The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks – A Decluttered Mind

Book #9

This has always been part of my “Essential Reading List” so naturally, it remained in my possession when I started minimizing and donating my old books. And what better time to pull it out of my shelf and re-read it than now?

The book is just what it promises to be: a complete foolproof manual on how humans can survive in the event the dead starts walking again to take over the world. The book does not posit that zombies are a possibility but rather a reality. The last section of the book is in fact dedicated to narrate several recorded attacks beginning from 60,000 B.C. It’s practically the bible of zombie enthusiasts and doomsday preppers alike.

To an outsider, this may seem outrageous, even ludicrous. But the book is actually full of extremely useful tips on how to survive a real-life pandemic. If you really think about it, a zombie infestation is, in essence, a pandemic. Even the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) released their own guide for zombie preparedness. Go ahead. Check it.

The Max Brooks modern classic explains in great detail all the essential items and equipment needed to survive the world of the undead as well as the strategies on how to combat the living dead. It gives the reader a clear picture on what could go well and go wrong when using each weapon and following each strategy, depending on the situation. What I like about it most is it offers practical knowledge on how to survive from the smallest outbreaks up until the plague reaches a global scale. Seems too extreme but remember the 1918 Spanish flu that infected a quarter of the world’s population and devastated thousands of communities? Yup.

If there’s one thing that we learned during this crisis is that humans are never prepared for such situations. Man, if COVID-19 proved to be a zombie virus, the entire Philippines would be a total shitstorm right now.

After all the lockdowns and quarantines are over, and we finally have some semblance of normalcy again, I hope that we all bank on this experience to ready ourselves physically, mentally, and yes, financially even for simple emergencies. If we can’t handle a virus that kills people, what more if we encounter one that kills people and then brings them back to “life”?

Featured image grabbed from Amazon.