Stony Brook is often treated to guest speakers with charming personalities, a streak of good humor, or an uncanny knowledge about how to survive an attack from the undead. But we’ve almost never had a guest speaker with all these AND great hair.
The popular writer and zombie survivalist, Max Brooks, visited Stony Brook Thursday Mar. 27 in an attempt to give students and faculty what he called a fighting chance in the impending zombie apocalypse.
Author of the popular handbook The Zombie Survival Guide, and World War Z, which has been made into a movie starring Brad Pitt to be released this summer (can anybody else say “blockbuster”?), Brooks’ arrival on campus was met by over a hundred dedicated readers, zombie enthusiasts, and players of the wildly popular Humans vs. Zombies game.
The impressions gathered from hearing Max Brooks answer questions were witty, honest, and unexpectedly critical, ranging from “do you think zombie bodies would make good fertilizer?” to “what do you think of the global survivalist movement?”
Some of his more memorable moments during this speaker’s Q and A were:
Q:”Where would you go in the event of a zombie outbreak?”
A:”That is a very good question. You know, almost every place I go to speak to they ask me that question…Next question.
Q:”What do you think is the best weapon for killing zombies?”
A:”Everybody loves to ask me this question, when the truth is that more often than not you’re not going to be fighting the living dead, but constantly searching for one thing: Water.” [He holds up a bottle of Poland Springs.]
Q:”what should we do to get out of Long Island, if zombies attack, because even though we’re on an Island we’re right next to [New York] city?
A:”That’s a good question. The only real ways to get off Island is ferry, train, or plane. And pretty much everyone will be trying to get out AT THE SAME TIME! It would probably be better to get off the Island BEFORE the zombies come.”
During the book signing, Brooks was signing and selling copies of his books and posters, and drawing a line in the SAC that was comparable to the last USG Comedy Show (or what I referred to as The Great John Oliver/Wyatt Cenac Waiting of 2012.)
Brooks revealed some details about the project he is currently working on. He says that there will be a comic book series based on a short story of his creation, called The Extinction Parade.
The story depicts, in a way that only Max Brooks could portray, the scene of a zombie apocalypse through the eyes of vampires, whose main food source is now threatened by this undead plague.
Just two days after Brooks’ campus incursion, it was announced that copies of Extinction Parade had hit the shelves in comic book store around the country.
