Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

While the author's time and experience in the field of Emergency Response is impressive, it just goes to show that expertise in one area doesn't necessarily make you proficient in another. This book claims to be able to help you prepare for all manner of weather-related emergencies, earthquake, civil unrest, and even survive a terrorist attack. The areas of the book concerned with basic personal preparedness (common-sense stuff like shutting off gas and electricity after a natural disaster, how to get water out of your pipes even after the main supply is shut off, and making a phone tree of in- and out-of-state contacts) and basic first-aid are thorough, and there is some useful information contained within (like the chart on water purification methods), some sections on emergency planning and personal response to natural and man-made disasters are so inaccurate as to be dangerous. In one instance, the author runs through a food list that he claims should sustain an adult for a year, but it only includes #4 of peanut butter and #1 of dried peas, along with commensurately low quantities of dried beans, flour, dry soup mix, and pasta that are almost equally unrealistic. The author's instruction on sheltering-in-place during an NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) event is to duct-tape yourself and your family in an interior bathroom, where, he claims, you will have enough breathable oxygen for about 3 hours. The author discourages firearms ownership, and it is clear he knows nothing about them when he claims that "9mm is as small as you should go, and anything larger than a .38 is too big." In case you are not a "gun person," .38 is the equivalent of 9.6mm or 9mm would be .358 inches. 9mm is marginally larger than .38 and nothing in-between exists. He recommends that his readers be unarmed, and prepared to abandon their homes and possessions in order to rely upon the government agencies to evacuate them and care for them in a mass-casualty shelter. He even recommends at one point that the items in the emergency survival kit (outlined in the earlier part of the book) should be used to barter for goods and services among other shelter residents.