The Library at the End of the World – Jim Cobb

The author very kindly sent me a review copy of this book at my request several weeks ago. I do need to apologize for how long it has taken to get around to finishing the book and doing the review. Sadly, I am woefully behind on reviews but am working feverishly to get caught up.

Overall, I enjoyed The Jakarta Pandemic. I felt it was a pretty realistic portrayal of a family’s experience during such a crisis. But, with that said, there are some flaws I need to note later in the review.

Alex Fletcher is an Iraqi war veteran who now works as a rep for a major pharmaceutical company. As the book begins, Alex is aware of growing flu outbreaks in several areas of the world. His employer, Biosphere, manufactures one of the leading vaccines that proves to be able to fight this illness. Alex has taken several measures to ensure the safety and well being of his family in the event of a disaster. They have extensive supplies set aside, such as weeks of food and water as well as several firearms. Alex and his wife, as well as their two children, live in a nice home in a well-to-do subdivision in Maine. True to life, they have neighbors they like and neighbors they don’t.

Early into the story, the flu begins to rage out of control in several areas of the country. Biosphere informs all of their reps to return all sample cases of the vaccine to the company for redistribution to government agencies. Alex decides to instead hand over his samples to a physician, hoping the medicine will be used to help folks in immediate need. He reserves several courses of medication for his family and close friends. Soon after this, he puts his family in “lock down” mode at home. Except in rare circumstance, they stay within the home at all times, subsisting on the extensive food stores they have.

Interestingly enough, the power as well as the Internet and cable TV rarely even flicker throughout the book. They are able to gain a lot of information on world events through websites and news broadcasts.

As the pandemic makes its way to and through Maine, several of the subdivision neighbors suffer the effects. A few perish from the illness. Alex and a couple of his close friends in the neighborhood do what they can to help the other residents. However, despite their best efforts, there are those within the neighborhood who believe perhaps they’d all be better served if Alex were to open his supply storage to everyone. A couple of these neighbors attempt to persuade Alex to share and share alike, which isn’t taken too well by the Fletchers.

As things go from bad to worse in the larger cities around them, the neighborhood finds itself being scouted by fleeing city dwellers and eventually a few of those folks take up residence in some of the now empty homes. One group in particular becomes quite a problem for everyone and after a short time, violence visits the neighborhood.

I found the book very slow at the start, putting it down several times as my interest waned. I felt Konkoly had a great story, if he’d just get around to it. But, by the same token, life itself during a pandemic if you’re holed up in your home will probably be rather boring so perhaps that was sort of the point?

Alex, his family, and his friends make mistakes along the way. I didn’t have a problem with that though as I felt it lent a level of realism to the story. People aren’t perfect and even those of us who have been “prepping” for years are going to miss things and make errors.

I feel the book would have been well served to have a thorough line edit done before publication. Countless times in the book, the verb tense changed mid-scene. While this is easily overlooked once you get used to it, I found it very jarring.

I did enjoy much of the dialogue in the book. I loved the bantering between Alex and his wife, as well as between a few of their friends in the neighborhood. I also felt several of the scenes came across as very realistic, both in actions and in motivations. Alex, in spite of his military experience and background, is very reluctant to get into physical altercations, even when perhaps he had every right to do so.

All in all, it is certainly worth the read. I’d readily recommend it to preppers looking for a non-zombie pandemic book.

Some time ago, I was approached by a casting agency about appearing on a new show about preppers. After a lengthy discussion where I was assured the show was going to be a legit attempt at educating the masses about disaster readiness, I declined once I learned they wanted to bring a TV crew to my home and have me give the entire country a guided tour of my own preps.

Flash forward several months and Doomsday Preppers premiers on NatGeo. They are a couple episodes in at this point. Last night, my wife and I sat down to watch the first episode via our cable provider’s On Demand feature. Because watching the show in this way excludes commercials, the actual running time was about 48 minutes or so. It took us well over an hour to get through it because both of us kept pausing the show to rant about this or that statement made by one of the preppers on the show.

Overall, color me seriously underwhelmed by the show. There are so many things they could have done with this show to make it truly worth the watch. But, as I would have predicted, they concentrated on the goofiest whack jobs they could find. Or at least portrayed them that way.

