There is, after all, a certain gravitas to the speech of a zombie. Not that it’s eloquent or pleasant to the ear. In fact, it is neither of these (and, come to think of it, probably a good example of the opposite).
Zombies are almost uniformly successful because they choose to partner up with other zombies. Zombies cooperate. They do this because they have the same shared goal in mind (eating your brain) and because they’re already headed in the same direction (toward you). Yet as this “cooperation” begins to mount, two zombies become three and then four, and before long you have a “gang” of zombies. After a few gangs meet and merge, you have a “horde.” Hordes combine and form an “army.” And then you’re fucking talking!
A lone zombie is not by any means disadvantaged. He’s just not as powerful as he could be when flanked by a number of his brethren. An army of zombies is one of the most powerful things known to man. The only things you can really compare it to are natural disasters. A horde of zombies hits with the city-leveling power of an earthquake. It disrupts communities like a tidal wave. It exterminates (or at least moves) populations like a famine.
But when zombies do talk, people listen.
If a zombie opens its mouth, some important stuff is about to go down, that, probably, you should know about.
If you want people to take you seriously when you talk, then make like a zombie and keep your trap shut 99.9 percent of the time. Then, when you do talk, they’ll listen as if their lives depend on it.
Okay, first of all, there’s a difference between “being prepared” and “undergoing preparation.”
Zombies are prepared (all of the time, at every moment of the day or night) to kick your ass and eat your brain. They don’t require any prep time to be ready for a battle or engagement. Their fighting effectiveness is not bolstered by a review of the terrain or conditions they will encounter. In this connection, military briefings and mission reports are almost entirely lost on them. They may even attempt to eat the person delivering the briefing.
In this way, zombies exist in stark contrast to the rather ponderous machinations of the modern political and military establishments. Formal conflicts between nations tend to have several stages, each of which allows conventional generals to prepare their troops for combat. These stages can include:
Sun Tzu’s most famous aphorism might be that “all war is based upon deception.” At face value, he’s talking about soldiers pretending to be strong when they are weak, pretending to be weak when they are strong, and pretending to be disorganized when they are a model of order. But what about soldiers who “pretend” to be alive, when they are technically dead, and look dead but move and fight as though they are clearly alive? What about a soldier who staggers and looks weak, but who is strong enough to kick your ass and eat your brain? What about a soldier who might appear to be “falling apart,” yet nonetheless can withstand gunshots, electrocution, and having entire limbs blown away? Zombies are the “living” embodiment of Sun Tzu’s ideal soldier.
A further examination of Sun Tzu’s specific suggestions makes clear that the author clearly had the tactics of zombies in mind (if he was not an actual zombie himself). For example:
“Feign disorder, then crush your enemy.”
Nobody seems more “disordered” than a zombie. Even in a great horde, they have trouble sticking together. Half of them can’t walk in a straight line. They give away their position by moaning. They’re confused and startled by shiny things and fireworks. (Hell, I might underestimate them myself if I didn’t know better.) But zombies only look disordered, and there is an eerie coordination to their efforts. Like a zombie, it’s best to let the enemy assume you are no threat. Then walk right through the entrenchments and barbed wire and eat his brain. In business, you may appear to be disorganized. Your desk may be a mess, and your calendar a tangle of conflicting appointments. But woe betide the coworker who assumes this means you are no threat to him. Once he has counted you out as competition, it will be all the easier to steal the corner office from under his nose.
“Attack him where he is unprepared—appear where you are not expected.”
Like, say, I don’t know, in shopping malls and abandoned military bases? Do you think those might be good places?
It’s not hard to see how this maxim might be applied to the boardroom, but if you really want to do it well, you’ve got to do it like a zombie. Zombies are masters of popping up where people don’t expect them and (more importantly) aren’t equipped to deal with them. Zombies climb through holes in masonry and shuffle into houses where defenseless humans are waiting. They walk underwater (occasionally fighting sharks), and decimate weaponless tourists on tropical islands. Zombies take “business” to people, even if people aren’t expecting it.
