The Zombie Survival Guide (and I Am Legend) reviewed with help from Aragorn

I am reviewing I Am Legend and The Zombie Survival Guide at the same time, as are similar in a couple of ways. Each presents itself as taking place in this world, with real science applying. Not only this, real science is applied - in I Am Legend, the guy does all sorts of experiments on the vampires he kills. He finds that it's maybe a virus and/or a bacteria, that sunlight burns it, garlic repels, but crosses and a couple other things are purely psychological. The Zombie Survival Guide mentions countless times that "studies have shown/proven" this or that. No studies are actually cited, but they have still proved things - scientifically. Unfortunately for both books, they start out by showing that the beings, vampires and zombies, are not mythical, not magical, that they exist in the real world. Then, it explains certain aspects of the conditions in scientific ways. It then goes on to mention certain aspects of these monsters that are total scientific BS - and sometimes disagree with what was previously said. What do you think about it, Aragorn?I agree. I'll start with I Am Legend: there was only one thing that still bothers me about this one, after I've read it. First of all, vampires are split into two groups: undead ones, and living ones. I feel like there was something else read/watched where vampires were not undead. Anyway, there were the two groups, with the undead acting more like zombies and the still-living eventually taking over and restarting society, albeit vampiric society. Stakes were the preferred method of dispatching, but the guy couldn't figure out at first why they worked so well. Finally, he figured out that it wasn't any organ being pierced, but the body as a whole, which had been dead for some time on the inside but airtight (the virus/whatever made your body airtight), and puncturing that let it decay all at once. Uh huh.Quite. Then, The Zombie Survival Guide, which comes highly recommended. I'll say this for it: it got better. It started off reminding me of Aragorn here, but it did progress to some potentially helpful information. I'll give a quick synopsis: BS scientific explanations which don't actually make sense and disagree with each other, good advice, stories. Here we go with the science.
Solanum is a virus which infects the brain, shuts it down, changes it to work without oxygen, and reboots it. It also devours the frontal lobe. The brain then reboots the body, which it has less coordination because the brain is kinda effed up. This is OK so far - but then things get added on which don't add up. The author, Max Brooks, mentions that using muscles = tearing muscles - that's how they work. Also, zombies have no organ function of any type - it's just the brain telling the muscles what to do. So the muscles are getting no oxygen or nutrients, and they don't heal when they tear - in fact, nothing ever heals. This means that a zombie will get progressively slower - it can't heal its muscles after it uses them. Forget that there's no chance they could use them at all without nutrients and oxygen.
Also, because the heart, etc are not in use (wait, what?) pretty much all the blood coagulates, which is handy for close combat, as a human is less likely to get showered in wet blood.
Oh, and before I forget, Brooks uses the terms "zombie" and "ghoul" synonymously. This really bothered me as, while both are possibly undead and sometimes eat people, zombies are human, or formerly so, while ghouls are not human.
To lend credence to the difference between his zombies and other legendary zombies, Brooks talks about Voodoo zombies and the difference between them and real zombies - only most of the stuff he has on Voodoo zombies he totally made up. His claim is that the Voodoo zombies are made too look dead and consequently buried (good so far) and then all suffer brain damage from lack of oxygen, which gives all of them the same symptoms. First of all, the buried zombies are using very little oxygen in their state of hibernation, so they're unlikely to run out. Second, they are revived and fed a second drug to induce lack of free will and obedience, but still be able to work - it is incredibly unlikely that someone would bother to make Voodoo zombies if it was just making randomly brain-damaged zombies. Random brain damage is not an effective means of establishing control. Also, many of the symptoms given in this book for the brain-damaged zombies are absurd.
I take exception to a number of things Brooks says about weapons. First, he says a section of lead pipe is too heavy to carry, and instead recommends a crowbar. Anyone having ever carried a crowbar will know what I'm saying here.
That's pretty much what I'm saying. Also, just in case any of you didn't read the Cracked article, I'll mention something Brooks gets quite wrong. While it is true that to kill a zombie one must kill the brain somehow, a head shot from a distance is not a good idea. Headshots are extremely difficult, and not something worth taking the time to do against multiple opponents. Also, to save ammo, Brooks recommends not using any type of machine gun, ever. However, a machine gun aimed at leg height through a crowd of zombies would certainly break some legs and put enough leg muscle out of commission that the zombies would stop moving. If zombies aren't moving, headshots can then be made. But expecting to pull of a headshot every time, even with training...
After this, Brooks gets into some good details about securing homes, how to travel, locations to stay, etc. He offers some excellent advice on a number of counts, not least to beware of other people as much as zombies. He ends with a number of stories fabricated to coincide, occasionally, with unexplained historical occurrences. Most of the information in the book is worth reading, should virus come into existence which creates "zombies" - but the actual information on zombies is not only worthless, it could be dangerous should an actual outbreak occur with a slightly different cause. Also, as stated before, the biological information does not make sense. A brain which has been "converted" to not run on oxygen does not mean that the body can survive and move around without it. Also, Brooks says that no normal bodily functions work (the senses do, except feeling), so zombies do not digest anything - they devour people, sometimes to the point where their stomach/intestines will burst out of their body, but they do not digest and therefore get no energy from them. Their ability to remain alive and moving (with no muscular repair) for as long as it takes to decompose (their are factual issues with what he says about this, too) is not possible. I commend his advice, but I have to call foul on his facts. It would have been easy to create, fictionally, a virus like the "rage" virus of 28 Days/Weeks later, but he had to make up a new, inconsistent one, which I find to be sloppy work. He had a couple grammar mistakes too.
Oh, Liana and Tajian: you both told me the coolest thing about this book is that he "believes it!"