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Survival Novels
This is my personal list of what I feel are worthwhile and realistic survival novels that give food for thought. It is just my personal list with comments that did not give too much of the plot away, you may not agree or have others.
John
UK Based
Survivors
Terry Nation Pub 1976
A virus has wiped out 95 per cent of the world's population in just a few weeks, leaving the remaining 5 per cent to stay alive in a world devoid of the most basic amenities - electricity, transport and medicine. The few survivors of the human race are forced to fall back on the most primitive skills in order to live and re-establish some semblance of law and order. Abby Grant, widowed by the plague, moves through this new dark age with determination, sustained by hope that her son, who fled his boarding school at the onset, has survived. She knows she must relearn the skills on which civilisation was built. With others, she founds a commune and the group return to the soil. But marauding bands threaten their existence. For Abby, there's a chance for a new life and love when she encounters James Garland, the fourteenth Earl of Woodhouse, who is engaged in a desperate fight to save his ancestral home. But more important, she must find her son.
Survivors Genesis of a Hero
John Eyers Sequel to above (Pub 1976)
Five years after the Great Death.... Gripping sequel to the first survivors novel. Peter Grant joins President Wormley's army after the shooting of his mother, Abby, and is caught in a political conflict that could mean the death or life of a reborn world.
Although not by Terry Nation this book picks up immediately from the Terry's book 'Survivors' telling the story of Abby Grant's son, Peter. The narration fills in Peter's experiences since the great death and leading up to the tragic ending of the first book. It then quickly proceeds to tell Peter's story as he tries to overcome that experience and develop a better and more meaningful life for himself.
This book is less about individual survival than the first, seeking instead to focus on the bigger picture and the morals of the situations Peter finds himself in. Some of the story covers uncomfortable ground and you begin to wonder where it is going but gradually we see Peter become a true visionary and worthy to be called his mother's son.
After the Fire John Lockley
Pub 1994
When a group of people are marooned in the small market town of Ampthill, after civilization collapses around them, they have to learn how to survive. All of them make shattering discoveries - some terrifying, some inspiring and some shocking. It all began with a mouse.
After the Fire 11 A still small Voice John Lockley
This sequel to "After the Fire" sees the small band of survivors having to cope with yet more crises. The community learns that not only are their crop yields going to be insufficient, but they are under attack from a rival group of survivors.
After the Fire 111 Chronicles
John Lockley
The conclusion to the "After the Fire" trilogy, this volume traces the Ampthill community as they face the antisocial, anarchic behaviour of the refugees from the plague who return south in search of food.
The Death of Grass
John Christopher
(Pub 1956)
At first the virus wiping out grass and crops is of little concern to John Custance. It has decimated Asia, causing mass starvation and riots, but Europe is safe and a counter-virus is expected any day. Except, it turns out, the governments have been lying to their people. When the deadly disease hits Britain they are left alone, and society starts to descend into barbarism. As John and his family try to make it across country to the safety of his brother's farm in a hidden valley, their humanity is tested to its very limits.
The Moving Snow
Ian Weekley
Pub 1974
"The end of 1989 looked like being a bad winter, snow started to fall in the Lincolnshire wolds as early as October. And it went on falling. This was not just the start of another bad winter, but the beginning of a climate crisis that was dramatically to change the face of Britain... a fascinating ecological background... "
I Spied a Pale Horse
Mark Timlin
1999.
Millenium here - news NOT good!
"...I could feel the tears running down my cheeks at the thought of my wife and child, dead all those months since The Death was at its height. I only cry in the dark now so that no one can see. Tears for them, and all the others that have died, and for the way I am now killing the survivors as if there were people to spare..."
While watching re-runs of THE SURVIVORS on UK GOLD one morning, Mark Timlin became possessed of a strong conviction that a post-apocalyptic Britain was unlikely to be peopled with potato farmers and the descendants of Oprah Winfrey and set about writing the way he thought the future would be.
As the Millennium approaches it’s the end of the world, in more senses than one for John. His wife and child are dead, society lies in ruins as a modern Black Death sweeps the world. All he can do is fight for survival with his friend Ugly and his dog Puppy.
But when a pregnant young girl comes into his life he finds he has more to fight for than he could have possibly imagined...
Last Light
Alex Scarrow
The Sutherland family is scattered. Andy is in Iraq doing private consulting work as an engineer, Jenny is in Manchester on a job interview, their teenage daughter Leona is at University in Norwich and their seven year-old son Jacob is at boarding school in London. When the world experiences a series of incidents which shut down global oil supplies and, in turn, cause chaos and rioting on an unprecedented scale the Sutherlands have a battle to find each other amid the rapidly collapsing society.
