Worst survivalist/prepper books?

[hanzel]

For me: "Patriots." I'm sorry, I appreciate what Rawles was trying to do (mixing the information with the story), but it was just SO poorly executed. The dialogue was painful, and I think I finally quit reading about the time they mentioned the guy using dial-up to telecommute to work.

Patriots was first written in 1995 and released in 1998.  The updated version came out in 2009 but the technology he describes was not "updated".  For many of us out in the country, dial up or satellite is the only options still if we want internet. So still using dial up for many Americans is a fact of life.  For my work I had to have a 40 ft tower placed in my front yard and use radio internet to "talk" to a tower over 10 miles away.  It was not a cheap option but it was my only option for a high speed / low latency connection (  I could not work with the high latency of a satellite connection ).  Up until they did upgrade earlier this year the best I could get was 1.5 megs from the connection.  The comment about the dial up connection was in the very beginning of the book so you would not have read very much of it.  The dialog is painful but then again so is reading Shakespeare. From a informational stand point it is still a very good informational book on prepping and survival.  Try going back and reading it, then read it again and see what information is woven into the story.  I actually pick up the book during the market crash in 2008.  You would be surprised how much of the beginning of the book was in the headlines of the day. 

[LibertyBelle]

For many of us out in the country, dial up or satellite is the only options still if we want internet. So still using dial up for many Americans is a fact of life. 

I have a few family members that are still on dial-up, and some that live so far off the beaten path that they can't even get cell phone service.

[lowland farmer]

For several years I was a non-fiction guy (history, howto, etc.) but for the past 18 months I've been reading a lot of fiction.

Here are my favorite (mostly prepper?) fiction books I've read in the last few months:

Feathers on the Wings of Love and Hate: Let the Gun Speak - John Grit
The Enemies Trilogy - Matthew Bracken
Weapon of Jihad - Karen D. Crumley, James G. Crumley
299 Days - Glen Tate
Castigo Cay - Matthew Bracken
The Gods of Color - Gunnar Sinclaire

By it's nature, prepping anticipates the future.  To me, that often makes reading non-fiction books about future predictions to be condescending and tedious.  I've found that fictional settings allow character development and conflict to develop that an instructional book wouldn't address.

Specifically consider Heavy G's wife in 299 days.  She had her "head in the sand", was in denial about the circumstances, etc.  That's a real issue for many folks.  Adding "get your spouse on board" to a task list found in a howto book, is a lot less helpful than reading a narrative of human interaction.

Yep, all of John Grit's books are great. There are two Feathers on the Wings of Love and Hate books and two Apocalypse Law books. He posted on Amazon a while back that Apocalypse Law 3 is in the hands of his editor and will be out in November.

His Feathers on the Wings of Love and Hate series is about a future America under total Socialism. The population has separated into rural Capitalist/Libertarians and the city people, most in the cities are totally dependent on social programs. The government has been trying to force the "Wild People" farmers to move into the cities and become members of welfare-dependent "Redundant Headcount." They have refused and the government has decided to kill all 35 million of them, as they cannot tolerate anyone living free and independent of government handouts and private property and capitalism have been banned anyway. This sparks a revolution. The Libertarians have no choice but to fight to the death, since the government plans to kill them all anyway. It is very well written and has a lot of survival and guerrilla warfare info in it.

Someone brought up the old motorcycle gang formula. The second book in his Apocalypse Law series does have motorcycles in it (maybe six) but the riders are not members of any motorcycle gang. It's a gang of raiders who go from town to town taking supplies from others, and they have gathered up trucks and pickups to haul the loot off with and a few motorcycles are used for scouting ahead of their caravan. Most of the population is dead, so there are plenty of trucks and motorcycles for the taking, but gas is getting old and running out. Diesel stores longer, but is running out too.

I have read all of his books and will read anything else he offers in the future.

[gloomygus]

I totally despised Dies The Fire.  Hated it with a passion.  Got about a quarter of the way into it and gave up.  Terrible!

