There are two schools of thought, basically...the Romero school, which is largely what the Survival Guide is based on, although it pretends not to be; and the zombies who can basically perform physically like a human being, which aren't talked about.
The guide itself I think makes a few assumptions. Also, fozmo, if you were paying attention to the guide, shotguns are looked down upon for their potential to attract attention. And yeah, that's definitely a shortcoming of the Guide, it doesn't cover all the different types of zombies. In fact, it takes itself seriously when it's dismissing some of them as being too silly to exist.
I sometimes fear that the Guide is going to become something of a beacon to the Hot Topic crowd and then everyone will think they know what to do, and there'll be an Evil Dead 3 or something.
I don't know. I'm a huge zombie fan (don't question me on this) and I didn't find it all that great. You could basically chop it down to the weapons section and the bits about being stealthy and also buy a Boy Scout guidebook and you'd probably be better off. I just don't like how it takes itself so goddamn seriously. I know that's part of the humor of it, but I felt somehow cheapened after reading this, like reading all the other zombie comics and books and watching countless zombie movies was pointless because so many of them treated zombies differently. That's part of the appeal of zombies, is that the only set rules are that they have is to have died or been bitten first and that headshots are the most effective way to kill them (not even required, necessarily), and the rest is up to the people making the stories. Then this book comes along and demands that I forget all that.
I'm probably making too big a deal out of this.
