Book picks similar to
Population Zero: Book 1 by Ryan Schow


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Dark Days


Ryan Casey - 2019
    A society in chaos. Will you survive the days of darkness?It all starts with a blast. Phones stop working. Planes plummet from the sky. As the police battle to maintain order, survivors scramble for the remaining supplies in a dark, disorienting new world.Martin is on a trip in the wilderness with his daughter. He knows a thing or two about preparing for disasters, but not so much about looking after a teenage girl. But when a catastrophic EMP event plunges the nation into darkness, Martin is forced on a dangerous journey to seek out shelter for his daughter in the early days of chaos.Will he be able to gather supplies and protect his daughter as society spirals out of control? Or will this dark new world destroy everything he cares about?Dark Days is the first book in the Days of Darkness post apocalyptic survival series. If you enjoy stories of ordinary people thrown into harrowing new circumstances, you'll love Dark Days.

Survive the Blast


Dave Bowman - 2019
    Panic takes over the nation. The only hope of survival is to escape the city. But that's just the beginning.When a mysterious warning appears online, Jack assumes it's a hoax. But after an EMP destroys the electrical grid, his biggest fears come to life. And the worst part? He's a thousand miles from his wife.Annie's in downtown Austin when she sees a plane fall from the sky. When the power fails, she realizes she's become a target. But Annie soon learns that escaping the city will be harder than she ever dreamed. And if she doesn't find safety fast, she'll never survive.With time running out, Jack must find his way out of Los Angeles. When a nuclear attack levels the city, Jack has to fight to survive. How can he escape LA and make it home to Texas? And will Annie still be alive if he does?Survive the Blast is Book 1 in Atomic Threat, a post-apocalyptic thriller series about ordinary people fighting to survive the end of the world as we know it.

Dawn's End


Justin Bell - 2021
    When the only safe place is in the dark, how will you survive?A civilization-ending storm kills billions overnight.A family torn apart in the midst of the chaos are stretched to their limits, struggling just to stay alive.When daylight becomes your mortal enemy, how will you outlast the end of days?

The Lookout


Jack Hunt - 2019
    But when a freak and hostile snowstorm blows in and a lost forest ranger turns up, shivering, and claiming an EMP has destroyed the power grid, trouble soon follows. As Kelly tries to make sense of the danger and make contact with the outside, she quickly finds herself at odds with the stranger, and fighting for survival.

Shadows


David Kazzie - 2020
    Power grids fail, planes fall from the sky, and America is thrown into chaos.Lucy Goodwin, an emergency room nurse, is anxious to get home to Virginia when her life is turned upside down by the mysterious blackout. Trapped in Washington, DC, and lucky to be alive after her train crashes, she realizes her journey home is only getting started.Lucy befriends a young girl orphaned by the disaster, and together, they must face down humanity’s capacity for darkness if they are to survive the opening days of America’s new reality.

The Collapse


E.S. Richards - 2019
    How prepared are you? An enormous coronal mass ejection engulfs the world, destroying electrical grids and causing secondary fires to break out in every major city. Millions die in the first few hours, and even those who are most prepared are caught unawares. Trapped in the firestorm raging across Chicago, Leonard will stop at nothing to find his family while his wife and son struggle to stay alive in the chaos. When a CME that dwarfs the Carrington Event engulfs the world, Len - a businessman with next to zero survival training and experience - sets off to find his wife and child. Emerging out of the heart of Chicago, he will face dangers of all types and experience both the heights and depths of humanity. His survival depends solely on his ability to learn on the fly in this twisted new hellscape of a world. From the #1 best-selling post-apocalyptic author Mike Kraus and author E.S. Richards comes a fresh new take on the EMP/CME story. With characters that are learning how to survive as they go - and finding some unlikely teachers along the way - they represent the true "everyday person" who isn't a hardcore prepper or survivalist, something unique and exciting in this genre. Solar Crash is a 6-part series that will be published monthly.