Through each of the family members’ struggle to make it to the family home to reconnect Scarrow was able to show different aspects of how society might quickly fall apart in such circumstances and how ‘nice ordinary people’ such as the Sutherlands will struggle to accept that the societal norms they’ve been used to might no longer apply. The description of what happens when Leona and her brother make it to their suburban home and then, along with the few neighbours similarly trapped, experience being terrorised by gangs each night is truly frightening. This along with other key scenes generated quite a few ‘what would I do faced with that scenario?’ moments for me.
Afterlight
Alex Scarrow
What would Britain be like 10 years after the oil has run out? This stark question is the basis of Afterlight, a crackingly absorbing thriller. The novel is ostensibly a sequel to the author’s Last Light, but you don’t have to have read the earlier book to enjoy this one, even though the same family, the Sutherlands, is at the centre of the story.
Afterlight is set at a time 10 years after the “end of oilâ€Â, interspersed with flashback chapters about the days and weeks immediately after this climactic event, told in Last Light, when civilised society as we know it collapsed. The “10 years on†story focuses on a small community who scratch an existence on a defunct gas/oil rig off the Norfolk coast. The surviving members of the Sutherland family have made their way there and live with a few hundred others, mainly woman and a few older men. They manage to be self-sustaining by growing plants, keeping chickens and doing lots of fishing. One of the men has rigged up a generator producing methane from human and chicken excrement, which provides a few hours of power each evening. The group lives simply, everyone making a contribution, sleeping crammed together on the various rig platforms: occasionally, a few of them sail to Bracton, the (fictional) coastal town nearby, for supplies from the abandoned shops and warehouses.
In the “10 years ago†sections, we learn the bare outline of how the Sutherlands ended up on the rig. This part of the novel, however, mainly focuses on one of the government-designated areas for people to collect in the event of a disaster, the ex-Millennium Dome. The Dome is the only one of these areas left, owing to Alan Maxwell, the civil servant in charge, only letting in a fraction of the number of refugees that he was told to in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. He’s used some clever tactics learned during his time as a history teacher to keep control of his mini-society in the ensuing years, but he is acutely aware that the supplies laid in 10 years ago are in danger of running out.
Afterlight is a real page-turner, which just gets better and better. It’s written in an easy, accessible style and has some attractive protagonists who you’ll be rooting for while at the same time knowing that they aren’t all (or even any of them) going to make it. It’s this ability to create a nervy, paranoid atmosphere, together with a relentless pace, and a focus on individuals’ thoughts and actions rather than on spectacle, that makes this novel just a great way to spend the two or three hours it will take to read it. It’s a far superior book to Last Light, not least because the author has jettisoned the James Bond elements that for me were a weak spot in the earlier novel, and has focused on the drama of people and of society.
The Day of the Triffids
John Wyndham
A shower of meteorites produces a glow that blinds anyone that looks at it. As it was such a beautiful sight, most people were watching, and as a consequence, 99% of the population go blind. In the original novel, this chaos results in the escape of some Triffids: experimental plants that are capable of moving themselves around and attacking people. In the film version, however, the Triffids are not experimental plants. Instead they are space aliens whose spores have arrived in an earlier meteor shower.
Breakdown
Katherine Amt Hanna
An influenza plague decimates humanity...
A man loses his wife and baby daughter...
A journey begins that will cross continents and plumb the depths of one human being’s ability to find redemption.
In a world ravaged by a deadly pandemic, former rock star Chris Price leaves the ruins of his life in New York and sets out on a long journey home to England. It’s been six years of devastation since the plague killed his wife and daughter, and Chris is determined to find out if any of his family has survived.
His passage leaves him scarred, in body and mind, by exposure to humankind at its most desperate and dangerous. But the greatest ordeal awaits him beyond the urban ruins, in an idyllic country refuge where Chris meets a woman, Pauline, who is largely untouched by the world’s horrors. Together, Chris and Pauline undertake the most difficult facet of Chris’s journey: confronting grief, violence, and the man Chris has become. Together, they will discover whether the human spirit is capable of surviving and loving again in a world of unparalleled desolation.
