I didn't think rewatching ep 2.02 was gonna hit my JamieKeeley feels so hard like Keeley still loved Jamie so fucking much what???? 😭😭😭😭😭

full name  —  jonathan apoloniusz mazur age  —  twenty - eight. october seventh, 1995 gender/pronouns  —  cis male, he/him orientation  —  bisexual, closeted publicly  birthplace  —  hampstead, london residence  —  south kensington, london languages spoken  —  polish, english height  —  200.66 cm / 6’7” weight  —  82 kg  /  181 lbs hair color  —  brunette eye color  —  blue

Be more like your dad! His mother had always squawked at Jonny, her Polish accent more thick with pride when talking about Filip Mazur. He and Bethany came to London as eighteen year olds with big dreams, having met back in Poland. They got engaged, married and had kids quickly, raising them to speak both English and Polish, to respect where they came from; heritage was important.

His father had, at one point, been the absolute best of the best on the pitch. A legend. He was loved by the team he played for (an Arsenal man through and through), loved by the nation (when he made his first appearance for Queen and country, Old Wembley’s stands shook) and loved by the pundits. He had records young footballers could only dream of, but it didn’t make him untouchable. 

In 2017, he did retire, at an eye watering age of forty two – something utterly unheard of in that world. He left with a wealth of accolades for Arsenal under his belt, a whole load of records - including oldest goal scorer in the Premier League. 

Jon, the Mazurs’ first born, had worked through Chelsea Academy as a kid - he didn't get to have a Bar Mitzvah because of his incredibly busy schedule, though he put his all into his sisters’ so that he could be a big part of it - and stayed with the Blues all the way through to seniors, making his debut in 2012, after Chelsea won the Champions League the year before. He was a Chelsea lad to his very core, playing (eventually) alongside Roy. Fucking. Kent. A man he should objectively hate given that he’d once tried to absolutely KO his dad in a match, but hey - what wouldn’t anyone give to kick a ball around under that man’s captaincy. He helped shape Jon into the player he is today and he’ll be grateful for it for as long as he’s able to play and beyond.

Of course WHU wanted him; he was in high demand; not only was he the second-tallest player in the Prem which made him a beast to go up against but he was known as an incredibly flexible player who had the ability to move from defence positions to the midfield right up to being in front, playing the 9. He had a kick like his dad, though in truth they were not that similar. That Mazur, though outspoken and bold off the grass, was patient and calm on the pitch, sharing his whippet speed and skill with his son. This Mazur had a relatively short temper and wasn’t afraid to use his elbows.. Though, this is something Jon has worked on over time, instead becoming known for his level headedness and dedication to the sport. He doesn’t fight referees, he doesn’t pick fights with the little shits on lower table teams, he’s an artist on the pitch. 

In 2015, aged twenty, Jon made his debut for the Three Lions, the England team, legacy number 1207.

Now he’s as beloved by West Ham fans as his father was (is) by Arsenal’s. He was named their captain in July of 2017, the same year his father stepped away from the game. It’s a role he takes seriously, trying to pave the way for the younger Hammers, showing them how to act and how to better themselves just as Roy Kent had done for him those years ago. 

On Nov 15th 2018, Jon was given the captain’s band for England for a game against USA, something his own father had never quite managed. He had wanted to step out of Fil’s shadow and this was just another challenge to take up in order to prove himself even more… to who, he wasn’t entirely sure. 

He captained the England team through the 2016 Euros, the 2020 Euros and the 2022 World Cup, he’s got 221 goals for West Ham under his belt, 62 for England and in 2023 he led West Ham to victory, winning the Europa Conference League in Prague.

The man is a true testament to himself and his game. It was no shock to the people that really knew him to find out that he was nominated for the Ballon d’Or, let alone when he won the thing (he, though, was sitting with his jaw agape before being roused from his seat). The biggest surprise of all was the moment his father walked out on stage to hand him the trophy - some people slammed the move from the older Mazur man, but it was perhaps the most touching moment of young Mazur’s life so far.

