As you know, I watch many of the survival themed forums, particularly the fiction sections as they are one of my favorite genres.
There are some new stories I recently started reading which I have to share with as many others as I think they will find them as exciting as I do.
The first one is on the Survivalist Boards under Books, Movies and Stories and is titled Going Home. This story follows a normal businessman from Florida caught 200 miles from home after an EMP burst takes out all modern electronics including cars. Our hero, though more prepared than most as he has a good Get Home Bag and some supplies, still has to deal with death at each turn as society comes unraveled. The author not only writes well, he posts regularly, as in an updated chapter once or twice a day! As one reader remarked, you will probably want to keep the story open on your browser and reload Going Home frequently throughout the day.
Another is the Union Creek Journal. This story is done as a series of blog postings as told by a survivor in the year 2015 after the American economy has collapsed. Our main character has gathered his family together at a farm in the middle of Nebraska and has managed to produce enough food and fuel to get by. However, as the cities empty, gangs and outlaws start to work their way out to the hinterlands in search of supplies. Unlike similarly themed stories, Union Creek Journal is well written, researched and realistic. This story is not a never ending laundry list of tools and equipment to buy and the characters, even the bad guys, are fleshed out and seemingly as normal as you and me. Please be sure to start at the bottom of the page as the chapters are in blog format and published as newest chapter on top.
I found another neat story on the WhenSHTF forum under Scenarios and Stories and entitled Boy - Story. This follows a young man making his way home, like Going Home, after an EMP burst. Unfortunately, the author has take a hiatus for the past month and no new chapters have been published. Still, the first part is very good and has some good lessons on what to do when you are faced with an emergency far from home and have no supplies to get started with.
Showing posts with label teotwawki fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teotwawki fiction. Show all posts
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Thursday, March 12, 2009
SHTF: SHTF Fiction Online
We all love reading end of the world fiction, right? Thanks to the Internet, there is a wealth of entertaining and free stories available online for any and all to read.
Look around and you may find the next "Lights Out
" or "Deep Winter
" out there.
The trick is finding the best sites for SHTF fiction. There are many sites which are no longer maintained and feature older works. Most of the sites out there feature original works but also include personal survival stories ("I was lost in the woods..") as well as reading suggestions and movies.
Please note: There is a problem with many authors as they tend to write part time and when the mood strikes them (and when work and home allow!), so some stories are incomplete.
Here are the places I find the best SHTF stories.
SHTFiction
OK, this site is mine and has a few short stories in progress, most of which are finished, but all which are not getting enough feedback or criticism to move faster. Please visit and leave a comment.
Note: A Change of Major is my latest story and is nearly complete.
TimeBomb 2000 - Member Stories
This is where Deep Winter, Shattered, We Interrupt This Program and so many other great stories got their start.
Lately, there have not been as many quality entries, but all of the past stories, with the exception of TSherry's work, have been maintained for reading.
The Preparedness Site
This was the old Fallout Shelter 653 website now redone in 2008. This site features the original work of Jerry D Young, probably the most prolific SHTF fiction writer out there, as well as other works.
Preparing for the end of the world? Click Here!
The Survivalist Boards
One of my favorite sites to visit. The stories here are first rate and are updated regularly. There are a couple of authors who routinely start stories and never finish them, but that is common with this genre.
However, there are some great stories which will keep you riveted to your seat. Check out Montani Semper Liberi. Gripping story!
AR15.Com
Affectionately known as ARFCOM, the Essential Survival Guides and Fiction section of the forum has some great stories.
Since this site is primarily about the AR15 weapon, nearly every story features that particular rifle prominently.
Best picks - Darkest Part of Day I and II. How in the world the author "fast45" can write something of this quality part time is beyond me.
Survival Monkey
Not so many stories, but several made their start here. Worth perusing for new titles.
Frugal Squirrels
Was one of the oldest and greatest. This is where Lights Out started and Gary Ott (Tired Old Man) left his mark. Now, it has been taken down and is no longer available but searching the internet for archived stories may prove useful.
There are other sites which I come across from time to time, but these are a good place to start if you are new to SHTF fiction.
Happy reading!
Advice for the day:
Rain barrels are a great way to save water for home and plant use. Use the down spout of your rain gutters and place an old trash can underneath. It is best to put a piece of screen over the top to keep out leaves and trash and to keep mosquitoes from breeding. There are plenty of "How To" online. Google it.
