Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is probably a decent book to have for most preppers, but I'm really not certain it was worth $35.00. It reminds me a little of "Where There is no Doctor" ($20.00), but for preppers . There are a lot of western, orthodox concepts that are very applicable to post-disaster medicine, as well as some that aren't, I believe due to lack of austere medicine experience on the part of the authors. All of the information in here is available from other sources, but if it's worth it to you to have it all in one book, then by all means, spend the money. The place that the book is extremely weak is in the area of alternative medicine, which would very likely be the area that a person needs to be strongest in if there really is a full collapse. Simply stocking up on pharmaceuticals is just not any kind of answer for the long-range disaster, primarily because of the fact that every single medical situation has to then be judged from a standpoint of rationing whatever you have, all orthodox pharmaceuticals will be looted before anything else, and in a nationwide (or worldwide) collapse, there will be a LOT of need for medical help. Although the authors stress the need for hygiene, sanitation, wound cleansing, etc., the part that people really need to know is plant medicine. This is no fault of the authors - they just don't have the experience in the area, so the herbal "remedies" they list (and it is just that - bare lists) read like the typical plantain-on-bug-bites 'advice' that you can find on even the least herbal-literate websites. In other words, useless plant medicine knowledge if you really want to try to put it to the test that a post-disaster puts everything to. This kind of thing isn't an empty field of information in the USA. There are herbalists out there who are using plant medicine for serious acute trauma and illness care every day and in the field, and have been doing so for decades, such as Sevensong, Doc Garcia, Sam Coffman, Kiva Rose, etc. I'm waiting for any or all of them to come out with a book on how to really deal with a full post-disaster collapse using plant medicine because nobody else really is doing this. There is unfortunately a big hole where there needs to be a collective volume of information on this kind of subject specific to plant medicine. So it's good that it's at least mentioned a little in this book, but it falls far short on actual usable depth or experience. Nothing against the authors - they're coming from the typical allopathic-approach to plant medicine (and they're much more open-minded about it than most of their peers, so kudos for that), but I don't think they really have the experience of dealing with post-disaster medicine in any modality. So - it's one of the best books out there on the subject (which unfortunately isn't saying much), but still falls way short in a lot of areas that it should be addressing more from direct experience than copy/paste and organize from rescue/trauma manuals, etc. One other note: I also think the approach to wound closure is a bit liberal toward the side of closing a wound in the field. Post-disaster settings are environments rich with pathogens in the way that one will find nowhere else. Rather than bowing to the uneducated hue and cry by preppers who want to know how to suture, I'd like to see the authors really stress the need for non-closure in any kind of post-disaster field environment. At least any kind of wound that the layman would be able to suture anyway. Again, this is more a question of post-disaster experience, and is typical for most US doctors. For instance in Haiti after the earthquake, orthopedic surgeons were using external fixation for broken bones left and right. Within months after this type of initial care, this treatment was a disaster in itself in reality as there was no follow-up care available and horrible hygiene issues. These are the kinds of little things that it takes experience in order to really write about in a fully useful manner. I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 3 because at least these 2 are trying, and very few others are even doing that much.