re: #1 Charles Johnson

I used to think Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death” was just a story, not a prediction of the future.

I am not a fan of anything Zombie, but I really liked World War Z (the novel, not the film adaptation) because it is not so much about zombies as it is about how humanity consistently fails to deal with a crisis: first we ignore it, then the authorities deny it and try to hide it (ostensibly to avoid panic) then the truth starts to leak out and people panic (because they know they have been lied to) then a number of half-measures are put in place that wind up only exacerbating the situation, etc…