A Review of World War Z Prt. 2: Blame

Map of world infestations. Yellow is safe, gray is infested, black

is basically just death, if you're there, you're dead.

Hello, Iowa, I see your black hole. I understand.

made by:Liquid Nazgul

They put a lot of effort into this.

So if you managed to make it through part one, I commend you. I almost didn't make through that sucker and I'm the one who wrote it.

Just to recap:

Part 1: Warnings showed us what happens when countries don't listen to important information, when people care more about themselves then the group as a whole, and no matter what there are still good people out there trying to make a difference, trying to save the world.

 

And now!

 

Part 2: Blame

 

Langley, Virginia USA

 

Bob Archer, director of the Central Intelligence Agency

 

"When you think about the CIA you probably think about our two most popular and enduring myths. The first is that our mission is to search the globe for any conceivable threat to the United States, and the second is that we have the power to perform the first."

 

Bob Archer is bitter about his role leading up to what is referred to in the book as "the great panic." He wants people to know that it wasn't their fault, that they were doing the best they could to protect  the United States of America. But you can also hear the regret in his voice. The resentment that the CIA wasn't as all powerful as everything thought they were.

 

"We wanted bad guys to suspect us, to fear us, and maybe think twice before trying to harm any of citizens. This was the advantage of our image as some sort of omniscient octopus. The only disadvantage was that our own citizens believed that image as well, so whenever anything, anywhere occurred without any warning, where do you think the finger was pointed: "Hey how did that crazy country get those nukes? Where was the CIA? How come all those people were murdered by a fanatic? Where was the CIA? How come with the dead began coming back to life , we didn't know about it until they were breaking through our living room windows? Where the hell was the CIA?!?"

 

Bob Archer wants everyone to understand that it wasn't their fault, but he spends so much time on the subject of how its not their fault that I can't help but think that he thinks it is. Every time he says "there was nothing we could do." It sounds as though he's saying, "maybe, somewhere, there was." So he put most of the blame on the People's Republic of China and their secrecy.

 

"If your soviet neighbor is trying to set fire to your house, you don't worry about the Arab down the block. If suddenly it's the Arab in your backyard, you can't be worrying about the People's Republic of China, and if one day the ChiComs show up at your front door with an eviction notice in one hand and a Molotov cocktail in the other, then the last thing you're going to do is look over his shoulder for a walking corpse."

 

"The PRC knew they were already our number one surveillance target. They knew they could never hide the existence of the nationwide "Healthy and Safety" sweeps. They realized the best way to mask what they were doing was to hide it in blame sight. Instead of lying about the sweeps themselves, they just lied about what they were sweeping for."

 

"all of it was to divert the world's eye from the real danger growing within China. And it worked! Every shred of intel we had on the PRC, the sudden disappearances, the mass executions, the curfews, the reserve call-ups, everything could easily be explained as standard ChiCom procedure." 

 

And then they lost a lot of people who used to work for the CIA making their job even more insurmountable. Bob Archer is really bitter about t hat.

 

"There were some of us who stayed because we actually believed in what we were doing. We weren't in this for the money or the working conditions, or even the occasional pat on the back. We were in this because we wanted to serve our country. We wanted to keep our people safe. But even with ideals like that, there comes a point when you have to realize that the sum of all your blood, sweat, and tears, will ultimately amount to zero."

 

And then of course they bring up the Warmbrunn-Knight Report, you know, the top secret one that was totally given to everybody, but nobody read. Yep. You can throw all the blame you want around, but when it all comes down to it, that report could have saved lives. And thus we find the source of Bob Archer's bitterness.

"the copy that was originally hand delivered by Paul Knight himself, the one marked "Eyes Only" for the director... it was found at the bottom of a desk in the San Antonio field office of the FBI, three years after The Great Panic."

 

Bob Archer is filled with bitterness and regret. Ultimately he was a good man, but he found himself in an unwinnable situation and it ruined him.

 

 

Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) General Alfred B.

