Well here is why Max Brooks shouldn't be trusted. His ideas and plans revolve around his fictional creation. If you applied his same principals to any other situation, with zombies who do not have the exact same properties as the ones that Max Brooks describes, you are screwing yourself. In effect, you prepare for one type of battle and are taken the second someone uses a completely different tactic.

Plus as far as I understand his philosophy he does not support preparing yourself in advance for any sort of disaster on this scale. In reality you should have a plan, and you should educate yourself on what you can do and what you can't. Exercise, packing a bug out bag, and even stashing supplies if you feel like it would be efficient in your case. Hell even knowing how long it would take to walk home from your workplace or school if you had to leave stat is useful. As a member of the site I linked said he read the Zombie Survival Handbook by Max Brooks and found about 6-10 pages that would be actually useful. If anyone reading this blog would like to read and understand actual survival techniques that could be employed gainfully during any sort of apocalyptic scenario would do well to read survival handbooks created by the armed forces. It'll teach you more than a book by Max Brooks would simply because they train you for a survival scenario, not just the ones prescribed in his books.

Basing your plans around fiction, even though well made fiction, is not going to help when the SHTF. If zombies rise during my lifetime I will be prepared to deal with them, as well as any other number of natural disasters or any imagined scenarios.