First up, we have the Range couple who live in a home built out of several shipping containers. They have about 50,000 lbs of food set aside, enough such that they feel they can feed their group of 22 or so people for fifteen years. According to the show, their primary concern is a pole shift, which they feel would cause major earthquakes and other disasters, resulting in a total societal collapse. They stressed this earthquake angle several times during their segment.

Ok, so they’re worried about major quakes. Yet throughout their food storage are hundreds of GLASS JARS sitting precariously on makeshift shelves. No straps or other securing devices were evident. Earth shakes –> glass jars hit the floor –> there goes your 50,000 lbs of food storage.

Further to that, I personally don’t ever want to live quite that, well, white trash looking. While I’m all for prepping, I believe there is a balance to be met where you live your life in a modicum of comfort and enjoyment while still working towards being prepared for disasters. They appear to love their lifestyle, more power to them. I just don’t think living in a shipping container is going to everyone’s cup of tea. I have to wonder how many people watched the show because they were interested in learning more about prepping, saw this ramshackle structure, and had thoughts like, If THIS is what prepping is all about, count me OUT!

They also have a bug out plan whereby they will use converted school buses to move their people and supplies to a secondary location, something like 12 hours from their home/retreat. It is always a good idea to have backup plans, so no argument there. But, they showed them doing an evacuation drill with the goal of moving a fair amount of their supplies into the buses and hitting the road in an hour. I just can’t wrap my head around what they figure could happen that would be bad enough to cause them to abandon their home, yet would still give them a solid hour to get ready to go?

Next up we have Christopher Nyegres. He has learned extensive skills in living off the land in his home area of Los Angeles County. His “pet apocalypse” is a major quake hitting California. His plan, as described on the show, is to live a nomadic lifestyle, subsisting on what he can hunt and forage. He has his survival bag with the usual assortment of gear and that’s about it. Kudos to him for learning these skills. But I shudder to think what chemicals he’s ingesting by eating the weeds growing alongside freeways and such in Los Angeles.

Also, if your main fear is a major quake hitting California, wouldn’t the most prudent thing to do be moving away from California? I understand, there are threats no matter where you go. I totally get that. But, let’s say my biggest fear was that I am convinced an asteroid is going to hit Dallas, Texas, sometime in the next five years. I’ve done the math and somehow I am utterly convinced this is going to happen. Would it seem wise for me to live in Dallas then? Seems to me the intelligent thing for me to do is move as far away from Dallas as I could, as soon as possible.

Oh, and he plans to use some stone arrowheads for trading to the homeless people he meets after the quake. I’d love to see how that pans out for him.

Finally, we have Megan Hurwitt. Her, my wife and I both wanted to slap. Her attitude, her mindset, just everything about her was exceptionally aggravating. They stated during her segment that she “works out” four hours a day, six days a week. Ok look, I’m not exactly in Olympic competition shape myself but there is no way this young woman worked out that much, unless she had just started that workout schedule a week before the show was taped.

Her main fear is an oil crash. That a Middle Eastern country would cut the US off or something and riots and other unpleasantness would result. Her plan, such as it is, is to hole up in her tiny apartment for a few weeks, then bug out on foot to a vehicle she has stashed somewhere about 6 hours walk from her apartment. (By the way, she had planned on that walk taking three hours but once she actually gave it a shot, found it took her double that amount of time.) There, she’ll take the car to Mexico.

She’s assuming:

1) She’d have anywhere near enough supplies to live, undetected, in her apartment for several weeks.

2) That she’d survive her trek from her apartment to her car, admittedly going through some pretty rough parts of the city.

3) That her car would still be at the hidden location, undamaged and ready to go.

4) That Mexico would somehow be anywhere near an ideal place to go.

The follow up portion of her segment mentions that Megan has recently enlisted in the military. One would hope they are somehow able to pound into her head some degree of common sense and reality. What she managed to show on her segment was nothing short of planning to fail.

In hopes of avoiding a heart attack brought on by a rapid increase in blood pressure, I’ll probably avoid watching future segments of Doomsday Preppers. I had high hopes for this show and was sorely disappointed.

For several years, the “go to” medical handbooks for survivalists have been Where There Is No Doctor and The Special Forces Medical Handbook. Both are great resources and deserve spots on your bookshelf. But, I’m here to tell you there’s a new medical book in town and it blows both of those texts out of the water.

