Book picks similar to
Surviving the Fall by William Allen


dystopia
post-apocalyptic
apocalyptic
apocalypse

Unexpected World


Chris Pike - 2016
     Assistant District Attorney Dillon Stockdale is on the phone with his daughter when an EMP obliterates the entire electrical grid of the United States. Anything relying on a computer is fried, including the plane his daughter is on. Gripped with the terrifying realization the plane has crash-landed somewhere in the expansive and dangerous landscape of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin, Dillon sets out to rescue her before it’s too late. A harrowing survival story with non-stop, pulse-pounding action, Unexpected World is a story of good vs. evil, of a complex narrative of fight or flight, and mind-bending choices resulting in profound consequences. Dillon Stockdale is determined, he’s well-equipped, and nothing will stop him. Or will it?

Roland: Reluctant Paladin


N.C. Reed - 2014
    He was just looking for a place to get out of the rain. His plan was to lay low and allow the world to reset itself after a world wide economic collapse. But, things do change. An orphan himself from an early age, the former soldier can't simply walk away and leave the children he finds. Especially once he realizes what a sorry lot of adults is nominally in charge of the group in the warehouse he's taken shelter in. But now, he's got his hands full, and then some. He has to find a home for those children, and a way to feed, clothe, and educate them. All while protecting them from people who would prey on them in one way or another, and while protecting his own back from an angry woman who apparently hates him just because. Her only redeeming feature as far as Roland is concerned? She wants to protect the children as much as he does. Leading a handful of teens and a busload of orphaned children, Roland sets out to find a safe haven for them. Along the way he'll make friends, enemies, and the odd mistake or two. Or more. Roland isn't exactly parenting material, either. With problems of his own to deal with, maybe taking on so much extra responsibility wasn't the smartest thing he's ever done. Then again, Roland has always been stubborn.

The Ranch: Jack Sterlings Legacy


Sean Liscom - 2019
    He had worked the same job his entire adult life, he had never married and he had no children. He was used to doing things on his own. His comfortable life was shaken to the core the day he learned of his fathers death. It was a mysterious meeting that set life altering events in motion and the allure of a new life was too great to walk away from. When an Electromagnetic Pulse brings the modern world to its knees, Jason's choice proves to be the right one. Excerpt I have been told by many people that I have lived an extraordinary life. While the past few years have been a wild ride, I don’t think that I would go that far. I would be more inclined to say that I have been very blessed. The people who I’ll introduce you to, they were the extraordinary ones. I was just lucky enough to call them my friends. In order to keep the memories alive of the ones that we lost along the way; I have decided to put pen to paper. It is in their memory that I tell you this story. My name is Jason Sterling and my incredible journey began on July 9th, 2015. That was the day I learned that my father had passed away. I was 38 years old and had been working at the same warehouse job for 20 years in Reno, Nevada. I had started there the summer I graduated from high school and the place just kind of stuck with me. Over the years I had risen through the ranks, from picker packer to shift lead. Then from shift lead to warehouse supervisor, then to supply chain manager. That was the position I had been in for the last five years. Retirement wasn't even a thought yet. Hell, I was only 38, who the hell retires at 38? So, every day I went to work. I was there at 5am and left after the second shift came on at 2:30pm. I liked to have contact with all my people. Maybe that’s why I was a successful manager. It's not that I really liked the job, I was just good at it and to be honest, I was comfortable. I had bigger plans for when I did decide to retire. Having never been married and having no kids, I had a lot of options open to me. The one option I was looking at was a huge log cabin in northern Montana. I loved the log cabin look and the idea of retiring and telling civilization to piss off was a feeling I felt more and more every day. At 6'-2" tall, I maintained an average weight of 195 with a pretty chiseled physique. I tried to do my hour every morning in the gym. After that, I was in the shower by 4:20 and on my way to work by 4:45. It was only a five-minute drive to work. That was the normal routine and had been every workday for years. I was always the first person at work, so I was a little surprised when I pulled in to find the Plant Manager’s car and a black limo in the parking lot. From outside I could see that the office lights were already on, my office light included. "Hmm, must be a surprise visit from corporate," I muttered to myself as I grabbed my briefcase and headed for the front door. I had been through these surprise inspections before, so I wasn't about to let it change my routine. In the front door, past the forklift charging stations and into the employee break room. It was a habit of mine to always start the coffee pots. I knew my people liked coming into work with hot coffee waiting for them. That done, I headed to my office. Let’s see who we had to impress today. Daryl, the plant manager, was in his office but the door was closed, so I proceeded to my office which was two doors down. My door was also closed, and I could see light spilling from under it. I stood there for a second or two trying to figure exactly what to do. Do I knock on my own office door? Do I just barge in like I own the place? This was a first.

