The Politburo initially covers up the outbreak by engineering a military crisis with Taiwan to avoid appearing weak internationally. Still, thousands of infected quickly spread the virus outside of China through immigration, human trafficking, and the organ trade.

"Patient Zero" is a twelve-year-old Chinese boy bitten while treasure diving with his father in "the sunken ruins of the Three Gorges Reservoir" (2.1. 18). Since the father and the unknown assailant never came up, "Patient Zero" gets the dubious honor of the first known zombie of World War Z.

The planets all formed from this spinning disk-shaped cloud, and continued this rotating course around the Sun after they were formed. The gravity of the Sun keeps the planets in their orbits. They stay in their orbits because there is no other force in the Solar System which can stop them.

The initial speed of the satellite maintained as it detaches from the launch vehicle is enough to keep a satellite on orbit for hundreds of years. A satellite maintains its orbit by balancing two factors: its velocity (the speed it takes to travel in a straight line) and the gravitational pull that Earth has on it.