Customer Reviews

Tom Brown's Guide to City and Suburban Survival (Field Guide)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The purpose behind this book differs significantly from Cory Lundin's When All Hell Breaks Loose, which I previously reviewed, even though both books are concerned with survival within a city. Whereas Lundin focused on post-disaster survival -- mainly within the confines of your home and backyard and dependent upon your own resources -- Tom Brown differs in that he imagines the reader needing to survive a personal emergency, with the rest of the city essentially unaffected. He allows, therefore, that you may have uninvited access to city resources outside your home, such as water and shelter in public areas, and restaurant or grocery store dumpsters for food.

He schools the reader in the basics of how electricity and water are supplied in a city and how they move within a house. An entire chapter is devoted to how weather occurs. Avoiding an emergency is as much his intent as surviving one. It is not till the end of the book that he discusses disasters and how to deal with them. Unlike Lundin, Brown briefly shows a debris hut, fire by friction, and a few traps.


Chapter titles: Introduction, Shelter, Water, Heat and Light, Food, Crime, Weather, Disasters, Enjoying the City. Appendices: Common Urban Edibles, Common Urban Animals, Survival Supplies.

Where to get food, water, shelter in the city? What happens when there's a disaster? This book is a decent start. Lots of helpful chapters on how to get the essentials, as well as what common edible plants grow in the city.

Another food-for-thought thing you can read is the chapter in Way of the Scout (also by Brown) on his first solo trip to New York City.

Was not based on a survival aspect as much as a preparation aspect, but was still good anyway.

I love Tom Brown's approach to survival: it's just a real practical, methodical look at basic human needs. Tom doesn't get excited. He just knows a lot of stuff that you should know that he's willing to share. He takes all his tracking and survival skills from the woods and turns them into street smarts for you and me. I may never build a snare trap in the city, but I'm glad to know ten ways to keep warm, six ways to build a shelter and three ways to distill questionable drinking water.

There are chapters on food, water, light, crime, weather and disasters. I keep this book in my "To-Go" bag.

Nancy Overton is the author of "A Checklist/ Making a Family Plan for Emergencies".

I believe the Author tries to cut bad review off at the pass by writing something like "I am prepared to take critcism from the arm chair survivalist" So, we don't want to be tagged as the "Arm Chair Survivalist" so we don't complain.

However, this book is not worth the money. There are some tips worth thinking about like, building a smaller shelter in your house in an emergency to more easily heat your living quarters, and placing the opening toward the south side window to get natural heat. However, this principle applies to ANY outdoor shelter in the winter, so if you use a little common sense, along with your knowledge of building outdoors shelters, you can figure this out on your own.

The book does not cover techniques on blending into the city in a disaster so you can move more freely to get resources. He discussed getting food out of dumpsters, but says to watch the restaurant to see what gets dumped and when. However, in a disaster, you wouldn't have restaurants doing business as usual, so that advice is worthless, unless you want to spend some time BEFORE a disaster watching the city and finding out a little about the under workings. Of course, the only people that will do this, are extremists. Useless to a middle class family man.

His description of water systems is not very helpful either. He misses a big link in his general description of how water flows into a city, and that is the water tower. These towers are almost always around, and the reason is, you need a big, high reservoir to meet water pressure demands of a city that uses water resources at roughly the same time, in the morning before work, and after getting home, and taking showers, and cooking.

He does not go in depth, about how to look for water in your own home, like in the toilet tank (treat it with Chlorox at 1/8 teaspoon per gallon) or in the water heater, by opening up the drain spicket on the bottom of the water heater, and opening up the upper most sink in your house.

He should have spent some time in the city doing some investigating and gathering info, in order to write a good book.

I am sorry, but I see this book as fluff, to make money, and not much else.

If you are really concerned with survival spend some time thinking about it, learn your house, and how it works, along with how to fix it yourself, and think about how the HOBO(professional homeless) lives in the city.

good luck, and think now, so you don't have to panic later!

comments and questions are welcome!

Mark D. Fellows :)
[...]

This book is a great guide to being prepared for natural disasters in any city or suburb. Much of the content is techniques for wilderness survival that have been adapted for what you find in the city. One thing that you don't find in a wilderness survival guide is crime prevention, which is approached well in this book.

This book rambles quite a bit and provides a wealth not very targeted information. Do I really need to know how the rain cycle works to survive in the suburbs? Or how a generator works (without instructions on how to build my own out of scraps)?

In all, the useful information in this book would fill a smallish pamphlet. The rest is filler.

A great disappointment.

It is good enough for what i am looking for. Interesting, but not a sit-down and read. By comparison i have picked up "Bug OUt" by Scott Williams and i can't put it down. Different, but topic-ly similar, i know, but interest is what keeps me reading one and not the other.

Tom Brown Jr. is brilliant. This is an excellent must read, there is so much great information in these pages, amazing reference book, a must have for any personal library.

This is one of the best urban survival books and is a must read. The only problem was it spent too much time on the basics and the science of how things develop. I already know the anatomy of a hurricane. Also the book was slanted to northen climates and did not cover protecting against heat.