Books for the Apocalypse

Sorry to berate GD with yet another silly thread; but I can not help myself.

I recently tagged some of my books for the apocalypse to represent books I would attempt to take with me in the unlikely event that I survived WWIII and was foredoomed to roam the razed landscape for the rest of my life. Of course, I would bring food, water, etc. etc... things to sustain myself and all that; but I believe without some books, I would go insane(er).

I have my current list down to 24 books (I am trying to bring this number down) representing what I would need to sustain my current level of understanding toward the subjects that mean the most to me (math and physics), plus some choice pieces of literature I wouldn't mind reading over and over. I have picked many books for them being comprehensive references in addition to being light-weight paperbacks with archival quality paper.

My question is, how would my fellow GDers pick such a group of books. Would you limit the raw number of books; or would you go by weight? Would you pick fiction or non-fiction or some combination thereof? Just a fun little curiosity :).

I don't have this problem, because a good study of current world situations reveals, that despite suspicion between countries, WWIII is not really on the cards.

However, I do have a list of 10 Obscure Books You'll Love posted on my blog, to make people aware of lovely obscure books that probably wouldn't survive an apocalypse I see coming more swiftly: a desolate future where nobody in Australia has even heard of H.P. Lovecraft or Train Man or other classics that helped me through my teen years, not because of WWIII but because of the cultural cringe and tyranny of distance.

Well, I plan on getting my list down to 'what I can grab and run with to the bomb shelter when the sirens go off.'

Books must be packed.
Everything else be damned!

(anyone that's ever worked for a politician knows to build a bomb shelter... heh.)

2>
I don't have this problem, because a good study of current world situations reveals, that despite suspicion between countries, WWIII is not really on the cards.

I think you are taking my original post just a little too seriously... it would seem my facetiousness is lost on some :(.

I just find preparing for the apocalypse a notion that ignores the enjoyment of the world we have now. What we should be doing is fixing the world so the apocalypse doesn't happen.

But in answer to your question, sometimes people with Asperger's Syndrome, like myself, take things a little too seriously. It's SERIOUSLY a problem I have to fix myself. Also I don't like it when I inadvertently make people on the internet angry. It just makes me sad.

I know what you meant by your original post, and I'm sorry I took it too seriously. I think reading Fight Club again is making me crabby about society.

#1 -
but did you take into account the anti-radioactive papers or housing for those books... I mean, think of what mutants you could end up carrying around with you whilst trying to read!

Personally I have been hoping for my bunny-book hybrid. The book could then hop around next to me as I am gathering the last things I will be able to keep of my previous lifestyle before I need to hide out in the wilderness for the next forty years, subsisting off of dirt and grass.

now if only I could decide if I want a HORDE of book-bunnies breeding... I mean, think of the new books they could give birth to! I really COULD get my ultimate writer-collaborations... but then, I'd have to feed all the little squirts! And the book litter!

But as to your original question -- I think I'm going to tag them as my apocalypse favourites, yes.

6> Wow, a book-bunny hybrid! Now that's an interesting though :). Book-bunnies breeding... who knows what cool stuff you could get out of that! It sounds like something right out of a Jeff Noon novel ;).

But if it's a Dan Brown-Book Bunny hybrid...

The terrible consequences of overturning nature are godawfully written "thrillers"...

book litter? Would it ferment into pulp fiction?

Great idea! I may use a slightly different tag, though. (Just because I don't wanna be a copycat.)
;o)

Hmm, let me think...

Fallout Shelter Must Haves?

Naw.

Just make sure you don't break your reading glasses....

AHHHHH!



Might make a great profile piccie!

Actually, I can read just fine with my naked eyes. I just can't see ANYTHING that's more than 9 inches from my face without my contacts or glasses. So, yeah, I'd be royally BLEEPED without them anyway.

#13 I'm in the same boat. I actually find that when I read I'm better off taking my glasses off, so when I'm working there is this constant taking the glasses off to read something, putting them back to see everything else.

Love the picture! That's one of my favorite eps too.

