The Disaster Diaries: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse

by Sam Sheridan

Sam Sheridan has traveled the world as an amateur boxer and mixed martial arts fighter; he has worked as an EMT, a wilderness firefighter, a sailor, a cowboy at the largest ranch in Montana, and in construction under brutal conditions at the South Pole. If he isn’t ready for the Apocalypse and the fractured world that will likely ensue, we are all in a lot of trouble.

Despite an arsenal of skills that puts many to shame, when Sam became a father he was beset with nightmares about being unable to protect his son. With disaster images from movies, books, and the nightly news filling his head, he was slowly being driven to distraction. If a rogue wave hit his beach community, would he be able to get out? If the power grid went down and he was forced outside the city limits, could he survive in the wilderness? And let’s not even talk about plagues, zombie hoards, and attacking aliens. Unable to quiet his mind, Sam decides to face his fears head-on and gain as many skills as possible.

The problem is each doomsday situation requires something unique. Trying to navigate the clogged highway out of town? Head to the best stunt driving school in the country. Need to protect your family, but out of ammunition? Learn how to handle a knife. Is your kid hurt or showing signs of mental strain? Better brush upon emergency medicine and the psychological effects of trauma. From training with an Olympic weight lifter to a down and dirty apprenticeship in stealing cars with an ex-gang member, from a gun course in the hundred-degree heat of Alabama to agonizing lessons in arctic wilderness survival, Sam leaves no stone unturned. Will it be enough if a meteor rocks the earth? Who’s to say? But as Sam points out, it would be a damn shame to survive the initial impact only to die a few days later because you don’t know how to build a fire.

A rollicking narrative with each chapter framed by a hypothetical catastrophic scenario, The Disaster Diaries is irresistible armchair adventure reading for everyone curious about what it might take to survive a cataclysmic event and those who just want to watch someone else struggling to find out.

Genres: Nonfiction, Survival, Post Apocalyptic, Dystopia, Audiobook, Memoir, Adult

Audiobook

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

After high school Sam went into the Merchant Marines, then quit and spent some time traveling Europe. He went to Harvard, also working a summer on the largest cattle ranch in Montana. Immediately after graduating, Sam took a job on a private sailing yacht for 18 months all the way to Australia. From there Sam went to Thailand, where he lived in a Muay Thai camp and fought, featuring on National Geographic’s “A Fighting Chance.”

Later Sam got a job doing construction in Antarctica, where he met a smokejumper who got him into Wildland Firefighting.
He continues to do yacht deliveries and has been writing books for the last few years. His first book, “A Fighter’s Heart,” took him on a lengthy odyssey to Brazil and Japan. Sam's second book, “The Fighter’s Mind,” is an investigation into the mental game of fighting, with essays and interviews with the best fighters and trainers in the world.

Reviews

[Peter Derk · Rating 3 out of 5]

In preparation for the apocalypse, Sam Sheridan decides to learn skills necessary to survive TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It). Shooting, hunting, wilderness stuff, arctic wilderness stuff.

The most important chapter, to me, was the last. Basically, it explained a lot about what happens when disasters go down in current times. It's really fucked up. There's a great piece about what happened at the Superdome when Hurricane Katrina refugees were stuck there. Basically, the news of the time would have us believe that it was a gang-controlled, ongoing riot of rape and death. In reality, though conditions were far less than ideal, the level of violence and actual crime was very low. Reports to a doctor headed into the dome said he should be prepared for 200 bodies. The actual total was 6, 4 from natural causes, one from a drug overdose, and one soul who pitched himself over a railing and committed suicide. In all fairness, there were 4 more bodies outside the Superdome as well, one of whom DID appear to be murdered. Doing the math, the actual number of dead was 4% of the number being reported.

What's total bullshit about all this? Let's see.

Here is a nonsense, irresponsible piece of crap journalism by someone who normally covers Real Housewives of Fuckall: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles...

Here is a story by a legit journalist. This story is CITED in the first article, and is obviously ignored: http://seattletimes.com/html/nationwo...

Okay, so what's the point of all this?

As Sam says in the book, the biggest danger in a disaster is probably going to be survival nuts. Not survivalists, rational people who are prepared, but survival nuts, people who hear a news reports about an outbreak of flu and decide it's time to strap on a pistol and hit the streets.

And what's irresponsible and reprehensible about all of this is that news folks think it's okay to report these wild numbers and completely false statements. I'm not saying people should be "protected" from the truth by any stretch. I'm just saying that their priority isn't to explain what's happening, it's to glue you to THEIR station so you can watch THEIR ads. That's it. End of story.

So here's what I ask, humble reader. If there's a bad situation, a super tornado or sharknado or outbreak of zombie or whatever, let's take it easy for a couple days. Look around, assess the situation for yourself. Turn off the TV. I'm serious. It's not going to help you in any significant way.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Are you prepared for the end of the world as we know it? Probably not. Although Sam Sheridan's book is not written to convince his readers that the end is imminent, it does make clear that in the aftermath of a cataclysmic event, most of us would be stuck without the knowledge and tools to survive. Driven by a commendable desire to protect and provide for his family in a disaster, Sheridan sought out and trained under a variety of experts to acquire those skills he deems most useful in a post-apocalyptic scenario. The Disaster Diaries chronicles his highly interesting personal quest to learn skills ranging from wilderness survival to weapons training to stealing cars. Despite the book's premise, Sheridan avoids coming across as overly paranoid, successfully balancing seriousness with humor. He doesn't expect his readers to necessarily go to the same lengths he did, but does want to persuade them to take some practical steps to increase their disaster preparedness - and I think he makes a good case.

[Loren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Journey into the mind of a megalomaniac, a narcissist, a "tough guy", an elitist and a sexist. Or don't. There's plenty of survivalist books out there that don't force feed you this much crap from an obvious no hack.

[Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh how I love me some 613.69. This book is specifically about surviving apocalyptic situations, as the "diary" entries at the beginning of each chapter illustrate. First a giant earthquake dropped a car on my family! Then we get home to no power & the moans of the undead fill the air! Then we try to escape in our car & a giant alien craft comes after us! Truly, this has been the worst month ever. Sadly, as Sheridan's attempt to cover what skills might be needed should the world end, this book has effectively nullified any chance I thought I might have of surviving the apocalypse. I can't lift heavy items correctly, I don't have any stockpiles of food or water, I haven't fired a gun since I was on rifle team in high school, and as much as I'd like to believe that I'm in sort of kind of okay shape, let's not kid ourselves that I could actually outrun anything that was trying to eat me. I also can't afford to get my vision surgically corrected before the inevitable downfall of society as one of Sheridan's more paranoid sources suggests, so clearly there's no hope left for me.

- As an aside, there's no character in the history of popular fiction that I empathize with more than Piggy from Lord of the Flies - oh my god, the utter horror of losing or breaking your glasses! Better to just leave me by the side of the road & don't look back, drop a giant rock on my head & keep on going.

There's a lot to like about this book once you get past thinking that you're obviously toast. There's some fine writing about society's tendency to "other" people they find scary & a spot-on passage that illustrates why arming everyone in the country with a pistol in the pursuit of "safety" is ludicrous: "For complex motor skills, like shooting, the optimal hear rate has been found to be between 115 & 145 beats per minute . . . but I could feel my heart rate climbing just from the stress of yelling at a cardboard target & having Tiger's unremitting gaze on my every move. How much greater would the stress be with an actual armed opponent who might be shooting back? It was unimaginable. It became very, very clear to me, very quickly, that unless you train for this stuff all the time, there is absolutely no way you are going to be able to do it during the car accident of a real fight. Even here, just in training, I got flustered, made mistakes, and started rushing, which only made things worse." To top it all off, there’s a whole horrifying, magical chapter about re-setting broken bones & bacteria & infections & just thinking about it makes me need to go wash my hands.

[Jenny (Reading Envy)]

I love a good post-apocalyptic/dystopian hypothetical situation, but something about how this reads just made it fall flat for me. His imaginings of what could happen, in italics, are far more interesting than his accounts of training or learning related things. I had to put it aside for other things.

[Ohyassi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Utterly useless, it seems like he wrote it just to have an excuse to race stunt cars and hunt elk.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In "The Disaster Diaries", author Sam Sheridan uses a series of fictional disasters as the connecting thread to weave together his exploration of the skills that might be needed to survive a world in chaos. Sheridan writes in a style reminiscent of Curt Gentry's book The Last Days of the Late, Great State of California. Where Gentry used a catastrophic earthquake to look at California's politics, economy and history, Sheridan uses an earthquake as a jumping off point for a ongoing series of disasters and to find out what skills might be needed to live in a post-apocalyptic world.

We begin with The Big One, a quake that devastates Southern California -- something that may happen in our lifetimes. What should a family do? Make sure their house is earthquake safe, have food and water for 30 days and have a "go bag" filled with essentials. OK so far. But what do you do when the zombies show up???? This is where the book becomes fun.

We are faced with a series of survival situations that just keep getting worse. Earthquake, followed by zombies (how is it you can kill the undead by shooting them?), followed by marauding gangs, an alien invasion, cannibals and then a new ice age. Sheridan uses his doomsday story as an opportunity to build survival skills. He starts with fitness & strength training (he almost had me on the phone to join a local health club) and then looks at learning how to shoot, wilderness medicine, cars (stealing them & driving them aggressively), learning how to live of the land, desert survival, knife fighting, hunting, and arctic survival. He also looks at dealing with mental strain. As he notes, "If you see a family member turn into a zombie, or a town melted by aliens, you're going to be traumatized".

Since I already know how to fight off zombies (I have 21 & 23 year old boys!), the sections of the book that I enjoyed the most involved Sheridan exploring how people perform (and fail to perform) under stressful conditions. What is the solution for getting things right when under pressure? Training, training & more training. Sheridan also understands that doing things accurately is more important than doing them quickly, hence his mantra, "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast". And this is true in all things, not just alien invasion. Sheridan notes that in emergency situations many people are unable to even dial 911 (I've experienced this myself). I also enjoyed his discussion of the need to develop situational awareness. More than a skill to help deal with disasters, this is a something that can prevent them in the first place.

It would be easy for a book like this to go off the deep end and turn paranoid, but Sheridan's humanity is his strength. The people he talks with, people who know their way around a gun or knife, all believe in being prepared for the worst but stress that the best way to win a fight is to avoid it. Sheridan understands that being afraid, that hiding in a bunker or living in fear the unwashed will come steal your food, is not "living" and is not necessary. Sheridan believes in people and that we are at our best when we work together -- cannibals excluded.

"The Disaster Diaries" is fascinating, both light-hearted and deadly serious. Sheridan shows a sharp eye for detail, nuance and character as he interviews people and completes a number of training courses. He writes the non-fiction portion of his book as well as he writes the fun, interconnecting disaster story.

To paraphrase drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs, this book has zombie-foo, alien-foo, desert-foo and artic-foo. I give it two thumbs up.

[Krista Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great in so many ways. Sheridan considers all of the different possibilities the world as we know it could end (nuclear war, aliens, asteroids, zombies, pandemic, etc.) and then determines what skills would be necessary to survive. Then he goes and trains with the best people in those fields and this is the result of that research. He also weaves in some short fictional pieces of he, his wife and their son trying to survive in each scenario. The writing is superb ("There is a tendency to ascribe mystical wisdom to Indians...and I had to be on guard against this Noble Savage problem. It's just a gnat's ass from racism, and more than that, it's factually wrong. Before the white man came, the Inuit...starved to death all the time; they had warfare and rape and all the foibles of human nature (although, to be fair, nobody does warfare and devastation like the white man.)")

