Vacationing in a post-apocalyptic world
I've been reading SurvivalBlog lately and decided to buy the guy's book. But, what the heck, if I'm going to read one version of a post-apocalyptic future, I may as well read several, right? Go with me on this. It's the way I think.
So in the past week I've read four five. I'm going to review them here and it'll be a lengthy post so feel free to skip it now.
"Alas, Babylon" by Pat Frank is a lovely little novel about when bad things happen to good people. It spends the first ninety pages getting to know the people and I genuinely liked them. It's a community with flawed, petty people, but it's the sort of place Doctor Who would visit to find that humans are just spectacular when pressed. Except that it doesn't take place in Great Britain, but in the lakes region of Florida about an hour north of Orlando. This is, coincidentally, exactly where my in-laws live.
This novel had nearly nothing about how to prepare, despite the main character having been warned. In fact, the way he DID prepare is a lesson in what not to do. (If you want to lay in supplies for when The Shit Hits The Fan (TSHTF) might I suggest you get them in the Big City before you head home to your Small Town so you IMPORT goods while you can, rather than take what the community already had on hand?)
It spent a bit too much time on a Cold War apocalypse scenario that I really would have preferred to skip. There was too much military jargon referring to regimes that are gone. The story was published in 1959 and people were dependent on oil, but not quite as much as they are today. Everyone who wanted them was easily able to find canning jars, for instance. Salt ended up being a critical need. After reading this story I happened to notice salt on sale at Stop & Shop and I bought out their entire shelf. :-)
This was a small town novel. The main character was civic-minded - had attempted to win a seat in the state legislature - and other main characters are the town librarian, town doctor, and various communications people. There wasn't a great deal of on-stage dying, though people who had medical needs certainly went first, which seemed realistic. This novel was about how the survivors rebuild a community. There was little violence (although some) and practically no refugees, which seemed unlikely.
Refugees? You want refugees? "Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle had them in spades. The first 130 pages deal with getting to know the large cast of characters before TSHTF. You get to see the disaster from the point of view of about a dozen people, most of whom I could care less about. It's overkill in every sense, a total collapse of everything but somehow crazy evil people survive with enough excess energy and high-functioningness to wage complex forms of war. It doesn't ring true at several levels.
The best part of the story had to do with how they dealt with refugees and trying to husband scarce resources. There was some vaguely interesting stuff about how to defend a stronghold, and a Deux Ex Machina point of view of Astronauts (Gods!) that seemed unnecessary. At 629 pages it really should have contained two or three novels, only one of which would have been worth the read.
There were a few snippets of how to prepare, including one warning that store clerks were paying attention to WHO prepared so they could go boost your supplies when TSHTF. Another interesting thing was how little people were enjoined to prepare for an imminent disaster. No evacuations, no contingency planning, it was as if everyone in New Orleans were told to come out to the beach to watch Hurricane Katrina coming in because it would be exciting to watch. Sadly, that part rang true. Don't expect Leaders to tell you when you should Get Out Of Dodge.
Although the disaster wasn't particularly dated, being geologic in nature, there were some pretty weird things going on in this novel including a lot of crowing about the instant death of the Feminist Movement and some male-fantasy versions of the breakdown of marriage. In short, women get to be a commodity for tending the ill, feeding the hungry and providing a moist vagina. Having been a young woman in 1977, I'd say this story said more about Larry Niven than it did about 1977.------
"Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse" is by James Wesley, [sic] Rawles. He puts a comma between his given name and family name for a reason that makes sense to him. This is pretty much how he thinks. He comes up with a good idea and the fact that it won't work within the framework of society isn't even a blip in his consciousness. To his way of thinking the Federalists should never have won, those damn Founding Fathers only got the Second Amendment right and pretty much nothing else.
I enjoy the author's blog. He is a guru in the emergency preparedness community, with detailed instructions on what to pack in a bug-out bag, what items to pre-purchase for eventual barter in a collapsed economy, etc. If you're into his blog it's probably worth the read, but as a literary item, not so much. This book reads like a survey of military options. It has elaborate and extremely complete instructions on exactly what to stockpile for TEOTWAWKI, from boots to ten spare magazines and parts for all your many, many, many guns.