So “ambush” your boss the next time he takes that solo visit to the topless bar, and use the opportunity to ask about your upcoming promotion in a friendly, my-cell-phone-takes-pictures-that-I-can-e-mail-to-your-wife kind of way. It’s not your fault he wasn’t prepared for your question, and you deserve an answer. Then and there.
“If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him.”
Lots of things are irritating, but almost nothing is more irritating than a zombie. Zombies make your house smell bad when you just cleaned it. They moan and grunt when you’re trying to get some sleep. They eat your brain when you’re busy using it for thinking and living and stuff.
Zombies are experts at irritating people. And, as Sun Tzu points out, irritated people make bad, bad decisions.
An “irritating” zombie may be pursuing a small group of humans through the countryside on a dark and stormy night. What do the humans do? Split up in different directions, ensuring that at least most of them will get away? Find some kind of vehicle (like a car or a helicopter) that can take them away from the zombie? You’d think so, but no. Instead, the humans barricade themselves inside the nearest barn, giving the zombie all evening to figure out a way to get inside . . . and time for his friends to show up.
If you have a coworker you need to beat out for a promotion, employ irritation to rile him or her. Steal his employee parking sticker. Order a dozen pizzas to her office. Send him page after page of solid black faxes. If a coworker can’t think clearly, a coworker can’t be a formidable opponent.
“If [your opponent] is taking his ease, give him no rest.”
Zombies don’t rest. They wait. They stalk. They bide their time, true. But they don’t rest.
Even when a zombie is frozen in ice or imprisoned in a steel drum by the Army Corps of Engineers, it is always plotting its next move.
In addition to not resting itself, a zombie actively prevents others from resting. Having a dogged, undead zombie after you tends to makes the idea of stopping for a nap seem like a bad plan. If the thing pursuing you is not going to be stopping, you’d better not either.
If you’re in a business situation in which you must best a foe, use dogged persistence to unnerve and destroy him. Work while he is sleeping. Put in twice the hours he does. Make it clear to him that you are an indefatigable opponent. Even the strongest adversary will begin to buckle when he realizes going up against you means forfeiting all future prospect of rest or recovery.
“Bring your own war material, but forage on the enemy for food.”
Good thinking there, Sun Tzu. “Forage on the enemy for food . . .” Maybe specifically on their brains?
“Use the conquered foe to augment your own strength.”
Seriously, do you still not believe that Sun Tzu was a zombie?
Nobody knows more about using the conquered to augment their own strength than zombies. True, armies might look for defectors from the other side, or see if any of the captured POWs want to try switching teams—but you never know if you can trust those guys. Maybe they’re looking to be double agents, or triple agents, or some shit.
When zombies bite and infect humans, there’s no question as to the “loyalty” of their conve
rts. The bitten humans are going to become zombies (if they don’t realize what’s happening and shoot themselves in the head first) and, once zombies, they’re never going back.
“In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact.”
This final lesson of Sun Tzu’s is perhaps the most compelling case for why the style of the zombie is most effective for one seeking military or corporate victory. It’s a simple idea, but vitally important.
If you’re a conquering army, then you’re conquering a foreign land for a reason. If history is any indicator, you are after natural resources, infrastructure, and access to assets. If, to take your enemy’s country captive, you have to firebomb it out of existence, it sort of defeats the purpose of taking it. If the cities are destroyed, the crops ruined, and the wells poisoned, then it’s going to be something of a hollow victory. What’s left for you to take? The spoils of war are, um, spoiled.
So in business, a hostile takeover must be executed so as to preserve the entity being taken. If your aggressive acquisition style causes the best and brightest to leave the target company, causes vendors to refuse to do business with it, and severs all its ties to the local and national politicians who helped it skirt all those pollution laws, then you’ve got to ask yourself if it’s really worth having.