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.

Zero Day


Bobby Adair - 2013
    Disturbing news footage is flooding the cable news channels. People are worried. People are frightened. But Zed Zane is oblivious. Zed needs to borrow rent money from his parents. He gets up Sunday morning, drinks enough tequila to stifle his pride and heads to his mom’s house for a lunch of begging, again.But something is wrong. There's blood in the foyer. His mother's corpse is on the living room floor. Zed's stepdad, Dan is wild with crazy-eyed violence and attacks Zed when he comes into the house. They struggle into the kitchen. Dan's yellow teeth tear at Zed's arm but Zed grabs a knife and stabs Dan, thirty-seven times, or so the police later say.With infection burning in his blood, Zed is arrested for murder but the world is falling apart and he soon finds himself back on the street, fighting for his life among the infected who would kill him and the normal people, who fear him.

Recon


Tarah Benner - 2014
    It's a reality he's forced to confront every year on Bid Day. But when your job is to go out into the radiation-soaked Fringe so that others can live in peace, you don’t ask too many questions. For Harper, the bid system works just fine. She’s the best developer in her year, and she's confident she’ll find a place among the wealthy, respected Systems workers. But when an upset in the bidding changes the course of Harper’s future, she’ll be forced to rely on an unlikely ally — dark, unreadable Eli Parker. In her search for answers, Harper will learn that in the compound, the truth doesn’t set you free. It gets you killed.

Taking on the Dead


Annie Walls - 2012
    It's the only way to survive. The only way not to draw the living dead. Helping a small group of people, she learns the new world might not be what she assumes. Venturing out of her refuge and comfort zone, she meets Rudy, who helps her find a greater purpose. She realizes that the world has moved on without her. Only it's not what she expects. Her knowledge of the living dead grows and only makes her more curious as humanity continues to hang on by a thread. While on her search for answers she finds comfort in new friendships and love, but her past seems as if it will haunt her forever. Kansas takes it upon herself to help other survivors, which would be easy if the famished were the only obstacles.

Surviving Passion


Maia Underwood - 2010
    Every day is a lone struggle for survival in the wilderness, more than a decade after the fall of modern civilization. No longer subject to law, order, or the social norms of its domestic past, the primal nature of man has reared its head with alarming swiftness. From her own frightening experiences, Selena has learned just how dangerous men are. Now, she avoids them at all costs, mastering a thoroughly elusive lifestyle, until she meets her match. After a chance encounter, Selena's life is swept on a tide of chaotic involvement with Dan, an intense but disciplined leader who clashes with her approach to survival on every level. Through her wild experiences with this frightening but captivating man, Selena learns that the human animal loves as passionately as it kills.Note: This novel is more dramatic, suspenseful and adventurous than sweet, loving and traditional.Caution: Contains explicit sex scenes.

London


Frank Tayell - 2013
    Within days the infection had spread to every corner of the world. Nowhere is safe from the undead...Bill watched from his window as London was evacuated. His leg broken, he is unable to join the exodus. Turning to his friends in the government, he waits and hopes for rescue. As the days turn into weeks, realising inaction will lead only to starvation and death, his thoughts turn to escape.Forced to leave the safety of his home he ventures out into the undead wasteland that once was England, where he will discover a horrific secret.This is the first volume of his journal.

