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Lets Read: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

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Jaertin said:
One of the more obvious examples of the reviewer having biases of her own. There's reaching and then there's inventing a scenario out of whole cloth to put the blame on the South Koreans. You know, because there's no way the communist North Koreans could have had a few slip through the checks the way it happened absolutely everywhere else? By hiding it, by bribing guards, by being important enough to refuse checks, by guards being bored, sloppy or drunk,... No no, had to be those dastardly South Koreans.
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I mean, to be fair... it's not really about South Koreans being dastardly?

But her personal theory is in no way an objective one.
 
Jaertin said:
One of the more obvious examples of the reviewer having biases of her own. There's reaching and then there's inventing a scenario out of whole cloth to blame the outbreaks on the South Koreans. You know, because there's no way the communist North Koreans could have had a few slip through the checks the way it happened absolutely everywhere else? By hiding it, by bribing guards, by being important enough to refuse checks, by guards being bored, sloppy or drunk,... No no, had to be those dastardly South Koreans.

Edit: Just to clarify, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Done well, scrutinizing the unreliable narrator is good fun. And here we have two for the price of none!
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She's most probably not correct about how the infection got in, no. It is... feasible? That this is how it happened, but the most plausible cause is a high ranking North Korean officer pulling rank to avoid being subjected to checks, yes. This would also better explain why it cut a swathe through the Kim family proper.

It's just that given the circumstances of how virulently nasty and hostile to her ideological biases the post-war South Korean government is, she's inclined to blame them for things when it is in doubt.
 
The Laurent said:
I mean, to be fair... it's not really about South Koreans being dastardly?

But her personal theory is in no way an objective one.
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Her theory proposes at minimum the "South Korean spies" being monstrously negligent.

veteranMortal said:
She's most probably not correct about how the infection got in, no. It is... feasible? That this is how it happened, but the most plausible cause is a high ranking North Korean officer pulling rank to avoid being subjected to checks, yes. This would also better explain why it cut a swathe through the Kim family proper.

It's just that given the circumstances of how virulently nasty and hostile to her ideological biases the post-war South Korean government is, she's inclined to blame them for things when it is in doubt.
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It's not impossible, but the reviewer has no evidence for it and there are much more pedestrian explanations available. With millions of people there were probably many points of entry for the infection. You just can't process that many people without a great number of fuckups.
IMO, it's just as likely, if not more so, that the Kims got done in by palace politics than by the zombies, though.
 
Jaertin said:
Her theory proposes at minimum the "South Korean spies" being monstrously negligent.
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Yes, monstrously negligent ... but not uncommonly negligent. This setting does, after all, feature a lot of instances of intelligence agencies/special forces/[insert palatable misnomer for "state-sanctioned wetwork squads" here] doing shit like this, be it through sheer misdirected idiocy or through deliberate spite.

I agree with the author that the "someone pulled rank and unintentionally decimated DPRK High Command" theory is more likely ... but it's also not really all that unreasonable to imagine that an intelligence operative, in service of an agency and government with extreme antipathy for the North, could get bit and, in the absence [or even in defiance] of orders to the contrary, decide "if I'm going down, I'm taking as many of those people as I can with me".
 
Stardust&Scotch said:
Yes, monstrously negligent ... but not uncommonly negligent. This setting does, after all, feature a lot of instances of intelligence agencies/special forces/[insert palatable misnomer for "state-sanctioned wetwork squads" here] doing shit like this, be it through sheer misdirected idiocy or through deliberate spite.

I agree with the author that the "someone pulled rank and unintentionally decimated DPRK High Command" theory is more likely ... but it's also not really all that unreasonable to imagine that an intelligence operative, in service of an agency and government with extreme antipathy for the North, could get bit and, in the absence [or even in defiance] of orders to the contrary, decide "if I'm going down, I'm taking as many of those people as I can with me".
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The only evidence she has for there being SK spies at all is the KCIA spook she mistrusts on basically everything else. (There certainly were, of course)
That the spies went into the bunkers at all is something she... just states with no supporting evidence?
And then presenting them as the sole vector.

I agree it's not at all out of character for the intelligence agency, nor literally impossible. But the reviewer has no reason to jump through these hoops. She hates the KCIA (justifiably, probably!) and worked backwards from that to paint them as responsible.

Notice for example that she doesn't raise the possibility of it being a Chinese spy? They're just as interested in keeping an eye on their belligerent nuclear-armed neighbor so they too would have had agents in place. If you reread the first parts, she even agrees that at some point the PRC started deliberately exporting the infection.
veteranMortal said:
This was essentially semi-officially endorsed biological warfare, and it was only able to happen because by this point the PRC was changing tactics, shifting from hoping to contain the plague to hoping to use it as a distraction. They couldn't keep it contained, and chasing runners like these was taking too many resources they needed to deal with the infected within China itself, so they though they'd just let the rest of the world deal with them.

