Top 20 Survival Preparedness Books
The following list of survival preparedness related books are the top twenty as defined by the most popular that have linked through Modern Survival Blog on Amazon.com during 2012.
The survival related books that people are buying coupled with their rankings may pique your interest. You may even want to pick up one or two for your own reference…
If you have some of your own favorites that aren’t on this list, add the title(s) in a comment at the end for others to see too!
1. Encyclopedia of Country Living, 10th Edition
2. Basic Butchering of Livestock & Game
3. SAS Survival Handbook, Revised Edition
4. U.S. Air Force Survival Handbook
5. Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness
7. Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills
8. The Doom and Bloom(tm) Survival Medicine Handbook
9. Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables
11. All New Square Foot Gardening
12. How To Survive the End of the World As We Know It
13. One Second After
14. Red Cross First Aid & Safety Handbook
15. Emergency Food Storage and Survival Handbook
16. Trapper’s Bible: Traps, Snares & Pathguards
17. Mini Farming: Self Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre
18. Guide to Canning, Freezing, Curing and Smoking Meat, Fish & Game
19. Prepper’s Pocket Guide: 101 Easy Things
20. Field Guide to Medicinal Plants
I would add Nuclear War Survival Skills by Cresson Kearny, especially given the implicit dangers of the unstable spent fuel storage tank at the reactor in Fukushima.
Got a few in hardcopy, a few more in pdfs. Been meaning to get the Doom & Bloom Survival Medicine Handbook, so ordered it from amazon using your link, plus a couple other items. You won’t be able to retire off the commission or anything, but you’re a daily read – so thank you.
I’d add Making the Best of Basics, James Talmage Stevens. My copy is about 13 years old now. Maybe Edible Wild Plants from the Peterson Field Guide series too.
Thanks ‘justajoe’, every penny helps towards keeping the lights on, and I hope that the suggestions do help some folks here and there. I don’t have Making the Best of Basics yet, but with your suggestion I may look into it. Edible Wild Plants is a good one too, as you mentioned.
Thanks for the daily read…
@Ken; Yeah, I’m a book junkie as much as I’m a flashlight slut. Got at least 13 of these and probably more that I don’t know about, although I try to at least skim every book that I buy. Have filled up two 5 shelf, 4′ bookcases, can’t have enough hard copy references for SHTF. “Making the Best of Basics” is a very good book. On the edible plants, I think that a local course on wild edibles, by someone of skill, would be better than the books themselves, although I love the reference point. The problem that I have seen with wild edible books is that authors tend to use line drawings due to the expense of color pictures of enough quality to be useful. I can’t function with line drawings of plants that if you make a mistake in identifying, have the potential of killing you. If you don’t have a HARD COPY library, you run the risk of not having the knowledge you will desperately need in a survival situation. Survive well. Enjoy.
I didn’t even make the cut for the top 20?
I was having a pretty good day until I read this list…LOL
It is a good list though. Obviously, I am partial to a few other titles that aren’t included – but you can’t go wrong with any of the above.
The list simply reflects what the readers have been purchasing lately by way of our Amazon outlets – and shouldn’t (doesn’t) reflect on the merits of any other good books out there (of which there are many). The Joe Nobody books have high marks on reader reviews at Amazon. I’ve recently purchased and am reading Holding Your Ground.
Ken – I hope you enjoy the book. I realize my work isn’t for everyone, but couldn’t help but post a wisecrack.
I do enjoy the blog here and have learned much from it.
My best to you and yours sir.
Joe
I know you were joking, but if it makes you feel any better, I bought your book!
@Joe Nobody.
I found two of your books (Holding your Ground & Standing Their Ground) worthwhile for different reasons. Thanks for writing them!
Be well.
I have all 4 of your previous books, and good thing I came across your post here: it reminded me to check again, and I’ve just ordered part 2 of “Holding their own”.
Thank you very much for your books.
I really hope to see more tactical preparedness books from you.
There are so many books on survival related to wilderness, food, medicine, etc., but your are the only books that I know which teach how to survive the inevitable violence.
Apparently, the list of books in this article is good, and I have most of them, but I would not hesitate to add 2 or 3 of your books to the Top-20 list.
By the way, Urban Survival by David Morris would definitely make the list, too.
I just don’t understand how canning food can possibly more important than self-defense.
Obviously, some people (if those are really the best-selling books on Amazon) believe that they will be able to eat lots of good food, and their towns or cities around them will just die out of starvation… Yeah, right.
