If you’ve made it this far, you already know it’s a dangerous world out there. Ebola, terrorism, Twitter trolls – everyday is a battle against threats to your life. Wouldn’t it be great to have a little guidance?
Finally, there’s help for your inner action hero: How to Survive Anything (Lonely Planet, $19.99). This helpful book, hilariously illustrated by Rob Dobi, provides a “visual guide to laughing in the face of adversity.”
Because you never know where the next threat will come from, How to Survive Anything casts a wide net. A very wide net.
Here you’ll find everything from “How to survive a nuclear explosion” to “How to survive a trip to the opera.”
Robin Barton, a contributor to How to Survive Anything and associate publisher of Lonely Planet, acknowledges that in some ways, our lives are very predictable.
“We know that there’s a vanishingly small chance of perishing in a nuclear explosion (famous last words!) or beneath a failed parachute,” he says. “But we can be reasonably certain that at some point in our lives we’re going to have to speak in public, meet our prospective in-laws for the first time or deal with a toddler’s tantrum.
“So, we focus mainly on our everyday fears – dress-down Fridays, identity theft, getting the middle seat on a long-haul flight – that most people worry about, while also suggesting survival strategies for a few cataclysmically bad days ... just in case,” he says.
Those bad days, by the way, include “How to survive a shipwreck” and “How to survive in a minefield.” All tremendously helpful, of course, but what are the odds of being able to consult this guide when, say, my elevator goes into a free fall?
“True,” Barton says. “It’s unlikely, unless you’re in a very poorly maintained, multi-story book store.”
The key, he says, is to study Rob Dobi’s illustrations now, before the need arises. His clear, graphical advice can be “recalled in an instant – which is all you’ll have in a free-falling elevator.”
Barton insists that each topic in How to Survive Anything has been vetted by experts in relevant fields.
“This is first-hand advice, shaped by experience,” he says. (This makes me wonder, particularly, about “How to survive a zombie attack.”)
He reminds me that John Locke – the 17th-century Enlightenment philosopher, not the character from “Lost” – said, “The only defense against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.”
Your Boy Scout troop leader was right: Be prepared.
“Not knowing that shaving cream can slow the spread of toxins from a jellyfish sting is no laughing matter!” Barton says.
Indeed.
