over what remains of San Antonio. I also wrote to Mr Strieber IG profile to thank him for that sparkle, but I guess, looking at his IG, that to get his attention I should have been kidnapped by aliens...
I suggest "A Canticle for Leibowitz"; the new priestly class studiously search for the mythical Fallout that had so many shelters built for it. The outcome of their quest proves knowledge is not the same as wisdom.
See if you can track down Joe Straczynski's early script for the film, it's excellent. It's about the writing of the fictional UN report that makes up the novel. Unfortunately none of that script survived in the final product.
I've become a huge fan of Don't Look Up, which seems a pretty brilliant mash up of a screw ball comedy and the most serious of subjects. It took balls to make that film, because it would have been so very easy to totally screw it up.
I’m not sure if they did it because of what was going on in China and I think Italy by that point or if it was just a coincidence but I’ll never forget Australian network TV (can’t remember which channel) broadcast Contagion about 2 weeks before the first ‘it would be better if you all worked from home’ orders
Yeah I have to agree. What an amazing book World War Z is. I haven’t read it since before Covid-19 so I may have to revisit it. Great article this… Thank you.
One of my favourite post-apocalyptic stories is the first Horizon game 'Horizon - Zero Dawn' which I recommend playing if you ever get the chance.
I won't spoil it but I love how the mystery behind how the world ended unfurls through the story as one plays it, revealing the ultimately horrifying truth behind the disaster and what people had to do to ensure the survival of the human race.
For me the most interesting aspect of apocalyptic horror fiction is the response and recovery...providing the apocalypse is a credible one that allows for the possibility of human survival and eventual recovery (for instance a massive planetoid strike that reduces the whole surface of the planet to molten magma would be right out). That's why - as an example - although "The Road" struck a cord with me emotionally - I could not fully engage with the characters and their situation because I didn't understand what had brought their world low and why - years, apparently, after the triggering event - this situation for survivors was still so primitive and desperate. Same with the generally execrable "Walking Dead" universe of stories where the characters never did seem to learn how to overcome the issues of their new normal and spent a lot of time flailing uselessly about. Did the zombie virus preferentially kill anyone with an IQ over 90?
What makes Brooks' book better than a lot of them is that he charts out a fairly plausible pathway for human response, I think. Basically denial, panic, and, finally, a hard-nosed, careful analysis of the threat(s) and the correct response to them. (He even has a small place — much smaller than real life events have shown, I am afraid — for the idea that some people would get permanently stuck in the "denial" phase.) This is one reason I like teaching with it, because the Brooksian zombie threat is very materialistic and well-defined, and so you can talk with a bunch of engineering students about how, for example, they would zombie-proof our university and create a plan to survive for, say, 5 years, until outside order could be restored. (This was an actual assignment of mine.) As an exercise, it's less about the specifics (though some of those are interesting, like, "how edible are fish caught in the Hudson River?", which is an entirely answerable question once you think to ask it), and more about the problem-solving framework. Which you can then apply to lots of other less fanciful hypotheticals.
I enjoyed the "Walking Dead" graphic novels but avoided the television series, because it looked very silly by comparison. The graphic novels vary in how intelligent the humans are when they confront the scope of the problem, and make the (I think important) point that other people are as big of a problem and cause of problems in such a world as the zombies themselves.
The basic thrust of TWD universe is that humans are the real problem and indeed it would seem (until the writers of the series deemed otherwise) the zeds were part of the background like trees. But the conflicts between human groups seemed forced and artificial given how thin surviving humans were on the ground, how plentiful the resources left behind by a society that collapsed in a matter of weeks, and the fact that there was no competition for resources between people and the walking fertilizer of this world. I think the tendency of people in such circumstances would be not to wander (though some might just to see what became of that place just over that hill in the distance) but to settle in some safe seeming, defensible locale and try to recover some semblance of the lives they once knew. As to the rise of petty tyrants leading to anthill wars between communities - unless the tyrant wanna be has some special knowledge or can act through willing henchman as a gatekeeper to certain resources , I don't see how they obtain and wield power in a mostly empty world where everyone is armed and resources are everywhere for easy picking. True perishables are long gone but there is much still available for recovery and consumption. Indeed, on the scale of potential apocalypses - the zombie apocalypse should be at the easier end of the scale vs nuclear war or an asteroid impact. On the harder end - the impact of the event will wipe out huge volumes of resources as well as people (especially nuclear war in its full counter-force/counter-value form which is aimed at, in part, piles of resources we call "cities") . On the zed end - as depicted in the TWD tv series - society fell quickly - over a period of ~6wks - leading to a world emptied of people but with much of its physical infrastructure intact. So once you've survived the ZA event and gotten over the "ick" factor and have learned the rules of this new world -you should be in good shape. As long as you don't need a tooth extracted or an appendectomy. You'll be doing even better once you've found some people to join up with (preferably not led by a deputy sheriff from GA or a bargain basement Mussolini). People will be the most precious resource in the post ZA world as you try to fill in the gaps in knowledge and skills your community needs to have addressed. The person you turn away from the gate today (cause they look a little sketchy or cuz the script said so)- might be the dentist, doctor, or plumber you need tomorrow.
