Survival Mom: How to Prepare Your Family for Everyday Disasters and Worst-Case Scenarios

I guess I could say “been there done that” because I went thru the Carter Perdition when in college when we had no gas and no meat. I started putting up canned food, toilet paper and water in the back of my dinky apartment closet. Because I lived in a basement of a brownstone I was already familiar with constant cold and intermittent water access, but with the affluence of later years I forgot about my youthful privation until I started paying attention to shortages again. It doesn’t matter how much money is in your pocket if shelves are bare. Then you gotta get out of your house in your car even if you’ve gotta drive 100 miles to get baby formula for grandchildren or toilet paper for all your elder neighbors. Lisa Bedford’s book Survival Mom is the best your reminder of what to do and what can happen very quickly if you’re not paying attention or doing what you should have been doing all along before you’re in stressful times. Make lists, prepare, think ahead, buy ahead on sale and don’t put off what you need to do. Your family is at stake.

I loved this book. I can easily see myself referring back to it as my family begins our own journey in preparing for disasters (natural and/or man-made). I have purchased perhaps a dozen prepping and self-sustaining books and this is by far the best. I enjoy the fact that it is broken down into sensible and realistically useful chapters i.e. water, sanitation, food storage and safety. I enjoy that this book makes sense to me. I try to approach books such as these knowing that I am a novice and some of the suggestions will not be for me and my family and some of the ideas will not make sense to me. However with this book - it almost feels like the author is an old friend and knows what my next question is going to be. I loved the fact that she does in fact talk about how to make your own commode and how to get younger children involved in the preparations. The advice was clear and concise to me. In fact, I was watching a show on cable and they were talking about a 'survival during catastrophe' situation and I said to myself: the five main destroyers of food stocks are: humidity, oxygen, heat, light and pests. This came straight from the book! I did not even realize that I was learning from the book enough to subconsciously recite details like this while I was absentmindedly watching television. There are recipes in here that I am actually eager to try out. I think the best part of this book was the end of the chapter checklists and planning steps.

This is the absolute best preparedness book, ever, for average people in urban, suburban and rural areas. I've been following Lisa Bedford's "SurvivalMom" blog for a couple of years, pre-ordered this book and devoured it after it arrived. The comprehensive and well-organized guidance can take a person from zero preparedness to eclipsing 95% of the population with just one trip to the grocery store and a couple hours shopping on the Internet. Today I'm ordering copies for my sister and a couple friends who live near the Cascadia Subduction Zone in the Pacific Northwest and recommending on Facebook for everyone else. Really terrific contribution to promoting and facilitating preparedness. This book is obviously a project of an exceptionally detailed-oriented person who has devoted years to assembling the latest, most useful information in an accessible, efficient manner. The author also helpfully relates her personal experiences in going from a mom focused on getting her family through normal everyday life to one steeped in emergency preparedness scenarios and practical strategies for persevering (comfortably, if possible) through events ranging from routine power outages to being stranded on the road as well as longer-term situations. She also does not shy away from matters usually associated with survivalists -- such as the need to not just be able to feed and shelter but also to be prepared to defend oneself and family. The Survival Mom book coupled with wilderness survival knowledge would put someone way ahead of the game (she briefly touches on some wilderness skills -- like fire-starters -- but does not, for instance, tell how to build a teepee, trap game or do other hard-core wilderness skills -- there are plenty of other books on those subjects). In sum, this book is a great value and a keeper.

This is an often-humorous guide to calculating what the most probable disasters are which your family might encounter, and then coming up with a bit of "insurance" (i.e., prepping) to help your family over the hump. It covers the gamut from the most likely scenarios, financial emergencies, bad weather, and natural disasters, and then progresses through a scenario which all of a sudden -doesn't- seem so tin-foil-hat these days, civil unrest, all the way through TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it). Unlike a lot of the other "survivalist" books which seem to care more about MRE's and guns, this book focuses on common-sense steps to build up a practical "stockpile" of things your family will need. Yeah, it's still handy to know how to go into the woods and eat berries, but if you've got kids in tow, it's better to build a solid foundation on stuff you will actually USE on an ordinary person's budget.

Lisa Bedford n'est pas une extrémiste et dieu merci, mais c'est une Américaine et à ce titre il y a des passages inutiles pour nous sur les armes à feu. Pour le reste, ce livre présente de manière à la fois succinte et précise toutes les étapes nécessaires pour préparer sa famille à toute éventualité sans se soucier de laquelle. Personnellement je trouve logique de se préparer aux éventualités mais je ne suis pas réceptive aux histoires de zombies et de fin du monde, beaucoup plus à celles de récession économique et la personne qui a écrit ce livre est une vraie personne ressource pour ne pas perdre du temps dans des futilités.Dans ce livre, elle explique par exemple les bonnes et les mauvaises manières, ou raisons, de stocker de la nourriture. Sa famille peut tenir confortablement en cas de pénurie temporaire d'électricité. Par contre elle n'est pas très orientée vers l'auto-suffisance mais beaucoup de ses conseils sont très pertinents et valent le détour. Je le conseille vraiment aux personnes qui veulent s'orienter vers la protection des besoins de sa famille sans fioritures et sans théories stupides.

Eigentlich ein Geschenk (gewünscht) habe ich das Buch wenig später in die Finger bekommen und war positiv überrascht (ich gehöre eher nicht zur Zielgruppe von Mrs. Bedford).Das Buch ist flüssig und gut verständlich geschrieben.Bereits der Einstieg ist amüsant, die Ausführungen informativ, ohne trocken oder besserwisserisch/belehrend zu sein (eine Eigenart, die bei einigen Survival- und Prepper-Gurus recht verbreitet zu sein scheint).Sie versucht auch nicht ihren "Lebensstil" mit missionarischen Eifer zu verbreiten, regt eher zum Nachdenken an und zeigt Möglichkeiten auf, sich vorzubereiten.Es ist angenehm, dass sie sich stellenweise selbst nicht so ernst nimmt, eine nette Abwechslung zu den HardcorePreppern, die den Eindruck vermitteln (wollen), man müsse zwangläufig mindestens die gleichen Vorkehrungen treffen, wie sie es tun (natürlich kritiklos), damit man im Falle einer (unausweichlichen) Katastrophe nicht hoffnungslos verloren ist.

The author keeps the info to the point, yet maintains an entertaining read throughout. No survival manual hits all of the bases, but this is a great place to start for any family, and every family should be prepared within reason. And I think that's the beauty of this book. Nothing blown out of proportion, just sensible, get organized, get ready.

I am no "end of the world" maniac, but this turned to be an informative book for me. It contains a lot of practical tips on reusing, recycling and economic living, so I'd recommend it to those for whom reducing excess of things - around them or on Earth - is of relevance.

Enjoyed the book very much. The information is presented in a very readable format that is fun to read. interesting.