Survival book and mindset

[Combat Controller]

Anyone read it? I was thinking it might be interesting but I also think it might not tell me anything new.

Corollary to the discussion;

I have noticed since Katrina that EDC, preparedness, firearms, survival etc have gone mainstream. I think this is a good thing personally. Any thoughts?

[Windy Wilson]

Hasn't it gone mainstream in a sort of "dotty Uncle" fashion? "That crazy guy is a prepper, he's saving everything thinking the end of the world is coming."

Then there's that guy who made the news saying he and his subscribers planned to become looters in the event of SHTF.

[Aesop]

Not yet.
Being a bookaholic, I have a collection of just about all the actual survival manuals and most of the published books, on the off chance someone has thought up something new.
It remains an off chance, so I doubt there's anything here but chicken broth (water tiptoed through by a chicken at some point).



[Update]: I got all the way to Point 2 before my Bullshit Detector pinged on specious conclusions from illusory "data".

In the past two decades Illinois has had about 50 percent more twisters than Alabama but far fewer fatalities. The discrepancy can be explained, in part, by a study in the journal Science, which found that Alabama residents believed their fate was controlled by God, not by them. The people of Illinois, meanwhile, were more inclined to have confidence in their own abilities and to take action.

Yes, Cupcake, but the fatalities have to do with what and who the tornado hits, not how they feel about it just before the car lands on their head.
The response, OTOH has a helluva lot more to do with the fact that the tornados in Illinois aren't hitting Chicago, just vast swaths of corn- wheat-, and soy-fields, whereas the ones in Alabama hit small farms and small towns (with a regrettable tendency to find trailerparks). If a twister went through the Southside of Chicago, the fatalities would be enormous, the average citywide IQ would increase afterwards, and those displaced by the trauma would go into full-on post-Katrina "where's the Guv'mint with my cellphone, bottled water, and a new house" pissing and moaning, followed by looting, in about 4 seconds, whereas in Alabama that sort of thing would only last about 4 seconds. So maybe you want to start comparing Alabama to Nawlins, (or it's city-mouse cousin, Chicongo) instead of to vast hinterlands of nothing but crops.
Or maybe just Google the pics of Mississippi River headless-chicken flooding response in St. Louis, versus farmers in Cornland building massive dykes just around their houses and barns, and doing just fine. Then tell me which ones believed in God and took control of their own destinies afterwards.

And this one in Point 8:

A study at University College London showed that the city’s cab drivers possessed unusually large hippocampi, the part of the brain that makes mental maps of our surroundings. The fact that London has very strict requirements for cab drivers forced them to create good mental maps, which caused their hippocampi to grow.

Or only people who had unusually large hippocampi before ever setting foot in a cab had the qualifications to pass the London cabbie's test and succeed at the job. Not having covered this wee scientific methodological fact makes a tiny difference.
Knowing which one is in fact true is the difference between actual science, and junk science. Not having checked the size of hippocampi on people before they became cabbies begs the whole question. It's like trying to establish a geometric plane with only one known point.

...


Got to the end. The summary on this from me would be "Okay kids, hold hands, hug your neighbors, and sing cheerful songs". I could make counter-arguments to most of his points {In fact, I did}, and some of the rest are fodder for the Duh!Channel on cable. I didn't see anything that would increase my chances of surviving anything but this article, which is wooly-headed, poorly-sourced, pop-psychology buzzword-laded babblegack and pretty mind-fluff masquerading as something serious. Which accords well with NatGeo's corporate ethics since at least 1970. If I were trapped with the author in a survival situation, I think the best reaction would be to carve him into steaks and bait, so that at least one of us would make it.
YMMV.



Corollary answer:
It is a net wash. More normal folks are starting to think long-term and self-sufficiently, which never hurts once a crisis occurs.
But the popular impression of survivalists and preppers is the goobers on Doomsday Preppers, (brought to us by...NatGeo!) who unfailingly inhabit the extreme left-edge of the bell curve on anything except "Propensity For Becoming A Circus Sideshow Freak or Rodeo Clown In Everyday Life" (apologies to any actual rodeo clowns), where they are the extreme right side of the curve.
It has made it easier to find some items without needing to "know a guy" or scouring every surplus store from L.A. to the Appalachians to find something. But it's also brought shyster junk-merchandisers and con-men out like bees to honey and moths to a Texas Aggie bonfire, while driving prices up on both good stuff and junk, across the board.
If I were emperor, everybody would just STHU about what they're doing, the merchandisers would simply enjoy the marketplace and sell their wares without screwing up a good thing, and the rule afterwards would be to leave everybody alone that didn't want any help, and shuttle the Stupid People to the most uncomfortable and annoying shelters imaginable with military chowhall and prison leftovers, and use them as labor to clear the roads of rubble and debris, until they learned that preparation beats handouts.

[Jered]

Then there's that guy who made the news saying he and his subscribers planned to become looters in the event of SHTF.

He hasn't heard of, "You loot, we shoot."

[Windy Wilson]

Then there's that guy who made the news saying he and his subscribers planned to become looters in the event of SHTF.

He hasn't heard of, "You loot, we shoot."

That's my policy.

[Kommander]

Don't worry, the guy in question has a full suit of birdshot proof armor. Nothing can stop him!

[Weetabix]

Anyone read it? I was thinking it might be interesting but I also think it might not tell me anything new.

Corollary to the discussion;

I have noticed since Katrina that EDC, preparedness, firearms, survival etc have gone mainstream. I think this is a good thing personally. Any thoughts?

Looks more like an article/blog post than a book. I didn't see any links to buy a book. That said, I don't think it will tell you anything new. For me, I think it's good to review things like that occasionally. I tend to live most of the points he made, and Aesop's excoriations aside, I thought it reminded me of some good points.

Re the corollary - I think it is a good thing. On the whole, the more stable people there are about in an emergency, the less mass a mob can achieve. There will be deterrents to the mob, and the better things should be all around.

[SoupOrMan]

Anyone read it? I was thinking it might be interesting but I also think it might not tell me anything new.

Corollary to the discussion;

I have noticed since Katrina that EDC, preparedness, firearms, survival etc have gone mainstream. I think this is a good thing personally. Any thoughts?

It's not really mainstream until you see a line called "L.L. Bean Tactical."

I'm glad that emergency preparedness is more and more common now than it was when I was in high school. Then again, my mom & dad's house in Middle of Nowhere, Illinois, had a tornado roll right down the street in front of it when I was 3. That tornado and an ice storm that wrecked central Illinois when I was 4 made me leery of not having an emergency plan that lasted at least a few weeks. I don't worry so much about the total breakdown of society as we know it as I do tornadoes, blizzards, ice storms, floods and earthquakes... or things that have been known to regularly affect my part of the world. Society may break down at the time of such a disaster, but it will be restored in short order one way or another. I'm glad to see more people taking it seriously, though.

[308Mike]

A little while back, I picked up a small (but very thick) book titled: SAS Survival Guide (384 pages, at $7.99). The cover also says there's an iPhone App now available. One of the VERY FIRST things the author mentions (in The Essentials) is the proper mental attitude.



I picked it up to compliment my laminated survival cards I got decades ago while I was a crew member on Marine CH-46's.

[Aesop]

The major difference being that last book is the pocket edition of John "Lofty" Wiseman's classic SAS Survival guide, and the mental attitudes he's talking about actually have some bearing on actual survival.