The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse by Steven C. Schlozman

As the walking dead rises up throughout the world, a few brave doctors attempt to find a cure by applying forensic techniques to captured zombies. Based on the research of renowned zombie expert Dr. Stanley Blum, performed at a remote island where a crack medical team has been sent to explore a radical theory that may lead to a cure for the epidemic, THE ZOMBIE AUTOPSIES documents for the first time the unique biology of zombie organisms. Twenty-five detailed drawings of the internal organs of actual zombies provide an accurate anatomy of these horrifying creatures, including zombie brains, hearts, lungs, skin, and the digestive system, while Dr. Blum’s notes reveal shocking insights into how they function, even as Blum and his staff themselves begin to succumb to the plague. No one knows the ultimate fate of Dr. Blum or his researchers, but now that his notebook, THE ZOMBIE AUTOPSIES, has been made available to the UN, the World Health Organization, and the general public, his scientific discoveries may provide the last hope for humans on earth!

Zombies are cool right now. I’m not sure what inspired their comeback exactly, but they are certainly back and there’s no hiding from them! With shows like The Walking Dead and the hugely successful book by Max Brooks World War Z it appears that the more realistic the media, the better.

People want to know “What would happen if the apocalypse occurred tomorrow?”

Well, The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse aims to answer that question.

Firstly, I need to tell you that it’s quite a creepy book. When you pick it up, it looks…I guess the word is ‘official’. There are classified and disclosure messages all over the place. Unlike the usual and unbelievable fake looking classified type stamps, you will find real looking and sounding notes by ‘the government’. Even more impressive is the fact that each page looks to have been a scan of the notes actually written by Dr Blum. The background is not plain white paper as in a novel. It is crumpled looking paper, with a font that really does look like handwriting. Then, every few pages there are the hand-drawn images that Dr Blum’s assistant is described to have drawn throughout the autopsies – all of them are fairly realistic and very gruesome.

Yes, it really is a book about autopsies – it’s not really a story. Some people may struggle with this aspect of the book if they pick it up expecting a tale, but I think as long as you know roughly what it is when you pick it up you will be pleasantly surprised.

Imagine that qualified doctors had been sent into a lab with a number of zombies to dissect and told to record exactly what they find. There you go, you now know what this book is. Each page flows through the few weeks that Dr Blum is at the facility, his dissection of the four zombies that lay in a containment chamber and his scientific findings.

Dr Blum accepted this job knowing that once he arrived he would not leave. So in addition to the diary of a scientist, you are also reading the diary of a dying man. Some of the book is quite disturbing because of this. This great man has watched the world pretty much collapse because of this disease and although he knows he will die, he preemptively ends his life to find not a cure, but clues to a cure. That’s quite a powerful sacrifice.

I guess the remaining question is “Why read it?” If it’s not a story, why should you spend a couple days reading it? This book is certainly aimed at real hardcore zombie fans. If you enjoy reading about zombies, but always have that “How would they really work!?” or “I don’t think those aspects of a zombie as possible” type feeling, this book will break down a zombies physiology and biology for you and explain it in a way that you will, from now on, be able to comprehend them as viable creatures.

I would say though that upon finishing this book it will haunt you for a while. The fact there is no real ending and that you don’t know what happens to the world following the end of the journal, it leaves you wondering. In a way, this makes the book far longer than it actually is. Where as a 500 page book might take 10 hours to read but give you a satisfying ending, this book takes 5 hours to read but gives you endless hours of thought and consideration.

Print Friendly