[minrlwtr]

Some of the "worst":

- "Patriots".  Yeah, it has some good info, but the writing is terrible.  It's like reading the speeches in Ayn Rand: nobody talks like that.

- "Prepper's Road March": The Mormon jargon threw me off right away.  I found it to be unreadable.

- "Lucifer's Hammer": lots of absolute balderdash.  Seriously, a commune?  I like Niven and the Chaos Manor dude as much as the next guy, but there are 20 prepper/post-apoc books better than "Hammer."

- "Deep Winter / Shatter / Remnant / Distance": it pains me to add these books to this list.  But I must.  Things just "fall into place" too easily for Rick Drummund, the main character, and those around him.  Yes, I still love the story, but great prepper fiction it ain't.  "Lights Out," "77 Days in September," "Castigo Cay", and "Renewal" are WAY better.

What Morman Jargon? I really like Preppers Road March and all the rest of the trilogy. There no religon in them whats so ever

[blademan]

I've only read three "prepper" books. Rawles' two and I'm about to read the third.
And one second after.
   Its pretty ironic that the title of one second after describes perfectly the ammount of time it took me to want to stop reading the book. About one second after starting.
     The first few chapters had me wanting to curl up in a hoodie footie in front of a quietly humming space heater with a cup of earl gay tea.
    This is the absloute worst telling of a good story I have come across in a long time.
   I litterally had to force myself to read it because a friend wanted to talk to me about it.
 The characters were too one dimensional, too black and white.
  There was some good group psychology in it though in how the decisions of the town got made and what kind of laws and regulations they passed as well as their relations with the nearby towns. However, some of the characters' decisions were just unrealistic.
    Like the main character's situation with his diabetic daughter.
 I think he would have actually become desperate enough to become actually dangerous and unstable in his quest to find insulin.
      The entire trial scene with the punks who robbed the nursing home and the looseness of their evidentiary process in convicting and sentencing the second guy. They ended someone's life based on subjective judgements and no actual evidence. Maybe the author's point was to show that things can go wrong and people aren't perfect, but he kinda failed there, it seemed more a cheer for small town justice with no recourse or procedure to it.
   Anyway, I don't want to hijack the thread, if I read something worse than OSA, I will post about it here.

[Chemsoldier]

I've only read three "prepper" books. Rawles' two and I'm about to read the third.
And one second after.
   Its pretty ironic that the title of one second after describes perfectly the ammount of time it took me to want to stop reading the book. About one second after starting.
     The first few chapters had me wanting to curl up in a hoodie footie in front of a quietly humming space heater with a cup of earl gay tea.
    This is the absloute worst telling of a good story I have come across in a long time.
   I litterally had to force myself to read it because a friend wanted to talk to me about it.
 The characters were too one dimensional, too black and white.
  There was some good group psychology in it though in how the decisions of the town got made and what kind of laws and regulations they passed as well as their relations with the nearby towns. However, some of the characters' decisions were just unrealistic.
    Like the main character's situation with his diabetic daughter.
 I think he would have actually become desperate enough to become actually dangerous and unstable in his quest to find insulin.
      The entire trial scene with the punks who robbed the nursing home and the looseness of their evidentiary process in convicting and sentencing the second guy. They ended someone's life based on subjective judgements and no actual evidence. Maybe the author's point was to show that things can go wrong and people aren't perfect, but he kinda failed there, it seemed more a cheer for small town justice with no recourse or procedure to it.
   Anyway, I don't want to hijack the thread, if I read something worse than OSA, I will post about it here.

Stop reading prepper fiction now before its too late.  One Second After is about the most like a normal mass market novel that the prepper community has produced.  Others have been "better" prepper books.  But aside from being horribly depressing at times, it is about the most readable from the standpoint of being like other "real" books.

[FreeLancer]

     The first few chapters had me wanting to curl up in a hoodie footie in front of a quietly humming space heater with a cup of earl gay tea.