Scorched: A Dry Earth Story


Theresa Shaver - 2017
    All choices lead to death when the sun has Scorched the world. Claudia has never seen rain or any water that hasn’t come from the old well behind her house. Now the well’s about played out and today they closed down the ration stations, for good. The gangs are circling to rob and loot the little they have. Her only choices are go north to the slave labour camps or stay and die by the gangs. Her grandmother wants them to run south and follow an old map that will lead them to a secret valley with all the water they will ever need. She swears it’s there but how can she drag her nine year old sister and an eighty-year old woman out into the desert wasteland that surrounds them based on an old map? Enjoy this clean, stand-alone adventure novel that moves at fast pace!

Outpost


Adam Baker - 2011
    They didn't expect the world to end. Kasker Rampart: a derelict refinery platform moored in the Arctic Ocean. A skeleton crew of fifteen fight boredom and despair as they wait for a relief ship to take them home. But the world beyond their frozen wasteland has gone to hell. Cities lie ravaged by a global pandemic. One by one TV channels die, replaced by silent wavebands. The Rampart crew are marooned. They must survive the long Arctic winter, then make their way home alone. They battle starvation and hypothermia, unaware that the deadly contagion that has devastated the world is heading their way...

Escape From Armageddon


Darrell Maloney - 2013
    His beloved Hannah is a beautiful scientist. Pragmatic, intelligent and analytical, she longs for the family she never had, and a change from her horrific childhood. Mark offers that change, and her life is finally complete.Then Hannah discovers that mankind is doomed. Suddenly their lives become a mad scramble, to find a way to save themselves and everyone they love.

Year One


Joshua Guess - 2011
    This work contains. "LWtD: With Spring Comes The Fall" and "LWtD: The Bitter Seasons" as well as a large amount of bonus content. Living With the Dead is a serialized story of everyday life at the beginning of and during the zombie apocalypse. Its original format was and is an almost daily blog. Told in the author's own voice, LWtD is the story of a group of survivors in central Kentucky, working to stay alive amid the violence and chaos of a crumbling civilization. Faced with threats and challenges that tax their endurance and force them to make terrible choices, the story follows the survivors day to day.From the viewpoint of one man and his friends, the answer to the question of what people will become when the rules no longer apply begins to emerge. For some, it is violent conflict. br/br/For others who only want to live in peace, this is a journey toward understanding that in a world of the dead, the only choice is to truly live.

The Release


Shelbi Wescott - 2013
    But as Lucy looks forward to her trip, a sinister plot is unfolding that will demolish the world as she knows it. An unknown bio-terrorist group unleashes a virus that virtually wipes out the earth’s population—leaving Lucy, and a small faction of survivors, trapped inside her high school to wait out the apocalypse. As war, looting, and death wreak havoc outside, inside, the students must contend with a tyrannical and paranoid principal and their own struggles of being orphaned, frightened, and unsure of what the future will bring. What begins as a basic fight for survival turns into a search for answers that will challenge everything Lucy has ever known about her life and her family.

American Survivor


A.J. Newman - 2018
    The North Koreans launch a surprise Nuclear EMP attack on the USA. Our hero, Joe doesn’t care about politics or what happened, he just knows his world went to Hell. Planes fell out of the sky, people went nuts looting and killing as he scrambled to hide from all of the craziness. Joe had a cabin and land in Southern Oregon when TSHTF and retreated to the cabin to survive the massive die-off that was always predicted for an apocalypse. The weeks before the Grid went down weren’t much better for Joe because his best friend, his fiance, and his beloved Grandma all died during the weeks leading up to lights out. Joe was a young auto mechanic whose only stress in life was from a domineering girlfriend, and now he has to learn how to survive in a Post-Apocalyptic world without military or survival training. To make matters, worse others look to him for support and guidance. Read American Survivor to find out how a regular guy survives in a Post-Apocalyptic world. AJ Newman