I know my good friends will laugh at me, but do you remember last week when the large meteor smashed into Russia and no one saw it coming? We balance so delicately on the thin tip of a society's knife; once society falls, survival is not guaranteed (maybe I've been teaching "Lord of the Flies" one too many times.) Great advice on all sorts of topics. If you've always wondered if you could survive and then how you might do it - this is good start. Of course the bad news is that most of us cannot afford to leave our jobs and pay for all the training Sheridan does, but at least I did watch the YouTube video to see how to position an unconcious person so they don't choke on drool, vomit, blood, etc. and I know what to do with a knife if confronted with someone else has a knife - RUN!. So at least I'm on my way.

[AdultNonFiction Teton County Library · Rating 2 out of 5]

TCL Call#: 613.69 Sheridan S

Madeleine - 2 stars
I so wanted to like this book as it deals with one of my favorite topics – post apocalyptic society. When it’s written by a self-admitted paranoid fusser then what’s not to love?
I’ll tell you what’s not to love: no real full explanations. I’ve seen this book described as the post-apocalyptic manual but a manual tells you how to do something and shows you the steps. I felt like Sheridan was angling for his own Discovery Channel show where he’d then show you what he talks about in the book. No thanks. If you’re going to talk about boosting a car you show me in pictures. Wilderness EMT? Show me in pictures.
This book is for someone who wants to hear stories about someone else’s experiences and come away none the wiser.

[Winnie Thornton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was truly one of a kind. Sam Sheridan (already a trained boxer and fighter) puts himself through eskrima, survival training, firearms courses, stunt driving, elk hunting, dogsledding, igloo-building, and more in order to prep for just about any kind of disaster. He's best when he simply recounts the training and the talented (sometimes near-whacko) dudes who coached him. He's weakest when using zombies and aliens as a narrative device--and when he props up his survivalist argument with self-crumbling evolutionist stilts. If you want to know what it feels like to make fire, tan deer skin, combat heat exhaustion, hike at 9,000 feet, make a double-lung shot through an elk at 300 yards, and bring a knife to a gunfight, this is the book for you.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book could have used better editing. His son's age went from 2 to 4 to 3, even though his apocalypse scenarios were supposed to be happening in chronological order. Besides that, he sometimes went off on tangents and had trouble focusing on what I felt was supposed to be the overarching theme of the book: surviving an apocalypse!
However, there were some interesting things I learned and, in general, I had a good time reading it. At least I have a little idea of some of the skills I would need should an apocalyptic scenario arise. Time to get off my butt and go prepare!

Read for the 2016 reading challenge prompt, "a book from the library".

[Melody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and well-written. I felt like the vignettes wanted to be a fictional deal off on their own, though. They were intrusive for me.

Sheridan is a tough guy before the book starts. He's even tougher by the end.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sam Sheridan's The Disaster Diaries is a fun dash through dire straights of all sorts with a "What Would YOU Do?" spin (or maybe a "What COULD You Do?" spin is more like it). For most of us, what we could do is not much. Why? Because we're pampered, spoiled, complacent, and dependent babies. Meaning: The first minute all hell (and there are many varieties, apparently) breaks loose, we'll be toast along with the majority of our wimpy compatriots.

The book is episodic in nature. In each chapter, Sheridan tackles a different "life skill," and although women might enjoy this, it comes across like a reality show from the Oxygen channel for men. In each case, Sheridan gets some "on the scene" training in the skill and screws up (at least initially) just like we would. The highlight for me is listening to the wisdom of the crusty, borderline eccentric "masters" that he serves apprenticeships under in his various pilgrimages -- some more eccentric than others, granted, and others pretty old-school solid like Don Yaegar, son of Chuck.

Some examples of skills Sam samples: We learn about strength from a weightlifter because you never know when you need to lift that Toyota off of your wife's leg, right? And a gun master shows Sheridan the art (and most of these skills are packaged in almost Zen-like terms) of firing a weapon. Pistols are good, but rifles are better. Most are fired in close quarters -- inside a room, yet. Cheerful thought. But just think of that wife (now on crutches from the Toyota) cowering behind you as an armed intruder comes at you in your castle!

We also meet a Yoda-like survivalist, who teaches Sheridan how to make fire out of whatever nature offers -- even in the rain. Back to the Toyota -- a car thief shows our hero how to start and steal a car without the key. Hey, you never know when you'll need emergency wheels, right? An EMT guy instructs on first-aid, CPR, and how tiny bacteria can rip you to shreds as quickly as a Grizzly bear if you don't treat your wound right. Then there's the dude who shows Sheridan how to drive cars in tight quarters at high speeds, the Obi-wan who counsels on knife warfare (his best advice if you're attacked by a knife-wielding opponent: run like hell), and the Nanook of the North-type whose sagacious wisdom includes tips on living in brutal cold and putting animal oil to good use (hint: best kill them first).

And so it goes. If there's one annoyance, it's the italicized beginnings and endings of each chapter, where Sheridan riffs on hypothetical Armageddon-like scenes where the skills might be necessary. Many of them are populated by zombies, giving the borderline serious scenarios a borderline silly bent. After a while, I just skimmed over these parts. Overall, though, if you're a guy, you'll enjoy learning how much you don't know about being a fire-making, gun-toting, wound-doctoring, car-thieving, knife-wielding, elk-shooting, igloo-building, high-speed-driving, wilderness-surviving poster boy for testosterone. All you need is a proving ground. Let the nuclear holocaust commence.....

