Just in Case by Kathy Harrison

This book is subtitled: How to Be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens, and that's the best description for it.

The author is a dedicated do it yourselfer and be prepared type of person. This book contains a tremendous amount of useful advice. Some of it is standard, and much of it come from her own experience following the principle of preparation and independence with her family.

If I had to give odds, I'd say she and her family must be in the top 1% of 1% for meeting and surviving any kind of emergency. If there's a flu pandemic, nuclear war, total financial breakdown or alien invasion, the party's at her house.

Seriously, it's hard to imagine a better or more thorough book on this subject.

She covers the practical aspects of preparing for disasters. Make a plan, and start slow. Make a to do list, and do it. Talk it over with your spouse and children. Involve them, because you're not running for the hills without them (I hope).

She has extensive chapters on food storage, survival food recipes, what to do if your power goes out (it's happened to me more times than I can remember), you go through a forest fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, thunderstorm or landslide.

She covers every possibility from a simple, temporary storm to surviving the breakdown of civilization as we know it. She could be a character out of a novel by science fiction writer Robert Heinlein. Survivors survive, he wrote. If she's not a survivor, the rest of us have no hope.

The chapter on terrorism explain the color coding system. She's probably the only person out of that department within DHS which understands it.

Afraid you may need to know how to purify water? There are more ways than you realize, and they're explained inside these pages.

There's basic advice on gardening, for fresh food in season and to put in long-term storage through canning, drying, pickling, and preserving.

How do you set up cold storage inside your home, for keeping fruits and vegetables such as potatoes and apples? Heat your house with wood. Find edible plants growing in the woods. Survive out in the wilderness if you have a problem while camping, hiking, cycling or floating.

Make yogurt, bake bread and make cheese.

Some of these subjects she skims over, of course. A full course on growing vegetables and fruits would fill complete books. And there are books devoted entirely to finding wild edible food.

However, she's not a gungho, hardcore survivalist, which may disappoint some. This book doesn't tell you to buy guns and gold. It does explain almost everything you should ever need to know to prepare for disasters whether they're personal, local, national or international.

Hopefully you'll never need 98% of the information in this book.

But if you ever need 2% of it, not having it could cost the life of yourself or someone you love.

Richard Stooker has a long-time interest in health, diet and fitness subjects, including kids running shoes, and the Brooks running shoes.