It might be time switch to a different tea.....

[blademan]

Well I'm trying to get my hands on 299 days and will see what that's like. G sounds pretty cool on the show and in his posts here and his replies to my messages. So I bet his will be better at least to some degree. And I thought Rawles did a better job in either of his books than One Second After. It was so drab and over religious. Rawles was really bad at this. I mean I don't have a problem with religion in general but these books were just too much and the religion in them was too heavy handed. Comming from a multi religion background myself, I have met people like the characters in these books, and in many ways, I would not want to be in their group or even run across their group in a total collapse situation.
    These guys really are trying and actually doing something good even if their effort seems to fall below a certain standard, I have enjoyed reading them simply because of the information and ideas they have.

[Chemsoldier]

    These guys really are trying and actually doing something good even if their effort seems to fall below a certain standard, I have enjoyed reading them simply because of the information and ideas they have.

...and there you go.  Writers write for a living, most since young adulthood.  They know writing more than any other subject area.  If you look at many successful writers like Tony Hillerman, Dick Francis and Clive Cussler you find that they are successful because they take an area that their life experiences has given them significant knowledge about and coupled that knowledge with writing ability.  Their performance (in their knowledge area) produces much better average work than the "research it for a few month and write a novel" writers.

Most prepper fiction is not written by professional writers*. Amusingly, OSA is actually writter by a professional author who is also at least a prepping minded person.

Ultimately though, you hit on the key point.  Prepper fiction is about information and ideas.  If you want literature go read the work of people who see writing as an art form instead of a way of conveying important information and ideas.

*Which I define as people who write as a full time career (or attempt to) and has had work published by a mainstream press.

[cep89]

The worst one I have read is "Cleveland: an invasion"  Just people running from explosions and shooting other people,  no reason given for the invasion.

Founders, Rawles newest book was just the same story as Patriots with more detail.

299 days by Glen Tate is the best series out there.  Very realistic

[Shaunypoo]

I really enjoyed "One Second After" and have given it to multiple other people who have read it and seen the prepper light, so to speak.  I think it is fast paced with lots of moral ambiguity that makes a good story.  While I enjoyed Rawles "Patriots" for what it was, other than the second rate writing he had no moral ambiguity.  He had good guys and bad guys.  And you knew who they were.

I enjoyed "On the Beach" as well.  Different point of view, but still compelling.

I read prepper fiction because one of my main areas of concern is how people emotionally handle SHTF.  Since I can't currently experience SHTF myself right now to help me emotionally prepare, I read about characters reactions.  Some are unrealistic, but some are spot on.  I use all of them as mind fuel for thoughts on how I would handle certain situations.  I read a lot of books and tend to be critical of punctuation and writing, but as long as it is a solid story with good character and plot development, I can overlook that.

"Dies the Fire" was one of the worst books I have read, period.  Too much luck too often to too many main characters.  And he really likes the Wiccan lifestyle.

[markl32]

I'm actually reading "Island in the Sea of Time" right now and loving it! But "Dies the Fire" didn't impress me in the sample I read, and from the reviews I saw, I thought the Wiccaness would get old for me.

I'll make sure it keep it close at hand

"Islands in the Sea of Time" is a great series.  I liked it better than the Dies the Fire Series.  I especially liked the captain's internal dialog.  This made for unusually good character development in my mind.  I found myself wishing this character was real and that I could somehow track her down and have a beer with her.

The Dies the Fire series goes far away from SHTF and way into the fantasy realm after book three.  It's still good fiction, but it has fully departed the SHTF genera at that point.  By book 7 I just lost intrest in the story line...  I would think that the forst three books would be popular with the TSP crowd though.  And if you can deal with a Black Female Lesbian, than why not a What Female Wiccan? 

Also note the two stories are in the same "Universe".  I don't want to give any spoilers but they are linked. 

