There are thousands of books marketed to preppers and survivalists, and a lot of them cover the same basic ground: build a fire, make a shelter, pack a bug-out bag, repeat. I’ve published many prepper books myself, it’s how Prepper Press got its name.
A good prepper library is an important thing to have. Knowledge is power. And if you have a survival library of valuable information you need to know in a crisis, that’s powerful as well.
The books I value most are the ones that answer questions when the internet isn’t available and you suddenly need to know how to purify questionable water, treat an infection, preserve food, communicate by radio, or deal with a problem you never expected to have.
I’m recommending 13 different books to start your own prepper library. I’ve prioritized books that work as reference material rather than books that are primarily entertainment. I also favored books that contain information I’d actually want available on paper during a prolonged power or communications outage. Some are old, and some are specialized. The goal is to have useful information available when the normal sources of information are not.
Rather than giving you 13 variations on the same wilderness-survival manual, I’ve tried to build a list that covers different parts of preparedness: medical care, disaster planning, water, food, communications, traditional survival skills, and self-sufficiency.
Medical
1. Where There Is No Doctor
Where There Is No Doctor is published by Hesperian Health Guides, a nonprofit organization that has produced practical health information for communities with limited access to medical care for decades. Hesperian’s books are designed to make medical knowledge accessible to non-medical readers and are particularly valuable as reference material when professional care is difficult to reach. The organization also makes many of its resources available digitally (download for free), which is great, but I prefer to have a copy in print.
It covers everything from wound care and infections to dehydration, medications, childbirth, sanitation, and recognizing and assessing common illnesses and conditions. More importantly, it assumes you may not have a hospital, urgent care clinic, or pharmacy five minutes away.
If you’re building a preparedness library, this is one of the first medical books I would buy.
2. Where There Is No Dentist
Dental problems are easy to overlook when you’re preparing for emergencies, right up until someone develops an abscessed tooth and there is no dentist available. You can download a digital copy for free, but again – paperback is best.
- Used Book in Good Condition
Where There Is No Dentist covers basic dental anatomy, toothaches, infections, broken teeth, extractions, cleaning, and preventive care. That doesn’t mean reading the book suddenly qualifies you to start pulling teeth, but in a prolonged emergency, understanding what is happening and what can be done immediately, what requires professional treatment, and what warning signs should not be ignored.
It’s also a good reminder that preparedness medicine goes well beyond bandages and tourniquets.
3. Where Women Have No Doctor
General survival and first-aid manuals often give comparatively little space to women’s health. This is also available as a digital download.
- Used Book in Good Condition
Where Women Have No Doctor covers pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health, infections, nutrition, violence, and other health concerns specific to women. In a serious long-term emergency, those issues don’t magically disappear because hospitals are closed.
This is particularly worth having if you’re thinking about preparedness at the family or community level rather than just individual survival.
4. The Survival Medicine Handbook
The Survival Medicine Handbook by Joseph and Amy Alton is written specifically for situations where normal medical care is unavailable.
That makes it somewhat different from a standard first-aid book, which generally assumes professional medical help is eventually coming. The Altons discuss longer-term care, infections, wounds, illness, medications, dental problems, and a wide range of medical situations that could arise during an extended disaster.
It’s a big book, but that’s exactly what I want from a medical reference sitting on a shelf.
Traditional Survival
5. U.S. Army Survival Manual FM 21-76
The U.S. Army Survival Manual (FM 21-76) is probably one of the most recognizable survival manuals ever published.
It covers shelter, water, food, fire, navigation, signaling, first aid, plants, animals, and survival in different environments. Many of the underlying principles remain useful, even though some techniques, equipment, and recommendations are now dated.
If you only own a handful of traditional survival manuals, FM 21-76 deserves a spot.
6. SAS Survival Handbook
John “Lofty” Wiseman’s SAS Survival Handbook is another classic, and there’s a reason it has stayed in print for decades. There is considerable overlap with military survival manuals, but Wiseman presents the material in a more accessible, civilian-oriented format.
It covers wilderness survival, navigation, shelter, food, water, first aid, signaling, disaster survival, and a surprisingly wide range of environments. There’s some overlap with the Army survival manual, but the two books approach subjects differently enough that I think owning both makes sense.
It’s also one of those books that’s useful simply for flipping through and discovering how much you don’t know.
