Connor Murphy, Period 7, 5/20/22

 Currently in class we’re reading the book ‘World War Z’ and it’s probably my favorite of the books we’ve read so far. What makes it so good in my eyes is the world it builds around you while you're imagining the scenario. After learning about how the book is a collection of stories from throughout the war I was immediately interested in what actually happened throughout the war and after. Ironically this kinda means I would’ve rather heard the UN report they mentioned at the beginning of the book but this doesn’t take away from the stories themselves. Currently my favorite of the stories I’ve read so far has to be that of the Admiral Zheng He nuclear submarine. I think this story really encapsulates my favorite parts of the book all in one. It has the human experience pinned down with the emotions amongst the crew and how they did their best to put those aside to do what would be best. It also shows the development of human history through the war, with mass exodus to the oceans, the formation of the Holy Russian Empire from the military revolt, and ending it off with being the direct cause of the Federation victory in the Chinese Civil War. This specifically has taught me about the resilience of humans. Of course it's something I’ve always been aware of, with the common analogy being that the Human race are like cockroaches where even world ending events wouldn’t be able to wipe us out. However in this book they go a little bit further, we often hear about the apocalypse as humanity being pushed to its brink with populations declining rapidly and only portions of humans tattered across the globe. In ‘World War Z’ we see a humanity that is defeated at first but eventually comes back from destruction, it truly is a ‘war’ following in the footsteps of the second world war. The Axis had near complete domination over Europe and was pushing east with the goal of completely destroying the Soviets and the populace of Europe. In any isolated scenario this would seem as a near total defeat, with the Western allies pushed to sea and nearly repelled from Egypt and the Soviets falling back well beyond their borders. However both sides never gave up, it would have been easy for the British to give up after the loss of France, the Germans even offered peace, but they didn’t. The Soviets could have given up when German boots marched through Ukraine and the Baltics up to the gates of Leningrad, but they didn’t. When the Japanese attacked pearl harbor they did it in hopes that the US wouldn’t be able to retaliate against them, demoralized from their defeat, but it only brought the American people into the war full force against the Rising Sun. Not to mention that Japan’s other campaign in China had seen resistance throughout the decade, causing the Chinese Civil War to stop so both sides could focus against the Japanese threat to what they called home. We see this reflected World War Z, humanity is pushed back and it gets bad, almost defeated by an enemy they were not prepared for, but through it all they did not give up. Defenses are put up, plans are made, and eventually the world is able to recover to a point that's stable enough to call a victory. This concept doesn’t really apply to other classes, but it shows us why the world turns. Humanity is determined, it doesn’t back down easily, it doesn’t give up when it gets hard, and often it fights to the last man and nothing before it. People everyday do what they think is right because they believe it has to be done, there are only two options: give in or keep trying. And for humans, if surrendering and fighting til the end come to the same conclusion, then at least they can say they stuck true to their values, their people, and their war because if someone is going to take that from them, then they’ll have to do it by force.