The disaster in this book was interesting and well done, expanding on the premise that civilization is only three meals away from collapsing. I was stunned by how quickly total violence became the norm in this book. The entire cast of characters were trained as specialists in their own tiny militia, though, so it was sort of a nail-hammer thing.
I not only couldn't identify with the characters, but I don't even think I know anyone like these people! It just boggled my mind how little they were involved in community or commerce. These people, avowed Born Again Christians, took FIVE YEARS to start attending church. It took several years before the agrarian farming community started having market day with barter among neighbors. The single twenty-something men in the story didn't seek out women for literally years. I don't THINK SO.
There were some odd politics thrown in, too. These people were the opposite of politically involved - never participating in any form of local government, just vowing to Fight Bad Government without ever lifting a finger to Form Good Government. Did I say I didn't relate? Boy oh boy, I didn't relate. I wanted to go back and re-read "Alas, Babylon" again just to cleanse my soul.------
"The Postman" by David Brin is the only one of these books that I'd read before, back when it came out. (It was written in 1984.) This was an interesting novel with a little bit of everything. It built on all the previous books, taking small functional towns from "Alas, Babylon" and the envoy wandering hippy from "Lucifer's Hammer" and the heroes of "Patriots" somehow became the arch enemy villains of "The Postman". (This is particularly interesting because "Patriots" was written twenty years after "The Postman".)
One of the things I liked about this book was that it started 13 years AFTER the apocalypse. When I read these stories I don't really much care how TSHTF, I just want to know what to do next. This chopped off a hundred some pages by just skipping to the interesting parts. Of course, that leaves it with no comments about emergency preparedness, other than some vague ideas that it might be a good idea to learn to use a bow and wear a fanny pack at all times.
I know they made a Kevin Costner film out of it, but I haven't seen it. I suspect they kept all the violent parts of the book (lots of bad guys ranging from casual everyday unorganized chaotic evil to Government-Augmented Lawful Evil) and left out the good parts of the book (small dignities making ever-widening circles of larger dignities.)
The hero of this book is at his heart a lover, not a fighter, and it was sort of nice to see how arts and intellectual pursuits could re-emerge. Basically, this was a fantasy written from the opposite point of view of "Patriots" where everyone left alive gets together to sing Kumbaya at the end of the day.------
In the comments to these reviews
wellarmedsmurf suggested I go read "Lights Out" by David Crawford. I found the PDF online and devoured it. I liked it a LOT. It doesn't belabor how or what the disaster was: TSHTF and now you have to deal. There was a lot of denial at first that things weren't normal and still a lot of access to things for the transition to TEOTWAWKI after TSHTF, so it had a useful quality: so what if you weren't a Wacko Survivalist: you can start NOW.
It rang true on so many levels. The guy pukes and cries after shooting people. I'd do that. (I mean all three: shoot them, puke, and cry.) They reinvent a bicameral legislature. I'd do that. They look out for their neighbors and walk to church on Sunday. I'd do that. Most of the people have shotguns, .22 rifles or .30-30 deer hunting rifles. I liked the Rich Survivalists with a cameo at the start, with all their reloading equipment that they don't know how to use. I like that their problems come on gradually: no one is bringing tanks and mortars to bear on them the first week. It makes sense. I liked that the various women had jobs or, even if they were home with the children, were fully functioning adults. The marriages made sense. The need to get to out-of-town family members made sense. There's a nice section on the realities of bugging out with children. Karate was mentioned several times - have I told you lately that three members of my family practice karate? All in all, it read much more like what TEOTWAWKI would look like in my particular neighborhood.
The only caveats I'd give is that the PDF is a bit rough - I found a dozen typos or so and there were a few rough edges to the plot structure that some professional editing would have smoothed over. It's obviously not a rough draft, though - this has been polished for a while - it's just not quite ready for mass market publication. (But then I think about Eragon becoming a bestseller so who knows? Some pretty dreadful things get published and this isn't at all dreadful.) It was a free download, but at 613 pages a fairly substantial commitment in terms of toner and paper. I read half of it then put the paper in upside down and printed the other half but then I had to throw away the uncollated, occasionally damaged pages after I read them. There's probably a better way to print double-sided if you want to keep them. If you liked "Alas, Babylon" and wanted to like "Patriots" but couldn't quite, you'd probably really like this book, too.-----
The take-away message is that each book does something different, something well. None of them could stand alone because the topic is just too huge for one mind to encompass. It was interesting to see how each author created their own sort of utopia out of the dystopia that surrounded them. I was left thinking how much it said about the author's personality.
