With a side of 'hey, if all these places are abandoned to die then they're probably going to lose their loyalty to the government real fast'. It's notable that the various enclaves generally don't seem to have fully bucked off 'I'm an American' as an identity. They just disagree with the remaining national goverment that it was the national government, rather than another enclave.
Lets Read: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
- Thread starter veteranMortal
- Start date
The places with the new national identities are the ones abandoned by their former nation's Redeker plan. You bet your ass that if my government deliberately left me to be eaten by zombies they wouldn't be my government anymore, ever, under any circumstances.
Even if my new nation was the Grand Duchy of Fuck Those Guys, population Me.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yeah, I had to go back and edit that into my post because I hit 'submit' and forgot to finish it.
Brooks tends to forget that people have agency as soon as the camera is no longer focused on them. Survivors are heroic and brave but don't actually do anything except passively survive* and then normally just rejoin the unquestionably valid national government. Governments don't actually have to do anything to maintain legitimacy, because they're modeled as these omniscient unaccountable unmoved movers. There's a reason the only political structure that's described doing anything in the post-Redeker era in any detail is what VeteranMortal calls the 'old junta' under Colin frickin' Powell, and why it's described in such glowing terms that are designed to convey the idea of an omniscient benevolent unaccountable unmoved-mover that can order anyone to do anything but isn't responsible to anyone.
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*(Brooks: of course they don't, it's right there in the name, man!)
Brooks tends to forget that people have agency as soon as the camera is no longer focused on them. Survivors are heroic and brave but don't actually do anything except passively survive* and then normally just rejoin the unquestionably valid national government. Governments don't actually have to do anything to maintain legitimacy, because they're modeled as these omniscient unaccountable unmoved movers. There's a reason the only political structure that's described doing anything in the post-Redeker era in any detail is what VeteranMortal calls the 'old junta' under Colin frickin' Powell, and why it's described in such glowing terms that are designed to convey the idea of an omniscient benevolent unaccountable unmoved-mover that can order anyone to do anything but isn't responsible to anyone.
________________________
*(Brooks: of course they don't, it's right there in the name, man!)
- Pronouns
- They/Them
OOC: It also takes incredible gall to go, "You know what's best for a survival situation/pandemic? A massive change in economic systems to one more privatized and capitalist."
Even if capitalism WAS better, and fuck no it isn't, in the middle of an economic/national/military/etc implosion/crisis is about the worst time ever to have to change these things... which is why revolutions that actually seek to better the world are difficult, because you have to manage hard things in shitty circumstances.
E: And it isn't, so you're privatizing the economy meant to try to keep people from dying of a Plague (of zombies in this case.)
Even if capitalism WAS better, and fuck no it isn't, in the middle of an economic/national/military/etc implosion/crisis is about the worst time ever to have to change these things... which is why revolutions that actually seek to better the world are difficult, because you have to manage hard things in shitty circumstances.
E: And it isn't, so you're privatizing the economy meant to try to keep people from dying of a Plague (of zombies in this case.)
- Pronouns
- They/Their
IC:
"Oh, sensible quarantine must be some authoritarian shitshow, unlike abandoning 80% of the population to be consumed so that us Hard Men can claim our rightful place as the Rulers of All We Observe' or the entire 'the only way the Cubans could produce the supplies necessary to prosecute the Z War is by mass slave labor, and not because they didn't abandon basically everything and then purposefully kill off the people who had the critical knowledge to rebuild things.'
Just... Wild.
And I would take you up on the offer, but I'm like, 60% sure that whatever remains of the FBI has my face plastered on some Most Wanted board in their office.
Ooc:
Then you have a relatively stable country capable of mostly sustaining itself (through raw necessity, since they're not able to import large amounts of materials or products,) I could absolutely see Cuba coming out... not *perfect*, but definitely a lot better than the countries we've been largely shown.
Combine this with the Fash hellstates that most of the other countries are, and you have a vested interest in making it as broadly open and valuable to come there, since that's essentially free population with decent odds of highly valuable Skilled Workers fleeing other countries. The fact that this is essentially free brownie points for the government by implementing the policies they've always talked about is just the gravy on top to make this Cuba one of the best places to live.
I would say the same thing between West and East Berlin, or Britain and Nazi Germany.
Fascist States are inherently less productive than non-fascist states.
It's honestly insane just how deep the double-think goes for these Junta bastards.
"Oh, sensible quarantine must be some authoritarian shitshow, unlike abandoning 80% of the population to be consumed so that us Hard Men can claim our rightful place as the Rulers of All We Observe' or the entire 'the only way the Cubans could produce the supplies necessary to prosecute the Z War is by mass slave labor, and not because they didn't abandon basically everything and then purposefully kill off the people who had the critical knowledge to rebuild things.'
Just... Wild.
And I would take you up on the offer, but I'm like, 60% sure that whatever remains of the FBI has my face plastered on some Most Wanted board in their office.