[Mark Tullius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last year, I wrote a blog on how Disaster Diaries by Sam Sheridan was the first book I’d ever pre-ordered. I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a great deal from both of his fighting books and I have an almost unhealthy preoccupation with the shit hitting the fan on a very large scale. As a child who grew up afraid of nuclear war, and a parent who’s spent too much time paying attention to politics and studying so-called conspiracies, it’s hard to find balance between being paranoid and prepared. I was hoping this book might help me.

Just as with his other books, Sheridan grabs the reader on the very first page, letting us into his nightmares, his fears, the reasons for the book. He’s a great storyteller with a distinct voice that stays true throughout and it was immediately apparent this wasn’t going to be a boring instructional guide.

With openness and humor, Sheridan lets the reader experience everything alongside him. The attraction and horror he had with the knife, the pressure of performing under the critical eye of a master, the pride of pulling it off. Each chapter was unique, something for everyone, as he considered all the situations his family could face. Because of my limited reading time, I only get in one chapter a night, but the book is perfectly suited for people like me. An exciting two pages of the nightmare, Sheridan’s experience and new understanding of the subject, and tied up neatly with his family’s survival.

By the time I got to the last chapter, I wasn’t exactly sure I should have read the book, despite how much I enjoyed it because it seemed to be adding to my anxiety. As someone who has had no training in some of the areas Sam tackled, and just enough training in others to know how inadequately prepared I’d be, reading about what could happen really increased my to-do list and amplified my urge to get the hell out of Los Angeles. If something bad is going to happen, that’s not where I want to be.

The last chapter is what really made the book. Not only did I love the way Sheridan points out what really happens in times of crisis and how the media warps it, but his take on if the apocalypse will ever occur was reassuring. His advice of being prepared, but at some point letting go and trusting things will be okay, is something I plan on following.

[Jess C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh... It was a fun enough experiment to write about and I enjoyed reading the book and learning a bit but...
(1) A little broey. The book focuses is on the big, tough man who is going to save his family. Especially at the beginning, his wife is almost completely without agency in his little vignettes about how it would go if there was an apocalypse. This does get a bit better as the book goes on.
(2) Sheridan says he is writing the book because having a child changes everything and he wants to live for and be better able to protect his child. I took this as him saying having a child made him less self-centered, yet this book is only about him.
(3) Lastly, if he really is doing this for his child, I can think of a million things that would pay higher dividends to his kid then his preparations for the apocalypse. A major event hitting where you live is probably unlikely and by its nature, unpredictable. If it does, the number of things outside your control to survive, are many. Initial survival will most likely be a function of almost pure luck. After that the preparations would help, but most likely you are already dead. Thus, if your goal is to help your child thrive in the best way possible, you would probably be better off with parenting classes or passing on a skill of use in our current world.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few months ago, I read "The Knowledge" which tried to outline the information that'd be important to reboot civilization. The Disaster Diaries felt like a companion book in that it outlined what skills an individual would need to survive the mechanics of TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World As We Know It).

Over the book's chapters, the author trains with firearms, survival, combat, driving, and legion other specialists. The author has a leg up on most of us being a former MMA fighter, but I didn't get the sense that anything his did was beyond what someone who was reasonably healthy and who did a little more training could do. The delivery was matter of fact and neither apocalyptic nor too rosy. The author has a moving closing where he talks about how Preppers and those who stockpile resources aren't likely to do well in any true catastrophe as their isolationism would limit what they could ever accomplish.

The one missed note was the opening section of each chapter which uses some sort of apocalyptic trope as a setup. I have mixed feelings on how effective these were.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Disaster Diaries is a fascinating look at how to get prepared for surviving the end of the world as we know it, or at least a good old-fashioned natural disaster. It's not a how-to manual so much as a what-and-why discussion. In the course of covering a range of survival skills, from knife-fighting to hot-wiring a car, the book explores what we might expect from human behavior and mental health when society breaks down, and the author's conclusions are surprising. Sheridan writes from a place of self-confidence and ready-for-anything self-reliance, rather than from fear and paranoia. He also manages to avoid the political and religious issues so prevalent in end-times writing, and concentrates on practical, evidence-based skills and strategies. Quite unexpectedly, the book has left me determined to become really fit, store some supplies, and get some wilderness training. But if I start stockpiling weapons, do an intervention, OK?

[Heather Penner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through the entertaining hypothetical scenarios of a big earthquake, followed by a zombie apocalypse, followed by an alien invasion, followed by the next ice age... Sam Sheridan researches and reports back to us on critical techniques for personal survival. Some of his teachings were humorous (what not to do when learning stunt car driving!), some were horrifying (how best to slice a person during a knife fight) but all were very interesting (how to build an igloo, and much more) There is a lot of good discussion about the importance of mental state, and the disastrous effects of panic. Also an excellent simplified overview of PTSD, for the layperson.
Sheridan ends the book with a rational look at what history teaches us about how communities behave during actual disaster, and discusses the fine line between "paranoid" and "prepared."
I feel certain that I will be thinking about some of this book's lessons for quite some time.

[Ryan Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, I'm a sucker for disaster books in general, and I found myself enjoying this one quite a bit. Being a new father, like the author, made the material relatable as well.

If you're looking for a how-to manual for surviving the apocalypse, this isn't it. But if you are interested in reading one man's story about trying to learn how to be more self-reliant, this is pretty good. I wasn't a fan of the way it began, but by the time the story really got started, I found that I was really enjoying myself. There's some pretty interesting characters, and the information, while not specific, is generally pretty good.