That's what I love about GD: from serious crabby WWIII to hopping bunny-books... and then I suppose you really could eat your words...

The difficulty with hopping bunny-books is that one assumes that they would in fact propagate themselves with the speed of ordinary bunnies. This scenario is perhaps as frightening as the serious crabby WWIII scenario. I mean, think of all those books (in the photo from the Twilight Zone episode above) suddenly popping up and bounding about one. It gives the phrase "information overload" an entirely new meaning.

I think, honestly, I would bring my thin rice-paper edition of Lord of the Rings. If the landscape is charred, I want to read about trees from the best writer who ever loved them with a passion.

I'd read about the Old Forest, and tarry in the clear streams.

And maybe hope that I can some day meet one of those elf-lords or ladies, helping to fix the landscape.

You know the ones - the elf lords, tall and fair with strength in their eyes, and wisdom upon their brow. And the lithe-limbed elf maidens, with pale skin and flowers growing about their feet wherever they lightly skipped.

;D

Here's a canonical elf-maiden drawing. Note the herbivore in the background to signify peace, the rose to symbolize romantic love, and the butterflies to symbolize the lack of air pollution. :D

Ah, Joel. You always make me smile. I can feel my blood pressure coming down, and peace descending. Thanks.

I always knew there was something special about you, JPB (besides your quality writing and peaceful pictures) -- that's my name too!

But... where oh where are her Elfin Britches?

Gosh imagine that outfit without a good strong breeze!

could you use book-bunnies to roast themselves, both fire and food so to speak?

now I want to know how many of us in Green Dragon take off our glasses to read? Seems like a possible association .... too near sighted to do anything but read, after the apocalypse. I assume in a truly gigantic disaster I would lose my glasses. In that case, I would have to be an Oracle spouting wise sayings with no reference to who was standing before me, couldn't see him.

I take off my glasses when I read. Score one against mutant mole-people.

I can see reasonably well without my glasses, but I need them to read road signs approaching. Mole-people lose out because without glasses they're screwed.

And I have an opposable thumb and five fingers to turn pages. Strike three against the mole-people.

As for the Oracle thing, you'd have to come up with insightful stuff on a daily basis or you lose your job. Even I can't be funny all the time, sometimes one of my jokes doesn't work, or my references are too obscure.

I wear my glasses when I go out because I'm near sighted. I don't have to take them off when I read because I don't see any difference, but my head starts to feel it after a while, so usually I do.

I first got glasses when I was 13 and I hated them so much that I only put them on when I absolutely had to. I quite like them now, 9 years later. Seeing is not overrated.

Oh, and I've often thought about my apocalypse books, but there are a lot of them, and my list probably isn't exactly realistic, although neither would my odds of survival be in one anyway.

Oops! The apocalypse is here. Nowt to do now, 'cept hole miself up in a library and catch up on TBR.

Post-apocalypse books would not be "desert island" books. I would pick practical titles that would help me get through my day, like:

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Cannibal's Cookbook : Recipes and Remedies for Human Sacrifice by Pamela Peck
The Unofficial MacGyver How-To Handbook by Bret Terrill
The Paranoia Switch: How Terror Rewires Our Brains and Reshapes Our Behavior--and How We Can Reclaim Our Courage by Martha Stout
Masturbation for Morons by David Samson
Radioactive Waste Management by James Saling
Urine Therapy: Nature's Elixir for Good Health by Flora Peschek-Böhmer
The War Against Toenail Fungus by Dwight Thomas
Growing Wild Mushrooms: A Complete Guide to Cultivating Edible and Hallucinogenic Mushrooms by Bob Harris
Antiperspirants and Deodorants: Principles of Underarm Technology by Eric Abrutyn and John Wild
Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide To Hosting the Perfect Funeral by Gayden Metcalfe
The Self-sufficient Life and How to Live It by John Seymour and Deirdre Headon

There was a book by M.K. Wren, A Gift Upon The Shore that contained, as an appendix, a list of books included in a vault/fallout shelter in the story. It was set in a post-nuclear Washington state setting; halfway decent story-telling.

