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The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Apocalypse
It’s the apocalypse—now what? Prepare for the end of civilization with the help of the world’s best-selling survival guide series and learn how to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.
The doomsday clock is seconds from midnight. Extinction-level dangers draw closer with every tick. But fear not! Here is an indispensable guide to preparing for and surviving the ultimate in worst-case scenarios, with humor to lighten the load. You can’t panic if you’re laughing.
Dozens of survival experts provide illustrated, step-by-step instructions
How to Pack a Go Bag in Thirty MinutesHow to Make Your Bunker Feel Like HomeHow to Survive an Alien InvasionHow to Defeat a Robot UprisingHow to Survive the Next PandemicHow to Fend Off a Hostile ClanHow to Eat Insects and RodentsHow to Rebuild a Utopian Society
You've gotten this far. Don't let zombies take you out.
The doomsday clock is seconds from midnight. Extinction-level dangers draw closer with every tick. But fear not! Here is an indispensable guide to preparing for and surviving the ultimate in worst-case scenarios, with humor to lighten the load. You can’t panic if you’re laughing.
Dozens of survival experts provide illustrated, step-by-step instructions
How to Pack a Go Bag in Thirty MinutesHow to Make Your Bunker Feel Like HomeHow to Survive an Alien InvasionHow to Defeat a Robot UprisingHow to Survive the Next PandemicHow to Fend Off a Hostile ClanHow to Eat Insects and RodentsHow to Rebuild a Utopian Society
You've gotten this far. Don't let zombies take you out.
262 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 31, 2023
32 people are currently reading
98 people want to read
About the author
Joshua Piven
89 books24 followersJosh Piven is a television writer and producer, speechwriter, playwright, and the author or co-author of more than twenty non-fiction and humor books, including the worldwide best-selling The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook series.
He wrote the teleplay and serves as producer of Don The Beekeeper, a half-hour children’s TV show about honeybees and urban beekeeping. His most recent stage play, a holiday farce called No Reservations, had its world premiere in November-December, 2013, to great success and critical acclaim. More information. His next play is Muddled.
Josh likes to refer to himself in the third person.
Piven is perhaps best known for his famously tongue-in-cheek worst-case books, books that offer readers real-world (though often hilarious) advice on surviving worst-case situations that they might—but hopefully won’t—encounter: everything from “how to fend off a shark” and “how to wrestle an alligator” to “how to avoid the Freshman 15” and “how to determine if your date is an axe murderer.”
Piven is an honors graduate of the University of Pennsylvania—and living proof that English majors aren't necessarily failures.
He wrote the teleplay and serves as producer of Don The Beekeeper, a half-hour children’s TV show about honeybees and urban beekeeping. His most recent stage play, a holiday farce called No Reservations, had its world premiere in November-December, 2013, to great success and critical acclaim. More information. His next play is Muddled.
Josh likes to refer to himself in the third person.
Piven is perhaps best known for his famously tongue-in-cheek worst-case books, books that offer readers real-world (though often hilarious) advice on surviving worst-case situations that they might—but hopefully won’t—encounter: everything from “how to fend off a shark” and “how to wrestle an alligator” to “how to avoid the Freshman 15” and “how to determine if your date is an axe murderer.”
Piven is an honors graduate of the University of Pennsylvania—and living proof that English majors aren't necessarily failures.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 2, 2024
Well there are helpful tid bits. But it is more tongue in cheek and fictional circumstances rather than helpful within the real possibilities. Also, we all lived through the Covid pandemic, thank you for letting us know that Wi-Fi and social distancing are important.
July 9, 2023
If you’re worried about flying a captured UFO, or dealing with stray dinosaurs or Neanderthals, then this is the book for you. It does include a few more mundane basic survival tips, but they often raised as many questions as they resolved.
For example, there was a picture of an underground bunker with a ladder down into it, and a dog depicted as lying on a mat within it. Er… how do you get a dog down the ladder? And then there was a suggestion that a dog can be a useful sentry… as long as it doesn’t give your position away by barking. Er… so how do you stop a dog barking when it hears something? Is there some kind of pre-training that the dog needs to go through?