I've been in the headspace of a much more critical discussion of World War Z. You're not wrong with it's unique mechanical-narrative framing being a boon for cinema if replicated. That doesn't take away it's politics which is to put it mildly is a time capsule fusion of 2000's liberalism and 'reformist' doctrine. This to my mind makes "How are we going to adapt Yonkers and the Redeker plan?" a bigger question to ask any future adaptation rather than the ones you've already answered in this article.
To get back to the main topic: This considerations and discussion with more neutral space does lean me more towards the mini-series. The differences in research and locational negation should provide more peer review and updating on it's politics. My only nitpick is that the adaptation should have a mixture of hi-fi/lo-fi presentation distinct from the Burns style to both preserve the post-apocalyptic with new tech of the setting and the context of the interviewing breaking this work into it's own out of a neutral goverment report.
Those are interesting questions to ask, too — how would a world in the 2020s re-answer some of the questions that Brooks asked? Now that you bring that up, I am reminded of having to explain to my students who Colin Powell and Howard Dean were, as they were clearly the models for the US President and VP at the time, and are pretty unknown to your modern college student. "Mission Accomplished" means very little to them. Its American political references are all entirely Bush-era, and absolutely do not map onto the 2020 political landscape at all, and need "translation" for anyone who wasn't around then, much less for a modern retelling. I anticipate coming back to this theme when I write something up on Contagion, and the ways in which its political imagination was clearly limited by its times — where the conspiracy theorist grifters are all outsiders and not the ones running the government...
And, yeah, I agree that the exact style of Burns wouldn't work quite as well "in universe" — the aesthetic would be a tricky one to get right. But what fun that would be, to figure that out. I am imagining somewhat silly "re-enactments" being paired with "found footage" of a much greater realism.
Your division at first sounds a bit off. The book's satire seems based more on the performance of it's "present" subjects rather than their actions in the past. Upon reflection, I can see how that's not a hard gap to cross at least on a case by case basis. One wonders how Trump's(That chapter shows that it's not so much modeling than innuendo IMHO) reality shelter would fit both in this question and in general. The retelling would probably use that part to try to fuse the two(like dead set) while it looks for what rich person would have such apolitical clout currently.
That being said if you don't mind more pointed political criticisms: I sincerely hope we can find a better answer in the 2020's than "Maybe we can learn something from failed plans defending apartheid" .
I'm not sure I read the book as suggesting the latter in the way you seem to imply it is. I think having two key elements of the story coming out of the South African and Israeli settings were more about looking for examples of people who (for reasons perhaps right or very wrong) would have created the kind of environment for fostering deeply "unthinkable thoughts." But the book itself also indicates that such thoughts were, in fact, thinkable elsewhere, and also gives alternative successful pathways to thinking about how to fight the war (e.g., the Japanese arc). I also think that giving someone like Redeker the "credit" is intentionally meant as a Werner von Braun situation — which is to say, meant to raise the exact moral and ethical questions you are raising. It doesn't exactly imply that Redeker came out of the thing whole, either! :-)
I find it hard to bridge the interpretative gap between us that would turn the Yukio Mishima coded organization as a real alternative to Redeker. Even without explicitly invoking the japanese version of godwin's law " Having a Red Zone survive and get anime levels of good at killing zacks" ain't a true policy deviation nor quite a psychological one from America interpretation
I would have personally picked the China arc. The whole conflict of the rebellion and ethnics driving the defection is a straight out opposition to the broad strokes of Redeker. Which makes the author injection of the rebels implementation at the end bizarre and undermines a lot of trust in me in terms of my reading of it.
Edit: I get the attempt of a Von Braun situation but the execution still breaks credibility in my eyes. The caveat of Identity loss doesn't fully sell the moral snowflakeness(or if that's part of the unreliable narrator selling which part of it was unreliable) of the character and the chessey Mandela endorsement.
The second issue and that post-covid....the broad strokes of the plan just by itself isn't really that unthinkable to me. It's just uncomfortable triage....it's sucks to think about but not really "Sanity-breaking that could only be barely be come up by planners of racist atrocites" bad .