I once read a apocoliptic Story (or a book or an essay) where the protagonist wrapped copies of how the world works in multiple layers of plastic and buried them in cesspits in hopes that future generations would dig them up and not have to rediscover all that our civilization has painfully learned.

>28 Jasper: That was Lucifer's Hammer

Oh, to be one of you lucky GDers gifted with clear vision! Between (really, really) near-sightedness and double astigmatism, I'm screwed without contact lenses or glasses. The last time I got contacts, the optometrist seemed overly excited because the new pair gave me sharper vision. The kicker was that my previous set had been the strongest prescription the company produced and they had just come out with this new one.

If I do survive the Environmental Apocalypse, I'm going to need the Zombie Survival Guide. This suburban lifestyle is just teetering on the brink of zombification.

I'm with you, Ex, or I would be if I could see past my nose without help... can't even read the R and L on the contact case w/out them in...

>31 TeacherDad: Haha - that's why I get the color-coded cases.

oh oh!
zombie-book-bunny hybrids!

hmmm... maybe we shouldn't mutate that many things into one... I mean, how could you read a book-bunny when it's trying to eat your brains all the time...?

Oh... wait... there's tv for eating brains already...

regarding vision: I am always a bit nervous about putting my glasses down somewhere different because if they are not on my nose, I can't see well enough to find them. This doesn't happen often, but some mornings I do get up and I don't know where I put them. Arg! sleepy and blind. I would not be a useful participant in a post-disaster world.

I have 3 different sets of glasses: univision, for baseball games, movies, driving, and other long distance things; "computer glasses" for work that are progressive and let me see the computer and the desk properly; and bifocals, which I use when watching TV & knitting.

It sucks to get old.

When I'm just lying in bed reading, I can actually see better just holding the book right next to my face without glasses.

>29 Morphidae: Thanks Morph. Niven & Pournelle, figures.

I can't tell you how much time I "wasted" as a kid trying to help my Dad find his glasses, keys, and other things. A couple of Christmases ago, I got him a gizmo from The Sharper Image, which came with little widgets you could stick on things and a remote that would make it beep until you located the object. "This will really help him out!" I thought.

Turns out the beep frequency was high enough that he couldn't hear it. It does suck to get old.

I had one of those Sharper Image things and then I lost parts of it. One of my finer personality traits, messy house, lost parts.

Hey, I'm still trying to find a bag of brand new knee socks purchased at some point in December, maggie1944. So you're in great shape compared to me.

do you have dogs? most missing parts from my house are found in the yard (-; Latest: one of the baby's pacifiers is disappeared.... Nothing quite as funny as a grey bearded schnauzer walking around with a pink pacifer in her mouth.

I take things apart and then find parts when I put them back together. Somehow, there's always more there than I actually took out of the original thing. Maybe I've been collecting all your lost parts over the years and didn't realize. You're welcome to come over and root around in my basement for things you're missing. 8^}

I keep piles of lost parts in boxes all throughout my house. I am sure whatever I am missing, I already have, and I need shop no more!

#22 - LOL, that really made ma laugh :-)
I take my glasses off when reading, or I get a severe headache. Until fairly recently I could stay alive outside without glasses but nowadays I need them to watch TV or just about anything that isn't close up.

I spend quite a lot of time searching for my glasses; I can navigate our flat without them so I always put them down... *somewhere*

I got my first glasses when I was 28, I think, I to me they're part of who I am. When I still played football (injury put an end to that one) I finally had to get contacts but I HATED them. Contacts are just visual aids; glasses are a statement (or, rather my choice of frames are).
;-)

BTW I have no idea which books to pick for the apocalypse.

I second the Zombie Survival Guide. I loved that one as a teenager, when I was just discovering George A. Romero's "Dead" movies. You know, when a book comes into your life at the right time, you remember it forever. Also, better you know how to deal with slavering hordes of undead than be eaten as an idiot.