2024 Prepper Fiction Reviews
Updated August 25 2024
I read (or at least try to read) a lot. Always have. I like almost all kinds of books. Research books, Fantasy novels, Sci-Fi, Instruction Manuals, you name it. I guess I never really went for romance novels, but in general, I like all kinds of learning. However, I have a special place in my heart for what I’ll call “disaster” books. Some people call this prepper fiction, or apocalypse novels, or what have you. The general theme is that the world (the world is defined in many ways here) gets destroyed/thrown for a look/in to big trouble and you follow some small group of people as they deal with how to move on with society. And the main character has to use critical thinking to solve a problem. Or lots of them.
Let’s be clear, some books in this genre are not very good. Some are indeed fantastic, but many follow the whole “single ex-military loner handles horrible cultural and civil collapse and gathers a haphazard band of friends and usually some inexplicably overqualified and overly good looking scientist love interest while battling some terrible band of villains to restore some local peace in a world of horrible.” I don’t particularly like those, but admittedly sometimes even those are at least interesting.
I wind up listening to all of/most of these books on Audible. I drive a lot, and I am an auditory learner, so this is good for me. But I anchor heavily on the narrator. If the narrator is good, I’ll listen, because it often (for me) makes up for a mediocre book.
Update: I still listen to a lot of audiobooks, because I have more free time in the car, but I recently wanted to move back towards… well… reading! I HATE reading on an iPad or my phone. Bad for the eyes, and I spend enough time in front of screens all day anyways. I was an old school (think Kindle 1!) Kindle user, and honestly, I got away from it. I recently picked up a Kindle Oasis (I got the 7” Ads free one - I hate ads) however, and I am really liking it! More on how that goes as I get rolling more.
The Best and Worst of Prepper Fiction
I will provide the links to each book, in case you are an audible person as well. I’ll call out what I liked about each one (and what I didn’t). This page will be long and scrolling, so I will include a list here at the top as well. To read the review for each, just scroll down. The review for each is under the Image of the Book Cover.
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller - Standalone Book
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel - Standalone Book (also a TV series)
New Madrid Earthquake - A Disaster Thriller by Bobby Akart - Standalone Book
Alas, Bablyon by Pat Frank - Standalone Book
Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle - Standalone Book
Warday by Whitley Streiber and James Kunetka - Standalone Book
Winter World by AG Riddle - Trilogy
Winter World (The Long Winter Book 1)
The Solar War (The Long Winter Book 2)
The Lost Colony (The Long Winter Book 3)
One Second After by William R. Forstchen - Trilogy plus one more written later:
One Second After (Book 1)
One Year After (Book 2)
The Final Day (Book 3)
Five Years After (Book 4)
Going Home by A. American - First book in an 11 book series (!!)
Yellowstone Hellfire by Bobby Akart - 4 book series
The Earth Abides by George R Stewart - Standalone Book
World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler - 4 book series
The Borrowed World by Franklin Horton - 10 book series (overlaps with other books by Horton as well)
A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by C. A. Fletcher - Standalone Book
The Jakarta Pandemic by Stephen Konkoly - This is sometimes listed as part of a 5 book series, but I think of this first one as separate, and the other 4 as a different set.
The Perseid Collapse by Stephen Konkoly - 4 books in this series, and it follows the timeline and characters from the Jakarta Pandemic.
On The Beach by Nevil Chute- Standalone Book
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen - Can be read as a Standalone, but there are actually FIVE books in the series. People often refer to them as the “Brian Books”.
The Girl with All The Gifts by M.R. Carey - Standalone book with a prequel (The Boy on the Bridge) written later
36 Hours by Bobby Akart - This is the first book in a 6 book series
Patriots by James Wesley Rawles - First book in a 5 part series called “The Coming Collapse”
Getting Out by Ryan Westfield - This is the first book in an 8 book series called “The EMP”.
Locker 9 by Franklin Horton - Part of a 4 part series of books called the Locker 9 Series
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi - Standalone Book (and maybe not exactly prepper fiction)
The Passage by Justin Cronin - Part of a Trilogy (all of them are long) - Also on the “edge” of being prepper but definitely disaster.
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George - I read it as a standalone book, but apparently it is a trilogy!
Lost on a Mountain in Maine by Donn Fendler
The Martian by Andy Weir - Standalone book (also a movie). Maybe more Sci-Fi than Prepper, but has a lot of resourcefulness in it!
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - Standalone book. As with the Martian, this is more Sci-Fi “Space Opera” than prepper, per se, but the way he deals with “thinking about how to deal with hopeless situations” is very prepper-ish.
Hot Zone / Zulu Virus Trilogy by Steven Konkoly (three part series, called the Zulu Virus Trilogy). This is a three part series (short books, so can be thought of as one big one) called (in order) Hot Zone | Kill Box | Firestorm
Breakthrough by Michael C. Grumley - First book in a series of 6 (I read the first 3 of 6).
Burning Hollow: Sunset on America Book 1 by Ryan Schow (This is the first book in the series and there are a bunch. I read the first two.)
NEW Big Sky Fallen by Kevin Craver - First Book in a series by a newcomer to Prepper Fiction
Cascadia Rising (Book 2)
A Scent of New-Mown Hay by John Blackburn
ARk Storm by Bobby Akart - (Book 1 of California Dreamin, but standalone)
Fractured by Bobby Akart - (Book 2 of California Dreamin, but Standalone)
Antarctica Station by A.G. Riddle (standalone book)
Mountain Man Series by Keith C. Blackmore (Books 1-3 but sold as an omnibus) - I also read the “pre-quel” and the short story “The Hospital” (more like a chapter or two), as well as Book 4 “Well Fed”
How High We Go In The Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu (standalone book)
Alone by Megan E. Freeman (standalone teen fiction book)
America Falls by Scott Medbury (long series of Books, Hell Week being the first)
Big Sky Fallen is the first book in the series “The Unraveling”. This book is very interesting to me because it is the first book in a while I didn’t listen to. I read it on Kindle, which was actually fun! This is set in the “today times” (meaning it is in America, and it makes specific references to things that have happened in the recent path (withdrawal from Afghanistan, specific economic troubles, etc - which I very much enjoy as it makes it feel real). The premise is that the US crumbles (which honestly is much more believable than some of the asteroid books I have read), and a group of (quite) prepared individuals meet up in Montana to at first ride out the storm and then later … well… do something about the storm.
I’d call this more of a “real” prepper book, in that it features a list of (likable) characters with military experience, who work together and aren’t fooling around. If you like the stories about how a hapless, slightly overweight dude finds his way and gets tough in the apocalypse and stumbles along, this one isn’t for you. But if you like to think about a real prepper community, and people who know what they are doing, there’s a lot to love here. I really liked the characters, and it certainly doesn’t lack for action. As a child of the 70’s and 80’s I also really enjoyed the clear line between good guys and bad guys in this one.
While I really liked the characters, and it was very fast paced, I didn’t love that the book moved (time wise) at different paces. Maybe I had just gotten used to many books following along with GREAT detail about the three days before and the three days after some very bad event (meteor, comet, EMP, zombies). But this one jumps forward in time with vignettes at different pacing. Some chapters have deep (and excellent) details about the slow/hard life in Montana winters. Others jump forward a year and get to the action. That was a little hard to pace at times.
However, you can easily tell that Mr. Craver has LOTS more story to tell, and has a lot in mind, and that this will be a fun ride. This book is much less “soap opera set in the apocalypse” and much more “how prepared people deal with a collapse.” Less interpersonal relationships, and more details about how to use radios and bring elements of military training in to preparedness. I’d recommend it, but it skews more to the heavy prepper side.
I absolutely LOVED “The Dog Stars” by Peter Heller. Mark Deakins did an excellent job as the narrator, and this is a standalone book (meaning not part of a series). The background is that a man survives an incredibly horrible flu/plague, losing his wife and a lot of hope in the process. The book doesn’t give details, but it is insinuated that something like 99% of the North American Population is wiped out, and perhaps other continents are less impacted. The main character/narrator is a pilot, and retreats to a Colorado private airport where he as a plane, and tries to live a life with his dog an another person who he meets at the airport. It is a sweet and often brutal story that is well written, with strong prose and a good story. Plenty of action, but not an action driven book. It is driven by his thoughts, which are interesting. It is an interesting look at hope, love, and how to move forward when you don’t want to. And what makes a friend. This is not an instruction manual for surviving anything, but it is an EXCELLENT book. This one stuck with me more than the vast majority of the books on this list. The imagery of this book and the plot really stayed with me.
Station Eleven is a book that centers around a specific person (not really about him, but about people that connected with him in some way) who dies on the same night a horrible Flu wipes out most of the world. This book is told from different perspectives, forward and backwards in time. It isn’t linear at all, and has a lot of layers, and different characters. This is less of a “Bad stuff happens and we follow a band of people who have to soldier forward in the apocalypse” book and more of an interesting story that just so happens to have the apocalypse as its theme. If you like reading books because they are fairly well written, and don’t mind if anything is even remotely realistic, this is an ok read. If you are looking for a fast paced thriller that will teach you about what might happen in a real disaster, this is a pretty bad book. This was enjoyable, but had flaws, so I’d rank this sort of in the middle of the books here. Certainly not prepper fantasy at ALL, though. If you like this book, you might also like How High We Go In The Dark (reviewed here also). They aren’t exactly the same, but the interconnecting stories is similar.
Bobby Akart has a bunch of books on this list. He writes fast paced, well researched books with a LOT of adventure. I like how he bounces back and forth between characters to tell the story, and he does a nice job building up to the disaster. Bobby Akart books (like the Yellowstone Volcano ones) always give you lots of science up front, and THEN the disaster. Which I like, because I like learning about the science.
This book taught me about the worst fault in the United States. And no, that isn’t in CA. The New Madrid fault (pronounced Mad-Rid, as opposed to like the city in Spain) had a major quake in the past. In fact, they were the worst quakes in US History, and in 1811 were felt as far away as the White House (from the Mississippi River!) and were so powerful the Mississippi River flowed BACKWARDS for SEVERAL HOURS. No, I didn’t make that up.
Anyway, the book revolves around people in modern day America and what they do when that happens again. Spoiler: It isn’t great. I thought the characters were fairly believable, and of course many of the scenes are overly dramatic and ridiculous, but enjoyable because they were like icing on a cake made of science. I learned a lot listening to this book. But to be clear, the world falls apart REALLY fast in this book, but it is more realistic in that it isn’t the WHOLE world. This book makes me fear earthquakes. Especially ones strong enough to make the Mississippi river flow backwards.
Alas, Babylon was one of my favorites. Maybe not as much because of the story (which was good) but because the writing was good, and the audiobook narrator (Will Patton) is one of my very favorites. I will listen to almost anything he narrates. This book is a little dated (it is from 1959) and deals with the aftermath of nuclear war in a small town (which doesn’t get nuked) in Florida. Of course the main character is ex-army, but it talks a lot about community coming together in a way I think would be fairly realistic. Some people try to take advantage, and some try to get by. There’s also a fair bit of commentary on race in this book, which made it interesting as well. I’d recommend this one. You cannot really say you are a fan of the genre if you haven’t read this book.
Another classic of the genre. Larry Niven is an absolutely fantastic Sci Fi writer, who wrote one of the all time classics: RINGWORLD. If you are a Sci Fi fan and haven’t read that, stop what you are doing and go read it. SO MUCH of modern Sci Fi and video games derive from Niven. Halo is at least partially stolen from Niven’s ringworld.
But I digress. Lucifer’s Hammer takes place in Los Angeles in the mid 1980’s, and centers around a few connected characters (bounces back and forth, and eventually they converge, of course) as a new Comet hurtles toward earth. This book is different from most in that it has equal weight to the buildup to the disaster (spoiler alert, the Comet hits earth, and it is bad) and the science around it, and the aftermath as society grapples with what to do and how to recover. This is a very action filled book (especially in the second half) and there are some fairly wild scenarios, but it is pretty well thought out, and realistic enough. This is a cornerstone of modern disaster books, and I recommend it.
I especially like a couple of the characters, and I like that there’s a big focus on knowledge and problem solving, not just shooting your way out of every problem.
Warday is another quasi-classic. Not on the same level as Alas, Babylon or The Earth Abides, but this one has been around for a while. It tells the story of what happens to America after Russia and the US nuke each other. It is told in a sort of diary format, with the two authors (very “meta”) being journalists after Warday, who are friends and travel around the US and document what the US has become post nuclear war. It bounces back and forth, journal style between the two authors, and they tell their accounts.
This was an “ok” book, but honestly not in my favorites. I don’t love the journalistic style (I prefer a linear story thread) and there was a lot less “prepper” in this book, and more social commentary bout humanity, and how we get along (or don’t). An ok book, but there’s a lot better books on this list. This one just didn’t age as well.
This one is on the edge of “prepper.” It is really more a space/Sci Fi thriller with the Earth’s demise at its core. So I am taking a little bit of liberty here. The Winter World is the first book in the Long Winter Trilogy. The Trilogy is, in order:
Winter World (The Long Winter Book 1)
The Solar War (The Long Winter Book 2)
The Lost Colony (The Long Winter Book 3)
I really like AG Riddle. I LOVED his Atlantis series. Fantastic. So I was willing to read any of his others. Seriously, if you like Sci Fi, read that book series. Excellent.
Anyway, The premise of this book is that Earth is cooling RAPIDLY. Ice is slowly covering the globe, and no one knows why. We send smart people in to space to try to figure it out, and (Spoiler alert) it is Aliens. Harvesting our sun. This book has a LOT happening, and takes some excellent Sci Fi twists and turns. The characters are OK (though a little bit overpowered). I mean, a super genius dude who is the world’s greatest robot engineer who also happens to be a medical Doctor and a super smart Astronaut lady who is in charge of the International Space Station. You aren’t following “normal” people here. But the story is fun, and has some really good Sci Fi twists. Not as good as the Atlantis Gene books though.
I’d say this is likely the most “famous” book on this list. Every prepper has read this book, and it even has a foreword by Newt Gingrich. This book has had a pretty big impact on a lot of people.
This book can be read standalone, but there are actually 4 books in the series. Really it was more of a Trilogy and then he added another one later. So the books are:
One Second After (Book 1)
One Year After (Book 2)
The Final Day (Book 3)
Five Years After (Book 4)
I read them all. The premise is an EMP takes out EVERYTHING electronic. The main character is in a small town in the Carolinas, and (of course) is a very smart ex military guy who cares about his family and is a professor. This book is seen by many as a pretty accurate representation of what would actually happen in a grid down situation. It is scary, too. The town has to band together against outside forces, and the US government and military are not necessarily on your team. Some of it is far fetched (an EMP might not actually do that sort of damage), but the basics are very solid (my opinion). If you are really considering getting prepared, there’s a lot to like (and scare you) about this book. It has a lot of action and is fast paced and a good page turner. You can read this as a Trilogy and skip the last one pretty easily.
“Going Home” is a favorite of the type of prepper that likes the guns and conspiracy parts of things. This is part of an 11 book (!!) series. I only read the first one. The first one was good, but I feel like I kind of got the point, so I went on to other books and figured I’d come back later.
This book is not fantastically well written prose, but it is chock (and I mean chock) full of action. This one is an EMP, and the main character (who is himself a prepper) is stuck a few hundred miles from home (wife and daughter) and he has to hoof it. This book can sort of be thought of as the ultimate guide to a bugout bag. The author (whom I do not know personally) is active on forums and very much researched the pack, and really, really made it realistic. The weights are right, the items are carefully thought out, and Morgan (the main character) basically uses a “real” bag.
I’d go for this one if you really like the action, and are someone who thinks a lot about bugout bags. I actually liked the characters pretty well (Morgan maybe less so than his two traveling companions) and this was enjoyable. But not quite enjoyable enough to make me read the other 10.
Note: I am not gonna list all 11 books. You can see them all by clicking above.
This book is the first in a series of 4 (I read all 4). I like Bobby Akart (the author) and he seems like he does a lot of scientific research, so there’s a LOT about Volcanoes in this book, which I liked learning about. It made me go read a bunch of other science papers about the Yellowstone Caldera. I have also been to Yellowstone a few times, and I liked the part where I knew the locations they are talking about.
The premise here is that an evil corporation is drilling for geothermal energy in Yellowstone and goes a little far, and triggers the Yellowstone Super volcano to erupt. Spoiler alert… this is VERY bad. The main characters are (of course) an extremely handsome and badass Park Ranger from Yellowstone as well as a super good looking but also incredibly smart Volcanologist who is trying to warn the world. I don’t think it is giving anything away to tell you they get together, and try to escape.
The first book is pretty excellent. Tons of suspense and excitement, and lots of interesting stuff. I remember it well, which is a hallmark of a good book for me. The other 3 books are OK, and I read them all because I sort of wanted to know what was going to happen. But they get increasingly far fetched. This book also had some really good cautionary tales about what happens when you let criminals out of jail in a disaster.
The last thing I liked is that parts of this book take place not super far from my house (as in I know where the neighborhood is!) and even references real people, like Gavin Newsom, the governor of California.
I’d recommend this first one, but not the other three books as much. But I am a completionist, so I went for them.
The Earth Abides is probably what I’d consider to be the “original” apocalypse fiction. This book was written in 1949 and centers on the Bay Area of California and a particular man who survives a very sudden and almost completely devastating plague (flu, etc, they never really explain). This book covers the aftermath of that, and how civilization works with only a few people to start over in the ashes of the old world. This is NOT a prepper book. And a lot of it is a little dated (no cell phones, no modern anything… it was the 40’s!). But it is an excellent piece of Sci Fi, and really delves in to what it means to be part of a community and a family. This is more of a piece of important, groundbreaking literature than a fun page turner. This book was very influential, though, and is one of the pillars of the genre.
World Made By Hand is the first in a series of 4 book series. It follows a small town (and particular people in specific) in New York, after an economic collapse grinds the US to Colonial Times, basically. It doesn’t cover much of the “how we got here” and more picks up after it has finished happening. The first few pages of the book detail the last of the electricity dying finally.
This book is for people who would like to imagine what living in a world without electricity (but without the whole violent apocalypse part of having it happen all at once like One Second After). There’s a lot of commentary (through the story) of how people get along, and whatnot. By the 4th book, however, it has become more of a slightly weird soap opera with some mild supernatural stuff thrown in.
There are some good characters in the book, and it was interesting (pro tip… don’t get tetanus if hospitals don’t exist any more). But it was more of a “suspend disbelief” story after a while.
I did, however read them all.
Franklin Horton, the author, has written a LOT of post-apocalyptic books. And I mean a LOT. This book is the first in what eventually became a series of 10 (I think… they might still be going). Franklin Horton has written a few book series that overlap, as well. For example, he has another Series called the “Mad Mick” series, which talks about a character that shows up in this book a little, and in another series (the Girl from Locker 9) as well. So it is all the same disaster, and he uses that to tell a whole bunch of stories, which is kind of cool.
The premise of this is that a few coworkers from a small town in Virginia are on a work trip a couple hundred miles away, and an EMP (terrorist this time) attack wipes out the power grid, and plunges the world in to chaos. Jim (the main character) has to try to get home to his family. Like the books by A. American, the main character is a prepper, and acts like it. Lots of talk about bugout bags, and how to get home. Lots and lots of bad stuff happens to Jim on the way home, and a lot of it is pretty far fetched. I know that parts of rural Virginia get pretty remote, but it is hard to believe he encountered EVERY crazy person in the world while walking home.
This book, despite being a little far fetched, does hold a special place in my heart, though. And that is because of the beginning of the book. Jim is staying in a hotel, and he thinks to himself he should fill up the car before going to bed. He decides not to, and it always stuck with me that if he had a full tank, literally the whole 10 book series wouldn’t have happened. He would have just driven home and been with his family. No gun battles with crazy people.
I only read the first two of this series.
A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World is a lovely, standalone book. It follows characters (one main one) in a what once was Great Britain (starts on an island) in a world where the disaster is that for some reason, people just stopped being able to have children. Humanity kind of grinds to a halt, and VERY few people can still have kids. They don’t really explain why that happened, at all, and the book takes place entirely after that.
But this is a nicely written book, with good pacing, and some good, fairly realistic action and thoughtfulness. I will beg you NOT to read anything else about this book, rather just read it. There’s a lot in this book that is excellent if you read it without knowing much about the plot beforehand.
So go read it. You’ll like it.
This book is the first in what eventually became a 5 book series. But this first one can stand alone. The premise of this one (the other books take place years later and have the same people, but different disaster) is that Alex Fletcher is an ex Iraq war vet who is very smart, and a big time family man. He lives in East Coast Suburbia, but is a pretty prepared dude. A super duper nasty Flu virus is sweeping across the world and causing a collapse, and he has to figure out how to keep his family safe through a brutal winter.
The whole book takes place in Alex’s nice, suburban neighborhood, and is actually almost eerily accurate for a lot of the early days of Coronavirus. Yes, there are lots of bad guys to fight, and the writing isn’t gonna with a Pulitzer prize, but the characters are good (if a little overpowered) and the story is interesting. It is a very good cautionary tale, and pretty educational. There are a lot of Alex’s neighbors who you really don’t want to be.
I’d say the first book is the best of the series.
This book picks up a few years after Alex Fletcher and his family survive the Jakarta Pandemic. The new disaster is a really (really) creative Chinese attack on America. That’s actually the best part of the book. The way they describe it is VERY original, and super scary, because it explains how a government could wipe out the US without ever really having to take the blame.
Anyway, Alex is forced to go extract his son from college. Hilarity does not ensue. This book has a whole lot of military style gunfights and tactics, etc. The author is ex military and it shows. Lots of details about that.
I read all 4 books in the series (5 if you could Jakarta) and they were all interesting. Dragged a little in the later books, but I always like to finish!
I read this book in middle school, and aside from My Side of The Mountain, and Hatchet, I think this was the first real apocalypse book I ever read. This is considered a modern classic and was written in 1963. It is set in Australia in the 60’s, and the premise is that the world nukes itself and the fallout hasn’t gotten to Australia yet, so people have to decide how to live out their final days.
Not much here for the prepper, but a heck of a good book in my opinion. I should probably re-read this one.
I love the book Hatchet. I own multiple copies of this book, and I would assume many of you read this book as kids. This is classified as Young Adult fiction, I believe, and track the story of Brian, a young boy whose parents have divorced as he flies to visit his dad in far northern Canada. The plane crashes when the pilot has a heart attack, and Brian is stuck alone in the wilderness with basically nothing but (you guessed it) a hatchet. A really nice book for a rainy afternoon. Quick, pretty well written, and an excellent tale.
If you haven’t read this, do yourself a favor. If you have, and it has been a few decades? I think you will be welcomed back to Brian’s story.
Note that Paulsen actually wrote 4 more of these in the Hatchet series. I didn’t know that until I had my son read Hatchet, and I looked and saw there were more! Go check out the rest of the Hatchet Series.
If you (or your kid) liked Hatchet, I can also recommend Alone by Megan Freeman (reviewed on this page as well). Also excellent.
The Girl with All the Gifts is an excellent book. I read it as a standalone, and is one of the few books on this list I actually read in hardback (as opposed to Audiobook format). I brought this to a family beach vacation, and devoured it. The premise is that the world has been turned in to flesh eating (and superfast) zombies of a sort by a fungus (Cordyceps) and most people infected are mindless, but a small few (including the main character of the book) are otherwise normal little kids… Except for the overwhelming desire to bite and kill humans, of course.
This book follows the main character, Melanie, through… the world? Not sure how to exactly describe how we follow her. But the story has a superb arc, and it is quite well written. I haven’t yet read the prequel (The Boy on the Bridge), but it is sitting on my nightstand.
If you have scrolled through this list, you will see I have read several series from Bobby Akart. Volcanoes in Yellowstone, Earthquakes on the New Madrid Fault and… EMP from SUNSPOTS!
This book follows the Ryman family as they try to deal with a massive Solar Flare that takes out the US power grid and plunges the world in to the dark ages. The first book is pretty good, as it has all the science (I like that part) about Sun Spots. It is a believable family from suburbia trying to stick together in a tough situation. There’s all the classic hallmarks. Rushing to be prepared, the daughter rising to the occasion, foolish neighbors, and a death defying run for the safety of a friend’s ranch.
After the first book (I read 5 and simply couldn’t handle one more at the end) they go downhill, and it turns more in to a military soap opera of the good guys fighting the bad guys. The characters are OK, and it is a sufficiently fun read, but a lot of it is pretty far fetched. I really can’t believe that everyone in rural towns turns in to a horrible person, ruled by a corrupt Sheriff and his mom. The first book is worth the price of admission for sure. If you like the characters, keep going. Basically, read the first one for sure. But decide how far you wanna go before doing the whole batch.
Let me start by saying a lot of people in the more heavy duty sides of prepping like this book. I liked some parts of it, but overall, it wasn’t my favorite. Patriots is a part of a 5 book series called “Coming Collapse” in which a group of people (couples, no kids, conveniently) all band together an build a prepper ranch in Idaho, and dedicate themselves to living a prepper lifestyle in Idaho. They are therefore ready to bugout there from Chicago when the financial collapse topples the US government and lawlessness rules the land. This book is REALLY in to details. Minute details about every rifle, and handgun, and supply they have. And they have a LOT.
They, of course, basically love the apocalypse and fight off every overblown bad guy (Think Cannibal Biker gangs… seriously) and eventually take on the actual government when it comes back to help. This book had a lot of disingenuous religious details (I am not very religious, but I don’t think if you all say you are Christians and you pray all the time, you should just be killing everyone) and is perhaps the least “likely” (Yes, I know that the Yellowstone Supervolcano blowing up is also not very likely) scenario. The financial collapse was cheesy at best, and laughable in reality. I only read the first one. Again, lots of people dig these, but they weren’t really for me.
This book is part of an 8 book series called “The EMP” that follows a man named Max who is a bit of a paranoid prepper (though he is an office type guy). He trains, has food, and a trusty Jeep, and some cool backpacks and stuff. When the EMP strikes, he thinks he is ready, and bugs out. He meets others along the way, they band together against a bunch of fully ridiculous stuff and hilarity does not frequently ensue.
Like many of these types of books in the genre, the first book is pretty good, and then they fall off. For this series, however, I read ALL 8. Max is not a hardened military dude, but he is tough, and (of course) really good with a Glock. This one gets some points for having some good strong female characters, which I liked. Georgia was a good character. A divorced woman who likes deer hunting and wants to take care of and raise her kids in the middle of some horrible situations.
This book is told in a bouncing back and forth between different characters, and Westfield frequently does that thing where an author introduced new bad guys and then tells their story while you know they will collide with poor old Max and his gang.
Not gonna win a Pulitzer, but entertaining enough.
Locker 9 is the first book in a series of 4 by Franklin Horton. He is the author of a few other series, many of which overlap (meaning some of the characters actually meet, and the timelines intersect, and it is all the same disaster). The concept of this book is that the college age girl Grace has a dad who is (meta!) a prepper author, who has trained his daughter to survive. He is always trying to plan for everything, and he sends her off to college with a badass diesel chevy truck and a key around her neck with instructions to go to a GPS coordinate if anything bad ever happens.
Well, bad stuff happens (an actually very believable and well designed terror plot, which is sort of the best part of the book, because it feels like it is VERY plausible, if perhaps a little racist and sterotypical) and she goes to what turns out to be a storage unit her dad stocked for her. And then she’s in a race to get home as the world falls apart.
I read the whole series, and though there are some realistic parts, all Franklin Horton books make super sure that the main character is ALWAYS in the path of a weirdly competent criminal with nothing to lose who is a full blown psychopath. Or maybe a few of them. Gotta sprinkle them throughout each book, right? Throw in a Senator trying to steal the good guy compound, and a bunch of ridiculously overqualified invincible snipers… you know… normal stuff.
Fun read, and I really liked the first book, because it focused on a college girl trying to get home. The rest was more of a para-military soap opera. Your Mileage May Vary, but I liked this one enough to read them all, at least.
Ok, I am stretching here. This is NOT a prepper book. But it won the Nebula and the Hugo, so it rocks. This book takes place in the future, when the world has fallen apart due to overuse, and pollution, and genetically engineering everything. It is a dystopian future that isn’t a barren wasteland, rather a polluted, crowded place, where the most valuable thing is original heirloom seeds that haven’t been modified and don’t have horrible diseases. Corporations have run amok, and the world is a pretty crazy place with high sea levels, and unbearable heat, etc. This is really, really solid Sci Fi, and has some amazing writing and characters. I put this on the list because it makes you think about what the world will REALLY be like in a few hundred years if we keep going. There’s a little Blade Runner in here, a little Dune, and a LOT of originality. I strongly recommend this book. I was always a William Gibson fan, and this is in that vein.
This book (Trilogy) is not really a prepper book, but more of a Sci Fi disaster book. I’ll warn you that you will likely need to commit to all three, and they are long. I listened to all of these on multiple, back to back cross country drives (I drove from Chicago to CA in a Uhaul TWICE in three months… by myself…never doing THAT again). They are way above average for this list (not quite a solid gold classic, but thoughtful, and fairly well written).
They also attempted to make a TV series out of this, and failed (I didn’t watch it when it came out, but critics didn’t like it, and I can’t see a TV show ever doing this book justice). So skip that part.
The book follows a girl and a Federal Agent who get tangled in to a military experiment with… well.. Vampires. It will not shock you to know that goes SUPER DUPER DUPER badly. This book sprawles forward and back across literally a thousand years, and uses a lot of different literary mechanisms, and follows lots of different characters. The world does NOT do well, but there’s a whole lot of interesting twists and turns, and there is plenty of dystopia to go around. I was pretty exhausted when I finished these. They are nearly fantasy level heavy. If you have ever read one of the super heavy (meaning SUPER complex plot spanning generations and millenia) fantasy series like The totally insane 10 book series The Malazan Book of the Fallen, you know what I mean. And for the record, unless you know what you are doing, leave the Malazan books alone. They are next. level.
My Side of the Mountain is more of a young adult book. Super quick read, and very enjoyable. It is about a boy (Sam) who hates his life in New York, and basically decides he’s gonna go live in the woods by himself. This book was written in 1959, and I guess maybe that sort of thing happened in the 50’s? It is hard to believe there wouldn’t be tons of people searching for a missing kid these days, but once you suspend that disbelief, this is a fun book. Sam is not really a prepper, per se, but he figures out how to live much more off the land. If you relied on this book as a way to learn life skills about living in the woods alone with no preparation, you would almost definitely die. But it is very fun, and if you like selt reliance, you owe it to yourself to read it.
This same author also wrote Julie of the Wolves (you guessed it! About a girl who runs away and lives with Wolves in Alaska) which is another classic about kids that are way more durable than it seems today’s children are.
Lost on a Mountain in Maine is not actually a fiction book. It is the true story of a boy (Donn Fendler) who gets separated from his hiking mates on Katahdin in Maine, and has to find his way out of the woods alone. This is a 100% true story, and I grew up with this, because I grew up in Maine, and have hiked the places he was, and spent a lot of time in the area. My family has a “camp” near there (no electricity, on a lake near Katahdin) and this is part of local history. Donn Fendler even used to come around to schools when I was a kid and talk to students.
This is a classic, but honestly pretty dated. This is the only book on this list I keep an autographed copy of. How’s THAT for an endorsement?
BTW, you can read about how 12 year old Donn escaped in many articles and This Donn Fendler Wikipedia Article.
The Martian, by Andy Weir is a very well known book (they made a movie with Matt Damon, so the book MUST be good, right?) about an astronaut who gets stuck on Mars and has to figure out how to stay alive and get back to earth. Not an easy task. This is a very well written, and well researched book with LOTS of accurate science and NASA-tech. This is at the edge of Prepper, and not Post Apocalyptic, but it is a heck of a good book, and I recommend it!
Project Hail Mary is (just like the book above, The Martian) by Andy Weir, and it is… incredible. This is one of those books I recommend to people I don’t know super well (meaning I don’t know their exact tastes) who ask for a good book. If you don’t like this book, we probably can’t be good friend. Seriously… just read it.
This book covers a man who wakes up in strange surroundings, with no memory. He appears to be in some sort of spaceship, and can remember how to DO all kinds of things, but doesn’t know his name, etc. The book unfolds in present, and flashbacks (as he gets his memory back, slowly) as he tries to complete a mission in deep space to save all of humanity from… well… space algae that is eating the sun, basically. I don’t think that ruins it or gives anything away. LOTS of science in this book. The main reason I put it on this list is that the main character has a lot of VERY stressful situations, and the author goes deep in to how to think about how to think in a situation like that. Which is basically prepping in a nutshell. You can sort of think of this book as prepping if all of humanity prepped together, and sent a prepped spaceship to survive and fix a problem… wrapped in a space opera. Also, it is a ridiculously good book. Honestly, I liked it better than the Martian. Which is high praise, because that was a hell of a book too.
Side note: I read this as an audiobook. Which I STRONGLY recommend for this one. For a few reasons (which I won’t tell you, because it would ruin part of the book), LISTENING to this book is superior to reading it. Trust me.
Update: My son read this after hearing how much I liked it, and he reports it is his favorite book ever. Then my wife read it (she hates sci fi) and was riveted. This is a heck of a good book.
Hot Zone (the first book in the Zulu Virus Chronicles) can really be thought of as a regular book chopped in to three parts. They (Hot Zone | Kill Box | FireStorm) aren’t really separate books, and you should just read all three. Steven Konkoly is an author I have read a bunch, and I like his stuff. As with many of the other books of his, the Zulu Virus is best (for me) in the beginning. The slow simmer of a virus getting out of hand… having to figure out what to do as the world falls apart…. hiding from the neighbors… that kind of thing. I recommend starting with different Konkoly books first, though. Try Jakarta Pandemic.
Breakthrough is the first book in a series of books (I am not finished with the whole set, but I am almost done with the third one). In many ways, the first one is sort of standalone (with a few cliffhangers) and after that, they blend together a bit more. I like when authors do that, because I can read the first one, leave satisfied, and decide if I want to spend more time with the characters!
I was recommended this book by a friend (Greg) who read this page, and asked if I had read any Grumley. The idea behind this book is that some smart scientists figure out how to talk to dolphins. They quickly realize that there is a lot going on, and dolphins are much smarter than they thought. At the same time, the world appears to be losing water (instead of sea level rise) and there are issues with the ice shelf. All of this is being investigated by two VERY smart (and tough) Navy investigators, and it turns out that maybe the world is in some trouble. I don’t want to spoil it, but I enjoyed this book and series. It isn’t gonna win awards, but there are real moments of excitement, the narrator does great work, and the story moves along well. It does have the impossibly smart, handsome, and lethal ex-Navy Seal character who falls in love with the very beautiful genius marine biologist lady. But hey, it makes it fun!
I’d recommend this one. Your call if you want to read ALL the books, but the first one or two are lots of fun.
Burning Hollow is the first book I have read by Ryan Schow, and so far so good! It is part of a series (and honestly, the book in no way wraps up any of the story plot at the end of book 1, so I’d probably advise this only if you are looking for a series. I listened to this in audio book format, and the “voice of the apocalypse” Kevin Pierce does his usual excellent job. There really is something about his voice!
The idea behind this book is that it takes place today (and honestly, this book is VERY current, and refers to very recent events like the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the conflict in Ukraine, and inflation) in mostly Tennessee. It is voiced in the “omniscient narrator” style, but bounced between different people. Often, the main character(s) but sometimes even a short lived (and yes, some people don’t live long) character, which is actually a nice touch.
The disaster is a slow grinding economic one, followed by an EMP (which actually happens towards the end of the book) and an attack on America. The main character(s) center around two families that live in Burning Hollow (a small town) TN. To say they don’t get along is an understatement, and honestly a lot of this book is more like a telenovela or soap opera than a disaster book. But there’s plenty of collapse to go around. And this book does not lack for action. So far (book 1) it is more good old fashioned redneck violence as opposed to highly trained navy seal stuff. I plan to read the rest, because I enjoyed the first one!
Update: I read the second one as well, and it was very similar to the first. Pretty well written, but more of an action soap opera than a hardcore
Perhaps the greatest cover for a disaster loving person such as myself. You really wanna know the story!
A Scent of New-Mown hay is a classic! This book was written in 1958 (it was Blackburn’s first book, and he went on to write like 30 others) and it isn’t totally a prepper book, to be fair. It is sort of a mystery book, that turns in to a horror book, that turns in to an action book. It is well written, and I really enjoyed it. It is very much “of a time”. Written about the 50’s, post WW2 in England, it revolves around a mystery in Russia, an international scandal, and (spoiler alert… even though it is on the cover) a Fungal Plague and… Nazis. It really has it all! Honestly, I think this book could have been a couple hundred pages longer, and gone in to even more depth. But I really enjoyed this one.
I’ll also note that I bought this book in hardcopy (the cover alone is worth it), but the pages were old and yellowed (I bought a 1970’s copy) so I bought it on Kindle and read it there. I had a good time reading Kevin Craver’s Big Sky Fallen on Kindle, so I did my second book, and it was great!
If you want the original book, check on eBay. There are usually a bunch of copies! That’s where I bought the one in the photo above.
This isn’t even close to the first book I have read by Bobby Akart, and there’s a reason. He writes good, fun books! What I like about all of his books is what I liked about this one too. He researches (for real, and a LOT) real scientific/disaster scenarios, and lays all that out up front, and THEN destroys the world, and tells about the disaster through the eyes of some person (or set of people) “on the ground.” This makes for an action book inside of a science book, inside an apocalypse story, which I like.
Akart is a good writer, and moves you along. Good foreshadowing, good character development (even though there certainly is plot armor…. the main characters of the book aren’t gonna die, and you sort of know it), and a fast paced, fun book.
This particular story is about California (this is the first in a series about Califronia, that are all standalone, called “California Dreamin” - I haven’t read the others yet), and what might happen if there was an ARk storm. As someone who lives in CA, I know that this is a real scenario. Of course Akart dials up the intensity, and makes everything a perfect storm, but the basics are still true. If feet of rain fell in a very short period of time on top of heavy snowpack, you’d have yourself a real problem. Biblical rains come to Southern CA (Pasadena area) and… well…. it doesn’t go well.
I’d recommend this one! Very fun, and not super long. I’ll also add this gets bonus points for not including any budding love interests, and no GI Joe character who is handsome and incredible. Yes, there’s a firefighter, but he’s old. And yes, the main characters are in good shape, but they are still basically normal people.
It pains me to say this, because I generally like Bobby Akart books (Yellowstone Hellfire, and the New Madrid Quake, etc), and I thought I’d LOVE this because I live in CA and this is all about earthquakes. However, this book was terrible. I struggled to finish it, and complained to my wife while doing it.
The concept of the book is that there’s a handsome, single, buff, Seismologist working for the USGS named Mac Atwood. He is, of course, brash and not by the book (complete with houseboat living, lots of shirt off action, and even a Jeep Rubicon thrown in for good measure). He’s supposed to be sort of a boyish charm genius, but he is written as more of a jerk. He is always in a rush, and ignoring policies and whatnot. Anyway, he (groan) meets the super sexy love of his life in a Female Volcanologist, and they set out to show how the disaster from the ARK storm is bad news for earthquakes, and we are all doomed. And there are helicopters, and submarines and other silliness.
The whole thing is silly, and lacks a lot of the cool science that I like from Akart. Well, maybe there was science, but it was told through obnoxious characters I didn’t really root for, and set against a fully absurd love story. I’ll also say that I listened to this on audiobook, and the narrator was horrible. His voice was OK, but the WAY he read each sentence was sing-songy and didn’t convey any of the story well. And he did that annoying thing where he read the female parts in a fake falsetto that made the women (who are supposed to be highly accomplished scientists) seem like complete idiots.
So yeah, terrible. I struggled to get through this. Not a recommend.
OK, I admit it. I LOVE A.G. Riddle books. I can’t give a ton of details on the plot, because (like all A.G. Riddle books) there’s plenty of twists. But this is a different flavor of disaster book (Antarctica is not a fun place). There were a fair number of scientific leaps (some were like… really?) but if you suspend disbelief, this is a GREAT book. If you are reading this review, and you have already read Riddle’s other books (The Atlantis Gene was my fave, but Winter World was good too), then just read this one. Good book. I listened to it on Audible, and the narrator was good for this one.
I. LOVED. THIS. BOOK. OK, some of my love of this likely stems from the fact I read it right after a terrible book, so this was so refreshing. But it is a good, action filled story about flawed people, who are fundamentally good, and the narrator was EXCELLENT. RC Bray really brought this book alive. If you like Audiobooks, strongly consider this.
This book is about a man (Gus) who isn’t really special, but he has survived the Zombie apocalypse (nearly everyone is a zombie) and is hiding out in a house on a mountain. He scavenges in the city, and has been doing this for a couple years post collapse. This books (the first one… still working on book 2) takes you through what happens in his days, and how he struggles with loneliness, and severe depression driven alcoholism. And then what happens when he meets other people. It is very good, with lots of “ooooh… that’s foreshadowing, and something is gonna happen with that!” hints. I also really liked that it takes place in Nova Scotia (I grew up in Maine so I know that area of the maritimes). The setting is good, but also, because it is Canada, there are very few guns. Shotguns at most. So no one has some crazy arsenal to deal with Zombies. It is mostly baseball bats. Which makes things grittier. I also admit to loving calling a winter hat a “toque”. :). I recommend this one. Classic zombie.
Full disclosure… there is a LOT of swearing in this book. This is OK for me, because I listen to audiobooks while driving alone. But I wouldn’t have played this book with my kids in the car. No way.
UPDATE: I finally finished all three, and the last one is a barnburner. Sort of stops even being so much about Zombies, and is a real “character arcs crash in to each other” action book. And I’ll tell you, Blackmore has easily two of the most evil characters (developed characters, not just faceless bad guys) I have ever read. Not likable folks, but VERY exciting to read. Of all the people in all of the books I would not want to meet in a post-apocalype world, Blackmore holds position 1 and 2. I am not sure of the order. But those two characters are bad news.
Second Update: I read the “Pre-Quel” as well. It covers the origins of the zombie plague. It follows Gus in the beginning, and is very good. Read them in the original order, though. Prequel after the first 3. But the prequel is excellent.
Third Update (August 2024): I sort of missed Gus and the Zombies, and I really loooove RC Bray’s voice, so I went back and read “The Hospital” as well as book 4 “Well Fed”. The Hospital is a super duper short story about the very early days of the zombie plague, when Gus goes to a Hospital to get medicine. Things go… badly. Honestly, I could have skipped this one. It is sort of needlessly shocking. Well Fed, however was a pretty great action book. As with many of these types of series, the books sort of have to keep ratcheting up the craziness to outdo the previous ones. I’ll say the “bad guys” in Book 3 are by far the most terrifying, but the bad guys in book 4 are not people you want to hang out with. Book 4 is not really even a Zombie book any more, because by the 4th year, most of the zombies are dead or can’t walk any more. But there sure is a lot of action in that part of Canada. Some good twists and turns, and RC Bray’s voice brings everyone to life. Only read this one if you just like the action and the soap opera drama of a series. I had fun with it, though.
How High We Go In The Dark is a little hard to explain. It isn’t a prepper book so much as an apocalypse book. If you liked Station Eleven, you’ll like this one. I read this on recommendation from my friend Lauren. We were talking about “disaster” books, and she recommended this.
It is written as a different set of characters each chapter, that all connect somehow to tell the overarching story. It starts out with a woman finding a neanderthal girl frozen in Siberia (thawed from Global Warming) and a virus long dormant in the dead body infecting a lot of the world, and killing many, many people slowly. The book follows what the earth does to try to cope, adapt and find humanity. To explain the whole thing would have spoilers, but I’ll say that the first few chapters of this book are intense. Intense meaning “lots of emotion”. I listened as an audiobook, and each character (chapter) is read by a different person. And the voice acting was excellent. In places, because the narrators are narrating a VERY sad situation, their voices crack with emotion. The book is not all doom and gloom, though. There are lots of uplifting and hopeful parts. But the part where so many children are suffering and dying slowly of the “Arctic Plague” that humanity builds giant theme parks for the kids where the final roller coaster is so fast it kills the children in a way they can’t feel it is… A LOT. I have kids, and that was rough. But overall, I’d rate this book highly. It will certainly be one of those that sticks with me.
If you liked this, try Station Eleven as well. Different in many ways, but the way the story intertwines is similarly lovely. I reviewed that one elsewhere on this page.
This is a very well written, and creative book. It was a recommendation from my sister in law Joyce, who is a published author with kids, so she knows what she is doing. Interestingly, I bought this both in hard copy and on Audible, and I’ll explain. This books is written is sort of a “stream of consciousness” crossed with a diary of sorts. It is told from the point of view (and thought process) of a roughly 12 year old girl who is… well.. Alone. Completely alone. I believe that the impact of the story was made greater by the narrator in the audiobook. She did a GREAT job of channeling the fear and confusion and stress of Maddy (the main character). I did read some parts of it the old fashioned way to see how it was, but I found myself missing the audiobook.
This book is hardly a prepper manual. She doesn’t really do anything crazy, and most of the book is an exploration of loneliness and thoughts about family and belonging. But it was well written and enjoyable. I’ll also say that this book gave me a greater appreciation of poetry. There’s a part of the book where the girl goes to the library and explores (she is alone for a LONG time), and her thoughts on poetry were pretty compelling. Can’t say I learn about poetry from very many disaster books! I’d recommend this one, and it is quick.
America Falls is really more of a huge long book chopped up in to smaller books. So it didn’t really make a ton of sense to buy one book at a time. I just got the “omnibus”. But there are 12 books in the series. I have completed the first one and most of the second one as of this review. And to be clear, when I say they flow together, I mean literally one chapter ends, and then they say “this is the end of book one” and then the first chapter of the second book literally just continues with no recap.
I was excited to read America Falls, because it centers around a kid (he’s about 13) named Isaac. He isn’t a supernatural soldier, or anything. Mostly a normal kid with a lot of toughness. I like that, especially after liking “Alone” (see other review). The idea of the book is that there’s a bad flu (spoiler, it is engineered, but you figure that out pretty quickly in the book) that kills adults but not kids, and kids have to fend for themselves against not just the environment, but against other obstacles. It isn’t horribly written, but it is probably middle of the pack compared to a lot on this list. The narrator (I like audio books) is acceptable (he’s no RC Bray, but that might not be fair) and the book is quite action packed. I actually think the author would have done himself some favors by drawing out the thought process a little more for characters, as opposed to making it “skip to the action” a lot, but it is a fun read. It has a lot of original elements, and has a lot of drama because of the way the “Bad guys” are a government that is not the US government. And I liked the characters. Overall not a bad book, and better than lots on this list, but I wouldn’t read this one first. I’ll update once I make it a little further.