Manuals for Surviving the Future

internisus · shafer sephiroth Joined: 04 Dec 2006

This may seem a bit weird, but a friend lent me Max Brooks's The Zombie Survival Guide, which is a totally serious, straight-faced manual to surviving a zombie attack. He even followed it up with an even-more-serious historical account of a zombie war. Anyway, I find the format really appealing, and I was instantly reminded of the excellent setting content of the Fallout pdf manual. I'm wondering if anyone knows of similar books.

Also, while you're at it, somebody take the pdf manual for Homeworld and turn it into a novel or something. Just give me more of the Homeworld universe any way you can. There is no more, is there? =( Oh well, back to the original topic.

Fake manuals. I found two possibilities on Amazon: How to Survive a Robot Uprising and The Government Manual for New Superheroes. I'd really like a post-nuclear-apocalypse manual, though. Basically Fallout-the-manual-for-realz. Anyone ever come across something like that? A manual to being a newly turned vampire could be neat, too.

I feel like an incredible dork right now.

CubaLibre · the road lawyer Joined: 02 Mar 2007 Location: Balmer

I don't know this for a fact, but I'm pretty sure there has got to be a post-nuclear survival manual written, not only in feigned earnest, but actual earnest, considering that for a significant amount of time there were a significant amount of people who were pretty sure that nuclear apocalypse could easily and certainly happen.
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stotelheim · Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 12:22 am

I'm still a bit dissappointed that this thread isn't about how to save yourself from toxic futureshock.
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kiken · Joined: 05 Dec 2006

I think you should read Protect & Survive. Britain's best government nuclear comic.

skonrad · Joined: 05 Dec 2006 Location: Vizzyvancizzouver

The robot one is a little bit more humor-driven, but it's pretty okay if you can get a discount price on it. At one point I read that it was being made into a movie, with Mike Myers attached to the project somehow. The opening few pages are a good intro to the humor of the book and are here: http://www.robotuprising.com/ .

My girlfriend's number one fear happens to be a zombie apocalypse (really), so I'm planning to read through the Zombie survival guide sometime soon.

shrugtheironteacup · *man of tomorrow* Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Location: a meat

I'm a huge fan of the Zombie Survival Guide (and World War Z was suprisingly compelling), but the only other vaguely related manual I have is The Batman Handbook. It is nowhere near as good as the Zombie-related manual, but is sort of amusing.

Includes handy advice on becoming Batman like "take a few years off and train with ninjas" and also a cursory guide to productively managing your youthful ward.
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Adilegian · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 4:24 am

While it's not totally about surviving the future, I recommend John Hodgman's Areas of My Expertise. I think the audiobook version is better, though, so snag that if you can.
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Mr. Mechanical · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 4:36 am

http://www.english.ilstu.edu/351/hypertext98/koss/how2survive/aboutsite/about.html ("I wanted the layout to mirror that of a cold war civil defense newsletter. I did not intend for this site to be confrontational. It is meant to be seen as art, not politics. By putting this information on-line, I hope it will give viewers somthing humerous and visually intersting to look")

http://www.oism.org/nwss/ (Free Online Book)

http://www.ki4u.com/survive/index.htm (11 Steps to Nuclear War Fallout Survival)

http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-Nuclear-War (How to Survive a Nuclear War)

Not really a manual, internisus, but I bet you could compile all that data into a manual of your own of sorts!
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