I don't think the Politburo really knew what they were dealing with, and once they did… That's a matter for a later chapter.
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That's one more piece of evidence in favour of it being the Chinese than there is for the South Koreans.


I'm not saying the scenario she presents is impossible. I'm commenting on the fact that she presents that scenario, and that scenario only, with no supporting evidence, and that this is one of the clearest examples of her biases at work.

Which isn't bad! It makes her a more interesting narrator that she's opinionated and not fully reliable.
 
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The main issue with having an unreliable singular POV first-person narrator is that many readers will at times take what they say at face value and won't be able to tell if they are unreliable if it isn't made very clear.
 
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Stardust&Scotch said:
with extreme antipathy for the North, could get bit and, in the absence [or even in defiance] of orders to the contrary, decide "if I'm going down, I'm taking as many of those people as I can with me".
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I honestly think you're playing up the evilness of our theoretical spy here. Say, they get bitten, realize it and panic because they're too afraid of whatever the consequences of admitting they're infected would be (I'd bet death or getting kicked out, neither of which sound very pleasant). So they sit on it, until it's too late. Fear and selfishness do the job just as well as callous cruelty.
 
Thalmann said:
I honestly think you're playing up the evilness of our theoretical spy here. Say, they get bitten, realize it and panic because they're too afraid of whatever the consequences of admitting they're infected would be (I'd bet death or getting kicked out, neither of which sound very pleasant). So they sit on it, until it's too late. Fear and selfishness do the job just as well as callous cruelty.
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Also, to play devil's advocate - North Korea isolated itself early enough that it is feasible that a South Korean agent could trust their Phalanx shot.
 
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Speaking of Phalanx, honestly I think my personal headcanon is that Breck Scott is literally a cartoon villain. The idea that he's being demonized beyond the usual corporate evil makes more logical sense, but I just think it adds a lot to the setting to have Breck as a cartoon villain.

=============

As Breckinridge Scott sat in his Arctic doom fortress setting money on fire, he eyed the idiot journalist. No, I can't lie to him, he'll see through it. I need to show him my Darkest Self. He flushed ten hookers down his solid gold toilet and called up his secretary. "Joanna! I need you to buy twenty shares in the racism factory! Oh, and I want ten pollutions on my desk by Wednesday! Everyone's being eaten by zombies? Fuck that, MONEY!"

He thought proudly about how he'd tested his useless Phalanx shots exclusively on endangered white rhinos and silverback gorillas, then called his secretary again. "Joanna, you know how I wanted twenty shares? Double it, and buy me fifty n-word passes! Oh, and my employees shouldn't get paid. They should be paying me for working here! I want two hundred thousand dollars a year from all of my employees! What do you mean, they'll try to find other jobs? Well, have my corporate ninjas assassinate them! Oh, and if they strike, we'lll fake an ISIS bombing and pin it on the lazy bastards!"

Then, he drank a cup of pure molten Nazi gold instead of coffee, and called up his eager minions: the Sweden Democrats and Donald Trump.

"Yes!" he cackled. "James Bond can't stop me now!"
 
Thalmann said:
I honestly think you're playing up the evilness of our theoretical spy here. Say, they get bitten, realize it and panic because they're too afraid of whatever the consequences of admitting they're infected would be (I'd bet death or getting kicked out, neither of which sound very pleasant). So they sit on it, until it's too late. Fear and selfishness do the job just as well as callous cruelty.
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fyi "extreme antipathy", in that sentence, applied to the intelligence agency and the government, not specifically to the operative.
veteranMortal said:
Also, to play devil's advocate - North Korea isolated itself early enough that it is feasible that a South Korean agent could trust their Phalanx shot.
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the real enemy ... was capitalism all along?
 
I have to admit ignorance as to why exactly the RoK intelligence agency reverting to the name of 'KCIA' is such a Bad Sign. I haven't studied South Korea or it politics and institutions too deeply, but the reviewer (and comments) give the impression that before being disbanded/reformed, the KCIA was somewhere around the level of the East German Stasi. Or am I misreading the text?

fires up Google, reads Wikipedia page

... Jesus H. Christ.

And Brooks thought bringing that back was a good idea? Or did he just... not consider the implications of resurrecting that brand-name? :jackiechan:
 
Ooc

I like the analisis that though the fascists consolidated a lot of power reddekering their populations they fucked themselves over in the long run because the humane nations have the population and industrial edge now.