A movie should at least have the best scenes, and that should include the story of that blind Japanase guy who stays in Japan when anyone else gets out, and then finds out why: because he needs to nurture the garden and free it of any unnatural things.
And of course what it should also contain episodes of that guy selling snake oil and getting rich, but afterwards getting hunted down in his gated villa etc.
There are so many different views on such a global catastrophe in this book, I always thought about it more being about total war than about zombies at all. It's just that the war is going to be a total if any fatal casualties you have at once change sides and continue to fight for the enemy.
The book has many, many such great scenes, characters, situations. It's what makes it a good book! And it is exactly why the movie gets it so wrong, by basically avoiding all of that. So disappointing!!!
Great article, thank you. I did quite a bit of thinking on this topic before the film came out. I loved the book and was astonished when I heard there was going to be a Hollywood film adaptation. My initial thought was "but there's no single character so how can there be a movie star?" And then I heard Brad Pitt was starring. I erroneously concluded that he was going to be the initial narrator, and thought to my sadly deluded self, "ah, that could work, Brad Pitt travels about the world interviewing various folks for his UN report, cool, hope they include the Australian segment". But alas, they only kept the name...
I do think my initial idea would work well with your suggestion of a streaming series. A named actor could be the link between each episode as they travel about the globe, seeing for themselves the rebuilding efforts, and then finding and speaking with a key person, and then the narrative cuts to a flash back. I'd love to see that!
Those are nice variations — either as an Anthony Bordain-style travelogue (would totally work, and also allow for almost infinite episodes, if one were so inclined), or having it be a meta-series about the making of a series (which would allow a lot more plot options, as well, beyond those of the book — e.g., what are the constraints put upon the filmmaker, what are their own difficulties in doing all that travel, etc.).
Excited for this new blog. I've been strangely on a post-apocalyptic kick in novels lately, having read Dr Bloodmoney by PKD, Farnham's Freehold by Heinlein back to back this year and Alas, Babylon (which has a fantastic audiobook read by Will Patton) by Pat Frank. Alas, Babylon seems like it's a lot like WWZ (haven't read) in that it's mostly about the degradation of industry and survival after all the standards of living people had gotten used to go away, and the slow recovery/readjustment to the "thousand-year night".
Thanks! I am planning to write about Dr. Bloodmoney soon, in fact. Such a bizarre (and relatively obscure, considering the profile of the author) take. I love telling people about it and it's weirdness.
I really enjoyed "Contagion" as well and think that kind of story telling would work for WWZ (which I also greatly enjoyed - never caught the film after I realized how different it was from the book). Post pandemic I rewatched the Contagion and was struck by how many things the screenplay anticipated that actually happened with COVID: conspiracy theories, quack cures, resistance to quarantine controls, the total unreadiness of our health care systems to deal with a growing disaster that was so massive and fast moving, running out of storage room for dead victims...Life imitated Art.
The film World War Z is totally worth skipping. Or at least, watching with an eye for it as not being anything much like the book. It has a few very well-shot scenes. I think the intro sequence in the trailer is probably the best scene in the whole movie, as it really does capture something. (It was so effective at giving that feel of being on the ground when something terrible is happening, but not understanding what, that it gave my wife some flashbacks to her experience of being in Manhattan when the 9/11 attacks occurred.)
I'll write more about Contagion, but if anything, it underestimated how stupid we could all be as a society. In Contagion, the conspiracy theories and the quacks were all "outsiders." During COVID, they were being pushed by "insiders," the political mainstream, many in the media, etc. Sigh. If they had put that in a movie in 2011 I don't think people would have found it plausible at all.
I agree and in Contagion - compassion, intelligence, and expertise successfully pushed back against the charlatans and eventually won the day. In the real, in the here and now, degreed and credentialed expertise has to shout to be heard above the self serving pols and similar ilk who politically need to discount the efficacy and knowledge of government organizations trusted with protecting our health and environment. The impact of the noise makers was bad during COVID - now imagine the damage such interference would cause if we're faced with a latter day Spanish Influenza. Or our society is trying to marshal the resources and provide some response to impacted areas in the wake of a limited nuclear attack.
This post could be the foundation, or at least seed, for a pretty interesting presentation on storytelling and disaster recovery at next year's "Prep Summit." https://www.preparednesssummit.org/home
Could be an interesting thing to attend, in any event! I appreciate having it put on my radar...
If you get serious about attending, please let me know. I'm on a planning committee for a radiation-related workshop that's held the day before the conference opens. I can be sure to send you the relevant information.
One other book to add to your list is Warday. Published in 1984. Is set in 1988/9, five years after a limited US / Soviet nuclear war. It's a combination travelogue and oral history of where America is now and what happened in those five years. Has an interesting meta level where the real life authors of the book are the main characters. Imagining their own lives and families in the aftermath.