World War Z was published in 2006, but takes place in 2009 at the earliest.  Late in the book, astronaut Terry Knox states that the International Space Station took over 10 years to complete; it started construction in November 1998, and Chief of Staff Karl Rove Grover Carlson says that the Republican party barely eked back into power after a disastrous 2-termer who started a “brush fire war” in the Middle East (George W. Bush).  He mentions an election year, but he doesn’t specify if it was the new president’s first or second term, so it’s either set right after 2008 or 2012.  This was written before the Nintendo Wii was announced, but one chapter mentions that people brought their GameCubes with them as they fled their homes in search of safety in the frozen Canadian wilderness.  This same chapter also mentions that they didn’t know how to pick survival gear; a park ranger finds a SpongeBob SquarePants sleeping bag frozen in the mud because its owner didn’t know the difference between a child’s indoor sleeping bag for slumber parties and a real insulated survival bag for camping.

The new president is never named, he’s just told be be pro-big business and anti-regulation, pushing a placebo zombie vaccine through the FDA to jumpstart the economy.  When shit hits the fan, he is “sedated” and his vice president takes power; we’re never told what happened to the president, whether he was bitten or had a stroke, just that he was “sedated.”  His Vice President is directly implied to be Colin Powell; he’s former military with family in Jamaica and black.  He appoints Howard Dean to be his vice president to form a bipartisan coalition; he is never referred to by name, but it is clearly supposed to be Howard Dean.  He was a rising star in the Democratic party from Vermont whose wife is a doctor and whose career imploded after he had a passionate outburst.  In 2004, Howard Dean gave a speech where he started passinately screaming about how he was gonna start sweeping state primaries and ride a wave into the White House, punctuating his point by going “HHEEUEAHHGH!!”  This was political suicide in 2004, and he was laughed out of the race.  In the book, he is referred to only as “the Whacko” because of this.  It is implied that he was Powell’s second choice for VP, his first being Barack Obama; the Whacko says that the Democrats wanted somebody else, somebody of the same skin color as the president, but that the country wasn’t ready for that.  In 2004, Obama was a candidate for senate in Illinois, so popular and so well spoken that he gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention before he even won his seat; then and there, pundits already had him pegged as the first black president, they could see the writing on the walls.  The Whacko becomes president when Powell dies of stress, but he is consistently referred to only as the wartime Vice President, out of respect for his boss.

Also, the Attorney General is implied to be Rudy Giuliani; all that is said about him was that he was the mayor of New York and once tried to give himself emergency powers to stay in office after his term.  Giuliani did exactly that after 9/11.

Other real life figures mentioned in the book

Fidel Castro; a ton of Cuban Americans flee the continent and return to the island during the zombie war, and he jumpstarts the economy by putting them to work as cheap laborers and slowly integrating them back into Cuban society.  He rehabilitates his image by stepping down as dictator and democratizing the country, voting himself out of office before the “nortecubanos” could hang him for decades of war crimes.

Nelson Mendela, referred to by his birth name Rolihlahla, the father of modern South Africa, he personally invites Paul Redekker, a former apartheid era political analyst, to solve the zombie problem; in the 80s, Redekker created a plan for the white minority government in case the black majority ever rose up against them.  In real life, Mandela lowered the temperature when he was elected president, saying that revenge against the apartheid government would do more harm than good.  In the story, Mandela uses this as justification to reuse the apartheid era plan to handle the zombie outbreak instead.  Redekker is so overcome by his compassion and forgiveness that he has a mental episode and dissociates, believing himself to be a black South African.

Kim Jong-il, the dictator of North Korea, he withdraws all troops from the DMZ and shuts the entire country down.  After months of radio silence, it is revealed that the entire country’s population has vanished; all satellite imagery shows a desolate wasteland, no zombies, but no humans either. He presumably moved everyone into subterranean bunker systems where he not only control their lives as on the surface, but now their access to food, water, and air.  He presumably became the god emperor he always wanted to be; either that, or the entire tunnel complex has been overrun, turning every man woman and child in North Korea into zombies.  The South Korean government refuses to send a expedition into the North to figure out what happened, lest they open up one of the tunnels and unleash millions of zombies onto the surface.

