The Best Survival & Preparedness Books

Looking for a great survival and preparedness book? Here's a list of top rated, best selling, current and updated books about disaster and emergency preparedness. We personally own several of these handy guides to "what if."

Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival

by Patricia Spigarelli Aston & Jack A. Spigarelli
The crisis of 2020 impacted every single one of us. Were you prepared? Are you prepared for the next crisis? This new, updated third edition gives you the tools you need to ensure safety and survival so you can be prepared for any disaster that comes your way. You’ll love Crisis Preparedness Handbook because it gives you everything you need to confidently handle any crisis and feel the peace that comes with being prepared.

The Crisis Preparedness Handbook is available at Amazon.com.

SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere

by John 'Lofty' Wiseman
This best selling survival handbook was recently revised and fully updated by author and survival expert John "Lofty" Wiseman. This book provides current-day survival knowledge and provides strategies for coping with any type of disaster, and is a great resource for campers, hikers, and outdoor enthusiasts. Topics include basic survival skills, shelter, food, first aid, how to react and survive during a natural disaster when services and supplies are cut off, self defense, security, and much more.

The SAS Survival Handbook is available at Amazon.com.

Prepper's Long-Term Survival Guide: Food, Shelter, Security, Off-the-Grid Power and More Life-Saving Strategies for Self-Sufficient Living

by Jim Cobb
This book will teach you how to prepare and survive in the event widespread social collapse, failure of the grid, pandemic, or other long term crises. This book goes beyond basic preparations for short-term disasters like an earthquake or hurricane — it will teach you how to survive in the event that nothing returns to normal for weeks, months, or even years. Topics include water, food, first aid, medical, defense, and community-building strategies.

The Prepper's Long-Term Survival Guide is available at Amazon.com.

The Prepper's Pocket Guide: 101 Easy Things You Can Do to Ready Your Home for a Disaster

by Bernie Carr
Whether you face earthquakes, floods, wildfires, hurricanes, or severe winter storms, this book explains how to be prepared for that inevitable day when catastrophe strikes your home town.

A list of 101 quick, simple, smart, and inexpensive vital steps you should take.

The Prepper's Pocket Guide is available at Amazon.com.

Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family, 3rd Edition

by Dr. Arthur T. Bradley
National Bestseller! Updated and expanded third edition. This 440-page book provides a complete step-by-step guide to creating a practical family disaster preparedness plan. This book covers every topic including food storage, water purification, electricity generation, back-up heat, personal protection, communication, preparedness networks, evacuations, and first aid, with a complete chapter for people with special needs, disabilities, and pet owners.

The Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness is available at Amazon.com.

Build the Perfect Bug Out Bag: Your 72-Hour Disaster Survival Kit

by Creek Stewart
If you follow the advice in this book, you will be ready to leave your home fast should an unexpected emergency or disaster strike. This book will help you create a self-contained 72-hour disaster preparedness kit to help you survive your journey to a safer location. Topics include food, water, protection, shelter, and tools you will need for independent survival. The book also covers considerations for bugging out with children, the elderly, those with special needs, and even pets.

Build the Perfect Bug Out Bag is available at Amazon.com.

Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties: The Classic Guide to Building Wilderness Shelters (Dover Books on Architecture)

by D. C. Beard
A hands-on guide with practical advice and instruction on how to build an emergency shelter and lodging. Clear illustrations and easy to follow text allows campers or survivalists to create a teepee, half-cave shelter, birch bark shack, a pole house, and more. Additional instruction includes how to use an axe, split and notch logs, and how to make a fireplace. This book is an invaluable guide for homesteaders, scouts, campers, hikers, and hunters of all ages.

Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties is available at Amazon.com.

Bushcraft 101: A Field Guide to the Art of Wilderness Survival

by Dave Canterbury
This book by bestselling author and expert field guide Dave Canterbury is geared more toward those who plan on embarking on a backcountry trip, and offers valuable insight on survival skills and crafting resources from your surroundings while enjoying the beauty and thrill of the wilderness. Topics include detailed information about choosing the right items for your kit, tools and supplies, collecting and cooking food, and protecting yourself from the elements. Reconnect with nature!

Bushcraft 101 is available at Amazon.com.

Advanced Bushcraft: An Expert Field Guide to the Art of Wilderness Survival

by Dave Canterbury
The perfect companion to Bushcraft 101! This book goes beyond bushcraft basics, and will teach you how to survive in the backcountry with little or no equipment. Topics include crucial survival skills, tracking wildlife, making medicine from plants, fire-starting, and navigating without maps or a compass. This must-have book for the backcountry enthusiast will help you take your self reliance and wilderness experience to the next level.

Advanced Bushcraft is available at Amazon.com.

The MeatEater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival

by Steven Rinella
New York Times Bestseller! For anyone planning to spend time outside, this book is packed with tried-and-true tips, techniques, and gear recommendations. Among other skills, readers will learn about old-school navigation and essential satellite tools, how to build a basic first-aid kit and apply tourniquets, and how to effectively purify water using everything from ancient methods to cutting-edge technologies. This essential guide delivers hard-won insights and know-how garnered from Rinella’s own experiences and mistakes and from his trusted crew of expert hunters, anglers, emergency-room doctors, climbers, paddlers, and wilderness guides—with the goal of making any reader feel comfortable and competent while out in the wild.

The Meateater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival is available at Amazon.com.

The Prepper's Water Survival Guide: Harvest, Treat, and Store Your Most Vital Resource

by Daisy Luther
Best Seller! Having enough water when catastrophe strikes can spell the difference between life and death. This book offers an easy, straightforward step-by-step plan to help you quickly learn how to store fresh water, collect rainwater, purify water from lakes and rivers, and dig a well for groundwater. You'll also learn how to keep large stores of water untainted for long periods of time, how to test water for dangerous toxins, and how to treat water-related illnesses commonly contracted during a disaster.

The Prepper's Water Survival Guide: Harvest, Treat, and Store Your Most Vital Resource is available at Amazon.com.

The Prepper's Water Survival Guide: The Ultimate Guide to Find, Collect, Purify, Filter, and Stockpile Water for Self-Sufficient Living Off-the-Grid and Prepare for the Worst of Catastrophes

by Jonathan Henry
If you're looking to learn how to obtain water for self-sufficiency, and if you want to master techniques for finding, collecting, filtering, purifying, and storing water, then this book is for you! The book offers information on how to survive 3 days without water, identifying contaminated water, finding alternate drinking water sources, how to purify water, build your own water supply system, water containers maintenance and management, how to extract water from the ground, and much more.

The Prepper's Water Survival Guide: The Ultimate Guide is available at Amazon.com.

The Survival Medicine Handbook: A Guide for When Help is Not on the Way (4th Edition)

by Joseph Alton MD and Amy Alton APRN
This expanded version is geared toward the non-medical professional and discusses likely issues that will be encountered in a catastrophic scenario. This book assumes there is no hospital or doctor available, and will give you the tools to handle injuries and illness to help you and your family when professional medical help is non-existent. Topics include: Medical preparedness, factors to consider when preparing, likely medical issues you may face, medical skills you will want to learn, natural remedies, mass casualty incidents, patient transport, wound care, fractures, hygiene-related medical issues, pest-related ailments, food and waterborne illness, burn injuries, infections, dental issues, stockpiling medications, and much, much more.

The Survival Medicine Handbook is available at Amazon.com.

The Prepper's Survival Natural Medicine: The Emergency Preparedness Manual You Need for When There is No Doctor, With Essential Knowledge in Critical First Aid, Life-Saving Herbs and Natural Remedies

by Raymond L. Hillman
The Ultimate Emergency Preparedness Book to Survive Even Without Doctors, Full of Critical Information on Life-Saving Herbs, Essential Oils, and Natural Remedies. You will learn how to make natural remedies and take care of your health in emergency situations, the fastest way to grow medicinal herbs and turn them into ready-to-use oils and blends, the skills you need to master the basics of survival medicine and how to put them into practice on a daily basis, how to set up basic equipment needed to create your natural remedies (grow, manage, process lifesaving herbs), Herbs 101 (identify herbs and how to correctly use them for not just defeating illness but enjoying a state of overall psychophysical well-being), setting up your first-aid kit, and recipes to concoct dyes, ointments, conditioners, lotions, and elixirs with just a few ingredients that you can grow in your backyard.

The Prepper's Survival Natural Medicine is available at Amazon.com.

Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and Central North America (Peterson Field Guides)

by Roger Tory Peterson
Best Seller! This book lists the more than 370 edible wild plants, poisonous look-alikes with drawings and photos to help you recognize each species.

Also included are plant habitat descriptions, plants by season, and preparation instructions or food uses.

Peterson Field Guides Edible Wild Plants: Eastern & Central North America is available at Amazon.com.

Western Medicinal Plants and Herbs (Peterson Field Guides)

by Christopher Hobbs
A Best-Selling Field Guide! A complete guide with the best information on medicinal plants of western North America.

Organized for fast identification with more than 530 color photographs with an index to medical topics to help identify specific ailments.

Peterson Field Guides Western Medicinal Plants and Herbs is available at Amazon.com.

Prepper's Natural Medicine: Life-Saving Herbs, Essential Oils and Natural Remedies for When There is No Doctor

by Cat Ellis
This book will empower you with all of the information needed to safely create your own medicines when doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies are unavailable. This book explains how to create renewable medicines from herbs, lichen, fungi and other natural ingredients. Expert prepper Cat Ellis shares tips for using healing plants that are widely available and easily grown throughout the U.S., covering situations specific to a large scale disaster scenario.

Prepper's Natural Medicine is available at Amazon.com.

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times

by James Wesley Rawles
Global financial collapse? Terrorist attack? Natural catastrophe? All it takes is one event to disrupt our way of life. If something terrible happens, we won't be able to rely on the government or our communities — we'll have to take care of ourselves. This book clearly explains everything you need to know to protect yourself and your family in the event of a disaster, including essential tactics and techniques for surviving completely on your own, how much food is enough, how to filter rainwater, protecting your money, what seeds to buy for your garden, and more. This is the ultimate guide to total preparedness and self reliance in a time of need.

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It is available at Amazon.com.

Full-Rip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest

by Sandi Doughton
This book explains how geologists and scientists uncovered evidence off a massive "megaquake" in the Pacific Northwest, identifying the cities of Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver as the centers of what will be the biggest earthquake ever recorded in the continental United States. There's a 100% chance of a mega quake hitting the Pacific Northwest. And, it's overdue. The "really big one" is expected along the 750-mile long Cascadia subduction zone that runs along the Pacific coast from Northern California up to southern British Columbia. The book introduces readers to the scientists who are trying to understand when, where, and just how big "the big one" will really be.

Full Rip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the PNW is available at Amazon.com.

When The Grid Goes Down, Disaster Preparations and Survival Gear For Making Your Home Self-Reliant

by Tony Nester
Survival instructor Tony Nester covers how to prepare yourself and your home for both short-term survival (24-72 hours) as well as long-term situations resulting from events like a grid-down emergency or a pandemic. Topics include: Being self-reliant, water storage and purification, alternative water sources, three essential foods to stock up on, off-grid medical kits, home security, personal defense, heating, lighting, and alternative sanitation and hygiene.

When the Grid Goes Down, Disaster Preparations for Making Your Home Self Reliant is available at Amazon.com.