World War Z reminded me a ton of Warday. Pity it's mostly forgotten now.
Thanks! I will check it out. Interesting that was co-written by James Kunetka, whose book on Los Alamos (City of Fire) is much better known than this book, apparently. It has an audiobook, as well.
I'd like to second the recommendation! I was borderline-obsessed with Warday when I was in middle school (in the early 2000s), after discovering it among a bunch of my parents' old sci-fi paperbacks. It started a lifelong fascination with apocalyptic fiction.
There are two other undeservedly-obscure 1980s nuclear-war novels that I would enthusiastically recommend: Carolyn See's "Golden Days" and P.C. Jersild's "After the Flood". Granted, I must admit that neither of them is quite what you were requesting in this post--they're both closer to "The Road" than "World War Z". But they might fit with your general interest in fictional depictions of nuclear war.
"Golden Days" may be the single strangest book I have ever read--equal parts satirical comedy of manners about LA yuppies, apocalyptic drama, and surreal religious allegory. It features a uniquely...cheerful take on nuclear war. It's quite short--really a novella.
"After the Flood" is the complete opposite in tone--it's perhaps the bleakest apocalyptic novel I've yet read. It's Swedish--think Ingmar Bergman or Lars von Trier. It was inspired by the author's work as a physician on civil defense, where he was instructed to euthanize casualties of nuclear attack. But I find it endlessly re-readable despite its bleakness--it's a picaresque first-person narrative by a young man who has grown up in and only known this ruined world. It's also quite short.
Thanks! I appreciate all recommendations.
I subscribed just so I could reply to this. "After the Flood" is not just my favourite post-apocalyptic novel, it's one of my favourite books of any genre. It's hard pin down why, but I love how the descriptions are so vibrant and detailed even though the world itself is so bleak and miserable. I haven't seen many books with as evocative storytelling. Admittedly the setting is not what you'd call a scientifically accurate post-nuke world, but the other merits more than make up for that.
I can add a strong recommendation behind this book. Great to see someone else has read it too, it's obscure even in Northern Europe and seems to be totally unknown elsewhere.
Also interesting to hear about the author's background. I have read some other books by Jersild and I always wondered what inspired him to write something so different from his other works.
Absolutely, I read "Warday" when it came out in in '84 and in my opinion - it should be considered the gold standard for nuclear war fiction. Not perfect in every respect - but it is a captivating, well sourced, and well-told story. The novel made the point that a limited nuclear exchange might leave most of the country effectively untouched but yet still negatively touch the lives of everyone in the country.
Thanks! I have just started it as an audiobook. Love the intro so far. Some things I would consider implausible or unlikely (the idea that the Soviets would have targeted a single nuke at NYC... if only!), but overall the framing is very thoughtful and has already given me some ideas to borrow/reference in the video game.
As you continue on in the novel - you'll learn more about the targeting of NYC...
I could not agree more Vauhgn.
I write from Milano, Italy: I read War Day in 1984 at the peak of the 80s war fear, I was 13, it triggered an interest in nuclear war that lasts so far. I read so many times the interview to Wilson Ackerman and the flight over what remains of San Antonio. I also wrote to Mr Strieber IG profile to thank him for that sparkle, but I guess, looking at his IG, that to get his attention I should have been kidnapped by aliens...
I suggest "A Canticle for Leibowitz"; the new priestly class studiously search for the mythical Fallout that had so many shelters built for it. The outcome of their quest proves knowledge is not the same as wisdom.
See if you can track down Joe Straczynski's early script for the film, it's excellent. It's about the writing of the fictional UN report that makes up the novel. Unfortunately none of that script survived in the final product.
I've become a huge fan of Don't Look Up, which seems a pretty brilliant mash up of a screw ball comedy and the most serious of subjects. It took balls to make that film, because it would have been so very easy to totally screw it up.
I’m not sure if they did it because of what was going on in China and I think Italy by that point or if it was just a coincidence but I’ll never forget Australian network TV (can’t remember which channel) broadcast Contagion about 2 weeks before the first ‘it would be better if you all worked from home’ orders
Yeah I have to agree. What an amazing book World War Z is. I haven’t read it since before Covid-19 so I may have to revisit it. Great article this… Thank you.
One of my favourite post-apocalyptic stories is the first Horizon game 'Horizon - Zero Dawn' which I recommend playing if you ever get the chance.
I won't spoil it but I love how the mystery behind how the world ended unfurls through the story as one plays it, revealing the ultimately horrifying truth behind the disaster and what people had to do to ensure the survival of the human race.