In a world where the internet provides seemingly limitless information at our fingertips, building a preparedness library of hard copy reference books may not even be something most people people think about. Today, we can Google search, check our Instagram saves, or refer back to our Pinterest boards for everything from recipes to measurement conversions to first aid information. But what if you could no longer access those resources? That’s where your emergency preparedness library comes in.
In the event of a power outage, internet blackout, EMP, or a variety of other emergency situations or natural disasters, that technology that makes our lives so much easier wouldn’t be accessible anymore. Because of this, keeping hard copies of things like books, resources, and recipes is essential for emergency preparedness.
Types of Resources
Physical, hard-copy books are probably the first things that come to mind when you think about an emergency preparedness library. These could be cookbooks, general guides, or even books related to specific traditional skills, such as gardening or knot-tying.
You may also want to consider things like photos, important documents, or digital files that are stored on a USB stick or external hard drive. Obviously, digital files are only accessible with power, but they can also be accessed without the internet. USB sticks and external hard drives are also compact and easy to store in a safe or a bug-out bag so you can grab them quickly and easily if you need to leave home.
Types of References
References are anything that you can “refer to”, such as recipes, skills resources, user manuals, or a first aid reference book. You can even print off resources or compilations of “expert tips” that you use most often and put them into a “resource binder” for easy access.
When it comes to specific reference books, you will never go wrong by investing in a few good all-around homesteading and survival guides. You can often find a lot of these kinds of books secondhand, and they don’t need to be repurchased frequently, as a lot of homesteading information is timeless.
Book Recommendations for your Emergency Preparedness Library
There are countless books out there that could make excellent additions to your preparedness library, and the ones that you choose can and should be customized to your family’s specific situation and needs. Below are a few of my personal favorites that I think would have a place in any collection of preparedness books.
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Cooking & Preserving Books
The Prairie Homestead Cookbook by Jill Winger
This is my favorite cookbook and I probably cook from it at least once a week. It’s full of whole-food, from-scratch recipes that perfectly suit the homesteading lifestyle. Jill’s “heritage recipes” use the kind of simple, farm-to-table ingredients that we always tend to have on hand as homesteaders.
Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish
This is a useful guide for things like breads, pizza doughs, and other “bread-y” things. It contains step-by-step instructions and recipes for both store-bought yeasted breads, as well as wild yeast and sourdough recipes.
Pressure Canning for Beginners and Beyond by Angi Schneider
This comprehensive guide is one that I use all the time, and I have made at least a dozen recipes from it. It’s a great guide for beginners and seasoned pressure canners alike. Pressure canning is something that requires the use of safe, tested recipes, and Angi is a knowledgeable, reliable, and trustworthy source of information. It’s great to know how to pressure can foods in case of an emergency, but it’s equally useful to know how to pressure can meats, for example, if the power goes out and your freezer stops working.
Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
This is the very first canning book I ever got, and it remains the most well-used and well-loved canning book I own. Some people refer to it as the “canning bible”. It contains a great variety of different canning recipes, and it’s essentially the “ultimate guide” to canning, full of any information you could ever possibly need to can with confidence.
Foraging Books
All That The Rain Promises and More by David Arora
This is a mushroom-specific foraging guide for my area of North America, and while I definitely recommend it for those who also live in this region, you may want to find an even more hyper-local guide to your specific area.
Having a guide on hand is always helpful, but especially when it comes to things like foraging mushrooms, you really want to work on building those skills ahead of time so you really know what you’re looking for.
Food Plants of Coastal First Peoples by Nancy J. Turner (or a guide specific to your local area on foraging)
Once again, this particular book is specific to my local area, but you may want to find a local guide for your own region that explores the edible wild plants, medicinal plants, and other forageables in the area. Becoming knowledgable in foraging can be one of your most essential skills when it comes to disaster preparedness.
Survival Medicine & First Aid Medical Books
The Ultimate Survival Medicine Guide by Joseph and Amy Alton
If there was only one book you’d want to have on hand in any emergency situation, I’d say that this would probably be it. It’s written by Joe Alton, a retired medical doctor and surgeon, and Amy Alton, a nurse practitioner. Together, they have decades of medical experience, and have put together one of the best survival books as a result.
The Ultimate Survival Medicine Guide covers all different types of medical situations that may arise when you don’t have access to a doctor or modern medical facilities, and it walks you through what to do when medical help isn’t on the way. It could very well be a life-saving addition to your survival library.
