The Good: Well laid out, easy to read with clear pictures and illustrations. Love the touch of humor that makes the serious subjects easier to read.

The Bad: This book opens the door to thinking worst case scenario, which can get a bit dark.

The Ugly: Planning out escape routes and pantry inventory at 2:30 in the morning because I can no longer sleep until it’s all set.

Here at Trek Tech, we like to think survival in the wild is within our reach. But what happens when it becomes necessary to survive in the urban wasteland of your post-disaster neighborhood? Reading through this well-written survival manual is a good start.  Starting with basic subjects like bug-out-bags and emergency food stores quickly progresses into Essential Gear, Skills, and Survival. The book details how to survive a disaster, and then how to get established during the aftermath. The 338 subjects have great illustrations, and highlight plenty of things that I had never considered before like always keeping Paracord, Vodka, and Sardines around for plenty of reasons. In addition to setting up a top shelf cache there are resources for planting a garden full of nutrition, setting up water filtration, and a primer on defending the homestead from whatever threat may be roaming the lawless streets.

While it is hard to focus on the worst-case scenarios in life without getting way too paranoid, it was good to read through plenty of scenarios and think hard about what I would do to keep my wife, kids and family this side of the daisies. Overall, I made substantial changes in lifestyle and altered emergency preparation plans completely as a result of this book.  Take a good look at this manual and we can discuss it over a home brewed beer on the other side of the next worldwide collapse.

The Author, Tim MacWelch is a survival expert and instructor who is a senior contributor to Outdoor Life who honed his skills from an early age in Virginia. The book is available on Amazon here: www.amazon.com