Survival stories grip readers because the stakes need no explanation. This tag covers survival as a theme in fiction and nonfiction: characters against nature, systems under stress, and real accounts of people who came through. It also touches the preparedness thinking behind my disaster recovery years.
1990sSeptember 11, 2026
Star Trek: Voyager rates minus 1 on the rewatch scale, with exceptions for the Borg material and the Seven of Nine seasons. Reset button television. Nothing ever mattered because they needed to be lost again next week, and the conflict…
1970sSeptember 11, 2026
Jeremiah Johnson (1972) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A man goes into the mountains to be alone and the film spends two hours on the practical difficulty of that. Almost no dialogue, real winter, and a…
1970sSeptember 10, 2026
Jaws (1975) rates 10 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The mechanical shark did not work, the schedule ran three times over, and the failure produced the technique. Spielberg was twenty-seven and had to build suspense out of everything…
2000sSeptember 10, 2026
I Am Legend (2007) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The first hour is one of the best depictions of solitude ever filmed. Then the ending inverts the meaning of the book it is named after, and…
2010sSeptember 10, 2026
Gravity (2013) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Cuaron opens on a thirteen minute unbroken shot and then destroys everything in it. The technical achievement is genuine and permanent. The dialogue keeps explaining a film that was…
Character DevelopmentSeptember 2, 2026
I asked a member of my own team what he would do in an earthquake. He said he would get under the window, without hesitating. He was not stupid. Nobody had ever told him.
Character DevelopmentSeptember 2, 2026
The Northridge earthquake threw me out of bed at 4:31 in the morning. Then the shaking stopped, we realised our son was missing, and every piece of theoretical knowledge I had was worth nothing.
EmergencyAugust 26, 2026
Everything you need for a hurricane is on a shelf right now. The day it lands on the news, the water aisle is empty and the gas lines are around the block. Decide now whether you are leaving or staying,…
Historical FictionAugust 21, 2026
I wanted to write prehistoric people as they were, not as primitives. Here is how the real Toba supervolcano and a single family became Family on Ice.
Disaster RecoveryJune 28, 2026
Breathless at the top of a canyon at eight at night, explaining to a fireman named Kurt what had happened and where my father was.
Disaster RecoveryMay 21, 2026
Fire on both sides of the road, and when I looked back it had jumped behind me. Years of camping experience and nothing in the car that helped.
1970sMay 19, 2026
Franklin Schaffner's 1973 Henri Charriere memoir. Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman.
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