Prepper Library
Assuming you are well along on prepping, i.e. food, water, security, etc. you can turn to longer term needs. In the event of a disaster, particularly one that causes the Internet, cable TV, or even the electrical grid to go down, people will need to consult good old paper books in their prepper library for information and entertainment.
One should also plan for music and video stored on CD and DVDs in case communications are out, but electronics are still working, though I am going to focus on books for the moment. If electronics are not working, books will become your primary form of entertainment, as well as your main source of information. The longer the duration of the disaster, the more you will need to rely on a personal library.
Examples of books you might want to have on hand include:
A full set of encyclopedias
Boy Scout Manuals (both old and current versions)
Survival Manuals, e.g. SAS
How-To Books:
Bushcraft skills
Construction skills
Cooking
Farming skills
Food Preservation
Home study courses
Mechanical skills
Medical skills
Gunsmithing books
Reloading manuals
Shortwave (HAM) radio skills
Peterson Field Guides
Maps and atlases
Children’s books
Fiction books:
Prepper fiction
Classic literature
Other entertainment
Non-fiction books:
History
Topics of interest to each member of the group
Music
Videos
Where to Find Books:
Not too long ago finding books was easy. Just go to a book store. However, most of the major publishers are moving toward electronic publishing, making it harder to acquire paper books. Small book stores were largely replaced by big box stores, before electronic publishing put the hurt on the big box stores. For instance, where do you buy a hardback set of encyclopedias?
When I was a child, parents would really try to afford an encyclopedia to help with their children’s education. My family had a set of World Book encyclopedias. Today we have Wikipedia and a laptop.
The proliferation of e-readers is helping this trend right along. I like e-readers as you can carry a whole library in a pocket if you want to. I can read a book with the Kindle app on my phone while riding the train to work. Why lug a physical book? However, you’ll want your “prepper” library in paper form in case the power goes away.
Paperback vs hardback
You can often find paper books, including the key books mentioned above, on Amazon, or frequently on eBay. If you check your area, you’ll probably find at least one used book store. Garage sales will turn up some interesting books, as well as CDs and DVDs.
It is also good to go for hardback books when they are available and inexpensive enough. Hardback books are more likely to be made from acid free paper, which will last longer when just sitting on a shelf. Paperback books are more likely to be printed on newsprint quality paper and will not last as long. Hardback, acid free, books will survive for hundreds of years if properly cared for, so your library can be part of your prepper estate.
If you are thinking in terms of your estate, check out Easton Press. They publish leather-bound, hardbacked books that will dress up your library and are a pleasure to look at or touch, not to mention read. Only a fool would donate these to the local library. 😊 Easton Press tends to publish a book, sell it for a few years, and then move on to other titles for their subscription customers, so check back from time to time to see what is new.
Many of their books that have gone out of print can be found on eBay. (Okay, so there are fools out there.) As I write this, I just put in a bid on a 38 volume set of Peterson’s Field Guides, published by Easton Press, but not currently in print. This could be a very handy reference if we are left in a grid down scenario for a prolonged period, and will be a pleasure to reference, even if no disaster occurs.
Reading Room of the Library of Congress
Thomas Jefferson’s Library:
You may be thinking that the idea of a library as an “estate” or even part of an estate, is a stretch but consider Thomas Jefferson’s library. Throughout his life Jefferson collected and treasured books. He collected the largest personal collection of books in the United States. Then during the War of 1812, Washington, DC was burned by the British.
That certainly qualified as a disaster, and part of the disaster was the burning of the Library of Congress. Jefferson sold his entire library of 6,487 books to the government to found the new Library of Congress. That was an estate the entire country was able to benefit from. Today the Library of Congress contains over 164 million books, none of which will be accessible to you once the lights go out. ☹
However, your own personal library will be accessible, so it makes sense to stock it for when you need it. Properly stocked, it will also be an important part of your preps or your estate.
Why we are discussing books:
Now about this point you may be wondering why is Uncle Paranoid blathering about an estate made up of books? Why is he going to used book stores, or blowing money on leather-bound books? What has this got to do with prepping once you get out of the “How To” section?
Well, the post-apocalyptic world is likely to be boring, or at least boring in between gun fights, starving hordes, and other day to day problems. You’re going to miss modern entertainment. What did people do for centuries prior to the invention of all the electronic gizmos we use for modern entertainment? They read books! 😊
You’ll occasionally find in various prepper fiction, or even on forums, people recognizing the need for some entertainment. For some reason that always turns into a need for board games. How many times do you want to play Monopoly or Clue?
After playing a board game every evening for a year or so, a good book will be very appealing. How about Winston Churchill’s “History of the English Speaking People” or Jules Verne’s works? Either will take more than an evening to get through! 😊 Maybe the Complete Works of Shakespeare will finally look interesting.
Around here, libraries are always moving out some books to make room for the new; and they do it dead cheap. Those books often run to light reading, but there’s not a thing wrong with having some of that.
I buy a lot of my prepping specific books on Amazon, used.
Mostly the ones I get are a few cents plus shipping so they run about $4 each.
Library used sales are good, but most of what my local library gets rid of are old textbooks that were donated and bodice ripper romances.
Excellent ideas. Thank you both.
Having a collection textbooks will help educate children/young people in the future. I just landed about 8 college textbooks on chemistry/biology/physics and the like for free.
Very good suggestion.
Will and Ariel Durant’ s. History of Civilazition multiple set.
That should be History of Civilization. My apologies for the spelling error.
I enjoy history so that one makes sense to me.
As I often do, I go crazy sometimes and “just throw money at a situtuation” when building my prepper library.
One thing I did was to buy the “Whole Shebang”, pretty much everything they have, all at once at a big discount. LOTS of really good stuff there, but not a “cheap” option.
I’m also a fan of books like the old Foxfire series (which you can often get very, very cheap used).
I also buy a lot of books from thrift stores.
Do you mean like Goodwill or Salvation Army? They tend to receive a lot of leftover belongings from estates. I recently ran into a family trying to clear out a recently deceased woman’s house so they could sell the house. She had been a voracious reader and there were over 3,000 volumes in the house. I suspect many of them ultimately wound up in a thrift store or used book store.