Neil Strauss has been preparing himself for emergencies for the last three years, but not for ordinary emergencies like blackouts or losing a job. It’s The End of the World As We Know It stuff that Strauss is concerned about – known by the acronym TEOTWAWKI in the book – the collapse of the system and civilization as we know it.
If you find his name familiar, here’s why: Neil Strauss is the author of the best-selling book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. In The Game, he reveals how he turned from a lonely and clueless music critic into one of the most famous pick-up artists in the world.
In Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life, Strauss writes about how he slowly loses his faith in the system, and determines to learn how to survive outside of it. He transforms from an everyday city-boy into a wilderness survivor who shoots, tracks, hunts, lives in the wild with nothing but a knife and the clothes on his back, picks locks, hot-wires cars, evades bounty hunters and escapes across the border.
Emergency’s 5 Acts
The book is divided into five parts; Orientation, Five Steps, Escape, Survive, Rescue. Orientation is a short introduction. Five Steps tells the story of how Strauss saw through the cracks of modern civilization, and why he decides to learn how to survive on his own in case The Shit Hits the Fan (TSHTF for short).