So in the past week I've read four five. I'm going to review them here and it'll be a lengthy post so feel free to skip it now.
"Alas, Babylon" by Pat Frank is a lovely little novel about when bad things happen to good people. It spends the first ninety pages getting to know the people and I genuinely liked them. It's a community with flawed, petty people, but it's the sort of place Doctor Who would visit to find that humans are just spectacular when pressed. Except that it doesn't take place in Great Britain, but in the lakes region of Florida about an hour north of Orlando. This is, coincidentally, exactly where my in-laws live.
This novel had nearly nothing about how to prepare, despite the main character having been warned. In fact, the way he DID prepare is a lesson in what not to do. (If you want to lay in supplies for when The Shit Hits The Fan (TSHTF) might I suggest you get them in the Big City before you head home to your Small Town so you IMPORT goods while you can, rather than take what the community already had on hand?)
It spent a bit too much time on a Cold War apocalypse scenario that I really would have preferred to skip. There was too much military jargon referring to regimes that are gone. The story was published in 1959 and people were dependent on oil, but not quite as much as they are today. Everyone who wanted them was easily able to find canning jars, for instance. Salt ended up being a critical need. After reading this story I happened to notice salt on sale at Stop & Shop and I bought out their entire shelf. :-)
This was a small town novel. The main character was civic-minded - had attempted to win a seat in the state legislature - and other main characters are the town librarian, town doctor, and various communications people. There wasn't a great deal of on-stage dying, though people who had medical needs certainly went first, which seemed realistic. This novel was about how the survivors rebuild a community. There was little violence (although some) and practically no refugees, which seemed unlikely.
Refugees? You want refugees? "Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle had them in spades. The first 130 pages deal with getting to know the large cast of characters before TSHTF. You get to see the disaster from the point of view of about a dozen people, most of whom I could care less about. It's overkill in every sense, a total collapse of everything but somehow crazy evil people survive with enough excess energy and high-functioningness to wage complex forms of war. It doesn't ring true at several levels.
The best part of the story had to do with how they dealt with refugees and trying to husband scarce resources. There was some vaguely interesting stuff about how to defend a stronghold, and a Deux Ex Machina point of view of Astronauts (Gods!) that seemed unnecessary. At 629 pages it really should have contained two or three novels, only one of which would have been worth the read.
There were a few snippets of how to prepare, including one warning that store clerks were paying attention to WHO prepared so they could go boost your supplies when TSHTF. Another interesting thing was how little people were enjoined to prepare for an imminent disaster. No evacuations, no contingency planning, it was as if everyone in New Orleans were told to come out to the beach to watch Hurricane Katrina coming in because it would be exciting to watch. Sadly, that part rang true. Don't expect Leaders to tell you when you should Get Out Of Dodge.
Although the disaster wasn't particularly dated, being geologic in nature, there were some pretty weird things going on in this novel including a lot of crowing about the instant death of the Feminist Movement and some male-fantasy versions of the breakdown of marriage. In short, women get to be a commodity for tending the ill, feeding the hungry and providing a moist vagina. Having been a young woman in 1977, I'd say this story said more about Larry Niven than it did about 1977.------
"Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse" is by James Wesley, [sic] Rawles. He puts a comma between his given name and family name for a reason that makes sense to him. This is pretty much how he thinks. He comes up with a good idea and the fact that it won't work within the framework of society isn't even a blip in his consciousness. To his way of thinking the Federalists should never have won, those damn Founding Fathers only got the Second Amendment right and pretty much nothing else.
I enjoy the author's blog. He is a guru in the emergency preparedness community, with detailed instructions on what to pack in a bug-out bag, what items to pre-purchase for eventual barter in a collapsed economy, etc. If you're into his blog it's probably worth the read, but as a literary item, not so much. This book reads like a survey of military options. It has elaborate and extremely complete instructions on exactly what to stockpile for TEOTWAWKI, from boots to ten spare magazines and parts for all your many, many, many guns.
The disaster in this book was interesting and well done, expanding on the premise that civilization is only three meals away from collapsing. I was stunned by how quickly total violence became the norm in this book. The entire cast of characters were trained as specialists in their own tiny militia, though, so it was sort of a nail-hammer thing.
