"The Crisis"

"It goes by many names: "The Crisis," "The Dark Years," "The Walking Plague," as well as newer and more "hip" titles such as "World War Z" or "Z War One." I personally dislike the last moniker as it implies an inevitable "Z War Two." For me, it will always be "The Zombie War," and while many may protest the scientific accuracy of the word zombie, they will be hard-pressed to discover a more globally accepted term for the creatures that almost caused our extinction. Zombie remains a devastating word, unrivaled in its power to conjure up so many memories or emotions, and it is these memories, and emotions, that are the subject of this book....The official report was a collection of cold, hard data, an objective "after-action report" that would allow future generations to study the events of the apocalyptic decade without being influenced by "the human factor." But isn't the human factor what connects us so deeply to our past? Will future generations care as much for chronologies and casualty statistics as they would for the personal accounts of individuals not so different from themselves? By excluding the human factor, aren't we risking the kind of personal detachment from a history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn't the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as "the living dead"? (1-2)

World War Z - Max Brooks
Biotechnology and genetics

Max Brooks enlists a journalistic technique in writing this novel to give the reader a more personal, and intimate look into his portrayal of the future. By using first person, it gives us a closer, candid and less formalized look at the zombie apocalypse. Max Brooks shows peoples general lack of understanding of the situation. By giving the war silly nicknames, it shows that they don't grasp the seriousness of the situation or understand how devastating it is to millions of people. The narrator has a great point in the whole human detachment that was portrayed in an edited book that he wrote. As humans, we need to feel an attachment and some responsibility for something that we caused in the past because if we don't, then we are almost certain to recreate it and cause another crisis. People won't change their ways unless they feel an attachment to something awful that was completely their own fault. This depiction of the future reveals that humans in the present are careless and don't really think about the consequences of their actions or how what they do today greatly effects tomorrow.