Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

One of these days I’m going to take a high-quality pictureo f my bookshelf and post it so you can zoom in and see all the titles of the various books in there. I have one seven-foot high bookcase that is dedicated to nothing but preparedness-related books. Of course, deciding what texts are and are not related to preparedness is pretty subjective. Food storage, first aid, gun stuff, beekeeping, water supplies, home improvement, etc, are all fair game. I dont think many of us would disagree that those topics would fit in. Then we get a little more esoteric – cookbooks, politics, history, economics and a few other unexpected subjects.

Cookbooks are pretty easy to figure out. I like to eat. When the economy finally runs off the rails, infrastructure fails and the dead walk the earth Im still going to like to eat. So, I learn to cook. In addition to the usual stuff I cook I also check through cookbooks and cooking magazines for recipes that involve foods that store well. Theres plenty of books out there that are dedicated to cooking with food storge but, honestly, some of those recipes are pretty unappealing. I’d rather go hunting through Food Network, Food & Wine, Sunset, and a few other cooking magazines and hunt down recipes that I can look at and say “Hey, if I used canned [ingredient] instead of fresh [ingredient] I could make this using only stuff I have in storage!” I get to expand my skillset, add a new recipe to the Post Apocalyptic Lunch Menu and get to eat more yummy food. Win-win. So…cookbooks.

History books are fairly specialized. When I was a kid I had very little interest in history. As I get older I discover that everyone, once they hit a certain age, start developing an independent interest in history. Some guys become fascinated with the Civil War. Some guys become World War Two buffs. A lot of guys get into the frontier/Old West stuff. My interest in history almost always revolves around misery and suffering. I’m fascinated with historical accounts of famines, plagues and disaster. I’m always keen to read first person accounts of the Great Depression, behind-the-lines refugees, lost-at-sea stories, etc, etc. Anything that recounts in detail how a person (or persons) coped with terrible hardship and trial is something that I find fascinating to read. I’ve no idea why, I suspect its because I dont ever want to be one of those people. As of late, the last year or so, I’ve been fascinated in the day-to-day lives of people in occupied Europe during the war, the partisans living in haylofts, the refugee family eating boiled grass and hay, the dissidents living in hiding, etc. I’ve also been especially drawn to accounts of peoples experiences in the times that preceded those events…Im guessing thats probably just my paranoid side wanting to find eerie parallels to todays situation and hopefully discovering insight into figuring out when its all going to come to a head. Regardless, theres more than a few books on the shelf about that sort of thing.

Politics is always a tricky subject. I have several books on the American revolution, biographies of Franklin, Washington, Reagan, etc. and a few of the standards like Common Sense and that sort of thing. How they relate to preparedness is a bit hard to describe but I think it goes towards understanding government better (if such a thing is even possible) and thereby gives me a better baseline of measuring just exactly when .gov gets a little too big for its britches. Its all fine and dandy to stand up and yell “Thats unconstitutional” but you have a bit more credibility when youve actually read the Constitution and the history behind it. Theres also a few more current books on politics in there too.

One shelf is mostly fiction. I do believe that fiction has a place in preparedness. Remember the scene in ‘The Matrix’ where Neo is first dropped into ‘the construct’? Morpheus explains to him that the construct is a computer generated reality that they use to practice and learn their skills…if youre a Star Trek fan, you could liken it to a holodeck. To me, fiction is that ‘practice arena’ for exploring concepts and ideas. No one really believes that zombies are going to start shambling down the street and start munching on your neighbors. However, the books like ‘World War Z’ are useful because they make us think about situations we may not have thought of before. Yeah there are no zombies but what if the bridges were choked off and we had to get outta here? How would we do that? That sort of thing. So I have Pournelle, Ahern, Ing, Straub, Frank, Smith and others sitting there on the bookshelf. One thing I dont normally advertise is that I have some …questionable…books there in the fiction section as well. The most notable is The Turner Diaries, a white supremacist manifesto in fiction form. Why is it there? Well, I dont support the ideas espoused in it, but I am interested in how cell structures are formed, underground movements are organized, and insurgencies planned…these are things this book covers so I read it. Too many people assume that if you read something you must believe in it. Hardly. I read stuff because I want to hear all sides of the argument, all sides of the story, see all the perspectives. I’ve read white supremacist literature and I’ve read Reconquista literature. I’ve read the Christian bible and I’ve read the Muslim Koran. I’ve read Ayn Rand and Ive read Abbie Hoffman. I’ve no problem exposing myself to new ideas… deciding which ones to keep and which ones to discard is probably the thing I most equate with freedom – the freedom to make up my mind for myself on an issue. I suspect that this is why the notion of censorship and bookburning always enrages me.

Economics didnt used to interest me and it still doesnt. I mean, Im not interested in it for its own sake…Im interested in economics for what learning about it will do to help me survive these bizarre times we live in. Theres some books like ‘Conquer the Crash’ and similar titles telling how to make it through recessions, depressions, inflation, deflation, etc, etc. The best book I’ve read so far has been Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson. Its a dated book that explains various economic policies and why they dont work. I cant be dure I agree with all of it but its fascinating to read about the fallacy of The Broken Window, why a machine that replaces fifty workers won’t lead to unemployment, how rationing increases shortages, etc, etc. An excellent book.

The very bottom shelf is where I keep references. Mostly military TM and FM manuals, gun catalogs, maps, dictionary, thesaurus and stylebook (yes, theyre preparedness related…you cant learn if you cant communicate, and if you cant learn you cant survive), Flaydermans, world atlas, etc. These are books I dont get into too often unless I need to shore up my understanding of something. Wouldnt want to be without them, though.

Often Ill randomly grab one book off the shelf and read it while in bed. When I finally turn out the lights I can mull the information over in my head until I finally fall asleep. Good stuff. If you havent started a similar bookcase for your own collection, I highly recommend it.