Get Food Insurance Now - Mountain House Freeze-Dried Food
Look around and you may find the next "Lights Out
" or "Deep Winter" out there. The trick is finding the best sites for SHTF fiction. There are many sites which are no longer maintained and feature older works. Most of the sites out there feature original works but also include personal survival stories ("I was lost in the woods..") as well as reading suggestions and movies.
Please note: There is a problem with many authors as they tend to write part time and when the mood strikes them (and when work and home allow!), so some stories are incomplete.
Here are the places I find the best SHTF stories.
SHTFiction
OK, this site is mine and has a few short stories in progress, most of which are finished, but all which are not getting enough feedback or criticism to move faster. Please visit and leave a comment.
Note: A Change of Major is my latest story and is nearly complete.
TimeBomb 2000 - Member Stories
This is where Deep Winter, Shattered, We Interrupt This Program and so many other great stories got their start.
Lately, there have not been as many quality entries, but all of the past stories, with the exception of TSherry's work, have been maintained for reading.
The Preparedness Site
This was the old Fallout Shelter 653 website now redone in 2008. This site features the original work of Jerry D Young, probably the most prolific SHTF fiction writer out there, as well as other works.
Preparing for the end of the world? Click Here!
The Survivalist Boards
One of my favorite sites to visit. The stories here are first rate and are updated regularly. There are a couple of authors who routinely start stories and never finish them, but that is common with this genre.
However, there are some great stories which will keep you riveted to your seat. Check out Montani Semper Liberi. Gripping story!
AR15.Com
Affectionately known as ARFCOM, the Essential Survival Guides and Fiction section of the forum has some great stories.
Since this site is primarily about the AR15 weapon, nearly every story features that particular rifle prominently.
Best picks - Darkest Part of Day I and II. How in the world the author "fast45" can write something of this quality part time is beyond me.
Survival Monkey
Not so many stories, but several made their start here. Worth perusing for new titles.
Frugal Squirrels
Was one of the oldest and greatest. This is where Lights Out started and Gary Ott (Tired Old Man) left his mark. Now, it has been taken down and is no longer available but searching the internet for archived stories may prove useful.
There are other sites which I come across from time to time, but these are a good place to start if you are new to SHTF fiction.
Happy reading!
Advice for the day:
Rain barrels are a great way to save water for home and plant use. Use the down spout of your rain gutters and place an old trash can underneath. It is best to put a piece of screen over the top to keep out leaves and trash and to keep mosquitoes from breeding. There are plenty of "How To" online. Google it.
Get Food Insurance Now - Mountain House Freeze-Dried Food
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
SHTF: SHTF/Survival Movies On YouTube
I read in a forum recently about how hard it was to find a copy of a certain doomer movie at the video store or on Amazon. This is no longer a problem thanks to YouTube.
Here is a good selection of some fine survivalist films available at YouTube.
Damnation Alley!
Omega Man!
No Blade Of Grass! (very rare)
Red Dawn!
The Day After!
Threads (parts of it)
Night of the Comet!
That should be enough to keep you entertained while waiting for a sequel to "Lights Out" or "Deep Winter"!
Advice for the day:
Frugal means packing a sack lunch for work.
Cheap means eating lunch at a restaurant and not leaving a tip.
Here is a good selection of some fine survivalist films available at YouTube.
Damnation Alley!
Omega Man!
No Blade Of Grass! (very rare)
Red Dawn!
The Day After!
Threads (parts of it)
Night of the Comet!
That should be enough to keep you entertained while waiting for a sequel to "Lights Out" or "Deep Winter"!
Advice for the day:
Frugal means packing a sack lunch for work.
Cheap means eating lunch at a restaurant and not leaving a tip.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
SHTF: The Road
Unless you have been under a rock or in your bunker for the past two years, you have heard of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Forget that it is an Oprah book club book, whatever, rather that it is a masterpiece of literature.
The Road describes a world where everything, all life, people, animals, plants, are dying off after a cataclysmic event. (Although the book does not say, to me it is obvious an extinction event, such as a massive meteorite storm or comet strike has taken place. Other reviewers love to pontificate, incorrectly, that the the story describes "nuclear winter" after a man-made nuclear war).
Amongst this ruin, we have a man and his son, both unnamed, traveling across this blasted and cold land moving south where they hope there is warmer temperatures and food.
The story is about survival, but it is more about love and keeping hope in the darkest of times. Something we here understand and appreciate all too well.
Heavy handedness aside, let's get down to practicality. If you have read The Road, you probably thought what I did - "How could I have survived in that situation?"
As I read The Road, I figured out these few lessons:
- Be prepared - duh. But really prepared with food for several years, ways to grow more and preserve it in adverse conditions, to have a retreat well off the beaten path and obscure from passers by and have plenty of ammo for your weapon.