Honor & Dishonor


Eric Meyer - 2020
    His brother Daniel is a scholar and an academic, and to the horror and dismay of his family, he converts to Islam. To make things worse, he travels to Afghanistan to teach in a madrassah, the religious schools that are a production line for Taliban terrorists. The  new mission handed to Rod Cooper’s Team is tough. A better word to describe it would be ‘suicide.’  Their brief, to go behind enemy lines and locate and pinpoint a new and powerful Taliban combined arms warband. A threatened escalation to the brutal war waged by the Islamic insurgents. Outnumbered, outgunned and faced by an enemy intent on their slaughter, they battle against an enemy determined to spill their blood on the soil of Afghanistan. Yet they are determined to acquit themselves with honor, no matter what the cost. When everything seems lost, Rod is faced with simple questions. Honor. Or dishonor. Decisions of life or death. And how to handle a brother who is a traitor. SEAL Attack: Honor and Dishonor is the first shortread novel in the SEAL Attack series. The book is a collaboration between Todd McLeod and Eric Meyer, the bestselling author of more than fifty war novels.

After the EMP


E.E. Isherwood - 2021
    New car. New retirement.Stolen by the EMP.It gets worse. Frank’s neighbors failed to prepare at all, so it falls on him to keep them alive.He starts easy: stockpile food, water, and guns. Disaster lessons he'd picked up reading books about the end of the world.But after the EMP, keeping people safe gets complicated. He has to rally the neighborhood before the streets turn to chaos.And they will. He’s read enough to know the power might come on tomorrow……or never.

DRYP: The Final Pandemic


R.A. Scheuring - 2020
    The Race is On to Stop a Catastrophic Pandemic.After an exchange student with bubonic plague turns up in a Reno hospital, a contractor with identical symptoms dies in Los Angeles.The government‘s official stance is that the cases are isolated, and the outbreak is under control. But George Mack, a 30-year public health veteran, quickly realizes this is no ordinary plague. The death toll is too high, and the spread pattern make no sense. As Reno’s hospitals fill with plague victims, Mack begins to believe that there is more to the epidemic than the CDC is letting on—and that he must take drastic steps if he hopes to save his city.Medical resident Dr. Susan Barry just wants to finish her training and get a real job. But when plague patients start showing up in her Los Angeles hospital, her plans for the future suddenly go off the rails. Faced with a growing crisis, Susan teams up with an old research mentor to determine the unthinkable: is the rapidly spreading plague an act of bioterrorism? Racing against the clock, Susan must also confront another disturbing possibility. She may be one of the plague’s few survivors.In Eastern Oregon, John Harr makes a pact with his fellow ranchers to keep the “California” plague out of the high desert where they live. Using roadblocks and quarantine, Harr and his neighbors think they’ve secured their home—until a mysterious and heavily armed convoy comes to town, and Harr must use his training from his past life in the military to protect the people he loves.

40 Days


A.J. Flowers - 2021
    No electronics. No cell phones. No hope.An atomic blast meant to stave off an incoming asteroid on a fatal collision course with Earth goes terribly wrong. Atomic debris scatter the globe, pelting civilization until only ruins and anarchy is left.40 Days.That’s how long it’ll take for the Atomic Fall to stop.The world will never be the same. Liam Hunt knows that better than anyone, being one of the military minds behind the life-saving attempt to keep humankind from extinction. When the lead general ignores his warnings, he knows it’s time to go to Plan B, because this is only the beginning.It’s a race for survival as Liam and his sister face hundreds of miles of ruined terrain. A rogue team of scientists and soldiers have established safety bunkers around the world and if Liam can make it in time, his family might just survive.Start running, because the countdown starts now.

