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| Source: Amazon.com |
How to Survive the End of
the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain
Times, by James Wesley Rawles
Ok, so I read a “survivalist” book. So sue me (no, please don’t, we’re much too poor for lawyers). Although I would have to argue that How to Survive the... was not so much a survivalist manual in the atypical sense but more of a guide for preparing for the “big event.” It did not follow what I would say is a typical survivalist mentality - not that I'm any true judge of such things. I am no expert, so I wouldn’t presume to say I know what they are all about. I’m getting off track here. Let’s get to the book review.
Rawles is the author of SurvivalBlog.com, as well as a novel that puts the suggestions he puts forth in How to Survive... into a “real” life situation. I haven’t read that one, nor do I intend to, to be honest. I’ll explain shortly.
I can’t go into too much detail on this book, as it was not easily approachable from an audiobook format. Seeing as audiobooks are my primary means of fast book reading (and the only way I could realistically read as much as I am lucky enough to do), this made for a problem right at the start.
For instance, the author refers to a great variety of website URLs in his descriptions of supplies that he deems essential to survive what he refers to repeatedly as TEOTWAWKI (pronounced “thee-ought-walky” by the book’s narrator). While this is probably realistic in a handheld book format, it didn’t translate so well in audio form. It seemed like half of the book was filled with the hapless narrator repeating phrases like: “go to www.go get prepared slash p (the letter “P”) backslash underscore things you should know colon parentheses question mark for more information on this particular thing-a-majig.” This doesn’t exactly make for pleasant listening.
Also - I should have started keeping track when I noticed this - he used the phrase: “when the Schumer hits the fan” repeatedly. A lot, in fact. If I hadn’t been reading this at work on my headphones, I could have started a really amusing drinking game with it. Every time he says “Schumer hits the fan,” you take a drink. Every time he quotes a URL, you take a drink. And every time you get annoyed by his writing style, you yell out a curse word. I’d have been drunk and yelling obscenities by page 20 (that is, if I was somebody who partook of distilled spirits, which in truth, I’m not).
What about the good part, you ask? No, the book was not a complete waste of my time. I am a pessimist, but I do have a need to find something good to say about most any book I struggle through. This one did have a great deal of applicable knowledge. For instance, Rawles goes to great lengths to describe the means by which a family (he recommends more than one family be involved, to ease some of the burden on the members), go about making sure that they are adequately prepared to deal with a national disaster that leaves our country without self-sufficiency for an extended period of time. Of course, this scenario is not without precedent - FEMA and the Hurricane Katrina disaster comes to mind.
Rawles describes potential pandemics, EMP attacks that knock out all of the nation’s electrical systems and leave us in a near pre-1900 state technologically wise, and other various worst-case scenarios including something as “mundane” as a nuclear or biological attack by a rogue state. He then goes to great effort to help the reader with information on the means of living through these sort of bad things in relative comfort.
Here is where I have another problem with the book. I know this is personal bias, but the suggestions Rawles makes are very much centered on maintaining a living standard that approximates what a North American would call comfortable. However, I personally do not believe that we can expect to continue to live in the same manner if a situation like the one he describes were to happen.
He also goes to great effort to describe how you should go about preparing your food storage. I maintain that he misses some useful and easily over-looked things, like the fact that there are other things a person can eat besides wheat and rice and beans if they are truly hungry. For example, insects are loaded with protein, but Rawles never even mentions the idea of having to live in a way that is not common to most Americans today. Ways of living such as eating insects when in “survival mode,” for instance. He spends a lot of time going on about how to get things, go about protecting them, and then maintaining them over a period of years. He doesn’t spend any time on what may very well be an inescapable result of U.S. national disaster - the need to do whatever you can with whatever you’ve got. Forgive my insolence, but that is what I call “the Schumer hitting the fan.”
I know I’m probably being unrealistic for a lot of “average” Americans, but in a situation that desperate, things will change. If they don’t, we won’t survive. As it is, many people wouldn’t survive such a disaster. It is normal for people to die when things go as badly as Rawles postulates that they will. Sadly, that is the truth. The trick would be, in my humble opinion, to survive the best way you could and not expect things to go the way they have, or even the way they should. But that is this author’s ten cents. Take it for what it is worth.
On the bright side (if there is a bright side to this story), Rawles’s book did make me want to get a bit more prepared. He even mentions the LDS church and - though he says he doesn’t follow the faith - commends the church’s stand on preparedness and canning. In this, he reminds me that I am not, as a member of the LDS faith, following all the things I believe to be true. I need to spend a bit more time and effort on being ready for bad days to come. In food storage and in emergency readiness, for instance. A bit more prayer wouldn’t hurt either.
