World War Z - how I liked the movie AND the book, and how it COULD happen

*** WARNING: SPOILERS! ***

When World War Z was advertised, I had no idea what it was about.  It didn't even occur to me that Z stood for Zombie until somebody told me.  It's not even that obvious from the trailers.  I do like seeing the major cities though in the posters that were out.  Of course, I like the Sydney one best.

Sydney, Australia

Berlin, Germany

Rome, Italy

Barcelona, Spain

Paris, France

Mexico City, Mexico

New York, USA

London, UK

Rio, Brazil

Moscow, Soviet Union

In the movie, the human race is infected by a saliva/blood borne virus that kills the host and animates it into a zombie. United Nations representative, Gerry Lane, has been asked by the government to try to track down the origin of the infection, and thus help find a vaccine to save the remaining population, and the rest of it plays out like Dawn of the Dead or Resident Evil or any of those other zombie movies with your fill of zombie action and scary moments.  Ultimately the solution lies in the zombies only attacking healthy people, so Gerry innoculates himself with a deadly virus and finds that the zombies largely ignore him.  There are some aspects from the book in it, but really, it's quite dissimilar.

There are some moments in the movie which I thought were great insights into human nature.  Jerusalem, Israel, was free from infection and when Gerry goes to investigate, they had early warning and their walls which were already high, were built even higher.  The whole city was built to repel attacks and so it survived quite well.  They also let in all refugees and Gerry found this a surprise, but they said "For every person we save, it's one less zombie to fight."  A really great sentiment, in my opinion.  Very different from the other perspective of saving a few people and then shutting out the rest so that they don't possibly contaminate the healthy population.

It's not a wonderful movie, but it's not bad for a zombie movie.  Entertaining, eye candy (in the form of Brad Pitt) and a bit of token science thrown in for an attempt at reality.

The book on the other hand (by Max Brooks), is a collection of war stories, collected 10 years after the Zombie war.  The interviewer is a United Nations agent, and the book is a wonderful insight into humanity in different cultures, as well as the different political methods which are unique to each country.  Zombies in the book walk, and don't run, and are relentless in their assault (unlike the movie where they chase you down).  They are also mindless in that they can't open doors, undo seatbelts - they are just automatons without reasoning, logic or learning who just seek and bite.  Zombies freeze in the cold, so many people went to the snow, but they reanimate when the snows melt.   They also are found in the ocean, walking along the ocean floor and can pop up on beaches after walking for long distances.  It is the brain which has to be destroyed for the zombie to stop, for even dismemebered, they will still come at a victim.

One recount of an organ transplant causing a zombie to rise was interesting - no doubt because of the organ trafficking that comes from China.  Another account by the someone in Tibet smuggling people out of China and how families would take their infected out seeking a cure was also quite interesting - it showed how the infection broke out in other places.  Another account of the Americans using chemical warfare in attempt to kill the healthy AND the undead merely provided more hosts for zombies - disastrous!  The Jerusalem story was very similar to the movie (obviously in a culture that had been constantly attacked for genocide multiple times), and in India, a place where people would make a pilgrimage to die became a zombie hot zone because people kept going there to die and then becoming zombies.  Another interesting facet of human behaviour was seen in a Palestinian refugee who was heading to Jerusalem, being dragged their by his father, thought that the zombie infection was some kind of cover-up or ruse, and even when inside the safety of Jerusalem, when he saw Israeli's fighting other Israeli's, he thought that it was a civil war and actually rejoiced for a moment before he saw the zombies for himself.

I really enjoyed the book.  I never thought war recounts could be interesting, but in this war story it was fighting an enemy that was relentless and unstoppable, with no agenda except human decimation.  It also dealt with the aftermath and rebuilding of civilisation.  How useful professions such health, farming, construction, engineering became the cornerstones for rebuilding society - and other professions which we value so highly in the current era such as banking, finance, and information technology suddenly became redundant.  Even the psychological aspect was dealt with in a really interesting manner - people were dying from "giving up" or "lack of hope" and someone went out and made movies of stories of hope which reduced the number of those sorts of deaths.

