Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life [Paperback]

Neil Strauss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2009

With the same sharp eye, quick wit and narrative drive that made "The Game" a bestseller, Neil Strauss takes us on a white-knuckle journey through America's heart of darkness as he scrambles to escape the system. As the economic downturn, continuing climate change and the prevailing terrorist threat prove that the dangers facing our world loom larger than ever, Strauss decides he's had enough. Soon he is investigating ways of getting second citizenship on the island of St. Kitts, protecting his assets offshore, and making friends with an elite group of billionaires who are thinking exactly the same thing. Strauss' thirst for survival becomes more extreme as he prepares for The End Of The World As We Know It. He trains with guns, learns American Indian tracking skills, hides caches of supplies and acquires a special forces motorcycle to help him 'bug out'. When The Shit Hits The Fan, this book might just save your life.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Book Description

Terrorist attacks. Natural disasters. Domestic crackdowns. Economic collapse. Riots. Wars. Disease. Starvation.

What can you do when it all hits the fan?

You can learn to be self-sufficient and survive without the system.

**I've started to look at the world through apocalypse eyes.** So begins Neil Strauss's harrowing new book: his first full-length worksince the international bestseller The Game, and one of the most original-and provocative-narratives of the year.

After the last few years of violence and terror, of ethnic and religious hatred, of tsunamis and hurricanes–and now of world financial meltdown–Strauss, like most of his generation, came to the sobering realization that, even in America, anything can happen. But rather than watch helplessly, he decided to do something about it. And so he spent three years traveling through a country that's lost its sense of safety, equipping himself with the tools necessary to save himself and his loved ones from an uncertain future.

With the same quick wit and eye for cultural trends that marked The Game, The Dirt, and How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, Emergency traces Neil's white-knuckled journey through today's heart of darkness, as he sets out to move his life offshore, test his skills in the wild, and remake himself as a gun-toting, plane-flying, government-defying survivor. It's a tale of paranoid fantasies and crippling doubts, of shady lawyers and dangerous cult leaders, of billionaire gun nuts and survivalist superheroes, of weirdos, heroes, and ordinary citizens going off the grid.

It's one man's story of a dangerous world–and how to stay alive in it.

Before the next disaster strikes, you're going to want to read this book. And you'll want to do everything it suggests. Because tomorrow doesn't come with a guarantee...

Questions for Neil Strauss

Amazon.com: What initially inspired you to write Emergency?

Strauss: It happened over the last eight years, watching as everything that we thought could never happen in America suddenly started happening. So I decided to take control over my own life, rather than being dependent on an increasingly undependable system, and worked toward becoming as self-sufficient, independent, skilled, and experienced as I could. That journey continues today.

Amazon.com: You use the term "Fliesian" in the book (as in Lord of the Flies). What is a Fliesian?

Strauss: Someone who believes that people, if put in a world where there are no consequences to their actions, will do horrible things.

Amazon.com: So how can we hold on to our kindness and humaneness in a crisis?

Strauss: Fortunately, in my experience, it is precisely these situations when you see the best in people come out. The worst in some tends to arise only when the resources one needs to survive are scarce and there is competition for them.

Amazon.com: Do you think that this book is catering to a fear-based culture?

Strauss: Actually, the book is less about spreading fears than getting over them. What most of us fear is the unknown, and we fret about what’s going to happen in an uncertain future when we consider the calamities of the past. I decided to no longer react to the things I read in newspapers, but instead to understand them. So I took each worst-case scenario to the extreme, and experienced many of the things that used to make me anxious. I guess, in that way, it was like a more interesting, adventurous Prozac.

Amazon.com: A lot of writers these days are basing books on various year-long stunts: read the encyclopedia for a year, always say "yes" for a year, have sex with your wife every day for a year. But your brand of immersion journalism, in Emergency and in The Game, is more open-ended--and more personal--than that. Do you draw any sort of line between the books and your life?

Strauss: My books never begin as books. They usually begin as some sort of lack I recognize in my life and try to fix with the help of the most qualified experts I can find. Often, these people are not in the public eye, but hidden in a splinter subculture. And while I’m trying to get taken under their wing, I realize at some point I’m spending so much time trying to learn and improve that I might as well have something to show for it, so I write a book.