Ooc:
I mean, Castro's political and military sense is why he survived the dozens and dozens of assassination attempts by the Americans.
Then you have a relatively stable country capable of mostly sustaining itself (through raw necessity, since they're not able to import large amounts of materials or products,) I could absolutely see Cuba coming out... not *perfect*, but definitely a lot better than the countries we've been largely shown.
Combine this with the Fash hellstates that most of the other countries are, and you have a vested interest in making it as broadly open and valuable to come there, since that's essentially free population with decent odds of highly valuable Skilled Workers fleeing other countries. The fact that this is essentially free brownie points for the government by implementing the policies they've always talked about is just the gravy on top to make this Cuba one of the best places to live.
Well, given most of the non-Soc/Com states abandoned most of their country to die via Zombie and then had to essentially rebuild a functional nation state from the Political Elite, I full agree that they would do better. Bigger Population, more Industrial Power maintained through the Z-War, and governments that don't have to spend significant amounts of their extremely limited resources policing their own citizens to maintain absolute control over their lives.
I would say the same thing between West and East Berlin, or Britain and Nazi Germany.
Fascist States are inherently less productive than non-fascist states.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
Tbh, I'm pretty sure it's been mentioned that a couple of liberal democracies also didn't pull a Redeker, and they also seem to be doing mostly fine?
- Pronouns
- She/Her
OOC for one second:
People have been looking a little too closely at the CSA's wartime atrocities lately, for the government's liking, I think. This guy does as he's paid to, after all, and the junta would really like it if we all stopped pointing out the veritable boneyard in their closets, but failing that they can try and point south and say everyone was doing it.
[screams]
The projection is fucking astonishing. Like, "we routinely abuse prisoners and threaten to kill them in unreasonably heinous ways, so everyone else must do it, too"?? Also, love the very casual way he interjects 'plantations' into the narrative and heavily implies the Cuban government was enslaving people with different skin colours.
People have been looking a little too closely at the CSA's wartime atrocities lately, for the government's liking, I think. This guy does as he's paid to, after all, and the junta would really like it if we all stopped pointing out the veritable boneyard in their closets, but failing that they can try and point south and say everyone was doing it.
I mean, his target audience is the junta and their mouthpiece interviewing him ... so likely yes.
This is late, I had a power cut before posting it lmao.
I suspect Russia. Supposedly they have an absolute obsession with entrenching tools, possibly connected to the parallel obsession with WWII. Super Manly Spetznaz doing backflips and throwing sharpened shovels and the like. Though googling it is a bit tricky since supposedly they actually did hand them out and try it for real recently.
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He/They
I do not believe that Max Brooks is particularly fascist. I think he was a more or less mainstream American liberal/conservative who was born into wealth and had never doubted the neoliberal ideological orthodoxy despite having some dissatisfaction with 2000s America. The fascism of the book is just an outgrowth of those unexamined metanarratives, combined with Brooks not particularly caring to think through everything about his worldbuilding.
If you genuinely believe in liberal democracy being a meritocratic hierarchy then of course keeping the people at the top of the hierarchy alive is one of the most important things to do in a crisis, you need the right people around to keep everything running properly. If you genuinely believe that capitalism is the only viable system then of course all the communist states will collapse. And so on and so forth.
The book is an unintentional case in how liberalism can become fascism.
If you genuinely believe in liberal democracy being a meritocratic hierarchy then of course keeping the people at the top of the hierarchy alive is one of the most important things to do in a crisis, you need the right people around to keep everything running properly. If you genuinely believe that capitalism is the only viable system then of course all the communist states will collapse. And so on and so forth.
The book is an unintentional case in how liberalism can become fascism.
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Mazeka
You must be joking
- Location
- United States
Combine this with a pop culture understanding of history/non-American foreign cultures with the mindsets of "if we are to survive, we must have order" and "surviving means hard decisions" that often appear in post-apocalyptic fiction.
(The Howard Dean insert makes a disparaging comment later on about Clement Attlee that pretty much confirms the former.)
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The zombies were eaten by emu.
Sure you can, just stick a nuclear reactor in the basement.
China fought a nuclear civil war. Admittedly between communist and 'communist' factions, but still.
Maybe. They do love their Backflipping Hatchet Attack, but I definitely recall the meme existing before the Ukraine war.
- Location
- [REDACTED]
The absolute cope happening with this, uh, interview. Cuba's not perfect but it's leagues better then what's going on in the States. Pretty desperate attempt to keep them from losing their population to Cuba and a dozen other places. But I don't think that brain drain is going to be stopping anytime soon, not unless something changes dramatically. I suspect it's just going to get harder and harder to legally leave the States in the future.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
In a bit of fairness to Brooks, Cuba explicitly wasn't under nearly as much direct threat as other countries, because (in author-canon) they were a fairly large island nation that successfully put themselves under quarantine. So converting their economy was less an exercise in "reorganizing things while we are using them to fight zombies" and more an exercise in "reorganizing things while the zombie threat is remote."