Joseph Alton, M.D., and his wife Amy Alton, A.R.N.P, are known by preppers the world over as Doctor Bones and Nurse Amy. They have written if not the first certainly the best medical guide specifically for preppers. Clocking in at a hair over four hundred pages, it is absolutely jam-packed with vital information. Here is just a short list of some of the topics addressed:

–Appendicitis
–Athlete’s foot
–Hypothermia
–Radiation sickness
–Suturing
–Animal bites
–Head injuries
–Diabetes
–High blood pressure
–Seizure disorders

One of the areas where this book really shines is they discuss herbal remedies and essential oils as part of the overall care of patients. Recognizing the slim likelihood a prepper will have access to a full pharmacy after a major societal collapse, advice is given as to how best treat the various injuries and illnesses without restricting that care to pharmaceuticals.

They also present the reader with extensive lists of medical supplies to be stocked up in advance of a collapse. Additionally, they recognize the fact that a single volume of medical advice will not suffice in a large, prolonged disaster. That being the case, they present a wonderful discussion of the skills a future “medical officer” in a retreat group should go to great lengths to learn in depth.

While the use of complicated medical terminology is unavoidable in a book like this, the authors make great efforts to ensure the topics are easily understood by the layperson.

Overall, I would say this book deserves inclusion in any “top ten” list of books important to the prepper and survivalist. You can find it here on Amazon.

I just learned author John Christopher (pen name for Samuel Youd) passed away over the weekend at the age of 89. His books had a tremendous impact on my life. Indeed, were it not for him, I might not be nearly as involved with survivalism as I am today.

It was in about 1983 or so when I first discovered Christopher’s books. An English teacher had a stack of old Boy’s Life magazines at the back the room and one day I was leafing through them. At the back of the magazine, they were running a serialized comic strip from The White Mountains, the first book in the Tripods trilogy.

I was absolutely riveted by this story of three young men traveling through a future Earth, one that had been taken over by the mysterious Tripods. I quickly found all the issues of Boy’s Life that had this storyline and put them in order, devouring them all in a day or two. I found out this was only the first segment and the magazine had gone on to do the same thing with The City of Gold and Lead as well as The Pool of Fire. I was particularly fascinated by the depictions of the ruins of our world the characters came across in their travels.

Visiting the school library, I found they didn’t have a copy of The White Mountains available but the librarian, Mrs. Mayer, located in the stacks a copy of Empty World.

After reading this story about a young man traveling through a Great Britain ravaged by a plague, my own fate as a reader was sealed. I found I was enthralled with any stories involving the end of the world. It wasn’t too much later that I discovered Jerry Ahern’s The Survivalist series as well as Dr. Bruce Clayton’s Life After Doomsday.

I’ve read several of John Christopher’s novels over the years. Some, like No Blade of Grass (a.k.a. The Death of Grass) are written for the grown up crowd. Others, like The Sword of the Spirits trilogy, were written for young adults. There is not a dud in the bunch. Christopher was remarkably adept at weaving stories that kept you interested and at creating characters about whom you cared, who seemed real to the reader.

I had the incredibly good fortune to have a conversation or two with him via email a few years back. At that time, his health had already begun to deteriorate and I learned he wasn’t writing much any more because of it. I asked if he’d be willing to sign a book through the mail for me and he declined, saying traveling to and from the post office was difficult. He did however mail me a signed bookplate for my copy of Empty World, something I shall always consider one of my most treasured possessions.

Rest in peace, my friend. You had a great run and your work shall always live on.

We picked this up at Redbox the other day and I was pleasantly surprised to find it wasn’t just a low-budget “vampires rule the world” flick. It has been a while since I enjoyed a movie this much.

Priest stars Paul Bettany as the titular character. As shown in an animated prologue, mankind has been at war with vampires for centuries. This never-ending war all but destroyed the planet. Eventually, “The Church” rose up to rule civilization and they developed highly skilled and powerful warriors, dubbed Priests, to do battle with the vampires. Eventually, the Priests succeed in the war and the remaining vamps are shuffled off to reservations. Seeing no further need of them, The Church disbands the Priests, considering them an embarrassment.

The world portrayed in Priest is sort of Mad Max meets high tech, with a liberal dose of the Old West tossed into the mix. Most people live in huge, walled cities, with small towns occasionally cropping up out in the wastelands. The cities are enormous, with tons of people all vying for space. Think of the cyberpunk style city life as portrayed in Bladerunner and you’d not be far off the mark. The world outside the cities though is nothing more than blasted desert wastes. The vampire reservations are mostly underground, with small buildings housing their “familiars,” who are humans who have been infected with the vampire virus.