Amazon.com: One of the first subcultures you embedded yourself in was a cabal of billionaires. Are wealthy people safer than the rest of us?

Strauss: No, they’re more scared than the rest of us. That’s why they’re taking so many precautionary measures. They are defined by their money, and now that identity is crumbling around them. You can’t buy safety. Those who are the most safe are the ones with knowledge, skills, and experience.

Amazon.com: You describe the philosophy of the sphincter in Emergency. What is that?

Strauss: I learned that from one of my defense instructors. The basic idea is that, in a high-pressure situation, the first thing that happens is people get nervous and uptight. And as soon as your sphincter tightens, as the metaphor goes, it cuts off circulation to your brain. So one of the best survival skills you can have is the ability to quickly and coolly assess a situation rather than panicking and doing something stupid.

Amazon.com: From your wilderness survival training, it sounds like you're in pretty good shape if things ever hit the fan. But what if you live in the city?

Strauss: That’s a good point. A lot of the wilderness survival skills I learned don’t take into account that, in America today, there’s little actual wilderness left. So I took a class called Urban Escape and Evasion. As the teacher put it, “Once you learn lockpicking, the world is your oyster.” He also taught car hot-wiring, evading pursuit vehicles, and, as an exam, handcuffed me, put me in a trunk, and told me I had to escape. It was one of the most interesting classes I’d taken in my life. If I’d known these skills in high school, I definitely would have been expelled.

Amazon.com: The book has a surprising trajectory--surprising to the reader and I think to you as well. You start out looking for a way to get out of Dodge if one of many possible disasters strikes, but as you develop your survival skills, instead of becoming a lone wolf in the woods, you start becoming tied to your community, as an EMT and a trained crisis management worker (not to mention a goat midwife). It's actually pretty heartwarming. Did you see any of that coming?

Strauss: Definitely not. I had no idea that when disasters happen now, instead of running away from them, I’d be running toward them and trying to be of some use to the community. I think that, if there’s a silver lining in the dark cloud that is the economy right now, it’s that hard times bring people closer together. Now is the time to get to know your neighbors. You never know when you may need them.

Amazon.com: Has your experience writing Emergency affected you differently from your experience writing The Game?

Strauss: Yes, because now, at 3 a.m. on a Saturday night, my search-and-rescue pager will go off and I’ll have to stop doing what I learned in The Game and start doing what I learned in Emergency.

From Publishers Weekly

The controversial author of The Game is back with a safer—of sorts—guide. With the U.S. threatened from within and without (e.g., swine flu, all sorts of religious extremists, subprime mortgages), the author takes three years of wilderness survival and lock-picking classes in an effort to learn how to survive anything from online hackers to terrorist plots. Witty, self-deprecating, and full of weird tips (how to fashion your credit card into a knife), the book is done justice by Strauss's careful reading. The pacing is purposeful and Strauss's youthful tone is flush with humor alongside a steady emphasis on the key ideas. A HarperCollins/It hardcover. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: It Books; First Edition edition (March 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060898771
• ISBN-13: 978-0060898779
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (181 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #15 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Current Events > Disaster Relief
  • #45 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Government     > Civics

More About the Author

Neil Strauss is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Game, Rules of the Game, and Emergency. He is also the coauthor of three other New York Times bestsellers--Jenna Jameson's How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, Mötley Crüe's The Dirt, and Marilyn Manson's The Long Hard Road Out ofHell--as well as Dave Navarro's Don't Try This at Home, a Los Angeles Times bestseller. His latest book, Everyone Loves You When You're Dead, collects the 228 best, craziest, and most soul-baring moments from his adventures with musicians, celebrities, and icons while writing cover stories for Rolling Stone and the New York Times. Strauss lives in Los Angeles and can be found at www.neilstrauss.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

304 of 325 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not as advertised., March 31, 2009

By 

Ada Cole "Autodidact" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life (Paperback)

I read an excerpt of this book on Tim Ferriss's blog, and I bought it on the presumption that it would answer some of the questions set forth. Namely, how are wealthy people preparing for potential economic emergencies and how will Neil, a not-so-wealthy author, use that information to prepare himself? Tim Ferriss talks about how he gets "in" with the author to find out about the "mysterious 5 flags." He later summarizes the book as follows:

"Neil's new book, Emergency, teaches you how to become Jason Bourne.

