A Good Book Review

Enforcing Home - Another Excellent Chapter in the Survivalist Series

I have wrote before about how well written and realistic A. American's Survivalist series was and the latest, book #6 called "Enforcing Home" is no exception. This latest book continues to find Morgan, his military partners improving their situation while faced with threats from armed bandits and the Department of Homeland Security.

While survivalist books by A. American, Joe Nobody, James Wesley Rawles and others are novels since the collapse hasn't happened yet,.....yet,.....you can still learn something. You can see problem sets and ask yourself how you would solve it, what decision you would make. Another way to learn are the survival tips that the authors spread among the story line.

Without giving too much up for those of you who haven't read the book yet, I had five major takeaways from a learning or reinforcement stand point:

Growing food occupied all the characters and/or their separate survival groups. The most successful people in the story line was a couple who had a collapse preexisting green hose and were adept at growing much of their own food supply. S o in a perfect world the survivalist would have a green house, possibly some cleared land for a spring-summer garden, a good supply of non-hybrid seeds, a water source and the skill to grow vegetables.

Feed chickens was the second point. In the story Morgan's group had chickens which gave them a healthy supply of eggs. A way to feed those chickens was described where a bucket with holes was hung up above the chicken coop and a dead animal carcass was put into the bucket. Flies would leave their eggs in the carcass and when they would hatch the maggots would fall out the bottom of buckets onto the ground for the chickens to eat. I never heard of that before.

Preserving eggs. Something I have heard before and reinforced in memory was the technique of coating eggs with mineral oil to preserve them. Having a supply of mineral oil on hand for other things is smart as well. Treats constipation, can be used for burning in oil lamp, even lubing weapons in a pinch.

Prepared for contact with disease ridden people. This is something I had wrote about before, about having personal protection gear and a plan on how to approach, handle or interface with people possibly infected with bad communicable diseases. In that perfect world again, a smart and well prepared survivalist would have a stockpile of antibiotics to treat some of treatable diseases, the knowledge of treatment plans, a stock of personal protective gear, and a plan on what to do with diseased infected suspected contacts or people that have been exposed within your own group.

If you are a prepper and have not yet read the Home novels from A. American (the "A" stands for Angry by the way) then you can pick up series through Amazon.

Surviving Home Replicates Likely Collapse

While I finished the book "Surviving Home" over a month ago I didn't get motivated to write about it until I received notice that the third book "Escaping Home" in this excellent series by A. American was available for pre-order. The first book, "Going Home", was a story about a man who found himself several hundred miles away from his family when EMP shut everything down and chronicled his journey trying to get back to his family and community.

Morgan Carter, the main character in this series, is a prepper, married and has a couple children. He was prepared with his Bug Out or Get Home bag, so he was prepared to walk and survive the 250 miles back to his prepared home.

I found the first book pretty realistic on how I envision the collapse environment with the story of Morgan encountering people who "go ugly early" in their attempts to better themselves and their situation through robbery, depredations and control. I had previously wrote a short review on A. American's first book.

The second book, Surviving Home, took up with the main character, Morgan Carter, back in the community and facing several realistic situations:

An unprepared community. One of the many faults with the suburban or community Bug In plan is that many, if not most, of your neighbors will be unprepared for the collapse. Many of these will be burdens on the few that are prepared. Many will resist any leaders stepping up; Many will turn on you because you have prepared and they have not.

Entitiliest community members. Many neighbors, in both A. American's excellent book and what I believe reality would be, will think that they are owed a share of another's foresight to prep. Surviving Home has some realistic scenarios, and dialog between characters, reverting to immoral behavior when faced with starvation. With that fear to imminent starvation and you have a volcanic situation.

Lack of organization. While many communities will not have an existing or "live in" organized law enforcement entity which could generate a basis for organized security, Surviving Home's story line did, although this character was a weak link for organizing a community security plan which of course would normally include procedures, training, and defensive measures. Not only is a sound security plan a requirement but organizing the community for the long haul which include food, fuel, and material procurement,..... water procurement, filtering, sterilization and storage and even short and long range procurement, reconnaissance and security patrols. A solid leader would have utilized all existing community member skills to the upmost. But then again, I say that "Surviving Home" was realistic and it was.

A. Americans novels also have a twist where the main character's is aided by some ex-soldiers now working for the Military to keep Homeland Security from running amok and turning this country into a facist state.  Good story all will enjoy - look for the lessons. 

We, preppers in general, read Survivalist novels such as the "Going Home, Surviving Home and Escaping Home" as well as the well known series of books written by James Wesley, Rawles for several reasons,......they are entertaining,....we pickup situations and tips that we didn't plan for or even think about. So it helps if they are realistic, as well as entertaining. A. American's series is my favorite survivalist series and this includes the ones by Rawles, Joe Nobody and Crawford.