PeaShooter
Master
I spent the last couple of weeks reading through several "survival" type books and I thought that I would leave my impressions. The books are Patriots by Rawles, (along with his book howe to survive TEOTWAWKI) One Second After by Forstchen, and Surviving the Economic Collapse by Fernando "Ferfal" Aguirre. I am also reading a blovel called “The Day The Dollar Collapsed” By John Gault ( http://johngaltfla.com/blog3/2009/11/18/the-day-the-dollar-died/ Up to chapter 17 with several more planned)
Let me first start out by saying that I am not going to try to determine who can foretell the future the best, because no one can. Each of the books has their inherent strengths and weaknesses. I will try to
shed some light on those as I can. So that being said, lest kick things off with the old standby, Patriots.
Patriots is a novel based informational book. Overall the story was compelling but a little too feel good for my tastes. In the end, I was expecting someone to stand up with their rifle over their heads and shout “Wolverines”. It is about a group of college friends who start prepping while in college and continue into their adult lives. After an economic collapse, they migrate to their Idaho retreat where the rest of the story plays out.
There was a lot of useful information in the novel. Everything from barricading a home from attack, food and medical supplies and topics, weapons, etc. The author does tend to be rather opinionated about his ideas and those can tend to run contrary to those ideas discussed on these boards. Overall a pretty good book, but I would not read it to model my preps after, as I believe him to be either wrong or overly optimistic about several of his visions of the aftermath. We can go back and forth for ever on some of his ideas, but I will not go into them in this post, we will leave them for others.
One Second After is a grim novel about the aftermath of an EMP attack on the US. This book was, I believe, pretty realistic in the possible ramifications of such a catastrophe. It made me think of several thing that I had not previously considered. The loss of electricity and almost all motor vehicles (and associated transportation of food and supplies) would be devastating to a large portion of our population. It brings to light the fact that it is only with our technology that we can support and feed our current population. Any disruption to this complex organization would be devastating. There wasn't a lot of hard prepping information except for overall ideas like storing food, medicine, water supply, EMP proofing strategic electronics, weapons, etc.. The books story hinged on the protagonist being “good” and speaking up against what would probably happen in the real world, food confiscation, executions by police, and general breakdown of society. Read it and get your eyes opened to the fragility of our society.
Surviving the Economic Collapse is a self published informational book (no story here, only hard information) about Ferfal's personal experiences and education after his home country of Argentina's economy collapsed in 2001. This is a book about what works for him in his situation. While large portions of the information can be adopted immediately in our own situations. He is basing his opinion on actual real world experience as opposed to most peoples suppositions on what will occur when SHTF. I found this book to be the most applicable of the three. While both Patriots and One Second After both had a lot of information I found Surviving to have the most “rubber meets the road” information. Since it is self published, it is not as polished as most books, with many misspellings and repetitive entries, however, this “unpolishediness” is what makes it so believable and unsanitized by the politically correct publishers.
Lastly and probably the most ominous of all of the books is the blovel “The Day the Dollar Died” Not much on actual substance other than the continuing reminder to prepare. What makes this so ominous to me is the governments reaction (which I think would be closer to the actual government response than the other books). The rapid decline into a statist's wet dream is what is the most chilling. The government will attempt to keep power and control at all costs and the author is doing a good job of crafting his story to display that wild grasping of power.
Let me first start out by saying that I am not going to try to determine who can foretell the future the best, because no one can. Each of the books has their inherent strengths and weaknesses. I will try to
shed some light on those as I can. So that being said, lest kick things off with the old standby, Patriots.
Patriots is a novel based informational book. Overall the story was compelling but a little too feel good for my tastes. In the end, I was expecting someone to stand up with their rifle over their heads and shout “Wolverines”. It is about a group of college friends who start prepping while in college and continue into their adult lives. After an economic collapse, they migrate to their Idaho retreat where the rest of the story plays out.
There was a lot of useful information in the novel. Everything from barricading a home from attack, food and medical supplies and topics, weapons, etc. The author does tend to be rather opinionated about his ideas and those can tend to run contrary to those ideas discussed on these boards. Overall a pretty good book, but I would not read it to model my preps after, as I believe him to be either wrong or overly optimistic about several of his visions of the aftermath. We can go back and forth for ever on some of his ideas, but I will not go into them in this post, we will leave them for others.
One Second After is a grim novel about the aftermath of an EMP attack on the US. This book was, I believe, pretty realistic in the possible ramifications of such a catastrophe. It made me think of several thing that I had not previously considered. The loss of electricity and almost all motor vehicles (and associated transportation of food and supplies) would be devastating to a large portion of our population. It brings to light the fact that it is only with our technology that we can support and feed our current population. Any disruption to this complex organization would be devastating. There wasn't a lot of hard prepping information except for overall ideas like storing food, medicine, water supply, EMP proofing strategic electronics, weapons, etc.. The books story hinged on the protagonist being “good” and speaking up against what would probably happen in the real world, food confiscation, executions by police, and general breakdown of society. Read it and get your eyes opened to the fragility of our society.
Surviving the Economic Collapse is a self published informational book (no story here, only hard information) about Ferfal's personal experiences and education after his home country of Argentina's economy collapsed in 2001. This is a book about what works for him in his situation. While large portions of the information can be adopted immediately in our own situations. He is basing his opinion on actual real world experience as opposed to most peoples suppositions on what will occur when SHTF. I found this book to be the most applicable of the three. While both Patriots and One Second After both had a lot of information I found Surviving to have the most “rubber meets the road” information. Since it is self published, it is not as polished as most books, with many misspellings and repetitive entries, however, this “unpolishediness” is what makes it so believable and unsanitized by the politically correct publishers.
Lastly and probably the most ominous of all of the books is the blovel “The Day the Dollar Died” Not much on actual substance other than the continuing reminder to prepare. What makes this so ominous to me is the governments reaction (which I think would be closer to the actual government response than the other books). The rapid decline into a statist's wet dream is what is the most chilling. The government will attempt to keep power and control at all costs and the author is doing a good job of crafting his story to display that wild grasping of power.
