128 Ingenious Tips to Endure the Coming Apocalypse and Other Minor Inconveniences

For almost half of this book, I was getting really quite angry at Joey Green. While his ideas were useful and his follow-up tidbits educational, the majority of his entries had virtually nothing to do with “survival” as I had expected it. I was tempted to toss the book at times, but then I realized that his problem isn’t one of distinguishing emergency from inconvenience or useful hack from essentially playing with garbage. His problem is far simpler: he just has a poorly-titled book.

Whereas I was looking for “survival secrets,” and then finding an entry describing how I can use a bobby pin to paint designs on my finger nails, I finally recognized that the disconnect comes only from my preconceptions that his book is about survival in the bushwhacking sense. The title threw me, which of course is the author’s (and editor’s) fault. It’s a classic case of needing to know an author before committing oneself to his book. Rather than mentioning “survival” at all, Green would have done much better service to his readers—and likely have broadened his audience base—by titling his book Last Minute Hacks or When All Else Fails: Trash into Treasure or Life is Easier with Tampons and Pantyhose.

Of course I get it, now that I know that Green’s got a quirky streak. Each chapter is set up like you’ve just fallen off a cliff into the unknown, promising to teach you “how to stitch a wound with condoms and dental floss,” then before you know it, he’s telling you how to use a cassette tape case as a smartphone holder. I started actually enjoying myself once I pictured this thin, balding guy performing his research: buying tampons, pantyhose, and condoms in bulk before heading out into the woods to see how he fairs. It also amuses me to picture his wife’s response, seeing him hang over the baby’s crib a mobile hacked from rusty clothes hangers and old Iggy Pop CDs.

Some of the hacks I’ll return to, particularly those dealing with water collection, purification, and distillation. The impromptu coffee filter and the plunger washing machine ideas will definitely come in handy after our next typhoon or brown out, and a few others like the whistles and padlock shim will be great additions to a “beverage container hacks” lesson (if I ever make one).

When all’s said and done, I’m glad I stuck it out to the end of this book, and even happier that I changed my approach to it. I do think that his “How it Works” section should have been optional for each entry. More often than not, that paragraph seemed like a total waste, and I generally skipped it.

If you’re looking for a book on survival, this isn’t it. If you’re looking for a book on how to make use of the random crap in your house or accomplish tasks while saving money, I think you might be pleased with Joey’s Green’s book here.

©2018 E.T.

Check Out These Survival-Tip Books:

• The Art of Survival by Cord Christian Troebst (1965)
• Camping’s Top Secrets by Cliff Jacobson (1987)
• Last-Minute Survival Secrets by Joey Green (2015)
• Survival Hacks by Creek Stewart (2016)