I found this softcover in this Little Free Library in Amherst NH while dropping off some books of my own, and nabbed it for another release copy.

I enjoyed this faux-scientific [or is it faux at all? Maybe that's just what they want you to think!] survival guide, by the author of World War Z, which expands on the Solanum-virus-inspired zombie plague described here. The table of contents includes things like "Myths and Realities" (to separate Hollywood zombies from the real kind, of course), "Weapons and Combat Techniques", and "Living in an Undead World", and the tone is, for the most part, straightforward - though there's some wry humor here and there. There's also considerable paranoia-fuel; the list of signs of a possible zombie outbreak are sufficiently vague that one could become quite uneasy just watching the news {wry grin}.

The section on weaponry is unnerving in its own way, as the suggestions could work equally well for survivalists of any stripe, though there are some zombie-specific considerations; given that one wants to be able to destroy the brain without getting within reach of the teeth (or spraying body fluids), weapons that would be effective against living people won't always work on zombies.

Sprinkled among the advice are snippets of (allegedly) real zombie incidents; these are presented in the same way that real-world home-invasion incidents might be used in an article about securing your house, and, again, present considerable paranoia-fuel - as well as some useful advice. It's funny how the "zombie apocalypse" possibility begins to creep into one's head as being as likely as, say, an impending meteor strike or a global plague of influenza. And, perhaps, it is... {looking nervously over my shoulder now...}

Among the zombie-specific suggestions are those about withstanding sieges; zombies won't get bored or run out of supplies - but you might. Oh, and the recommendation to have good earplugs on hand, as "the constant, collective moan of the undead, a sound that will persist at all hours for as long as the siege continues, can be a deadly form of psychological warfare."

The last 60 pages or so of the book consist of recorded zombie attacks through history, starting as early as 60,000 BC (!); this historical timeline makes the whole zombie-plague business seem even more real, and some of the anecdotes are dandy short-short stories in themselves. [There are some incidents from the Roman era, and I almost expected to find a reference to the storyline from De Bello Lemures, another pseudo-historical zombie-attack book - but as that plague was apparently curse-based rather than viral, I suppose it's just as well that no crossover was attempted!]

Among the tidbits in this section: an item about Greenland circa 1253, suggesting that it was zombies that caused the vanishing of all of the early Viking settlements. Guess that would explain it, right? There's also a blank "outbreak journal" for the reader to use in recording their own experiences. It's good to be prepared!

[I was amused to find that the book has its own TV Tropes page!]

Guidelines for safely visiting and stocking Little Free Libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the LFL site here.

I left this book in the Little Free Library on this lovely day; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in MA here.]

*** Released for the 2020 The The challenge. ***