Coronavirus: World War Z author eerily predicted global pandemic

This writer’s fictional pandemic is so realistic that the US military has sought his advice on crisis management.

Crisis expert Max Brooks predicted the coronavirus pandemic 14 years ago in his best-selling book World War Z, although he wishes he’d been wrong

“This is way too real,” he told news.com.au.

“I am very careful to try not to predict the future – I don’t want to dare.”

But even he is astonished at the similarities between his zombie apocalypse novel and the viral pandemic now sweeping through the world.

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World War Z came out in cinemas in 2013.

Brad Pitt starred in the Hollywood adaptation of World War Z.

Mr Brooks wrote World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War in 2006, as a series of interviews between apocalypse survivors.

The novel is markedly different to the Hollywood adaptation starring Brad Pitt.

Although he wrote about a fictional pandemic, the bleak world he created is fast becoming a reality.

“(My book) is pretty similar – from the disease starting in China and being covered up, the rapid spread around the world, America’s utter fumbling of the initial stages of the outbreak, ” he said.

UTS student publication The Comma first noticed the similarities and others have called for an answer.

“I was looking into the past, not the future (when I wrote the book),” Mr Brooks said.

“All I did was draw on history to try and justify how I thought my fictional pandemic would play out.”

Brad Pitt in World War Z (2013)

Mr Brooks’s research was highly realistic, a point not lost on the US military.

In 2013, the military at Fort Sam Houston in Texas asked the World War Z author to share his thoughts on crisis management.

According to an account published later by the US army, Mr Brooks’s lessons on catastrophes lessons apply whether soldiers are confronting a Category 5 hurricane or a civilisation-threatening pandemic.

Mr Brooks confirmed to news.com.au that he is in conversation with the US army right now over the coronavirus.

“All I will say is I am in contact with those in the US military,” he said.

Max Brooks is an expert in crisis management, and he has one simple message for people around the world.

Mr Brooks emphasised that he was not some kind of all-knowing seer.

“This is not prediction – it’s historical fact. In every crisis you’re going to find the looters, the opportunists, the soulless sociopaths trying to make a buck.”

Mr Brooks wrote about a greedy businessman creating a fake cure for the zombie virus – called Phalanx – and it’s eerily similar to the fake cures and testing kits for coronavirus circulating on the internet.

However, he reckons the most realistic element of his story is his lack of a protagonist.

“The reason I didn’t put a central hero (is because) that’s not how humans solve their problems,” he said.

“We don’t all depend on a hero to come and save us – we solve big problems collectively.”

“That’s what we’re doing now … we all have to do our part.

“Right now, until science and industry can manufacture the cures, vaccines, medical equipment, we all have to do our part to buy them time.

“We (the general public) can't make ventilators, but we can buy them time for the factories to make them.

“We can slow the spread.”

Mr Brooks is based in LA, which is currently under lockdown, and hasn’t visited his own father since the crisis began.

In a tweet that went viral, Brooks told other people around the world to “stay at home.”

A message from me and my dad, @Melbrooks. #coronavirus #DontBeASpreader pic.twitter.com/Hqhc4fFXbe

— Max Brooks (@maxbrooksauthor) March 16, 2020

“History can be a warning,” he said.

“History can also be a comfort, because when you think about pandemics, we have faced pandemics before and we have conquered them.”

This article originally appeared on The Comma and was reproduced with permission.