Other editions of book When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance and Planetary Survival

There’s never been a better time to “be prepared.” Matthew Stein’s comprehensive primer on sustainable living skills—from food and water to shelter and energy to first-aid and crisis-management skills—prepares you to embark on the path toward sustainability. But unlike any other book, Stein not only shows you how to live “green” in seemingly stable times, but to live in the face of potential disasters, lasting days or years, coming in the form of social upheaval, economic meltdown, or environmental catastrophe. When Technology Fails covers the gamut. You’ll learn how to start a fire and keep warm if you’ve been left temporarily homeless, as well as the basics of installing a renewable energy system for your home or business. You’ll learn how to find and sterilize water in the face of utility failure, as well as practical information for dealing with water-quality issues even when the public tap water is still flowing. You’ll learn alternative techniques for healing equally suited to an era of profit-driven malpractice as to situations of social calamity. Each chapter (a survey of the risks to the status quo; supplies and preparation for short- and long-term emergencies; emergency measures for survival; water; food; shelter; clothing; first aid, low-tech medicine, and healing; energy, heat, and power; metalworking; utensils and storage; low-tech chemistry; and engineering, machines, and materials) offers the same approach, describing skills for self-reliance in good times and bad. Fully revised and expanded—the first edition was written pre-9/11 and pre-Katrina, when few Americans took the risk of social disruption seriously—When Technology Fails ends on a positive, proactive note with a new chapter on "Making the Shift to Sustainability," which offers practical suggestions for changing our world on personal, community and global levels.

Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 have made Americans farmore aware of the need to be prepared for the unexpected.Matthew Stein’s comprehensive guide to sustainable living skills gives you the tools you need to fend for yourself and your family in times of emergency or disaster.It also goes a step further, giving sound instructions on how to become self-reliant in seemingly stable timesand for the long term by adopting a sustainable lifestyle.Fully revised and expanded, When Technology Fails is truly encyclopedic, covering topics from food and shelter to medicine and metallurgy, and ends on a positive, proactive note with a new chapter on “Making the Shift to Sustainability,”which offers practical suggestions for changing our world on personal, community, and global levels.

When Technology Fails is the first to offer, under one cover, basic instructions and recommended resources for the wide range of skills and technologies necessary for self-reliant living and achieving mastery of all kinds of emergency conditions.A user-friendly "bible" in the tradition of the Whole Earth Catalog, this book provides information that will help the average person become more self-reliant. In an era of super-storms, burgeoning population, massive earth-quakes, global warming, and record-breaking floods and droughts, more and more people are seeking to prepare themselves to deal with the difficult times that may lie ahead.When Technology Fails addresses this universal concern in one engaging and concise volume for the general reader. A directory of resources and an instructional guide to sustainable technologies, it outlines survival strategies for dealing with changes that affect food, water, shelter, energy, health, communications, and essential goods and services.When Technology Fails provides something for everyone, from parents who want to help their families when a disaster strikes, to the go-it-alone survivalist, to the eco-minded person who wishes to tread more lightly on the earth - whatever the future may hold.