Emergency is a surprisingly impressive book. Having read The Game, his book about becoming a pickup artist, I'd expected good writing, humor, sharp observations and a wry outlook on life. I wasn't expecting this book to be so profound.
First of all, I have to admire Strauss for being hardheaded, for following his impulses come what may and for having the guts to tell us all about the consequences, including the interesting but negative stuff.
I think his political views are off-base, but that's incidental.
This is the story of his journey to learn how to survive - just in case.
He starts out as a self-confessed wuss who wants to survive no matter what, but had precious little experience at it. He grew up in a forty-second apartment in Chicago. He's been a writer and a pickup artist.
So he attends a seminar of The Sovereign Society in Panama, where nobody trusts each other. He hangs out on survivalist boards.
But he doesn't just talk the talk, he walks the walks as far as it takes him, which is very far. He winds up with a second citizenship from the island of St Kitts, an island in the Caribbean, after paying a big chunk of money he says he couldn't afford.
(Perhaps the money he got for selling his seduction program, plus his bestsellers, helped.)
He finds and then takes all kinds of courses on how to survive in the woods, how to survive in the city, how to handle guns, how to drive motorcycles, how to identify edible plants, how to make and handle knives and use one to butcher a goat, and much more.
Each step of the way, he identifies a gap in his knowledge about what could happen, and takes another step toward self-reliance.
He entertains us along the way, and includes his observations on the age-old question of whether human beings are innately good or bad. In a disaster will they help each other or fight each other? Most survivalists are betting on the latter.
There were indeed points where I wanted to tell him that small rural communities would probably pull together and help each other, though they may also become hostile to outsiders, so it's not a simple either/or question.
His quest to learn all leads him to take classes and get certified as a Certified Emergency Response Technician (CERT), then as an EMT, and then becomes a member of the California Emergency Mobile Patrol. Soon after, he helps out victims of the worst rail disaster in California history.
He realizes he no longer wants to be the lone wolf survivor, but enjoys helping out his community. He keeps his second home in St Kitts, just in case, but wants to help them as well.
Where did the pickup artist and seduction guru go to?
Next: learn how to survive no matter what on freeze dried foods and survival foods.
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