Book picks similar to
Unexpected World by Chris Pike


post-apocalyptic
fiction
apocalyptic
sci-fi

The Borrowed World


Franklin Horton - 2015
    Life as we know it in America grinds to a halt as the electrical grid collapses, communication networks are damaged, critical bridges and dams are destroyed, and major fuel refineries go up in massive fiery clouds. When the government responds by immediately halting fuel sales to the public, Jim Powell finds himself in a terrifying predicament – trapped five hundred miles from home with a group of coworkers. With thousands of trapped travelers and scarce law enforcement, the miles between Jim and his family become a brutal gauntlet where the rules of civilized society no longer apply. As Jim puts his years of preparation and planning to the test, he is forced to ask himself if he has what it takes to make it home. Does he have the strength -- the brutality -- required to meet this new world toe-to-toe?

Blackout


Boyd Craven - 2018
    He’s a poacher, a moonshiner and a prepper, out of necessity. Despite trying to live on the straight and narrow, he knows the law can turn things on you in a heartbeat. When Wes has to come up with money for his Grandpa’s surgery, he gets involved with an unsavory group. Living deep in poverty for most of his life, he’s become resilient and flexible, but college education can only take him so far. A solar storm sends the northern lights as far south as Texas, and cascading failures in the grid cripple the nation. Now, without communications, Flagg has to prove he has what it takes to still survive.

Solar Storm (Survival EMP Book 1)


Rob Lopez - 2017
     The biggest solar storm in recorded history will hit Earth, and the resulting EMP pulse will fry electricity grids and disable fragile electronics. Transmission wires will melt, transformers will explode, modern vehicles and aircraft will cease to work. In less than a minute, the world will be taken back two centuries. Lauren Nolan is in New York on a business trip when the blackout hits and the transportation system grinds to a halt. Trapped in the panic that envelops the metropolis, she has find a way to get back to her two children, five hundred miles away in North Carolina. Unable to get word to them, and with society collapsing around her, she faces a long and harrowing journey on foot. Her husband is serving overseas and it looks like she might never see him again. Sergeant Rick Nolan is in Syria on a covert ops mission against ISIS. When the solar storm wipes out his communications and his air cover, he and his small team find themselves on the same level as the enemy that surrounds them. Caught in a desperate fight for survival and forced to run, one thought is uppermost in his mind: How is he going to get home? Solar Storm is Book 1 of an EMP, post-apocalyptic series about family survival and the challenges entailed. Contains moderate language and graphic action scenes.

Survival


Devon C. Ford - 2016
    By the time the country realised it was everywhere, nearly everyone died. Being one of the few left alive wasn't the freedom he would have expected. Banding together those he found along the way, he has to fight to keep them safe. To keep them alive. To survive.

The Last Tribe


Brad Manuel - 2015
    Not only do you struggle to find food, water, and shelter, you deal with the sadness and loss of everyone you know, and everything you have. Fourteen year old Greg Dixon is living that nightmare. Attending boarding school outside of Boston, he is separated from his family when a pandemic strikes. His classmates and teachers are dead, rotting in a dormitory turned morgue steps from his room. The nights are getting colder, and his food has run out. The last message from his father is get away from the city, and meet at his grandparent’s town in remote New Hampshire. Knowing the impending New England winter could be the final nail in his coffin, he packs what little food he can find, and sets off on his one hundred mile walk north with the unwavering belief that his family is alive and will join him. As the fast moving and deadly disease strips away family and friends, Greg’s father, John, is trapped in South Carolina. Roadblocks, a panic stricken population, and winter make it impossible for him to get to his son. John and his three brothers appear to be immune, but they are scattered across a locked down United States, forced to wait for the end of humanity before travelling to the mountains of New Hampshire. Spring arrives, and the Dixons make their way north to find young Greg. They meet others along the way, and slowly form the last tribe of humanity from the few people still alive in the northeast.