Household / Disaster Preparedness
7. Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family
Many survival books focus on wilderness survival. Most disasters, however, happen while you’re living in a house or apartment surrounded by family members, pets, vehicles, utilities, bills, and all the other parts of normal life. This is one of the books on the list that most clearly treats preparedness as a household-management problem rather than a wilderness-survival exercise.
- Used Book in Good Condition
Arthur Bradley’s Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family takes a much broader approach to preparedness. It covers emergency planning, food, water, communications, evacuation, power outages, sanitation, security, finances, and other practical concerns.
For someone who wants to become more prepared but doesn’t know where to start, this is one of the better all-around books.
8. Nuclear War Survival Skills
Cresson Kearny’s Nuclear War Survival Skills is old, occasionally awkward, and still one of the most important nuclear preparedness books ever written. Some recommendations reflect the technology and assumptions of the Cold War era, so I treat it as a foundational reference rather than a current civil-defense manual.
It covers fallout, radiation, shelter construction, ventilation, water, sanitation, food, radiation measurement, and numerous improvised solutions developed for people with limited resources. Much of the book was specifically designed around the idea that ordinary Americans might need to protect themselves without access to sophisticated equipment.
A complete digital edition is also available free from legitimate sources, although I’d still want a printed copy.
9. Holding Your Ground
Joe Nobody’s Holding Your Ground focuses on something a lot of preparedness books barely address: what happens when you decide you’re not bugging out. Even if you have no interest in armed defense, some of its discussion of observation, access control, and hardening a residence can be considered separately from the book’s more tactical material.
- Amazon Kindle Edition
Most preppers will probably remain at home during the majority of disasters, which means defending and managing that location becomes extremely important. The book looks at home security, property defense, planning, observation, barriers, and ways of making a residence less vulnerable during serious civil disorder.
You don’t have to agree with every scenario or recommendation to get useful ideas from it.
10. The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide
Food storage gets much of the attention in preparedness discussions, but water is usually the more immediate necessity.
Daisy Luther’s The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide focuses entirely on finding, storing, treating, and managing water during emergencies. It discusses household water storage, rainwater, wells, filtration, purification, contamination, and what happens when municipal water systems stop functioning.
Water is important enough that I think it deserves an entire book rather than a 15-page chapter in a general survival manual.
11. Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook
Food storage sounds simple until you actually try to figure out how much food you need, what you should store, how long it lasts, and whether your family will actually eat any of it.
Peggy Layton’s Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook provides a practical introduction to building and managing an emergency food supply. It covers staple foods, rotation, shelf life, storage methods, menus, and planning for longer emergencies.
It’s considerably more useful than simply buying a few buckets of mystery food, stacking them in the basement, and hoping for the best.
Communications
12. The Guerrilla’s Guide to the Baofeng Radio
Baofeng’s inexpensive handheld radios are widely used by hobbyists and preparedness-minded users. They’re also confusing enough that plenty of people buy one, turn it on twice, and then toss it into a drawer.
The Guerrilla’s Guide to the Baofeng Radio by NC Scout is aimed specifically at using these radios for practical communications. It covers programming, antennas, communications planning, field use, and getting more out of the radio than simply listening to the local weather frequency.
Owning radios isn’t the same thing as having communications capability. You need to know how to use them before the emergency. Readers should also understand the applicable radio rules and licensing requirements before transmitting.
Self-sufficiency
13. The Encyclopedia of Country Living
If most of the books on this list are about surviving an emergency, Carla Emery’s The Encyclopedia of Country Living is about developing practical skills that reduce dependence on systems that can fail.
It’s a massive reference covering gardening, livestock, food preservation, cooking, homesteading, basic self-sufficiency, and a wide range of older skills that many people no longer learn. You probably won’t sit down and read the entire thing cover to cover, and that’s not really the point.
It’s the kind of book you keep on the shelf because someday you may suddenly need to know how to do something that YouTube used to explain for you.
Build a Library, Not Just a Gear Closet
Preppers tend to spend a lot of money on equipment.
Radios, knives, generators, water filters, solar panels, firearms, backpacks, and all the other gear certainly has its place. But equipment isn’t especially useful if you don’t know how to use it, maintain it, repair it, or improvise when it fails.
Books are relatively cheap, don’t need electricity, don’t require an internet connection, and can contain decades of knowledge.
If you’re building your preparedness supplies, build a library at the same time. Buy the books, put them somewhere accessible, and—most importantly—read the ones that contain skills you’re likely to need. The best reference book is the one you already know how to use when the power goes out and the internet isn’t there to help.
Which books do you recommend? Let me know in the comments.