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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
Urban disaster survival guide
By Alberto Vargas
I wrote a review of the earlier edition of this book, which may be seen here: [...] Relatively little has changed in the new edition, and my earlier review remains valid, so I will not rehash it here.
26 of 30 persons found the following review helpful.
Not concentered enough
By Todd
These books seem to be either for beginners or for more progressed people, and deal more with “everyday” disasters (where you have to survive among a few days and a few weeks) or with long-term disasters where you have to survive for the long-term (like collapse of government). This book is a disappointing mishmash of each of these. So while it has a lot of utile information, I think beginners won’t find this book very utile because it’s not focalized on beginner issues, and it will be very hard to prioritize. Advanced humans won’t want to wade through the basic selective information to get the parts that are more advanced. People preparing for short-term disasters don’t need info on long-term survival, like building trench latrines, and humans preparing for long-term disasters don’t need selective information on storing short-term furnishes of feed and water, etc.
One example – the section on shelter. It addresses 3 choices – a tent (I didn’t need a book for that idea), a geodesic dome (I don’t know what it is and am pretty sure I won’t build one, but this book wouldn’t aid me anyway, since it doesn’t in truth tell you how to make one, altho it did inform me that they use them at Burning Man…) and how to live on the streets in a city or in abandoned buildings (I got this book so I wouldn’t have to live on the streets!). It exclusively omits other shelter solutions, like using things available in nature or that might be salvageable or in your emergency supplies. The Lighting, Power and Heating division has good data on hand crank lanterns and solar, but in some way doesn’t talk about fire making at all, and likewise spends a page on how to make a wind turbine, which plainly isn’t for the beginner or short-term emergency. The divisions on feed and water, on the other hand are good and have good basi principles but don’t deal with long-term feed and water needs.
The division on earthquakes has a good deal of good practical counsel regarding how to prepare for an earthquake (slightly more sophisticated than bolt stuff to the walls, but still mutual sense stuff) and how to handle the prompt aftermath, but there is not much specific selective information on what furnishes you might need that are dissimilar than the generic disaster kit or how your preparation will have to be dissimilar (for example, where ought to you keep your disaster kit, since an earthquake is specially likely to render your house unsafe). So the division is good, but not comprehensive (though evidently not each specific disaster section could be comprehensive). I imagine the divisions on other specific disasters is similar.
Because there’s such a mishmash, you have to be somewhat welleducated to plow through all the selective information to determine what is practical and what isn’t. To put together a “proper” emergency preparedness kit according to this book would in all likelihood cost $10,000 or $15,000 and would require that you have a spare 2 car garage to store it all. There are some good ideas here, but this book alone won’t prepare you for a disaster and can’t be applied to prepare a basic, solid emergency kit unless you already have rather a bit of psychological result of perception learning and reasoning and in truth need more of a reminder and a lot of suggestions.
5 of 5 humans found the following review helpful.
A will have to have for the novice on Emergency Preparedness
By M. Gonney
I’m a finish novice when it comes to Emergency Preparedness and I highly commend this book. For the reviewers who are complaining regarding the book not being competent to focus on selective information for the novice or data for the advanced, I think they are watching it through the faulty lenses. The people who are making the complaint already have the mindest for Emergency Preparedness and the noesis base to distinguish the information. This book is for beginners and novices who are walking around thinking water is always going to be running and atm machines are always going to spit out cash and electricity is a natural right and not a service. This book is a wake up call and I strongly commend each family to buy it immediately!
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