Trackers


Nicholas Sansbury Smith - 2017
    Estes Park police chief Marcus Colton and tracker Sam "Raven" Spears have never liked one another, but when a young girl goes missing in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colton hires Spears to help find her. Their search ends after a night of devastating horror. When word reaches Estes that the nation has been hit by a coordinated electromagnetic pulse attack, Colton and Spears are forced to work together again. But they quickly realize they aren't just tracking a killer - they are tracking a madman. As the United States descends into chaos, the hunters become the hunted. Halfway across the country, Senator Charlize Montgomery awakes to find the nation's capital has gone dark. Forced to set off on foot, she treks across a city that has woken to a new world, and as the night progresses she learns the EMP attack was just the beginning.

Fight Like a Man


L.L. Akers - 2017
    They had everything they needed at their homestead. What he wasn't prepared for, was his family not being home if it ever happened.Olivia Rowan is with her sisters, Gabby and Emma, on a girls-only trip to Myrtle Beach. When chaos erupts and there's no gas, their journey home is a nightmare, filled with predators and danger--and apparently, Olivia hadn't learned a thing her husband tried to teach her. When your neighbors run out of food and water, and turn on each other, what will you do?Jake, a country boy mechanic, never believed in TEOTWAWKI, but he'd heard his brother-in-law preach about it many times. He knew what to do; but he didn't prepare. He lazily left it all up to Grayson--he was the prepper after all. When catastrophe strikes, will he continue to keep his head stuck in the sand while his clueless neighbors destroy each other, and his wife is stuck out on the road; or will he stand up and fight like a man? And if you're alone? Bug in or Bug out?Graysie Rowan, a freshman at University, just wants to go home. When no word comes from the government, and the state capital is overrun with looters, chaos and mayhem, the college administration puts the students on lock-down. But her dad, Grayson, had prepared her for this. Now, if she can only remember what it was he said to do...If they want to survive this post-apocalyptic event, they'll all have to learn to fight like a man.The end came not with boots on the ground, nuclear weapons or an EMP. It snuck in with a quiet clatter at the back door and flipped the switch, covering the states in darkness and sending this family on three divergent paths that ultimately lead home. When they collide in this surreal and gripping family drama, it won't be without bullets and bloodshed.

Mountain Man


Keith C. Blackmore - 2011
    Living on the outskirts of a city and scavenging for whatever supplies remain after civilization died two years ago, Gus knows that every time he goes down into undead suburbia could be his last.A novel of the zombie apocalypse. *First book of a completed 4-book series.* Contains graphic language and scenes of violence. Complete series order:Book 1: Mountain ManBook 2: SafariBook 3: HellifaxBook 4: Well FedAlso :The Hospital (a single short story, also part of the collection "CauldronGristle." This story happens six months before the events of "MountainMan." )

No Direction Home


Mike Sheridan - 2017
    An Irish couple on their dream vacation in Orlando. A bank robber in an Atlanta prison...what do they all have in common? They are survivors of vPx073, the most deadly virus ever to be unleashed on the planet. One that has brought civilization to a standstill. Haunted by the tragic death of his Gulf War veteran father, Cody Parsons is a struggling student at UTK when the pandemic hits Knoxville. Soon the sharpshooting skills his father taught him as a fourteen-year-old are put to good use --- especially when an ex-US army combat engineer takes him under his wing. As food and water runs out, and roving gangs take over the cities, the paths of some very determined survivors are destined to meet...with surprising consequences. With strong, original characters that jump off the page, this is a fast-paced story that fans of post-apocalyptic survival fiction will appreciate.

77 Days in September


Ray Gorham - 2011
    Kyle Tait is settling in for his flight home to Montana when a single nuclear bomb is detonated 300 miles above the heart of America. The blast, an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP), destroys every electrical device in the country, and results in the crippling of the power grid, the shutting down of modern communications, and bringing to a halt most forms of transportation.Kyle narrowly escapes when his airplane crashes on take-off, only to find himself stranded 2,000 miles from home in a country that has been forced, from a technological standpoint, back to the 19th Century. Confused, hurt, scared, and alone, Kyle must make his way across a hostile continent to a family he’s not even sure has survived the effects of the attack. As Kyle forges his way home, his frightened family faces their own struggles for survival in a community trying to halt its slow spiral into chaos and anarchy. 77 Days in September follows Kyle and his wife, Jennifer, as they are stretched past their breaking point, but find in their devotion to each other the strength to persevere.

