This book has terribly useful tips. A must-read! ( )

Haven't read "World War Z" and at times the "Survival Guide" seems overly long. But it's droll, and inspired me to keep a list of Zombie Subspecies, currently including: Ambitious Careerists, Fashionistas, Consumerists, Fanatic Followers of any topic / sport / leisure, Couch Potatoes, and Suburbanites. Like the Zombie ranks themselves, the list keeps growing.

Upon finishing, I see that the Zombie franchise includes a graphic novel on outbreak stories, featured in the last chapter. I think I'd have liked to read that over this, but ... no regrets. ( )

This book is without doubt the best Zombie Survival Guide. Having digested its contents, I'm now very comfortable with what I need to be doing when an Outbreak occurs. I'll be drilling my team to ensure we're ready when the time comes.

I'd recommend this book to anyone with more than a passing interest in the Zombie genre, it's a highly amusing take to use a survivalist format that does effectively outline the main elements of the Zombie mythos and apply them to a real world situation. I found myself chuckling along during my morning commute, and the level of detail that the author presents is memorable.

However, there are two flaws with the book that make it only 3 stars for me. Firstly, it's somewhat repetitive and after a while there just isn't much more to be said about how to escape a Zombie. Secondly, the real world examples section at the back is so poor that it soured the read for me. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of human history will find it frustrating that the author did not bother to try and make the material seem realistic, and it should easily have been possible to create a set of Zombie outbreaks that could actually have occurred. I wish that I had not read that part of the book, it would probably have been 4 or 5 stars if it was not there. ( )

Come on, let’s be honest for a moment. You know at least once you’ve been walking around the city or town you live in on a lazy summer afternoon and let your mind wander. You take note of the Federal Armory’s location, the sturdy defensible buildings, locations of bridges and water barriers. Maybe as you’ve done home improvements you’ve put some thought into defensive measures Just In Case the zombie uprising occurs.

No? Just me and a select few? Well, then this book isn’t for you.

If you have put some -serious- thought into anti zombie tactics, and maybe fantasized about taking up professional zombie hunting as a career choice than this book shall be your bible. Many have picked this up as a comic gag gift, but really the comedy comes from Brook’s deadpan seriousness of the subject manner. At some point you may find yourself kind of wrapped up in it, imagining what it would be like if it really was nonfiction. I imagine the fictional writer of the book and what he would be like to sit down to tea with. Serious, kind of heartless and relentless in a way, but you could never be bored talking to this guy.

He glosses over the topics that would be covered in your usual survivalist enthusiast manual and focuses his laser-like beam of scholarly might on zombie characteristics and flaws and how to survive when the shambling dead are coming at you. In some ways, I think of this book and it’s fictional counterpart World War Z in role-playing game terms. WWZ is set in the same universe and lays out how a “Level 4 Infection Event” as the book terms it would play out like a campaign guide, and The Zombie Survival Guide is like the sourcebook where Brooks lays out the facts of how the zombies behave, their physiology, abilities, and weaknesses. I read this book before World War Z and yes, the zombies behave exactly as described in this book.

I really liked the historical anecdotes that make up nearly the last half of the book; it was a nice touch and shows that he really put a lot of research into this work of “humor”. Let me not forget the simple line-drawn illustrations in the book. They are clearly a parody of airline safety manuals with expressionless Ken Doll-like men doing bizarre things taken out of context. Even when fishing for underwater zombies with a spear gun and machete they are hilariously cool and calm like Hindu cows.

It certainly is his labor of love and if you’re a zombie movie fan like I am you’ll enjoy the read… and perhaps put together that Earthquake Preparedness Kit you’ve been putting off for years. ( )

The joke wears thin pretty quick. The idea of a zombie apocalypse may be laughable, but if such a thing could be possible, this book would appear as nothing more than a practical survival guide. Because it's just about as funny as a practical survival guide. ( )