When Technology Fails (Revised & Expanded): A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency
Selected Book Details
- Paperback
- Edition: 2nd
- Author: Matthew Stein
- Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
- Release Date: August 2008
- ISBN-10: 1933392452
- ISBN-13: 9781933392455
- List Price: $35.00
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryThere’s never been a better time to “be prepared.” Matthew Stein’s comprehensive primer on sustainable living skills—from food and water to shelter and energy to first-aid and crisis-management skills—prepares you to embark on the path toward sustainability. But unlike any other book, Stein not only shows you how to live “green” in seemingly stable times, but to live in the face of potential disasters, lasting days or years, coming in the form of social upheaval, economic meltdown, or environmental catastrophe. When Technology Fails covers the gamut. You’ll learn how to start a fire and keep warm if you’ve been left temporarily homeless, as well as the basics of installing a renewable energy system for your home or business. You’ll learn how to find and sterilize water in the face of utility failure, as well as practical information for dealing with water-quality issues even when the public tap water is still flowing. You’ll learn alternative techniques for healing equally suited to an era of profit-driven malpractice as to situations of social calamity. Each chapter (a survey of the risks to the status quo; supplies and preparation for short- and long-term emergencies; emergency measures for survival; water; food; shelter; clothing; first aid, low-tech medicine, and healing; energy, heat, and power; metalworking; utensils and storage; low-tech chemistry; and engineering, machines, and materials) offers the same approach, describing skills for self-reliance in good times and bad.Fully revised and expanded—the first edition was written pre-9/11 and pre-Katrina, when few Americans took the risk of social disruption seriously—When Technology Fails ends on a positive, proactive note with a new chapter on "Making the Shift to Sustainability," which offers practical suggestions for changing our world on personal, community and global levels. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Great starting guide for all areas of survival
Rating:
This book is interesting and full of very usful information. Weather you like hiking and backpacking or are looking to be more self sufficiant this book has something for you. Its a great guide for how to be prepaired in any circumstance.
Interesting, good read, but not very practical
Rating:
Let's start with the shortcomings, which become very obvious as soon as you pick up the book:
- Book is huge and heavy, it is the size of a laptop PC, sort of coffee table sized. It is highly impractical to take something this big with you and use it as a reference. It is even a little too large to read comfortably at home. So it fails at being a "Manual" as the long title implies.
- Inconsistent topical coverage: there are chapters and passages about high level geopolitics and analysis of oil deposits, etc. which are followed by minute details about building a fire or cleaning a wound. Basically, the books tries to be an A-Z encyclopedia of sustainability and survival, which proves hard to do.
- Not a particularly good *survival* guide. Kind of follows from the points above, too bulky and too much volume devoted to other stuff. However, also the typical survival topics are not covered with enough detail, and at times it felt like some content was lifted from other books (e.g. survival kits, animal snares), or at least overlapped enough to make it more worth your time to read more compact dedicated survival guides.
So what is good about this book?
- Comprehensive, covers a lot of topics, with good overview and pointers to further reading. Quotes and summarizes a lot of other writing on "long emergency" and survival, so you can spare yourself reading a ton of other books and get the gist of many topics. If you are interested in the details, however, you will have to read those other books.
- Discussion of "long emergency" and sustainable living topics is excellent. Basically, these are the non-how-to portions of the book. Things like analysis of global warming, oil deposits, alternative energy, energy efficient buildings, etc. More focused and more readable than many other books I have encountered on these topics.
- Extensive bibliography about all the topics discussed. Each chapter has a list of books, magazines, and retail outlets, with the author's summary of what they are about and recommendations. This is a great starting point for exploring any topic in depth.
- Intelligent, logical, calm writing style. Although the topic is emergency and survival, the author does not come across as paranoid or extreme in his opinions. It is clear that the author has done a lot of research and done a great job summarizing and presenting it. Overall, the book is a pleasure to read as a result of that.
This is a great book to introduce you to the overall survival and sustainable living topics, after which you are better off getting other resources as your go-to manuals and references.
Sigh, another one...
Rating:
Its really quite a 'good' book. Basic generalization of techniques I've used for years. If a person takes this book, and learns the stuff prior to a SHTF crisis, they'd probably be OK. Buy TWO of them, get one dirty, bloody, and tacky with tree-sap, used as a practical field guide. Growing up in the 'poor' south in the '60s I suppose I've really just about seen it all. I keep expecting to find something with fresh, new ideas.
Preachy at times, but a very useful book
Rating:
All of the skills necessary to survive any disaster whether at home or in the wild. This is a book you want to keep, read over and over and practice after you read it. Very well written with many drawings illustrating the needed skills.
The only reason for 4 instead of 5 stars is that the book can get a bit preachy as to why technology will fail. One chapter would have sufficed as to what could happen. Instead the authors get into many theories in almost every chapter. While I agree with most of the theories, some are a bit out there, including things that haven't even been fully proven yet.
The author misses much, but very good
Rating:
This book is EXCELLENT at teaching us to live a sustainable and green life style, and to survive a loss of our electronic gizmos if that were ever to occur. As someone deeply interested in greening my life, this book is excellent. The tips are wonderful. The resources great. In terms of this content, I would give the book 5 stars.
Amish and Mennonite Americans have been living this sustainable life style for ever. I admire them greatly, and one of the strengths of this book is showing us how we can all "get off the grid" and make the world a better place.
However, sadly, the author's ideology is deeply flawed in some respects, especially when it comes to population growth. In the introduction (which descends into fear mongering) the author talks about the so called proven problems with population. This is a falsehood as the book Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits clearly shows. Population growth will only be a danger if we refuse to treat the world with respect. An Amish family with 12 kids living on a farm off the grid using cloth diapers and sustainable farming practices actually would help green the planet, whereas a typical American family of four, with both parents off working and commuting in SUVs with annual vacations by plane and the children off in inefficient schools instead of home-schools will do serious harm to the planet. If one compares the two families, the modern family is the menace, not the children themselves. The family of 12 living sustainably is a gift, the family of 4 living in a rush to consume is the problem. Human existence, and human babies are NOT the problem (as much as the inconsisent ideologues on the eco-left would have us believe). Furthermore, as much as I am very interested in greening the planet (and am living my life accordingly increasingly year by year) much of this book's introduction is fear mongering. It reads like Malthus. He was wrong. So is this author. If we all take small steps, we can help change the world. There is no reason to go crazy moving to farms.
While we are considering the population question, the author I am sure is a big fan of chemical contraceptives which are imperiling our water supply and our planet themselves. As women who take the pill use our water supply to flush their waste, an INCREDIBLE amount of estrogen is finding its way into our rivers. Fish are failing to reproduce and frogs are dying off in disturbing rates as a result. This proven fact is largely ignored simply because of politics, but the studies showing the problem are relatively clear. One could use Natural Family Planning and the effects on the environment are ZERO, even as the method is 99% effective. (See The Art of Natural Family Planning or Taking Charge of Your Fertility, 10th Anniversary Edition: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health) Zero chemicals in the water, zero latex in the landfills, and our bodies are not marred by expensive surgeries.
So, this book tends to be ideologically extreme and unbalanced. But that shouldn't stop you from reading the book and profiting from its strengths.
These criticisms out the way (the ideology of this author was really off-putting), the ideas about off the grid living, green living, sustainable living, and electricity-free living are wonderful, if predictable. Just don't tell the Amish to stop having babies. It isn't necessary.
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