The Disaster Diaries By John Steele

I have two tents to my name out here in the Victorian scrub; one to sleep in and one for my stuff. I don’t have much, being pretty much into minimalism by necessity. Thus, while I like to read at the end of the day, as the light fades, I don’t keep my books, but pass them on to my “apprentice.” At the moment I am working through a pile of survival/disaster books which I got from a second-hand bookshop, so I will give a series of reports in the posts to follow, and then out hey go, to a good home.

First up, in no particular order, is Sam Sheridan, The Disaster Diaries, (Penguin, 2014). This is a chronicle of one man’s attempt to prepare for some unnamed apocalypse. Sheridan travels America learning from the masters of survival all of the skills, such as use of guns and knives, survival medicine, wilderness survival, acquiring food from hunting and much more. It is the whole survivalist program. And, opening each chapter is a non-fiction story of the author and his wife and kid, facing various apocalyptic situations, some unrealistic, like zombies and alien invasion, but some deadly realistic, such as facing a gang who intend to eat him and his family, and he has only a machete, probably a smaller one, and a kitchen knife for defence.

Overall, an interesting read, but the ending kills it all. Having spent all of their time learning the skills to survive whatever comes his way, he says that the evidence points towards people not reverting to the law of the jungle in disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. But on this he is wrong, since there are plenty of reports of rapes, looting and violence even if the initial reports from the Superdome were exaggerated. And, if anything, the events of the US in 2020, with the rampages of antifa show what human nature is capable. Thus, a good book, with a flawed conclusion. On the remainder pile it goes.

I have two tents to my name out here in the Victorian scrub; one to sleep in and one for my stuff. I don’t have much, being pretty much into minimalism by necessity. Thus, while I like to read at the end of the day, as the light fades, I don’t keep my books, but pass them on to my “apprentice.” At the moment I am working through a pile of survival/disaster books which I got from a second-hand bookshop, so I will give a series of reports in the posts to follow, and then out hey go, to a good home.

First up, in no particular order, is Sam Sheridan, The Disaster Diaries, (Penguin, 2014). This is a chronicle of one man’s attempt to prepare for some unnamed apocalypse. Sheridan travels America learning from the masters of survival all of the skills, such as use of guns and knives, survival medicine, wilderness survival, acquiring food from hunting and much more. It is the whole survivalist program. And, opening each chapter is a non-fiction story of the author and his wife and kid, facing various apocalyptic situations, some unrealistic, like zombies and alien invasion, but some deadly realistic, such as facing a gang who intend to eat him and his family, and he has only a machete, probably a smaller one, and a kitchen knife for defence.

Overall, an interesting read, but the ending kills it all. Having spent all of their time learning the skills to survive whatever comes his way, he says that the evidence points towards people not reverting to the law of the jungle in disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. But on this he is wrong, since there are plenty of reports of rapes, looting and violence even if the initial reports from the Superdome were exaggerated. And, if anything, the events of the US in 2020, with the rampages of antifa show what human nature is capable. Thus, a good book, with a flawed conclusion. On the remainder pile it goes.