Is World War Z Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot

Traffic, then a bigger problem than traffic

Gerry Lane is a former United Nations investigator with a wife, Karin, and two daughters, Rachel and Connie. They are stuck in downtown Philadelphia traffic when the outbreak starts, and they flee to Newark, where they take in a boy named Tommy, whose family hid in their apartment and wouldn't leave. A helicopter sent by Thierry Umutoni, a deputy secretary-general at the UN, picks them up and carries them to a Navy ship in the Atlantic. Scientists on board are studying the plague, and the virologist Andrew Fassbach thinks it's a virus and that finding where it began is the only way to a vaccine. The Navy says his family can stay on the ship only if he helps, so Gerry agrees, reluctantly.

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South Korea, starting at the plane ramp

Gerry flies to Camp Humphreys in South Korea with Fassbach and a Navy SEAL escort, since that is where the first report of the outbreak came from. The group is attacked as soon as they arrive. Fassbach panics, slips on the plane ramp and accidentally shoots himself. US soldiers at the base save the rest of the team. Gerry learns that the base doctor brought the infection in, and a CIA officer who is locked up there sends Gerry toward Israel, where Mossad has set up a secure area. The shot kills Fassbach.

The wall in Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, a Mossad official named Jurgen Warmbrunn tells Gerry that Israel built defenses after hearing about Indian troops fighting the infected. The city has a huge wall and has let Israeli and Palestinian refugees shelter inside. This is the scene people dread most, in the middle of the film. The refugees celebrate loudly, which draws the infected, who climb on top of each other to form a ramp over the wall. They pour into the city while everyone inside runs, and the city is overrun. Warmbrunn has soldiers escort Gerry back to his plane. On the way Gerry notices that the infected skip an old man and a thin boy. One of the escorts, Segen, is bitten on the hand, and Gerry cuts it off before the infection spreads. She survives, and the group boards Belarus Airways Flight 160.

A bad day to be on an airplane

Gerry sends the plane to a World Health Organization research facility in Cardiff. On the way, a stowaway attacks a flight attendant, who then attacks the passengers. Gerry blows a hole in the cabin with a grenade to push the infected out, and the plane crashes. The Navy thinks he's dead and moves his family to Nova Scotia. Gerry and Segen both live, and Gerry is trapped in his seat and hurt, and they make it to the Cardiff facility. He passes out and wakes up three days later in the care of the WHO staff. Thinking over what he saw, he concludes that the infected leave sick people alone, so a curable disease could work as camouflage.

Shots in the lab, then a vaccine

The pathogen samples are kept in a part of the WHO building that is full of the infected. Gerry, Segen and the head doctor try to sneak through and accidentally alert them. In the chase that follows, the three are separated, and Segen and the doctor have to turn back. Gerry reaches the samples alone, but one infected person blocks his only exit. With no better idea, he injects himself with a pathogen and opens the door, and the infected person walks right past him. Gerry and Segen make their way to a secure area at Freeport, in Nova Scotia, where he reunites with Karin and the kids. Tommy, who lost his own family, ends up unofficially taken in by Gerry and Karin. A vaccine is then created from a hybrid of meningitis, smallpox and swine flu parts, and it lets civilians move through infected areas and gives the military an edge.