Of course, it’s always ideal to have up-to-date first aid training as well (and a robust collection of medical supplies on hand), but a well-rounded medical guide is an essential part of any preparedness bookshelf.
Surviving When Modern Medicine Fails by Scott A. Johnson
This book goes through different medical emergencies and illnesses and provides a lot of information on how to treat them with essential oils. Obviously, this isn’t necessarily a cure-all, but it doesn’t hurt to have it on hand, especially if you like using essential oils in your natural medicine cabinet.
Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner’s Guide by Rosemary Gladstar
This is, by far, my favorite herbal medicine book. It’s great for beginner to intermediate herbalists, and contains information on growing, harvesting, and using a wide variety of different medicinal herbs, natural remedies, and herbal preparation. It also provides a lot of excellent recipes for things like lotions, salves, tinctures and more.
The Country Almanac of Home Remedies by Brigitte Mars and Chrystle Fielder
I’ve had this book for a long time and I can’t count how many times I’ve referred to it. It’s full of traditional “folk medicine” for ailments like bug bites to coughs and colds to ear infections and more. It’s a fascinating look into how people used to treat illnesses years ago, and how many of those methods are still worth considering today.
Gardening & Homesteading Books
The Family Garden Plan by Melissa K. Norris
This is a very practical, user-friendly gardening guide that walks you through everything you need to know to grow up to a year’s worth of food for your family. It takes you through every step, from planning to planting to crop rotation to harvest and beyond. It includes all the knowledge and tools that you need to grow a successful garden, no matter how big or small. There are also places to record notes, as well as formulas to figure out how much food you need to grow for preservation if you’re trying to increase your food storage.
The Essential Guide to Self-Sufficient Living by Abigail R. Gehring
This book is a great all-around guide that includes vital information on things like vegetable gardening, canning, fermenting, keeping chickens, making soap, and so much more.
Back To Basics by Abigail R. Gehring
This is like a homesteading encyclopedia, and I am constantly amazed at how much information was crammed into this guide. It contains everything from building a house, felling trees and choosing the right firewood, to raising livestock, building a composting toilet and cooking over an open fire. Of course, there’s also information on classic topics like gardening, cooking, canning, and even sewing and needlecrafts.
This timeless guide is so valuable, you may even want to consider passing it down to future generations!
Other Must-Have Preparedness & Survival Books
The Cyber Attack Survival Manual by Heather Vescent and Nick Selby
This one is a little bit different, and will be more helpful if you read it ahead of time, as it’s more of a preventative guide for digital threats such as identity theft, fraud, cyberattacks, and more. However, there are also practical tips on how to deal with things after the fact if and when they do happen.
Nuclear War Survival Skills (2022 Edition) by Cresson Kearny
This is a relatively unique book that may fall more into the category of “special interest”. It was originally written during the cold war, but the second edition was updated in 2022 during the start of the Russia / Ukraine war. Some of the photos are a bit dated, but the information and wisdom is timeless. It was designed to be picked up by the “average person” in the event of a nuclear event so they could do their best to survive with what they have on hand.
The Ultimate Prepper’s Survival Guide by James Wesley Rawles
James is a former US Army intelligence officer and survivalist, and has written a number of books on preparedness, as well as some fiction books around the topics of prepping and survival.
This particular book is a very user-friendly and visual guide that outlines all of the areas of preparedness, as well as things like mindset, the importance of community, bugging out, what to do during “the year after” a major emergency, and more.
The end of the book contains checklists for things like trading and bartering, books, bug-out-bags, vehicle lists, financial preparations, etc.
At the end of the day, the best preparedness books are the ones that you will actually use. It’s easy to hoard a bunch of clutter on a bookshelf, but if and when the time comes that you actually need to access a specific book in your survival library, you’ll want a clear and concise collection at your fingertips. Choose wisely, and sleep a little better at night knowing that you and your family have all of the information you could ever need, whatever may come.
You don’t need to have a ton of books and references on hand. You just need to have the right ones.
Ready to Learn More?
If you’re eager to get started with long-term food storage in Mylar bags, be sure to check out my Practical Preparedness Crash Course. It’s a comprehensive and actionable online course with easy-to-follow video lessons and downloads that I put together so you can sleep a little bit easier knowing that you have the skills and resources necessary to weather any storm.
We dive deeper into the 6 Areas of Preparedness such as layering your food storage, emergency water preparedness, safety and security, emergency medical preparedness, and so much more.
This is a fantastic list for anyone serious about preparedness! These books cover everything from survival skills to homesteading, ensuring you’re ready for whatever comes your way.