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Harve Rackham
PULLING THROUGH
Mass market paperback
Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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107 people want to read
About the author
Dean Ing
75 books34 followersDean Charles Ing was an American author, who usually wrote in the science fiction and techno-thriller genres.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Fresno State University (1956), a master’s degree from San Jose State University (1970), and a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon (1974). It was his work in communication theory at the University of Oregon that prompted him to turn to writing in the 1970s.
Dean Ing was a veteran of the United States Air Force, an aerospace engineer, and a university professor who holds a doctorate in communications theory. He became professional writer in 1977. Ing and his wife lived in Oregon.
Much of Ing's fiction includes detailed, practical descriptions of techniques and methods which would be useful in an individual or group survival situation, including instructions for the manufacture of tools and other implements, the recovery of stuck vehicles and avoidance of disease and injury.
In addition to his fiction writing, Ing wrote nonfiction articles for the survivalist newsletter P.S. Letter, edited by Mel Tappan. Following in the footsteps of sci-fi novelist Pat Frank, Ing included a lengthy nonfiction appendix to his nuclear war survival novel Pulling Through.
In Ing’s fiction, his characters are involved with scientific or engineering solutions and entrepreneurial innovation, elements drawn from his own experience. A lifelong tinkerer, designer, and builder, he was an Air Force crew chief and a senior engineer for United Technologies and Lockheed. His characters know how things work, and they use ingenuity and engineering to solve situational challenges. Ing's work reflects the Oregon traditions of self-reliant independence and suspicion of authority.
“Since I deplore the voracious appetite of the public for entertainment-for-entertainment’s sake,” he told an interviewer in 1982, “most of my work has a clear didactic element. . . . I believe that Jefferson’s ideal of the independent yeoman farmer should be familiar to every generation because I mistrust a technological society in which most members are thoroughly incompetent to maintain the hardware or the software.”
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Fresno State University (1956), a master’s degree from San Jose State University (1970), and a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon (1974). It was his work in communication theory at the University of Oregon that prompted him to turn to writing in the 1970s.
Dean Ing was a veteran of the United States Air Force, an aerospace engineer, and a university professor who holds a doctorate in communications theory. He became professional writer in 1977. Ing and his wife lived in Oregon.
Much of Ing's fiction includes detailed, practical descriptions of techniques and methods which would be useful in an individual or group survival situation, including instructions for the manufacture of tools and other implements, the recovery of stuck vehicles and avoidance of disease and injury.
In addition to his fiction writing, Ing wrote nonfiction articles for the survivalist newsletter P.S. Letter, edited by Mel Tappan. Following in the footsteps of sci-fi novelist Pat Frank, Ing included a lengthy nonfiction appendix to his nuclear war survival novel Pulling Through.
In Ing’s fiction, his characters are involved with scientific or engineering solutions and entrepreneurial innovation, elements drawn from his own experience. A lifelong tinkerer, designer, and builder, he was an Air Force crew chief and a senior engineer for United Technologies and Lockheed. His characters know how things work, and they use ingenuity and engineering to solve situational challenges. Ing's work reflects the Oregon traditions of self-reliant independence and suspicion of authority.
“Since I deplore the voracious appetite of the public for entertainment-for-entertainment’s sake,” he told an interviewer in 1982, “most of my work has a clear didactic element. . . . I believe that Jefferson’s ideal of the independent yeoman farmer should be familiar to every generation because I mistrust a technological society in which most members are thoroughly incompetent to maintain the hardware or the software.”
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 5, 2014
Written at the height of The Cold War, Pulling Through is 142 pages of short survival story with 146 pages of How To Instruction Manuel. It is not only a classic for the time period, but a valuable resource that speaks to the era in which it was written. In the book, the major characters build a KFM Meter (think Home Made Fallout Meter) and in the instruction manuel section the author gives not only written instruction but blue prints for making one. He also details making a bicycle battery charger and other interesting things. This book would be of interest to any "Doomsday Prepper" or person just interested in having a backup during an ice storm or power outage. Very interesting stuff.
May 30, 2020
Not a good choice for a teenager experiencing the height of the Cold War. Did spark some hope of survivability.
January 14, 2026
Alex Wellerstein is a historian focusing on nuclear weapons and the government structures surrounding them. He mentioned this book in his newsletter Doomsday Machines (which is outstanding if you're interested in nuclear history) so I tracked it down on the Internet Archive and...yeah. Oh boy.
