Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient when the Unexpected Happens

Just finished this book and loved it so much I ordered a copy for my daughter (she can't have mine:)). The author shares a lot of valuable information in this book. It's clear she has been doing this for a while. The book is not perfect and is certainly lacking in some areas. I still gave it 5 stars just do to the fact that despite it's shortcomings the information provided is well worth the cost of the book and while she may not cover everything in depth she touches on just about everything (concerning emergency preparedness not self-sufficiency) which makes it a nice guide to have. I appreciate the fact that she shares some of her mistakes that she has made along with her successes. I also liked that she was budget conscious throughout the book. Shes does provide a number of links as well as book recommendations to supplement the material. I certainly did not expect it to be 100% comprehensive given the massive size of the topic. It definitely gave me some great ideas and also got me thinking about what all I should be focusing on. It's a great book for basic emergency preparedness. Not so much a great primer for SHTF scenarios. An example, would be the fact that there was no real discussion of the fact that after a few days of a major shutdown when people who have not prepared start getting hungry, that you will be a target. or that when you evacuate you may run into people setting traps to ambush you. These are not pleasant things to talk about and if that is not her bag nor her cup of tea (and clearly it's not), I think those subject are important enough to at least bear mention. I would have liked to seen more information concerning dealing with a pandemic as well. She mentions that a filter mask is worthless (I'm not so sure how true that is) but there no mention of gas mask filters. In short, I think she covers well the things she has personal experience with. Stocking water and food, canning, non-electric alternatives for cooking and lighting, and gives you enough information to provide you with a framework of other information you will want to study further. Just buy it. Related note: I had bough The Prepper's Pocket Guide at the same time and while I haven't read through it all in detail, I can say right of the bat that I'm much more impressed with this book than that one.

Purchased this book as a gift for a friend. We personally are not new to prepping, but our friend is. When I thumbed through this book, I liked what I saw. This writer writes in a way that is basic and easy to understand. She explains the basics of what to buy, how to store it, and ideas for locating space for storing whatever. There are so many other topics she hits as well, and all I could think was, "I wish I had this book when I began prepping years ago." It's laid out very well and she has simple, yet effective ideas. If you are a beginner, you may consider this purchase. I hate to sound sexist or whatever, but you can tell this book is written by a female, because she is detailed and thinks of topics to discuss that many male writers don't elaborate on. For example, one topic she addresses is what to do with the children when the lights go out (during emergency). Did you think about storing board games, books, puzzles, coloring books w/crayons, maybe crafts, glue, construction paper, et... You get the idea. That's a woman's touch to prepping, for sure. She takes care of the kid category, as well as others that a male writer may forget. I liked this book. Yes, I recommend it.

This book covers many categories of family preparedness - food and water storage, heating (and the dangers of fire and carbon monoxide in the home), first aid, threats from weather, earthquakes or civil unrest, and basic information for someone just realizing how important these things are. The book is organized into easy to read chapters, with charts, drawings and bulleted blocks. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn how to keep their family safe, organized and unafraid in emergencies. The only drawback, in my opinion, is that the author is rather preachy about global warming, peak oil and recycling. I don't think her personal opinions belong in this type of book. For the reviewer who asked about an appendix showing where to buy the items she recommends - do a quick search on the Internet and you will find many places selling survival equipment and long term storage foods. I recommend Lehmans dot com and beprepared dot com for starters.

Are you a Prepper, Homesteader, live in a area prone to Natural disasters, have limited storage space, wondered were to start or what to do if the lights go out or you have to live your home? Then you should purchase this book. Kathy Harrison was in "After Armaggedon" a sceniro film made by the History Channel. I came over to Amazon & purchased this book. I have it marked, using it as my guide to prepping, preparing my home, car and family for any siuation that is ordinary from Tornados to Electrical Grid down preparing. I love the fact that her book expresses constantly how important your family, or group or unit knows what to do, where to go and how to use items in all situations; unlike other survival guides. Lets face it, what would your family, group or unit do without you? Do they know what to do? Her approach puts you in the lead position for being prepared, but most importantly how you can be teaching others to be a great leader should you be absent or imcompasitated. The author herself has been prepping for 30 years and lived in different states, gets right to the point, easy read and relatable because her wisdom and experiences shine in this book. This is a book that will help you to evaluate any life threating and non-threating situation and motive you to help yourself, your family and/or group and unit to become self-sufficent and self reliant in all unexpected situations.

