JCD wrote:I liked the book. In fact, I couldn't put it down.
One thing which I thought lacking in realism was the fact that the survivalists and prepared were not raided by starving people. This seems highly unlikely.
Actually, in one part of the novel where the "city council" is deciding how to apportion the existing food they make a conscious decision to confiscate all farm animals and farm produce but not confiscate individual food stores with the caveat that if someone goes on the village's rations they have to turn over any stored food. (Jeez, and I thought they were going to kill all the lawyers first in the PAW. How did that get through?).
Later in the novel, the main character wakes up to find two guys rummaging through his house looking for food and he kills them. I think the underlying assumption is that the survivalist characters had the same experience (and maybe the same result).
That seemed a little unrealistic. The way Asheville handled the matter (confiscating all food with people with political connections getting more) seemed right on the money. It seemed entirely unlikely that within 3 months of the grid going down that a cannibal army would scour the land eating everybody in their way. Look at Somalia. They've had chronic food shortages. Where are the cannibal armies? Certainly there's civil unrest, pirates, and warlords, but no posse of rump-eaters.
Anyway, overall, it was a good book.
) I work a part time security job on the weekends and I lent it to my co-worker to read. We both were working out how we would get home from there if it hit then. He lives close by, but I'm an hour drive about 30 miles away. We worked out what supplies were available to assist us in getting home. An old bike that has been chained in the garage for a couple years left by someone at the homeless shelter no doubt would be the best way for me to get started. If stores were open, most people would not know what was going on so giving them my credit card number for a newer bike and trailer would probably work. 
