- Rawles, James Wesley.
Survivors.
New York: Atria Books, 2011.
ISBN 978-1-4391-7280-3.
-
This novel is frequently described as a sequel to the author's
Patriots (December 2008), but in
fact is set in the same time period and broadens the scope
from a small group of scrupulously prepared families coping
with a “grid down” societal collapse in an isolated
and defensible retreat to people all around the U.S. and the
globe in a wide variety of states of readiness dealing with the
day to day exigencies after a hyperinflationary blow-off destroys
paper money worldwide and leads to a breakdown in the just-in-time
economy upon which life in the developed world has become
dependent.
The novel tracks a variety of people in different circumstances:
an Army captain mustered out of active duty in Afghanistan,
an oil man seeking to ride out the calamity doing what he
knows best, a gang leader seeing the collapse of the old
order as the opportunity of a lifetime, and ordinary people
forced to summon extraordinary resources from within themselves
when confronted with circumstances nobody imagined plausible.
Their stories illustrate how even a small degree of preparation
(most importantly, the knowledge and skills you possess, not
the goods and gear you own [although the latter should not be
neglected—without a source of clean water, in 72 hours you're
a refugee, and as Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote in
Lucifer's Hammer, “No
place is more than two meals from a revolution”]) can make
all the difference when all the rules change overnight.
Rawles is that rarest of authors: a know-it-all who actually
knows it all—embedded in this story, which can be
read simply as a periapocalyptic thriller, is a wealth of information
for those who wish to make their own preparations for such
discontinuities in their own future light cones. You'll want to
read this book with a browser window open to look up terms and
references to gear dropped in the text (acronyms are defined in the
glossary at the end, but you're on your own in researching
products).
Some mylar-thin thinkers welcome societal collapse; they
imagine it will sweep away the dysfunction and corruption that
surrounds us today and usher in a more honourable and moral
order. Well, that may be the ultimate result (or maybe it won't:
a dark age has its own momentum, and once a culture has not
only forgotten what it knew, but forgotten what it has forgotten,
recovery can take as long or longer than it took to initially
discover what has been lost). Societal collapse, whatever the
cause, will be horrific for those who endure it, many
of whom will not survive and end their days in misery and terror.
Civilisation is a thin veneer on the red in tooth and claw heritage
of our species, and the predators among us will be the first to exploit
the opportunity that a breakdown in order presents.
This novel presents a ruthlessly realistic picture of what
societal collapse looks like to those living it. In a way,
it is airbrushed—we see the carnage in the major metropolitan
areas only from a distance. But for those looking at the
seemingly endless list of “unsustainable” trends
underway at present and wise enough to note that something
which is unsustainable will, perforce, end, this book will
help them think about the aftermath of that end and suggest
preparations which may help riding it out and positioning
themselves to prosper in the inevitable recovery.
January 2012 