[Badseedgirl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sam Sheridan appears to be a man that has more money and time on his hands than is healthy for an individual. What did I learn from this book? The only skill I need to learn is gymnastics and yoga because I need to be able to reach my ass with my lips if Mr. Sheridan's "worst case" pans out. Oh yeah and I need to keep more bottled water at my house.

2.5 stars for an entertaining if somewhat unrealistic prepper guide.

[Jess (scijessreads) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I liked the idea of this book, but not the execution. The "fiction" part with his family in the earthquake-zombie-alien-frozen climate apocalypse was not necessary. The organization also seemed very random.

[Terri Light · Rating 2 out of 5]

The fictional scenarios were distracting and overwrought. And, thanks to the author, I can probably not roast and eat a rat now, even if I had to.

[Bruce Cline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way too much narrative to make too few points. So much more could have been covered if not for the author’s desire to explain his personal experiences in tedious detail.

[Max Nova · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Disaster Diaries” is an exuberant sprint through all manner of survival topics. Sheridan bounces all over the place: Performing under extreme stress, disaster preparedness, physical fitness, firearms, emergency medical care, hotwiring cars, primitive wilderness survival, hunting, knife fighting, winter survival. Could you actually survive after reading this book? Hell no. But it’s a fun introduction to a bunch of skills and Sheridan points the way to good resources for learning more.

This passage is pretty representative of the tone and spirit of the entire book:

What little boy, growing up, isn’t obsessed with guns? Squirt guns, laser guns. The nonstop violence of cartoons and comic books gives way to John Woo movies. A few real hippie mothers in my neighborhood hadn’t allowed toy guns in the house, but that just meant those poor kids had to find sticks and break them to look like pistols. Poor bastards.

#####################

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry had written, “Being a man is, precisely, being responsible.” That’s the secret philosophy of real manhood—a man takes responsibility for everything that happens. He never, ever makes excuses. If it’s bad, he should have seen it coming, avoided it. He’s a master of his fate.

You may think I’m a paranoid pessimist, spouting all this doom and gloom. But after considerable thought on the matter, I believe that’s wrong. I’m an optimist. You and me, we’re going to make it, at least those first twenty-four hours after the wave hits, the bomb drops, or those corpses start clawing their way out of the dirt. If you are one of the lucky 1 percent who survive the pandemic, it will be a damn shame if you die because you don’t know how to start a fire. We’re going to make it, and we need to know what we’re doing.

The thing that separates us from animals is the prefrontal cortex, and fear and stress can completely circumvent that part of your brain.

Dave Grossman and Loren W. Christensen wrote in On Combat: “You do not rise to the occasion in combat, you sink to the level of your training. Do not expect the combat fairy to come bonk you with the combat wand and suddenly make you capable of doing things you never rehearsed before.”

There is a simple technique that can help even an untrained person overcome extreme stress in any situation, and it’s sometimes called combat breathing. Basically, the only link between the sympathetic nervous system and the autonomic is breathing. You breathe automatically, but you can also control your breathing with your thoughts, unlike your heart rate or your adrenaline levels.

Strength is agility and stability.

Sean told me a basic level of strength that remains an excellent goal: be able to squat twice your body weight.

eventually, usually within 10–15 km, the animal collapses from hyperthermia (Liebenberg, 2006). The basis for this kind of hunting lies in human endurance capabilities, which exceed those of other mammals, especially in the heat. Reasonable fit humans are unique in being able to run 10–20 km or more in hot conditions at speeds (2.5–6 m/sec) that exceed the trot-gallop transitions of most quadrupeds (Bramble and Lieberman, 2004). Because quadrupeds, including hyenas and dogs, cannot simultaneously gallop and pant (Bramble and Jenkins, 1993), a human hunter armed with nothing more lethal than a club or untipped spear can safely run a large mammal such as a kudu into hyperthermia by chasing the prey above its trot-gallop transition speed.

McDougall mentions Arizona’s annual fifty-mile Man Against Horse Race, where at short distances the horses kick ass, but later on humans start to close the gap. In 2011 the fastest man ran 7:33 and the fastest horse ran 6:45.

Make sure you have enough water. A gallon a day per person, for a month.

For those of you who don’t know, the go bag (or the bug-out bag, or the ditch bag) is a small bag filled with essentials that you grab on the way out the door. It’s always ready, and so are you. When I worked on boats, we had our passports wrapped in plastic and a water jug in the ditch bag, so if the boat was sinking, you grabbed that on the way to the life raft. This is a survivalist staple. Having a go bag is usually a good idea, something small already in your car, a bigger one in your home. It’s easy to get sucked into wanting a bigger and bigger bag (do I add a tent? water filtration?), but try to keep it reasonable.

Some of the survivalists call it long-term grid-down, or TEOTWAWKI, a desperate acronym for The End of the World as We Know It,

If you could survive long enough, Des Pres found, you might recover your will to live. From all his interviews, he set the recovery time at anywhere between a week and several months. Criminals did better, because they were used to breaking the rules. In the camps, if you followed all the rules, you were dead in a month. Criminals recognized the face of this camp social order; they could recognize “us against them”—to the death—earlier than law-abiding citizens. They were in less denial about the changes to their reality.

Prepare by readying your mind and body, the things that will always be with you. Sitting in a bunker with a sweaty shotgun in your hand is paranoia, but learning the skills to be self-reliant is common sense.

another old maxim is “The pistol is what you fight your way back to the rifle with.”

Apocalypse means “unveiling” in ancient Greek.

Armageddon is a contact sport, and somebody’s going to get hurt.

“Cleaning the wound is the most important thing you can do. Wound cleaning is so freaking huge,” Bill said. “There is no medication that replaces the physical removal of dirt and bacteria.” We’re so used to antibiotics and creams that we’ve lost our fear of infection. But it’s absolutely deadly. You have to get in and scrub the wound, deeply, painfully clean it, or else the person is doomed.