With that in mind, is there anyway anyone could survive that cold desolate world described in The Road? I'd like to think there is, after all, there were communes and survivors who had not yet degenerated into cannibalism and despicable acts.
To get started..
Don't be a refugee - Lesson one. The Man and Boy are wandering with all their worldly possessions. Around every corner is death and destruction waiting for them. Rather than walking to death, we know to have a retreat ready before the day happens.
Retreat location is everything - we don't know how the disaster took place, but we do know from The Road that pretty much everything above ground was affected. So having an underground shelter would be advantageous. Further, the shelter should not be too far north (colder), near an earthquake zone (falling asteroids could trigger a quake) or near the sea (flooding). So somewhere in the southwest or lower Plain states would be nice.
Our shelter must be over a deep aquifer for our well to go. Something with water for years and unaffected by the elements. So a well is mandatory and having the pump run on wind or another renewable power source is mandatory
Next, our shelter must be large, very large to house what we are going to stock it with.
Food,food,food - the characters in The Road are starving most of the book. We will need to stock our shelter not for a few months, but for years. That means the some sort of list of foods and schedule of consumption:
Year one, two - canned and packaged food.
Year three - long term storage food such as grain, rice, beans, powdered milk, honey, cooking oil.
Year four through seven - more long term grain, powdered milk, honey and oil. Retort foods such as Emergency Essentials, Meals-Ready-To-Eat for variety and as a treat.
Year eight and on - Underground food production garden with grow lights and hydroponics. Continued use of grains. Small scale animal production such as pygmy goats and chickens.
That was my estimate, so I went to the food calculator and entered in my data. Here is what I got..
First, I figured in seven years worth of food with four big people and one little person consuming - so that (7 x 4) + (7 x 1) x the estimated annual amounts.
That would mean
Grains - 9436lbs
Fats (oils, etc) - 413lbs
Beans - 1848lbs
Sugars - 1883lbs
Milk - 2359lbs
Plus a bunch of cooking essentials like baking powder, yeast, salt, etc.
Using this same calculator, I would increase the number of years I plan to stay in the shelter and stock accordingly.
It is a lot to consider, but think about the core food, grain. Only 10K lbs would feed five people for 7 years.
So the shelter has to be huge. I figure that I would have to buy a truckload of grain at a time, although I think a grain truck carries about 20,000 lbs so one would be enough. Just having a place to store it would be a chore.
With food and water covered for our post-The Road world, we need a few other essentials.
Power - Solar is out and the electric grid is down. The wind still blows and wind power may be are only option. We have to keep the wind mills running in all the dust and ash, and discovery will always be a problem. But if the windmills are running outside and our shelter is underground hidden from view, other refugees and bandits will pass them by hopefully and move on.
The windmills would store their power in deep cycle batteries and would power cooking, heating and lights.
The other option would be to have several thousand gallons of propane stored underground around my bunker. It could be used for cooking, heating and powering a generator.
Wood and coal fire would be out as the smoke would have to be expelled and that would attract others.
Washing, toilets and personal hygiene - all I wanted to do when I was reading The Road was the desire to take a shower. Having wash facilities would be crucial as would be toilets. The waste would have to be used for fertilizer in the growth rooms for vegetables and fruit productions.
Water from the bath/shower would be reused for watering the plants. Waste from the animals would be used for earthworm production and fertilizer.
What else would we need? Clothing, including changing sizes for children as they grow. Shoes too.
Vitamins as our diet becomes progressively more limited. Medicine as the chance of minor infections spreading becomes a real issue in our closed bunker environment. Having a sun lamp or tanning bed for artificial sunlight and vitamin D production would help too.
I would want to have at least four or five families in the shelter. We would probably be down there, with very limited exposure to the outside world for 7-10 years judging from the book. At that time, most of the die off would have unfortunately happened and then we could wait for the world to hopefully heal itself.
Could you survive the world of The Road? Most likely not based upon what I read. But thinking about solutions to problems is what we should do and do often. However, some survival situations are simply too big to grasp and plan for.
The Road describes a world where everything, all life, people, animals, plants, are dying off after a cataclysmic event. (Although the book does not say, to me it is obvious an extinction event, such as a massive meteorite storm or comet strike has taken place. Other reviewers love to pontificate, incorrectly, that the the story describes "nuclear winter" after a man-made nuclear war).
Amongst this ruin, we have a man and his son, both unnamed, traveling across this blasted and cold land moving south where they hope there is warmer temperatures and food.