Survive the Fall


Grace Hamilton - 2020
    The hunting trip is merely a ploy contrived by his wife and mother to force Greg and his father to end their estrangement. Not even Greg’s teenage daughter or his father’s hunting buddies along for the ride will be enough of a buffer to heal the rift of long-standing resentments. But the helicopter has barely dropped them in the remote Canadian wilderness when they discover their new equipment is dead with no explanation. Now they’ll have to rely on each other and resort to Old West ingenuity to find their way home—before the hunter becomes the hunted.For seventeen-year-old Darryl Healy, things aren’t much easier on his grandparents’ cattle ranch. Not when his highly intelligent and successful mother keeps hounding him about college applications. But college quickly loses its allure when the lights go out after a cyberattack. Frightening responsibilities fall squarely on Darryl’s unproven shoulders as a power-hungry politician is determined to confiscate the ranch’s resources—by any means necessary.Danger and death await the Healy family as each group attempts to navigate this terrifying new post-apocalyptic world while the vast wilderness separates them. When deceit arises from within their ranks, they’ll face threats as lethal as the grizzly bears and mountain lions lurking in the shadows.And in order to survive the nightmare, a deal with the devil might be their only saving grace.

World on Edge


Chris Pike - 2021
    No technology. No nothing.A deadly EMP obliterates the nation's power grid.The survivors must rely on themselves, their courage, and wit, while enduring horrific hardships.Joe Buck is on a collision course with a life altering event. He’ll need to rely on his skills to survive the catastrophic EMP about to unfold as he’s working behind the scenes of his blue collar job at the Super Bowl. Breakout country singer, and small-town girl Lexi Carter is on the same trajectory. She has just finished singing a well-received rendition of the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. It’s 5:23 pm and Ethan Crossfield, the lead pilot of the Blue Angels, has NRG Stadium in his sights, packed with thousands of people as he streaks across the sky at mind numbing speeds, moments before his flyover.The crowd is raucous.The performances were meticulously rehearsed, finely tuned down to the second, and should have gone off without a hitch. Except for one surprise glitch: An EMP.During the chaos and the ensuing struggle to survive, society collapses faster than expected, and an unlikely hero emerges, unknowingly stalked by powerful and ruthless people willing to kill at all costs to maintain the secrecy of their diabolical plot.Find out who is left standing in this fast-paced and thrilling first installment in the World on Edge series.

The Grave Diggers


Chris Fritschi - 2020
    At the 11th hour humanity fought back, saving what little was left of the world. The carnage and destruction left the county shattered and Sergeant Jack Tate a broken man who's given up on himself. But when he gets a cryptic offer to help his faltering country he ignores his suspicions and accepts the challenge.His decision plunges Tate into a fight for his life and he will quickly discover the undead aren't the only ones out to kill him.

Apocalypse Trails: Episode 1


Joe Nobody - 2016
    Commander Jack Cisco has been under the Pacific Ocean for months aboard the USS Utah, conducting a top secret surveillance mission. When their boat finally returns to port, the officers and crew are shocked to find the entire West Coast of the United States has been destroyed or abandoned. Low on supplies and running out of options, the captain has no choice but to enter port and hope to find some answers. It’s not long before they discover that the world they left behind just a few short months before is gone forever.

Among the Dead


Stephen A. Kennedy - 2020
    Everything shuts down. Airports, businesses, schools. Cell phone service and electricity soon follow. The virus turns people insane, causing them to attack anything that moves. Armed forces are quickly overrun, and every citizen is in a fight for their life.Samantha survives the initial onslaught of infected. But now she decides to venture out from upstate New York to find her husband, who was stranded in Los Angeles. Determined to be reunited with her love, she sets out through the hell that the United States has become.Along the way, she meets Jason, another survivor, who was separated from his wife in Flagstaff, Arizona. They decide to travel together, helping each other reach their spouses. They soon find they’ll have to make difficult decisions in order to survive.But how long can someone cling to their values and morals in a world that has abandoned such things?Among the Dead is the first book of the In the Valley trilogy.