“If the world was ending, I would have Leviquin or Cipro, Augmentin, and Bactrim or Septra. Those last two are drugs from the sulfa family, and they are antibiotics that will handle resistant strains. All of these can be had in pill form.” Easier for us laymen than dealing with syringes. Dr. Winters thought for a moment, and then added Doxycycline because it treats atypical bacteria such as Rickettsia, which causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever and typhus. “Typhus,” he said, “which is flea- and tick-borne, was incredibly deadly for refugee camps.” Certainly, typhus is one of the great killers in history, like the plague and dysentery, and typhus epidemics changed history. In a refugee camp, or in a city with no electricity or plumbing, it could strike again. These drugs deteriorate over time—most of them have expiration dates of about a year. Dr. Winters said that you would, of course, still try them if you had nothing else, but you couldn’t expect much. Within five years, most of the stores might be inert. In a long-term grid-down, we’re headed for a time of no antibiotics.

the most common cause of infectious diseases is drinking water that has human or animal fecal matter in it. These diseases are usually diarrheal; our system recognizes the problem and tries to flush the invasive bacteria out of the intestines. Fighting these bacteria is the norm in most places on earth. Heat kills, so bring any water you intend to consume to a rolling boil. If you’re above eighteen thousand feet, you have to boil it for a few minutes, because at high elevation water boils at a lower temperature. Or use chemicals—chlorine or iodine are the common ones. Or filters. There are a lot of neat little filtration devices out there. Water is a big deal. You can last a month or more without food, but without water you’re dead in three days, maybe a little longer.

Messing with the wires is old school, it’s not necessary, nobody does that anymore.” He reached right up under the dashboard and fished out the wires. “You still got it here. Always the white wire with a red stripe is hot. Tie it to the blue, then tap it to the yellow.” He bridged with the screwdriver. “But you don’t need to do that. What I did is flare the ignition switch”—it looked exploded, almost like a bullet spread out—“but with a little three-pound dent puller, it would be effortless.”

The cord on the bow was 550 parachute cord, another ubiquitous survival item (a lot of survivalists replace their shoelaces with 550 paracord, just in case).

Hemp was the source of almost all rope in the Western world until the invention of nylon.

“You can tell if a plant will make decent cordage by breaking a small branch and tearing it—if you get long strips, you can weave those to make string or rope. I don’t teach the various names of plants, because those will change from location to location. I try to teach characteristics, to make it more universal.” Cordage, meaning rope or string, is a highly valuable survival item. You can use it to lash your structure together, to make traps, to make the bow part of the bow drill, or to construct a bow and arrow.

Clothing is an essential survival tool. By wearing the skins of animals, our ancestors survived and flourished. John showed me how it could be done. Basically, the animal skin has to be cleaned of tissue and membranes on the inside and hair on the outside. I asked about that. Wouldn’t leaving the hair on make it much warmer? Yes, but it would also make it ten times harder to tan.

To tan a hide, you coat it with oils, which allows it to dry but stay supple.

John and I scraped the meat, membranes, and hair off a deer hide. Then we soaked it in brain oils (John bought pig brains from the supermarket). You have to really work the oils in, soaking and wringing the hide out dozens of times. Wringing the heavy hide dry like a chamois is laborious work, but the hide needs to soak up the oils completely. Leaving the hair on makes the job harder because then the oils can only penetrate from one side. After you’ve really imbued the hide with brain oils, you need to work it as it dries to keep it from becoming a piece of rigid cardboard. John showed me how to push and pull, stretch and grip the hide as it dried. Slowly, imperceptibly, the hide begins to turn into buckskin, that soft, supple, wonderful stuff that feels like a velvet blanket.

Finally, you take the lovely soft piece of skin and smoke it, locking in the oils, so that afterward, even if it gets wet, it will dry soft.

“There were no dumb cavemen,” said Professor Shea. “The lions and wolves made sure of that. These were a profoundly intelligent and spiritual people.”

For long-term survival, put a steel pot in your go bag.

I have it tattooed on my arm in Latin: Mundis Ex Igne Factus Est. The world is made of fire. Your soul is forged in hardship, in privation. There is nothing worthwhile that comes easy.

What’s the best thing to have in your bug-out bag? A doctor or a mechanic. The numbers to stand watch, to divide up labor, and to fight if necessary.

He lectured like a college professor, a good one—encyclopedic, animated, and exhilarated by the subject. “This is martial arts,” he said. “Martial means war. This isn’t about competition. It’s about winning. I arrange the circumstances, no matter what they might be. Real martial arts, if we’re enemies, I don’t challenge you to a duel with a stick and knife (the classic eskrima pairing of weapons). Real martial arts is me following you, unseen, for days, and then sniping you from a roof across from your house when you come out the front door. That’s martial arts.” Here’s my guy, I thought.

All this may play into what sociologists call elite panic, which, in a disaster, is something you do have to keep an eye out for. The elite, meaning government and law enforcement, sometimes overreact. They have the most to lose from the upending of order. “Elite panic in disaster, as identified by contemporary disaster scholars, is shaped by belief, belief that since human beings at large are bestial and dangerous, the believer must himself or herself act with savagery to ensure that individual safety or the safety of his interests. The elites that panic are, in times of crisis, the minority. . . .” writes Solnit.

When disaster does strike, retaining your humanity is the most important part of survival. There will be moments of chaos and confusion, but they won’t last. Social order will reassert itself. Cooler heads will prevail. Working together with your neighbors will have a much higher success rate than going into paranoid bunker mode.

As the ancients said, homo homini lupus est—man is a wolf to man.