The story is about survival, but it is more about love and keeping hope in the darkest of times. Something we here understand and appreciate all too well.
Heavy handedness aside, let's get down to practicality. If you have read The Road, you probably thought what I did - "How could I have survived in that situation?"
As I read The Road, I figured out these few lessons:
- Be prepared - duh. But really prepared with food for several years, ways to grow more and preserve it in adverse conditions, to have a retreat well off the beaten path and obscure from passers by and have plenty of ammo for your weapon.
With that in mind, is there anyway anyone could survive that cold desolate world described in The Road? I'd like to think there is, after all, there were communes and survivors who had not yet degenerated into cannibalism and despicable acts.
To get started..
Don't be a refugee - Lesson one. The Man and Boy are wandering with all their worldly possessions. Around every corner is death and destruction waiting for them. Rather than walking to death, we know to have a retreat ready before the day happens.
Retreat location is everything - we don't know how the disaster took place, but we do know from The Road that pretty much everything above ground was affected. So having an underground shelter would be advantageous. Further, the shelter should not be too far north (colder), near an earthquake zone (falling asteroids could trigger a quake) or near the sea (flooding). So somewhere in the southwest or lower Plain states would be nice.
Our shelter must be over a deep aquifer for our well to go. Something with water for years and unaffected by the elements. So a well is mandatory and having the pump run on wind or another renewable power source is mandatory
Next, our shelter must be large, very large to house what we are going to stock it with.
Food,food,food - the characters in The Road are starving most of the book. We will need to stock our shelter not for a few months, but for years. That means the some sort of list of foods and schedule of consumption:
Year one, two - canned and packaged food.
Year three - long term storage food such as grain, rice, beans, powdered milk, honey, cooking oil.
Year four through seven - more long term grain, powdered milk, honey and oil. Retort foods such as Emergency Essentials, Meals-Ready-To-Eat for variety and as a treat.
Year eight and on - Underground food production garden with grow lights and hydroponics. Continued use of grains. Small scale animal production such as pygmy goats and chickens.
That was my estimate, so I went to the food calculator and entered in my data. Here is what I got..
First, I figured in seven years worth of food with four big people and one little person consuming - so that (7 x 4) + (7 x 1) x the estimated annual amounts.
That would mean
Grains - 9436lbs
Fats (oils, etc) - 413lbs
Beans - 1848lbs
Sugars - 1883lbs
Milk - 2359lbs
Plus a bunch of cooking essentials like baking powder, yeast, salt, etc.
Using this same calculator, I would increase the number of years I plan to stay in the shelter and stock accordingly.
It is a lot to consider, but think about the core food, grain. Only 10K lbs would feed five people for 7 years.
So the shelter has to be huge. I figure that I would have to buy a truckload of grain at a time, although I think a grain truck carries about 20,000 lbs so one would be enough. Just having a place to store it would be a chore.
With food and water covered for our post-The Road world, we need a few other essentials.
Power - Solar is out and the electric grid is down. The wind still blows and wind power may be are only option. We have to keep the wind mills running in all the dust and ash, and discovery will always be a problem. But if the windmills are running outside and our shelter is underground hidden from view, other refugees and bandits will pass them by hopefully and move on.
The windmills would store their power in deep cycle batteries and would power cooking, heating and lights.
The other option would be to have several thousand gallons of propane stored underground around my bunker. It could be used for cooking, heating and powering a generator.
Wood and coal fire would be out as the smoke would have to be expelled and that would attract others.
Washing, toilets and personal hygiene - all I wanted to do when I was reading The Road was the desire to take a shower. Having wash facilities would be crucial as would be toilets. The waste would have to be used for fertilizer in the growth rooms for vegetables and fruit productions.
Water from the bath/shower would be reused for watering the plants. Waste from the animals would be used for earthworm production and fertilizer.
What else would we need? Clothing, including changing sizes for children as they grow. Shoes too.
Vitamins as our diet becomes progressively more limited. Medicine as the chance of minor infections spreading becomes a real issue in our closed bunker environment. Having a sun lamp or tanning bed for artificial sunlight and vitamin D production would help too.
I would want to have at least four or five families in the shelter. We would probably be down there, with very limited exposure to the outside world for 7-10 years judging from the book. At that time, most of the die off would have unfortunately happened and then we could wait for the world to hopefully heal itself.
Could you survive the world of The Road? Most likely not based upon what I read. But thinking about solutions to problems is what we should do and do often. However, some survival situations are simply too big to grasp and plan for.
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