A Review: Emergency Preparedness the Right Way, by Howard Godfrey

The first prepping book I bought was Emergency Preparedness the Right Way by Howard Godfrey. I’m not exactly sure why I decided to purchase this one over the many other books on this topic available. I was just browsing on amazon.com and somehow this book ended up in my cart. I think it was the cute little girl on the cover that did it.

This is a small book – only 143 pages including the index and references. Small though it may be, it does cover the major survival topics. Chapters include:

-Planning and other random thoughts

-Water

                                       -Food

                                       -Storage Tips

                                     -Cooking, lights and fuel

                                     -Medical and sanitation

                                     -72-hour kits

                                     -Miscellaneous recipes (HH says: These are truly
                                      miscellaneous. Don’t buy this book for food storage recipes)

                                     -Improvised equipment

                                     -Some Last Thoughts

One thing I appreciated about this book is that it makes survival topics very accessible for the novice prepper. It’s not full of jargon or highly technical discussions. I got a good basis and it inspired me to do further research.

One weakness of this book is that it has a bit of filler. The author includes long (the one on pinto beans is 1+ pages) quotations from scholarly studies done at BYU. While the information may be relevant, the author could have simply summarized the findings of the studies. It felt like the author was trying to beef up the page count of his book, much like my students would do when I was a teacher back in the day. Add a bit of filler, make the margins 2 inches, jack up the font size and PRESTO you have a 5-7 page research paper, teacher! This book is self-published. This kind of stuff, plus the random nature of the first and last chapters, wouldn’t have made it past the editing process of most publishing houses.

Since some people are put off by heavily Mormon content, I will make note of it when I do reviews. Personally it doesn’t bother me. Some of the nicest people I have met are Mormons. I also have read enough Mormon preparedness documents to be able to quote their scriptures by now! The Mormons are on their game when it comes to prepping. The author does say "Remember, if you are prepared you shall not fear", which is a Mormon scriptural reference. That is about it.

This wasn’t a bad start to my prepping library. It covers the most important topics, albeit not in great depth. There is some filler included, but it is an adequate primer for the beginning prepper. I’ll keep this for reference and it has whetted my appetite for more.

Emergency Preparedness the Right Way is available at Amazon.com