[tc556guy]

There have been a few that had grammatical or spelling errors, but I tend to look past those (and wonder who the editor was) but as stories that just bothered me, I put "On the Beach" (yes, a Cold War classic) near the top of that list.  The defeatist attitude was just too much for me to tolerate.  I've read another from that era that was a precursor to Red Dawn (i.e. US invaded) and it was equally defeatist - makes me wonder what was in the water back then.

-N

I've been collecting post-apoc lit since I was a kid ( 40 years give or take). There are general themes/  trends through the decades. You can see where the national mood was based on these trends. On The Beach is a product of its time.

[bigjim71]

for just bad prepper fiction I don't know if anything beats Rawles... Patriots was just painful to read. His characters just suck. They don't act like real people. They don't talk like real people ..... They are some amalgome of the Ubermench perfect (no swearing, drinking, never question there faith). Wow I just hated them.

Survivors was a better book, of coarse you have your obligitory motorcycle gang but I just think it was a better book. Gave me hope for....

Founders, with this he took a step back and it was definatly the "Return of the Jedi" of the seriese.

I just finished book 5 299 days the visitors, did not know Heavy G from the forum is Mr Tate. If you are reading this I have  been very happy with that series, and wait with baited breath for book 6. Now I am reading Lights out, seems good so far.

[backwoods_engineer]

BigJim, in retrospect and after reading it twice, I'd put Book 5 of 299 Days on the list of Worst Prepper Fiction.  It just doesn't advance the storyline, and maybe I just don't care about Grant's ongoing little spat with Todd Whats-His-Name the Loyalist.

[bigjim71]

BigJim, in retrospect and after reading it twice, I'd put Book 5 of 299 Days on the list of Worst Prepper Fiction.  It just doesn't advance the storyline, and maybe I just don't care about Grant's ongoing little spat with Todd Whats-His-Name the Loyalist.

I wee what you are saying, but I have to disagree the book itself wasn't the most exciting book in the series and not allot of practical "prepper" stuff. I think though that it is necessary to move the story along. It is telling the story of how the hero and the community are having to change as the partial collapse becomes the norm. It is also forshadowing things to come as the patriot forces actively start fighting the loyalist forces.

[Oil Lady]

The first few chapters had me wanting to curl up in a hoodie footie in front of a quietly humming space heater with a cup of earl gay tea.

In today's publishing world, a lot of editors and publishers who get presented with an unpublished manuscript (MS) for consideration will only read the first 5 chapters, OR only read the first 20 pages, OR only read the first 5 pages (depends upon genre, MS length, and the general eagerness/laziness of the one reading). He/she will read only as far as he/she feels the need to read to get a sense of the writing competency of the author, the unfolding of the plot, and also the overall tone and execution of the book.  Therefore, today's writers will spend more time overly-polishing the first 5 chapters than any other part of a book.

Yeah, I have repeatedly seen that same syndrome of gee-the-first-few-chapters-were-phenomenal-but-then-after-chapter-five-it-all-just-fell-off-a-cliff.

[mysterion]

I haven't read alot of the new fiction about survival/post-apohalypse scenarios, but I think Earth Abides was just all wrong. I can't believe an entire generation of people would just give up technology and go back to a hunter gatherer type of living and just being too uninterested to learn how to read, use electricity or machinine steel objects.  Almost all fiction in this category is disappointing, even by gifted authors like Heinlein. The two books I eneded up liking the best was Alas, Babylon and Malevil. Patriots was kind of Red Dawn meets the NWO, and I like it in that sense, kind of like one of those feel good B rated movies you watch at a drive in after the main feature is over (When was the last time any of you went  to a drive in theater? The last one I went to was  Armageddon, and that was the last flick that theater ran before it closed for good)

Wolf and Iron started out really interesting, and so did Lucifer's Hammer.They just kind of lost the plot in the middle. The Postman was the same way.  I think that the book The Last Ship had the most potential of being a great work of fiction, and his writing style was outstanding, but then the story just fell short of my expectations, too. Still a good book though. Down to a Sunless Sea was also quite decent, and both of those books are based  on a military unit that survives a nuclear war.