There Falls No Shadow
David E. Crossley
PRELUDE
After the twin towers fell in New York, American declared war on terrorism. First they struck at Afghanistan and then Iraq. The terrorist fought back with bombs and fear, there were bombs in London, but eventually their attacks waned. Governments hailed the lull as proof that terror could not win. For years then it seemed we stood a chance of peace but the terrorists were playing a waiting game; changing their strategy, building their resources.
Then they struck at London again. A lorry load of explosives surrounded by radioactive waste tore apart contaminated the heart of the city. It wasn’t a nuclear explosion, but the shock waves from it shook the financial foundations of the world. It was only the beginning.
In Brussels, a car left running in the car park in the car park spewed out blister-agent gas through its exhaust, killing or maiming hundreds of politicians and workers at the European parliament complex. In the Hong Kong stock exchange, a computer technician uploaded a new virus. First it collapsed the market, and then it spread its tendrils throughout the global financial structure, causing chaos. In the Middle East, Israeli intelligence discovered a plot to sail a nuclear bomb into a major port in America. The US navy and Coast Guard boarded and searched every cargo ship at the three mile line for four months. They found nothing.
Again the terrorist rested. Long enough this time for their victims to believe life might be returning to normal. Then they struck again. Not from the sea but from the air. Seven cargo aircraft, each carrying a nuclear device, detonated at thirty thousand feet above Washington, Los Angeles, Moscow, Tokyo, Bonn, Tel Aviv and Pretoria. The bombs killed no one except the crews but the electromagnetic pulse generated by the blasts surged like a flood through thousands of square miles of power and telecommunications systems. The effects were more catastrophic for technologically dependent nations than a ground burst could ever have been. Circuits, transistors and relays blew. Large tracks of the supposedly nuclear-attack proof Internet evaporated as the unhardened commercial servers and telephone networks running it died. Industrial, commercial and financial systems fell apart.
People panicked. Shortages became commonplace. Riots were now a regular feature of the news. Most people tried to get on with their lives as best they could but everyone knew, there must be more to come. Ever more aggressive restrictions were imposed on the freedoms people had believed their rights. The world was demoralised and confused, frantic to replace technology on which it had relied so heavily. It was in no state to defend itself against another blow. And this time, the terrorist were not going to wait.
Still waiting publication of two and three in this trilogy.
The Killing Moon
Rod Glenn
A series of cataclysmic events bring about the global collapse of civilisation. The few remaining survivors must fight for their survival in a world plunged back into the dark ages.
Twenty years on, a new generation grow up out of the ashes and, after their idyllic life is destroyed, five friends must leave their childhood home in rural Northumberland and embark on a perilous journey to Middlesbrough, a city gripped with gang violence and sectarian killings.
Tragedy, lies and deceit mar their every step as they are cast into a dark and twisted world that is itself on the brink of destruction.
Testosterone and cordite waft off the pages of this post-apocalyptic tale from the very start. It's set in the near future, when escalating conflicts have led to the accidental release of a manufactured virus. The infection has wiped out most of the population, spreading panic and leading to the collapse of civilisation as we know it.
Most of the action takes place 20 years after the cataclysm, and it centres on a group of young people living in a small settlement in northern England. Nature has reclaimed the cities and roads, and the survivors have had to adjust to life without modern conveniences or communications. Their rural community is slowly picking up the threads of life when three newcomers arrive. Their appearance soon shatters the peaceful scene, and the friends undertake a nightmarish journey to the Black City.
Descriptions of the Black City aka Middlesbrough, and the decaying wastelands of the north are detailed and atmospheric. The importance of friendship is brought to the fore as the characters endure separation and hardship
Rod Glenn doesn't hold anything back. It's full of the kind of casual violence that the prudish, the easily offended, very young children and those with high blood pressure or a heart condition should avoid. Consult your doctor before reading this novel. --Warpcore SF, February 2010
Taking current events to a logical hyperbole, the author weaves an immediately grabbing, absolutely terrifying soon-to-be future. Without giving too much away (because this is one I firmly recommend reading) a cocktail of Iraq, China, Swine-flu, and all around poor human decisions bring about the collapse of society as we know it.
But the book's broad-scope beginnings merely set the stage for a coming of age tale that is something of a mix between Mad Max and Stephen King's The Body. It is the characters in this story that really capture the reader and keep you turning pages well into the night. Let me put it this way; at 322 pages, the book is a respectable length and I took it with me to be my reading material on a three day trip - I was done with it in a day and a half.
