World War Z - Plot

Plot

Through a series of oral interviews, Brooks, as an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission, describes the history of 'World War Z'. Although the origin of the zombie pandemic is unknown, the story begins in China after a young boy is bitten; he becomes the pandemic's "patient zero"-- (it is implied that even though he is the first victim that can be positively identified, he may not be, in fact, the first ever victim). The Chinese government attempts to contain the infection and concocts a crisis involving Taiwan to mask their activities. The infection is spread to other countries by the black market organ trade and by refugees, before an outbreak of "African rabies" finally brings the plague to public attention.

As the infection spreads, Israel is the only country to take the reports of zombies seriously, initiating a nationwide quarantine and closing its borders to everyone except uninfected Jews and Palestinians. Pakistan and Iran destroy each other in a nuclear war after the Iranian government attempts to stem the flow of refugees fleeing through Pakistan. The United States of America does little to prepare because it is overly confident in its ability to handle any threat. Although special forces teams are used to contain initial outbreaks, a widespread effort never starts as the nation is sapped of political will by several "brushfire wars" (implied to be the Iraq War), and a rabies vaccine, marketed as effective, created a false sense of security.

When the world recognizes the true scope of the problem, a period known as the "Great Panic" begins. Following the fall of New York City, the United States Army sets up a high-profile defense at Yonkers, New York to restore American morale. The U.S. military uses obsolete Cold War tactics on the zombies, including anti-tank weapons and demoralization through wounding. These are ineffective against zombies, which "can't be shocked and awed", have no self-preservation instincts, and can only be stopped if shot in the head and killed. The soldiers are routed on live television, while other countries suffer similarly disastrous defeats, and human civilization teeters on the brink of collapse.

In South Africa, the government adopts a plan drafted by ex-apartheid government official Paul Redeker, which calls for the establishment of small safe zones, areas surrounded by natural boundaries and cleared of zombies. Unable to save everyone, the plan calls for large groups of refugees to be abandoned, but kept alive outside the safe zones to distract the hordes of undead, allowing those within time to regroup and recuperate. Governments worldwide adopt their own versions of the "Redeker Plan", or relocate the populace to safer foreign territory, such as the complete evacuation of the Japanese Home Islands. As zombies freeze solid in the cold, many civilians in North America flee to the wildernesses of northern Canada and the Arctic, where some 11 million people, unprepared to deal with the cold Canadian winter, die from starvation and exposure.

The three remaining astronauts in the ISS managed to survive for the duration of the war by salvaging supplies from the abandoned Chinese space station. During this time they maintained some of the military and civilian satellites using the various pods attached to the ISS and the orbital fuel station.

The United States is eventually able to stem the bulk of the pandemic, using the terrain and natural barriers created by the Rocky Mountains, and establishes safe zones west of the Rocky Mountains. The US spends the better part of the next decade completely eradicating the pandemic west of the Rockies and rebuilding American civilization. All aspects of civilian life are now devoted to supporting the war effort against the pandemic. Much of it resembles total war strategies employed during the Second World War such as: rationing of fuel and food, cultivation of private gardens, and civilian neighborhood patrols. The U.S. government also initiate a "Re-education Act" to train the civilian population into a more productive workforce for the war effort.

Seven years after the start of the zombie pandemic, a conference is held off the coast of Honolulu, Hawaii, aboard the USS Saratoga, where most of the world's leaders indicate they want to wait out the zombie plague, but the U.S. President successfully argues that the only way to survive physically and psychologically is to go on the offensive. Determined to lead by example, the U.S. military reinvents itself to meet the specific challenges involved in fighting the living dead: automatic weapons and mobility are replaced by semi-automatic rifles and formation firing; troops are retrained to focus on head shots and slow, steady rates of fire, and a multipurpose hand tool, the "Lobotomizer" or "Lobo" (described as a cross between a shovel and a battle-ax), is designed to destroy zombie heads close up. In three groups (north, central, and south), the US Army advance in lines stretching across North America. In this formation, the U.S. military leaves its safe zone west of the Rocky Mountains and crosses the continent in a three-year campaign, systematically destroying the zombies and reclaiming outposts of survivors (whether they want to be reclaimed or not). The only cases in which the US resurrected its modern technology was during situations where survivors refused to be reclaimed.

Ten years after the official end of the zombie war, millions of zombies are still active and the Earth's geopolitical landscape has been forever transformed. A democratic Cuba has become the world's most thriving economy and the international banking capital. China has also become a democracy, following a civil war sparked by the collapse of the Three Gorges Dam and ending after a mutinying Chinese Navy submarine destroys the Communist leadership with submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Tibet, freed from Chinese rule, hosts the world's most populated city. Following a religious revolution, Russia is now an expansionist theocracy. Owing to the lack of fertile women, the Russian government have initiated a "breeding" program where the remaining women are impregnated to boost the population. North Korea is completely empty, with the entire population presumed to have disappeared into underground bunkers; it is unknown if they survived or have become zombies. Iceland has been completely depopulated, and is the world's most heavily infested country. The UK remains united, and now exports oil from a reserve under Windsor Castle. The oil fields in Saudi Arabia have been destroyed. The United Nations fields a large military force to eliminate the remaining zombies from overrun areas, defeat hordes that surface from the ocean floor, and kill frozen zombies before they thaw. Overall, there is a drastic reduction in the human population, which is alluded to have been brought to the brink of extinction, and many environments and animal species have been devastated, as much by desperate humans as by marauding zombies.