But the scary thing is that this COULD become possible - if mother nature decided to make it that way.  There are a number of mind controlling mechanisms between other species in nature that sound quite terrifying if they occurred in vertebrates or humans (information taken from io9).

The wasp Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga preys on the spider Plesiometa argyra in an Alien-like manner.  The female wasp stings the spider to paralyse it then lays an egg in its abdomen.  When the larva hatches, it feeds upon its host and the spider continues to go about its business as if nothing is wrong.  After a few weeks, the larva releases a chemical to build a web totally different from its normal web - basically just threads bonded together and the spider sits there waiting to die.  When the larva emerges, it kills its host with poison and sucks it dry, and then makes a cocoon which hangs from the web and the wasp will eventually emerge.  That the parasite can emit chemicals that can control the host's mind... creepy!

The Cordyceps family of fungi are all endoparasitic on insects and spiders.  The Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus attacks ants of the Camponotus leonardi species.  Once infected, the ant is compelled to go away from the nest to an area with specific types of conditions for the fungus to grow - and then clamps down with its jaws to the leaf to die there.  The fungus consumes all the ants tissues (except the muscles for clamping down with its mandibles) fortifying it structurally and once the fungus is ready to reproduce, the fruiting bodies erupt from the ant's head.  These ants when infected are commonly known as "zombie ants".  You can see an example of Cordyceps attacking ants on BBC here.  The Last of Us, a FPS game about zombies, the zombie infection is based upon Cordyceps.

Destroying the reproductive capabilities of its host is another nasty way for parasites to work.  The female larvae of the barnacle Sacculina carcini seek out crabs as their host.  They attach to the underside of her shell, creating a bulge which eventually becomes a knot.  Tendrils are then spread inside the host to draw nutrients.  A male Sacculina comes along and implants inside the female barnacle, and they continually reproduce.  The crab is now infertile and its behaviour is also modified by them - it stops growing and moulting and even cares for the barnacles' eggs.  If the crab infected was a male, the barnacle sterilises it and then causes changes in the crab to make it more like a female crab's body by widening and flattening the abdomen.  It forces hormone changes in the crab so that it acts more like a female, and also takes care of the barnacle's eggs.

The article details a great number of other interesting parasitic mind controlling infections - if you're into that kind of thing, I recommend reading it.

So my mind has been turning over these things since I watched the movie and read the book.  What if this happened?  What if I was a survivor?  What are the REALLY important things in life?  How can I be make my life a more productive and useful one?  I wonder if everyone who read the book ended up thinking these things - maybe not - but it is a really good example of how decadent and self indulgent our society has become, and maybe a good war would bring us back to the values which truly define the human spirit.

A change of reading habit

Perhaps it's because I'm busy these days, and between work and parenting and gaming I just don't have time to read books like I used to.  However, there is one rather embarrassing thing that I HAVE noticed about my reading habits..

... and that is that I read a book AFTER I have watched a movie.

Take Harry Potter, though that was what started it all, I think.  I watched the first movie and then after that I read the books as they came out.  That was well before I had children though.

More recently, there was Stephanie Meyer's Twilight.  I read the books after I watched the first movie.  I actually quite enjoy the movies, and I liked the last one especially as Bella came into her abilities.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - I watched both versions of the movie and then I read all three books.  The Swedish version is very good, I thought.  Though Lisbeth was annoying towards the end, but it was still a good read, and a good watch.

The other day I saw my sister watching Beautiful Creatures, and I only saw the end.  I didn't know what it was about but she told me it was a book, so I read the book.  I read all the books, actually.  Another teenage romance with a supernatural.  It was not a BAD read, but it was a teenager's book, really.

Hunger Games was another that I read after I watched the movie.  I haven't even read the second book yet, but probably because the book did not engage me as much as I thought it would.  Weird, since it was so popular and I managed to read through Beautiful Creatures, so why can't I get through this teenage book?

The latest one was World War Z.  Zombie movies are generally not my thing, but I watched this one because I had heard good things about it.  Then when I was talking about it, a World of Warcraft guildmate told me that he refused to watch it because it was nothing like the book.  So I was curious, I read the book.  And it really was different.  So different that it has been on my mind for days, that I thought I would write about it in its own post.

