Does James Wesley, Rawles’ book “How To Survive The End Of The World As We Know It” actually help us do what the title claims? In as much as any book could help in such a dire situation, yes. Does that make it a good book? Read on.
Rawles is a lightning rod in the prepping community
Rawles is one of the most popular writers of both fiction and non-fiction in the survivalist/prepping genre, and he owns one of the top survival websites on the planet, Survival Blog.
He’s also fairly controversial in the community, due to his “hard core” stances about relocating to the rural northwestern part of the USA.
One of his first books published in the genre, “How To Survive The End Of The World As We Know It” is a non-fiction textbook about survivalism, is list-heavy and it pulls no punches about the fast scope of what it takes to have a fully operational survival retreat (a goal virtually unobtainable by most readers).
Even though most will never be able to fully implement his ideas, many of his plans translate well into preps people at all income levels can achieve.
Here’s the publisher’s “blurb” about the book:
Disruptive elections. Global financial collapse. A terrorist attack. A natural catastrophe.
All it takes is one event to disrupt our way of life. We could find ourselves facing myriad serious problems from massive unemployment to a food shortage to an infrastructure failure that cuts off our power or water supply. If something terrible happens, we won’t be able to rely on the government or our communities. We’ll have to take care of ourselves.
In How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, James Rawles, founder of SurvivalBlog.com, clearly explains everything you need to know to protect yourself and your family in the event of a disaster—from radical currency devaluation to a nuclear threat to a hurricane. Rawles shares essential tactics and techniques for surviving completely on your own, including how much food is enough, how to filter rainwater, how to protect your money, which seeds to buy for your garden, why goats are a smart choice for livestock, and how to secure your home. It’s the ultimate guide to total preparedness and self-reliance in a time of need.
What’s the scoop?
How To Survive dovetails seamlessly (and sometimes repetitively) with his novel Patriots (published relatively closely together in time).
Chapter headings include:
- Your list of lists
- The Survival Retreat
- Water
- The Deep Larder
- Fuel and home power
- Gardens & livestock
- Communications & monitoring
- Home security & Self Defense
- Firearms for self-sufficiency and self-defense
- G.O.O.D (Get out of Dodge) vehicles
- Investing, Barter and home based business
It’s beyond the scope of a short review to talk about all of this, but let me just state that there are several chapters that really stand out as well done, and a couple I was quite “meh” over.
List of lists
The “list of lists” concept is great, basically it involves making a list of EVERYTHING important to survival, breaking it down into orders of priority, and then making separate lists that fall under the topic heading.
For example one list you would make would be Food, and under that you would put the various kinds of food; normal, everyday meals; long term storage, portable; long term storage, not portable; seeds; etc.
A bit off the rails for Salty’s railroad…
His ideas about the Survival Retreat are where things start to go off the rails a bit for most people, because he recommends relocation to a very, very rural area west of the Mississippi and living all-year-round at that retreat.
He does recognize (and much of the book covers) the fact that most people cannot do this, but still the “best case” of a rural western Idaho retreat is never far out of the writer’s mind, and it’s quite apparent.
Rather than go through each section, I will just say that he puts forward DETAILED outlines and lists of items of use, and why they are useful in each chapter.
Fierarms & Barter the Rawles way? No thanks.
A couple of the chapters I didn’t care much for were the firearms and investing/barter sections. I found his firearms advice rudimentary and simplistic, whereas I am not a huge “precious metals” fan whereas he is.
The book is available in many versions, one of which is audiobook. I am a huge audiobook fan, but I have to admit this book is “iffy” on audio. The narrator, Dick Hill, does a GREAT job, the real issue come in the fact that the structure of the book (very list heavy) doesn’t really translate well to audio. It’s not BAD, but this is a book that’s probably better read traditionally rather than audio.
Bottom line?
Recommended, one thumb up.
