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.
EmergencyWhen the cone points at your house, Florida performs the same rituals every storm: the grocery run, the water pallet brawl, the generator still in its box and the flashlights that leaked years ago. Here's the funny version, and how…
Disaster RecoveryEvery critical need in my Clearwater apartment has a primary and at least one backup: a UPS on every device, phone tethering, sixteen self-switching night lights, a propane camp stove and a reliable car. When Hurricane Milton cut the power…
FearI rolled down a Kelso dune at dawn with nobody for miles, and I got lost in Joshua Tree half a mile from the road. Here are both stories and what I'd tell anyone hiking the desert alone.
1990sStar 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…
1970sJeremiah 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…
1970sJaws (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…
2000sI 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…
2010sGravity (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…
Book ReviewsVerne's search-and-rescue novel is minor work on its own, but it plants Tom Ayrton on a remote island with a promise of rescue, setting up a thread that won't pay off for eight years and three books. The real story…
Character DevelopmentI 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 DevelopmentThe 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.
EmergencyEverything 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,…
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