Robert Ing wrote a couple of survival style books that were 3 out of 5 stars lol. That is all the praise I can give them. There are alot of new kindle ebooks with survivalist themes but even though I bought a few of them , I haven't read any of them yet.

[blademan]

OilLady:
   I think this maybe didn't happen in this case. The first few chapters were the hardest for me to get through. The rest of the story was not much better, but the thing is that the first few chapters were so warm and fuzzy and pie in the sky and one dimensional, it was the literary equivelant of drinking liquid sweet and low. I was eager for the freaking pulse to hit finally so the guy could quit gushing about how content he was in his life.
  My gosh, it was a little much. I mean the rest of the book wasn't much better, but at least it had a little more grit to it than the first chapter or so.

[El Rhino]

Rawles' Founders makes Patriots and even Survivors look like literary masterpieces.  I'll admit that Patriots was stacked with a lot of good info and Survivors at least had an entertaining story line.     In Founders it seemed like even Rawles lost interest in the book towards the end with as rushed as some of the big events in the storyline unfolded.   I also think that he decided to lash out against everyone who complains of too much religious material in his books by turning that up a notch in this one.   

Most of his character archetypes (weapons experts with hearts of gold and pockets full of silver that save the day without saying any bad words) make me think that this series is what Don Quixote would be like if it were written by Don Quixote himself. 

[archer]

Rawles' Founders makes Patriots and even Survivors look like literary masterpieces.  I'll admit that Patriots was stacked with a lot of good info and Survivors at least had an entertaining story line.     In Founders it seemed like even Rawles lost interest in the book towards the end with as rushed as some of the big events in the storyline unfolded.   I also think that he decided to lash out against everyone who complains of too much religious material in his books by turning that up a notch in this one.   

Most of his character archetypes (weapons experts with hearts of gold and pockets full of silver that save the day without saying any bad words) make me think that this series is what Don Quixote would be like if it were written by Don Quixote himself. 

i'll make sure i avoid them even more.

[Niccolum]

... I think Earth Abides was just all wrong. I can't believe an entire generation of people would just give up technology and go back to a hunter gatherer type of living and just being too uninterested to learn how to read, use electricity or machinine steel objects.

As one of my favorite novels, I feel compelled to defend it...    Earth Abides isn't nearly in the same vein as a "prepper" novel like Patriots, 299 Days, etc (which are about the only two series I've read in this genre). It was written as a post-apocalyptic novel. It's much more similar to A Canticle for Leibowitz and, to a lesser extent, Alas Babylon. It has a grim post-WWII/Cold War concern about the outright destruction of humanity on a global scale much like Canticle and Alas Babylon.

Given sufficient depopulation like that depicted in Earth Abides, how would mankind preserve electricity, machining, etc? Reading and literacy is probably the only item that I would believe isn't realistic in Steward's world - and even then I think it would take on a "priestly" hue. Few people alive today are as even half skilled as the average farmer, homesteader, or whatever of a 150 years ago. And those people stood on the shoulder of those that came before. That's Jack's whole point with 13skills.com in a small, small way. I work in IT, am fairly good at it, and I couldn't preserve computing technology in a massive collapse of society like Earth Abides depicts because the resources and knowledge capital just isn't there. Few modern industries or skills could survive because the decades and centuries of build-up to have them requires, well, decades and centuries to build up. If you wipe out just about everyone that knew how it worked in one massive wave, you'd be starting from scratch... or maybe at least 16th century Europe or China.