The book, in the final analysis, made me a bit depressed. So many things seem beyond my reach, as a relatively poor student and home owner (albeit a fairly modest home) in a bad housing economy. I can’t realistically afford to buy a “retreat property” and live at it year-round, as Rawles suggests. I cannot raise so-called “heritage” livestock or crops where I live. I cannot afford to buy all the stuff he recommends. Nor do I think it is truly worth my efforts to invest in precious metals or a huge store of firearms of various types. He even mentions how people should think about getting “dual purpose” guns. These are guns with multiple barrels which allow the carrier to fire shotgun shells and 22 caliber rounds from the same weapon quickly. A good idea, but not particularly realistic for average people.
There are many such examples of what I’d call “practical impracticality” in this book. In the end, I found it disheartening since I felt I’d never be able to do all that preparation by the time a disaster hit, and I am incredulous that anybody out there is so obsessed with these things that they spend the sums of money Rawles mentions to invest in such items as gasoline storage tanks for their property, military-grade concertina wire to protect their land (land, incidentally, that they should have carefully picked out based on a large list of needs including spring water, arable land, low local population, possible fuel sources on the property, defensibility, etc...), sophisticated night vision stuff, and the list goes on and on. All this seems geared toward keeping a small group of people alive while the rest of us die from our foolishness. It is a sad and cynical way to look at things, no matter how true it may turn out to be.
I’d recommend the book with the strong caveat that it is geared a certain way, and you should expect that from the outset. He says from the beginning that his book is not intended to be a “survivalist” “lone-wolf” “living off the land” kind of manual, as his experience leads him to feel that such a lifestyle is not realistic or productive, which I can agree with. He also advocates charity and good living, so you’ve got to give him credit for that. too But for me personally, I found the author’s point of view to be a bit skewed when compared to my supposed “average American” situation and circumstances. Even if he has great intentions and a background in the military/government that commends his suggestions to be more than just some wacko with a word processor and too much time on his hands, there was still a lack of realism to some of his suggestions that I couldn’t get past.
I definitely wouldn’t recommend the audiobook, based on my personal experience, but the paper copy is probably better for the purpose it is meant to fill. And on the bright side, I do feel like getting my stuff together a bit more, for when the “Schumer hits the...” take a drink... “fan.” So there is that. Now who’s up for a preparedness / surviving thee-ought-walky drinking game?
Ok, so I read a “survivalist” book. So sue me (no, please don’t, we’re much too poor for lawyers). Although I would have to argue that How to Survive the... was not so much a survivalist manual in the atypical sense but more of a guide for preparing for the “big event.” It did not follow what I would say is a typical survivalist mentality - not that I'm any true judge of such things. I am no expert, so I wouldn’t presume to say I know what they are all about. I’m getting off track here. Let’s get to the book review.
Rawles is the author of SurvivalBlog.com, as well as a novel that puts the suggestions he puts forth in How to Survive... into a “real” life situation. I haven’t read that one, nor do I intend to, to be honest. I’ll explain shortly.
I can’t go into too much detail on this book, as it was not easily approachable from an audiobook format. Seeing as audiobooks are my primary means of fast book reading (and the only way I could realistically read as much as I am lucky enough to do), this made for a problem right at the start.
For instance, the author refers to a great variety of website URLs in his descriptions of supplies that he deems essential to survive what he refers to repeatedly as TEOTWAWKI (pronounced “thee-ought-walky” by the book’s narrator). While this is probably realistic in a handheld book format, it didn’t translate so well in audio form. It seemed like half of the book was filled with the hapless narrator repeating phrases like: “go to www.go get prepared slash p (the letter “P”) backslash underscore things you should know colon parentheses question mark for more information on this particular thing-a-majig.” This doesn’t exactly make for pleasant listening.
Also - I should have started keeping track when I noticed this - he used the phrase: “when the Schumer hits the fan” repeatedly. A lot, in fact. If I hadn’t been reading this at work on my headphones, I could have started a really amusing drinking game with it. Every time he says “Schumer hits the fan,” you take a drink. Every time he quotes a URL, you take a drink. And every time you get annoyed by his writing style, you yell out a curse word. I’d have been drunk and yelling obscenities by page 20 (that is, if I was somebody who partook of distilled spirits, which in truth, I’m not).
What about the good part, you ask? No, the book was not a complete waste of my time. I am a pessimist, but I do have a need to find something good to say about most any book I struggle through. This one did have a great deal of applicable knowledge. For instance, Rawles goes to great lengths to describe the means by which a family (he recommends more than one family be involved, to ease some of the burden on the members), go about making sure that they are adequately prepared to deal with a national disaster that leaves our country without self-sufficiency for an extended period of time. Of course, this scenario is not without precedent - FEMA and the Hurricane Katrina disaster comes to mind.