The foreword by Spider Robinson extols Dean Ing as a veritable combination of Howard Hughes and Doc Savage: engineer, race car driver, backpacker, polymath, and survivalist. There's more than a fair whiff of bullshit about it (do I really believe the guy built from commercial parts a car capable of 50+ miles to the gallon?), but it sets expectations appropriately. We're told Ing is a guy who writes entertaining science fiction mainly as a vehicle to promulgate valuable information to help people survive the inevitable nuclear war, and that this won't just be an entertaining novel, but also a lifesaving manual of important tricks for surviving doomsday. Unfortunately the most important survival tips seem to be "have a flying car so you can dodge traffic on your way home from the apocalypse" and "having a highly-skilled NASA engineer brother-in-law who can figure out how to solve all of your problems."
Wellerstein makes this point in his newsletter, but it's something any fan of the post-apocalyptic genre has probably noticed: for the story to be exciting, survival has to be in doubt and the heroes have to overcome problems, but this is at odds with the idea that the heroes are preppers. Main character Harve Rackham has dug a fallout shelter tunnel beneath his house because he knows World War III could come any day, but he hasn't bothered to install filtered pump to provide air, or a basic toilet, or any kind of water storage or even much in the way of food. His sister's family plan to use their bicycles to escape danger if roads are blocked, but they let their son's bike fall into disrepair to the point it's unusable when they need it. This creates more drama in the story, but also makes the characters less believable as serious people planning to "pull through."
Ing's politics are also a bit unpleasant to my eye. It's taken for granted in most post-apocalyptic survival stories that cities will be deathtraps and one's best bet is to have some kind of rural redoubt. Harve Rackham doesn't spare much energy caring about the people dying in the Bay Area who didn't have the good sense to buy a home in the country like he did. He also worries that the softness of modern living (including features such as not beating your kids) has made the younger generation soft, maybe too soft to survive. It's not as bad as it could be, but there's an element of moral scold about it that wearied me, especially since so much of the narrative depends on Rackham and his gang being lucky or otherwise having plot armor to survive.
The book is half novel and half a collection of how-to essays on nuclear survival. Some of those go in weird directions, like explaining how damming up sea water and letting it evaporate off repeatedly can be used as a source of salt, ignoring the fact that this would almost certainly be enormously contaminated by fallout and that in an all-out nuclear exchange there might be plenty of surplus salt available owing to everyone being dead. It's a bit of perverse fantasizing that probably qualifies as whistling past the graveyard.
Interesting to read as a historical piece, but its present obscurity is perfectly understandable.
The foreword by Spider Robinson extols Dean Ing as a veritable combination of Howard Hughes and Doc Savage: engineer, race car driver, backpacker, polymath, and survivalist. There's more than a fair whiff of bullshit about it (do I really believe the guy built from commercial parts a car capable of 50+ miles to the gallon?), but it sets expectations appropriately. We're told Ing is a guy who writes entertaining science fiction mainly as a vehicle to promulgate valuable information to help people survive the inevitable nuclear war, and that this won't just be an entertaining novel, but also a lifesaving manual of important tricks for surviving doomsday. Unfortunately the most important survival tips seem to be "have a flying car so you can dodge traffic on your way home from the apocalypse" and "having a highly-skilled NASA engineer brother-in-law who can figure out how to solve all of your problems."
Wellerstein makes this point in his newsletter, but it's something any fan of the post-apocalyptic genre has probably noticed: for the story to be exciting, survival has to be in doubt and the heroes have to overcome problems, but this is at odds with the idea that the heroes are preppers. Main character Harve Rackham has dug a fallout shelter tunnel beneath his house because he knows World War III could come any day, but he hasn't bothered to install filtered pump to provide air, or a basic toilet, or any kind of water storage or even much in the way of food. His sister's family plan to use their bicycles to escape danger if roads are blocked, but they let their son's bike fall into disrepair to the point it's unusable when they need it. This creates more drama in the story, but also makes the characters less believable as serious people planning to "pull through."
Ing's politics are also a bit unpleasant to my eye. It's taken for granted in most post-apocalyptic survival stories that cities will be deathtraps and one's best bet is to have some kind of rural redoubt. Harve Rackham doesn't spare much energy caring about the people dying in the Bay Area who didn't have the good sense to buy a home in the country like he did. He also worries that the softness of modern living (including features such as not beating your kids) has made the younger generation soft, maybe too soft to survive. It's not as bad as it could be, but there's an element of moral scold about it that wearied me, especially since so much of the narrative depends on Rackham and his gang being lucky or otherwise having plot armor to survive.
The book is half novel and half a collection of how-to essays on nuclear survival. Some of those go in weird directions, like explaining how damming up sea water and letting it evaporate off repeatedly can be used as a source of salt, ignoring the fact that this would almost certainly be enormously contaminated by fallout and that in an all-out nuclear exchange there might be plenty of surplus salt available owing to everyone being dead. It's a bit of perverse fantasizing that probably qualifies as whistling past the graveyard.
Interesting to read as a historical piece, but its present obscurity is perfectly understandable.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews