Let's be clear. I am a classic little leftie and this book was not written for me in particular. But I loved it. It's so entertaining and funny and I actually learned so much from Piven, Borgenicht, and Dave Holder, the latter of whom "served in the British Army for 21 years as a Combat Engineer and Mountain Leader, traveling the world to hostile or otherwise challenging locations."

Embedded among the actual useful tips about scary situations were hilarious bits like "Do not wear a utility belt. A heavy-duty belt with a sheathed buck knife and bear spray may tip others off that you're a prepper. Zip ties are scary." Or "Never ever show off your prepper pantry, safe room, or bunker. Preppers tend to believe they are smarter than the average person, so staying silent may be challenging." I absolutely love how it balanced the knife edge of taking itself extremely seriously and not seriously AT ALL.

The Worst-Case Scenario series has done it again. With a focus on the apocalypse and its many scenarios, the book provides humorous, satirical, and almost realistic methods on how to survive. Much of the advice is repeated from previous series which was a little bit of a let down, however, it still makes for a great read for someone who maybe wants to take their survival seriously and with a grain of salt.

There were so many of these books back in the day, and rather fun they were too – so it was a touch of a surprise to see this was credited as a new book and not a post-coronasniffles rewrite. But this is back on form, and a book perfectly able to steer us through any further nastiness towards the utopia we've so far always failed to construct.

Yes, here is advice on shopping for your six month stay in an underground bunker without alerting the neighbours (and décor tips for it, too). Here is what to grab and go with, how to make that go into another country, how to joyride in a UFO if needed, and so much more. Because let's face it, whether it's a tsunami, a nuclear strike or zombie onrush, one of these days you will need to know how to whittle something to hunt with.

OK, some of it is plain daft – a guess at the colour of the arming switch in an alien spacecraft to blast them back from whence they came. OK, some of it is USA-only (by admission, f'instance the eating grubs bit, and guidance to uranium in your new cave abode). Some of it can be just a basic extrapolation from what we really ought to be doing anyway – hygiene, always getting savvy about exit routes from large buildings, learning what tear gas does to you when Paris police decide they don't want to let you in to watch the footie… And some of it is so outre yet obviously so viable you just have to laugh – how to don a bear's carcass for warmth, and who to eat first springs to mind there.

So yes, echt survivalist guide material to hopefully farcical scenarios – well, as I say, we'd all think that about more of these books if we were in 2019, that it was farcical. But we're not, and it isn't, and we know how things can go down. This is handy for an entertaining browse and for when we don't know how deep the things going down are going to get, but want to be savvy just in case. A health-maintaining as well as healthy four stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for free access to this e-ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

A very enjoyable book with real-world application, perhaps not expecting a true apocalypse, but helpful information nonetheless. Leaves one feeling ready for the unexpected and eager to examine current states of preparedness.

Very disappointed with this one. I have been a fan of these books since I was a kid and still have the worst case school survival book from it's first publishing.
This one just felt very American-centric, very middle-class and almost rehashed from other books.
Although the illustrations were as good and as cheeky as ever I do think that they could have covered more options than just the US, after all the pandemic happened everywhere, and maybe offered options for different budgets.

If you’re worried about flying a captured UFO, or dealing with stray dinosaurs or Neanderthals, then this is the book for you. It does include a few more mundane basic survival tips, but they often raised as many questions as they resolved.

For example, there was a picture of an underground bunker with a ladder down into it, and a dog depicted as lying on a mat within it. Er… how do you get a dog down the ladder? And then there was a suggestion that a dog can be a useful sentry… as long as it doesn’t give your position away by barking. Er… so how do you stop a dog barking when it hears something? Is there some kind of pre-training that the dog needs to go through?

Actually pre-training and pre-preparing is probably something worth thinking about for those worried about potential disasters, but there seemed to be relatively little about that in the book. Its all very well thinking about flying captured UFOs, but what about making sure that people can drive a manual and an automatic car. Its surprising how many people struggle when they encounter a different type of car. Should serious preppers be building up practical skills like that? Maybe they should also be playing flight simulator games too (?).

Some preppers swear by hunkering down in bunkers for a few months, but others laud the idea of going and sailing off shore for a few months in a blue water yacht designed for being off-grid (as long as Tsunamis are not a threat). But sail options weren’t discussed in the book, so the contents seemed a bit narrowly focused in places.

In other places the advice also seemed potentially contradictory. There were warnings about not lighting fires during the day, as it can give your position away. And then under communications there were instructions on how to use smoke signals…

Yes there were useful tips about how to get water, and food in the wild. And, apparently, if a group is about to start eating each other, its better to start by eating a stranger or an evil person (!).

By the end of the book the reader might be wondering whether this is a real book for survival, or a joke book for laughs (?). One of the warnings at the front disclaimed the completeness, safety and accuracy of the information contained in the book. So, perhaps that says it all? Personally, I’d rather have preferred the book to be either more humorous (with less survival information) or more focused on survival skills (and less trying to be funny).

My library doesn’t have all that much when it comes to survival books but this was an interesting read. The author considered the essentials, what the body needs to intake (food/water per day), the cheapest way to make a bunker, a very in depth guide on survival. I have read a few other survival books but this one seems to have better explanations and even has a variety of options to choose from when it comes to deciding on the most cost effective way to make the most out of a situation.