Since there are no real life Surviving the Collapse scenarios, other than short term disaster type situations and perhaps wilderness survival circumstances, we are regulated to reading fictional accounts of TEOTEAWKI/SHTF.
I read them these Post Collapse - Survival books as they serve a good purpose to the Survival Preparing community to present us with situations and examples for us to think about, learn from, plan for, ultimately prepare for if they are good, valid lessons.
In that vein, I ordered and recently finished the post apocalypse book "One – by Conrad Williams".
This book starts with an event, left identified, but similar to a nuclear holocaust or maybe even a meteor strike which find the main character Richard Jane barely surviving his deep sea diving job and intent on getting to London to find his 5 year old son and estranged wife.
This novel about post apocalypse in England is more of a tale of human suffering, both physical and emotional, with very little lessons to be learned or to be wargamed by today’s Survivor Preppers, other than to just prepare.
I had to struggle to get through the book and half way through, without so much as a tag line or date, the novel shifts to 10 years in the future with Richard still searching for his son and people eating bits and scraps of what has been left....until a crop of Zombie like, flesh eating creatures (called Skinners) start to appear and become a large threat.
This may good a decent novel for those you who like to read Sci-Fi type Monster stories, but not for the serious Survival Prepper trying to embed himself into a survival situation for lessons learned and wargaming problems presented. This book is like The Road, where the only lesson is the lesson to prepare well in the first place....maybe that's the lesson and I just couldn't see.