Zombies are experts at taking a countryside whole, without pillaging crops, destroying property, or wrecking historical and cultural treasures (except by accident). Any invading force (be it an army or a corporation) should look to zombies as the best example of conquering-while-leaving-intact.
To sum up, it is clear that Sun Tzu (like any bright military tactician) recognized the superior battlefield skills of zombies. The impulse to apply Sun Tzu’s writings to the business world is, therefore, not entirely incorrect. Yet sources should always be credited, and in this case, the source is clearly zombies.
SECTION 4
All’s Fair in Death and War: How to Fight
Everything you know is wrong.
There, I said it.
When it comes to the art of warfare, your every conception could not be more off base.
Enemy surveillance, carefully coordinated attack plans involving feints and deception, long-range weapons . . . these are not the tools of a true warrior. These are lies. These are the tools of weaklings. Of failures.
The modern military-industrial complex seeks only to fatten itself by promulgating the untruth that expensive military equipment and years of strategy training at West Point are the most reliable tools for achieving victory on the battlefield.
I, on the other hand, am someone you can trust. I have no vested interest in deceiving you. I am here only to provide access to the laws that have allowed zombies to become the most effective fighting force in the world today.
Zombie Tip—Know guts, know glory: Zombie warriors understand that the shortest path to achieving victory is the one that goes straight through the enemy soldiers. One by one. With their teeth.
You might shoot your enemies with M-16s, destroy them with fragmentation grenades, or send them through a skinless shrieking hell with a combination of napalm and white phosphorus. And that’s, you know, fine . . . but notice also that you’re not winning every battle you fight. You’re not eliminating your enemy’s entire army each time you engage it. You’re not conquering the countryside with the swiftness and fatality of an implacable virus.
In short: You are not fighting like a zombie, so there is room for improvement.
Throughout history, the most brilliant military minds have sought to defeat armies of zombie soldiers. All have failed. No advance in their high-tech weaponry or cutting-edge training has ever allowed these leaders to match the tactics and fighting skills inherent in a bunch of stinking, rotted, walking corpses.
In the history of combat, there has been no foe as implacable and persistent as the zombie. Zombies have penetrated supposedly impregnable fortresses. They have forded uncrossable streams, traversed moats filled with flaming oil, and chewed through drawbridges on even the most impenetrable castles. They have risen from watery depths to overtake ships and sailing vessels—from ancient Roman barks to modern aircraft carriers—with ease and facility. They have clogged the treads of tanks with their bones. They’ve attached themselves to helicopter skids (then hoisted themselves up to feast on the pilots inside). They’ve overtaken the most well-defended modern military outposts.
Zombies get close to their enemies and tear them limb from limb. Zombies bite off noses and ears. Zombies eat brains.
While zombies are often belittled, denigrated, and (most crucially) underestimated by their opponents, they always manage to somehow have the last laugh (or last brain). It is this “somehow” that this section proposes to examine, quantify, and make available to the reader in practical, easy-to-understand steps.
You need to ask yourself right now: “When it comes to zombies, do I want to beat them (clearly, an impossible task) or do I want to join them?”
Many soldiers wish that they could face their opponents with unflinching resolution, instead of doubt and anxiety. Many soldiers wish they were part of expeditionary forces that would operate autonomously and act with resolve, instead of requiring constant micromanagement. This section will make clear that these and other traits can be adopted by today’s soldiers if they copy the ways of zombies.
Do you already have military training? Don’t worry. It’s nothing that can’t be overcome. It’s time to slough off the things you learned at West Point and replace them with things learned at Monroeville. Are you already a battle-hardened veteran? Prepare to learn more in three hours in an abandoned shopping mall than you did in three tours in the Middle East.