(Spoiler alert if you haven't read Patriots or Survivors) I think the worst prepper novel I've ever read is Survivors. I always enjoyed Patriots even though it was clearly an evolving work and I never found it terribly realistic. But Survivors was just plain awful. You follow one main character through a big portion of the first part of the book on a trek through Europe, he sails off on the boat across the Atlantic, and then ..... just randomly travels through all of Mexico on a horse in a chapter or two and arrives safely?? Are you kidding me? This is the same continent where the people in Patriots couldn't even drive to the next state over while being heavily armed without casualties?? The book also introduces characters that in no way advance the plot (like the lady who stocked seeds) just to talk about some random thing. I didn't even bother with Founders. If someone gave me the book for free or if I (literally) fell over it at the library I might read it. But otherwise, I'm done with Rawles' fiction books.

[Shaunypoo]

My whole point of view on the worst/best books of a given genre is like my viewpoint on women: there is something beautiful about each and every one of them.  Sometime you really have to dig deep to find it, but it is there, and you will be rewarded.  Are some of the books listed above really that bad?  Probably, but in the long run you will be rewarded if you find out for yourself.

I have so many books in the hopper that none of the books listed in this thread are moving to the top of the list.  That being said, if I happen to run along one of them at a bookstore or online for cheap, I will get it and probably read it.

I have read plenty of the books mentioned so far and were less than enamored with many of them, but either a nugget of information or an expression of a viewpoint made the book worth reading.  Besides, you can't truly enjoy the great books without ready a few sh!tty books now and then.

[blademan]

Shauny,
   I understand that very well. That's kind of how I felt about atlas shrugged. In a slightly different way though. Its probably one of my favorite books of any genre, but the first time I read it ( well second, actually, I listened to it the first time.) I had to put it down  and read 3 other long books during it. (I did this in two weeks, I read a lot and quickly) it just went on and on. 1200 pages and didn't really duplicate information or go off on distracting tangents. It was amazing but tiring.

[ag2]

.......  And although not really a "prepper" book, I would say that Unintended Consequences by John Ross is one of the best books I've ever read.  The author is actually qualified to write about his subject. ......

I LOVED this book!!  Here is my opinion.  Although it isn't specific to the prepper genre, I believe it should be required reading for all preppers, attorneys, law enforcement officers, sailors, soldiers and elected officials who swore to defend our Constitution.  It should also be required reading in high school (consider it a novel which weaves in history) and immigration curriculum.  It's been a few years. I need to read it again.

[Smurf Hunter]

I LOVED this book!!  Here is my opinion.  Although it isn't specific to the prepper genre, I believe it should be required reading for all preppers, attorneys, law enforcement officers, sailors, soldiers and elected officials who swore to defend our Constitution.  It should also be required reading in high school (consider it a novel which weaves in history) and immigration curriculum.  It's been a few years. I need to read it again.

Agree. Copies of the print edition are somewhat difficult to find.  With a little leg work digital copies can be found.

[ag2]

I think one of the best is Mathew Bracken's Trilogy and Castigo Cay.  The trilogy is less of a how-to-prep and more of a "watch out!  Here's what's coming if we don't fight tyranny!)  But there's just the right amount of prep with very good story lines and writing.

I would like to hear Jack interview Mr. Bracken.

[Smurf Hunter]

I think one of the best is Mathew Bracken's Trilogy and Castigo Cay.  The trilogy is less of a how-to-prep and more of a "watch out!  Here's what's coming if we don't fight tyranny!)  But there's just the right amount of prep with very good story lines and writing.

I would like to hear Jack interview Mr. Bracken.

+1

I follow the man on twitter and FB.  He's a little hasty with some of his posts (a small amount were proven false after researching), but in general I think he's dialed into the situation at hand.

[ag2]

Sometimes I wonder if folks that we periodically talk about lurk or post in this forum.  I'm sure Bracken, if he does post here, uses an unassuming handle like "smurf hunter".

It's you, isn't it?  smurf hunter is really Bracken.  Back in your sneaking and peeking days as a frogman, you called the bad guys "smurfs" and that's how you created smurf hunter as your handle.  I'm onto you.