Nope. Unlike a lot of classic movie zombies, those of Max Brooks’ world don’t need any nourishment (no brains for them…they must have read brains are high in saturated fat…)
I haven’t actually set out to read this so much as run accross it and flip through it to something interesting. Also, I like to use it as a quick reference when discussing zombies with others.
“No no, don’t you see, it says right here on page 23, real zombies don’t actually eat brains despite what the media has told you.”
“Recent evidence has once and for all discounted the theory that human flesh is fuel for the undead” ZSG, page 11.
And they don’t die until they decompose. Life span, again depending on environmental factors, is estimated to be 3 to 5 years. That’s a whole lot of spagetteos.
I’ll never forget David Sedaris discussing this book and his encounter with a California hippy girl that told him she wouldn’t eat people as a zombie because she was a vegetarian. Sorry, but zombie vegetarians also eat people.
Just finished WWZ last night- at 2:30 in the morning, with a 9 AM class this morning. I’d have been OK, except for the part where I couldn’t sleep. Until I locked the door. And the windows. That, with me sleeping on the second floor.
Can I just point out that I get to play this right now. Live action, 24-7 Humans vs. Zombies game, with Nerf guns. Ridiculous amounts of fun.
Oh, and Max Brooks’s zombies are very slightly more plausible, if only because it takes them more than five seconds between infection and reanimation.
You haven’t seen the remake of Day of the Dead have you? They had a character that was a vegetarian and after he was bitten and turned did not eat people. The survivors hypothesized that because he was a vegetarian when he was alive he was now a vegetarian zombie. WORST. REMAKE. EVER.
I’ve read the book, and as a consequence have spent a fair amount of time with friends discussing how we’ll survive the zombie attack. We’re pretty lame.
No one else seems to be as worried about the underwater zombies as I am!!!
Really, really want to read World War Z now.
As others have pointed out zombies don’t actually derive any nourishment from what they eat. They will continue to try and eat people even if their entire digestive track has been remobed (most of the rules that apply to Romero zombies seem to apply to Brooks zombies). And animals (at least mammals) aren’t off limits either.
So what is? Unless they’re something supernatural, they need food.
If you’re worried about underwater zombies, then World War Z is gonna be awesome for you…
especially the part where the sub is sitting on the bottom of the ocean, and they can hear the zombies scrabbling at the hull.
Also, for those that are into decent Zombie stories, may I recommend “Day by Day Armageddon”? It’s planned as a several part book, part one is usually available at Barnes and Nobles. Quite good, but the additional parts will be sporadic, as the author is an active duty pilot for the Navy.
Also, didn’t the doctor in the original Day of the Dead prove that the living dead don’t actually need to eat?
Yep, eviscerated zombies still tried to bit “Dr Frankenstein”.
I’ve had my eyes on both books for a long time. This thread has convinced me to go down to my favourite bookstore and get them.
The whole ‘kill the brain’, don’t need air, food, circulatory system part of zombies strains my incredulity. Yeah, I know, suspend disbelief and the underwater aspects Max wrote about are a great way to unnerve folks…but I don’t see how a biological system can exist that motivates a zombie for several years, without any apparent power source.
Stored complex carbs? Solar power? How does a gooey brain reanimate the dead without caloric intake?
Well what a coinicdence - I just finished it this morning. Hell of a book. The bit that got me were the migratory ‘snakes’ of millions of zombies lurching across the plains.
Furthermore, I had no less than three zombie-related nightmares while reading it, one of them last night where I was holed up in a tall building defending my cat from the Zs with a meat cleaver.
I don’t hold Unintentionally Blank’s view of the lack of ‘realism’. The whole book is an amazingly imaginatively-conceived bit of hokum from start to finish, and there is no explanation for the zombies’ ability to survive (though it does imply that they eventually disintegrate completely) - they’re feaking zombies man, and the viral theory of the infection is never explicitly confirmed.
To borrow a line from Mystery Science Theater 3,000:
“If you’re wondering how he eats or breathes and other science facts!”
“La la la”
“Just repeat to yourself ‘it’s just a show I should really just relax’!”
Once I can suspect my disbelief in regards to the dead rising it isn’t such a big stretch for me to figure they don’t need oxygen, food, or a functioning circulatory system. That’s just me. I just sit back and enjoy the undead cannibalistic fun!
Marc
Oh I agree. It was a great read with a TON of thought given to ‘Premise: The dead rise…and they’re pissed’, and for the most part the details were extremely well thought out. It was just those one or two niggling things.
I mean, obviously it makes no sense. There are bands of roving zombies on the ocean floor, way deep down. It’s not about sense.
(If called upon, I’d say it’s really a metaphor for hunger, disease, poverty, etc. Or zombies. Whatever. Drop everything and go read World War Z.)
I’m rebuying the books.
I got WWZ when it first came out as a hardback, but it seems to have disappeared along with my survival guide, so I think I’m gonna rebuy as paperback.
Actually, the most chilling part was fighting a foe that wasn’t affected by Shock and Awe…,that every casualty on your side made the other side stronger, and that we keep getting good at fighting the previous war.
It’s possible that, for an energy source, the zombies use the old organs and tissues that it no longer needs. As far as we can tell, zombie only need a small part of the brain and nervous system, and the muscles to function. The digestive, circulatory, respiratory systems, etc… can all go. So it can be assumed, then, that there is some internal process cannibalizing the parts of the body the zombie isn’t using and turning them into whatever nourishment it needs. And, since it has so much less mass that needs nourishment, it can survive much longer on what’s there. In the book it does mention that instead of blood or other bodily fluids, when a zombie is injured thick,black ooze comes out, so this could be what happens. Organs get metabolized into this ooze, which could very well be full of whatever the fuck the zombie needs to move.