Let’s be clear: This is serious business. The world needs effective soldiering, now more than ever. Today’s geopolitical clusterfuck contains (but is by no means limited to):
• Traditionally warring ethnic factions
• Newly warring ethnic factions
• Tyrants and dictators who have ceased to be useful to the major world superpowers
• Insane religious leaders who encourage poor people to commit acts of violence
• Countries that are bored enough to fight over useless islands or horrible deserts in the middle of nowhere
• Third world paramilitary leaders who feel they’d do a much better job of running things than an elected president
Zombie Tip—A brain in the hand is worth two behind the hastily improvised zombie barricades: Count your blessings, man. When something good comes your way, go ahead and enjoy it. Don’t forsake it in favor of what might be behind the next door. Cause it could be some kind of anti-zombie nerve gas the government has been working on, and then you’re just fucked.
All of whom will probably, at some point, need to have their shit set straight via a military engagement. These problems aren’t going away, and it’s important that a capable military is around to address them. That “capable military” is going to be you.
The soldiers of tomorrow are going to have a lot on their plate, and their ability to do what they do—effectively and efficiently—is going to be more important than ever before. Fighting like a zombie will allow you to achieve victory, destroy foes, and settle geopolitical conflicts with the quick decisiveness of a zombie’s bite.
The world needs help from zombie soldiers, and if you’re reading this book, then it looks like it’s going to fall to you. Ask yourself if you’re tough enough to get down like a member of the walking dead. If you are, then welcome to basic training.
Everybody has different strengths and weaknesses.
If there’s a lesson to be taken from this fact, it’s “use what you got.” It’s a lesson nobody’s learned better than a zombie.
The luckiest zombies are those with the good fortune to be reanimated directly after mortal life has departed from the body. These zombies, usually still wearing the clothes they were buried in (which, in the ca
se of female zombies, almost always includes pearls and a hat), have the fortune to be mistaken for living humans. Occasionally, these lucky zombies are even mistaken for the particular living people they were before they died. The advantages of this are diverse and considerable. A zombie who appears to be simply a drunken or similarly incapacitated human being of sallow complexion has a much greater chance of gaining access to the places where living humans (and their correspondingly delicious brains) are to be found. Some of these highest-functioning zombies are even lucky enough to remember a word or two of human speech. (Usually these will be simple words and phrases like “hello,” “yes,” “no,” and “I am, in fact, a neurosurgeon. Now please let me closer to that succulent frontal lobe.”) These zombies are the millionaires, the professional athletes, the rock stars of the zombie world. But as long as they remain appropriately humble, we have little reason to begrudge them their success. (Zombies are not covetous of one another’s good fortune. This is yet another trait we could stand to adopt from them.)
Other zombies (perhaps the majority fall into this category) are lucky enough to have all of their limbs and features, but cannot pass for living human beings. These zombies have deathly pale skin. Their grave-clothes are often generations old. Their fingernails and teeth are long and ragged. Their hair is unkempt and encrusted with soil. Still, these zombies are able to be mistaken for living humans at great distances or in the dark, and often use this fact to their advantage. These zombies can sometimes blend into crowds of inebriated people (such as at sporting events or rock concerts), and can pass unnoticed through inhabited areas on dark, rainy nights.
Other zombies still are less lucky, yet manage as best they can. Zombies in this category are often missing arms or legs. Eyes, noses, and teeth are questionable. Baldness is common. Decomposition, to some degree, has already set in. These zombies are often called the most hideous because they still possess some visible similarity to a living human, but with the most jarring variations thereupon. These zombies induce fainting, vomiting, and the invocation of deities on sight. Tragically, they must exist in a world not designed for them—a world of staircases made for people with two legs, ladders for those with two arms, and voice-recognition software that is hard enough for a living human to use and damn-near impossible for a zombie’s rotted vocal cords to operate. These zombies can’t pass for human, and don’t try to. They win by paralyzing victims with fear. By being a glorious abattoir-on-parade. If someone faints at the sight of them, so much the easier. If a zombie’s wounds or half-decayed state is knee splittingly hilarious, then hey, keep laughing while the zombie gets that much closer, funny guy. Maybe these zombies don’t look much like people anymore, but the point is, you’re still getting eaten.
The Ultimate Book of Zombie Warfare and Survival Page 6