I not only couldn't identify with the characters, but I don't even think I know anyone like these people! It just boggled my mind how little they were involved in community or commerce. These people, avowed Born Again Christians, took FIVE YEARS to start attending church. It took several years before the agrarian farming community started having market day with barter among neighbors. The single twenty-something men in the story didn't seek out women for literally years. I don't THINK SO.
There were some odd politics thrown in, too. These people were the opposite of politically involved - never participating in any form of local government, just vowing to Fight Bad Government without ever lifting a finger to Form Good Government. Did I say I didn't relate? Boy oh boy, I didn't relate. I wanted to go back and re-read "Alas, Babylon" again just to cleanse my soul.------
"The Postman" by David Brin is the only one of these books that I'd read before, back when it came out. (It was written in 1984.) This was an interesting novel with a little bit of everything. It built on all the previous books, taking small functional towns from "Alas, Babylon" and the envoy wandering hippy from "Lucifer's Hammer" and the heroes of "Patriots" somehow became the arch enemy villains of "The Postman". (This is particularly interesting because "Patriots" was written twenty years after "The Postman".)
One of the things I liked about this book was that it started 13 years AFTER the apocalypse. When I read these stories I don't really much care how TSHTF, I just want to know what to do next. This chopped off a hundred some pages by just skipping to the interesting parts. Of course, that leaves it with no comments about emergency preparedness, other than some vague ideas that it might be a good idea to learn to use a bow and wear a fanny pack at all times.
I know they made a Kevin Costner film out of it, but I haven't seen it. I suspect they kept all the violent parts of the book (lots of bad guys ranging from casual everyday unorganized chaotic evil to Government-Augmented Lawful Evil) and left out the good parts of the book (small dignities making ever-widening circles of larger dignities.)
The hero of this book is at his heart a lover, not a fighter, and it was sort of nice to see how arts and intellectual pursuits could re-emerge. Basically, this was a fantasy written from the opposite point of view of "Patriots" where everyone left alive gets together to sing Kumbaya at the end of the day.------
In the comments to these reviews
wellarmedsmurf suggested I go read "Lights Out" by David Crawford. I found the PDF online and devoured it. I liked it a LOT. It doesn't belabor how or what the disaster was: TSHTF and now you have to deal. There was a lot of denial at first that things weren't normal and still a lot of access to things for the transition to TEOTWAWKI after TSHTF, so it had a useful quality: so what if you weren't a Wacko Survivalist: you can start NOW.
It rang true on so many levels. The guy pukes and cries after shooting people. I'd do that. (I mean all three: shoot them, puke, and cry.) They reinvent a bicameral legislature. I'd do that. They look out for their neighbors and walk to church on Sunday. I'd do that. Most of the people have shotguns, .22 rifles or .30-30 deer hunting rifles. I liked the Rich Survivalists with a cameo at the start, with all their reloading equipment that they don't know how to use. I like that their problems come on gradually: no one is bringing tanks and mortars to bear on them the first week. It makes sense. I liked that the various women had jobs or, even if they were home with the children, were fully functioning adults. The marriages made sense. The need to get to out-of-town family members made sense. There's a nice section on the realities of bugging out with children. Karate was mentioned several times - have I told you lately that three members of my family practice karate? All in all, it read much more like what TEOTWAWKI would look like in my particular neighborhood.
The only caveats I'd give is that the PDF is a bit rough - I found a dozen typos or so and there were a few rough edges to the plot structure that some professional editing would have smoothed over. It's obviously not a rough draft, though - this has been polished for a while - it's just not quite ready for mass market publication. (But then I think about Eragon becoming a bestseller so who knows? Some pretty dreadful things get published and this isn't at all dreadful.) It was a free download, but at 613 pages a fairly substantial commitment in terms of toner and paper. I read half of it then put the paper in upside down and printed the other half but then I had to throw away the uncollated, occasionally damaged pages after I read them. There's probably a better way to print double-sided if you want to keep them. If you liked "Alas, Babylon" and wanted to like "Patriots" but couldn't quite, you'd probably really like this book, too.-----
The take-away message is that each book does something different, something well. None of them could stand alone because the topic is just too huge for one mind to encompass. It was interesting to see how each author created their own sort of utopia out of the dystopia that surrounded them. I was left thinking how much it said about the author's personality.