Actually pre-training and pre-preparing is probably something worth thinking about for those worried about potential disasters, but there seemed to be relatively little about that in the book. Its all very well thinking about flying captured UFOs, but what about making sure that people can drive a manual and an automatic car. Its surprising how many people struggle when they encounter a different type of car. Should serious preppers be building up practical skills like that? Maybe they should also be playing flight simulator games too (?).
Some preppers swear by hunkering down in bunkers for a few months, but others laud the idea of going and sailing off shore for a few months in a blue water yacht designed for being off-grid (as long as Tsunamis are not a threat). But sail options weren’t discussed in the book, so the contents seemed a bit narrowly focused in places.
In other places the advice also seemed potentially contradictory. There were warnings about not lighting fires during the day, as it can give your position away. And then under communications there were instructions on how to use smoke signals…
Yes there were useful tips about how to get water, and food in the wild. And, apparently, if a group is about to start eating each other, its better to start by eating a stranger or an evil person (!).
By the end of the book the reader might be wondering whether this is a real book for survival, or a joke book for laughs (?). One of the warnings at the front disclaimed the completeness, safety and accuracy of the information contained in the book. So, perhaps that says it all? Personally, I’d rather have preferred the book to be either more humorous (with less survival information) or more focused on survival skills (and less trying to be funny).
(These comments are based on an ARC copy of the text, donated for the purpose of review).
For example, there was a picture of an underground bunker with a ladder down into it, and a dog depicted as lying on a mat within it. Er… how do you get a dog down the ladder? And then there was a suggestion that a dog can be a useful sentry… as long as it doesn’t give your position away by barking. Er… so how do you stop a dog barking when it hears something? Is there some kind of pre-training that the dog needs to go through?
Actually pre-training and pre-preparing is probably something worth thinking about for those worried about potential disasters, but there seemed to be relatively little about that in the book. Its all very well thinking about flying captured UFOs, but what about making sure that people can drive a manual and an automatic car. Its surprising how many people struggle when they encounter a different type of car. Should serious preppers be building up practical skills like that? Maybe they should also be playing flight simulator games too (?).
Some preppers swear by hunkering down in bunkers for a few months, but others laud the idea of going and sailing off shore for a few months in a blue water yacht designed for being off-grid (as long as Tsunamis are not a threat). But sail options weren’t discussed in the book, so the contents seemed a bit narrowly focused in places.
In other places the advice also seemed potentially contradictory. There were warnings about not lighting fires during the day, as it can give your position away. And then under communications there were instructions on how to use smoke signals…
Yes there were useful tips about how to get water, and food in the wild. And, apparently, if a group is about to start eating each other, its better to start by eating a stranger or an evil person (!).
By the end of the book the reader might be wondering whether this is a real book for survival, or a joke book for laughs (?). One of the warnings at the front disclaimed the completeness, safety and accuracy of the information contained in the book. So, perhaps that says it all? Personally, I’d rather have preferred the book to be either more humorous (with less survival information) or more focused on survival skills (and less trying to be funny).
(These comments are based on an ARC copy of the text, donated for the purpose of review).
November 12, 2023
There were so many of these books back in the day, and rather fun they were too – so it was a touch of a surprise to see this was credited as a new book and not a post-coronasniffles rewrite. But this is back on form, and a book perfectly able to steer us through any further nastiness towards the utopia we've so far always failed to construct.
Yes, here is advice on shopping for your six month stay in an underground bunker without alerting the neighbours (and décor tips for it, too). Here is what to grab and go with, how to make that go into another country, how to joyride in a UFO if needed, and so much more. Because let's face it, whether it's a tsunami, a nuclear strike or zombie onrush, one of these days you will need to know how to whittle something to hunt with.
