There aren’t too many books I buy where you get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sit down to read them, and they are exact­ly what I was look­ing for.  How­ev­er, in David Mor­ris’s book “Urban Sur­vival Guide: Learn The Secrets Of Urban Sur­vival To Keep You Alive After Man-Made Dis­as­ters, Nat­ur­al Dis­as­ters, and Break­downs In Civ­il Order,” that is exact­ly what I got, and more.  As many of you know I live just out­side NYC.  You prob­a­bly are sick of hear­ing me say that.  What that has done for me is give me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be very crit­i­cal of what is hap­pen­ing around me, and think deeply about how I am going to act or react to a sit­u­a­tion that may occur.  David Mor­ris, has gone a step fur­ther in this book.  He has inter­viewed dozens of experts on a miri­ad of pos­si­bil­i­ties, and has laid out a plan that can help you to seri­ous­ly kick start your plans to either Bug In or Bug Out based on your own per­son­al sit­u­a­tion.  I drew many par­al­lels out of this book, but clear­ly David has years on me when it comes to assess­ing the sit­u­a­tions, and prepar­ing for them.  The book is actu­al­ly a 12 week course that David sells online called  Sur­vive In Place.  If the book par­al­lels the course, then there is a lot of infor­ma­tion there.

This is a no non­sense guide and plan.  David gets right to the point regard­ing every aspect of get­ting ready to Bug Out or Bug In.  There is very lit­tle fluff, and uses real life exam­ples of dis­as­ters such as Kat­ri­na with specifics as to why peo­ple should have got­ten out ear­li­er, and what you should be aware of if you are ever going to be in the same or sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion.  I think this was writ­ten before the Earth­quake in Haiti or I am sure there would have been ref­er­ences in there to that dis­as­ter as well.  There is a com­pre­hen­sive resources sec­tion as well as URLs for you to go to his Web­site to see addi­tion­al con­tent, exam­ples, and updates around the infor­ma­tion writ­ten in the book.

This book cov­ers every­thing from your own san­i­ty gut check to “Hard­en­ing Your Home” which is a whole chap­ter in the book.  Do not expect very detailed infor­ma­tion on how to add met­al bars or sheet­ing to pro­tect win­dows how­ev­er.  Expect the high lev­el infor­ma­tion to be there so that you may take the steps to look into doing what you have to do for you or your fam­i­ly.  The fact that Mor­ris brings the infor­ma­tion up and points to it should be enough for you to inves­ti­gate, if you have not already.  Oth­er­wise this would be 1000 plus page book.

The book does come with work sheets that you can repli­cate on your PC to help you to plan and improve your skill set(s).  There was even a skills assess­ment sheet to help you to assess where you, your fam­i­ly, and / or your sur­vival group need to improve on.  Need­less to say, I need a lot of skills improve­ment.  Those sec­tions will help you to pri­or­i­tize what is impor­tant to you.

There is no gun talk, or very lit­tle, which was fine with me, because every­one has their own opin­ions, and it is clear David Mor­ris knows this.  I was hap­py to see there was lit­tle gun talk as there are more impor­tant top­ics to be dis­cussed.

This book is an easy read, as it reads quick­ly, is not over com­pli­cat­ed, and is just chock full of infor­ma­tion for the urban and sub­ur­ban prep­per / sur­vival­ist.  I am going to go out on a limb and say that if you are in prep mode at all, you need to get your hands on this book to help take you to the next lev­el.  You may only find that this solid­i­fies your thought process, but it is always good to know there are oth­er like minds out there.

I had been look­ing at this book for a long time going back and forth about pur­chas­ing it.  I am glad I did.  In fact, I bought it on the Kin­dle plat­form, and now will prob­a­bly go back and buy it in paper­back so I have it to mark up and make notes in, as well as throw in my Bug Out Bag with me. And, the fact that I will buy any book twice with a close to $25.00 price tag says a lot.

Here is the book on Ama­zon:  http://goo.gl/90NOf.  I think you will find it is well worth read­ing.

• Here are addi­tion­al reviews of the book:  http://goo.gl/4JWwz