The Zombie Survival Guide

Complete Protection from the Living Dead

by Max Brooks

Paperback, 254 pages

English language

Published Aug. 13, 2003 by Three Rivers Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-4000-4962-2

(61 reviews)

The Zombie Survival Guide is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now. Fully illustrated and exhaustively comprehensive, this book covers everything you need to know, including how to understand zombie physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain.Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack 1. Organize before they rise! 2. They feel no fear, why should you?3. Use your head: cut off theirs.4. Blades don't need reloading.5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it. 7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!9. No place is safe, only safer. 10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on. Don't be carefree and foolish with your most precious asset--life. This book is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now without your even knowing it. The Zombie Survival Guide offers complete protection through trusted, proven tips for safeguarding yourself and your loved ones against the living dead. It is a book that can save your life.From the Trade Paperback edition.

9 editions

fiainros reviewed The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks

Review of 'The Zombie Survival Guide' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

From what I'd heard about this book and what I had in mind that it was, it fell very flat. Sadly, bits people find clever, I find stupid. The things I thought were going to be clever ended up being something different and stupid. So, overall, I don't care for this book.

I'm was not a fan of zombie movies, but my husband is, so we've consumed quite a bit of zombie culture. Brooks is essentially making up his own type of zombie and then not-so-slyly cracking on every other rendition of the zombie genre and saying every one else is wrong. To me, this seems like an outsider coming to play in someone else's sandbox and changing all the rules.

Usually I give a book about 30 pages to give up. However, it has taken a week for me to read 10 pages. I need to read books a little faster than 10 pages a week, and I'm not going to waste 3 weeks on a book I'm not going to read. The 30 page rule used to be because that would give me about a half-hour with a book and if I didn't like it after that, then so be it. The fact that I haven't pulled this out on a bus ride during the past week to get 30 minutes to read shows that my level of interest from just the introduction is pretty poor.

cherold reviewed The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks

Review of 'The Zombie Survival Guide' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

I might have found this interesting if I'd read it after reading Brooks' wonderful World War Z, but I couldn't even get through it. I thought it would be funny, but what I saw seemed generally straightforward, like a real book really designed to help protect you from zombies.

If I still had this book now, I would give it another shot, since in the context of WWZ it might work better, but on its own, it's only for fans of survival manuals.

mothlight reviewed The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks

Review of 'The Zombie Survival Guide' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I'm not sure I get this book. It is like two books glued together which kind of totally contradict each other and not quite sure what it wants to be overall.

The first half is a mildly interesting instruction manual to survive the zombie apocalypse. So, there are lots of lists of supplies (this many guns, this much water, etc). And there is some deep thinking about the realities of fighting zombies, i.e. wear tight clothes which can't be grasped, use these sorts of weapons instead of these others, etc.

It is sort of like Tolkien's Silmarillion, loads of back story to build new imagined worlds. It can be a bit tedious to wade through the lists and world building.

Then the second half becomes a completely different book. While the first half seems to imply that zombie attacks are well known and maybe a commonplace event in the world it is addressing. But the second half becomes a (imaginary) historical survey of zombie attacks (i.e. the Roman legions fighting zombies). It takes the position that only a select few know about these are there are vast cover up efforts by authorities. It kind of destroys the internal consistency of the book.

The second half does include much more actual storytelling (as opposed to lots of lists) and is probably much more interesting.

RxBrad reviewed The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks

Review of 'The Zombie Survival Guide' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Meh... aside from the last 1/4 of the book, there was really no story. Just a bunch of lists and seemingly common sense suggestions. It is what it says it is: a "survival guide". But, it's technically the prequel to World War Z, so figured I might as well read it.

Jonathan Arnold reviewed The zombie survival guide by Max Brooks

Review of 'The zombie survival guide' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Fun little graphical book with a "history" of the battle against the undead. It tells the story of about 8 different zombie attacks thru history, starting from pre-history through modern times. I think my favorite was the one of the French Foriegn Legion outpost getting attacked and beseiged by zombies. What happens next seems rife for its own story.

Black and white drawings are often pretty graphic. But the stories are all plausible...

Michael @ Knowledge Lost reviewed The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks

Review of 'The Zombie Survival Guide' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

The Zombie Survival Guide, is a tongue-in-cheek survival manual written Max Brooks. It reads like a normal manual and is quiet amusing, I now know how to dealing with the potentiality of a zombie attack. The guide concludes with a fictional list of documented zombie encounters throughout history. The oldest entry is 60,000 BC, in Katanga, Central Africa, although the author expresses doubt to its validity. Instead, he presents evidence from 3,000 BC in Hieraconpolis, Egypt as the first verifiable instance of a zombie outbreak. The most recent entry is 2002, in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.