World War Z_ An Oral History of the Zombie War ( PDFDrive )

cinnamon from Sri Lanka
cloves from Indonesia
wintergreen from China
pimento berry oil from Jamaica
balsam oil from Peru
And that’s just for a bottle of peacetime root beer. We’re not even talking about something like a
desktop PC, or a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
Ask anyone how the Allies won the Second World War. Those with very little knowledge might
answer that it was our numbers or generalship. Those without any knowledge might point to
techno-marvels like radar or the atom bomb. [Scowls.] Anyone with the most rudimentary
understanding of that conflict will give you three real reasons: first, the ability to manufacture
more materiel: more bullets, beans, and bandages than the enemy; second, the natural resources
available to manufacture that materiel; and third, the logistical means to not only transport those
resources to the factories, but also to transport the finished products out to the front lines. The
Allies had the resources, industry, and logistics of an entire planet. The Axis, on the other hand,
had to depend on what scant assets they could scrape up within their borders. This time we were
the Axis. The living dead controlled most of the world’s landmass, while American war production
depended on what could be harvested within the limits of the western states specifically. Forget
raw materials from safe zones overseas; our merchant fleet was crammed to the decks with
refugees while fuel shortages had dry-docked most of our navy.
We had some advantages. California’s agricultural base could at least erase the problem of
starvation, if it could be restructured. The citrus growers didn’t go quietly, neither did the
ranchers. The beef barons who controlled so much prime potential farmland were the worst. Did
you ever hear of Don Hill? Ever see the movie Roy Elliot did on him? It was when the infestation
hit the San Joaquin Valley, the dead swarming over his fences, attacking his cattle, tearing them
apart like African driver ants. And there he was in the middle of it all, shooting and hollering like
Gregory Peck in Duel in the Sun. I dealt with him openly and honestly. As with everyone else, I
gave him the choice. I reminded him that winter was coming and there were still a lot of very
hungry people out there. I warned him that when the hordes of starving refugees showed up to
finish what the living dead started, he’d have no government protection whatsoever. Hill was a
brave, stubborn bastard, but he wasn’t an idiot. He agreed to surrender his land and herd only on
the condition that his and everyone else’s breeding stock remained untouched. We shook on that.
Tender, juicy steaks—can you think of a better icon of our prewar artificial standard of living?
And yet it was that standard that ended up being our second great advantage. The only way to
supplement our resource base was recycling. This was nothing new. The Israelis had started when
they sealed their borders and since then each nation had adopted it to one degree or another.
None of their stockpiles, however, could even compare to what we had at our disposal. Think about
what life was like in the prewar America. Even those considered middle class enjoyed, or took for
granted, a level of material comfort unheard of by any other nation at any other time in human
history. The clothing, the kitchenware, the electronics, the automobiles, just in the Los Angeles
basin alone, outnumbered the prewar population by three to one. The cars poured in by the
millions, every house, every neighborhood. We had an entire industry of over a hundred thousand