Thanks to the suggestion of someone on this forum I just read Jean Hegland's novel, Into the Forest. Stories like this really help to keep me focused on what's important. It's about two teenaged sisters living alone in a house in a northern California forest after the collapse of society. (Note to self: get a strainer to strain bugs out of flour.) There was some useful information, but for me the book's greatest value was in helping me "get in the mood" for what may come. It was very well written and enjoyable (and there were even a few sex scenes!)

-- Pearlie Sweetcake (storestuff@home.now), December 03, 1999

Answers

May I suggest that you also read Ragnar Benson "Live off the land in the city and country" and "Survival Poaching". Both are excellent. www.paladin-press.com

One of the best fictional accounts of survival is "Lucifer's Hammer" by Niven and Pournelle. An oldie but a goodie. Probably 50c at the flea market.

Please see also thread on 22 ammo, and my thoughts on CCI 22 CB Long and .177 spring-piston pellet rifles.

-- Vlad (Strelok60@yahoo.com), December 03, 1999.

Ah Perlie, In reading Jean's book you got a virtual tour of our community, from Palmer creek to the town square and the Tip-Top Cafe. Jean lives down the road a couple miles, over the bridge and up the dirt road a piece. It's a great place to live. My neighbor/landlord's wife couldn't quite buy into the idea of "preps" until she read this book. Now she's committed too. Good book.

DCK, West of Healdsburg on a Hill...

-- Don Kulha (dkulha@vom.com), December 03, 1999.

I just finished "Millennium Rising" -- Jane Jensen. It has a different twist about TEOTWAWKI, it incorporates all the known prophecies about the end of mankind. The book is fiction.

-- Carol (glear@usa.net), December 03, 1999.

Vlad, I read Lucifer's Hammer about 20 years ago, and it changed my life. I realized how fragile our system is, and became somewhat of a survivalist for a few years. I read it again recently.

-- Pearlie Sweetcake (storestuff@home.now), December 03, 1999.

Check out this book site before you buy a book online. It is the cheapest place I have found for books. The site usually has older books and may not have the newer ones. http://www.bookcloseouts.com/bc/main.asp

-- Carol (glear@usa.net), December 03, 1999.

Lucifers Hammer is good, BUT

The best survival book of all time, so far, goes to

"ALAS BABYLON" by Pat Frank. written in 1959 and still in print.

Senario; Major nuclear war Time; Xmas season 1960

Place; little (5000) town on river in central Florida between Orlando and Cape Canaveral

There is so much good stuff in this book.

One of my favorites is a conversation between the town doctor and the books main character, NOTE, the war is 15 hours old, "I have had a day like no man could imagine. Two fellows have drunk themselves insensible since morning. Seven cardiacs are dead and a couple of more will go before morning. Three miscarriages and one of the women died. Three suicides-one of them the town banker. Eight babies born, three of them preemies. The county hospital is a mess, cots end to end on every corridor. A good many accident cases, a few gun shot wounds. And all this with only three casualties caused directly by the war--three refugees from Tallahassee who drove through some fallout."

One older lady dies because she is a diabetic and her insulin spoils without refrigeration. Her husband and daughter dug her grave in front of the house,"Her herse was an wheelbarrow and her coffin was an electric blanket".

-- woody (woody11420@aol.com), December 04, 1999.

John Carpenter's No Blade of Grass, written in 1958. The military encircles London, forcing a band of people to sneak out, with a destination a family member's hidden valley farm in northern England. Good literature, the classic bug out book, as they encounter looted houses and armed bands, all within just a few days of an infrastructure collapse.

-- ChickenOne (MaxiePearl@foxtrot.ne), December 04, 1999.

"Malevil" by Robert Merle. Survivors of a French nuclear blast try to rebuild in the French countryide.

"The Fifth Sacred Thing" by Starhawk. Visionary magical realism novel. Depicts a future that holds both horrors of a toxic, militaristic society, and a society that has rebuilt itself using sustainable, humane and ecologically sound basis.

-- Firemouse (firemouse@fcmail.com), December 04, 1999.