The boys the novel centres around are a charming mix of battered, world-weary angst, fun-loving immortals, and quietly introspective naïveté, and the perilous journey they make across post-cataclysmic Northern England is just the right mixture of suspense, humour, and characterization. The setting, like many of the characters, is gritty and hopeful at the same time. If you are a fan of Mad Max, or the recent video games Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 2, you'll find this book enormously enjoyable.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
U.S.A Based
Earth Abides
George R. Stewart
Generally regarded as the classic tale of life struggling on after a global disaster, Earth Abides (1949) was George R. Stewart's only venture into SF. Before the first page the human race has been almost completely wiped out by plague. Our hero Isherwood "Ish" Williams discovers a female survivor and fumblingly tries to bring up a new civilization in the ruins of California. It's an elegiac story of loss as humanity makes it through the crisis, at the cost of our race's painfully gathered knowledge--which seems irrelevant to the new generations as they develop a hunter-gatherer society reminiscent of the old Amerindian tribes, and see no practicality in the fabulous tales of the old days told them by Ish. His nickname is deliberately reminiscent of Ishi, the once famous Californian Indian who was also the last of his tribe and became a misfit in a new world, in his case early 20th-century America. Annoyingly for fans of survivalist SF who reckon civilization can be rebuilt in about a month with a Swiss army knife, Earth Abides proposes that the cycle of regrowth will take significant time ... but there is always time. Stewart's title and epigraph echo the Book of Ecclesiastes: "Men go and come, but Earth abides."
In this profound ecological fable, a mysterious plague has destroyed the vast majority of the human race. Isherwood Williams, one of the few survivors, returns from a wilderness field trip to discover that civilization has vanished during his absence. Eventually he returns to San Francisco and encounters a female survivor who becomes his wife. Around them and their children a small community develops, living like their pioneer ancestors, but rebuilding civilization is beyond their resources, and gradually they return to a simpler way of life.
Wolf and Iron
Gordon R. Dickson
In the Iron Years, civilization has collapsed, every man's hand is raised against another and only the strong survive. Jeeris Belamy Waltar, formerly a student of behaviour and sociodynamics, must travel across a violent and lawless America to seek out a refuge where he can keep science alive.
World Made By Hand
James Howard Kunstler Pub 2008
In the best-seller The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler explored how the terminal decline of oil production had the potential to put industrial civilization out of business. With World Made By Hand Kunstler makes an imaginative leap into the future, a few decades hence, and shows us what life may be like after these coming catastrophesâ€â€the end of oil, climate change, global pandemics, and resource warsâ€â€converge. For the townspeople of Union Grove, New York, the future is not what they thought it would be. Transportation is slow and dangerous, so food is grown locally at great expense of time and energy. And the outside world is largely unknown. There may be a president and he may be in Minneapolis now, but people aren’t sure. As the heat of summer intensifies, the residents struggle with the new way of life in a world of abandoned highways and empty houses, horses working the fields and rivers replenished with fish. A captivating, utterly realistic novel, World Made by Hand takes speculative fiction beyond the apocalypse and shows what happens when life gets extremely local.
The Witch of Hebron: A World Made by Hand
James Howard Kunstler
In the sequel to his bestselling "World Made by Hand," Kunstler expands on his vision of a post-oil society with a new novel about America, in which the electricity has flickered off, the Internet is a distant memory, and the government is little more than a rumor.
Full Circle
Michael Boyle
Not wishing to give away the plot....
They said it was a meteor...They were wrong..Sixty five million years ago a primordial swamp spawned a terror unlike the anything the world had ever known: a monstrous virus. Twenty years later it had circled the globe, ending the reign of the dinosaurs.In a short lived but devastating plague most of the animals on the planet fell victim to the disease.
Unfortunately for humanity, the story does not end there.
An archaeological expedition stumbles across a strange fossil that still contains the ancient virus. A research worker unwittingly releases it, and a proven planet killer is reborn. People start dying...rumors start flying..world leaders believe they are victims of a biological attack, and they search frantically for a nonexistent culprit. Fear and panic spread faster than the disease. Scientists all over the world wage a desperate battle against the microscopic nightmare.
The virus has come full circle.
This book is well worth the read
A Distant Eden
Lloyd Tackitt
December 2012, a massive solar storm knocks out the power grid. Three hundred million Americans are suddenly faced with a survival situation. They have no water, electricity or fuel. Food rapidly disappears from the store shelves, not to be replaced. Only three percent will survive. Those three percent will have much in common. What does it take to be one of them?
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cheers, always nice to have more reading material 
