In 'World War Z,' Brooks also paints a picture of government officials unwilling to take on the problem. Obviously, there are key differences – COVID-19 isn’t turning people into ravenous walking corpses – but the dynamics of a pandemic are the same, Brooks said. False hope is peddled in the form of medication (the FDA has already ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to stop selling fake coronavirus cures) and eventually there's a Great Panic, when people realize the spread of the zombie virus is out of control.īrooks said we've already hit our great panic when it comes to the novel coronavirus, with people panic-buying toilet paper and getting into fights over bottled water, which wasn't in danger of running out. In his novel, for example, the virus begins in China and spreads around the world. This is the pattern I just zombified it.'īest books of 2020 so far: What USA TODAY's critics loved reading And history follows very predictable patterns. 'I'm not some prophet-genius,' Brooks said. The resemblances between Brooks' take on the zombie apocalypse and today's COVID-19 outbreak are there, too. He also noted similarities between the coronavirus and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Spring reading guide: 20 new books to read while social distancing from coronavirusīrooks wrote “World War Z” after studying widespread diseases like the Black Death and influenza. There tends to be denial, and then the longer the denial goes, you can almost predict the severity of the panic that will follow. The history of disaster tends to follow a pretty predictable cycle. 'The problem is, I wasn't trying to predict anything,' Brooks, 47, told USA TODAY. during an election year, is at times eerily similar to the coronavirus pandemic – and Brooks knows it.

His take on the zombie apocalypse, 'World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War,' hit shelves back in 2006 and was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt in 2013. The plot of 'World War Z,' which starts with a 'Patient Zero' in China who triggers a viral outbreak that spreads to the U.S. Author Max Brooks knew what a disastrous pandemic would look like in the United States more than decade ago.

Max brooks new book