Our hero, if you want to call him that, has a lonely existence in the city. He is contacted by Hicks (Cam Gigandet), who is a sheriff from a nearby small settlement. Hicks tells the Priest about a vampire attack that killed the Priest’s brother and ex-wife and that his niece is missing, believed to have been kidnapped by the vampires. The Priest goes to The Church authorities to ask to be reinstated so he can officially track down the vampires. They don’t believe him and order him to not interfere further.

Naturally this doesn’t sit well with the Priest and he goes off to find his niece, accompanied by Hicks as well as a Priestess (Maggie Q) who has also defected from The Church’s authority. I’m not giving away a huge spoiler by saying the main villain not only knows they’re coming, he’s counting on it.

What follows is a ton of action and great fun. Being Priests, much of their weaponry is centered upon religious themes, such as small crosses that double as shuriken. The fight scenes are well done, not overly choreographed wire walking nonsense. The Priests are shown to have almost superhuman agility and fighting skills but again, this isn’t overdone.

Mad Max + Bladerunner + Blade = Priest. There is so much that could have gone wrong with that formula but I think they pulled it off rather well.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, Mr. Page and I met some time ago through a message board and at his request, I sent him a fair amount of information on my thoughts about surviving a post-collapse environment. Despite the lack of recognizing this in any type of acknowledgments in the book, he’s still a good chap in my opinion.

Back in April, I reviewed The Official Zombie Handbook by Sean Page. While this new book isn’t truly a sequel, it follows along in the same overall mythos as the first book. The idea here is that zombies are real and there is the genuine threat of a zombie apocalypse. This is fiction posing as non-fiction.

And, like his first book, he succeeds with this magnificently.

Believe it or not, there is a ton of information here that is useful to the long-term prepper/survivalist. While the focus is, of course, on waging war against a zombie uprising, the tips, suggestions, and instructions are applicable to just about any major societal collapse.

Among the topics Page addresses are:

–Forming, training, and outfitting your security forces.
–Creating communities that will thrive.
–Basic infantry tactics for small communities.

Throughout the book, Page illustrates his points by referencing historical events, most of which are obviously fictitious being that the concentration is on past zombie outbreaks. However, these events are presented in such a way that you know for certain Page “did his homework” in terms of placing these fictional uprisings within real historical events.

One of the chapters I particularly loved was Survivor Communities of the Zombie Apocalypse. There, page goes into great detail about the different types of groups a survivor may encounter during and after a zombie apocalypse. From cannibals to cults, each is discussed extensively. Great stuff!

I’m telling you, if zombies are your thing, you absolutely cannot go wrong with this book. And even if you aren’t “into” zombies, you’ll still learn a great deal about what it will take to form new communities, post-collapse.

I enjoyed this book immensely and cannot wait for the next one.

This is an interesting approach to the run of the mill survival guides you can find everywhere today. Rather than just presenting list on top of list of supplies to acquire, padded with an extensive chapter or two on first aid techniques, this is actually a 12 week training course that is designed to prepare you for urban survival situations.

There is a ton of great information here. Everything from 72 hour kits to “ghetto medicine.” Morris discusses inexpensive ways to harden your home, where to look for like minded people, and safe rooms. While much of the information is certainly applicable across the board, as the title suggests the focus is on the urban prepper and the unique challenges present when dealing with a city environment.

This book is certainly worth the read. But, I do think it could have been edited and formatted a little better. The topics are kind of scattered in the chapters. There is an entire chapter on lessons to be learned from Hurricane Katrina, which has great information, but much of it could have perhaps just been included in other chapters. Barter information, rather than coming in the Economics of Survival chapter is instead discussed in the Urban Movement After A Disaster section.

Morris also mentions rather frequently his websites and encourages his readers to become “affiliates” to earn money through getting other people to click over to his site. While I’m all for self-promotion, I found this somewhat distasteful.

All in all, the Urban Survival Guide is worth the read and has excellent suggestions for city dwelling preppers. You may just have to look past the promotional material you come across from time to time.

I read and reviewed Ex-Heroes back in March of last year. As I said back then, it was one of my favorite reads of the year. Ex-Patriots is the newly released sequel and it certainly lives up to its predecessor!