Multiple passports, moving assets, lock-picking, escape and evasion, foraging, even how to cross borders without detection (one preferred location: McAllen, Texas, page 390)-it's a veritable encyclopedia of for those who want to disappear or become lawsuit-proof global citizens."

That is not at all what this book is actually about. It has more in common with 'Travels with Charley' than 'Bourne Identity'

What this book is not:
1. A manual that dwells on options. Example, the only solution Neil offers for economic safeguarding is wiring $500,000 to St. Kitts and buying property there, and later becoming a citizen. Not a scalable solution.
2. About currency, passports, swiss banking etc. - basically all the topics about becoming a "lawsuit-proof global citizen" or opening up your personal options internationally are glossed over. The law firm in charge of "lawsuit proofing" Neil is under investigation by the end of the book.
3. A practical guide to anything really that can save your life, unless you take it to be advice that you should take a half dozen survivalist courses and practice sleeping in your backyard.

What this book is:
1. Aw-shucks musings about his girlfriend, who he presents as nails-on-chalkboard ditzy and selfish, but gosh darn it, if ya look at it the right way, downright wise! If the phrase "I'm going to Kendra's" will somehow save your life, then perhaps this is the book for you.
2. A page turner - all in all a pretty good story. I read it in one sitting without too much boredom.
3. FULL of celebrity name dropping and other very dishy stuff about his billionaire friends. "When I saw Leonard Cohen..." "When I crashed Tom Cruise's bike..." "I looked over toward President Clinton..." "Trisha (Yearwood) wanted us backstage..." Lots of glam setup for a story basically about a guy learning to camp.
4. A classic 'city slicker wises up' type story with the feel good ending that Neil decides to help people at the end by becoming an EMT. It even features the "begrudging respect" when someone he initially dismisses turns out to have some value in their "potato head."
5. Very heavily weighted toward caching/stashing food, emergency toilets, camping, foraging, knife and gun skills, tracking etc. However, all of these topics are approached anecdotally, as in "I can identify over 700 kinds of tracks" with only one photographic example, and no real segue into how this relates to anything.

All in all it was an entertaining read, but I wouldn't recommend it to perform as advertised because there isn't anything in it that is truly useful.

106 of 128 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad for city dwellers, March 10, 2009

By 

adp113 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life (Paperback)

The book is a good read for its entertainment value. Sure, with enough money you can really do and buy whatever you will want or need. Some of the things in the book are basic boy scout things. If you were not a boy scout, or you lived in a big city all your life you will learn lots from the book. If you grew up hunting, fishing, and camping you will do alright if stuff gets that bad. Beware, Neil is heavy on the George Bush bashing so if you are tired of that...... well.... maybe not your type of book.

The second half of the book is much better than the first half. Most of the cool stuff is after the halfway point. After looking up some of the things he bought and was taught, it was an expensive endeavor for sure. Learning to shoot a handgun cost him more than $2,000. The Rokon, more than $5k. The biggest thing I walked away with, from the book, was that it is probably a good idea to teach/introduce your kids as much non-book knowledge as you can while they are young. Fear is learned, lack of understanding comes from lack of experience, and little kids are like sponges.

Although I gave it a 3, I do recommend the book. After all, given the times we are living you might just have to use some of the things in the book.

92 of 117 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What will you do when WSHTF?, March 11, 2009

By 

BanjoAndy (MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life (Paperback)

Truth can be stranger than fiction, and that's the case in Emergency.

Neil Strauss wonders what he would do if the world as we know it failed to function as it does currently. What would he do if an event the magnitude of 9/11 or Katrina took place in his hometown? No more electricity, iPods, takeout food or Seinfeld reruns.

The book begins with him as a typical "city boy", knowing nothing about survival. In similar fashion to The Game he seeks out the best of the best to learn the skills he feels he needs to survive. And also similar to The Game he takes all this knowledge and moves beyond it, creating his own interpretations.

At times while reading this book I was tempted with ideas ranging from calling my financial planner to see about moving my money to something more secure to thoughts of leaving the country. Other times I was laughing hysterically.

This was one of those books that I just couldn't put down. Within 24 hours of purchase I had read all 418 pages. It was entertaining, it made me laugh and it made me think.

Highly recommended to any American living in 2009.