How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times

by James Wesley, Rawles, Dick Hill (Narrator)

Read James Wesley, Rawles's posts on the Penguin Blog

In the vein of Sam Sheridan's The Disaster Diaries, a comprehensive guide to preparing for the apocalypse!

With the recent economic crisis, formerly unimaginable scenarios have become terrifyingly real possibilities—learn how to prepare for the worst
Global financial collapse, a terrorist attack, a natural catastrophe—all it takes is one event to disrupt our way of life. We could find ourselves facing myriad serious problems from massive unemployment to a food shortage to an infrastructure failure that cuts off our power or water supply. If something terrible happens, we won't be able to rely on the government or our communities. We'll have to take care of ourselves.

In How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, James Rawles, founder of SurvivalBlog.com, clearly explains everything you need to know to protect yourself and your family in the event of a disaster—from radical currency devaluation to a nuclear threat to a hurricane. Rawles shares essential tactics and techniques for surviving completely on your own, including how much food is enough, how to filter rainwater, how to protect your money, which seeds to buy for your garden, why goats are a smart choice for livestock, and how to secure your home. It's the ultimate guide to total preparedness and self-reliance in a time of need.

Audible Audio

Published July 18, 2025

About the author

James Wesley, Rawles is a internationally recognized authority on family disaster preparedness and survivalism. He has been described by journalists as the "conscience of survivalism." Formerly a U.S. Army intelligence officer, Rawles is now a fiction and nonfiction author, as well as a rancher. His books have been translated into seven languages. He is also a lecturer and the founder and Senior Editor of http://www.SurvivalBlog.com, the Internet's first blogs on preparedness that has enjoyed perennial popularity and now receives more than 320,000 unique visits per week. He and his family live at a remote self-sufficient ranch surrounded by National Forest lands that is is cryptically identified as located "somewhere west of the Rockies.

Rawles worked as an Associate Editor and Regional Editor (for the Western U.S.) with Defense Electronics magazine in the late 1980s and early 1990s and concurrently was Managing Editor of The International Countermeasures Handbook. He worked as a technical writer through most of the 1990s with a variety of electronics and software companies including Oracle Corporation. In 2005, he began blogging full-time. On his book covers and in his blog, he presents his name with a comma, as James Wesley, Rawles, to distinguish between his given name and his family name.

James Wesley, Rawles was born James Wesley Rawles in California in 1960 and attended local public schools. Rawles received a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Jose University.

From 1984 to 1993, he served as a United States Army Military Intelligence officer. He resigned his commission as a U.S. Army Captain immediately after Bill Clinton was inaugurated as President of the United States.

Rawles is the editor of SurvivalBlog.com, a popular blog on survival and preparedness topics. The blog has been described as "the guiding light of the prepper movement." The main focus of his blog is preparing for the multitude of possible threats toward society. In his various writings, Rawles has warned about socio-economic collapse, terrorist attacks, and food shortages.

He is now a freelance writer, blogger, and survival retreat consultant. One journalist called him a "survival guru" He was described as the "conscience of survivalism." Rawles is best known as the author of the survivalist novel Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse.

Rawles is an outspoken proponent of family preparedness, especially regarding food storage and advocates relocating to lightly populated rural "retreat" areas. His preparedness philosophy emphasizes the fragility of modern society, the value of silver and other tangibles for barter, recognition of moral absolutes, being well-armed, maintaining a "deep larder," relocation to rural retreats, and Christian charity. In an interview in The New York Times, Rawles identified himself as a "guns and groceries" survivalist.

Rawles interprets the 2nd Amendment as supporting citizens' individual rights to bear and keep arms. He believes they should be able to take arms to public events.

Rawles is opposed to racism. He supports abolition of modern slavery in the world.

Rawles is a spokeman for the surivalist movement. A central premise of that movement is that there is a high risk of a coming societal meltdown and the need to prepare for the repercussions. Rawles said that the popular media has developed an incorrect far-right "lunatic fringe" image in part because of the actions of a radical few such as Timothy McVeigh. He called this a distortion of the true message of survivalism. Unlike the handful of fringe proponents, Rawles focuses instead on family preparedness and personal freedom. Rawles explained that the typical survivalist does not actually live in a rural area, but is rather is a city dweller worried about the collapse of society who views the rural lifestyle as idyllic. Speaking from his experience, Rawles cautions that rural self-sufficiency a