A Field Guide for the Unprepared
Real skills.Unreal narrator.
“I am not here to save you. I’m here because when it happens, I don’t want to share a stairwell with a man who thinks water comes from a subscription.”
Dr. Buck Savage† · †not a doctor
Ten volumes · 341,678 words · 175 drawings
Buy the ten paperbacks and the ebooks and audiobooks come with them.
The shelf, 1 to 10Hover a spine
FORAGING1
WATER2
FOOD STORAGE3
FIRE & POWER4
FIRST AID5
HUNTING & FISHING6
COMMS & ELECTRONICS7
ENGINES & TRANSPORT8
DEFENSE & SHELTER9
COMMUNITY10Water, fire, food, wounds, weather, engines, locks, radios, dinner, and the neighbours.
Section 1 — the arithmetic
I ran the numbers
Buck runs arithmetic on strangers as a self-soothing behaviour. He has run it on this series too. Every figure below is measured from the finished books at build time, not typed into a template.
- Volumes
- 10
- Words of actual instruction
- 341,678
- Illustrations, drawn not stock
- 175
- Hours of it, read aloud
- 39.25
- Jokes inside a safety step
- 0
- Raccoons at large
- 1
- Doctors
- 0
Section 2 — the part that is not a joke
It is a real manual. That is the whole trick.
The cover gets the laugh and sells the gift. Then somebody opens it, and it turns out to be the clearest plain-English manual they own.
Every identification runs on positive ID against three independent confirmations. Water is worked at one gallon per person per day over fourteen days. Where a mistake maims or kills, the comedy stops mid-paragraph and the prose goes flat, procedural and short.
Section 3 — free, and no email wall
Check the manual before you buy the joke
Every volume ends in a practical appendix that tells the reader to photocopy it freely and laminate it shamelessly. So we published it — the real cards, at full strength, on every volume page.
Doreen’s cornerHis ex-wife. Taught him most of it.
“Don’t buy him ten. He’ll shelve ten. Buy him Water — he’ll read that one because it will annoy him, and then he’ll buy the other nine himself.”
“Date everything the day it comes in. An unpractised plan is a wish.”
Section 4 — the present
She is right, and it is mostly how these are bought
Nobody buys a survival manual for themselves: buying one means admitting the tap might stop. Somebody buys it for them, on a birthday, and gets to be the one who was right. So pick by the person, not the subject.
Give it to the one who keeps three ornamental matches in a designer vase.
Give it to the one who has been driving past that dashboard light since 2024.
Give it to the one who cannot name one neighbour.