My priorities are:
1. Self-defense. I have a family and 2 kids. We have bullet-proof vests and gas masks. My loved ones must live, even if it’s hell outside the house. They will live. Period.
2. Water and food.
3. Emergency medicine and training.
We don’t have gold or silver. If we were millionaires, we’d probably worry about “investments”, but – not an issue. I’d rather buy another bag of rice from Costco or a pack of ammo than an ounce of metal that I can neither eat not shoot.
I digress…
Thank you very much for your books, Sir!
They are in MY list.
@angrycitizen; Some of us are rural citizens and as such are “in place” as far as BOing, so canning is a major concern for preservation of garden food in the absence of refrigeration. You sound as if you are an urbanite and even as such, you still might find canning useful. If you lose all power everything in your freezer could be salvaged by canning, so it does have its place. If you had 200#s of meat and vegetables, and a couple hundred pint jars, you could can those vittles in 10-16 hours and save them, if you have the supplies and know-how. If TSHTF and you bugged out, you have to go somewhere, and if it lasted for a year or two, how are you going to eat? Everyone’s top 20 is different according to their situation as there are MANY facets to survival. The farther you are from the metro areas the less survival becomes a tactical exercise, which is why I don’t live in a metro area even though I have almost 40 years of tactical training. Survive well. Enjoy.
Thank you all for the kind words.
I own 4 of the books in the above list myself. It’s a good list.
Prepper/Self-reliance books are like pizza, rifles and music – you ask any 10 people to list the top 20 and you will get at least 11 answers.
A tip-of-the-hat to Ken for having the guts to post the list. Now, if he really was a brave man he would post a list of the 20 best firearms for preppers…talk about starting a riot…LOL
@Joe Nobody; Well, Ken has graciously allowed me to post the “Top 4 Firearms for TSHTF” or something like that, last spring. It wasn’t too bad. I figured I’d get a lot of “hate comments” for the weapons left out, but it turned out to not be too bad. The top 20 would be too easy IMHO. Now, four…yeah that was hard, cuz I love’em all. Appreciate your writing and comments. Survive well. Enjoy.
As we read your list, we wondered why so many of these books were HOW TO. We wondered why so many of us place so much faith in our abilities to use our hands to make our world what we see it as.
We have all of your books in the list…we have studied ALL of the books in the list during the past 18 years…we have used much of the knowledge that is contained therein, but after we read DEEP SURVIVAL
by Laurence Gonzales we realized we had wasted alot of valuable time.
After reading that book and pondering its justifications We realized that it is not what we have or even the knowledge we possess, but the steadfast resolve to survive that is the key to life…IF you do nothing in the remaining time that we have, I strongly suggest that your next book is the one that will forever change the way you look at survival…and will forever change your perspective of life and surviving the days that lie ahead.
@iamdlogan; I read that book some years back. I would suggest, politely, that you didn’t waste a lot of valuable time. While I think that the book should be required reading, it just promotes an attitude that a lot of people already have, they just don’t articulate it well, which is to survive at all cost. If you ask anyone that could be considered a “survivalist” in the most specific form of the word, I think most (even Gonzales) would rather that you DID have all the knowledge and truly useful tools, in addition to the attitude. While I teach a different aspect of survival in my gun classes, I teach the same thing. One of my overhead class slides is a frog in the mouth of an egret (stork) trying to swallow him and the frog has his hands wrapped tightly around the egret’s neck, with the caption “never, ever give up”. And, so it is, that IS what survival is, without the tools and gadgets. Deciding to survive, OR not having enough sense to give up, is what allows most people to survive, just putting one foot in front of the other and not quitting. It is, contradictorially, brains or ignorance over brawn!!! Either way will work, although it is best if it isn’t an accident. I asked my son when he graduated from Ranger school if it was hard? With a smile on his face he looked me in the eye and said “No! As long as you don’t mind pain, being sleepy, tired, wet, cold and hungry, it’s easy!” I too suggest that folks read the book, but don’t throw out all your good work (the baby) with the bathwater, just because you see the light. Lots of people without the correct attitude will survive, just cuz they have the “stuff” to. Even more though, will survive, even though they don’t have the “stuff” and only have the attitude, they will prevail. It’s just easier with the stuff, just keep your perspective. Survive well. Enjoy.
Oh! Just one more thought for Joe NOBODY! The answer to your question about weapons is…the best weapon is the one you have with you, and the second one, is the one you can hit what you aim at with.