Rawles describes potential pandemics, EMP attacks that knock out all of the nation’s electrical systems and leave us in a near pre-1900 state technologically wise, and other various worst-case scenarios including something as “mundane” as a nuclear or biological attack by a rogue state. He then goes to great effort to help the reader with information on the means of living through these sort of bad things in relative comfort.
Here is where I have another problem with the book. I know this is personal bias, but the suggestions Rawles makes are very much centered on maintaining a living standard that approximates what a North American would call comfortable. However, I personally do not believe that we can expect to continue to live in the same manner if a situation like the one he describes were to happen.
He also goes to great effort to describe how you should go about preparing your food storage. I maintain that he misses some useful and easily over-looked things, like the fact that there are other things a person can eat besides wheat and rice and beans if they are truly hungry. For example, insects are loaded with protein, but Rawles never even mentions the idea of having to live in a way that is not common to most Americans today. Ways of living such as eating insects when in “survival mode,” for instance. He spends a lot of time going on about how to get things, go about protecting them, and then maintaining them over a period of years. He doesn’t spend any time on what may very well be an inescapable result of U.S. national disaster - the need to do whatever you can with whatever you’ve got. Forgive my insolence, but that is what I call “the Schumer hitting the fan.”
I know I’m probably being unrealistic for a lot of “average” Americans, but in a situation that desperate, things will change. If they don’t, we won’t survive. As it is, many people wouldn’t survive such a disaster. It is normal for people to die when things go as badly as Rawles postulates that they will. Sadly, that is the truth. The trick would be, in my humble opinion, to survive the best way you could and not expect things to go the way they have, or even the way they should. But that is this author’s ten cents. Take it for what it is worth.
On the bright side (if there is a bright side to this story), Rawles’s book did make me want to get a bit more prepared. He even mentions the LDS church and - though he says he doesn’t follow the faith - commends the church’s stand on preparedness and canning. In this, he reminds me that I am not, as a member of the LDS faith, following all the things I believe to be true. I need to spend a bit more time and effort on being ready for bad days to come. In food storage and in emergency readiness, for instance. A bit more prayer wouldn’t hurt either.
The book, in the final analysis, made me a bit depressed. So many things seem beyond my reach, as a relatively poor student and home owner (albeit a fairly modest home) in a bad housing economy. I can’t realistically afford to buy a “retreat property” and live at it year-round, as Rawles suggests. I cannot raise so-called “heritage” livestock or crops where I live. I cannot afford to buy all the stuff he recommends. Nor do I think it is truly worth my efforts to invest in precious metals or a huge store of firearms of various types. He even mentions how people should think about getting “dual purpose” guns. These are guns with multiple barrels which allow the carrier to fire shotgun shells and 22 caliber rounds from the same weapon quickly. A good idea, but not particularly realistic for average people.
There are many such examples of what I’d call “practical impracticality” in this book. In the end, I found it disheartening since I felt I’d never be able to do all that preparation by the time a disaster hit, and I am incredulous that anybody out there is so obsessed with these things that they spend the sums of money Rawles mentions to invest in such items as gasoline storage tanks for their property, military-grade concertina wire to protect their land (land, incidentally, that they should have carefully picked out based on a large list of needs including spring water, arable land, low local population, possible fuel sources on the property, defensibility, etc...), sophisticated night vision stuff, and the list goes on and on. All this seems geared toward keeping a small group of people alive while the rest of us die from our foolishness. It is a sad and cynical way to look at things, no matter how true it may turn out to be.
I’d recommend the book with the strong caveat that it is geared a certain way, and you should expect that from the outset. He says from the beginning that his book is not intended to be a “survivalist” “lone-wolf” “living off the land” kind of manual, as his experience leads him to feel that such a lifestyle is not realistic or productive, which I can agree with. He also advocates charity and good living, so you’ve got to give him credit for that. too But for me personally, I found the author’s point of view to be a bit skewed when compared to my supposed “average American” situation and circumstances. Even if he has great intentions and a background in the military/government that commends his suggestions to be more than just some wacko with a word processor and too much time on his hands, there was still a lack of realism to some of his suggestions that I couldn’t get past.
I definitely wouldn’t recommend the audiobook, based on my personal experience, but the paper copy is probably better for the purpose it is meant to fill. And on the bright side, I do feel like getting my stuff together a bit more, for when the “Schumer hits the...” take a drink... “fan.” So there is that. Now who’s up for a preparedness / surviving thee-ought-walky drinking game?
And my parting comment:
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| Source: LOL snaps.com |
That's capitalism for you. The other side should say:
"So I put something on the sign and my boss didn't like it".
Wow it almost sounds like he wants to live on a compound somewhere....... Thanks for the review, now I know what not to read.
ReplyDeleteWell, we need to store water and update our 72 hour kit. If something happens that is needing more than the 72 hour kit, we be in trouble boy.
ReplyDelete