Gruenther (US) - appointed July 1953 - November 1956.
(NATO Photo 398kb

Ref. no: 1251)

The next story in part two is about a guy named Travis D'Ambrosia, Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

Now, I wasn't a huge military buff before reading this, so some stuff I had to look up. One of them being that fancy title up there. It basically means that Travis is the best of the best of the best, sir. With honors.

Not only is he one of the highest ranking officials ever in the history of ever, he's also in charge of U.S. European Command. Only four star generals or admirals can even sneeze in the general direction of this job. He's pretty much just the bee's knees.

In his opening description he's sad and has a problem with eye contact.

Where Bob was bitter about his regret and unable to take on any of the blame, Travis was broken from it. He shouldered the blame because he saw the short comings and in perfect hindsight he knew where they could have done better.

 

"I won't deny mistakes were made. I won't deny we could have been better prepared. I'll be the first to admit that we let the American people down. I just want the American people to know why."

 

See what I'm talking about? This is a stand up guy. This is one of those great men of history that people are always talking about.

 

"He was that type of man, the chairman of the joint chiefs. He kept the conversation 'hypothetical,' indulging in the fantasy that was just some intellectual exercise. After all, the rest of the world wasn't ready to believe something so outrageous, why should the men and women in this room?

We kept up with the charade as long as we could, speaking with a smile or punctuating with a joke... I'm not sure when the transition happened. It was so subtle, I don't think anyone even noticed, but suddenly you had a room full of military professionals, each one with decades of combat experience and more academic training than the average civilian brain surgeon, and all of us speaking openly and honestly, about the possible threat of walking corpses. It was like... a dam breaking; the taboo was shattered and the truth just started flowing out. It was... liberating."

 

Serious people talk about serious things and these were the leaders of the United States of America, they had to be very serious all of the time. They weren't people who were used to having these sorts of conversations. But they made it happen. Because they had to. The stretch of imagination required of them was difficult but they managed. I'm sure if it was a room full of science fiction writers the whole issue would have been solved within the hour, but they didn't have science fiction writers. They had respectable people who were very serious. And yet, they made it work.

 

Enter The Alpha Teams, stage one of their plan.

 

"The White House loved Phase One. It was cheap, fast, and if executed properly, hundred percent covert. Phase One involved the insertion of Special Forces Units into infested areas. Their orders to investigate, isolate, and eliminate... With extreme prejudice."

 

"Phase Two required a massive national undertaking, the likes of which hadn't been seen since the darkest days of the Second World War. That kind of effort requires Herculean amounts of both national treasure and national support, both of which, by that point, were nonexistent. The American people had just been through a very long and bloody conflict. They were tired. They had enough. Like the 1970s the pendulum was swinging from a militant stance to a very resentful one."

 

This conflict in mentioned a lot in World War Z. The one that made all the American people hate the military. Its never outright stated which conflict in our history it is, but I'm sure we can all guess. Sometimes in the book the opinions make my eyes roll, other times I'm okay with what they're implying. Here, I'm totally on board with Travis. He's got it down. He knows what's up, he knows what he's talking about.

 

"In totalitarian regimes- communism, fascism, religious fundamentalism- popular support is given. You can start wars, you can prolong them, you can put anyone you want in a uniform for any length of time without ever having to worry about the slightest political backlash. In a democracy the polar opposite is true. Public support must by husbanded as a finite national resource. It must be spent wisely, sparingly, and with the greatest return on your investment. America is especially sensitive to war weariness, and nothing brings on backlash like the perception of defeat. I say 'perception' because America is a very all-or-nothing society. We like the big win, the touchdown, the knock out in the first round. We like to know, and for everyone else to know, that our victory was not only uncontested, it was positively devastating."

 

"Americans are honest people, we expect a fair deal. I know that a lot of other cultures used to think that was naïve and even childish, but it's one of our most sacred principles. To see Uncle Sam going back on his word, revoking people's private lives, revoking their freedom..."

 

"This generation had had enough, and that's why when the undead began to devour our country we were almost too weak and too vulnerable to stop them."

 

Phase Two was never started which lead to everything else that happened.

 

"This is our system, and it's the best in the world. But it must be protected and defended, and it must never again be so abused." 