If everyone in the country could become just a little more self-reliant, we could defuse this thing before it happens. If everyone lived with a few months’ worth of food and water in their house or apartment, we could delay that competition for resources, and probably avoid a lot of the problems following something like an EMP attack, a solar flare, or even an economic crisis. Aliens or zombies are still gonna be tough, but that’s a given.

But preparing for the end of the world is like being a parent—at some point, you have to let go. You can’t control everything, you can’t live in the bunker, you can’t refuse to ever let your daughter go on a date. At some point, when you’ve done your best, you have to get on with your life and trust the universe not to fuck you. Some of the people I met over the course of this journey seem happy and content; for others, all their preparation seems to have made them more worried, more fearful.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a perfect example of why I like being in a book club. I would not have picked this book out, myself. However, author Sam Sheridan provides not only an entertaining look the various skills and strains of “preppers,” but also covers the whole thing with an unexpected level of humanity and hope.

The cover and the subtitle, in my opinion, do the book a disservice. Sheridan doesn’t see himself as a lone wolf or an “alpha” or whatever guys who are way too into the Punisher see themselves as, but instead believes that humans are social creatures and that history shows that humans cooperate in survival situations. Further, the catalyst for writing this book was the birth of his son. The entire book is about Sheridan trying to understand what he would need to do to help his wife and child survive.

Sheridan’s adventures take him all over North America – from the mountains of Colorado to igloos with the Inuit. He learns to tan hides, fight with knives, steal a car, subsist in the Arizona desert, set bones in the wilderness, and a whole lot more. He is as interested in the experts teaching him the skills as much as the skills from the laid-back hippies to the ex-cons to the paranoid.

Recently I reviewed A.J. Jacobs’ The Puzzler, which is also about an amateur putting himself in the middle of niche experts in their field. Jacobs and Sheridan are very different kinds of guys in some ways – Jacobs looks like someone who would attend an international puzzle tournament. Sheridan was a merchant marine and an MMA fighter. However, both writers have an insatiable curiosity and a fondness for people a little outside of the average culture. I really like that about them and that’s one of the things that makes their books so fun.

Even if you never crack this book, think about Sheridan’s take on the mix of preparation and hope:

“By keeping my preparation mostly in the arena of self-reliance and knowledge (as opposed to the “my fallout shelter has four-and-half-foot –thick walls” arena), I have only made my life better. I’ve enjoyed learned new skills for dealing with new scenarios – and the confidence that comes with it. But preparing for the end of the world is like being a parent – at some point, you have to let go. You can’t control everything, you can’t live in the bunker, you can’t refuse to ever let your daughter go on a date. At some point, when you’ve done your best, you have to get on with your life and trust the universe not %*$( you…With the supreme good luck of being alive comes a duty, a requirement, to understand. You have to be curious. You have to try.”

[Spike Gomes · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happens when the poop hits the spinning blades? Well, for myself, if I'm to be completely honest, death within a couple weeks. My survival knowledge consists mostly of a CPR class I had to take for work and some rusty First Aid and map reading lessons from Boy Scouts and JROTC. Certainly my deep knowledge of the religious mores of Tokugawa Japan, the ability to properly write a sonnet and finely honed skills at mastering a slew of retro video games from the 80s aren't going to be in very high demand when the lights no longer work and water doesn't come out of the tap anymore. I have creeping sensation that for the vast majority of those of us who dwell in the First World, that's par for the course. While I'm not really buying into the prepper mindset, the way the world seems slowly grinding towards one of its periodic socio-political, cultural and environmental sloughs, it certainly seems like a good idea to have some sense of what's required to be a bit more self-reliant if and when the finely tuned machine that is our modern existence breaks down, whether it be for a short time in a localized area (pretty high probability) or for keeps worldwide (low probability, and rather questionable if you want to be amongst the living, when you really think about it).

"The Disaster Diaries" isn't really a "how-to" book. It's more a quasi-journalistic recounting of one man's quest to try to make himself ready to face the challenges of a post-apocalyptic world, as well as a meditation on how people individually and collectively deal with the sort of physical and psychological stresses that it would entail. While Sheridan doesn't quite come out and say it, it seems strongly driven by a desire to protect his family should worst come to worst, and certainly, in the various chapters, as much time is spent on the character of the people training him and their spouses and families as the training he's receiving himself.

As a former wilderness firefighter, sailor, EMT and current MMA practitioner and journalist, Sheridan is certainly far more physically and mentally primed to take in the lessons in the various forms of wilderness survival, firearms and knife training, tool-making and hunting than a neurotic bookish aesthete like myself. The fact that he struggles quite a bit in certain parts, both mentally and physically is quite telling, particularly when it is made clear that many of these skills were ones that a man living in a primitive or frontier society would have to have known in order to survive. How to properly set a trap, stalk a deer, tan a hide or prevent a wound from becoming infected with sepsis, these are things people once knew, even if they didn't know the exact reasons why it worked sometimes. There's also chapters on the psychological aspects of living through a world gone wrong that are pretty profound. From the looks of it, it seems that preppers are in some ways negatively preparing themselves for the end of the world as we know it, but more on that later.

At the same time, there are some major flaws to this book. One thing that seriously irked me was the reliance on science fiction scenarios to illustrate certain necessary elements of survival. I found the whole zombie part and UFO invasion part to be pandering and unserious. The same sort of point could have been made by using a pandemic or widespread civil insurrection as examples. It is part of a strain of pop-cultural ironicism that pervades certain aspects of the book. It's not the sneering of a blue state urbanite Ivy League grad (though the author does have that educational background despite his job history), but just a sort of quiet signaling of "I'm a culturally aware sophisticate like you, reader! Isn't it funny how earnest and eccentric some these guys teaching me are!". That said, Sheridan never ever patronizes or disrespects the guys (and gals) who are instructing him. It's clear he respects their hard-earned knowledge and willingness to pass it on. Still, that literary equivalent of an arched eyebrow when they get quirky or intense grinds my gears a bit. Those aspects of their personality are precisely *why* they are masters and teachers. You have to be a little bit off to spend months experimenting with the best ways to use deer brains to tan its hide, or commit to walking barefoot everywhere to hone your situational and body awareness. That said, I find binge-watching "The Walking Dead" to be far more weird and a lot less useful, and that's the sort of behavior that belongs to the tribe of people who believe in the ironic arched-eyebrow of pop-cultural awareness and hipness.