Kathy Harrison has written a terrific starter manual for emergency preparation and self-sufficiency. Having lived a self-sufficient life style in a rural location for many years, Kathy is an author who truly "walks-the-walk". You can count on her practical advice to help you prepare for emergencies by taking steps towards building self-sufficiency--including the confidence, supplies, and skill-sets that will be needed to help carry you and your family through difficult times! "Just in Case" shines as a handbook for self-sufficiency and emergency preparations for the relative newcomer to emergency preparedness. It is primarily geared towards self-reliant living and survival "in-place", i.e. for preparing for, and dealing with, short term grid failures and crises from the comforts of your own home front. However, it is short on wilderness survival and primitive living skills, so if your fears and concerns run along the lines of coping with a long-term societal breakdown, this book is a great place to start, but once you get your feet wet, you should expand your search to a broader range of resources, information, and skills than are taught by "Just in Case". Kathy's practical experience and know how are truly invaluable, and her sound advice and information will get you solidly started down the right path.

The Wife Says: I LOVE this book! It has a wealth of information for self sufficiency, and is very easy to read. It has info that ANYONE can use, regardless of where you live. I love the fact that the author does not write in a paranoid tone, but rather in a relatable low key tone that is more matter of fact than anything. It covers all aspects of preparation, and has some obvious topics in it, as well as some things that I had not yet thought of. I actually have started a notebook for taking notes as I read the book, to make implementation much easier after I finish reading. I also love that she has lists of things for storage as a place to begin. I have been able to omit the items that we don't use, and add the ones that we do, to all of the lists thus far. Overall this is a wonderful resource for anyone wanting to prepare - whether that means a power outage or something far worse like job loss or economic collapse.

Rather than scare us with the ideas that the sky is falling and no one can help up, Kathy Harrison assures her readers that yes, sometimes bad things happen, but not only can you and your family survive, but you can be comfortable, happy, and good neighbors to others. Though she is far more self-sufficient than most of us will ever be, she assures us that thriving in a snow storm, a flood, or rolling blackouts is within the average family's grasp. Rather than panicking every time we hear a warning and running to Walmart to buy them out of bottled water and canned foods, she give the reader a flexible but clear method for stocking up a home and getting the whole family involved. She reminds us throughout to be one of the good guys--not hording those last-minute emergency supplies and sharing if possible with some of our less-prepared neighbors. This is a wonderful handbook for any house than needs suggestions on how to make a 72-hour kit, to make sure the kids don't freak out in emergencies, and to keep a family together, safe, comfortable, and well-fed in any kind of emergency. She isn't telling us how to skin animals or set traps or survive in the brush. Use survival manuals for that. She is showing us how to avoid having to stay in emergency shelters or to need FEMA every time Mother Earth goes a little crazy.

I live in a first strike hurricane zone and to put it plainly, Katrina took off my roof. That said, as a child who grew up during the Cold War, I never expected to live past 30. I was sure that we'd be nuked. Then when Orson Welles warned us that Nostradamus predicted 1998 to be the end, I fully believed that it would be. It was all nonsense, yes, but here in my mid-forties now, I still have a nagging worry that something may happen. Not zombies, but something. All that said, my husband and I are looking to rely less and less on technology and more and more on ourselves and nature. My hope was that this book would be a good start in the right direction. It's too bad that it was disappointing. I have read that blistering review here that had some reasonable arguments and some not so much. For example, it is true that there are fire bans in certain parts of this country but in a serious disaster, police will be incapable of enforcing those bans during a serious crisis. Survival is key, despite fire bans. I'm not going to die because someone has banned fires. My problem however is with all the advice but at the same time all the secrets. For example she says (not exact words but you'll get the meaning) "You can buy a certain manual washing machine for $60," and leaves it at that. A certain one? How do I find it? Where did she see it? We'll never know because she does not share any of her resources. I mean none of them. How many of us get books on hobbies and in the back it has a list of online stores where you can get supplies? This is supposed to be a book about disaster readiness and she doesn't have a list on where to obtain supplies. Really? I appreciate her efforts and there is indeed a lot of helpful information. I just think she needs to share a little more of her knowledge that she was unwilling to do for whatever reason. I seriously doubt product (or business) placement applies here, for the very reason those craft and hobby books ARE able to share their suggested suppliers. Perhaps this can be an addition in a future edition. My advice is that it IS handy, but get a book that has resources too.