 

So, Bob Archer is bitter and resentful, Travis D'Ambrosia is sad and full of regrets. Bob Archer is a good man, and Travis D'Ambrosia is a great one. Next we move on to someone who neither of those things.

 

He's that little red dot,

hanging out in the vostok

station.

Breck Scott is living in isolation up in Antarctica. He's smug and kind of a jerk. I don't like him, but his story pushes the underlining message of some people just care about themselves.

 

The media is still calling the whole zombie problem an outbreak of African Rabies.

He creates a vaccine for rabies, doesn't know if it works, doesn't care. Sells it and everything related to it to profit off of people's fears.

 

Breck Scott is selfish.

 

"We knew it would work against Rabies, and that's what they said it was, right? Just some weird strain of jungle rabies."

 

He starts very quickly with the self-defense, he wants the narrator to know that it wasn't his fault at all. He was just doing his own thing. It's everyone else's fault for buying into it.

 

"People used to take flu shots all the time never knowing if it was for the right strain, why was this any different?"

 

"You know how many disease scares there used to be? You'd think the black death was sweeping the globe every three months or so... ebola, SARS, avian flu, you know how many people made money on those scares?"

 

See what I'm talking about the self-defense? It just keeps a rolling.

 

"We never lied, you understand. They told us it was rabies, so we made a vaccine for rabies. We said it had been tested in Europe and the drugs it was based on had been tested in Europe. Technically, we never lied, technically we never did anything wrong." 

 

"Everyone got to be heroes, everyone got to make money. Six months after Phalanx hit the market, you started getting this cheaper, knock off brands, all solid sellers, as well as the other ancillary stuff like home air purifiers."

 

"It wasn't the idea of safety anymore, it was the idea of the idea of safety."

"It protected them from their fears, that's all I was selling."

 

"All I did was what I supposed to do. I chased my dream and I got my slice. You wanna blame someone, blame whoever first called it rabies, or whoever knew it wasn't rabies and gave us the green light anyway."

 

And then he ends his three page long rant of how he never did anything wrong, he laughs about all the people he fooled, like it was a huge joke.

 

"If there's a hell, I don't want to think about how many of those dumb shits are waiting for me. I just hope they don't want a refund."

 

Moving on from scum of the earth, we meet Grover Carlson former White House Chief of staff. He has a new job now, shoveling poop for fuel. He's kind of a jerk, so I'm okay with it.

 

Grover, like Breck, doesn't take any blame. The way he sees it, it was an unfortunate accident that they didn't react properly, but he's not going to get bent out of shape about.

 

"Of course we got a copy of the Knight-WarnJews report. What do you think we are? The CIA?"

 

See what I'm talking about? He can't even bring himself to say the actual name of the report that could have saved everyone. Or a lot of people at least. There's a reason he's shoveling poop now. If I was in charge I would make him shovel poop too.

 

"Can you imagine what America would have been like if the federal government slammed on the breaks every time some paranoid crackpot cried "wolf" or "global warming" or "living dead"? What we did, what every president since Washington has done, was provide a measured, appropriate response, in direct relation to a realistic threat assessment."

 

Clearly, the stretch of imagination that Travis's group was able to handle was not a thing for this other group. Why they weren't together, I'm not sure. I feel like they all should have been this big cement looking room all arguing over a big red button that says, 'push in case of zombies.' I feel like everyone should have a button like that.

Its the same reason I buy extra canned goods when I go grocery shopping. Canned goods are my big red button.

 

"We knew Phalanx was a placebo and we were grateful for it. It calmed people down and let us do our jobs."

 

I can actually get behind that sentence, no matter how terrible it is. You need a calm populace in order to do stuff.

 

Then the narrator asked if they ever tried to solve the whole zombie problem...

"C'mon. Can you ever "solve" poverty? Can you ever "solve" crime? Can you ever solve disease, unemployment, war or any other societal herpes? Hell no. All you can hope for is to make them manageable enough to allow people to get on with their lives. That's not cynicism, that's maturity. You can't stop the rain. All you can do is just build a roof that you hope won't leak, or at least won't leak on the people who are gonna vote for you."

