Is Ebola the real ‘World War Z?’ (Spoiler alert: It’s not).
In 2006, I released a novel about a global zombie plague that drives humanity to the brink of extinction. While the zombies may have been fake, I tried to anchor the human response (political-military-economic-cultural) in reality. I studied the history of pandemics, natural disasters and industrialized warfare. I interviewed doctors, soldiers, journalists and someone who “has never gotten a check from the CIA” in an attempt to illustrate the fragile global systems that shield our species from the abyss. As a result, I’ve been repeatedly asked if the current outbreak of Ebola is the real-life incarnation of my novel. As much as any author would love to crow about how “I predicted this!”, this time, I’m happy to say, my fictional plague could not be more different from the truth.
It could be argued that there are some similarities between the initial Ebola outbreak in West Africa and my fictional virus. Early on, there were missed warnings, such as a U.S. intelligence group’s failure to mine data that was written in French. There was also an obvious lack of interest on the part of the industrialized world. Not only were the headlines already taken up by Islamic State and the war in Ukraine but, let’s be honest, ignoring the plight of Africans is shamefully commonplace in the First World.
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