Martin Scorsese, mentioned in passing only as “Marty,” a friend of world famous film director Roy Elliot, who himself is a thinly veiled pastiche of Steven Spielberg.  Interestingly enough, the audio book features Martin Scorsese doing the voice of the conartist who created the placebo vaccine

One chapter has a ton of vapid celebrities hole together in a fortified mansion on Long Island, and takes great care to show each of them getting torn apart not by zombies but by regular people who storm the facility because they were stupid enough to broadcast their location on reality television.  A redneck with a “Get’er Done” hat (Larry the Cable Guy) and some bald guy with diamond earrings (Howie Mandel) blow themselves up with a grenade.  Rival political commentators, an annoying guy who talks about feminization of western society and a leathery blonde (Bill Maher and Ann Coulter) have end-of-the-world viking sex as the facility burns to the ground.  A dumb starlet (Paris Hilton) is killed by one of her handlers and her little rat dog escapes on foot.  A radio shock jock (Howard Stern) actually survives the war and restarts his show.

Michael Stipe of REM joins the army to fight the zombies

Another war veteran mentions how his brother used to have a bunch of Mel Brooks’ old comedy skits on vinyl record, and how he and his squad acted out the “Boy meets Girl” puppet skit with some human skulls.  Mel Brooks is author and narrator Max Brooks’ father.

Queen Elizabeth II, refuses to evacuate England when the island is overrun by zombies.  She intends to remain in Buckingham Palace “for the duration,” mirroring the fact that her parents refused to evacuate to Canada during World War II.

Vladimir Putin declares himself Tsar of the Holy Russian Empire, an ultra-orthodox religious state that has armed priests execute political dissidents under the guise of mercy killing people who have been bitten by zombies.

Yang Liwei, the first “taikonaut” (Chinese astronaut) has a space station named after him

While the main conflict is about government responses to the zombie pandemic, we see glimpses of a greater war torn planet.

A major plot line involves a Chinese Civil War which sees the entire communist politburo nuked out of existence by a rebel sub commander, as well as an attempted “scorched space policy” where the government planned to blow up their space station with scuttling charges to cause a cascade of space debris to encircle the Earth and prevent any other countries from launching missions in the future (this is known as Kessler Syndrome in real life, and was featured as the inciting incident of the 2013 movie Gravity).  The People’s Republic becomes the United Federation.

Iran and Pakistan destroy each other in nuclear war; everyone thought it would be India and Pakistan, but they had very close diplomatic infrastructure in place to prevent such a catastrophe; Pakistan helped Iran build a nuclear arsenal, but as millions of refugees fled from India through Pakistan to the east, Iran had to blow up some Pakistani bridges to stem the flow of zombies, which led to a border war and eventually total nuclear retaliation.

Floridians flee to Cuba, Wisconsinites flee to Canada, the federal government flees to Hawaii.  Everything east of the Rockies is abandoned and ruled by warlords until the government sorts itself out and mounts an expedition to clear the continent of zombies by literally marching an unbroken line of soldiers stretching from Canada to Mexico across the wasteland to the Atlantic.

Israel withdraws from Gaza and the West Bank to become super isolationist, building a wall around the entire country to stop the zombies getting in (they were the first country to respond to the pandemic, and the most successful), but the religious right rebels against the secular left in a civil war that sees Jerusalem ceded to a unified Palestine.

It is an amazing, multifaceted story with so much going on that nobody recognizes.  It was written as a response to the end of the Cold War and the start of the War on Terror.  It’s about a geopolitical shift, a change in the status quo, a disaster from which the world never recovers; America before 9/11 was a very different place than American after 9/11.  Iraq and Afghanistan changed everything, and we’re still feeling their effects to this day; the story uses the zombie apocalypse as the next big international disaster the world must adapt to.  World War Z is World War III with zombies, and I think it would do a lot better if it were published today, now that we’ve had several decades to respond to the fall of the Soviet Union and the endless wars in the Middle East and a global pandemic.