 

Grover admits that in certain places the outbreaks were ignored. This may or may not have to do with his above philosophy of not getting rain on his supporters. Wouldn't life be so much easier if the non supporters just died off?

 

"You gave the problem the amount of attention you thought it deserved."

"Right."

 

Given that, at any time, government always has a lot on its plate, and especially at this time because another public scare was the last thing the American people wanted."

 

"Yep."

"So you figured that the threat was small enough to be managed by both the alpha teams abroad and some additional law enforcement training at home?"

"You got it."

"Even though you'd seen warnings to the contrary that it could never just be woven into the fabric of public life and that it actually was a global catastrophe in the making."

"Grow up."

 

 

This my mom holding her grandson for the first time.

I've also seen her do SheHulk type things in my life.

She's pretty much just awesome.

So, we've heard from seriously important people so far in this section. Next Max Brooks introduces us to a the everyday suburban mom, Mary Jo Miller. She built an entire town on stilts called Troy, located in Montana.

I honestly have never met a Mary Jo who wasn't a strong and powerful woman. That might be why I'm so partial to this story. Or because I'm sure this is my mom in story book form. I'm not sure which.

 

Mary Jo explains that she was just a typical mom with a good job and other things to worry about, the whole African Rabies thing wasn't a real threat. She had the whole family on Phalanx and their dog had worms which was annoying.

 

"Oh yeah, at first it was kinda scary, kinda weird, "you know, I hear its not really rabies." and stuff like that. But then the first winter things died down, remember, and anyway it was a lot more fun to rehash last night's celebrity fat camp or totally bitch out whoever wasn't in the break room at that moment."

 

But then this happened and her entire world changed. And Mary Jo became SheHulk. She didn't have a whole country to look after, she just had her family and I think her rather short did a fairly good job in showing that.

 

 

"Aiden'd heard something. He asked me what it was, I was about say I didn't know when I saw his eyes go wide. He was looking past me at the glass sliding door that led to the backyard. I turned just in time to see it shatter. It was about five foot ten, slumped, narrow shoulders with this puffy wagging belly. It wasn't wearing a shirt and its mottled gray flesh was all torn and pockmarked. It smelled like the beach, like rotten kelp and saltwater. Aiden jumped up and ran behind me. Tim was out of the chair, standing between us and that thing. In a split second it was like all the lies fell away. Tim looked frantically around for a weapon just as it grabbed him by the shirt. They fell on the carpet, wrestling. He shouted for us to get to the bedroom, for me to get the gun. We were in the hallway when I heard Jenna scream. I ran to her room, through open the door, another one, big, I'd say six and half feet with giant shoulders and bulging arms. The window was broken and it had Jenna by the hair, she was screaming, "Mommymommymommy!"
"When I try to remember, everything goes by too fast. I had it by the neck, it pulled Jenna towards its open mouth. I squeezed hard and pulled. The kids say I tore the thing's head off. Just ripped it right out with all the flesh and muscle and whatever else hanging in tatters. I don't think it's possible. Maybe with all your adrenaline pumping...I just think the kids have just built up in their memories over the years making me into SheHulk or something. I know I freed Jenna, I remember that, and just a second later, Tim came into the room, with this thick black goo all over his shirt. He had the gun in one hand and Finley's leash in the other. He threw me the car keys and told me to get the kids in the suburban. He ran into the backyard as I headed for the garage. I heard the gun go off as I started the engine." 

 

 

So in part two we've met Bob Archer. Smart, resentful.

Then we met Travis D'Ambrosia, Smart, sad.

Breck Scott, total jerk. Very sociopathic in nature.

Grover Carlson, refusing to shoulder any of the blame. Or even to see it.

 

And then we meet Mary Jo Miller. Who is not to blame for anything. She's just a wife and a mom, but she builds an entire town not only to protect her family, but to protect other families, because it's the right thing to do.

She's awesome.

 

 

Thus concludes part two.

 

Part three: The Great Panic. Someday. Don't hold your breath.