Setting aside the economic benefit. I bet a ton of brain drain from reddeker states is motivated by not liking the odds of being used as bait / "necessary" sacrifice
 
globalwarmth said:
Ooc

I like the analisis that though the fascists consolidated a lot of power reddekering their populations they fucked themselves over in the long run because the humane nations have the population and industrial edge now.

Setting aside the economic benefit. I bet a ton of brain drain from reddeker states is motivated by not liking the odds of being used as bait / "necessary" sacrifice
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Yeah, it's a really solid framing that the WWZ book in-universe is a project of outright present-moment revisionism trying to ignore that all those vast numbers left to die as mute meatshields for Power... didn't, at least not completely.

The North Korea example is a great solution to the problem it posed in the book. Because it was always nonsense that the Brainwashed Communist Hivemind just buried themselves, but of course, canonically they did. So "they exiled most of their people and hunkered down like paranoid lifeboat survivalists" is perfect - they behaved exactly like every other Redeker country, and the displaced population instantly formed a probably-superior nation.

I was thinking the resolution to the problem would be that the KCIA was pushing the "lol molepeople" line as a cover for doing something very fucking nasty and just killing everyone with more traditional bio/chemweapons or dirty bombs or whatnot, ala the earlier gassing example. But this works better as an illustration of the through-line that the 'lower' classes have agency, and don't just lie down and die once you lose power over them.

The parallel/antimatter book to this that interviews the non-Redeker nations would be fascinating, even with the same level of bias (though it'd much less offensive because they didn't all, y'know, totally fash out).

SirKaid said:
At a certain point the two are indistinguishable. Does Brooks write in a way that a reactionary would appreciate because of his apathy toward anything that isn't a white cis male American, or is he a reactionary hiding his malice behind mere apathy? Is there a meaningful difference?
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Not for this, I imagine. It perhaps has longer-term differences - the True Believer, Cynical Manipulator, and Comfortable Moderate (etc) all having different goals and forms of delusion.
 
Antumbra said:
Yeah, it's a really solid framing that the WWZ book in-universe is a project of outright present-moment revisionism trying to ignore that all those vast numbers left to die as mute meatshields for Power... didn't, at least not completely.

The North Korea example is a great solution to the problem it posed in the book. Because it was always nonsense that the Brainwashed Communist Hivemind just buried themselves, but of course, canonically they did. So "they exiled most of their people and hunkered down like paranoid lifeboat survivalists" is perfect - they behaved exactly like every other Redeker country, and the displaced population instantly formed a probably-superior nation.

I was thinking the resolution to the problem would be that the KCIA was pushing the "lol molepeople" line as a cover for doing something very fucking nasty and just killing everyone with more traditional bio/chemweapons or dirty bombs or whatnot, ala the earlier gassing example. But this works better as an illustration of the through-line that the 'lower' classes have agency, and don't just lie down and die once you lose power over them.
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Weirdly, Wainio's third(?) interview in the 'march east' phase of the story does at least allude to this, because they keep finding survivor enclaves. But it's deliberately glided over just how many survivors there actually were relative to the number of people who were born into or stayed in the national redoubt.
 
I'm happy we finally got to the DPRK. I wish it was more focused on what actually happened, but I think keeping it vague in the actual book and this review is kinda the point.

I think the reviewer gives too much credit to the Kim dynasty though. People that kill their political dissidents with anti-aircraft cannons does not make rational leaders. Kim Yo-Jong as new great leader is a hot take though because she was in charge of ensuring the old regime got pushed out for new lackeys loyal to Kim Jong Un.

I like the take though. Exile the peasants and keep the military and leadership. I still think it's devolved into Metro:2033 Korea edition. Complete with military blackout of what goes on topside.

Japan is gonna be funny to read because I don't know how a Katana would be used for destroying brains without breaking. Reject democracy return to Bushido.

I'm excited to see if Mexico / Aztlan gets expanded upon a little bit. New Aztec Empire. Let's go.

Maybe if the Author goes for the epilogue we'll see the collapse of post-reddeker governments. Balkanization of the US is always interesting to read about.
 
Solar Mechanis said:
I'm happy we finally got to the DPRK. I wish it was more focused on what actually happened, but I think keeping it vague in the actual book and this review is kinda the point.
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Well, it's pretty explicit about what happened to 3/4 of the North Korean population and the remaining 1/4 has kind of reduced itself to irrelevancy and is probably dead.

Maybe if the Author goes for the epilogue we'll see the collapse of post-reddeker governments. Balkanization of the US is always interesting to read about.
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I mean, I'd be happy to see the US stay unified as long as those fuckers weren't in charge of it...
 
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