I even have a reading list of books to read from the movies I've watched!

• The Big Year.  I quite enjoyed the movie - it's about birding and competition, which is already something that interests me - so I would like to see how the book pans out.
• We bought a Zoo is another one which was a cute movie, and I wonder how it reads as a book.
• The Help - I really really enjoyed that movie.  My sister says it's a good book.

The Land of the Painted Caves - Jean M Auel

I have always loved the Earth's Children's series and the final book in the series came out this year and enjoyed it like I did all the others.

Valley of Horses was still my favourite of the books, with all her taming of the animals, finding the firestones and meeting Jondalar.

In this book, Ayla is progressing with her Zelandoni training and goes through many trials and new experiences.  There is a lot of cave touring, looking at cave paintings and singing the Mother's song (which unfortunately I found a little bit dull).  Then there is a conflict at the end with Jondalar which is not that great a conflict, and is resolved after a few chapters with a near death experience with Datura.  The loss of her baby with her calling to the Zelandoni and also the revelation that babies are created when a male and female copulate are also interesting points in the book.  However there are no other animals tamed or new inventions - this book focuses on the spiritual and interpersonal relationships between humans and the culture of the cretaceaous Man.

The herbal medicines that are used in the book I've always found interesting.  I know some herbal remedies - obviously willow bark for analgesia as it contains salicylates, peppermint for stomach ailments, coltsfoot for lung ailments and coughs.  So I thought I should look into datura a little more.

Datura contains tropane alkaloids such as scopolamine, atropine and hyoscyamine in their seeds and flowers.  In the book they used the root.  The effects are typically anticholinergic giving a delirium rather than a hallucination.

Wild carrot seeds have been used to prevent conception.  Pennyroyal as an abortifacient or menstrual stimulator - I read about this in lots of other books as well.

The other thing that I wish there was more of in this book was between The Others and Flatheads.  I remember in the Plains of Passage (when Jondalar and Ayla were going home) that they came across a Flathead couple and Ayla spoke to them the Clan way.  I liked that.

Nothing to Envy - Barbara Demick

When I was on my way back from Hong Kong I saw this book on the shelf and I admit that North Korea and it's regime fascinates me, so I decided to buy it and take it with me to read on the plane.

I found it to be a really fantastic and eye opening book, to the lives of ordinary people in North Korea.

Before I read this book, my thoughts on North Korea were how indoctrination and communism really can brainwash a whole society.  And of course the nuclear threat they pose.  I wondered if all of North Korea thought the rest of the world was bad and that they were the lucky people.

I however had no idea that people in North Korea were starving to death, and that there was a famine there in the 90s which decimated about 20% of the population.  And reading the stories of the 6 people portrayed in this book, it is hard to remember that these are real people, real lives which are portrayed, and not a work of fiction which makes it all the more sad, all the more tragic.

We take our lives for granted, the freedom of speech, of information, in fact we even take that history for granted - we believe what we read in our books and whatever is passed down, even the food on our plates.  I can't imagine what I would have been like had I been born in North Korea, or what kind of person I would be.  Would I be a thief?  Would I be an avid communist?  Or would I be a freethinker, yearning for life on the other side of the fence?

I would recommend this book to anyone to read.  It really moved me.

Favourite books for toddlers

I spent ages asking friends what books their toddlers liked and collected a little library for Erika.  Not all books are as hot as they make out to be though!  Here is a list of the top 10 books (as chosen by Erika) not in any particular order.

1) The Very Hungry Caterpillar
2) The Gruffalo
3) Maisy bakes a cake
4) Hairy McLairy sit
4) 10 Little Ladybugs
5) The That's not my (monster, dinosaur, dragon, teddy etc) series of books
6) The Going to Bed Book
7) Each Peach Pear Plum
8) Moo Baa La La la
9) Dr Seuss Wacky Weather
10) Runaway Rabbit

Books that I didn't like
1) Guess how much I love you