It has now been two years since a zombie virus has swept the globe. The zombies, called “exes,” dominate the landscape. The group of survivors living in The Mount, a former movie studio, has swelled considerably. They are protected and led by a quartet of superheroes — St. George, Zzzap, Stealth, and Cerberus. Over the last couple years, they have all managed to put together some semblance of a community. But due to the increasing population of The Mount, resources are wearing thin. Scavenging parties are having to range further and further and coming back with less.

As things are looking more and more dire, contact is made with a group of soldiers operating out of an Army base in Arizona. These aren’t ordinary soldiers either. Beginning just prior to the zombie outbreak, and as illustrated through a few flashbacks, these soldiers have been greatly enhanced through Project Krypton with tremendous strength and speed. They want to bring The Mount back into the fold of the United States. And they won’t take no for an answer.

The heroes agree to meet with the leaders of the base to determine how best to proceed. As might be predicted, they learn that all is not what it seems with the base and Project Krypton.

As with the first book in this series, Ex-Patriots is solidly written and well plotted. The actions of the various characters make sense and are true to the mythology Clines has set up. The real villain in this story makes an appearance early, though the reader won’t recognize him as such. And indeed, this character gives the story a great twist, one that the reader doesn’t see coming.

I also enjoyed the introduction of a few new heroes, such as The Driver. While at first his powers seem sort of second-rate, Clines is able to show how important even a supposedly lesser hero can be.

Quite often, when an author has a stellar debut novel, the second book feels rushed and just isn’t quite as good as the first. There is no “sophomore slump” evident here though. I think Ex-Patriots is as good, if not better, than Ex-Heroes. And while it isn’t absolutely necessary to read the first book to enjoy the second, I’d recommend it. The first book outlines the backgrounds of many of the characters, allowing you to understand their motivations and such. You’ll get a lot more out of the second book if you’ve read the first.

All in all, Ex-Patriots is highly recommended.

This is a very handy little book. By little, I’m referring to the fact that it measures 7″ x 5″, with about 320 pages. But those little pages are absolutely jam packed with quality information.

Save Your Ass covers a huge range of emergencies and disasters. Everything from terror attacks and riots to severe weather is discussed in detail. The chapter on Crisis Survival Psychology alone is worth the price of the book. This is an area that is often missed in most survival texts or if it is included, only a couple pages are devoted to it.

Each chapter is extensively illustrated with line drawings. But, I will say that there are a few of them that probably weren’t needed, such as a woman noting where the emergency exits are on a plane. I don’t know that we really needed a visual aid for that.

While an excellent survival book, it does suffer a bit from trying to cover every possible scenario and topic. The chapter on first aid contains information that has been covered innumerable times in other books like this and none of those books can really replace a stand alone book on the subject. There is a lengthy chapter on Healthy Body, covering stretching, strength training, and other health topics. While interesting, I found this information kind of misplaced when compared to the rest of the book.

Overall, I do like the book and would recommend it, particularly to those who are somewhat new to disaster readiness preparation. There is a gem or two to be found for us more experienced preppers as well. With a cover price well under $20.00, you will certainly get your money’s worth.

Imagine the type of survival retreat someone with Bill Gates’ wealth could create. Every luxury imaginable — hydroponics for fresh veggies, enough space for livestock, a fully stocked infirmary, hardened against any possible threat. A survivalist’s wet dream, right?

Now, imagine being in this retreat for several years.

And the leader/owner goes batshit crazy.

Bodeen’s book The Compound is both entertaining and thought provoking. It is written for the young adult crowd but don’t let that keep you away from it. Eli is the main character. He was 9 years old when his father, a billionaire computer guy, shuffled he and his family into the compound in advance of a nuclear attack. Dad has been planning for years for this very thing and the compound is the epitome of his preparations.

However, Dad has kept some secrets from his family. Some of those secrets were by their nature necessary. Others will shock the reader.

While the back story is told in a series of flashbacks interspersed here and there, the main portions of the book take place after the family has been underground for six years. Food is running a bit low and some of the elaborate preparations are starting to come unraveled. This is one of the aspects of the book that I found very “spot on” with regards to practical, real world, survival preps. No matter how much we prep, there are inevitably going to be things we forget, things that will run out.

The other aspect to think about is, what happens if a family member becomes mentally ill? How do you deal with that? We usually stock up on medical supplies, including basic medications. But those probably don’t include meds used to address psychological issues. And in this book, that mental illness becomes a MAJOR issue.

Interesting, thought provoking, and engaging. Recommended.