Although this book is written from the perspective of someone living in the US, the information given is also applicable to those of us living elsewhere in the world. I'm lucky enough to live in the UK which, as a temperate zone, doesn't really have to cope too much with things like extremes of weather, but I think it's useful to have "just in case" guides on what to do if something goes wrong and you're on your own for a time. I bought this book in 2012 for that reason, and the section I've mainly referred back to since then has been about powercuts (it has handy information on keeping pipes from freezing if the electricity shortage is longer-term, and what to check in your home once the power is back on). Hopefully I never need to get to the stage where I have to scavenge for food in the wild (as a 54 year old woman with no natural survival skills, I'm pretty sure I'd be picked off by predators - human or otherwise - or do something stupid that led to my downfall, long before I made a success out of going "Grizzly Adams"), but the information in this book is still very useful and it's handy to have something to refer back to if needed. The reason I chose this book over others is because it's written from a family perspective of coping if something unexpected happens, and is not one of the usual "gung-ho" survival guides written by an ex- Navy Seal, which assumes that the people who have lived in homes with clean water from taps and access to electricity at the flick of a switch for their whole lives can suddenly revert successfully back to living off the land with things they make themselves from bits of discarded wood and some wire ("Behold - I have fashioned a water wheel which can also skin rabbits!"). If things ever get that bad, and we're back to living in caves, I'll probably be one of the first to do something stupid and die off pretty quickly, which I'd probably be looking forward to as I'd be pretty miserable with that sort of survivalist life! Those more-extreme "end of the world prepper/SHTF" guides are for a completely different type of person, and I wish them well following the Apocalypse (which I'll not survive) when they inherit the earth (what's left of it). This book does mention things to be aware of in the event of a terrorist/biological weapons attack, but doesn't go into "life after civilisation ends" level of detail. There are certainly books which have that level of information, but it's not one I need. In the meantime, this handy book details things that people like myself can use in case of those unexpected day-to-day emergencies when you can't rely on the usual public services to help you if something has gone wrong. Also has some useful store-cupboard recipes in the back :)

I recommend this book for every household. It covers many possible emergency situations: loss of power, evacuation, fire in the home, pandemic, terrorism and much more; it explains what to expect and what an individual/family should do to be prepared in these circumstances. There are detailed lists for stocking up and for working through every situation. The book is thorough, even containing a section on how to "make your own staples, such as bread, cheese, and yogurt" as a "way of ensuring your fresh food supply." Now that's comprehensive! I had planned to work on emergency preparedness for our family this winter and this book gives me the tools I need for the task. A final note: this book is written in a positive light, it's no gloom and doom manual. And there is repeated encouragement to look out for unprepared neighbours and others and to give them a helping hand. Great job, Kathy Harrison! This book is going to help a lot of people.

Dà dei buoni consigli. Può essere utile, visti i tempi che corrono...

I've been reading a fair number of "survival"-type books recently, both wilderness and home survival. I think this one will be the last for a while as I'm getting filled up with the genre. That said, I think this was a good book to choose to end with. To start with, the author (Kathy Harrison) is a good deal less paranoid and a good deal more practical than most urban survivalists. Which is why I bought this book. If you're expecting any discussion of necessary guns, armor, or anti-government tactics, this book is not for you. Rather, it's a book that outlines how to be more self-sufficient and how to cope with potential disasters that affect you and your home. The book includes general discussions of power-loss, fire, terrorist attacks, chemical and nuclear accidents, storms, pandemics, a small bit about wilderness survival, and a good bit of talk about self-sufficiency, especially with regards to food. In that regard, I think the book goes a little over-board in talking about building up a one-year supply of emergency food. As with other books that I've read, I think that if civilization craps out to the point where there's no food for a year, we'll all be so far up the creek that surviving an extra year will be the least of your worries. It's pretty hard to imagine anything short of a planet-wrecking asteroid or nuclear war leading to a scenario requiring one year's worth of food in your basement! In fact, we just had a huge wind storm here that knocked out the power for half a day. This is the kind of thing I'm interested in reading about. A few days worth of food storage, a week or two if things are really awful. Which is why I found this book less-than-perfect. Kathy states how nice it is now that survivalism has gone "mainstream" (has it?) and now she isn't considered a paranoid wacko anymore. But I don't know. Lining up shoes beside your kids beds and keeping the floor clear to exits at night seems a little over-the-top to me. Sure, practice fire safety, develop a plan, practice it with your kids (all things she advocates). But make sure before they go to sleep they have a safe escape route or an escape bag packed and ready to go? "If I die before I wake..." kind of advice if you ask me! As mentioned, the book also includes a lot of writing about food. Food is nice, but it's hardly the most important thing in a critical situation, even over a period of days. The large final section about how to cook with emergency food rations was interesting, but not likely to be terribly useful. So once more, this is a book that's probably tailored to someone more anxious and worried than I am. Yes, it's important to be prepared. Yes, self-sufficiency is a good thing (I look forward to trying her recipe for home-made mozzarella). But I'm not going to be telling my children to keep a close eye on their shoes before they fall asleep in case the house catches fire, terrorists attack, or a nuclear-reactor somewhere blows up. Life is short. By all means, prepare yourself for the unexpected, but also take the time to stop worrying and enjoy life a little. This book does deliver more of that message than any other survival book that I've read, but I still tend to follow that message even further. For that reason, for me, it's a four-star book.

Emergency preparation for families - it only loses a star due to its US focus, though the advice itself is international. It should probably be awarded that one star back for stuffing any religiosity between the lines rather than in the paragraphs. Very readable, very helpful, very sensible.