So what's the take-away? Well, for one, being prepared for disaster isn't so much what's stuffed in your basement, gun closet or bug out bag. It's about what's stuffed into your head and repeated through many hours of training and practice. So long as you are alive and mobile, that can never be taken away from you. If anything, relying on a basement, an armory and what you have in a bag can be crutch. Eventually the supplies run out, or you run out of bullets, or you lose your basic tools. A total collapse means a return to hunting and gathering, and that means mobility and constant situational awareness. Survival also means not just survival for yourself but for others. Humans are social animals. A man with a family has more reason and will to survive than a single guy. A family within a tight knit community has yet more reasons, and means of survival. Running up into the mountains and holing up alone on a pile of cans and bullets is a one-way train to crazy-town, and in a situation like the end of the world as we know it, crazy-town is a death sentence. Nearly all the people profiled and visited in this book have close knit families and tight social networks. They're not walling themselves off from their neighbors or hoarding their knowledge or supplies. In fact, during the Arctic Training session on Hudson Bay towards the end of the book, where the guy teaching survival skills *is currently* living in a harsh unforgiving environment where death is omnipresent, the ethos is positively collectivist. Extra meat and fish is given to those who cannot gather or hunt for themselves anymore. Granted, it is a native society where everyone is distantly related in one way or another, but it illustrates the point. We are responsible for knowing *how* to survive, but others provide the *reason* to survive.

So in short, single childless me with the survival skills of a geriatric cocker spaniel? I'm doomed.

Four out of Five stars.

[Dustan Woodhouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

A break from business books, and a side track into the mindset of the survivalist.

Will you survive an apocalyptic event? Nah, me neither.

Am I stocking up on guns, ammo, water filters, and carrying a Go bag in my trunk? Nope.

Nor do I plan to.

I'll deal with it all when I need to deal with it all. I'm too busy focusing on sieving in a pre-apocalyptic world to plan for the post version.

An entertaining and informative read though. Well assembled and I learned some interesting things. Mostly how genius our grasp on this thing called life really is.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't let the title or the cover fool you -- this is one of the most hopeful non-fiction books I've read in years, along with Neil Strauss' Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life. Yeah, be prepared for problems but don't have your heart set on the apocalypse actually happening.



I thought I was the only one who was looking forward to the apocalypse (because that's the only way I will finally get a horse -- if they are all set free and up for grabs and there is no such thing as bills or health insurance premiums to pay) but I am not the only one. Sheridan points out that the End of the World as We Know It is attractive to many people for many reasons. Hey, if the streets are overrun with zombie hoards, you've got a great reason for calling out of work.



The main problem I have with the book is that it does glorify hunting. Now, I understand that when the shit hits the fan, all bets are off. I used to be homeless. I was 5' 10" and was less than 115 pounds at one point. Yes -- I was thinking of ways to catch rats to eat (never managed it). Hunger is a HUGE teacher. But that point has not hit yet. We still have a choice whether to kill a critter for fun or not.

And yes -- when the apocalypse comes and I finally have a horse, I will eventually die of starvation. However, I'll eat babies ripped from their mother's wombs before I eat a horse, a cat or a dog. Hey -- I may not starve after all. Just lick my chops and call me Ms. Lecter.

[Daniel Christensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apropos of nothing…
Sam Sheridan is a tough guy. He’s competed in MMA, worked as a forest firefighter, a sailor, and spent 6-months in Antarctica. But after the birth of his son, he becomes pre-occupied with the question of ‘what if?’. What if there is a massive natural disaster, civil war, an EMP strike, or the zombie apocalypse?
The preppers called this TEOTWAWKI (The end of the world as we know it), and Sheridan decides to get ready.
Each chapter is Sheridan musing on some aspect of TEOTWAWKI – is his house earthquake-proof? could he steal a car? could he kill an animal? could he fight with a knife? would he be fit enough? could he work as a field medic? could he psychologically cope?
In each chapter he mixes his experiences meeting with an expert, and doing the training, with some general background and pop science. Early on, particularly, it felt like a bunch of Men’s Health articles. But as the book went on it got better. He told a bit of himself, and also maintained optimism and balance. Even though he is prepping, he doesn’t come across as a whackjob prepper. He trains with guns, but it’s not a book about gun rights, or thinly veiled racial panic. He emphasises the importance of community and dignity, and finishes with a look at how well communities often function in the face of disaster. He includes a bit of a breakdown of the misinformation which occurred around Hurricane Katrina, and how well the community actually functioned.
Probably a good one for my martial arts/ self-defence buddies.

[Adil Ehsan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun romp through the various skills needed to survive the various forms of the apocalypse. From essential survival skills to driving fast cars, it's the light hearted story of one man's journey to develop and master these skills. While this is not a how to manual the one way this book could have been much better is if if had photographs and illustrations to go with it. It would have simply made some sections much more lively and made some of the actions and skills come alive. Ultimately it's a light hearted romp that takes the topic seriously but turns it into a light hearted journey of what you might find useful when TWAWKIE (the world as we know it ends) happens. Word of warning this is nothing like his other books (which I love btw) but is as accessible if not as personal.