Frontier Justice


Arthur T. Bradley - 2013
    Governments have collapsed. Cities have become graveyards filled with unspeakable horror. People have resorted to scavenging from the dead, or taking from the living. The entire industrialized world has become a wasteland of abandoned cars, decaying bodies, and feral animals. To stay alive, U.S. Deputy Marshal Mason Raines must forage for food, water, and gasoline while outgunning those who seek to take advantage of the apocalyptic anarchy. Together with his giant Irish wolfhound, Bowie, he aligns with survivors of the town of Boone in a life and death struggle against a gang of violent criminals. With each deadly encounter, Mason is forced to accept his place as one of the nation's few remaining lawmen. In a world now populated by escaped convicts, paranoid mutants, and government hit squads, his only hope to save the townspeople is to enforce his own brand of frontier justice.

Black Autumn


Jeff Kirkham - 2018
    economy crumbles after a rogue nation detonates a small nuclear bomb in a Los Angeles port.The disastrous economic domino effect known as “Black Autumn” threatens a group of Special Forces vets, their families, and friends, leaving serious doubt that their skills and fortitude will be enough to bridge the deadly gap between modern society and an epoch of American savagery.**Black Autumn is a survival/military thriller, post-apocalyptic saga, Book One of the ReadyMan Series. The four books of the Black Autumn Companion Series occur during the same seventeen days of the collapse of America as Black Autumn and can be read in any order: The Last Air Force One, and Black Autumn: Travelers (now available), and coming in 2019: Black Autumn: Conquistadors, and Black Autumn: Gunslingers. **

Rules of Survival


Jack Hunt - 2019
     Tyler Ford is a tour guide, a brother, and the son of a prepper from Whitefish, Montana. Robbed of a childhood and forced to learn his father’s stringent rules of survival for every kind of apocalypse, he couldn’t wait to leave home, but when an EMP obliterates the United States electrical grid, takes out communication and stalls vehicles, Tyler must face the past and remember what he taught him if he hopes to make it out of Vegas alive. When chaos erupts, will you know the rules to survive? Erika Lyons just wanted an evening away from the hectic world of hotel management but she got more than she expected. There’s only one thing worse than a bad date, that’s relying on them to keep you alive. Demanding guests were a challenge, desperate ones, pure hell. As food stops being delivered, vehicles clog up the streets, and society begins to unravel, sin city could be the most dangerous place in America. In a world without power, fighting to stay alive may be the only rule that matters. With no warning, no communication, and planes falling out of the sky, the Ford’s may be the only ones who know what it takes to thrive. Can Tyler, and two ordinary strangers survive the perilous journey home to Montana? Can the Ford family hold it together long enough to push back the tide of violence, looters and roving gangs? And will they help the community survive as the world is thrown into darkness? Rules of Survival is book one in Survival Rules, a post-apocalyptic EMP thriller series following the Ford family and their community as they fight to survive after an EMP destroys the nation’s power grid.

Home


Tom Abrahams - 2015
    HE THOUGHT HIS FAMILY WAS SAFE. HE WAS WRONG. Five years after a pneumonic plague killed two-thirds of the world’s population, army veteran Marcus Battle is isolated. He’s alone with his guns, his food, and the graves of his wife and child. Unaware of the chaos that’s befallen everything outside of his central Texas ranch land, Marcus lives a Spartan life. If anyone steps onto his property he shoots first and never ask questions. But when a woman in distress, chased by marauders, seeks asylum, Marcus has a decision to make. Does he throw her to the wolves to protect himself or does he help her and leave the shelter and protection of home?

When the Power Is Gone


P.A. Glaspy - 2017
    Regular people, with regular jobs, living a normal life - except for one thing. They are what many people call "preppers." They have stocked up on supplies to survive any kind of event they can think of that may occur to disrupt life as they know it. When that event comes, they start preparing for the new way of life they will face. Along with their teenage son, and their next door neighbors and best friends, they plan their exit from a neighborhood too close to the city to a farm in the country. They just have to get there. Their faith in their own capabilities and in humankind will be challenged, as they fight to protect and keep their supplies and, quite possibly, their lives.