Survival Mom: How to Prepare Your Family for Everyday Disasters and Worst-Case Scenarios – The Practical Prepper's Guide to Peace of Mind

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.

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.

I would love to write a long, detailed review of this book but I'll spare you that and cut to the chase. This is one of the best survival/prep books you can get. Why? It has a wide range of information about urban prepping and survival strategies that are well organized and presented. If you are looking to prepare for your family or home, this is the book you want. It pulls a lot of info together into a concise reference which allows you to focus on the necessities and make quick progress on getting things ready for a potential natural disaster or other crisis. There are many references given in this book on places on how to get additional information, where to buy proven products and what works and doesn't work in many cases. There is also a lot of common sense strategies on what to do in certain situations and solid advice on how to avoid them in the first place. The author has done her homework and thoroughly covered a lot of territory in this book when it comes to household prepping - make sure to get a copy!

I'll admit, I was drawn to this book by the cover and the clever title and bought it to add to my rather extensive "prepping" library. I'm a mom to six girls. Raised by an Army officer, "contingency planning" has been part of my life. Through the years of teaching breadmaking (from milling to baking), preserving the harvest through dehydration, storing food, batteries, etc. for "down times", and even having emergency backpacks for each of my children since diaper days (the oldest is now 26), I figured I had this stuff down pretty well. This book is hands down my favorite prepping book and is the very first book I recommend to people in my workshops. This book has it ALL. This is the book I wish I had written--but she does a much better job than anyone else could have. EASY to read--helpful checklists--BALANCED approach (unlike so many books out there)--HUMOR--she is REAL and REALISTIC. If you only get one book on the subject--if you've been putting off prepping for everything from a temporary power outage to a long term national disaster--GET THIS BOOK. You can do as much or as little as you want. Bite sized bits of info so you can just get STARTED, CONTINUE a process already begun or BEEF UP and fill any HOLES you may not even realize exist in your planning! And, my favorite part, this book is written from the perspective of a MOM. Love it. Can't recommend this book highly enough! -- Donna G Spann

Great find!!!! This is a wonderful book starting with the basics that any one beginning prepping will greatly appreciate. It has informative lists that help you get started gathering supplies for not only food but on how to keep important papers as well as which ones you'll need in an emergency. How to prepare your car/truck to survive a disaster or to go move to a safer place. Each chapter builds upon the last one and supplies a list of things necessary to do in order to continue on. It breaks down tasks into simple things from just adding one or two extra cans of food to your routine shopping list to larger storage of much used and needed supplies.This book even has a chapter on finances that you will need to have inorder to "get through". Gives you the top items for bartering as well as covers self protection for you and your family. This is a must read for any "Mom" in the house even if you aren't prepping. I wish I'd gotten this book sooner as it would have saved me so much time and energy. These baby steps lists are a must in getting you and your family well prepared.!!

I saw this book online as a recommendation on a survivalist blog. I ADORE how this book isn't doomsday and freakout, but gives real life ordeals that may cause you to need to be a survivalist! It takes things down a notch and doesn't make it look like I'm reading the next lock down compounds notes. There are real life situations and real life ideas for how to prep and make it easy and help you to not feel like a total freak. I've been laughed at over and over because I've stored food and stockpiled items to use without power for YEARS. I grew up in a place where the power could be out for weeks~ and it was only 7 miles from the nearest town, 13 miles from the nearest city. I like knowing survival things. I like having best case and worst case scenarios laid out before me. I like knowing that I have the skills to keep my family safe, warm, fed and full of clean water. This is a must have book for ANY survivalist, or someone thinking about starting a good sized pantry. It made me think about things I otherwise wouldn't. LOVE THIS BOOK!!!! I read it, and then had to buy one for a friend of mine.

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.

This was my first venture into prepping books, and I struck it rich. Extremely easy to read, no fear-mongering, you can skip around to chapters that seem most important or useful to you, detailed recommendations on being prepared for specific kinds of disaster, so you can concentrate on the one(s) you're most likely to encounter. Good lists.

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.

Covers a great deal. Lots of useful information especially for someone starting out.

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.

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.

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