OK, some of it is plain daft – a guess at the colour of the arming switch in an alien spacecraft to blast them back from whence they came. OK, some of it is USA-only (by admission, f'instance the eating grubs bit, and guidance to uranium in your new cave abode). Some of it can be just a basic extrapolation from what we really ought to be doing anyway – hygiene, always getting savvy about exit routes from large buildings, learning what tear gas does to you when Paris police decide they don't want to let you in to watch the footie… And some of it is so outre yet obviously so viable you just have to laugh – how to don a bear's carcass for warmth, and who to eat first springs to mind there.
So yes, echt survivalist guide material to hopefully farcical scenarios – well, as I say, we'd all think that about more of these books if we were in 2019, that it was farcical. But we're not, and it isn't, and we know how things can go down. This is handy for an entertaining browse and for when we don't know how deep the things going down are going to get, but want to be savvy just in case. A health-maintaining as well as healthy four stars.
Yes, here is advice on shopping for your six month stay in an underground bunker without alerting the neighbours (and décor tips for it, too). Here is what to grab and go with, how to make that go into another country, how to joyride in a UFO if needed, and so much more. Because let's face it, whether it's a tsunami, a nuclear strike or zombie onrush, one of these days you will need to know how to whittle something to hunt with.
OK, some of it is plain daft – a guess at the colour of the arming switch in an alien spacecraft to blast them back from whence they came. OK, some of it is USA-only (by admission, f'instance the eating grubs bit, and guidance to uranium in your new cave abode). Some of it can be just a basic extrapolation from what we really ought to be doing anyway – hygiene, always getting savvy about exit routes from large buildings, learning what tear gas does to you when Paris police decide they don't want to let you in to watch the footie… And some of it is so outre yet obviously so viable you just have to laugh – how to don a bear's carcass for warmth, and who to eat first springs to mind there.
So yes, echt survivalist guide material to hopefully farcical scenarios – well, as I say, we'd all think that about more of these books if we were in 2019, that it was farcical. But we're not, and it isn't, and we know how things can go down. This is handy for an entertaining browse and for when we don't know how deep the things going down are going to get, but want to be savvy just in case. A health-maintaining as well as healthy four stars.
June 2, 2024
Ehhhh don't bother.
Seemed interesting enough from the synopsis, but it was too unrealistic. Yes, I understand we are talking about Apocalypse that may never happen... but if it does, I just highly doubt I'm going to have oil lamps to trade cavemen or have to fight a tiger or be able to carry blankets with me to my igloo🤷♀️
Seemed interesting enough from the synopsis, but it was too unrealistic. Yes, I understand we are talking about Apocalypse that may never happen... but if it does, I just highly doubt I'm going to have oil lamps to trade cavemen or have to fight a tiger or be able to carry blankets with me to my igloo🤷♀️
January 11, 2026
A few things were interesting, written by experts, but most of this is tongue and cheek. It's so silly but written in bullet points like a survival guide. It's a good gag gift more than good reading material.
September 5, 2023
Mix of tongue in cheek and real life survival tips. This series is always a great learning opportunity with fun thrown in.
April 30, 2024
Some entertaining parts.
November 19, 2025
you need this is anything bad happens, seems stupid and with situations out of a supernatural book but it can apply to real world situations.
December 10, 2025
Equal parts humorous and helpful.
April 15, 2024
1.5 stars. Or one.
July 18, 2023
Very disappointed with this one. I have been a fan of these books since I was a kid and still have the worst case school survival book from it's first publishing.
This one just felt very American-centric, very middle-class and almost rehashed from other books.
Although the illustrations were as good and as cheeky as ever I do think that they could have covered more options than just the US, after all the pandemic happened everywhere, and maybe offered options for different budgets.
This one just felt very American-centric, very middle-class and almost rehashed from other books.
Although the illustrations were as good and as cheeky as ever I do think that they could have covered more options than just the US, after all the pandemic happened everywhere, and maybe offered options for different budgets.
June 22, 2024
Joke book, with a few practical tips… this should’ve been read on the toilet.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews