When reading the early access version of Zalewski's book, I had been wary of the potential tie-in to preppers, and had initially skipped ahead to the chapters on fiscal preparedness and finance. I soon wished I had been able to read these words of wisdom when I was much younger, and wanted to send print versions off to each of my wife's 'kids'.
Zalewski got interested in preppers as a hobby around 2015. As someone I am presuming lives in the Bay Area, some degree of being prepared for natural disasters just makes sense. I lived there when the Loma Prieta earthquake in Santa Cruz took out a section of the Bay Bridge while also collapsing buildings and a long stretch of elevated freeway, killing dozens. The aftermath left traffic snarled for months, was more than enough to get many Bay Area denizens interested in some degree of prepping.
Zalewski's book begins by examining risks in a very sane, voice-of-reason, manner. The end-of-the-world scenarios get downplayed immediately in favor of the actual things that kill or injure most people in first world countries--things like ladders and backyard swimming pools. He does consider larger scale risks but always in a thoughtful manner. With that out of the way, he quickly moves on to my favorite parts of his book, about building a rainy-day fund and safeguarding your savings. In my mind, those two chapters are worth the price of the book by themselves. The rest of the first part, another seven chapters, are about other very practical issues, like keeping your skills fresh, defensive driving, working at heights, drugs, fire, digital and physical threats to property, staying in shape, dieting, and building community. There are many notes, referring to pages of online references that take up over 30 pages at the back of the book.
I plan on keeping this book around as a reference, all-be-it an unusual one, and close with this quote from the book:
Far more people are killed in the United States by lawnmowers than by animals of prey.
Practical Doomsday: A User's Guide to the End of the World
by Michal Zalewski
January 2022, 250 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781718502123