That doesn't make it good, but it does make it that little smidgen less dumb.
Exactly. They're not doing great.
This is way late, but, what does PMC mean? It's clear from context that it isn't "paramilitary corporation" so I don't know what it is
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Professional Managerial Class.
turns out I asked that question last month when I first found this thread and have no memory of having done so because I never sleep >_< Sorry
TheDoge
“It's not a game if there aren't rules.”
- Location
- North America
1) "Those elite anti-zombie fast-reaction companies were actually the Gestapo" - check.
2) "Yonkers was an Inside Job" - check.
3) "A coalition government was literally the End of Democracy" - check.
4) "Avowedly hostile warlord states should have been left in peace, and anyone who fought them was actually the SS" - check.
5) "Any government which implemented Redeker was fascist" - Bingo! I have bingo!
This is going to be one of those sorts of threads, isn't it?
@veteranMortal Imagine botching the reclamation of a single mid-sized archipelago so badly that your battalions were in tatters and your dead outnumbered your living. This post brought to you by the "we took back a continent with California and a box of scraps" gang.
And furthermore, as a proud forklift-operator of the DeStRes tradition (who can now play Tetris blindfolded, true story), I will not allow anyone to type the name Arthur Sinclair without the title "czar."
2) "Yonkers was an Inside Job" - check.
3) "A coalition government was literally the End of Democracy" - check.
4) "Avowedly hostile warlord states should have been left in peace, and anyone who fought them was actually the SS" - check.
5) "Any government which implemented Redeker was fascist" - Bingo! I have bingo!
This is going to be one of those sorts of threads, isn't it?
@veteranMortal Imagine botching the reclamation of a single mid-sized archipelago so badly that your battalions were in tatters and your dead outnumbered your living. This post brought to you by the "we took back a continent with California and a box of scraps" gang.
And furthermore, as a proud forklift-operator of the DeStRes tradition (who can now play Tetris blindfolded, true story), I will not allow anyone to type the name Arthur Sinclair without the title "czar."
TheDoge
“It's not a game if there aren't rules.”
- Location
- North America
Reports of the Death of the Constitution - and the Bill of Rights - have been greatly exaggerated.
Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
How's that junta boot leather taste?
TheDoge
“It's not a game if there aren't rules.”
- Location
- North America
Throw a rock into a crowd - chances are good you will hit someone who has killed, stole, or ate human flesh in the last ten-to-twenty years. Oh, but it was a survival situation, right? Lifeboat ethics. Whatever happened - that's between them and their conscience.
But the government is a little ugly or harsh to quell dissent? Utterly unforgivable.
People have bitched and moaned about restriction of civil liberties during wartime since... ever, I think? If the government actually hanged everybody who raised a whisper of defiance, it would have swiftly run out of citizens.
Trace Coburn
BattleTech Starfighter Analyst
- Location
- NDBBM, New Zealand
[Still OOC, since I have no clue how NZ fared in WWZ or this interpretation thereof, and I suspect Brooks didn't either]
There is a fundamental bargain underlying any form of government: the governed give their loyalty and their tax-revenue, and in return the government uses those resources to provide the governed with services, the sine qua non being protection. Any government that enacted Redeker completely and utterly abrogated that fundamental bargain with every last single soul they abandoned — they betrayed them, and I use that word deliberately! — and those who survived that betrayal would be perfectly within their rights to create their own government that would keep such a bargain (blackjack and hookers optional) and to tell any and all representatives of the old government who might come along to take a long walk off a short pier! That they'd had their chance to do right by their citizens, but they didn't just 'fumble' the ball but deliberately threw it away, and now they had absolutely zero standing to expect any kind of sympathy or allegiance from those they knowingly and with malice aforethought left behind to be fucking eaten by fucking zombies.
^^^^^ THIS, SO GODDAMN HARD.
There is a fundamental bargain underlying any form of government: the governed give their loyalty and their tax-revenue, and in return the government uses those resources to provide the governed with services, the sine qua non being protection. Any government that enacted Redeker completely and utterly abrogated that fundamental bargain with every last single soul they abandoned — they betrayed them, and I use that word deliberately! — and those who survived that betrayal would be perfectly within their rights to create their own government that would keep such a bargain (blackjack and hookers optional) and to tell any and all representatives of the old government who might come along to take a long walk off a short pier! That they'd had their chance to do right by their citizens, but they didn't just 'fumble' the ball but deliberately threw it away, and now they had absolutely zero standing to expect any kind of sympathy or allegiance from those they knowingly and with malice aforethought left behind to be fucking eaten by fucking zombies.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
OOC: So, when's the "help help the new CIA found out I was on the Cuban internet and an Alpha Team killed my family" coming?